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diff --git a/718-h/718-h.htm b/718-h/718-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a269339 --- /dev/null +++ b/718-h/718-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,20592 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tono-Bungay, by H. G. Wells</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +div.center {text-align: center;} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tono-Bungay, by H.G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Tono-Bungay</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H.G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November, 1996 [eBook #718]<br /> +[Most recently updated: March 23, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: John Bean; Diane Bean and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TONO-BUNGAY ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>Tono-Bungay</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by H.G. Wells</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#book01"><b>BOOK THE FIRST</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER THE FIRST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER THE SECOND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER THE THIRD</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#book02"><b>BOOK THE SECOND</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER THE FIRST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER THE SECOND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER THE THIRD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#book03"><b>BOOK THE THIRD</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER THE FIRST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER THE SECOND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER THE THIRD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#book04"><b>BOOK THE FOURTH</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER THE FIRST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER THE SECOND</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER THE THIRD</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="book01"></a>BOOK THE FIRST<br /> +THE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +OF BLADESOVER HOUSE, AND MY MOTHER; AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +Most people in this world seem to live “in character”; they have a +beginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with another +and true to the rules of their type. You can speak of them as being of this +sort of people or that. They are, as theatrical people say, no more (and no +less) than “character actors.” They have a class, they have a +place, they know what is becoming in them and what is due to them, and their +proper size of tombstone tells at last how properly they have played the part. +But there is also another kind of life that is not so much living as a +miscellaneous tasting of life. One gets hit by some unusual transverse force, +one is jerked out of one’s stratum and lives crosswise for the rest of +the time, and, as it were, in a succession of samples. That has been my lot, +and that is what has set me at last writing something in the nature of a novel. +I have got an unusual series of impressions that I want very urgently to tell. +I have seen life at very different levels, and at all these levels I have seen +it with a sort of intimacy and in good faith. I have been a native in many +social countries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, my +cousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten illegal +snacks—the unjustifiable gifts of footmen—in pantries, and been +despised for my want of style (and subsequently married and divorced) by the +daughter of a gasworks clerk; and—to go to my other extreme—I was +once—oh, glittering days!—an item in the house-party of a countess. +She was, I admit, a countess with a financial aspect, but still, you know, a +countess. I’ve seen these people at various angles. At the dinner-table +I’ve met not simply the titled but the great. On one occasion—it is +my brightest memory—I upset my champagne over the trousers of the +greatest statesman in the empire—Heaven forbid I should be so invidious +as to name him!—in the warmth of our mutual admiration. +</p> + +<p> +And once (though it is the most incidental thing in my life) I murdered a +man.... +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I’ve seen a curious variety of people and ways of living altogether. +Odd people they all are great and small, very much alike at bottom and +curiously different on their surfaces. I wish I had ranged just a little +further both up and down, seeing I have ranged so far. Royalty must be worth +knowing and very great fun. But my contacts with princes have been limited to +quite public occasions, nor at the other end of the scale have I had what I +should call an inside acquaintance with that dusty but attractive class of +people who go about on the high-roads drunk but <i>en famille</i> (so redeeming +the minor lapse), in the summertime, with a perambulator, lavender to sell, +sun-brown children, a smell, and ambiguous bundles that fire the imagination. +Navvies, farm-labourers, sailormen and stokers, all such as sit in 1834 +beer-houses, are beyond me also, and I suppose must remain so now for ever. My +intercourse with the ducal rank too has been negligible; I once went shooting +with a duke, and in an outburst of what was no doubt snobbishness, did my best +to get him in the legs. But that failed. +</p> + +<p> +I’m sorry I haven’t done the whole lot though.... +</p> + +<p> +You will ask by what merit I achieved this remarkable social range, this +extensive cross-section of the British social organism. It was the Accident of +Birth. It always is in England. Indeed, if I may make the remark so cosmic, +everything is. But that is by the way. I was my uncle’s nephew, and my +uncle was no less a person than Edward Ponderevo, whose comet-like transit of +the financial heavens happened—it is now ten years ago! Do you remember +the days of Ponderevo, the <i>great</i> days, I mean, of Ponderevo? Perhaps you +had a trifle in some world-shaking enterprise! Then you know him only too well. +Astraddle on Tono-Bungay, he flashed athwart the empty heavens—like a +comet—rather, like a stupendous rocket!—and overawed investors +spoke of his star. At his zenith he burst into a cloud of the most magnificent +promotions. What a time that was! The Napoleon of domestic conveniences! +</p> + +<p> +I was his nephew, his peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on to his +coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the chemist’s +shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I was, you might say, the stick of his +rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a +golden rain in the sky, after my bird’s-eye view of the modern world, I +fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two and twenty years older, +with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this +Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine +realites of steel—to think it all over in my leisure and jot down the +notes and inconsecutive observations that make this book. It was more, you +know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight +across the channel in the Lord Roberts <i>B</i>.... +</p> + +<p> +I warn you this book is going to be something of an agglomeration. I want to +trace my social trajectory (and my uncle’s) as the main line of my story, +but as this is my first novel and almost certainly my last, I want to get in, +too, all sorts of things that struck me, things that amused me and impressions +I got—even although they don’t minister directly to my narrative at +all. I want to set out my own queer love experiences too, such as they are, for +they troubled and distressed and swayed me hugely, and they still seem to me to +contain all sorts of irrational and debatable elements that I shall be the +clearer-headed for getting on paper. And possibly I may even flow into +descriptions of people who are really no more than people seen in transit, just +because it amuses me to recall what they said and did to us, and more +particularly how they behaved in the brief but splendid glare of Tono-Bungay +and its still more glaring offspring. It lit some of them up, I can assure you! +Indeed, I want to get in all sorts of things. My ideas of a novel all through +are comprehensive rather than austere.... +</p> + +<p> +Tono-Bungay still figures on the hoardings, it stands in rows in every +chemist’s storeroom, it still assuages the coughs of age and brightens +the elderly eye and loosens the elderly tongue; but its social glory, its +financial illumination, have faded from the world for ever. And I, sole +scorched survivor from the blaze, sit writing of it here in an air that is +never still for the clang and thunder of machines, on a table littered with +working drawings, and amid fragments of models and notes about velocities and +air and water pressures and trajectories—of an altogether different sort +from that of Tono-Bungay. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I write that much and look at it, and wonder whether, after all, this is any +fair statement of what I am attempting in this book. I’ve given, I see, +an impression that I want to make simply a hotch-potch of anecdotes and +experiences with my uncle swimming in the middle as the largest lump of +victual. I’ll own that here, with the pen already started, I realise what +a fermenting mass of things learnt and emotions experienced and theories formed +I’ve got to deal with, and how, in a sense, hopeless my book must be from +the very outset. I suppose what I’m really trying to render is nothing +more nor less than Life—as one man has found it. I want to +tell—<i>myself</i>, and my impressions of the thing as a whole, to say +things I have come to feel intensely of the laws, traditions, usages, and ideas +we call society, and how we poor individuals get driven and lured and stranded +among these windy, perplexing shoals and channels. I’ve got, I suppose, +to a time of life when things begin to take on shapes that have an air of +reality, and become no longer material for dreaming, but interesting in +themselves. I’ve reached the criticising, novel-writing age, and here I +am writing mine—my one novel—without having any of the discipline +to refrain and omit that I suppose the regular novel-writer acquires. +</p> + +<p> +I’ve read an average share of novels and made some starts before this +beginning, and I’ve found the restraints and rules of the art (as I made +them out) impossible for me. I like to write, I am keenly interested in +writing, but it is not my technique. I’m an engineer with a patent or two +and a set of ideas; most of whatever artist there is in me has been given to +turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I +will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I +must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I +have in mind. And it isn’t a constructed tale I have to tell, but +unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the +spirit of truth-telling all through as strongly as I have now, you shall have +it all—falls into no sort of neat scheme of telling. It involves three +separate feminine persons. It’s all mixed up with the other things.... +</p> + +<p> +But I’ve said enough, I hope, to excuse myself for the method or want of +method in what follows, and I think I had better tell without further delay of +my boyhood and my early impressions in the shadow of Bladesover House. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +There came a time when I realised that Bladesover House was not all it seemed, +but when I was a little boy I took the place with the entirest faith as a +complete authentic microcosm. I believed that the Bladesover system was a +little working-model—and not so very little either—of the whole +world. +</p> + +<p> +Let me try and give you the effect of it. +</p> + +<p> +Bladesover lies up on the Kentish Downs, eight miles perhaps from Ashborough; +and its old pavilion, a little wooden parody of the temple of Vesta at Tibur, +upon the hill crest behind the house, commands in theory at least a view of +either sea, of the Channel southward and the Thames to the northeast. The park +is the second largest in Kent, finely wooded with well-placed beeches, many +elms and some sweet chestnuts, abounding in little valleys and hollows of +bracken, with springs and a stream and three fine ponds and multitudes of +fallow deer. The house was built in the eighteenth century, it is of pale red +brick in the style of a French chateau, and save for one pass among the crests +which opens to blue distances, to minute, remote, oast-set farm-houses and +copses and wheat fields and the occasional gleam of water, its hundred and +seventeen windows look on nothing but its own wide and handsome territories. A +semi-circular screen of great beeches masks the church and village, which +cluster picturesquely about the high road along the skirts of the great park. +Northward, at the remotest corner of that enclosure, is a second dependent +village, Ropedean, less fortunate in its greater distance and also on account +of a rector. This divine was indeed rich, but he was vindictively economical +because of some shrinkage of his tithes; and by reason of his use of the word +Eucharist for the Lord’s Supper he had become altogether estranged from +the great ladies of Bladesover. So that Ropedean was in the shadows through all +that youthful time. +</p> + +<p> +Now the unavoidable suggestion of that wide park and that fair large house, +dominating church, village and the country side, was that they represented the +thing that mattered supremely in the world, and that all other things had +significance only in relation to them. They represented the Gentry, the +Quality, by and through and for whom the rest of the world, the farming folk +and the labouring folk, the trades-people of Ashborough, and the upper servants +and the lower servants and the servants of the estate, breathed and lived and +were permitted. And the Quality did it so quietly and thoroughly, the great +house mingled so solidly and effectually earth and sky, the contrast of its +spacious hall and saloon and galleries, its airy housekeeper’s room and +warren of offices with the meagre dignities of the vicar, and the pinched and +stuffy rooms of even the post-office people and the grocer, so enforced these +suggestions, that it was only when I was a boy of thirteen or fourteen and some +queer inherited strain of scepticism had set me doubting whether Mr. Bartlett, +the vicar, did really know with certainty all about God, that as a further and +deeper step in doubting I began to question the final rightness of the +gentlefolks, their primary necessity in the scheme of things. But once that +scepticism had awakened it took me fast and far. By fourteen I had achieved +terrible blasphemies and sacrilege; I had resolved to marry a viscount’s +daughter, and I had blacked the left eye—I think it was the left—of +her half-brother, in open and declared rebellion. +</p> + +<p> +But of that in its place. +</p> + +<p> +The great house, the church, the village, and the labourers and the servants in +their stations and degrees, seemed to me, I say, to be a closed and complete +social system. About us were other villages and great estates, and from house +to house, interlacing, correlated, the Gentry, the fine Olympians, came and +went. The country towns seemed mere collections of ships, marketing places for +the tenantry, centres for such education as they needed, as entirely dependent +on the gentry as the village and scarcely less directly so. I thought this was +the order of the whole world. I thought London was only a greater country town +where the gentle-folk kept town-houses and did their greater shopping under the +magnificent shadow of the greatest of all fine gentlewomen, the Queen. It +seemed to be in the divine order. That all this fine appearance was already +sapped, that there were forces at work that might presently carry all this +elaborate social system in which my mother instructed me so carefully that I +might understand my “place,” to Limbo, had scarcely dawned upon me +even by the time that Tono-Bungay was fairly launched upon the world. +</p> + +<p> +There are many people in England to-day upon whom it has not yet dawned. There +are times when I doubt whether any but a very inconsiderable minority of +English people realise how extensively this ostensible order has even now +passed away. The great houses stand in the parks still, the cottages cluster +respectfully on their borders, touching their eaves with their creepers, the +English countryside—you can range through Kent from Bladesover northward +and see persists obstinately in looking what it was. It is like an early day in +a fine October. The hand of change rests on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for +awhile, as it were half reluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing for +ever. One frost and the whole face of things will be bare, links snap, patience +end, our fine foliage of pretences lie glowing in the mire. +</p> + +<p> +For that we have still to wait a little while. The new order may have gone far +towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to +be known in the village as the “Dissolving Views,” the scene that +is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is +yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have +grown bright and strong, so that the new England of our children’s +children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of democracy, of equality, and +above all of promiscuous fraternity have certainly never really entered into +the English mind. But what <i>is</i> coming into it? All this book, I hope, +will bear a little on that. Our people never formulates; it keeps words for +jests and ironies. In the meanwhile the old shapes, the old attitudes remain, +subtly changed and changing still, sheltering strange tenants. Bladesover House +is now let furnished to Sir Reuben Lichtenstein, and has been since old Lady +Drew died; it was my odd experience to visit there, in the house of which my +mother had been housekeeper, when my uncle was at the climax of Tono-Bungay. It +was curious to notice then the little differences that had come to things with +this substitution. To borrow an image from my mineralogical days, these Jews +were not so much a new British gentry as “pseudomorphous” after the +gentry. They are a very clever people, the Jews, but not clever enough to +suppress their cleverness. I wished I could have gone downstairs to savour the +tone of the pantry. It would have been very different I know. Hawksnest, over +beyond, I noted, had its pseudomorph too; a newspaper proprietor of the type +that hustles along with stolen ideas from one loud sink-or-swim enterprise to +another, had bought the place outright; Redgrave was in the hands of brewers. +</p> + +<p> +But the people in the villages, so far as I could detect, saw no difference in +their world. Two little girls bobbed and an old labourer touched his hat +convulsively as I walked through the village. He still thought he knew his +place—and mine. I did not know him, but I would have liked dearly to have +asked him if he remembered my mother, if either my uncle or old Lichtenstein +had been man enough to stand being given away like that. +</p> + +<p> +In that English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a +“place.” It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of your +eyes, it was inextricably your destiny. Above you were your betters, below you +were your inferiors, and there were even an unstable questionable few, cases so +disputable that you might for the rough purposes of every day at least, regard +them as your equals. Head and centre of our system was Lady Drew, her +“leddyship,” shrivelled, garrulous, with a wonderful memory for +genealogies and very, very old, and beside her and nearly as old, Miss +Somerville, her cousin and companion. These two old souls lived like dried-up +kernels in the great shell of Bladesover House, the shell that had once been +gaily full of fops, of fine ladies in powder and patches and courtly gentlemen +with swords; and when there was no company they spent whole days in the corner +parlour just over the housekeeper’s room, between reading and slumber and +caressing their two pet dogs. When I was a boy I used always to think of these +two poor old creatures as superior beings living, like God, somewhere through +the ceiling. Occasionally they bumped about a bit and one even heard them +overhead, which gave them a greater effect of reality without mitigating their +vertical predominance. Sometimes too I saw them. Of course if I came upon them +in the park or in the shrubbery (where I was a trespasser) I hid or fled in +pious horror, but I was upon due occasion taken into the Presence by request. I +remember her “leddyship” then as a thing of black silks and a +golden chain, a quavering injunction to me to be a good boy, a very shrunken +loose-skinned face and neck, and a ropy hand that trembled a halfcrown into +mine. Miss Somerville hovered behind, a paler thing of broken lavender and +white and black, with screwed up, sandy-lashed eyes. Her hair was yellow and +her colour bright, and when we sat in the housekeeper’s room of a +winter’s night warming our toes and sipping elder wine, her maid would +tell us the simple secrets of that belated flush.... After my fight with young +Garvell I was of course banished, and I never saw those poor old painted +goddesses again. +</p> + +<p> +Then there came and went on these floors over our respectful heads, the +Company; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated and +discussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper’s room and the +steward’s room—so that I had them through a medium at second hand. +I gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew’s equals, they +were greater and lesser after the manner of all things in our world. Once I +remember there was a Prince, with a real live gentleman in attendance, and that +was a little above our customary levels and excited us all, and perhaps raised +our expectations unduly. Afterwards, Rabbits, the butler, came into my +mother’s room downstairs, red with indignation and with tears in his +eyes. “Look at <i>that!</i>” gasped Rabbits. My mother was +speechless with horror. <i>That</i> was a sovereign, a mere sovereign, such as +you might get from any commoner! +</p> + +<p> +After Company, I remember, came anxious days, for the poor old women upstairs +were left tired and cross and vindictive, and in a state of physical and +emotional indigestion after their social efforts.... +</p> + +<p> +On the lowest fringe of these real Olympians hung the vicarage people, and next +to them came those ambiguous beings who are neither quality nor subjects. The +vicarage people certainly hold a place by themselves in the typical English +scheme; nothing is more remarkable than the progress the Church has +made—socially—in the last two hundred years. In the early +eighteenth century the vicar was rather under than over the house-steward, and +was deemed a fitting match for the housekeeper or any not too morally +discredited discard. The eighteenth century literature is full of his +complaints that he might not remain at table to share the pie. He rose above +these indignities because of the abundance of younger sons. When I meet the +large assumptions of the contemporary cleric, I am apt to think of these +things. It is curious to note that to-day that down-trodden, organ-playing +creature, the Church of England village Schoolmaster, holds much the same +position as the seventeenth century parson. The doctor in Bladesover ranked +below the vicar but above the “vet,” artists and summer visitors +squeezed in above or below this point according to their appearance and +expenditure, and then in a carefully arranged scale came the tenantry, the +butler and housekeeper, the village shopkeeper, the head keeper, the cook, the +publican, the second keeper, the blacksmith (whose status was complicated by +his daughter keeping the post-office—and a fine hash she used to make of +telegrams too!) the village shopkeeper’s eldest son, the first footman, +younger sons of the village shopkeeper, his first assistant, and so forth. +</p> + +<p> +All these conceptions and applications of a universal precedence and much else +I drank in at Bladesover, as I listened to the talk of valets, +ladies’-maids, Rabbits the butler and my mother in the much-cupboarded, +white-painted, chintz-brightened housekeeper’s room where the upper +servants assembled, or of footmen and Rabbits and estate men of all sorts among +the green baize and Windsor chairs of the pantry—where Rabbits, being +above the law, sold beer without a license or any compunction—or of +housemaids and still-room maids in the bleak, matting-carpeted still-room or of +the cook and her kitchen maids and casual friends among the bright copper and +hot glow of the kitchens. +</p> + +<p> +Of course their own ranks and places came by implication to these people, and +it was with the ranks and places of the Olympians that the talk mainly +concerned itself. There was an old peerage and a Crockford together with the +books of recipes, the Whitaker’s Almanack, the Old Moore’s +Almanack, and the eighteenth century dictionary, on the little dresser that +broke the cupboards on one side of my mother’s room; there was another +peerage, with the covers off, in the pantry; there was a new peerage in the +billiard-room, and I seem to remember another in the anomalous apartment that +held the upper servants’ bagatelle board and in which, after the Hall +dinner, they partook of the luxury of sweets. And if you had asked any of those +upper servants how such and such a Prince of Battenberg was related to, let us +say, Mr. Cunninghame Graham or the Duke of Argyle, you would have been told +upon the nail. As a boy, I heard a great deal of that sort of thing, and if to +this day I am still a little vague about courtesy titles and the exact +application of honorifics, it is, I can assure you, because I hardened my +heart, and not from any lack of adequate opportunity of mastering these +succulent particulars. +</p> + +<p> +Dominating all these memories is the figure of my mother—my mother who +did not love me because I grew liker my father every day—and who knew +with inflexible decision her place and the place of every one in the +world—except the place that concealed my father—and in some details +mine. Subtle points were put to her. I can see and hear her saying now, +“No, Miss Fison, peers of England go in before peers of the United +Kingdom, and he is merely a peer of the United Kingdom.” She had much +exercise in placing people’s servants about her tea-table, where the +etiquette was very strict. I wonder sometimes if the etiquette of +housekeepers’ rooms is as strict to-day, and what my mother would have +made of a <i>chauffeur</i>.... +</p> + +<p> +On the whole I am glad that I saw so much as I did of Bladesover—if for +no other reason than because seeing it when I did, quite naively, believing in +it thoroughly, and then coming to analyse it, has enabled me to understand much +that would be absolutely incomprehensible in the structure of English society. +Bladesover is, I am convinced, the clue to almost all that is distinctively +British and perplexing to the foreign inquirer in England and the +English-speaking peoples. Grasp firmly that England was all Bladesover two +hundred years ago; that it has had Reform Acts indeed, and such—like +changes of formula, but no essential revolution since then; that all that is +modern and different has come in as a thing intruded or as a gloss upon this +predominant formula, either impertinently or apologetically; and you will +perceive at once the reasonableness, the necessity, of that snobbishness which +is the distinctive quality of English thought. Everybody who is not actually in +the shadow of a Bladesover is as it were perpetually seeking after lost +orientations. We have never broken with our tradition, never even symbolically +hewed it to pieces, as the French did in quivering fact in the Terror. But all +the organizing ideas have slackened, the old habitual bonds have relaxed or +altogether come undone. And America too, is, as it were, a detached, outlying +part of that estate which has expanded in queer ways. George Washington, +Esquire, was of the gentlefolk, and he came near being a King. It was Plutarch, +you know, and nothing intrinsically American that prevented George Washington +being a King.... +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +I hated teatime in the housekeeper’s room more than anything else at +Bladesover. And more particularly I hated it when Mrs. Mackridge and Mrs. Booch +and Mrs. Latude-Fernay were staying in the house. They were, all three of them, +pensioned-off servants. +</p> + +<p> +Old friends of Lady Drew’s had rewarded them posthumously for a prolonged +devotion to their minor comforts, and Mrs. Booch was also trustee for a +favourite Skye terrier. Every year Lady Drew gave them an invitation—a +reward and encouragement of virtue with especial reference to my mother and +Miss Fison, the maid. They sat about in black and shiny and flouncey clothing +adorned with gimp and beads, eating great quantities of cake, drinking much tea +in a stately manner and reverberating remarks. +</p> + +<p> +I remember these women as immense. No doubt they were of negotiable size, but I +was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare proportions in my +mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended. Mrs. Mackridge was large and +dark; there was a marvel about her head, inasmuch as she was bald. She wore a +dignified cap, and in front of that upon her brow, hair was <i>painted</i>. I +have never seen the like since. She had been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick +Blenderhasset Impey, some sort of governor or such-like portent in the East +Indies, and from her remains—in Mrs. Mackridge—I judge Lady Impey +was a very stupendous and crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the +Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. +Mackridge had no wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along +with the old satins and trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a +fine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a low fool +to boot; when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging your poor +tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful “Haw!” that made +you want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying “Indade!” +with a droop of the eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Booch was a smaller woman, brown haired, with queer little curls on either +side of her face, large blue eyes and a small set of stereotyped remarks that +constituted her entire mental range. Mrs. Latude-Fernay has left, oddly enough, +no memory at all except her name and the effect of a green-grey silk dress, all +set with gold and blue buttons. I fancy she was a large blonde. Then there was +Miss Fison, the maid who served both Lady Drew and Miss Somerville, and at the +end of the table opposite my mother, sat Rabbits the butler. Rabbits, for a +butler, was an unassuming man, and at tea he was not as you know butlers, but +in a morning coat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with +side whiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat among +these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to exist, like a +feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, +resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was hard on +me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather over-fed, ageing, pretending +people, that my youthful restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be +thrust in among their dignities. +</p> + +<p> +Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out perforce; and +day after day the talk was exactly the same. +</p> + +<p> +“Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?” my mother used to ask. +</p> + +<p> +“Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?” +</p> + +<p> +The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. “They say,” +she would begin, issuing her proclamation—at least half her sentences +began “they say”—“sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many +of the best people do not take it at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not with their tea, ma’am,” said Rabbits intelligently. +</p> + +<p> +“Not with anything,” said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing +repartee, and drank. +</p> + +<p> +“What won’t they say next?” said Miss Fison. +</p> + +<p> +“They do say such things!” said Mrs. Booch. +</p> + +<p> +“They say,” said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, “the doctors are +not recomm-an-ding it now.” +</p> + +<p> +My Mother: “No, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackridge: “No, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, to the table at large: “Poor Sir Roderick, before he died, consumed +great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may have hastened his +end.” +</p> + +<p> +This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was +considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick. +</p> + +<p> +“George,” said my mother, “don’t kick the chair!” +</p> + +<p> +Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favourite piece from her repertoire. +“The evenings are drawing out nicely,” she would say, or if the +season was decadent, “How the evenings draw in!” It was an +invaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along without +it. +</p> + +<p> +My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always consider it due to +Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of elongation or +contraction, whichever phase it might be. +</p> + +<p> +A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day would +ensue, and die away at last exhausted. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits; among +others she read the paper—<i>The Morning Post</i>. The other ladies would +at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births, marriages, and deaths +on the front page. It was, of course, the old <i>Morning Post</i> that cost +threepence, not the brisk coruscating young thing of to-day. “They +say,” she would open, “that Lord Tweedums is to go to +Canada.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said Mr. Rabbits; “dew they?” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he,” said my mother, “the Earl of +Slumgold’s cousin?” She knew he was; it was an entirely irrelevant +and unnecessary remark, but still, something to say. +</p> + +<p> +“The same, ma’am,” said Mrs. Mackridge. “They say he +was extremelay popular in New South Wales. They looked up to him greatlay. I +knew him, ma’am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant young fella.” +</p> + +<p> +Interlude of respect. +</p> + +<p> +“’Is predecessor,” said Rabbits, who had acquired from some +clerical model a precise emphatic articulation without acquiring at the same +time the aspirates that would have graced it, “got into trouble at +Sydney.” +</p> + +<p> +“Haw!” said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, “so am tawled.” +</p> + +<p> +“’E came to Templemorton after ’e came back, and I remember +them talking ’im over after ’e’d gone again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Haw?” said Mrs. Mackridge, interrogatively. +</p> + +<p> +“’<i>Is</i> fuss was quotin’ poetry, ma’am. ’E +said—what was it ’e said—‘They lef’ their country +for their country’s good,’—which in some way was took to +remind them of their being originally convic’s, though now reformed. +Every one I ’eard speak, agreed it was takless of ’im.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Roderick used to say,” said Mrs. Mackridge, “that the +First Thing,”—here Mrs. Mackridge paused and looked dreadfully at +me—“and the Second Thing”—here she fixed me +again—“and the Third Thing”—now I was +released—“needed in a colonial governor is Tact.” She became +aware of my doubts again, and added predominantly, “It has always struck +me that that was a Singularly True Remark.” +</p> + +<p> +I resolved that if ever I found this polypus of Tact growing up in my soul, I +would tear it out by the roots, throw it forth and stamp on it. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re queer people—colonials,” said Rabbits, +“very queer. When I was at Templemorton I see something of ’em. +Queer fellows, some of ’em. Very respectful of course, free with their +money in a spasammy sort of way, but—Some of ’em, I must confess, +make me nervous. They have an eye on you. They watch you—as you wait. +They let themselves appear to be lookin’ at you...” +</p> + +<p> +My mother said nothing in that discussion. The word colonies always upset her. +She was afraid, I think, that if she turned her mind in that direction my +errant father might suddenly and shockingly be discovered, no doubt +conspicuously bigamic and altogether offensive and revolutionary. She did not +want to rediscover my father at all. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious that when I was a little listening boy I had such an idea of our +colonies that I jeered in my heart at Mrs. Mackridge’s colonial +ascendancy. These brave emancipated sunburnt English of the open, I thought, +suffer these aristocratic invaders as a quaint anachronism, but as for being +gratified—! +</p> + +<p> +I don’t jeer now. I’m not so sure. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +It is a little difficult to explain why I did not come to do what was the +natural thing for any one in my circumstances to do, and take my world for +granted. A certain innate scepticism, I think, explains it and a certain +inaptitude for sympathetic assimilation. My father, I believe, was a sceptic; +my mother was certainly a hard woman. +</p> + +<p> +I was an only child, and to this day I do not know whether my father is living +or dead. He fled my mother’s virtues before my distincter memories began. +He left no traces in his flight, and she, in her indignation, destroyed every +vestige that she could of him. Never a photograph nor a scrap of his +handwriting have I seen; and it was, I know, only the accepted code of virtue +and discretion that prevented her destroying her marriage certificate and me, +and so making a clean sweep of her matrimonial humiliation. I suppose I must +inherit something of the moral stupidity that would enable her to make a +holocaust of every little personal thing she had of him. There must have been +presents made by him as a lover, for example—books with kindly +inscriptions, letters perhaps, a flattened flower, a ring, or such-like gage. +She kept her wedding-ring, of course, but all the others she destroyed. She +never told me his christian name or indeed spoke a word to me of him; though at +times I came near daring to ask her: add what I have of him—it +isn’t much—I got from his brother, my hero, my uncle Ponderevo. She +wore her ring; her marriage certificate she kept in a sealed envelope in the +very bottom of her largest trunk, and me she sustained at a private school +among the Kentish hills. You must not think I was always at +Bladesover—even in my holidays. If at the time these came round, Lady +Drew was vexed by recent Company, or for any other reason wished to take it out +of my mother, then she used to ignore the customary reminder my mother gave +her, and I “stayed on” at the school. +</p> + +<p> +But such occasions were rare, and I suppose that between ten and fourteen I +averaged fifty days a year at Bladesover. +</p> + +<p> +Don’t imagine I deny that was a fine thing for me. Bladesover, in +absorbing the whole countryside, had not altogether missed greatness. The +Bladesover system has at least done one good thing for England, it has +abolished the peasant habit of mind. If many of us still live and breathe +pantry and housekeeper’s room, we are quit of the dream of living by +economising parasitically on hens and pigs.... About that park there were some +elements of a liberal education; there was a great space of greensward not +given over to manure and food grubbing; there was mystery, there was matter for +the imagination. It was still a park of deer. I saw something of the life of +these dappled creatures, heard the belling of stags, came upon young fawns +among the bracken, found bones, skulls, and antlers in lonely places. There +were corners that gave a gleam of meaning to the word forest, glimpses of +unstudied natural splendour. There was a slope of bluebells in the broken +sunlight under the newly green beeches in the west wood that is now precious +sapphire in my memory; it was the first time that I knowingly met Beauty. +</p> + +<p> +And in the house there were books. The rubbish old Lady Drew read I never saw; +stuff of the Maria Monk type, I have since gathered, had a fascination for her; +but back in the past there had been a Drew of intellectual enterprise, Sir +Cuthbert, the son of Sir Matthew who built the house; and thrust away, +neglected and despised, in an old room upstairs, were books and treasures of +his that my mother let me rout among during a spell of wintry wet. Sitting +under a dormer window on a shelf above great stores of tea and spices, I became +familiar with much of Hogarth in a big portfolio, with Raphael, there was a +great book of engravings from the stanzas of Raphael in the Vatican—and +with most of the capitals of Europe as they had looked about 1780, by means of +several pig iron-moulded books of views. There was also a broad eighteenth +century atlas with huge wandering maps that instructed me mightily. It had +splendid adornments about each map title; Holland showed a fisherman and his +boat; Russia a Cossack; Japan, remarkable people attired in pagodas—I say +it deliberately, “pagodas.” There were Terrae Incognitae in every +continent then, Poland, Sarmatia, lands since lost; and many a voyage I made +with a blunted pin about that large, incorrect and dignified world. The books +in that little old closet had been banished, I suppose, from the saloon during +the Victorian revival of good taste and emasculated orthodoxy, but my mother +had no suspicion of their character. So I read and understood the good sound +rhetoric of Tom Paine’s “Rights of Man,” and his +“Common Sense,” excellent books, once praised by bishops and since +sedulously lied about. Gulliver was there unexpurgated, strong meat for a boy +perhaps but not too strong I hold—I have never regretted that I escaped +niceness in these affairs. The satire of Traldragdubh made my blood boil as it +was meant to do, but I hated Swift for the Houyhnhnms and never quite liked a +horse afterwards. Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire’s +“Candide,” and “Rasselas;” and, vast book though it +was, I really believe I read, in a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to +end, and even with some reference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon—in +twelve volumes. +</p> + +<p> +These readings whetted my taste for more, and surreptitiously I raided the +bookcases in the big saloon. I got through quite a number of books before my +sacrilegious temerity was discovered by Ann, the old head-housemaid. I remember +that among others I tried a translation of Plato’s “Republic” +then, and found extraordinarily little interest in it; I was much too young for +that; but “Vathek”—“Vathek” was glorious stuff. +That kicking affair! When everybody <i>had</i> to kick! +</p> + +<p> +The thought of “Vathek” always brings back with it my boyish memory +of the big saloon at Bladesover. +</p> + +<p> +It was a huge long room with many windows opening upon the park, and each +window—there were a dozen or more reaching from the floor up—had +its elaborate silk or satin curtains, heavily fringed, a canopy (is it?) above, +its completely white shutters folding into the deep thickness of the wall. At +either end of that great still place was an immense marble chimney-piece; the +end by the bookcase showed the wolf and Romulus and Remus, with Homer and +Virgil for supporters; the design of the other end I have forgotten. Frederick, +Prince of Wales, swaggered flatly over the one, twice life-size, but mellowed +by the surface gleam of oil; and over the other was an equally colossal group +of departed Drews as sylvan deities, scantily clad, against a storm-rent sky. +Down the centre of the elaborate ceiling were three chandeliers, each bearing +some hundreds of dangling glass lustres, and over the interminable +carpet—it impressed me as about as big as Sarmatia in the store-room +Atlas—were islands and archipelagoes of chintz-covered chairs and +couches, tables, great Sevres vases on pedestals, a bronze man and horse. +Somewhere in this wilderness one came, I remember, upon—a big harp beside +a lyre-shaped music stand, and a grand piano.... +</p> + +<p> +The book-borrowing raid was one of extraordinary dash and danger. +</p> + +<p> +One came down the main service stairs—that was legal, and illegality +began in a little landing when, very cautiously, one went through a red baize +door. A little passage led to the hall, and here one reconnoitered for Ann, the +old head-housemaid—the younger housemaids were friendly and did not +count. Ann located, came a dash across the open space at the foot of that great +staircase that has never been properly descended since powder went out of +fashion, and so to the saloon door. A beast of an oscillating Chinaman in +china, as large as life, grimaced and quivered to one’s lightest steps. +That door was the perilous place; it was double with the thickness of the wall +between, so that one could not listen beforehand for the whisk of the +feather-brush on the other side. Oddly rat-like, is it not, this darting into +enormous places in pursuit of the abandoned crumbs of thought? +</p> + +<p> +And I found Langhorne’s “Plutarch” too, I remember, on those +shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired pride and +self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of public spirit, in such a +furtive fashion; queer, too, that it should rest with an old Greek, dead these +eighteen hundred years to teach that. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +The school I went to was the sort of school the Bladesover system permitted. +The public schools that add comic into existence in the brief glow of the +Renascence had been taken possession of by the ruling class; the lower classes +were not supposed to stand in need of schools, and our middle stratum got the +schools it deserved, private schools, schools any unqualified pretender was +free to establish. Mine was kept by a man who had had the energy to get himself +a College of Preceptors diploma, and considering how cheap his charges were, I +will readily admit the place might have been worse. The building was a dingy +yellow-brick residence outside the village, with the schoolroom as an +outbuilding of lath and plaster. +</p> + +<p> +I do not remember that my school-days were unhappy—indeed I recall a good +lot of fine mixed fun in them—but I cannot without grave risk of +misinterpretation declare that we were at all nice and refined. We fought much, +not sound formal fighting, but “scrapping” of a sincere and +murderous kind, into which one might bring one’s boots—it made us +tough at any rate—and several of us were the sons of London publicans, +who distinguished “scraps” where one meant to hurt from ordered +pugilism, practising both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic +gifts. Our cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without +style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands +of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The +head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to +the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had a strong mathematical bias, +and I think now that by the standard of a British public school he did rather +well by us. +</p> + +<p> +We had one inestimable privilege at that school, and that was spiritual +neglect. We dealt with one another with the forcible simplicity of natural +boys, we “cheeked,” and “punched” and +“clouted”; we thought ourselves Red Indians and cowboys and +such-like honourable things, and not young English gentlemen; we never felt the +strain of “Onward Christian soldiers,” nor were swayed by any +premature piety in the cold oak pew of our Sunday devotions. All that was good. +We spent our rare pennies in the uncensored reading matter of the village +dame’s shop, on the <i>Boys of England</i>, and honest penny +dreadfuls—ripping stuff, stuff that anticipated Haggard and Stevenson, +badly printed and queerly illustrated, and very very good for us. On our +half-holidays we were allowed the unusual freedom of rambling in twos and +threes wide and far about the land, talking experimentally, dreaming wildly. +There was much in those walks! To this day the landscape of the Kentish world, +with its low broad distances, its hop gardens and golden stretches of wheat, +its oasts and square church towers, its background of downland and hangers, has +for me a faint sense of adventure added to the pleasure of its beauty. We +smoked on occasion, but nobody put us up to the proper “boyish” +things to do; we never “robbed an orchard” for example, though +there were orchards all about us, we thought stealing was sinful, we stole +incidental apples and turnips and strawberries from the fields indeed, but in a +criminal inglorious fashion, and afterwards we were ashamed. We had our days of +adventure, but they were natural accidents, our own adventures. There was one +hot day when several of us, walking out towards Maidstone, were incited by the +devil to despise ginger beer, and we fuddled ourselves dreadfully with ale; and +a time when our young minds were infected to the pitch of buying pistols, by +the legend of the Wild West. Young Roots from Highbury came back with a +revolver and cartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life +one holiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine at +Chiselstead, and nearly burst our ear drums; then we fired in a primrose +studded wood by Pickthorn Green, and I gave a false alarm of +“keeper,” and we fled in disorder for a mile. After which Roots +suddenly shot at a pheasant in the high road by Chiselstead, and then young +Barker told lies about the severity of the game laws and made Roots sore +afraid, and we hid the pistol in a dry ditch outside the school field. A day or +so after we got in again, and ignoring a certain fouling and rusting of the +barrel, tried for a rabbit at three hundred yards. Young Roots blew a molehill +at twenty paces into a dust cloud, burnt his fingers, and scorched his face; +and the weapon having once displayed this strange disposition to flame back +upon the shooter, was not subsequently fired. +</p> + +<p> +One main source of excitement for us was “cheeking” people in vans +and carts upon the Goudhurst road; and getting myself into a monstrous white +mess in the chalk pits beyond the village, and catching yellow jaundice as a +sequel to bathing stark naked with three other Adamites, old Ewart leading that +function, in the rivulet across Hickson’s meadows, are among my +<i>memorabilia</i>. Those free imaginative afternoons! how much they were for +us! how much they did for us! All streams came from the then undiscovered +“sources of the Nile” in those days, all thickets were Indian +jungles, and our best game, I say it with pride, I invented. I got it out of +the Bladesover saloon. We found a wood where “Trespassing” was +forbidden, and did the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand” through it +from end to end, cutting our way bravely through a host of nettle beds that +barred our path, and not forgetting to weep and kneel when at last we emerged +within sight of the High Road Sea. So we have burst at times, weeping and +rejoicing, upon startled wayfarers. Usually I took the part of that +distinguished general Xenōphen—and please note the quantity of the ō. I +have all my classical names like that,—Socrates rhymes with Bates for me, +and except when the bleak eye of some scholar warns me of his standards of +judgment, I use those dear old mispronunciations still. The little splash into +Latin made during my days as a chemist washed off nothing of the habit. +Well,—if I met those great gentlemen of the past with their accents +carelessly adjusted I did at least meet them alive, as an equal, and in a +living tongue. Altogether my school might easily have been worse for me, and +among other good things it gave me a friend who has lasted my life out. +</p> + +<p> +This was Ewart, who is now a monumental artist at Woking, after many +vicissitudes. Dear chap, how he did stick out of his clothes to be sure! He was +a longlimbed lout, ridiculously tall beside my more youth full compactness, +and, except that there was no black moustache under his nose blob, he had the +same round knobby face as he has to-day, the same bright and active hazel brown +eyes, the stare, the meditative moment, the insinuating reply. Surely no boy +ever played the fool as Bob Ewart used to play it, no boy had a readier knack +of mantling the world with wonder. Commonness vanished before Ewart, at his +expository touch all things became memorable and rare. From him I first heard +tell of love, but only after its barbs were already sticking in my heart. He +was, I know now the bastard of that great improvident artist, Rickmann Ewart; +he brought the light of a lax world that at least had not turned its back upon +beauty, into the growing fermentation of my mind. +</p> + +<p> +I won his heart by a version of Vathek, and after that we were inseparable +yarning friends. We merged our intellectual stock so completely that I wonder +sometimes how much I did not become Ewart, how much Ewart is not vicariously +and derivatively me. +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +And then when I had newly passed my fourteenth birthday, came my tragic +disgrace. +</p> + +<p> +It was in my midsummer holidays that the thing happened, and it was through the +Honourable Beatrice Normandy. She had “come into my life,” as they +say, before I was twelve. +</p> + +<p> +She descended unexpectedly into a peaceful interlude that followed the annual +going of those Three Great Women. She came into the old nursery upstairs, and +every day she had tea with us in the housekeeper’s room. She was eight, +and she came with a nurse called Nannie; and to begin with, I did not like her +at all. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody liked this irruption into the downstairs rooms; the two “gave +trouble,”—a dire offence; Nannie’s sense of duty to her +charge led to requests and demands that took my mother’s breath away. +Eggs at unusual times, the reboiling of milk, the rejection of an excellent +milk pudding—not negotiated respectfully but dictated as of right. Nannie +was a dark, longfeatured, taciturn woman in a grey dress; she had a furtive +inflexibility of manner that finally dismayed and crushed and overcame. She +conveyed she was “under orders”—like a Greek tragedy. She was +that strange product of the old time, a devoted, trusted servant; she had, as +it were, banked all her pride and will with the greater, more powerful people +who employed her, in return for a life-long security of servitude—the +bargain was nonetheless binding for being implicit. Finally they were to +pension her, and she would die the hated treasure of a boarding-house. She had +built up in herself an enormous habit of reference to these upstairs people, +she had curbed down all discordant murmurings of her soul, her very instincts +were perverted or surrendered. She was sexless, her personal pride was all +transferred, she mothered another woman’s child with a hard, joyless +devotion that was at least entirely compatible with a stoical separation. She +treated us all as things that counted for nothing save to fetch and carry for +her charge. But the Honourable Beatrice could condescend. +</p> + +<p> +The queer chances of later years come between me and a distinctly separated +memory of that childish face. When I think of Beatrice, I think of her as I +came to know her at a later time, when at last I came to know her so well that +indeed now I could draw her, and show a hundred little delicate things you +would miss in looking at her. But even then I remember how I noted the infinite +delicacy of her childish skin and the fine eyebrow, finer than the finest +feather that ever one felt on the breast of a bird. She was one of those elfin, +rather precocious little girls, quick coloured, with dark hair, naturally +curling dusky hair that was sometimes astray over her eyes, and eyes that were +sometimes impishly dark, and sometimes a clear brown yellow. And from the very +outset, after a most cursory attention to Rabbits, she decided that the only +really interesting thing at the tea-table was myself. +</p> + +<p> +The elders talked in their formal dull way—telling Nannie the trite old +things about the park and the village that they told every one, and Beatrice +watched me across the table with a pitiless little curiosity that made me +uncomfortable. +</p> + +<p> +“Nannie,” she said, pointing, and Nannie left a question of my +mother’s disregarded to attend to her; “is he a servant boy?” +</p> + +<p> +“S-s-sh,” said Nannie. “He’s Master Ponderevo.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he a servant boy?” repeated Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a schoolboy,” said my mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Then may I talk to him, Nannie?” +</p> + +<p> +Nannie surveyed me with brutal inhumanity. “You mustn’t talk too +much,” she said to her charge, and cut cake into fingers for her. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she added decisively, as Beatrice made to speak. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice became malignant. Her eyes explored me with unjustifiable hostility. +“He’s got dirty hands,” she said, stabbing at the forbidden +fruit. “And there’s a fray to his collar.” +</p> + +<p> +Then she gave herself up to cake with an appearance of entire forgetfulness of +me that filled me with hate and a passionate desire to compel her to admire +me.... And the next day before tea, I did for the first time in my life, +freely, without command or any compulsion, wash my hands. +</p> + +<p> +So our acquaintance began, and presently was deepened by a whim of hers. She +had a cold and was kept indoors, and confronted Nannie suddenly with the +alternative of being hopelessly naughty, which in her case involved a generous +amount of screaming unsuitable for the ears of an elderly, shaky, rich aunt, or +having me up to the nursery to play with her all the afternoon. Nannie came +downstairs and borrowed me in a careworn manner; and I was handed over to the +little creature as if I was some large variety of kitten. I had never had +anything to do with a little girl before, I thought she was more beautiful and +wonderful and bright than anything else could possibly be in life, and she +found me the gentlest of slaves—though at the same time, as I made +evident, fairly strong. And Nannie was amazed to find the afternoon slip +cheerfully and rapidly away. She praised my manners to Lady Drew and to my +mother, who said she was glad to hear well of me, and after that I played with +Beatrice several times. The toys she had remain in my memory still as great +splendid things, gigantic to all my previous experience of toys, and we even +went to the great doll’s house on the nursery landing to play discreetly +with that, the great doll’s house that the Prince Regent had given Sir +Harry Drew’s first-born (who died at five), that was a not ineffectual +model of Bladesover itself, and contained eighty-five dolls and had cost +hundreds of pounds. I played under imperious direction with that toy of glory. +</p> + +<p> +I went back to school when that holiday was over, dreaming of beautiful things, +and got Ewart to talk to me of love; and I made a great story out of the +doll’s house, a story that, taken over into Ewart’s hands, speedily +grew to an island doll’s city all our own. +</p> + +<p> +One of the dolls, I privately decided, was like Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +One other holiday there was when I saw something of her—oddly enough my +memory of that second holiday in which she played a part is vague—and +then came a gap of a year, and then my disgrace. +</p> + +<h4>VIII</h4> + +<p> +Now I sit down to write my story and tell over again things in their order, I +find for the first time how inconsecutive and irrational a thing the memory can +be. One recalls acts and cannot recall motives; one recalls quite vividly +moments that stand out inexplicably—things adrift, joining on to nothing, +leading nowhere. I think I must have seen Beatrice and her half-brother quite a +number of times in my last holiday at Bladesover, but I really cannot recall +more than a little of the quality of the circumstances. That great crisis of my +boyhood stands out very vividly as an effect, as a sort of cardinal thing for +me, but when I look for details, particularly details that led up to the +crisis—I cannot find them in any developing order at all. This +halfbrother, Archie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember him +clearly as a fair-haired, supercilious looking, weedily-lank boy, much taller +than I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that we hated each other +by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and yet I cannot remember my first +meeting with him at all. +</p> + +<p> +Looking back into these past things—it is like rummaging in a neglected +attic that has experienced the attentions of some whimsical robber—I +cannot even account for the presence of these children at Bladesover. They +were, I know, among the innumerable cousins of Lady Drew, and according to the +theories of downstairs candidates for the ultimate possession of Bladesover. If +they were, their candidature was unsuccessful. But that great place, with all +its faded splendour, its fine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at +the old lady’s disposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that +she used this fact to torment and dominate a number of eligible people. Lord +Osprey was among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to his +motherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, because he was poor, but +quite as much, I nowadays imagine, in the dim hope of finding some affectionate +or imaginative outcome of contact with them. Nannie had dropped out of the +world this second time, and Beatrice was in the charge of an extremely amiable +and ineffectual poor army-class young woman whose name I never knew. They were, +I think, two remarkably illmanaged and enterprising children. I seem to +remember too, that it was understood that I was not a fit companion for them, +and that our meetings had to be as unostentatious as possible. It was Beatrice +who insisted upon our meeting. +</p> + +<p> +I am certain I knew quite a lot about love at fourteen and that I was quite as +much in love with Beatrice then as any impassioned adult could be, and that +Beatrice was, in her way, in love with me. It is part of the decent and useful +pretences of our world that children of the age at which we were, think +nothing, feel nothing, know nothing of love. It is wonderful what people the +English are for keeping up pretences. But indeed I cannot avoid telling that +Beatrice and I talked of love and kissed and embraced one another. +</p> + +<p> +I recall something of one talk under the overhanging bushes of the +shrubbery—I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my +worship a little inelegantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say? you should +have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the wall comes +suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various branches of the +bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane, and far away and high +behind her, dim and stately, the cornice of the great façade of Bladesover rose +against the dappled sky. Our talk must have been serious and business-like, for +we were discussing my social position. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t love Archie,” she had said, <i>apropos</i> of +nothing; and then in a whisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, +“I love <i>you!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +But she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and could +not be a servant. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll never be a servant—ever!” +</p> + +<p> +I swore that very readily, and it is a vow I have kept by nature. +</p> + +<p> +“What will you be?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +I ran my mind hastily over the professions. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you be a soldier?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“And be bawled at by duffers? No fear!” said I. “Leave that +to the plough-boys.” +</p> + +<p> +“But an officer?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” I said, evading a shameful difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather go into the navy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wouldn’t you like to fight?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d like to fight,” I said. “But a common soldier +it’s no honour to have to be told to fight and to be looked down upon +while you do it, and how could I be an officer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t you be?” she said, and looked at me doubtfully; and +the spaces of the social system opened between us. +</p> + +<p> +Then, as became a male of spirit, I took upon myself to brag and lie my way +through this trouble. I said I was a poor man, and poor men went into the navy; +that I “knew” mathematics, which no army officer did; and I claimed +Nelson for an exemplar, and spoke very highly of my outlook upon blue water. +“He loved Lady Hamilton,” I said, “although she <i>was</i> a +lady—and I will love you.” +</p> + +<p> +We were somewhere near that when the egregious governess became audible, +calling “Beeee-âtrice! Beeee-e-âtrice!” +</p> + +<p> +“Snifty beast!” said my lady, and tried to get on with the +conversation; but that governess made things impossible. +</p> + +<p> +“Come here!” said my lady suddenly, holding out a grubby hand; and +I went very close to her, and she put her little head down upon the wall until +her black fog of hair tickled my cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“You are my humble, faithful lover,” she demanded in a whisper, her +warm flushed face near touching mine, and her eyes very dark and lustrous. +</p> + +<p> +“I am your humble, faithful lover,” I whispered back. +</p> + +<p> +And she put her arm about my head and put out her lips and we kissed, and boy +though I was, I was all atremble. So we two kissed for the first time. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Beeee-e-e</i>-â-trice!” fearfully close. +</p> + +<p> +My lady had vanished, with one wild kick of her black-stocking leg. A moment +after, I heard her sustaining the reproaches of her governess, and explaining +her failure to answer with an admirable lucidity and disingenuousness. +</p> + +<p> +I felt it was unnecessary for me to be seen just then, and I vanished guiltily +round the corner into the West Wood, and so to love-dreams and single-handed +play, wandering along one of those meandering bracken valleys that varied +Bladesover park. And that day and for many days that kiss upon my lips was a +seal, and by night the seed of dreams. +</p> + +<p> +Then I remember an expedition we made—she, I, and her +half-brother—into those West Woods—they two were supposed to be +playing in the shrubbery—and how we were Indians there, and made a wigwam +out of a pile of beech logs, and how we stalked deer, crept near and watched +rabbits feeding in a glade, and almost got a squirrel. It was play seasoned +with plentiful disputing between me and young Garvell, for each firmly insisted +upon the leading <i>rôles</i>, and only my wider reading—I had read ten +stories to his one—gave me the ascendency over him. Also I scored over +him by knowing how to find the eagle in a bracken stem. And somehow—I +don’t remember what led to it at all—I and Beatrice, two hot and +ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken and hid from him. The great +fronds rose above us, five feet or more, and as I had learnt how to wriggle +through that undergrowth with the minimum of betrayal by tossing greenery +above, I led the way. The ground under bracken is beautifully clear and faintly +scented in warm weather; the stems come up black and then green; if you crawl +flat, it is a tropical forest in miniature. I led the way and Beatrice crawled +behind, and then as the green of the further glade opened before us, stopped. +She crawled up to me, her hot little face came close to mine; once more she +looked and breathed close to me, and suddenly she flung her arm about my neck +and dragged me to earth beside her, and kissed me and kissed me again. We +kissed, we embraced and kissed again, all without a word; we desisted, we +stared and hesitated—then in a suddenly damped mood and a little +perplexed at ourselves, crawled out, to be presently run down and caught in the +tamest way by Archie. +</p> + +<p> +That comes back very clearly to me, and other vague memories—I know old +Hall and his gun, out shooting at jackdaws, came into our common experiences, +but I don’t remember how; and then at last, abruptly, our fight in the +Warren stands out. The Warren, like most places in England that have that name, +was not particularly a warren, it was a long slope of thorns and beeches +through which a path ran, and made an alternative route to the downhill +carriage road between Bladesover and Ropedean. I don’t know how we three +got there, but I have an uncertain fancy it was connected with a visit paid by +the governess to the Ropedean vicarage people. But suddenly Archie and I, in +discussing a game, fell into a dispute for Beatrice. I had made him the fairest +offer: I was to be a Spanish nobleman, she was to be my wife, and he was to be +a tribe of Indians trying to carry her off. It seems to me a fairly attractive +offer to a boy to be a whole tribe of Indians with a chance of such a booty. +But Archie suddenly took offence. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said; “we can’t have that!” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t have what?” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t be a gentleman, because you aren’t. And you +can’t play Beatrice is your wife. It’s—it’s +impertinent.” +</p> + +<p> +“But” I said, and looked at her. +</p> + +<p> +Some earlier grudge in the day’s affairs must have been in Archie’s +mind. “We let you play with us,” said Archie; “but we +can’t have things like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“What rot!” said Beatrice. “He can if he likes.” +</p> + +<p> +But he carried his point. I let him carry it, and only began to grow angry +three or four minutes later. Then we were still discussing play and disputing +about another game. Nothing seemed right for all of us. +</p> + +<p> +“We don’t want you to play with us at all,” said Archie. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we do,” said Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“He drops his aitches like anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, ’e doesn’t,” said I, in the heat of the moment. +</p> + +<p> +“There you go!” he cried. “E, he says. E! E! E!” +</p> + +<p> +He pointed a finger at me. He had struck to the heart of my shame. I made the +only possible reply by a rush at him. “Hello!” he cried, at my +blackavised attack. He dropped back into an attitude that had some style in it, +parried my blow, got back at my cheek, and laughed with surprise and relief at +his own success. Whereupon I became a thing of murderous rage. He could box as +well or better than I—he had yet to realise I knew anything of that at +all—but I had fought once or twice to a finish with bare fists. I was +used to inflicting and enduring savage hurting, and I doubt if he had ever +fought. I hadn’t fought ten seconds before I felt this softness in him, +realised all that quality of modern upper-class England that never goes to the +quick, that hedges about rules and those petty points of honour that are the +ultimate comminution of honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half +done. He seemed to think that first hit of his and one or two others were going +to matter, that I ought to give in when presently my lip bled and dripped blood +upon my clothes. So before we had been at it a minute he had ceased to be +aggressive except in momentary spurts, and I was knocking him about almost as I +wanted to do; and demanding breathlessly and fiercely, after our school manner, +whether he had had enough, not knowing that by his high code and his soft +training it was equally impossible for him to either buck-up and beat me, or +give in. +</p> + +<p> +I have a very distinct impression of Beatrice dancing about us during the +affair in a state of unladylike appreciation, but I was too preoccupied to hear +much of what she was saying. But she certainly backed us both, and I am +inclined to think now—it may be the disillusionment of my ripened +years—whichever she thought was winning. +</p> + +<p> +Then young Garvell, giving way before my slogging, stumbled and fell over a big +flint, and I, still following the tradition of my class and school, promptly +flung myself on him to finish him. We were busy with each other on the ground +when we became aware of a dreadful interruption. +</p> + +<p> +“Shut up, you <i>fool!</i>” said Archie. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Lady Drew!” I heard Beatrice cry. “They’re +fighting! They’re fighting something awful!” +</p> + +<p> +I looked over my shoulder. Archie’s wish to get up became irresistible, +and my resolve to go on with him vanished altogether. +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of the two old ladies, presences of black and purple silk and +fur and shining dark things; they had walked up through the Warren, while the +horses took the hill easily, and so had come upon us. Beatrice had gone to them +at once with an air of taking refuge, and stood beside and a little behind +them. We both rose dejectedly. The two old ladies were evidently quite +dreadfully shocked, and peering at us with their poor old eyes; and never had I +seen such a tremblement in Lady Drew’s lorgnettes. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve never been fighting?” said Lady Drew. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been fighting.” +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t proper fighting,” snapped Archie, with accusing +eyes on me. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Mrs. Ponderevo’s George!” said Miss Somerville, +so adding a conviction for ingratitude to my evident sacrilege. +</p> + +<p> +“How could he <i>dare?</i>” cried Lady Drew, becoming very awful. +</p> + +<p> +“He broke the rules” said Archie, sobbing for breath. “I +slipped, and—he hit me while I was down. He knelt on me.” +</p> + +<p> +“How could you <i>dare?</i>” said Lady Drew. +</p> + +<p> +I produced an experienced handkerchief rolled up into a tight ball, and wiped +the blood from my chin, but I offered no explanation of my daring. Among other +things that prevented that, I was too short of breath. +</p> + +<p> +“He didn’t fight fair,” sobbed Archie. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice, from behind the old ladies, regarded me intently and without +hostility. I am inclined to think the modification of my face through the +damage to my lip interested her. It became dimly apparent to my confused +intelligence that I must not say these two had been playing with me. That would +not be after the rules of their game. I resolved in this difficult situation +upon a sulky silence, and to take whatever consequences might follow. +</p> + +<h4>IX</h4> + +<p> +The powers of justice in Bladesover made an extraordinary mess of my case. +</p> + +<p> +I have regretfully to admit that the Honourable Beatrice Normandy did, at the +age of ten, betray me, abandon me, and lie most abominably about me. She was, +as a matter of fact, panic-stricken about me, conscience stricken too; she +bolted from the very thought of my being her affianced lover and so forth, from +the faintest memory of kissing; she was indeed altogether disgraceful and human +in her betrayal. She and her half-brother lied in perfect concord, and I was +presented as a wanton assailant of my social betters. They were waiting about +in the Warren, when I came up and spoke to them, etc. +</p> + +<p> +On the whole, I now perceive Lady Drew’s decisions were, in the light of +the evidence, reasonable and merciful. +</p> + +<p> +They were conveyed to me by my mother, who was, I really believe, even more +shocked by the grossness of my social insubordination than Lady Drew. She +dilated on her ladyship’s kindnesses to me, on the effrontery and +wickedness of my procedure, and so came at last to the terms of my penance. +“You must go up to young Mr. Garvell, and beg his pardon.” +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t beg his pardon,” I said, speaking for the first +time. +</p> + +<p> +My mother paused, incredulous. +</p> + +<p> +I folded my arms on her table-cloth, and delivered my wicked little ultimatum. +“I won’t beg his pardon nohow,” I said. “See?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you will have to go off to your uncle Frapp at Chatham.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care where I have to go or what I have to do, I +won’t beg his pardon,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +And I didn’t. +</p> + +<p> +After that I was one against the world. Perhaps in my mother’s heart +there lurked some pity for me, but she did not show it. She took the side of +the young gentleman; she tried hard, she tried very hard, to make me say I was +sorry I had struck him. Sorry! +</p> + +<p> +I couldn’t explain. +</p> + +<p> +So I went into exile in the dog-cart to Redwood station, with Jukes the +coachman, coldly silent, driving me, and all my personal belongings in a small +American cloth portmanteau behind. +</p> + +<p> +I felt I had much to embitter me; the game had and the beginnings of fairness +by any standards I knew.... But the thing that embittered me most was that the +Honourable Beatrice Normandy should have repudiated and fled from me as though +I was some sort of leper, and not even have taken a chance or so, to give me a +good-bye. She might have done that anyhow! Supposing I had told on her! But the +son of a servant counts as a servant. She had forgotten and now remembered. +</p> + +<p> +I solaced myself with some extraordinary dream of coming back to Bladesover, +stern, powerful, after the fashion of Coriolanus. I do not recall the details, +but I have no doubt I displayed great magnanimity... +</p> + +<p> +Well, anyhow I never said I was sorry for pounding young Garvell, and I am not +sorry to this day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +OF MY LAUNCH INTO THE WORLD AND THE LAST I SAW OF BLADESOVER</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +When I was thus banished from Bladesover House, as it was then thought for good +and all, I was sent by my mother in a vindictive spirit, first to her cousin +Nicodemus Frapp, and then, as a fully indentured apprentice, to my uncle +Ponderevo. +</p> + +<p> +I ran away from the care of my cousin Nicodemus back to Bladesover House. +</p> + +<p> +My cousin Nicodemus Frapp was a baker in a back street—a slum +rather—just off that miserable narrow mean high road that threads those +exquisite beads, Rochester and Chatham. He was, I must admit, a shock to me, +much dominated by a young, plump, prolific, malingering wife; a bent, +slow-moving, unwilling dark man with flour in his hair and eyelashes, in the +lines of his face and the seams of his coat. I’ve never had a chance to +correct my early impression of him, and he still remains an almost dreadful +memory, a sort of caricature of incompetent simplicity. As I remember him, +indeed, he presented the servile tradition perfected. He had no pride in his +person; fine clothes and dressing up wasn’t “for the likes +of” him, so that he got his wife, who was no artist at it, to cut his +black hair at irregular intervals, and let his nails become disagreeable to the +fastidious eye; he had no pride in his business nor any initiative; his only +virtues were not doing certain things and hard work. “Your uncle,” +said my mother—all grown-up cousins were uncles by courtesy among the +Victorian middle-class—“isn’t much to look at or talk to, but +he’s a Good Hard-Working Man.” There was a sort of base +honourableness about toil, however needless, in that system of inversion. +Another point of honour was to rise at or before dawn, and then laboriously +muddle about. +</p> + +<p> +It was very distinctly impressed on my mind that the Good Hard-Working Man +would have thought it “fal-lallish” to own a pocket handkerchief. +Poor old Frapp—dirty and crushed by, product of, Bladesover’s +magnificence! He made no fight against the world at all, he was floundering in +small debts that were not so small but that finally they overwhelmed him, +whenever there was occasion for any exertion his wife fell back upon pains and +her “condition,” and God sent them many children, most of whom +died, and so, by their coming and going, gave a double exercise in the virtues +of submission. +</p> + +<p> +Resignation to God’s will was the common device of these people in the +face of every duty and every emergency. There were no books in the house; I +doubt if either of them had retained the capacity for reading consecutively for +more than a minute or so, and it was with amazement that day after day, over +and above stale bread, one beheld food and again more food amidst the litter +that held permanent session on the living-room table. +</p> + +<p> +One might have doubted if either of them felt discomfort in this dusty darkness +of existence, if it was not that they did visibly seek consolation. They sought +this and found it of a Sunday, not in strong drink and raving, but in imaginary +draughts of blood. They met with twenty or thirty other darkened and unclean +people, all dressed in dingy colours that would not show the dirt, in a little +brick-built chapel equipped with a spavined roarer of a harmonium, and there +solaced their minds on the thought that all that was fair and free in life, all +that struggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour, all +fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting torments. +They were the self-appointed confidants of God’s mockery of his own +creation. So at any rate they stick in my mind. Vaguer, and yet hardly less +agreeable than this cosmic jest, this coming “Yah, clever!” and +general serving out and “showing up” of the lucky, the bold, and +the cheerful, was their own predestination to Glory. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“There is a Fountain, filled with Blood<br /> +Drawn from Emmanuel’s Veins,” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +so they sang. I hear the drone and wheeze of that hymn now. I hated them with +the bitter uncharitable condemnation of boyhood, and a twinge of that hate +comes back to me. As I write the words, the sounds and then the scene return, +these obscure, undignified people, a fat woman with asthma, an old Welsh +milk-seller with a tumour on his bald head, who was the intellectual leader of +the sect, a huge-voiced haberdasher with a big black beard, a white-faced, +extraordinarily pregnant woman, his wife, a spectacled rate collector with a +bent back.... I hear the talk about souls, the strange battered old phrases +that were coined ages ago in the seaports of the sun-dry Levant, of balm of +Gilead and manna in the desert, of gourds that give shade and water in a +thirsty land; I recall again the way in which at the conclusion of the service +the talk remained pious in form but became medical in substance, and how the +women got together for obstetric whisperings. I, as a boy, did not matter, and +might overhear. +</p> + +<p> +If Bladesover is my key for the explanation of England, I think my invincible +persuasion that I understand Russia was engendered by the circle of Uncle +Frapp. +</p> + +<p> +I slept in a dingy sheeted bed with the two elder survivors of Frapp fecundity, +and spent my week days in helping in the laborious disorder of the shop and +bakehouse, in incidental deliveries of bread and so forth, and in parrying the +probings of my uncle into my relations with the Blood, and his confidential +explanations that ten shillings a week—which was what my mother paid +him—was not enough to cover my accommodation. He was very anxious to keep +that, but also he wanted more. There were neither books nor any seat nor corner +in that house where reading was possible, no newspaper ever brought the clash +of worldly things into its heavenward seclusion; horror of it all grew in me +daily, and whenever I could I escaped into the streets and tramped about +Chatham. The news shops appealed to me particularly. One saw there smudgy +illustrated sheets, the <i>Police News</i> in particular, in which vilely drawn +pictures brought home to the dullest intelligence an interminable succession of +squalid crimes, women murdered and put into boxes, buried under floors, old men +bludgeoned at midnight by robbers, people thrust suddenly out of trains, happy +lovers shot, vitrioled and so forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse of the +life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of “police raids” on this +and that. Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban +John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly +empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening +that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but +anything, a wonderful, good-meaning, impenetrable race apart. +</p> + +<p> +I have never revisited Chatham; the impression it has left on my mind is one of +squalid compression, unlit by any gleam of a maturer charity. All its effects +arranged themselves as antithetical to the Bladesover effects. They confirmed +and intensified all that Bladesover suggested. Bladesover declared itself to be +the land, to be essentially England; I have already told how its airy +spaciousness, its wide dignity, seemed to thrust village, church, and vicarage +into corners, into a secondary and conditional significance. Here one gathered +the corollary of that. Since the whole wide country of Kent was made up of +contiguous Bladesovers and for the gentlefolk, the surplus of population, all +who were not good tenants nor good labourers, Church of England, submissive and +respectful, were necessarily thrust together, jostled out of sight, to fester +as they might in this place that had the colours and even the smells of a +well-packed dustbin. They should be grateful even for that; that, one felt, was +the theory of it all. +</p> + +<p> +And I loafed about this wilderness of crowded dinginess, with young, receptive, +wide-open eyes, and through the blessing (or curse) of some fairy godmother of +mine, asking and asking again: “But after all, <i>why</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +I wandered up through Rochester once, and had a glimpse of the Stour valley +above the town, all horrible with cement works and foully smoking chimneys and +rows of workmen’s cottages, minute, ugly, uncomfortable, and grimy. So I +had my first intimation of how industrialism must live in a landlord’s +land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give upon the river, drawn +by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and ships stripped of magic and +mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber, and coal. The sailors looked to me gross +and slovenly men, and the shipping struck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I +discovered that most sails don’t fit the ships that hoist them, and that +there may be as pitiful and squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as with +a man. When I saw colliers unloading, watched the workers in the hold filling +up silly little sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran +to and fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and mud, +I was first seized with admiration of their courage and toughness and then, +“But after all, <i>why</i>—?” and the stupid ugliness of all +this waste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it +obviously wasted and deteriorated the coal.... And I had imagined great things +of the sea! +</p> + +<p> +Well, anyhow, for a time that vocation was stilled. +</p> + +<p> +But such impressions came into my leisure, and of that I had no excess. Most of +my time was spent doing things for Uncle Frapp, and my evenings and nights +perforce in the company of the two eldest of my cousins. He was errand boy at +an oil shop and fervently pious, and of him I saw nothing until the evening +except at meals; the other was enjoying the midsummer holidays without any +great elation; a singularly thin and abject, stunted creature he was, whose +chief liveliness was to pretend to be a monkey, and who I am now convinced had +some secret disease that drained his vitality away. If I met him now I should +think him a pitiful little creature and be extremely sorry for him. Then I felt +only a wondering aversion. He sniffed horribly, he was tired out by a couple of +miles of loafing, he never started any conversation, and he seemed to prefer +his own company to mine. His mother, poor woman, said he was the +“thoughtful one.” +</p> + +<p> +Serious trouble came suddenly out of a conversation we held in bed one night. +Some particularly pious phrase of my elder cousin’s irritated me +extremely, and I avowed outright my entire disbelief in the whole scheme of +revealed religion. I had never said a word about my doubts to any one before, +except to Ewart who had first evolved them. I had never settled my doubts until +at this moment when I spoke. But it came to me then that the whole scheme of +salvation of the Frappes was not simply doubtful, but impossible. I fired this +discovery out into the darkness with the greatest promptitude. +</p> + +<p> +My abrupt denials certainly scared my cousin amazingly. +</p> + +<p> +At first they could not understand what I was saying, and when they did I fully +believe they expected an instant answer in thunderbolts and flames. They gave +me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder sat up and expressed his +sense of my awfulness. I was already a little frightened at my temerity, but +when he asked me categorically to unsay what I had said, what could I do but +confirm my repudiation? +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no hell,” I said, “and no eternal punishment. +No God would be such a fool as that.” +</p> + +<p> +My elder cousin cried aloud in horror, and the younger lay scared, but +listening. “Then you mean,” said my elder cousin, when at last he +could bring himself to argue, “you might do just as you liked?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you were cad enough,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +Our little voices went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got out of +bed and made his brother do likewise, and knelt in the night dimness and prayed +at me. That I found trying, but I held out valiantly. “Forgive +him,” said my cousin, “he knows not what he sayeth.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can pray if you like,” I said, “but if you’re +going to cheek me in your prayers I draw the line.” +</p> + +<p> +The last I remember of that great discussion was my cousin deploring the fact +that he “should ever sleep in the same bed with an Infidel!” +</p> + +<p> +The next day he astonished me by telling the whole business to his father. This +was quite outside all my codes. Uncle Nicodemus sprang it upon me at the midday +meal. +</p> + +<p> +“You been sayin’ queer things, George,” he said abruptly. +“You better mind what you’re saying.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he say, father?” said Mrs. Frapp. +</p> + +<p> +“Things I couldn’t’ repeat,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“What things?” I asked hotly. +</p> + +<p> +“Ask ’<i>im</i>,” said my uncle, pointing with his knife to +his informant, and making me realise the nature of my offence. My aunt looked +at the witness. “Not—?” she framed a question. +</p> + +<p> +“Wuss,” said my uncle. “Blarsphemy.” +</p> + +<p> +My aunt couldn’t touch another mouthful. I was already a little troubled +in my conscience by my daring, and now I began to feel the black enormity of +the course upon which I had embarked. +</p> + +<p> +“I was only talking sense,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +I had a still more dreadful moment when presently I met my cousin in the brick +alley behind the yard, that led back to his grocer’s shop. +</p> + +<p> +“You sneak!” I said, and smacked his face hard forthwith. +“Now then,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +He started back, astonished and alarmed. His eyes met mine, and I saw a sudden +gleam of resolution. He turned his other cheek to me. +</p> + +<p> +“’It it,” he said. “’It it. <i>I’ll</i> +forgive you.” +</p> + +<p> +I felt I had never encountered a more detestable way of evading a licking. I +shoved him against the wall and left him there, forgiving me, and went back +into the house. +</p> + +<p> +“You better not speak to your cousins, George,” said my aunt, +“till you’re in a better state of mind.” +</p> + +<p> +I became an outcast forthwith. At supper that night a gloomy silence was broken +by my cousin saying, +</p> + +<p> +“’E ’it me for telling you, and I turned the other cheek, +muvver.” +</p> + +<p> +“’E’s got the evil one be’ind ’im now, a +ridin’ on ’is back,” said my aunt, to the grave discomfort of +the eldest girl, who sat beside me. +</p> + +<p> +After supper my uncle, in a few ill-chosen words, prayed me to repent before I +slept. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose you was took in your sleep, George,” he said; +“where’d you be then? You jest think of that me boy.” By this +time I was thoroughly miserable and frightened, and this suggestion unnerved me +dreadfully but I kept up an impenitent front. “To wake in +’ell,” said Uncle Nicodemus, in gentle tones. “You +don’t want to wake in ’ell, George, burnin’ and +screamin’ for ever, do you? You wouldn’t like that?” +</p> + +<p> +He tried very hard to get me to “jest ’ave a look at the +bake’ouse fire” before I retired. “It might move you,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +I was awake longest that night. My cousins slept, the sleep of faith on either +side of me. I decided I would whisper my prayers, and stopped midway because I +was ashamed, and perhaps also because I had an idea one didn’t square God +like that. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, with a sudden confidence, “damn me if +you’re coward enough.... But you’re not. No! You couldn’t +be!” +</p> + +<p> +I woke my cousins up with emphatic digs, and told them as much, triumphantly, +and went very peacefully to sleep with my act of faith accomplished. +</p> + +<p> +I slept not only through that night, but for all my nights since then. So far +as any fear of Divine injustice goes, I sleep soundly, and shall, I know, to +the end of things. That declaration was an epoch in my spiritual life. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +But I didn’t expect to have the whole meeting on Sunday turned on to me. +</p> + +<p> +It was. It all comes back to me, that convergence of attention, even the faint +leathery smell of its atmosphere returns, and the coarse feel of my +aunt’s black dress beside me in contact with my hand. I see again the old +Welsh milkman “wrestling” with me, they all wrestled with me, by +prayer or exhortation. And I was holding out stoutly, though convinced now by +the contagion of their universal conviction that by doing so I was certainly +and hopelessly damned. I felt that they were right, that God was probably like +them, and that on the whole it didn’t matter. And to simplify the +business thoroughly I had declared I didn’t believe anything at all. They +confuted me by texts from Scripture which I now perceive was an illegitimate +method of reply. When I got home, still impenitent and eternally lost and +secretly very lonely and miserable and alarmed, Uncle Nicodemus docked my +Sunday pudding. +</p> + +<p> +One person only spoke to me like a human being on that day of wrath, and that +was the younger Frapp. He came up to me in the afternoon while I was confined +upstairs with a Bible and my own thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“’Ello,” he said, and fretted about. +</p> + +<p> +“D’you mean to say there isn’t—no one,” he said, +funking the word. +</p> + +<p> +“No one?” +</p> + +<p> +“No one watching yer—always.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should there be?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t ’elp thoughts,” said my cousin, +“anyhow. You mean—” He stopped hovering. “I +s’pose I oughtn’t to be talking to you.” +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated and flitted away with a guilty back glance over his shoulder.... +</p> + +<p> +The following week made life quite intolerable for me; these people forced me +at last into an Atheism that terrified me. When I learnt that next Sunday the +wrestling was to be resumed, my courage failed me altogether. +</p> + +<p> +I happened upon a map of Kent in a stationer’s window on Saturday, and +that set me thinking of one form of release. I studied it intently for half an +hour perhaps, on Saturday night, got a route list of villages well fixed in my +memory, and got up and started for Bladesover about five on Sunday morning +while my two bed mates were still fast asleep. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +I remember something, but not so much of it as I should like to recall, of my +long tramp to Bladesover House. The distance from Chatham is almost exactly +seventeen miles, and it took me until nearly one. It was very interesting and I +do not think I was very fatigued, though I got rather pinched by one boot. +</p> + +<p> +The morning must have been very clear, because I remember that near Itchinstow +Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since +played so large a part in my life. But at the time I did not know it was the +Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which +I had never yet seen nearly. And out upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a +steamer or so, going up to London or down out into the great seas of the world. +I stood for a long time watching these and thinking whether after all I should +not have done better to have run away to sea. +</p> + +<p> +The nearer I drew to Bladesover, the more doubtful I grew of the duality of my +reception, and the more I regretted that alternative. I suppose it was the +dirty clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly, that put me out of mind of +that. I took a short cut through the Warren across the corner of the main park +to intercept the people from the church. I wanted to avoid meeting any one +before I met my mother, and so I went to a place where the path passed between +banks, and without exactly hiding, stood up among the bushes. This place among +other advantages eliminated any chance of seeing Lady Drew, who would drive +round by the carriage road. +</p> + +<p> +Standing up to waylay in this fashion I had a queer feeling of brigandage, as +though I was some intrusive sort of bandit among these orderly things. It is +the first time I remember having that outlaw feeling distinctly, a feeling that +has played a large part in my subsequent life. I felt there existed no place +for me that I had to drive myself in. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, down the hill, the servants appeared, straggling by twos and threes, +first some of the garden people and the butler’s wife with them, then the +two laundry maids, odd inseparable old creatures, then the first footman +talking to the butler’s little girl, and at last, walking grave and +breathless beside old Ann and Miss Fison, the black figure of my mother. +</p> + +<p> +My boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance. +“Coo-ee, mother” said I, coming out against the sky, +“Coo-ee!” +</p> + +<p> +My mother looked up, went very white, and put her hand to her bosom. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose there was a fearful fuss about me. And of course I was quite unable +to explain my reappearance. But I held out stoutly, “I won’t go +back to Chatham; I’ll drown myself first.” The next day my mother +carried me off to Wimblehurst, took me fiercely and aggressively to an uncle I +had never heard of before, near though the place was to us. She gave me no word +as to what was to happen, and I was too subdued by her manifest wrath and +humiliation at my last misdemeanour to demand information. I don’t for +one moment think Lady Drew was “nice” about me. The finality of my +banishment was endorsed and underlined and stamped home. I wished very much now +that I had run away to sea, in spite of the coal dust and squalour Rochester +had revealed to me. Perhaps over seas one came to different lands. +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +I do not remember much of my journey to Wimblehurst with my mother except the +image of her as sitting bolt upright, as rather disdaining the third-class +carriage in which we traveled, and how she looked away from me out of the +window when she spoke of my uncle. “I have not seen your uncle,” +she said, “since he was a boy....” She added grudgingly, +“Then he was supposed to be clever.” +</p> + +<p> +She took little interest in such qualities as cleverness. +</p> + +<p> +“He married about three years ago, and set up for himself in +Wimblehurst.... So I suppose she had some money.” +</p> + +<p> +She mused on scenes she had long dismissed from her mind. “Teddy,” +she said at last in the tone of one who has been feeling in the dark and finds. +“He was called Teddy... about your age.... Now he must be twenty-six or +seven.” +</p> + +<p> +I thought of my uncle as Teddy directly I saw him; there was something in his +personal appearance that in the light of that memory phrased itself at once as +Teddiness—a certain Teddidity. To describe it in and other terms is more +difficult. It is nimbleness without grace, and alertness without intelligence. +He whisked out of his shop upon the pavement, a short figure in grey and +wearing grey carpet slippers; one had a sense of a young fattish face behind +gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and forward over the forehead, an +irregular nose that had its aquiline moments, and that the body betrayed an +equatorial laxity, an incipient “bow window” as the image goes. He +jerked out of the shop, came to a stand on the pavement outside, regarded +something in the window with infinite appreciation, stroked his chin, and, as +abruptly, shot sideways into the door again, charging through it as it were +behind an extended hand. +</p> + +<p> +“That must be him,” said my mother, catching at her breath. +</p> + +<p> +We came past the window whose contents I was presently to know by heart, a very +ordinary chemist’s window except that there was a frictional electrical +machine, an air pump and two or three tripods and retorts replacing the +customary blue, yellow, and red bottles above. There was a plaster of Paris +horse to indicate veterinary medicines among these breakables, and below were +scent packets and diffusers and sponges and soda-water syphons and such-like +things. Only in the middle there was a rubricated card, very neatly painted by +hand, with these words— +</p> + +<div class="center"> +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: +2em; margin-bottom: 2em;" border="1" > + +<tr> +<td>Buy Ponderevo’s Cough Linctus <i>now</i>.<br /> +NOW!<br /> +WHY?<br /> +Twopence Cheaper than in Winter.<br /> +You Store Apples! why not the Medicine<br /> +You are Bound to Need?</td> +</tr> + +</table> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +in which appeal I was to recognise presently my uncle’s distinctive note. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle’s face appeared above a card of infant’s comforters in the +glass pane of the door. I perceived his eyes were brown, and that his glasses +creased his nose. It was manifest he did not know us from Adam. A stare of +scrutiny allowed an expression of commercial deference to appear in front of +it, and my uncle flung open the door. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t know me?” panted my mother. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle would not own he did not, but his curiosity was manifest. My mother +sat down on one of the little chairs before the soap and patent medicine-piled +counter, and her lips opened and closed. +</p> + +<p> +“A glass of water, madam,” said my uncle, waved his hand in a sort +of curve and shot away. +</p> + +<p> +My mother drank the water and spoke. “That boy,” she said, +“takes after his father. He grows more like him every day.... And so I +have brought him to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“His father, madam?” +</p> + +<p> +“George.” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment the chemist was still at a loss. He stood behind the counter with +the glass my mother had returned to him in his hand. Then comprehension grew. +</p> + +<p> +“By Gosh!” he said. “Lord!” he cried. His glasses fell +off. He disappeared replacing them, behind a pile of boxed-up bottles of blood +mixture. “Eleven thousand virgins!” I heard him cry. The glass was +banged down. “O-ri-ental Gums!” +</p> + +<p> +He shot away out of the shop through some masked door. One heard his voice. +“Susan! Susan!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he reappeared with an extended hand. “Well, how are you?” he +said. “I was never so surprised in my life. Fancy!... <i>You!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He shook my mother’s impassive hand and then mine very warmly holding his +glasses on with his left forefinger. +</p> + +<p> +“Come right in!” he cried—“come right in! Better late +than never!” and led the way into the parlour behind the shop. +</p> + +<p> +After Bladesover that apartment struck me as stuffy and petty, but it was very +comfortable in comparison with the Frapp living-room. It had a faint, +disintegrating smell of meals about it, and my most immediate impression was of +the remarkable fact that something was hung about or wrapped round or draped +over everything. There was bright-patterned muslin round the gas-bracket in the +middle of the room, round the mirror over the mantel, stuff with ball-fringe +along the mantel and casing in the fireplace,—I first saw ball-fringe +here—and even the lamp on the little bureau wore a shade like a large +muslin hat. The table-cloth had ball-fringe and so had the window curtains, and +the carpet was a bed of roses. There were little cupboards on either side of +the fireplace, and in the recesses, ill-made shelves packed with books, and +enriched with pinked American cloth. There was a dictionary lying face downward +on the table, and the open bureau was littered with foolscap paper and the +evidences of recently abandoned toil. My eye caught “The Ponderevo Patent +Flat, a Machine you can Live in,” written in large firm letters. My uncle +opened a little door like a cupboard door in the corner of this room, and +revealed the narrowest twist of staircase I had ever set eyes upon. +“Susan!” he bawled again. “Wantje. Some one to see you. +Surprisin’.” +</p> + +<p> +There came an inaudible reply, and a sudden loud bump over our heads as of some +article of domestic utility pettishly flung aside, then the cautious steps of +someone descending the twist, and then my aunt appeared in the doorway with her +hand upon the jamb. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Aunt Ponderevo,” cried my uncle. “George’s +wife—and she’s brought over her son!” His eye roamed about +the room. He darted to the bureau with a sudden impulse, and turned the sheet +about the patent flat face down. Then he waved his glasses at us, “You +know, Susan, my elder brother George. I told you about ’im lots of +times.” +</p> + +<p> +He fretted across to the hearthrug and took up a position there, replaced his +glasses and coughed. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt Susan seemed to be taking it in. She was then rather a pretty slender +woman of twenty-three or four, I suppose, and I remember being struck by the +blueness of her eyes and the clear freshness of her complexion. She had little +features, a button nose, a pretty chin and a long graceful neck that stuck out +of her pale blue cotton morning dress. There was a look of half-assumed +perplexity on her face, a little quizzical wrinkle of the brow that suggested a +faintly amused attempt to follow my uncle’s mental operations, a vain +attempt and a certain hopelessness that had in succession become habitual. She +seemed to be saying, “Oh Lord! What’s he giving me <i>this</i> +time?” And as came to know her better I detected, as a complication of +her effort of apprehension, a subsidiary riddle to “What’s he +giving me?” and that was—to borrow a phrase from my schoolboy +language “Is it keeps?” She looked at my mother and me, and back to +her husband again. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said. “George.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said to my mother, descending the last three steps of +the staircase and holding out her hand! “you’re welcome. Though +it’s a surprise.... I can’t ask you to <i>have</i> anything, +I’m afraid, for there isn’t anything in the house.” She +smiled, and looked at her husband banteringly. “Unless he makes up +something with his old chemicals, which he’s quite equal to doing.” +</p> + +<p> +My mother shook hands stiffly, and told me to kiss my aunt.... +</p> + +<p> +“Well, let’s all sit down,” said my uncle, suddenly whistling +through his clenched teeth, and briskly rubbing his hands together. He put up a +chair for my mother, raised the blind of the little window, lowered it again, +and returned to his hearthrug. “I’m sure,” he said, as one +who decides, “I’m very glad to see you.” +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +As they talked I gave my attention pretty exclusively to my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +I noted him in great detail. I remember now his partially unbuttoned waistcoat, +as though something had occurred to distract him as he did it up, and a little +cut upon his chin. I liked a certain humour in his eyes. I watched, too, with +the fascination that things have for an observant boy, the play of his +lips—they were a little oblique, and there was something +“slipshod,” if one may strain a word so far, about his mouth, so +that he lisped and sibilated ever and again and the coming and going of a +curious expression, triumphant in quality it was, upon his face as he talked. +He fingered his glasses, which did not seem to fit his nose, fretted with +things in his waistcoat pockets or put his hands behind him, looked over our +heads, and ever and again rose to his toes and dropped back on his heels. He +had a way of drawing air in at times through his teeth that gave a whispering +zest to his speech It’s a sound I can only represent as a soft Zzzz. +</p> + +<p> +He did most of the talking. My mother repeated what she had already said in the +shop, “I have brought George over to you,” and then desisted for a +time from the real business in hand. “You find this a comfortable +house?” she asked; and this being affirmed: “It looks—very +convenient.... Not too big to be a trouble—no. You like Wimblehurst, I +suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle retorted with some inquiries about the great people of Bladesover, and +my mother answered in the character of a personal friend of Lady Drew’s. +The talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked upon a dissertation upon +Wimblehurst. +</p> + +<p> +“This place,” he began, “isn’t of course quite the +place I ought to be in.” +</p> + +<p> +My mother nodded as though she had expected that. +</p> + +<p> +“It gives me no Scope,” he went on. “It’s +dead-and-alive. Nothing happens.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s always wanting something to happen,” said my aunt +Susan. “Some day he’ll get a shower of things and they’ll be +too much for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not they,” said my uncle, buoyantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you find business—slack?” asked my mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! one rubs along. But there’s no Development—no growth. +They just come along here and buy pills when they want ’em—and a +horseball or such. They’ve got to be ill before there’s a +prescription. That sort they are. You can’t get ’em to launch out, +you can’t get ’em to take up anything new. For instance, I’ve +been trying lately—induce them to buy their medicines in advance, and in +larger quantities. But they won’t look for it! Then I tried to float a +little notion of mine, sort of an insurance scheme for colds; you pay so much a +week, and when you’ve got a cold you get a bottle of Cough Linctus so +long as you can produce a substantial sniff. See? But Lord! they’ve no +capacity for ideas, they don’t catch on; no Jump about the place, no +Life. Live!—they trickle, and what one has to do here is to trickle +too—Zzzz.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said my mother. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t suit me,” said my uncle. “I’m the +cascading sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“George was that,” said my mother after a pondering moment. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt Susan took up the parable with an affectionate glance at her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s always trying to make his old business jump,” she said. +“Always putting fresh cards in the window, or getting up to something. +You’d hardly believe. It makes ME jump sometimes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it does no good,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“It does no good,” said his wife. “It’s not his +miloo...” +</p> + +<p> +Presently they came upon a wide pause. +</p> + +<p> +From the beginning of their conversation there had been the promise of this +pause, and I pricked my ears. I knew perfectly what was bound to come; they +were going to talk of my father. I was enormously strengthened in my persuasion +when I found my mother’s eyes resting thoughtfully upon me in the +silence, and than my uncle looked at me and then my aunt. I struggled +unavailingly to produce an expression of meek stupidity. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said my uncle, “that George will find it more +amusing to have a turn in the market-place than to sit here talking with us. +There’s a pair of stocks there, George—very interesting. +Old-fashioned stocks.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind sitting here,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle rose and in the most friendly way led me through the shop. He stood on +his doorstep and jerked amiable directions to me. +</p> + +<p> +“Ain’t it sleepy, George, eh? There’s the butcher’s dog +over there, asleep in the road-half an hour from midday! If the last Trump +sounded I don’t believe it would wake. Nobody would wake! The chaps up +there in the churchyard—they’d just turn over and say: +‘Naar—you don’t catch us, you don’t! See?’.... +Well, you’ll find the stocks just round that corner.” +</p> + +<p> +He watched me out of sight. +</p> + +<p> +So I never heard what they said about my father after all. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +When I returned, my uncle had in some remarkable way become larger and central. +“Tha’chu, George?” he cried, when the shop-door bell sounded. +“Come right through”; and I found him, as it were, in the +chairman’s place before the draped grate. +</p> + +<p> +The three of them regarded me. +</p> + +<p> +“We have been talking of making you a chemist, George,” said my +uncle. +</p> + +<p> +My mother looked at me. “I had hoped,” she said, “that Lady +Drew would have done something for him—” She stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“In what way?” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“She might have spoken to some one, got him into something +perhaps....” She had the servant’s invincible persuasion that all +good things are done by patronage. +</p> + +<p> +“He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done,” she added, +dismissing these dreams. “He doesn’t accommodate himself. When he +thinks Lady Drew wishes a thing, he seems not to wish it. Towards Mr. Redgrave, +too, he has been—disrespectful—he is like his father.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who’s Mr. Redgrave?” +</p> + +<p> +“The Vicar.” +</p> + +<p> +“A bit independent?” said my uncle, briskly. +</p> + +<p> +“Disobedient,” said my mother. “He has no idea of his place. +He seems to think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. +He’ll learn perhaps before it is too late.” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle stroked his cut chin and me. “Have you learnt any Latin?” +he asked abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +I said I had not. +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll have to learn a little Latin,” he explained to my +mother, “to qualify. H’m. He could go down to the chap at the +grammar school here—it’s just been routed into existence again by +the Charity Commissioners and have lessons.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, me learn Latin!” I cried, with emotion. +</p> + +<p> +“A little,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve always wanted” I said and; “<i>Latin!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +I had long been obsessed by the idea that having no Latin was a disadvantage in +the world, and Archie Garvell had driven the point of this pretty earnestly +home. The literature I had read at Bladesover had all tended that way. Latin +had had a quality of emancipation for me that I find it difficult to convey. +And suddenly, when I had supposed all learning was at an end for me, I heard +this! +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no good to you, of course,” said my uncle, +“except to pass exams with, but there you are!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have to learn Latin because you have to learn Latin,” +said my mother, “not because you want to. And afterwards you will have to +learn all sorts of other things....” +</p> + +<p> +The idea that I was to go on learning, that to read and master the contents of +books was still to be justifiable as a duty, overwhelmed all other facts. I had +had it rather clear in my mind for some weeks that all that kind of opportunity +might close to me for ever. I began to take a lively interest in this new +project. +</p> + +<p> +“Then shall I live here?” I asked, “with you, and study... as +well as work in the shop?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the way of it,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +I parted from my mother that day in a dream, so sudden and important was this +new aspect of things to me. I was to learn Latin! Now that the humiliation of +my failure at Bladesover was past for her, now that she had a little got over +her first intense repugnance at this resort to my uncle and contrived something +that seemed like a possible provision for my future, the tenderness natural to +a parting far more significant than any of our previous partings crept into her +manner. +</p> + +<p> +She sat in the train to return, I remember, and I stood at the open door of her +compartment, and neither of us knew how soon we should cease for ever to be a +trouble to one another. +</p> + +<p> +“You must be a good boy, George,” she said. “You must +learn.... And you mustn’t set yourself up against those who are above you +and better than you.... Or envy them.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, mother,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +I promised carelessly. Her eyes were fixed upon me. I was wondering whether I +could by any means begin Latin that night. +</p> + +<p> +Something touched her heart then, some thought, some memory; perhaps some +premonition.... The solitary porter began slamming carriage doors. +</p> + +<p> +“George” she said hastily, almost shamefully, “kiss +me!” +</p> + +<p> +I stepped up into her compartment as she bent downward. +</p> + +<p> +She caught me in her arms quite eagerly, she pressed me to her—a strange +thing for her to do. I perceived her eyes were extraordinarily bright, and then +this brightness burst along the lower lids and rolled down her cheeks. +</p> + +<p> +For the first and last time in my life I saw my mother’s tears. Then she +had gone, leaving me discomforted and perplexed, forgetting for a time even +that I was to learn Latin, thinking of my mother as of something new and +strange. +</p> + +<p> +The thing recurred though I sought to dismiss it, it stuck itself into my +memory against the day of fuller understanding. Poor, proud, habitual, sternly +narrow soul! poor difficult and misunderstanding son! it was the first time +that ever it dawned upon me that my mother also might perhaps feel. +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +My mother died suddenly and, it was thought by Lady Drew, inconsiderately, the +following spring. Her ladyship instantly fled to Folkestone with Miss +Somerville and Fison, until the funeral should be over and my mother’s +successor installed. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle took me over to the funeral. I remember there was a sort of prolonged +crisis in the days preceding this because, directly he heard of my loss, he had +sent a pair of check trousers to the Judkins people in London to be dyed black, +and they did not come back in time. He became very excited on the third day, +and sent a number of increasingly fiery telegrams without any result whatever, +and succumbed next morning with a very ill grace to my aunt Susan’s +insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs +of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his +dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the +Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother’s funeral. Moreover, I +was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk +hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a deep mourning band. +</p> + +<p> +I remember, but rather indistinctly, my mother’s white paneled +housekeeper’s room and the touch of oddness about it that she was not +there, and the various familiar faces made strange by black, and I seem to +recall the exaggerated self-consciousness that arose out of their focussed +attention. No doubt the sense of the new silk hat came and went and came again +in my emotional chaos. Then something comes out clear and sorrowful, rises out +clear and sheer from among all these rather base and inconsequent things, and +once again I walk before all the other mourners close behind her coffin as it +is carried along the churchyard path to her grave, with the old vicar’s +slow voice saying regretfully and unconvincingly above me, triumphant solemn +things. +</p> + +<p> +“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in +me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth +in me shall never die.” +</p> + +<p> +Never die! The day was a high and glorious morning in spring, and all the trees +were budding and bursting into green. Everywhere there were blossoms and +flowers; the pear trees and cherry trees in the sexton’s garden were +sunlit snow, there were nodding daffodils and early tulips in the graveyard +beds, great multitudes of daisies, and everywhere the birds seemed singing. And +in the middle was the brown coffin end, tilting on men’s shoulders and +half occluded by the vicar’s Oxford hood. +</p> + +<p> +And so we came to my mother’s waiting grave. +</p> + +<p> +For a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered, hearing the words +of the ritual. It seemed a very curious business altogether. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly as the service drew to its end, I felt something had still to be said +which had not been said, realised that she had withdrawn in silence, neither +forgiving me nor hearing from me—those now lost assurances. Suddenly I +knew I had not understood. Suddenly I saw her tenderly; remembered not so much +tender or kindly things of her as her crossed wishes and the ways in which I +had thwarted her. Surprisingly I realised that behind all her hardness and +severity she had loved me, that I was the only thing she had ever loved and +that until this moment I had never loved her. And now she was there and deaf +and blind to me, pitifully defeated in her designs for me, covered from me so +that she could not know.... +</p> + +<p> +I dug my nails into the palms of my hands, I set my teeth, but tears blinded +me, sobs would have choked me had speech been required of me. The old vicar +read on, there came a mumbled response—and so on to the end. I wept as it +were internally, and only when we had come out of the churchyard could I think +and speak calmly again. +</p> + +<p> +Stamped across this memory are the little black figures of my uncle and +Rabbits, telling Avebury, the sexton and undertaker, that “it had all +passed off very well—very well indeed.” +</p> + +<h4>VIII</h4> + +<p> +That is the last I shall tell of Bladesover. The dropscene falls on that, and +it comes no more as an actual presence into this novel. I did indeed go back +there once again, but under circumstances quite immaterial to my story. But in +a sense Bladesover has never left me; it is, as I said at the outset, one of +those dominant explanatory impressions that make the framework of my mind. +Bladesover illuminates England; it has become all that is spacious, dignified +pretentious, and truly conservative in English life. It is my social datum. +That is why I have drawn it here on so large a scale. +</p> + +<p> +When I came back at last to the real Bladesover on an inconsequent visit, +everything was far smaller than I could have supposed possible. It was as +though everything had shivered and shrivelled a little at the Lichtenstein +touch. The harp was still in the saloon, but there was a different grand piano +with a painted lid and a metrostyle pianola, and an extraordinary quantity of +artistic litter and <i>bric-à-brac</i> scattered about. There was the trail of +the Bond Street showroom over it all. The furniture was still under chintz, but +it wasn’t the same sort of chintz although it pretended to be, and the +lustre-dangling chandeliers had passed away. Lady Lichtenstein’s books +replaced the brown volumes I had browsed among—they were mostly +presentation copies of contemporary novels and the <i>National Review</i> and +the <i>Empire Review</i>, and the <i>Nineteenth Century and After</i> jostled +current books on the tables—English new books in gaudy catchpenny +“artistic” covers, French and Italian novels in yellow, German art +handbooks of almost incredible ugliness. There were abundant evidences that her +ladyship was playing with the Keltic renascence, and a great number of ugly +cats made of china—she “collected” china and stoneware +cats—stood about everywhere—in all colours, in all kinds of +deliberately comic, highly glazed distortion. +</p> + +<p> +It is nonsense to pretend that finance makes any better aristocrats than rent. +Nothing can make an aristocrat but pride, knowledge, training, and the sword. +These people were no improvement on the Drews, none whatever. There was no +effect of a beneficial replacement of passive unintelligent people by active +intelligent ones. One felt that a smaller but more enterprising and intensely +undignified variety of stupidity had replaced the large dullness of the old +gentry, and that was all. Bladesover, I thought, had undergone just the same +change between the seventies and the new century that had overtaken the dear +old <i>Times</i>, and heaven knows how much more of the decorous British +fabric. These Lichtensteins and their like seem to have no promise in them at +all of any fresh vitality for the kingdom. I do not believe in their +intelligence or their power—they have nothing new about them at all, +nothing creative nor rejuvenescent, no more than a disorderly instinct of +acquisition; and the prevalence of them and their kind is but a phase in the +broad slow decay of the great social organism of England. They could not have +made Bladesover they cannot replace it; they just happen to break out over +it—saprophytically. +</p> + +<p> +Well—that was my last impression of Bladesover. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +THE WIMBLEHURST APPRENTICESHIP</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +So far as I can remember now, except for that one emotional phase by the +graveside, I passed through all these experiences rather callously. I had +already, with the facility of youth, changed my world, ceased to think at all +of the old school routine and put Bladesover aside for digestion at a latter +stage. I took up my new world in Wimblehurst with the chemist’s shop as +its hub, set to work at Latin and materia medica, and concentrated upon the +present with all my heart. Wimblehurst is an exceptionally quiet and grey +Sussex town rare among south of England towns in being largely built of stone. +I found something very agreeable and picturesque in its clean cobbled streets, +its odd turnings and abrupt corners; and in the pleasant park that crowds up +one side of the town. The whole place is under the Eastry dominion and it was +the Eastry influence and dignity that kept its railway station a mile and +three-quarters away. Eastry House is so close that it dominates the whole; one +goes across the marketplace (with its old lock-up and stocks), past the great +pre-reformation church, a fine grey shell, like some empty skull from which the +life has fled, and there at once are the huge wrought-iron gates, and one peeps +through them to see the façade of this place, very white and large and fine, +down a long avenue of yews. Eastry was far greater than Bladesover and an +altogether completer example of the eighteenth century system. It ruled not two +villages, but a borough, that had sent its sons and cousins to parliament +almost as a matter of right so long as its franchise endured. Every one was in +the system, every one—except my uncle. He stood out and complained. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle was the first real breach I found in the great front of Bladesover the +world had presented me, for Chatham was not so much a breach as a confirmation. +But my uncle had no respect for Bladesover and Eastry—none whatever. He +did not believe in them. He was blind even to what they were. He propounded +strange phrases about them, he exfoliated and wagged about novel and incredible +ideas. +</p> + +<p> +“This place,” said my uncle, surveying it from his open doorway in +the dignified stillness of a summer afternoon, “wants Waking Up!” +</p> + +<p> +I was sorting up patent medicines in the corner. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d like to let a dozen young Americans loose into it,” said +my uncle. “Then we’d see.” +</p> + +<p> +I made a tick against Mother Shipton’s Sleeping Syrup. We had cleared our +forward stock. +</p> + +<p> +“Things must be happening <i>somewhere</i>, George,” he broke out +in a querulously rising note as he came back into the little shop. He fiddled +with the piled dummy boxes of fancy soap and scent and so forth that adorned +the end of the counter, then turned about petulantly, stuck his hands deeply +into his pockets and withdrew one to scratch his head. “I must do +<i>something</i>,” he said. “I can’t stand it. +</p> + +<p> +“I must invent something. And shove it.... I could. +</p> + +<p> +“Or a play. There’s a deal of money in a play, George. What would +you think of me writing a play eh?... There’s all sorts of things to be +done. +</p> + +<p> +“Or the stog-igschange.” +</p> + +<p> +He fell into that meditative whistling of his. +</p> + +<p> +“Sac-ramental wine!” he swore, “this isn’t the +world—it’s Cold Mutton Fat! That’s what Wimblehurst is! Cold +Mutton Fat!—dead and stiff! And I’m buried in it up to the arm +pits. Nothing ever happens, nobody wants things to happen ‘scept me! Up +in London, George, things happen. America! I wish to Heaven, George, I’d +been born American—where things hum. +</p> + +<p> +“What can one do here? How can one grow? While we’re sleepin’ +here with our Capital oozing away into Lord Eastry’s pockets for rent-men +are up there....” He indicated London as remotely over the top of the +dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by a whirl of the +hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of things do they do?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Rush about,” he said. “Do things! Somethin’ glorious. +There’s cover gambling. Ever heard of that, George?” He drew the +air in through his teeth. “You put down a hundred say, and buy ten +thousand pounds worth. See? That’s a cover of one per cent. Things go up +one, you sell, realise cent per cent; down, whiff, it’s gone! Try again! +Cent per cent, George, every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the +shoutin’! Zzzz.... Well, that’s one way, George. Then another +way—there’s Corners!” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re rather big things, aren’t they?” I ventured. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if you go in for wheat or steel—yes. But suppose you tackled a +little thing, George. Just some little thing that only needed a few thousands. +Drugs for example. Shoved all you had into it—staked your liver on it, so +to speak. Take a drug—take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. +Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren’t unlimited supplies of +ipecacuanha—can’t be!—and it’s a thing people must +have. Then quinine again! You watch your chance, wait for a tropical war +breaking out, let’s say, and collar all the quinine. Where ARE they? Must +have quinine, you know. Eh? Zzzz. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord! there’s no end of things—no end of <i>little</i> +things. Dill-water—all the suffering babes yowling for it. Eucalyptus +again—cascara—witch hazel—menthol—all the toothache +things. Then there’s antiseptics, and curare, cocaine....” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather a nuisance to the doctors,” I reflected. +</p> + +<p> +“They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They’ll do you +if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That makes it romantic. +That’s the Romance of Commerce, George. You’re in the mountains +there! Think of having all the quinine in the world, and some +millionaire’s pampered wife gone ill with malaria, eh? That’s a +squeeze, George, eh? Eh? Millionaire on his motor car outside, offering you any +price you liked. That ’ud wake up Wimblehurst.... Lord! You haven’t +an Idea down here. Not an idea. Zzzz.” +</p> + +<p> +He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such fragments as: “Fifty +per cent. advance sir; security—to-morrow. Zzzz.” +</p> + +<p> +The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of +irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in +reality. It was the sort of nonsense one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set +him going on to still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my +uncle’s way of talking. But I’ve learnt differently since. The +whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will presently +be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy +up land upon which people will presently want to build houses, you secure +rights that will bar vitally important developments, and so on, and so on. Of +course the naïve intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments +of human inadequacy. He begins life with a disposition to believe in the wisdom +of grown-up people, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been +the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state +there is a power as irresistible as a head master’s to check mischievous +and foolish enterprises of every sort. I will confess that when my uncle talked +of cornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do +that would pretty certainly go to jail. Now I know that any one who could +really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the House of Lords! +</p> + +<p> +My uncle ranged over the gilt labels of his bottles and drawers for a while, +dreaming of corners in this and that. But at last he reverted to Wimblehurst +again. +</p> + +<p> +“You got to be in London when these things are in hand. Down here—! +</p> + +<p> +“Jee-rusalem!” he cried. “Why did I plant myself here? +Everything’s done. The game’s over. Here’s Lord Eastry, and +he’s got everything, except what his lawyers get, and before you get any +more change this way you’ll have to dynamite him—and them. +<i>He</i> doesn’t want anything more to happen. Why should he? Any chance +’ud be a loss to him. He wants everything to burble along and burble +along and go on as it’s going for the next ten thousand years, Eastry +after Eastry, one parson down another come, one grocer dead, get another! Any +one with any ideas better go away. They <i>have</i> gone away! Look at all +these blessed people in this place! Look at ’em! All fast asleep, doing +their business out of habit—in a sort of dream, Stuffed men would do just +as well—just. They’ve all shook down into their places. <i>They</i> +don’t want anything to happen either. They’re all broken in. There +you are! Only what are they all alive for?... +</p> + +<p> +“Why can’t they get a clockwork chemist?” +</p> + +<p> +He concluded as he often concluded these talks. “I must invent +something,—that’s about what I must do. Zzzz. Some convenience. +Something people want.... Strike out.... You can’t think, George, of +anything everybody wants and hasn’t got? I mean something you could turn +out retail under a shilling, say? Well, <i>you</i> think, whenever you +haven’t got anything better to do. See?” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +So I remember my uncle in that first phase, young, but already a little fat, +restless, fretful, garrulous, putting in my fermenting head all sorts of +discrepant ideas. Certainly he was educational.... +</p> + +<p> +For me the years at Wimblehurst were years of pretty active growth. Most of my +leisure and much of my time in the shop I spent in study. I speedily mastered +the modicum of Latin necessary for my qualifying examinations, and—a +little assisted by the Government Science and Art Department classes that were +held in the Grammar School—went on with my mathematics. There were +classes in physics, in chemistry, in mathematics and machine drawing, and I +took up these subjects with considerable avidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the +form of walks. There was some cricket in the summer and football in the winter +sustained by young men’s clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail of the +big people and the sitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I +didn’t find any very close companions among the youths of Wimblehurst. +They struck me, after my cockney schoolmates, as loutish and slow, servile and +furtive, spiteful and mean. <i>We</i> used to swagger, but these countrymen +dragged their feet and hated an equal who didn’t; we talked loud, but you +only got the real thoughts of Wimblehurst in a knowing undertone behind its +hand. And even then they weren’t much in the way of thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +No, I didn’t like those young countrymen, and I’m no believer in +the English countryside under the Bladesover system as a breeding ground for +honourable men. One hears a frightful lot of nonsense about the Rural Exodus +and the degeneration wrought by town life upon our population. To my mind, the +English townsman, even in the slums, is infinitely better spiritually, more +courageous, more imaginative and cleaner, than his agricultural cousin. +I’ve seen them both when they didn’t think they were being +observed, and I know. There was something about my Wimblehurst companions that +disgusted me. It’s hard to define. Heaven knows that at that cockney +boarding-school at Goudhurst we were coarse enough; the Wimblehurst youngsters +had neither words nor courage for the sort of thing we used to do—for our +bad language, for example; but, on the other hand, they displayed a sort of +sluggish, real lewdness, lewdness is the word—a baseness of attitude. +Whatever we exiled urbans did at Goudhurst was touched with something, however +coarse, of romantic imagination. We had read the <i>Boys of England</i>, and +told each other stories. In the English countryside there are no books at all, +no songs, no drama, no valiant sin even; all these things have never come or +they were taken away and hidden generations ago, and the imagination aborts and +bestialises. That, I think, is where the real difference against the English +rural man lies. It is because I know this that I do not share in the common +repinings because our countryside is being depopulated, because our population +is passing through the furnace of the towns. They starve, they suffer, no +doubt, but they come out of it hardened, they come out of it with souls. +</p> + +<p> +Of an evening the Wimblehurst blade, shiny-faced from a wash and with some loud +finery, a coloured waistcoat or a vivid tie, would betake himself to the Eastry +Arms billiard-room, or to the bar parlour of some minor pub where nap could be +played. One soon sickened of his slow knowingness, the cunning observation of +his deadened eyes, his idea of a “good story,” always, always told +in undertones, poor dirty worm! his shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty +advantage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as +I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of +Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog pipe, +his riding breeches—he had no horse—and his gaiters, as he used to +sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the brim of his +artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases constituted his conversation: +“hard lines!” he used to say, and “Good baazness,” in a +bass bleat. Moreover, he had a long slow whistle that was esteemed the very +cream of humorous comment. Night after night he was there. +</p> + +<p> +Also you knew he would not understand that <i>I</i> could play billiards, and +regarded every stroke I made as a fluke. For a beginner I didn’t play so +badly, I thought. I’m not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time. +But young Dodd’s scepticism and the “good baazness” finally +cured me of my disposition to frequent the Eastry Arms, and so these noises had +their value in my world. +</p> + +<p> +I made no friends among the young men of the place at all, and though I was +entering upon adolescence I have no love-affair to tell of here. Not that I was +not waking up to that aspect of life in my middle teens I did, indeed, in +various slightly informal ways scrape acquaintance with casual Wimblehurst +girls; with a little dressmaker’s apprentice I got upon shyly speaking +terms, and a pupil teacher in the National School went further and was +“talked about” in connection with me but I was not by any means +touched by any reality of passion for either of these young people; +love—love as yet came to me only in my dreams. I only kissed these girls +once or twice. They rather disconcerted than developed those dreams. They were +so clearly not “it.” I shall have much to say of love in this +story, but I may break it to the reader now that it is my role to be a rather +ineffectual lover. Desire I knew well enough—indeed, too well; but love I +have been shy of. In all my early enterprises in the war of the sexes, I was +torn between the urgency of the body and a habit of romantic fantasy that +wanted every phase of the adventure to be generous and beautiful. And I had a +curiously haunting memory of Beatrice, of her kisses in the bracken and her +kiss upon the wall, that somehow pitched the standard too high for +Wimblehurst’s opportunities. I will not deny I did in a boyish way +attempt a shy, rude adventure or so in love-making at Wimblehurst; but through +these various influences, I didn’t bring things off to any extent at all. +I left behind me no devastating memories, no splendid reputation. I came away +at last, still inexperienced and a little thwarted, with only a natural growth +of interest and desire in sexual things. +</p> + +<p> +If I fell in love with any one in Wimblehurst it was with my aunt. She treated +me with a kindliness that was only half maternal—she petted my books, she +knew about my certificates, she made fun of me in a way that stirred my heart +to her. Quite unconsciously I grew fond of her.... +</p> + +<p> +My adolescent years at Wimblehurst were on the whole laborious, uneventful +years that began in short jackets and left me in many ways nearly a man, years +so uneventful that the Calculus of Variations is associated with one winter, +and an examination in Physics for Science and Art department Honours marks an +epoch. Many divergent impulses stirred within me, but the master impulse was a +grave young disposition to work and learn and thereby in some not very clearly +defined way get out of the Wimblehurst world into which I had fallen. I wrote +with some frequency to Ewart, self-conscious, but, as I remember them, not +intelligent letters, dated in Latin and with lapses into Latin quotation that +roused Ewart to parody. There was something about me in those days more than a +little priggish. But it was, to do myself justice, something more than the +petty pride of learning. I had a very grave sense of discipline and preparation +that I am not ashamed at all to remember. I was serious. More serious than I am +at the present time. More serious, indeed, than any adult seems to be. I was +capable then of efforts—of nobilities.... They are beyond me now. I +don’t see why, at forty, I shouldn’t confess I respect my own +youth. I had dropped being a boy quite abruptly. I thought I was presently to +go out into a larger and quite important world and do significant things there. +I thought I was destined to do something definite to a world that had a +definite purpose. I did not understand then, as I do now, that life was to +consist largely in the world’s doing things to me. Young people never do +seem to understand that aspect of things. And, as I say, among my educational +influences my uncle, all unsuspected, played a leading part, and perhaps among +other things gave my discontent with Wimblehurst, my desire to get away from +that clean and picturesque emptiness, a form and expression that helped to +emphasise it. In a way that definition made me patient. “Presently I +shall get to London,” I said, echoing him. +</p> + +<p> +I remember him now as talking, always talking, in those days. He talked to me +of theology, he talked of politics, of the wonders of science and the marvels +of art, of the passions and the affections, of the immortality of the soul and +the peculiar actions of drugs; but predominantly and constantly he talked of +getting on, of enterprises, of inventions and great fortunes, of Rothschilds, +silver kings, Vanderbilts, Goulds, flotations, realisations and the marvelous +ways of Chance with men—in all localities, that is to say, that are not +absolutely sunken to the level of Cold Mutton Fat. +</p> + +<p> +When I think of those early talks, I figure him always in one of three +positions. Either we were in the dispensing lair behind a high barrier, he +pounding up things in a mortar perhaps, and I rolling pill-stuff into long +rolls and cutting it up with a sort of broad, fluted knife, or he stood looking +out of the shop door against the case of sponges and spray-diffusers, while I +surveyed him from behind the counter, or he leant against the little drawers +behind the counter, and I hovered dusting in front. The thought of those early +days brings back to my nostrils the faint smell of scent that was always in the +air, marbled now with streaks of this drug and now of that, and to my eyes the +rows of jejune glass bottles with gold labels, mirror-reflected, that stood +behind him. My aunt, I remember, used sometimes to come into the shop in a +state of aggressive sprightliness, a sort of connubial ragging expedition, and +get much fun over the abbreviated Latinity of those gilt inscriptions. +“Ol Amjig, George,” she would read derisively, “and he +pretends it’s almond oil! Snap!—and that’s mustard. Did you +<i>ever</i>, George? +</p> + +<p> +“Look at him, George, looking dignified. I’d like to put an old +label on to <i>him</i> round the middle like his bottles are, with Ol Pondo on +it. That’s Latin for Impostor, George <i>must</i> be. He’d look +lovely with a stopper.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> want a stopper,” said my uncle, projecting his face.... +</p> + +<p> +My aunt, dear soul, was in those days quite thin and slender, with a delicate +rosebud completion and a disposition to connubial badinage, to a sort of gentle +skylarking. There was a silvery ghost of lisping in her speech. She was a great +humourist, and as the constraint of my presence at meals wore off, I became +more and more aware of a filmy but extensive net of nonsense she had woven +about her domestic relations until it had become the reality of her life. She +affected a derisive attitude to the world at large and applied the epithet +“old” to more things than I have ever heard linked to it before or +since. “Here’s the old news-paper,” she used to say—to +my uncle. “Now don’t go and get it in the butter, you silly old +Sardine!” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the day of the week, Susan?” my uncle would ask. +</p> + +<p> +“Old Monday, Sossidge,” she would say, and add, “I got all my +Old Washing to do. Don’t I <i>know</i> it!”... +</p> + +<p> +She had evidently been the wit and joy of a large circle of schoolfellows, and +this style had become a second nature with her. It made her very delightful to +me in that quiet place. Her customary walk even had a sort of hello! in it. Her +chief preoccupation in life was, I believe, to make my uncle laugh, and when by +some new nickname, some new quaintness or absurdity, she achieved that end, she +was, behind a mask of sober amazement, the happiest woman on earth. My +uncle’s laugh when it did come, I must admit was, as Baedeker says, +“rewarding.” It began with gusty blowings and snortings, and opened +into a clear “Ha ha!” but in fullest development it included, in +those youthful days, falling about anyhow and doubling up tightly, and +whackings of the stomach, and tears and cries of anguish. I never in my life +heard my uncle laugh to his maximum except at her; he was commonly too much in +earnest for that, and he didn’t laugh much at all, to my knowledge, after +those early years. Also she threw things at him to an enormous extent in her +resolve to keep things lively in spite of Wimblehurst; sponges out of stock she +threw, cushions, balls of paper, clean washing, bread; and once up the yard +when they thought that I and the errand boy and the diminutive maid of all work +were safely out of the way, she smashed a boxful of eight-ounce bottles I had +left to drain, assaulting my uncle with a new soft broom. Sometimes she would +shy things at me—but not often. There seemed always laughter round and +about her—all three of us would share hysterics at times—and on one +occasion the two of them came home from church shockingly ashamed of +themselves, because of a storm of mirth during the sermon. The vicar, it seems, +had tried to blow his nose with a black glove as well as the customary +pocket-handkerchief. And afterwards she had picked up her own glove by the +finger, and looking innocently but intently sideways, had suddenly by this +simple expedient exploded my uncle altogether. We had it all over again at +dinner. +</p> + +<p> +“But it shows you,” cried my uncle, suddenly becoming grave, +“what Wimblehurst is, to have us all laughing at a little thing like +that! We weren’t the only ones that giggled. Not by any means! And, Lord! +it <i>was</i> funny!” +</p> + +<p> +Socially, my uncle and aunt were almost completely isolated. In places like +Wimblehurst the tradesmen’s lives always are isolated socially, all of +them, unless they have a sister or a bosom friend among the other wives, but +the husbands met in various bar-parlours or in the billiard-room of the Eastry +Arms. But my uncle, for the most part, spent his evenings at home. When first +he arrived in Wimblehurst I think he had spread his effect of abounding ideas +and enterprise rather too aggressively; and Wimblehurst, after a temporary +subjugation, had rebelled and done its best to make a butt of him. His +appearance in a public-house led to a pause in any conversation that was going +on. +</p> + +<p> +“Come to tell us about everything, Mr. Pond’revo?” some one +would say politely. +</p> + +<p> +“You wait,” my uncle used to answer, disconcerted, and sulk for the +rest of his visit. +</p> + +<p> +Or some one with an immense air of innocence would remark to the world +generally, “They’re talkin’ of rebuildin’ Wimblehurst +all over again, I’m told. Anybody heard anything of it? Going to make it +a reg’lar smartgoin’, enterprisin’ place—kind of +Crystal Pallas.” +</p> + +<p> +“Earthquake and a pestilence before you get <i>that</i>,” my uncle +would mutter, to the infinite delight of every one, and add something inaudible +about “Cold Mutton Fat.”... +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +We were torn apart by a financial accident to my uncle of which I did not at +first grasp the full bearings. He had developed what I regarded as an innocent +intellectual recreation which he called stock-market meteorology. I think he +got the idea from one use of curves in the graphic presentation of associated +variations that he saw me plotting. He secured some of my squared paper and, +having cast about for a time, decided to trace the rise and fall of certain +lines and railways. “There’s something in this, George,” he +said, and I little dreamt that among other things that were in it, was the +whole of his spare money and most of what my mother had left to him in trust +for me. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s as plain as can be,” he said. “See, here’s +one system of waves and here’s another! These are prices for Union +Pacifics—extending over a month. Now next week, mark my words, +they’ll be down one whole point. We’re getting near the steep part +of the curve again. See? It’s absolutely scientific. It’s +verifiable. Well, and apply it! You buy in the hollow and sell on the crest, +and there you are!” +</p> + +<p> +I was so convinced of the triviality of this amusement that to find at last +that he had taken it in the most disastrous earnest overwhelmed me. +</p> + +<p> +He took me for a long walk to break it to me, over the hills towards Yare and +across the great gorse commons by Hazelbrow. +</p> + +<p> +“There are ups and downs in life, George,” he said—halfway +across that great open space, and paused against the sky.... “I left out +one factor in the Union Pacific analysis.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Did</i> you?” I said, struck by the sudden chance in his voice. +“But you don’t mean?” +</p> + +<p> +I stopped and turned on him in the narrow sandy rut of pathway and he stopped +likewise. +</p> + +<p> +“I do, George. I <i>do</i> mean. It’s bust me! I’m a bankrupt +here and now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then—?” +</p> + +<p> +“The shop’s bust too. I shall have to get out of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you!—<i>you’re</i> all right. You can transfer your +apprenticeship, and—er—well, I’m not the sort of man to be +careless with trust funds, you can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. +There’s some of it left George—trust me!—quite a decent +little sum.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you and aunt?” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t <i>quite</i> the way we meant to leave Wimblehurst, +George; but we shall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and +ticketed—lot a hundred and one. Ugh!... It’s been a larky little +house in some ways. The first we had. Furnishing—a spree in its way.... +Very happy...” His face winced at some memory. “Let’s go on, +George,” he said shortly, near choking, I could see. +</p> + +<p> +I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little while. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s how it is, you see, George.” I heard him after a +time. +</p> + +<p> +When we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a time we +walked in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say anything home yet,” he said presently. +“Fortunes of War. I got to pick the proper time with Susan—else +she’ll get depressed. Not that she isn’t a first-rate brick +whatever comes along.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” I said, “I’ll be careful”; and it +seemed to me for the time altogether too selfish to bother him with any further +inquiries about his responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of +relief at my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his +plans.... But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and went +suddenly. “Those others!” he said, as though the thought had stung +him for the first time. +</p> + +<p> +“What others?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Damn them!” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“But what others?” +</p> + +<p> +“All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck, the +butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape! Gord! George, <i>how</i> they’ll +grin!” +</p> + +<p> +I thought him over in the next few weeks, and I remember now in great detail +the last talk we had together before he handed over the shop and me to his +successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business, “lock, stock, +and barrel”—in which expression I found myself and my indentures +included. The horrors of a sale by auction of the furniture even were avoided. +</p> + +<p> +I remember that either coming or going on that occasion, Ruck, the butcher, +stood in his doorway and regarded us with a grin that showed his long teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“You half-witted hog!” said my uncle. “You grinning +hyaena”; and then, “Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goin’ to make your fortun’ in London, then?” said Mr. +Ruck, with slow enjoyment. +</p> + +<p> +That last excursion took us along the causeway to Beeching, and so up the downs +and round almost as far as Steadhurst, home. My moods, as we went, made a +mingled web. By this time I had really grasped the fact that my uncle had, in +plain English, robbed me; the little accumulations of my mother, six hundred +pounds and more, that would have educated me and started me in business, had +been eaten into and was mostly gone into the unexpected hollow that ought to +have been a crest of the Union Pacific curve, and of the remainder he still +gave no account. I was too young and inexperienced to insist on this or know +how to get it, but the thought of it all made streaks of decidedly black anger +in that scheme of interwoven feelings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry +for him—almost as sorry as I was for my aunt Susan. Even then I had quite +found him out. I knew him to be weaker than myself; his incurable, +irresponsible childishness was as clear to me then as it was on his deathbed, +his redeeming and excusing imaginative silliness. Through some odd mental twist +perhaps I was disposed to exonerate him even at the cost of blaming my poor old +mother who had left things in his untrustworthy hands. +</p> + +<p> +I should have forgiven him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any manner +apologetic to me; but he wasn’t that. He kept reassuring me in a way I +found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt Susan and +himself. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s these Crises, George,” he said, “try Character. +Your aunt’s come out well, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +He made meditative noises for a space. +</p> + +<p> +“Had her cry of course,”—the thing had been only too +painfully evident to me in her eyes and swollen face—“who +wouldn’t? But now—buoyant again!... She’s a Corker. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll be sorry to leave the little house of course. It’s a +bit like Adam and Eve, you know. Lord! what a chap old Milton was! +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘The world was all before them, where to choose<br /> +Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +“It sounds, George.... Providence their guide!... Well—thank +goodness there’s no imeedgit prospect of either Cain or Abel!” +</p> + +<p> +“After all, it won’t be so bad up there. Not the scenery, perhaps, +or the air we get here, but—<i>Life!</i> We’ve got very comfortable +little rooms, very comfortable considering, and I shall rise. We’re not +done yet, we’re not beaten; don’t think that, George. I shall pay +twenty shillings in the pound before I’ve done—you mark my words, +George,—twenty—five to you.... I got this situation within +twenty-four hours—others offered. It’s an important firm—one +of the best in London. I looked to that. I might have got four or five +shillings a week more—elsewhere. Quarters I could name. But I said to +them plainly, wages to go on with, but opportunity’s my +game—development. We understood each other.” +</p> + +<p> +He threw out his chest, and the little round eyes behind his glasses rested +valiantly on imaginary employers. +</p> + +<p> +We would go on in silence for a space while he revised and restated that +encounter. Then he would break out abruptly with some banal phrase. +</p> + +<p> +“The Battle of Life, George, my boy,” he would cry, or “Ups +and Downs!” +</p> + +<p> +He ignored or waived the poor little attempts I made to ascertain my own +position. “That’s all right,” he would say; or, “Leave +all that to me. <i>I’ll</i> look after them.” And he would drift +away towards the philosophy and moral of the situation. What was I to do? +</p> + +<p> +“Never put all your resources into one chance, George; that’s the +lesson I draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a hundred to one, +George, that I was right—a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards. +And here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I’d have only kept back a +little, I’d have had it on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on +the rise. There you are!” +</p> + +<p> +His thoughts took a graver turn. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s where you’ll bump up against Chance like this, George, +that you feel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific +men—your Spencers and Huxleys—they don’t understand that. I +do. I’ve thought of it a lot lately—in bed and about. I was +thinking of it this morning while I shaved. It’s not irreverent for me to +say it, I hope—but God comes in on the off-chance, George. See? +Don’t you be too cocksure of anything, good or bad. That’s what I +make out of it. I could have sworn. Well, do you think I—particular as I +am—would have touched those Union Pacifics with trust money at all, if I +hadn’t thought it a thoroughly good thing—good without spot or +blemish?... And it was bad! +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lesson to me. You start in to get a hundred percent. and +you come out with that. It means, in a way, a reproof for Pride. I’ve +thought of that, George—in the Night Watches. I was thinking this morning +when I was shaving, that that’s where the good of it all comes in. At the +bottom I’m a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you’re going to +do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all <i>what</i> he’s doing? +When you most think you’re doing things, they’re being done right +over your head. <i>You’re</i> being done—in a sense. Take a +hundred-to one chance, or one to a hundred—what does it matter? +You’re being Led.” +</p> + +<p> +It’s odd that I heard this at the time with unutterable contempt, and now +that I recall it—well, I ask myself, what have I got better? +</p> + +<p> +“I wish,” said I, becoming for a moment outrageous, +“<i>you</i> were being Led to give me some account of my money, +uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not without a bit of paper to figure on, George, I can’t. But you +trust me about that never fear. You trust me.” +</p> + +<p> +And in the end I had to. +</p> + +<p> +I think the bankruptcy hit my aunt pretty hard. There was, so far as I can +remember now, a complete cessation of all those cheerful outbreaks of +elasticity, no more skylarking in the shop nor scampering about the house. But +there was no fuss that I saw, and only little signs in her complexion of the +fits of weeping that must have taken her. She didn’t cry at the end, +though to me her face with its strain of self-possession was more pathetic than +any weeping. “Well” she said to me as she came through the shop to +the cab, “Here’s old orf, George! Orf to Mome number two! +Good-bye!” And she took me in her arms and kissed me and pressed me to +her. Then she dived straight for the cab before I could answer her. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle followed, and he seemed to me a trifle too valiant and confident in +his bearing for reality. He was unusually white in the face. He spoke to his +successor at the counter. “Here we go!” he said. “One down, +the other up. You’ll find it a quiet little business so long as you run +it on quiet lines—a nice quiet little business. There’s nothing +more? No? Well, if you want to know anything write to me. I’ll always +explain fully. Anything—business, place or people. You’ll find Pil +Antibil. a little overstocked by-the-by, I found it soothed my mind the day +before yesterday making ’em, and I made ’em all day. Thousands! And +where’s George? Ah! there you are! I’ll write to you, George, +<i>fully</i>, about all that affair. Fully!” +</p> + +<p> +It became clear to me as if for the first time, that I was really parting from +my aunt Susan. I went out on to the pavement and saw her head craned forward, +her wide-open blue eyes and her little face intent on the shop that had +combined for her all the charms of a big doll’s house and a little home +of her very own. “Good-bye!” she said to it and to me. Our eyes met +for a moment—perplexed. My uncle bustled out and gave a few totally +unnecessary directions to the cabman and got in beside her. “All +right?” asked the driver. “Right,” said I; and he woke up the +horse with a flick of his whip. My aunt’s eyes surveyed me again. +“Stick to your old science and things, George, and write and tell me when +they make you a Professor,” she said cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +She stared at me for a second longer with eyes growing wider and brighter and a +smile that had become fixed, glanced again at the bright little shop still +saying “Ponderevo” with all the emphasis of its fascia, and then +flopped back hastily out of sight of me into the recesses of the cab. Then it +had gone from before me and I beheld Mr. Snape, the hairdresser, inside his +store regarding its departure with a quiet satisfaction and exchanging smiles +and significant headshakes with Mr. Marbel. +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +I was left, I say, as part of the lock, stock, and barrel, at Wimblehurst with +my new master, a Mr. Mantell; who plays no part in the progress of this story +except in so far as he effaced my uncle’s traces. So soon as the +freshness of this new personality faded, I began to find Wimblehurst not only a +dull but a lonely place, and to miss my aunt Susan immensely. The +advertisements of the summer terms for Cough Linctus were removed; the bottles +of coloured water—red, green, and yellow—restored to their places; +the horse announcing veterinary medicine, which my uncle, sizzling all the +while, had coloured in careful portraiture of a Goodwood favourite, rewhitened; +and I turned myself even more resolutely than before to Latin (until the +passing of my preliminary examination enabled me to drop that), and then to +mathematics and science. +</p> + +<p> +There were classes in Electricity and Magnetism at the Grammar School. I took a +little “elementary” prize in that in my first year and a medal in +my third; and in Chemistry and Human Physiology and Sound, Light and Heat, I +did well. There was also a lighter, more discursive subject called +Physiography, in which one ranged among the sciences and encountered Geology as +a process of evolution from Eozoon to Eastry House, and Astronomy as a record +of celestial movements of the most austere and invariable integrity. I learnt +out of badly-written, condensed little text-books, and with the minimum of +experiment, but still I learnt. Only thirty years ago it was, and I remember I +learnt of the electric light as an expensive, impracticable toy, the telephone +as a curiosity, electric traction as a practical absurdity. There was no argon, +no radium, no phagocytes—at least to my knowledge, and aluminium was a +dear, infrequent metal. The fastest ships in the world went then at nineteen +knots, and no one but a lunatic here and there ever thought it possible that +men might fly. +</p> + +<p> +Many things have happened since then, but the last glance I had of Wimblehurst +two years ago remarked no change whatever in its pleasant tranquillity. They +had not even built any fresh houses—at least not actually in the town, +though about the station there had been some building. But it was a good place +to do work in, for all its quiescence. I was soon beyond the small requirements +of the Pharmaceutical Society’s examination, and as they do not permit +candidates to sit for that until one and twenty, I was presently filling up my +time and preventing my studies becoming too desultory by making an attack upon +the London University degree of Bachelor of Science, which impressed me then as +a very splendid but almost impossible achievement. The degree in mathematics +and chemistry appealed to me as particularly congenial—albeit giddily +inaccessible. I set to work. I had presently to arrange a holiday and go to +London to matriculate, and so it was I came upon my aunt and uncle again. In +many ways that visit marked an epoch. It was my first impression of London at +all. I was then nineteen, and by a conspiracy of chances my nearest approach to +that human wilderness had been my brief visit to Chatham. Chatham too had been +my largest town. So that I got London at last with an exceptional freshness of +effect, as the sudden revelation of a whole unsuspected other side to life. +</p> + +<p> +I came to it on a dull and smoky day by the South Eastern Railway, and our +train was half an hour late, stopping and going on and stopping again. I marked +beyond Chiselhurst the growing multitude of villas, and so came stage by stage +through multiplying houses and diminishing interspaces of market garden and +dingy grass to regions of interlacing railway lines, big factories, gasometers +and wide reeking swamps of dingy little homes, more of them and more and more. +The number of these and their dinginess and poverty increased, and here rose a +great public house and here a Board School and there a gaunt factory; and away +to the east there loomed for a time a queer, incongruous forest of masts and +spars. The congestion of houses intensified and piled up presently into +tenements; I marveled more and more at this boundless world of dingy people; +whiffs of industrial smell, of leather, of brewing, drifted into the carriage; +the sky darkened, I rumbled thunderously over bridges, van-crowded streets, +peered down on and crossed the Thames with an abrupt eclat of sound. I got an +effect of tall warehouses, of grey water, barge crowded, of broad banks of +indescribable mud, and then I was in Cannon Street Station—a monstrous +dirty cavern with trains packed across its vast floor and more porters standing +along the platform than I had ever been in my life before. I alighted with my +portmanteau and struggled along, realising for the first time just how small +and weak I could still upon occasion feel. In this world, I felt, an Honours +medal in Electricity and magnetism counted for nothing at all. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards I drove in a cab down a canon of rushing street between high +warehouses, and peeped up astonished at the blackened greys of Saint +Paul’s. The traffic of Cheapside—it was mostly in horse omnibuses +in those days—seemed stupendous, its roar was stupendous; I wondered +where the money came from to employ so many cabs, what industry could support +the endless jostling stream of silk-hatted, frock-coated, hurrying men. Down a +turning I found the Temperance Hotel Mr. Mantell had recommended to me. The +porter in a green uniform who took over my portmanteau, seemed, I thought, to +despise me a good deal. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +Matriculation kept me for four full days and then came an afternoon to spare, +and I sought out Tottenham Court Road through a perplexing network of various +and crowded streets. But this London was vast! it was endless! it seemed the +whole world had changed into packed frontages and hoardings and street spaces. +I got there at last and made inquiries, and I found my uncle behind the counter +of the pharmacy he managed, an establishment that did not impress me as doing a +particularly high-class trade. “Lord!” he said at the sight of me, +“I was wanting something to happen!” +</p> + +<p> +He greeted me warmly. I had grown taller, and he, I thought, had grown shorter +and smaller and rounder but otherwise he was unchanged. He struck me as being +rather shabby, and the silk hat he produced and put on, when, after mysterious +negotiations in the back premises he achieved his freedom to accompany me, was +past its first youth; but he was as buoyant and confident as ever. +</p> + +<p> +“Come to ask me about all <i>that</i>,” he cried. “I’ve +never written yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, among other things,” said I, with a sudden regrettable +politeness, and waived the topic of his trusteeship to ask after my aunt Susan. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll have her out of it,” he said suddenly; +“we’ll go somewhere. We don’t get you in London every +day.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my first visit,” I said, “I’ve never seen +London before”; and that made him ask me what I thought of it, and the +rest of the talk was London, London, to the exclusion of all smaller topics. He +took me up the Hampstead Road almost to the Cobden statue, plunged into some +back streets to the left, and came at last to a blistered front door that +responded to his latch-key, one of a long series of blistered front doors with +fanlights and apartment cards above. We found ourselves in a drab-coloured +passage that was not only narrow and dirty but desolatingly empty, and then he +opened a door and revealed my aunt sitting at the window with a little +sewing-machine on a bamboo occasional table before her, and +“work”—a plum-coloured walking dress I judged at its most +analytical stage—scattered over the rest of the apartment. +</p> + +<p> +At the first glance I judged my aunt was plumper than she had been, but her +complexion was just as fresh and her China blue eye as bright as in the old +days. +</p> + +<p> +“London,” she said, didn’t “get blacks” on her. +</p> + +<p> +She still “cheeked” my uncle, I was pleased to find. “What +are you old Poking in for at <i>this</i> time—<i>Gubbitt?</i>” she +said when he appeared, and she still looked with a practised eye for the +facetious side of things. When she saw me behind him, she gave a little cry and +stood up radiant. Then she became grave. +</p> + +<p> +I was surprised at my own emotion in seeing her. She held me at arm’s +length for a moment, a hand on each shoulder, and looked at me with a sort of +glad scrutiny. She seemed to hesitate, and then pecked little kiss off my +cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a man, George,” she said, as she released me, and +continued to look at me for a while. +</p> + +<p> +Their <i>ménage</i> was one of a very common type in London. They occupied what +is called the dining-room floor of a small house, and they had the use of a +little inconvenient kitchen in the basement that had once been scullery. The +two rooms, bedroom behind and living room in front, were separated by +folding-doors that were never now thrown back, and indeed, in the presence of a +visitor, not used at all. There was of course no bathroom or anything of that +sort available, and there was no water supply except to the kitchen below. My +aunt did all the domestic work, though she could have afforded to pay for help +if the build of the place had not rendered that inconvenient to the pitch of +impossibility. There was no sort of help available except that of indoor +servants, for whom she had no accommodation. The furniture was their own; it +was partly secondhand, but on the whole it seemed cheerful to my eye, and my +aunt’s bias for cheap, gay-figured muslin had found ample score. In many +ways I should think it must have been an extremely inconvenient and cramped +sort of home, but at the time I took it, as I was taking everything, as being +there and in the nature of things. I did not see the oddness of solvent decent +people living in a habitation so clearly neither designed nor adapted for their +needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of beauty as this was, and it is +only now as I describe this that I find myself thinking of the essential +absurdity of an intelligent community living in such makeshift homes. It +strikes me now as the next thing to wearing second-hand clothes. +</p> + +<p> +You see it was a natural growth, part of that system to which Bladesover, I +hold, is the key. There are wide regions of London, miles of streets of houses, +that appear to have been originally designed for prosperous-middle-class homes +of the early Victorian type. There must have been a perfect fury of such +building in the thirties, forties, and fifties. Street after street must have +been rushed into being, Campden Town way, Pentonville way, Brompton way, West +Kensington way in the Victoria region and all over the minor suburbs of the +south side. +</p> + +<p> +I am doubtful if many of these houses had any long use as the residences of +single families if from the very first almost their tenants did not makeshift +and take lodgers and sublet. They were built with basements, in which their +servants worked and lived—servants of a more submissive and troglodytic +generation who did not mind stairs. The dining-room (with folding doors) was a +little above the ground level, and in that the wholesome boiled and roast with +damp boiled potatoes and then pie to follow, was consumed and the numerous +family read and worked in the evening, and above was the drawing-room (also +with folding doors), where the infrequent callers were received. That was the +vision at which those industrious builders aimed. Even while these houses were +being run up, the threads upon the loom of fate were shaping to abolish +altogether the type of household that would have fitted them. Means of transit +were developing to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out of +London, education and factory employment were whittling away at the supply of +rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand the subterranean drudgery of +these places, new classes of hard-up middle-class people such as my uncle, +employees of various types, were coming into existence, for whom no homes were +provided. None of these classes have ideas of what they ought to be, or fit in +any legitimate way into the Bladesover theory that dominates our minds. It was +nobody’s concern to see them housed under civilised conditions, and the +beautiful laws of supply and demand had free play. They had to squeeze in. The +landlords came out financially intact from their blundering enterprise. More +and more these houses fell into the hands of married artisans, or struggling +widows or old servants with savings, who became responsible for the quarterly +rent and tried to sweat a living by sub-letting furnished or unfurnished +apartments. +</p> + +<p> +I remember now that a poor grey-haired old woman who had an air of having been +roused from a nap in the dust bin, came out into the area and looked up at us +as we three went out from the front door to “see London” under my +uncle’s direction. She was the sub-letting occupier; she squeezed out a +precarious living by taking the house whole and sub-letting it in detail and +she made her food and got the shelter of an attic above and a basement below by +the transaction. And if she didn’t chance to “let” steadily, +out she went to pauperdom and some other poor, sordid old adventurer tried in +her place.... +</p> + +<p> +It is a foolish community that can house whole classes, useful and helpful, +honest and loyal classes, in such squalidly unsuitable dwellings. It is by no +means the social economy it seems, to use up old women, savings and +inexperience in order to meet the landlord’s demands. But any one who +doubts this thing is going on right up to to-day need only spend an afternoon +in hunting for lodgings in any of the regions of London I have named. +</p> + +<p> +But where has my story got to? My uncle, I say, decided I must be shown London, +and out we three went as soon as my aunt had got her hat on, to catch all that +was left of the day. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +It pleased my uncle extremely to find I had never seen London before. He took +possession of the metropolis forthwith. “London, George,” he said, +“takes a lot of understanding. It’s a great place. Immense. The +richest town in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town, +the Imperial city—the centre of civilisation, the heart of the world! See +those sandwich men down there! That third one’s hat! Fair treat! You +don’t see poverty like that in Wimblehurst George! And many of them high +Oxford honour men too. Brought down by drink! It’s a wonderful place, +George—a whirlpool, a maelstrom! whirls you up and whirls you +down.” +</p> + +<p> +I have a very confused memory of that afternoon’s inspection of London. +My uncle took us to and fro showing us over his London, talking erratically, +following a route of his own. Sometimes we were walking, sometimes we were on +the tops of great staggering horse omnibuses in a heaving jumble of traffic, +and at one point we had tea in an Aerated Bread Shop. But I remember very +distinctly how we passed down Park Lane under an overcast sky, and how my uncle +pointed out the house of this child of good fortune and that with succulent +appreciation. +</p> + +<p> +I remember, too, that as he talked I would find my aunt watching my face as if +to check the soundness of his talk by my expression. +</p> + +<p> +“Been in love yet, George?” she asked suddenly, over a bun in the +tea-shop. +</p> + +<p> +“Too busy, aunt,” I told her. +</p> + +<p> +She bit her bun extensively, and gesticulated with the remnant to indicate that +she had more to say. +</p> + +<p> +“How are <i>you</i> going to make your fortune?” she said so soon +as she could speak again. “You haven’t told us that.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Lectricity,” said my uncle, taking breath after a deep +draught of tea. +</p> + +<p> +“If I make it at all,” I said. “For my part I think shall be +satisfied with something less than a fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re going to make ours—suddenly,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“So <i>he</i> old says.” She jerked her head at my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“He won’t tell me when—so I can’t get anything ready. +But it’s coming. Going to ride in our carriage and have a garden. +Garden—like a bishop’s.” +</p> + +<p> +She finished her bun and twiddled crumbs from her fingers. “I shall be +glad of the garden,” she said. “It’s going to be a real big +one with rosaries and things. Fountains in it. Pampas grass. Hothouses.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll get it all right,” said my uncle, who had reddened a +little. +</p> + +<p> +“Grey horses in the carriage, George,” she said. “It’s +nice to think about when one’s dull. And dinners in restaurants often and +often. And theatres—in the stalls. And money and money and money.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may joke,” said my uncle, and hummed for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Just as though an old Porpoise like him would ever make money,” +she said, turning her eyes upon his profile with a sudden lapse to affection. +“He’ll just porpoise about.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll do something,” said my uncle, “you bet! +Zzzz!” and rapped with a shilling on the marble table. +</p> + +<p> +“When you do you’ll have to buy me a new pair of gloves,” she +said, “anyhow. That finger’s past mending. Look! you +Cabbage—you.” And she held the split under his nose, and pulled a +face of comical fierceness. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle smiled at these sallies at the time, but afterwards, when I went back +with him to the Pharmacy—the low-class business grew brisker in the +evening and they kept open late—he reverted to it in a low expository +tone. “Your aunt’s a bit impatient, George. She gets at me. +It’s only natural.... A woman doesn’t understand how long it takes +to build up a position. No.... In certain directions now—I +am—quietly—building up a position. Now here.... I get this room. I +have my three assistants. Zzzz. It’s a position that, judged by the +criterion of imeedjit income, isn’t perhaps so good as I deserve, but +strategically—yes. It’s what I want. I make my plans. I rally my +attack.” +</p> + +<p> +“What plans,” I said, “are you making?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, George, there’s one thing you can rely upon, I’m doing +nothing in a hurry. I turn over this one and that, and I don’t +talk—indiscreetly. There’s—No! I don’t think I can tell +you that. And yet, why NOT?” +</p> + +<p> +He got up and closed the door into the shop. “I’ve told no +one,” he remarked, as he sat down again. “I owe you +something.” +</p> + +<p> +His face flushed slightly, he leant forward over the little table towards me. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I listened. +</p> + +<p> +“Tono-Bungay,” said my uncle very slowly and distinctly. +</p> + +<p> +I thought he was asking me to hear some remote, strange noise. “I +don’t hear anything,” I said reluctantly to his expectant face. He +smiled undefeated. “Try again,” he said, and repeated, +“Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, <i>that!</i>” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said my uncle, rejoicing and expanding. “What <i>is</i> +it? That’s what you got to ask? What <i>won’t</i> it be?” He +dug me violently in what he supposed to be my ribs. “George,” he +cried—“George, watch this place! There’s more to +follow.” +</p> + +<p> +And that was all I could get from him. +</p> + +<p> +That, I believe, was the very first time that the words Tono-Bungay ever heard +on earth—unless my uncle indulged in monologues in his chamber—a +highly probable thing. Its utterance certainly did not seem to me at the time +to mark any sort of epoch, and had I been told this word was the Open Sesame to +whatever pride and pleasure the grimy front of London hid from us that evening, +I should have laughed aloud. +</p> + +<p> +“Coming now to business,” I said after a pause, and with a chill +sense of effort; and I opened the question of his trust. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle sighed, and leant back in his chair. “I wish I could make all +this business as clear to you as it is to me,” he said. +“However—Go on! Say what you have to say.” +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +After I left my uncle that evening I gave way to a feeling of profound +depression. My uncle and aunt seemed to me to be leading—I have already +used the word too often, but I must use it again—<i>dingy</i> lives. They +seemed to be adrift in a limitless crowd of dingy people, wearing shabby +clothes, living uncomfortably in shabby second-hand houses, going to and fro on +pavements that had always a thin veneer of greasy, slippery mud, under grey +skies that showed no gleam of hope of anything for them but dinginess until +they died. It seemed absolutely clear to me that my mother’s little +savings had been swallowed up and that my own prospect was all too certainly to +drop into and be swallowed up myself sooner or later by this dingy London +ocean. The London that was to be an adventurous escape from the slumber of +Wimblehurst, had vanished from my dreams. I saw my uncle pointing to the houses +in Park Lane and showing a frayed shirt-cuff as he did so. I heard my aunt: +“I’m to ride in my carriage then. So he old says.” +</p> + +<p> +My feelings towards my uncle were extraordinarily mixed. I was intensely sorry +not only for my aunt Susan but for him—for it seemed indisputable that as +they were living then so they must go on—and at the same time I was angry +with the garrulous vanity and illness that had elipped all my chance of +independent study, and imprisoned her in those grey apartments. When I got back +to Wimblehurst I allowed myself to write him a boyishly sarcastic and sincerely +bitter letter. He never replied. Then, believing it to be the only way of +escape for me, I set myself far more grimly and resolutely to my studies than I +had ever done before. After a time I wrote to him in more moderate terms, and +he answered me evasively. And then I tried to dismiss him from my mind and went +on working. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, that first raid upon London under the moist and chilly depression of +January had an immense effect upon me. It was for me an epoch-making +disappointment. I had thought of London as a large, free, welcoming, +adventurous place, and I saw it slovenly and harsh and irresponsive. +</p> + +<p> +I did not realise at all what human things might be found behind those grey +frontages, what weakness that whole forbidding façade might presently confess. +It is the constant error of youth to over-estimate the Will in things. I did +not see that the dirt, the discouragement, the discomfort of London could be +due simply to the fact that London was a witless old giantess of a town, too +slack and stupid to keep herself clean and maintain a brave face to the word. +No! I suffered from the sort of illusion that burnt witches in the seventeenth +century. I endued her grubby disorder with a sinister and magnificent quality +of intention. +</p> + +<p> +And my uncle’s gestures and promises filled me with doubt and a sort of +fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, +in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of tenderness +for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic fortunes mocked by his +grandiloquent promises. +</p> + +<p> +I was to learn better. But I worked with the terror of the grim underside of +London in my soul during all my last year at Wimblehurst. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="book02"></a>BOOK THE SECOND<br /> +THE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +HOW I BECAME A LONDON STUDENT AND WENT ASTRAY</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +I came to live in London, as I shall tell you, when I was nearly twenty-two. +Wimblehurst dwindles in perspective, is now in this book a little place far +off, Bladesover no more than a small pinkish speck of frontage among the +distant Kentish hills; the scene broadens out, becomes multitudinous and +limitless, full of the sense of vast irrelevant movement. I do not remember my +second coming to London as I do my first, for my early impressions, save that +an October memory of softened amber sunshine stands out, amber sunshine falling +on grey house fronts I know not where. That, and a sense of a large +tranquillity. +</p> + +<p> +I could fill a book, I think, with a more or less imaginary account of how I +came to apprehend London, how first in one aspect and then in another it grew +in my mind. Each day my accumulating impressions were added to and qualified +and brought into relationship with new ones; they fused inseparably with others +that were purely personal and accidental. I find myself with a certain +comprehensive perception of London, complete indeed, incurably indistinct in +places and yet in some way a whole that began with my first visit and is still +being mellowed and enriched. +</p> + +<p> +London! +</p> + +<p> +At first, no doubt, it was a chaos of streets and people and buildings and +reasonless going to and fro. I do not remember that I ever struggled very +steadily to understand it, or explored it with any but a personal and +adventurous intention. Yet in time there has grown up in me a kind of theory of +London; I do think I see lines of an ordered structure out of which it has +grown, detected a process that is something more than a confusion of casual +accidents though indeed it may be no more than a process of disease. +</p> + +<p> +I said at the outset of my first book that I find in Bladesover the clue to all +England. Well, I certainly imagine it is the clue to the structure of London. +There have been no revolutions no deliberate restatements or abandonments of +opinion in England since the days of the fine gentry, since 1688 or +thereabouts, the days when Bladesover was built; there have been changes, +dissolving forest replacing forest, if you will; but then it was that the broad +lines of the English system set firmly. And as I have gone to and fro in London +in certain regions constantly the thought has recurred this is Bladesover +House, this answers to Bladesover House. The fine gentry may have gone; they +have indeed largely gone, I think; rich merchants may have replaced them, +financial adventurers or what not. That does not matter; the shape is still +Bladesover. +</p> + +<p> +I am most reminded of Bladesover and Eastry by all those regions round about +the West End parks; for example, estate parks, each more or less in relation to +a palace or group of great houses. The roads and back ways of Mayfair and all +about St. James’s again, albeit perhaps of a later growth in point of +time, were of the very spirit and architectural texture of the Bladesover +passages and yards; they had the same smells, the space, the large cleanest and +always going to and fro where one met unmistakable Olympians and even more +unmistakable valets, butlers, footmen in mufti. There were moments when I +seemed to glimpse down areas the white panelling, the very chintz of my +mother’s room again. +</p> + +<p> +I could trace out now on a map what I would call the Great-House region; +passing south-westward into Belgravia, becoming diffused and sporadic westward, +finding its last systematic outbreak round and about Regent’s Park. The +Duke of Devonshire’s place in Piccadilly, in all its insolent ugliness, +pleases me particularly; it is the quintessence of the thing; Apsley House is +all in the manner of my theory, Park Lane has its quite typical mansions, and +they run along the border of the Green Park and St. James’s. And I struck +out a truth one day in Cromwell Road quite suddenly, as I looked over the +Natural History Museum “By Jove,” said I “but this is the +little assemblage of cases of stuffed birds and animals upon the Bladesover +staircase grown enormous, and yonder as the corresponding thing to the +Bladesover curios and porcelain is the Art Museume and there in the little +observatories in Exhibition Road is old Sir Cuthbert’s Gregorian +telescope that I hunted out in the storeroom and put together.” And +diving into the Art Museum under this inspiration, I came to a little +reading-room and found as I had inferred, old brown books! +</p> + +<p> +It was really a good piece of social comparative anatomy I did that day; all +these museums and libraries that are dotted over London between Piccadilly and +West Kensington, and indeed the museum and library movement throughout the +world, sprang from the elegant leisure of the gentlemen of taste. Theirs were +the first libraries, the first houses of culture; by my rat-like raids into the +Bladesover saloon I became, as it were, the last dwindled representative of +such a man of letters as Swift. But now these things have escaped out of the +Great House altogether, and taken on a strange independent life of their own. +</p> + +<p> +It is this idea of escaping parts from the seventeenth century system of +Bladesover, of proliferating and overgrowing elements from the Estates, that to +this day seems to me the best explanation, not simply of London, but of all +England. England is a country of great Renascence landed gentlefolk who have +been unconsciously outgrown and overgrown. The proper shops for Bladesover +custom were still to be found in Regent Street and Bond Street in my early +London days in those days they had been but lightly touched by the +American’s profaning hand—and in Piccadilly. I found the +doctor’s house of the country village or country town up and down Harley +Street, multiplied but not otherwise different, and the family solicitor (by +the hundred) further eastward in the abandoned houses of a previous generation +of gentlepeople, and down in Westminster, behind Palladian fronts, the public +offices sheltered in large Bladesoverish rooms and looked out on St. +James’s Park. The Parliament Houses of lords and gentlemen, the +parliament house that was horrified when merchants and brewers came thrusting +into it a hundred years ago, stood out upon its terrace gathering the whole +system together into a head. +</p> + +<p> +And the more I have paralleled these things with my Bladesover-Eastry model, +the more evident it has become to me that the balance is not the same, and the +more evident is the presence of great new forces, blind forces of invasion, of +growth. The railway termini on the north side of London have been kept as +remote as Eastry had kept the railway-station from Wimblehurst, they stop on +the very outskirts of the estates, but from the south, the South Eastern +railway had butted its great stupid rusty iron head of Charing Cross station, +that great head that came smashing down in 1905—clean across the river, +between Somerset House and Whitehall. The south side had no protecting estate. +Factory chimneys smoke right over against Westminster with an air of carelessly +not having permission, and the whole effect of industrial London and of all +London east of Temple Bar and of the huge dingy immensity of London port is to +me of something disproportionately large, something morbidly expanded, without +plan or intention, dark and sinister toward the clean clear social assurance of +the West End. And south of this central London, south-east, south-west, far +west, north-west, all round the northern hills, are similar disproportionate +growths, endless streets of undistinguished houses, undistinguished industries, +shabby families, second-rate shops, inexplicable people who in a once +fashionable phrase do not “exist.” All these aspects have suggested +to my mind at times, do suggest to this day, the unorganised, abundant +substance of some tumorous growth-process, a process which indeed bursts all +the outlines of the affected carcass and protrudes such masses as ignoble +comfortable Croydon, as tragic impoverished West Ham. To this day I ask myself +will those masses ever become structural, will they indeed shape into anything +new whatever, or is that cancerous image their true and ultimate diagnosis?... +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, together with this hypertrophy there is an immigration of elements +that have never understood and never will understand the great tradition, +wedges of foreign settlement embedded in the heart of this yeasty English +expansion. One day I remember wandering eastward out of pure curiosity—it +must have been in my early student days—and discovering a shabbily bright +foreign quarter, shops displaying Hebrew placards and weird, unfamiliar +commodities and a concourse of bright-eyed, eagle-nosed people talking some +incomprehensible gibberish between the shops and the barrows. And soon I became +quite familiar with the devious, vicious, dirtily-pleasant eroticism of Soho. I +found those crowded streets a vast relief from the dull grey exterior of +Brompton where I lodged and lived my daily life. In Soho, indeed, I got my +first inkling of the factor of replacement that is so important in both the +English and the American process. +</p> + +<p> +Even in the West End, in Mayfair and the square, about Pall Mall, Ewart was +presently to remind me the face of the old aristocratic dignity was fairer than +its substance; here were actors and actresses, here money lenders and Jews, +here bold financial adventurers, and I thought of my uncle’s frayed cuff +as he pointed out this house in Park Lane and that. That was so and so’s +who made a corner in borax, and that palace belonged to that hero among modern +adventurers, Barmentrude, who used to be an I.D.B.,—an illicit diamond +buyer that is to say. A city of Bladesovers, the capital of a kingdom of +Bladesovers, all much shaken and many altogether in decay, parasitically +occupied, insidiously replaced by alien, unsympathetic and irresponsible +elements; and with a ruling an adventitious and miscellaneous empire of a +quarter of this daedal earth complex laws, intricate social necessities, +disturbing insatiable suggestions, followed from this. Such was the world into +which I had come, into which I had in some way to thrust myself and fit my +problem, my temptations, my efforts, my patriotic instinct, all my moral +instincts, my physical appetites, my dreams and my sanity. +</p> + +<p> +London! I came up to it, young and without advisers, rather priggish, rather +dangerously open-minded and very open-eyed, and with something—it is, I +think, the common gift of imaginative youth, and I claim it +unblushingly—fine in me, finer than the world and seeking fine responses. +I did not want simply to live or simply to live happily or well; I wanted to +serve and do and make—with some nobility. It was in me. It is in half the +youth of the world. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I had come to London as a scholar. I had taken the Vincent Bradley scholarship +of the Pharmaceutical Society, but I threw this up when I found that my work of +the Science and Art Department in mathematics, physics and chemistry had given +me one of the minor Technical Board Scholarships at the Consolidated Technical +Schools at South Kensington. This latter was in mechanics and metallurgy; and I +hesitated between the two. The Vincent Bradley gave me £70 a year and quite the +best start-off a pharmaceutical chemist could have; the South Kensington thing +was worth about twenty-two shillings a week, and the prospects it opened were +vague. But it meant far more scientific work than the former, and I was still +under the impulse of that great intellectual appetite that is part of the +adolescence of men of my type. Moreover it seemed to lead towards engineering, +in which I imagined—I imagine to this day—my particular use is to +be found. I took its greater uncertainty as a fair risk. I came up very keen, +not doubting that the really hard and steady industry that had carried me +through Wimblehurst would go on still in the new surroundings. +</p> + +<p> +Only from the very first it didn’t.... +</p> + +<p> +When I look back now at my Wimblehurst days, I still find myself surprised at +the amount of steady grinding study, of strenuous self-discipline that I +maintained throughout my apprenticeship. In many ways I think that time was the +most honourable period in my life. I wish I could say with a certain mind that +my motives in working so well were large and honourable too. To a certain +extent they were so; there was a fine sincere curiosity, a desire for the +strength and power of scientific knowledge and a passion for intellectual +exercise; but I do not think those forces alone would have kept me at it so +grimly and closely if Wimblehurst had not been so dull, so limited and so +observant. Directly I came into the London atmosphere, tasting freedom, tasting +irresponsibility and the pull of new forces altogether, my discipline fell from +me like a garment. Wimblehurst to a youngster in my position offered no +temptations worth counting, no interests to conflict with study, no +vices—such vices as it offered were coarsely stripped of any imaginative +glamourfull drunkenness, clumsy leering shameful lust, no social intercourse +even to waste one’s time, and on the other hand it would minister greatly +to the self-esteem of a conspicuously industrious student. One was marked as +“clever,” one played up to the part, and one’s little +accomplishment stood out finely in one’s private reckoning against the +sunlit small ignorance of that agreeable place. One went with an intent rush +across the market square, one took one’s exercise with as dramatic a +sense of an ordered day as an Oxford don, one burnt the midnight oil quite +consciously at the rare respectful, benighted passer-by. And one stood out +finely in the local paper with one’s unapproachable yearly harvest of +certificates. Thus I was not only a genuinely keen student, but also a little +of a prig and poseur in those days—and the latter kept the former at it, +as London made clear. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction. +</p> + +<p> +But I did not realise all this when I came to London, did not perceive how the +change of atmosphere began at once to warp and distribute my energies. In the +first place I became invisible. If I idled for a day, no one except my +fellow-students (who evidently had no awe for me) remarked it. No one saw my +midnight taper; no one pointed me out as I crossed the street as an astonishing +intellectual phenomenon. In the next place I became inconsiderable. In +Wimblehurst I felt I stood for Science; nobody there seemed to have so much as +I and to have it so fully and completely. In London I walked ignorant in an +immensity, and it was clear that among my fellow-students from the midlands and +the north I was ill-equipped and under-trained. With the utmost exertion I +should only take a secondary position among them. And finally, in the third +place, I was distracted by voluminous new interests; London took hold of me, +and Science, which had been the universe, shrank back to the dimensions of +tiresome little formulae compacted in a book. I came to London in late +September, and it was a very different London from that great greyly-overcast, +smoke-stained house-wilderness of my first impressions. I reached it by +Victoria and not by Cannon Street, and its centre was now in Exhibition Road. +It shone, pale amber, blue-grey and tenderly spacious and fine under clear +autumnal skies, a London of hugely handsome buildings and vistas and distances, +a London of gardens and labyrinthine tall museums, of old trees and remote +palaces and artificial waters. I lodged near by in West Brompton at a house in +a little square. +</p> + +<p> +So London faced me the second time, making me forget altogether for a while the +grey, drizzling city visage that had first looked upon me. I settled down and +went to and fro to my lectures and laboratory; in the beginning I worked hard, +and only slowly did the curiosity that presently possessed me to know more of +this huge urban province arise, the desire to find something beyond mechanism +that I could serve, some use other than learning. With this was a growing sense +of loneliness, a desire for adventure and intercourse. I found myself in the +evenings poring over a map of London I had bought, instead of copying out +lecture notes—and on Sundays I made explorations, taking omnibus rides +east and west and north and south, and to enlarging and broadening the sense of +great swarming hinterlands of humanity with whom I had no dealings, of whom I +knew nothing.... +</p> + +<p> +The whole illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and sometimes +outrageous possibility, of hidden but magnificent meanings. +</p> + +<p> +It wasn’t simply that I received a vast impression of space and multitude +and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged from neglected, +veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of perception. Close at +hand in the big art museum I came for the first time upon the beauty of nudity, +which I had hitherto held to be a shameful secret, flaunted and gloried in; I +was made aware of beauty as not only permissible, but desirable and frequent +and of a thousand hitherto unsuspected rich aspects of life. One night in a +real rapture, I walked round the upper gallery of the Albert Hall and listened +for the first time to great music; I believe now that it was a rendering of +Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.... +</p> + +<p> +My apprehension of spaces and places was reinforced by a quickened apprehension +of persons. A constant stream of people passed by me, eyes met and challenged +mine and passed—more and more I wanted then to stay—if I went +eastward towards Piccadilly, women who seemed then to my boyish inexperience +softly splendid and alluring, murmured to me as they passed. Extraordinarily +life unveiled. The very hoardings clamoured strangely at one’s senses and +curiosities. One bought pamphlets and papers full of strange and daring ideas +transcending one’s boldest; in the parks one heard men discussing the +very existence of God, denying the rights of property, debating a hundred +things that one dared not think about in Wimblehurst. And after the ordinary +overcast day, after dull mornings, came twilight, and London lit up and became +a thing of white and yellow and red jewels of light and wonderful floods of +golden illumination and stupendous and unfathomable shadows—and there +were no longer any mean or shabby people—but a great mysterious movement +of unaccountable beings.... +</p> + +<p> +Always I was coming on the queerest new aspects. Late one Saturday night I +found myself one of a great slow-moving crowd between the blazing shops and the +flaring barrows in the Harrow Road; I got into conversation with two bold-eyed +girls, bought them boxes of chocolate, made the acquaintance of father and +mother and various younger brothers and sisters, sat in a public-house +hilariously with them all, standing and being stood drinks, and left them in +the small hours at the door of “home,” never to see them again. And +once I was accosted on the outskirts of a Salvation Army meeting in one of the +parks by a silk-hatted young man of eager and serious discourse, who argued +against scepticism with me, invited me home to tea into a clean and cheerful +family of brothers and sisters and friends, and there I spent the evening +singing hymns to the harmonium (which reminded me of half-forgotten Chatham), +and wishing all the sisters were not so obviously engaged.... +</p> + +<p> +Then on the remote hill of this boundless city-world I found Ewart. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +How well I remember the first morning, a bright Sunday morning in early +October, when I raided in upon Ewart! I found my old schoolfellow in bed in a +room over an oil-shop in a back street at the foot of Highgate Hill. His +landlady, a pleasant, dirty young woman with soft-brown eyes, brought down his +message for me to come up; and up I went. The room presented itself as ample +and interesting in detail and shabby with a quite commendable shabbiness. I had +an impression of brown walls—they were papered with brown paper—of +a long shelf along one side of the room, with dusty plaster casts and a small +cheap lay figure of a horse, of a table and something of grey wax partially +covered with a cloth, and of scattered drawings. There was a gas stove in one +corner, and some enameled ware that had been used for overnight cooking. The +oilcloth on the floor was streaked with a peculiar white dust. Ewart himself +was not in the first instance visible, but only a fourfold canvas screen at the +end of the room from which shouts proceeded of “Come on!” then his +wiry black hair, very much rumpled, and a staring red-brown eye and his stump +of a nose came round the edge of this at a height of about three feet from the +ground “It’s old Ponderevo!” he said, “the Early bird! +And he’s caught the worm! By Jove, but it’s cold this morning! Come +round here and sit on the bed!” +</p> + +<p> +I walked round, wrung his hand, and we surveyed one another. +</p> + +<p> +He was lying on a small wooden fold-up bed, the scanty covering of which was +supplemented by an overcoat and an elderly but still cheerful pair of check +trousers, and he was wearing pajamas of a virulent pink and green. His neck +seemed longer and more stringy than it had been even in our schooldays, and his +upper lip had a wiry black moustache. The rest of his ruddy, knobby +countenance, his erratic hair and his general hairy leanness had not +even—to my perceptions grown. +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” he said, “you’ve got quite decent-looking, +Ponderevo! What do you think of me?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re all right. What are you doing here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Art, my son—sculpture! And incidentally—” He +hesitated. “I ply a trade. Will you hand me that pipe and those smoking +things? So! You can’t make coffee, eh? Well, try your hand. Cast down +this screen—no—fold it up and so we’ll go into the other +room. I’ll keep in bed all the same. The fire’s a gas stove. Yes. +Don’t make it bang. too loud as you light it—I can’t stand it +this morning. You won’t smoke ... Well, it does me good to see you again, +Ponderevo. Tell me what you’re doing, and how you’re getting +on.” +</p> + +<p> +He directed me in the service of his simple hospitality, and presently I came +back to his bed and sat down and smiled at him there, smoking comfortably, with +his hands under his head, surveying me. +</p> + +<p> +“How’s Life’s Morning, Ponderevo? By Jove, it must be nearly +six years since we met! They’ve got moustaches. We’ve fleshed +ourselves a bit, eh? And you?” +</p> + +<p> +I felt a pipe was becoming after all, and that lit, I gave him a favourable +sketch of my career. +</p> + +<p> +“Science! And you’ve worked like that! While I’ve been +potting round doing odd jobs for stone-masons and people, and trying to get to +sculpture. I’ve a sort of feeling that the chisel—I began with +painting, Ponderevo, and found I was colour-blind, colour-blind enough to stop +it. I’ve drawn about and thought about—thought more particularly. I +give myself three days a week as an art student, and the rest of the time +I’ve a sort of trade that keeps me. And we’re still in the +beginning of things, young men starting. Do you remember the old times at +Goudhurst, our doll’s-house island, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand Young +Holmes and the rabbits, eh? It’s surprising, if you think of it, to find +we are still young. And we used to talk of what we would be, and we used to +talk of love! I suppose you know all about that now, Ponderevo?” +</p> + +<p> +I finished and hesitated on some vague foolish lie, “No,” I said, a +little ashamed of the truth. “Do you? I’ve been too busy.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m just beginning—just as we were then. Things +happen.” +</p> + +<p> +He sucked at his pipe for a space and stared at the plaster cast of a flayed +hand that hung on the wall. +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, Ponderevo, I’m beginning to find life a most +extraordinary queer set-out; the things that pull one, the things that +don’t. The wants—This business of sex. It’s a net. No end to +it, no way out of it, no sense in it. There are times when women take +possession of me, when my mind is like a painted ceiling at Hampton Court with +the pride of the flesh sprawling all over it. <i>Why>?</i>... And then again +sometimes when I have to encounter a woman, I am overwhelmed by a terror of +tantalising boredom—I fly, I hide, I do anything. You’ve got your +scientific explanations perhaps; what’s Nature and the universe up to in +that matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s her way, I gather, of securing the continuity of the +species.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it doesn’t,” said Ewart. “That’s just it! +No. I have succumbed to—dissipation—down the hill there. Euston +Road way. And it was damned ugly and mean, and I hate having done it. And the +continuity of the species—Lord!... And why does Nature make a man so +infernally ready for drinks? There’s no sense in that anyhow.” He +sat up in bed, to put this question with the greater earnestness. “And +why has she given me a most violent desire towards sculpture and an equally +violent desire to leave off work directly I begin it, eh?... Let’s have +some more coffee. I put it to you, these things puzzle me, Ponderevo. They +dishearten me. They keep me in bed.” +</p> + +<p> +He had an air of having saved up these difficulties for me for some time. He +sat with his chin almost touching his knees, sucking at his pipe. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I mean,” he went on, “when I say life is +getting on to me as extraordinarily queer, I don’t see my game, nor why I +was invited. And I don’t make anything of the world outside either. What +do <i>you</i> make of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“London,” I began. “It’s—so enormous!” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it! And it’s all up to nothing. You find chaps keeping +grocers’ shops—why the <i>devil</i>, Ponderevo, do they keep +grocers’ shops? They all do it very carefully, very steadily, very +meanly. You find people running about and doing the most remarkable things +being policemen, for example, and burglars. They go about these businesses +quite gravely and earnestly. I somehow—can’t go about mine. Is +there any sense in it at all—anywhere?” +</p> + +<p> +“There must be sense in it,” I said. “We’re +young.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re young—yes. But one must inquire. The grocer’s a +grocer because, I suppose, he sees he comes in there. Feels that on the whole +it amounts to a call.... But the bother is I don’t see where I come in at +all. Do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where <i>you</i> come in?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, where <i>you </i>come in.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly, yet,” I said. “I want to do some good in the +world—something—something effectual, before I die. I have a sort of +idea my scientific work—I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he mused. “And I’ve got a sort of idea my +sculpture,—but <i>how</i> it is to come in and +<i>why</i>,—I’ve no idea at all.” He hugged his knees for a +space. “That’s what puzzles me, Ponderevo, no end.” +</p> + +<p> +He became animated. “If you will look in that cupboard,” he said, +“you will find an old respectable looking roll on a plate and a knife +somewhere and a gallipot containing butter. You give them me and I’ll +make my breakfast, and then if you don’t mind watching me paddle about at +my simple toilet I’ll get up. Then we’ll go for a walk and talk +about this affair of life further. And about Art and Literature and anything +else that crops up on the way.... Yes, that’s the gallipot. Cockroach got +in it? Chuck him out—damned interloper....” +</p> + +<p> +So in the first five minutes of our talk, as I seem to remember it now, old +Ewart struck the note that ran through all that morning’s intercourse.... +</p> + +<p> +To me it was a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new horizons of +thought. I’d been working rather close and out of touch with +Ewart’s free gesticulating way. He was pessimistic that day and sceptical +to the very root of things. He made me feel clearly, what I had not felt at all +before, the general adventurousness of life, particularly of life at the stage +we had reached, and also the absence of definite objects, of any concerted +purpose in the lives that were going on all round us. He made me feel, too, how +ready I was to take up commonplace assumptions. Just as I had always imagined +that somewhere in social arrangements there was certainly a Head-Master who +would intervene if one went too far, so I had always had a sort of implicit +belief that in our England there were somewhere people who understood what we +were all, as a nation, about. That crumpled into his pit of doubt and vanished. +</p> + +<p> +He brought out, sharply cut and certain, the immense effect of purposelessness +in London that I was already indistinctly feeling. We found ourselves at last +returning through Highgate Cemetery and Waterlow Park—and Ewart was +talking. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at it there,” he said, stopping and pointing to the great +vale of London spreading wide and far. “It’s like a sea—and +we swim in it. And at last down we go, and then up we come—washed up +here.” He swung his arms to the long slopes about us, tombs and +headstones in long perspectives, in limitless rows. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re young, Ponderevo, but sooner or later our whitened memories +will wash up on one of these beaches, on some such beach as this. George +Ponderevo, F.R.S., Sidney Ewart, R.I.P. Look at the rows of ’em!” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. “Do you see that hand? The hand, I mean, pointing upward, on +the top of a blunted obelisk. Yes. Well, that’s what I do for a +living—when I’m not thinking, or drinking, or prowling, or making +love, or pretending I’m trying to be a sculptor without either the money +or the morals for a model. See? And I do those hearts afire and those pensive +angel guardians with the palm of peace. Damned well I do ’em and damned +cheap! I’m a sweated victim, Ponderevo...” +</p> + +<p> +That was the way of it, anyhow. I drank deep of talk that day; we went into +theology, into philosophy; I had my first glimpse of socialism. I felt as +though I had been silent in a silence since I and he had parted. At the thought +of socialism Ewart’s moods changed for a time to a sort of energy. +“After all, all this confounded vagueness <i>might</i> be altered. If you +could get men to work together...” +</p> + +<p> +It was a good talk that rambled through all the universe. I thought I was +giving my mind refreshment, but indeed it was dissipation. All sorts of ideas, +even now, carry me back as it were to a fountain-head, to Waterlow Park and my +resuscitated Ewart. There stretches away south of us long garden slopes and +white gravestones and the wide expanse of London, and somewhere in the picture +is a red old wall, sun-warmed, and a great blaze of Michaelmas daisies set off +with late golden sunflowers and a drift of mottled, blood-red, fallen leaves. +It was with me that day as though I had lifted my head suddenly out of dull and +immediate things and looked at life altogether.... But it played the very devil +with the copying up of my arrears of notes to which I had vowed the latter half +of that day. +</p> + +<p> +After that reunion Ewart and I met much and talked much, and in our subsequent +encounters his monologue was interrupted and I took my share. He had exercised +me so greatly that I lay awake at nights thinking him over, and discoursed and +answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature +a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical assertion of the +incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my +more irritable and energetic nature to active protests. “It’s all +so pointless,” I said, “because people are slack and because +it’s in the ebb of an age. But you’re a socialist. Well, +let’s bring that about! And there’s a purpose. There you +are!” +</p> + +<p> +Ewart gave me all my first conceptions of socialism; in a little while I was an +enthusiastic socialist and he was a passive resister to the practical +exposition of the theories he had taught me. “We must join some +organisation,” I said. “We ought to do things.... We ought to go +and speak at street corners. People don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +You must figure me a rather ill-dressed young man in a state of great +earnestness, standing up in that shabby studio of his and saying these things, +perhaps with some gesticulations, and Ewart with a clay-smudged face, dressed +perhaps in a flannel shirt and trousers, with a pipe in his mouth, squatting +philosophically at a table, working at some chunk of clay that never got beyond +suggestion. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder why one doesn’t want to,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +It was only very slowly I came to gauge Ewart’s real position in the +scheme of things, to understand how deliberate and complete was this detachment +of his from the moral condemnation and responsibilities that played so fine a +part in his talk. His was essentially the nature of an artistic appreciator; he +could find interest and beauty in endless aspects of things that I marked as +evil, or at least as not negotiable; and the impulse I had towards +self-deception, to sustained and consistent self-devotion, disturbed and +detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of +admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at +bottom secretive, and he gave me a series of little shocks of discovery +throughout our intercourse. +</p> + +<p> +The first of these came in the realisation that he quite seriously meant to do +nothing in the world at all towards reforming the evils he laid bare in so easy +and dexterous a manner. The next came in the sudden appearance of a person +called “Milly”—I’ve forgotten her surname—whom I +found in his room one evening, simply attired in a blue wrap—the rest of +her costume behind the screen—smoking cigarettes and sharing a flagon of +an amazingly cheap and self-assertive grocer’s wine Ewart affected, +called “Canary Sack.” “Hullo!” said Ewart, as I came +in. “This is Milly, you know. She’s been being a model—she IS +a model really.... (keep calm, Ponderevo!) Have some sack?” +</p> + +<p> +Milly was a woman of thirty, perhaps, with a broad, rather pretty face, a +placid disposition, a bad accent and delightful blond hair that waved off her +head with an irrepressible variety of charm; and whenever Ewart spoke she +beamed at him. Ewart was always sketching this hair of hers and embarking upon +clay statuettes of her that were never finished. She was, I know now, a woman +of the streets, whom Ewart had picked up in the most casual manner, and who had +fallen in love with him, but my inexperience in those days was too great for me +to place her then, and Ewart offered no elucidations. She came to him, he went +to her, they took holidays together in the country when certainly she sustained +her fair share of their expenditure. I suspect him now even of taking money +from her. Odd old Ewart! It was a relationship so alien to my orderly +conceptions of honour, to what I could imagine any friend of mine doing, that I +really hardly saw it with it there under my nose. But I see it and I think I +understand it now.... +</p> + +<p> +Before I fully grasped the discursive manner in which Ewart was committed to +his particular way in life, I did, I say, as the broad constructive ideas of +socialism took hold of me, try to get him to work with me in some definite +fashion as a socialist. +</p> + +<p> +“We ought to join on to other socialists,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve got something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s go and look at some first.” +</p> + +<p> +After some pains we discovered the office of the Fabian Society, lurking in a +cellar in Clement’s Inn; and we went and interviewed a rather +discouraging secretary who stood astraddle in front of a fire and questioned us +severely and seemed to doubt the integrity of our intentions profoundly. He +advised us to attend the next open meeting in Clifford’s Inn and gave us +the necessary data. We both contrived to get to the affair, and heard a +discursive gritty paper on Trusts and one of the most inconclusive discussions +you can imagine. Three-quarters of the speakers seemed under some jocular +obsession which took the form of pretending to be conceited. It was a sort of +family joke, and as strangers to the family we did not like it.... As we came +out through the narrow passage from Clifford’s Inn to the Strand, Ewart +suddenly pitched upon a wizened, spectacled little man in a vast felt hat and a +large orange tie. +</p> + +<p> +“How many members are there in this Fabian Society of yours?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +The little man became at once defensive in his manner. +</p> + +<p> +“About seven hundred,” he said; “perhaps eight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like—like the ones here?” +</p> + +<p> +The little man gave a nervous self-satisfied laugh. “I suppose +they’re up to sample,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The little man dropped out of existence and we emerged upon the Strand. Ewart +twisted his arm into a queerly eloquent gesture that gathered up all the tall +façades of the banks, the business places, the projecting clock and towers of +the Law Courts, the advertisements, the luminous signs, into one social +immensity, into a capitalistic system gigantic and invincible. +</p> + +<p> +“These socialists have no sense of proportion,” he said. +“What can you expect of them?” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +Ewart, as the embodiment of talk, was certainly a leading factor in my +conspicuous failure to go on studying. Social theory in its first crude form of +Democratic Socialism gripped my intelligence more and more powerfully. I argued +in the laboratory with the man who shared my bench until we quarreled and did +not speak and also I fell in love. +</p> + +<p> +The ferment of sex had been creeping into my being like a slowly advancing tide +through all my Wimblehurst days, the stimulus of London was like the rising of +a wind out of the sea that brings the waves in fast and high. Ewart had his +share in that. More and more acutely and unmistakably did my perception of +beauty, form and sound, my desire for adventure, my desire for intercourse, +converge on this central and commanding business of the individual life. I had +to get me a mate. +</p> + +<p> +I began to fall in love faintly with girls I passed in the street, with women +who sat before me in trains, with girl fellow-students, with ladies in passing +carriages, with loiterers at the corners, with neat-handed waitresses in shops +and tea-rooms, with pictures even of girls and women. On my rare visits to the +theatre I always became exalted, and found the actresses and even the +spectators about me mysterious, attractive, creatures of deep interest and +desire. I had a stronger and stronger sense that among these glancing, passing +multitudes there was somewhere one who was for me. And in spite of every +antagonistic force in the world, there was something in my very marrow that +insisted: “Stop! Look at this one! Think of her! Won’t she do? This +signifies—this before all things signifies! Stop! Why are you hurrying +by? This may be the predestined person—before all others.” +</p> + +<p> +It is odd that I can’t remember when first I saw Marion, who became my +wife—whom I was to make wretched, who was to make me wretched, who was to +pluck that fine generalised possibility of love out of my early manhood and +make it a personal conflict. I became aware of her as one of a number of +interesting attractive figures that moved about in my world, that glanced back +at my eyes, that flitted by with a kind of averted watchfulness. I would meet +her coming through the Art Museum, which was my short cut to the Brompton Road, +or see her sitting, reading as I thought, in one of the bays of the Education +Library. But really, as I found out afterwards, she never read. She used to +come there to eat a bun in quiet. She was a very gracefully-moving figure of a +girl then, very plainly dressed, with dark brown hair I remember, in a knot low +on her neck behind that confessed the pretty roundness of her head and +harmonised with the admirable lines of ears and cheek, the grave serenity of +mouth and brow. +</p> + +<p> +She stood out among the other girls very distinctly because they dressed more +than she did, struck emphatic notes of colour, startled one by novelties in +hats and bows and things. I’ve always hated the rustle, the disconcerting +colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women’s clothes. Her +plain black dress gave her a starkness.... +</p> + +<p> +I do remember, though, how one afternoon I discovered the peculiar appeal of +her form for me. I had been restless with my work and had finally slipped out +of the Laboratory and come over to the Art Museum to lounge among the pictures. +I came upon her in an odd corner of the Sheepshanks gallery, intently copying +something from a picture that hung high. I had just been in the gallery of +casts from the antique, my mind was all alive with my newly awakened sense of +line, and there she stood with face upturned, her body drooping forward from +the hips just a little—memorably graceful—feminine. +</p> + +<p> +After that I know I sought to see her, felt a distinctive emotion at her +presence, began to imagine things about her. I no longer thought of generalised +womanhood or of this casual person or that. I thought of her. +</p> + +<p> +An accident brought us together. I found myself one Monday morning in an +omnibus staggering westward from Victoria—I was returning from a Sunday +I’d spent at Wimblehurst in response to a unique freak of hospitality on +the part of Mr. Mantell. She was the sole other inside passenger. And when the +time came to pay her fare, she became an extremely scared, disconcerted and +fumbling young woman; she had left her purse at home. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily I had some money. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me with startled, troubled brown eyes; she permitted my proffered +payment to the conductor with a certain ungraciousness that seemed a part of +her shyness, and then as she rose to go, she thanked me with an obvious +affectation of ease. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you so much,” she said in a pleasant soft voice; and then +less gracefully, “Awfully kind of you, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +I fancy I made polite noises. But just then I wasn’t disposed to be +critical. I was full of the sense of her presence; her arm was stretched out +over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body was near me. +The words we used didn’t seem very greatly to matter. I had vague ideas +of getting out with her—and I didn’t. +</p> + +<p> +That encounter, I have no doubt, exercised me enormously. I lay awake at night +rehearsing it, and wondering about the next phase of our relationship. That +took the form of the return of my twopence. I was in the Science Library, +digging something out of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, when she appeared +beside me and placed on the open page an evidently premeditated thin envelope, +bulgingly confessing the coins within. +</p> + +<p> +“It was so very kind of you,” she said, “the other day. I +don’t know what I should have done, Mr.—” +</p> + +<p> +I supplied my name. “I knew,” I said, “you were a student +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly a student. I—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I’m a student +myself at the Consolidated Technical Schools.” +</p> + +<p> +I plunged into autobiography and questionings, and so entangled her in a +conversation that got a quality of intimacy through the fact that, out of +deference to our fellow-readers, we were obliged to speak in undertones. And I +have no doubt that in substance it was singularly banal. Indeed I have an +impression that all our early conversations were incredibly banal. We met +several times in a manner half-accidental, half furtive and wholly awkward. +Mentally I didn’t take hold of her. I never did take hold of her +mentally. Her talk, I now know all too clearly, was shallow, pretentious, +evasive. Only—even to this day—I don’t remember it as in any +way vulgar. She was, I could see quite clearly, anxious to overstate or conceal +her real social status, a little desirous to be taken for a student in the art +school and a little ashamed that she wasn’t. She came to the museum to +“copy things,” and this, I gathered, had something to do with some +way of partially earning her living that I wasn’t to inquire into. I told +her things about myself, vain things that I felt might appeal to her, but that +I learnt long afterwards made her think me “conceited.” We talked +of books, but there she was very much on her guard and secretive, and rather +more freely of pictures. She “liked” pictures. I think from the +outset I appreciated and did not for a moment resent that hers was a +commonplace mind, that she was the unconscious custodian of something that had +gripped my most intimate instinct, that she embodied the hope of a possibility, +was the careless proprietor of a physical quality that had turned my head like +strong wine. I felt I had to stick to our acquaintance, flat as it was. +Presently we should get through these irrelevant exterior things, and come to +the reality of love beneath. +</p> + +<p> +I saw her in dreams released, as it were, from herself, beautiful, worshipful, +glowing. And sometimes when we were together, we would come on silences through +sheer lack of matter, and then my eyes would feast on her, and the silence +seemed like the drawing back of a curtain—her superficial self. Odd, I +confess. Odd, particularly, the enormous hold of certain things about her upon +me, a certain slight rounded duskiness of skin, a certain perfection of +modelling in her lips, her brow, a certain fine flow about the shoulders. She +wasn’t indeed beautiful to many people—these things are beyond +explaining. She had manifest defects of form and feature, and they didn’t +matter at all. Her complexion was bad, but I don’t think it would have +mattered if it had been positively unwholesome. I had extraordinarily limited, +extraordinarily painful, desires. I longed intolerably to kiss her lips. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +The affair was immensely serious and commanding to me. I don’t remember +that in these earlier phases I had any thought of turning back at all. It was +clear to me that she regarded me with an eye entirely more critical than I had +for her, that she didn’t like my scholarly untidiness, my want of even +the most commonplace style. “Why do you wear collars like that?” +she said, and sent me in pursuit of gentlemanly neckwear. I remember when she +invited me a little abruptly one day to come to tea at her home on the +following Sunday and meet her father and mother and aunt, that I immediately +doubted whether my hitherto unsuspected best clothes would create the +impression she desired me to make on her belongings. I put off the encounter +until the Sunday after, to get myself in order. I had a morning coat made and I +bought a silk hat, and had my reward in the first glance of admiration she ever +gave me. I wonder how many of my sex are as preposterous. I was, you see, +abandoning all my beliefs, my conventions unasked. I was forgetting myself +immensely. And there was a conscious shame in it all. Never a word—did I +breathe to Ewart—to any living soul of what was going on. +</p> + +<p> +Her father and mother and aunt struck me as the dismalest of people, and her +home in Walham Green was chiefly notable for its black and amber tapestry +carpets and curtains and table-cloths, and the age and irrelevance of its +books, mostly books with faded gilt on the covers. The windows were fortified +against the intrusive eye by cheap lace curtains and an “art pot” +upon an unstable octagonal table. Several framed Art School drawings of +Marion’s, bearing official South Kensington marks of approval, adorned +the room, and there was a black and gilt piano with a hymn-book on the top of +it. There were draped mirrors over all the mantels, and above the sideboard in +the dining-room in which we sat at tea was a portrait of her father, +villainously truthful after the manner of such works. I couldn’t see a +trace of the beauty I found in her in either parent, yet she somehow contrived +to be like them both. +</p> + +<p> +These people pretended in a way that reminded me of the Three Great Women in my +mother’s room, but they had not nearly so much social knowledge and did +not do it nearly so well. Also, I remarked, they did it with an eye on Marion. +They had wanted to thank me, they said, for the kindness to their daughter in +the matter of the ‘bus fare, and so accounted for anything unusual in +their invitation. They posed as simple gentlefolk, a little hostile to the rush +and gadding-about of London, preferring a secluded and unpretentious quiet. +</p> + +<p> +When Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for tea, a +card bearing the word “A<small>PARTMENTS</small>” fell to the +floor. I picked it up and gave it to her before I realised from her quickened +colour that I should not have seen it; that probably had been removed from the +window in honour of my coming. +</p> + +<p> +Her father spoke once in a large remote way of he claims of business +engagements, and it was only long afterwards I realised that he was a +supernumerary clerk in the Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful man at +home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown eyes +magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a paper collar, +and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a large Bible which he +had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also he cultivated the little +garden-yard behind the house, and he had a small greenhouse with tomatoes. +“I wish I ’ad ’eat,” he said. “One can do such a +lot with ’eat. But I suppose you can’t ’ave everything you +want in this world.” +</p> + +<p> +Both he and Marion’s mother treated her with a deference that struck me +as the most natural thing in the world. Her own manner changed, became more +authoritative and watchful, her shyness disappeared. She had taken a line of +her own I gathered, draped the mirror, got the second-hand piano, and broken +her parents in. +</p> + +<p> +Her mother must once have been a pretty woman; she had regular features and +Marion’s hair without its lustre, but she was thin and careworn. The +aunt, Miss Ramboat, was a large, abnormally shy person very like her brother, +and I don’t recall anything she said on this occasion. +</p> + +<p> +To begin with there was a good deal of tension, Marion was frightfully nervous +and every one was under the necessity of behaving in a mysteriously unreal +fashion until I plunged, became talkative and made a certain ease and interest. +I told them of the schools, of my lodgings, of Wimblehurst and my +apprenticeship days. “There’s a lot of this Science about +nowadays,” Mr. Ramboat reflected; “but I sometimes wonder a bit +what good it is?” +</p> + +<p> +I was young enough to be led into what he called “a bit of a +discussion,” which Marion truncated before our voices became unduly +raised. “I dare say,” she said, “there’s much to be +said on both sides.” +</p> + +<p> +I remember Marion’s mother asked me what church I attended, and that I +replied evasively. After tea there was music and we sang hymns. I doubted if I +had a voice when this was proposed, but that was held to be a trivial +objection, and I found sitting close beside the sweep of hair from +Marion’s brow had many compensations. I discovered her mother sitting in +the horsehair armchair and regarding us sentimentally. I went for a walk with +Marion towards Putney Bridge, and then there was more singing and a supper of +cold bacon and pie, after which Mr. Ramboat and I smoked. During that walk, I +remember, she told me the import of her sketchings and copyings in the museum. +A cousin of a friend of hers whom she spoke of as Smithie, had developed an +original business in a sort of tea-gown garment which she called a Persian +Robe, a plain sort of wrap with a gaily embroidered yoke, and Marion went there +and worked in the busy times. In the times that weren’t busy she designed +novelties in yokes by an assiduous use of eyes and note-book in the museum, and +went home and traced out the captured forms on the foundation material. +“I don’t get much,” said Marion, “but it’s +interesting, and in the busy times we work all day. Of course the workgirls are +dreadfully common, but we don’t say much to them. And Smithie talks +enough for ten.” +</p> + +<p> +I quite understood the workgirls were dreadfully common. +</p> + +<p> +I don’t remember that the Walham Green <i>ménage</i> and the quality of +these people, nor the light they threw on Marion, detracted in the slightest +degree at that time from the intent resolve that held me to make her mine. I +didn’t like them. But I took them as part of the affair. Indeed, on the +whole, I think they threw her up by an effect of contrast; she was so obviously +controlling them, so consciously superior to them. +</p> + +<p> +More and more of my time did I give to this passion that possessed me. I began +to think chiefly of ways of pleasing Marion, of acts of devotion, of treats, of +sumptuous presents for her, of appeals she would understand. If at times she +was manifestly unintelligent, in her ignorance became indisputable, I told +myself her simple instincts were worth all the education and intelligence in +the world. And to this day I think I wasn’t really wrong about her. There +was something extraordinarily fine about her, something simple and high, that +flickered in and out of her ignorance and commonness and limitations like the +tongue from the mouth of a snake.... +</p> + +<p> +One night I was privileged to meet her and bring her home from an entertainment +at the Birkbeck Institute. We came back on the underground railway and we +travelled first-class—that being the highest class available. We were +alone in the carriage, and for the first time I ventured to put my arm about +her. +</p> + +<p> +“You mustn’t,” she said feebly. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you,” I whispered suddenly with my heart beating wildly, +drew her to me, drew all her beauty to me and kissed her cool and unresisting +lips. +</p> + +<p> +“Love me?” she said, struggling away from me, +“Don’t!” and then, as the train ran into a station, +“You must tell no one.... I don’t know.... You shouldn’t have +done that....” +</p> + +<p> +Then two other people got in with us and terminated my wooing for a time. +</p> + +<p> +When we found ourselves alone together, walking towards Battersea, she had +decided to be offended. I parted from her unforgiven and terribly distressed. +</p> + +<p> +When we met again, she told me I must never say “that” again. +</p> + +<p> +I had dreamt that to kiss her lips was ultimate satisfaction. But it was indeed +only the beginning of desires. I told her my one ambition was to marry her. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she said, “you’re not in a +position—What’s the good of talking like that?” +</p> + +<p> +I stared at her. “I mean to,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t,” she answered. “It will be years” +</p> + +<p> +“But I love you,” I insisted. +</p> + +<p> +I stood not a yard from the sweet lips I had kissed; I stood within arm’s +length of the inanimate beauty I desired to quicken, and I saw opening between +us a gulf of years, toil, waiting, disappointments and an immense uncertainty. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you,” I said. “Don’t you love me?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked me in the face with grave irresponsive eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said. “I <i>like</i> you, of +course.... One has to be sensibl...” +</p> + +<p> +I can remember now my sense of frustration by her unresilient reply. I should +have perceived then that for her my ardour had no quickening fire. But how was +I to know? I had let myself come to want her, my imagination endowed her with +infinite possibilities. I wanted her and wanted her, stupidly and +instinctively.... +</p> + +<p> +“But,” I said “Love—!” +</p> + +<p> +“One has to be sensible,” she replied. “I like going about +with you. Can’t we keep as we are?’” +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +Well, you begin to understand my breakdown now, I have been copious enough with +these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my behaviour degenerated, +my punctuality declined; I was more and more outclassed in the steady grind by +my fellow-students. Such supplies of moral energy as I still had at command +shaped now in the direction of serving Marion rather than science. +</p> + +<p> +I fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped men +from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent, +hard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen rivalry to +moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the lists. Then indeed I +made it a point of honour to show by my public disregard of every rule that I +really did not even pretend to try. +</p> + +<p> +So one day I found myself sitting in a mood of considerable astonishment in +Kensington Gardens, reacting on a recent heated interview with the school +Registrar in which I had displayed more spirit than sense. I was astonished +chiefly at my stupendous falling away from all the militant ideals of +unflinching study I had brought up from Wimblehurst. I had displayed myself, as +the Registrar put it, “an unmitigated rotter.” My failure to get +marks in the written examination had only been equalled by the insufficiency of +my practical work. +</p> + +<p> +“I ask you,” the Registrar had said, “what will become of you +when your scholarship runs out?” +</p> + +<p> +It certainly was an interesting question. What <i>was</i> going to become of +me? +</p> + +<p> +It was clear there would be nothing for me in the schools as I had once dared +to hope; there seemed, indeed, scarcely anything in the world except an illpaid +assistantship in some provincial organized Science School or grammar school. I +knew that for that sort of work, without a degree or any qualification, one +earned hardly a bare living and had little leisure to struggle up to anything +better. If only I had even as little as fifty pounds I might hold out in London +and take my B.Sc. degree, and quadruple my chances! My bitterness against my +uncle returned at the thought. After all, he had some of my money still, or +ought to have. Why shouldn’t I act within my rights, threaten to +‘take proceedings’? I meditated for a space on the idea, and then +returned to the Science Library and wrote him a very considerable and +occasionally pungent letter. +</p> + +<p> +That letter to my uncle was the nadir of my failure. Its remarkable +consequences, which ended my student days altogether, I will tell in the next +chapter. +</p> + +<p> +I say “my failure.” Yet there are times when I can even doubt +whether that period was a failure at all, when I become defensively critical of +those exacting courses I did not follow, the encyclopaedic process of +scientific exhaustion from which I was distracted. My mind was not inactive, +even if it fed on forbidden food. I did not learn what my professors and +demonstrators had resolved I should learn, but I learnt many things. My mind +learnt to swing wide and to swing by itself. +</p> + +<p> +After all, those other fellows who took high places in the College examinations +and were the professor’s model boys haven’t done so amazingly. Some +are professors themselves, some technical experts; not one can show things done +such as I, following my own interest, have achieved. For I have built boats +that smack across the water like whiplashes; no one ever dreamt of such boats +until I built them; and I have surprised three secrets that are more than +technical discoveries, in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come +nearer flying than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a +turn for obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed +to train my mind? If I had been <i>trained</i> in research—that +ridiculous contradiction in terms—should I have done more than produce +additions to the existing store of little papers with blunted conclusions, of +which there are already too many? I see no sense in mock modesty upon this +matter. Even by the standards of worldly success I am, by the side of my +fellow-students, no failure. I had my F.R.S. by the time I was thirty-seven, +and if I am not very wealthy poverty is as far from me as the Spanish +Inquisition. Suppose I had stamped down on the head of my wandering curiosity, +locked my imagination in a box just when it wanted to grow out to things, +worked by so-and-so’s excellent method and so-and-so’s indications, +where should I be now? +</p> + +<p> +I may be all wrong in this. It may be I should be a far more efficient man than +I am if I had cut off all those divergent expenditures of energy, plugged up my +curiosity about society with more currently acceptable rubbish or other, +abandoned Ewart, evaded Marion instead of pursuing her, concentrated. But I +don’t believe it! +</p> + +<p> +However, I certainly believed it completely and was filled with remorse on that +afternoon when I sat dejectedly in Kensington Gardens and reviewed, in the +light of the Registrar’s pertinent questions my first two years in +London. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +THE DAWN COMES, AND MY UNCLE APPEARS IN A NEW SILK HAT</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +Throughout my student days I had not seen my uncle. I refrained from going to +him in spite of an occasional regret that in this way I estranged myself from +my aunt Susan, and I maintained a sulky attitude of mind towards him. And I +don’t think that once in all that time I gave a thought to that mystic +word of his that was to alter all the world for us. Yet I had not altogether +forgotten it. It was with a touch of memory, dim transient perplexity if no +more—why did this thing seem in some way personal?—that I read a +new inscription upon the hoardings: +</p> + +<div class="center"> +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: +2em; margin-bottom: 2em;" border="1" > + +<tr> +<td>THE SECRET OF VIGOUR,<br /> +TONO-BUNGAY.</td> +</tr> + +</table> +</div> + +<p> +That was all. It was simple and yet in some way arresting. I found myself +repeating the word after I had passed; it roused one’s attention like the +sound of distant guns. “Tono”—what’s that? and deep, +rich, unhurrying;—“<i>bun</i>—gay!” +</p> + +<p> +Then came my uncle’s amazing telegram, his answer to my hostile note: +“<i>Come to me at once you are wanted three hundred a year certain +tono-bungay.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” I cried, “of course! +</p> + +<p> +“It’s something—. A patent-medicine! I wonder what he wants +with me.” +</p> + +<p> +In his Napoleonic way my uncle had omitted to give an address. His telegram had +been handed in at Farringdon Road, and after complex meditations I replied to +Ponderevo, Farringdon Road, trusting to the rarity of our surname to reach him. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +His reply came promptly: +</p> + +<p> +“192A, Raggett Street, E.C.” +</p> + +<p> +The next day I took an unsanctioned holiday after the morning’s lecture. +I discovered my uncle in a wonderfully new silk hat—oh, a splendid hat! +with a rolling brim that went beyond the common fashion. It was decidedly too +big for him—that was its only fault. It was stuck on the back of his +head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt sleeves. He welcomed me with a +forgetfulness of my bitter satire and my hostile abstinence that was almost +divine. His glasses fell off at the sight of me. His round inexpressive eyes +shone brightly. He held out his plump short hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Here we are, George! What did I tell you? Needn’t whisper it now, +my boy. Shout it—<i>loud!</i> spread it about! Tell every one! +Tono—T<small>ONO</small>—, TONO-BUNGAY!” +</p> + +<p> +Raggett Street, you must understand, was a thoroughfare over which some one had +distributed large quantities of cabbage stumps and leaves. It opened out of the +upper end of Farringdon Street, and 192A was a shop with the plate-glass front +coloured chocolate, on which several of the same bills I had read upon the +hoardings had been stuck. The floor was covered by street mud that had been +brought in on dirty boots, and three energetic young men of the hooligan type, +in neck-wraps and caps, were packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, +amidst much straw and confusion. The counter was littered with these same +swathed bottles, of a pattern then novel but now amazingly familiar in the +world, the blue paper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude giant, and +the printed directions of how under practically all circumstances to take +Tono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side opened a staircase down which I +seem to remember a girl descending with a further consignment of bottles, and +the rest of the background was a high partition, also chocolate, with +“Temporary Laboratory” inscribed upon it in white letters, and over +a door that pierced it, “Office.” Here I rapped, inaudible amid +much hammering, and then entered unanswered to find my uncle, dressed as I have +described, one hand gripping a sheath of letters, and the other scratching his +head as he dictated to one of three toiling typewriter girls. Behind him was a +further partition and a door inscribed “ABSOLUTELY PRIVATE—NO +ADMISSION,” thereon. This partition was of wood painted the universal +chocolate, up to about eight feet from the ground, and then of glass. Through +the glass I saw dimly a crowded suggestion of crucibles and glass retorts, +and—by Jove!—yes!—the dear old Wimblehurst air-pump still! It +gave me quite a little thrill—that air-pump! And beside it was the +electrical machine—but something—some serious trouble—had +happened to that. All these were evidently placed on a shelf just at the level +to show. +</p> + +<p> +“Come right into the sanctum,” said my uncle, after he had finished +something about “esteemed consideration,” and whisked me through +the door into a room that quite amazingly failed to verify the promise of that +apparatus. It was papered with dingy wall-paper that had peeled in places; it +contained a fireplace, an easy-chair with a cushion, a table on which stood two +or three big bottles, a number of cigar-boxes on the mantel, whisky Tantalus +and a row of soda syphons. He shut the door after me carefully. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, here we are!” he said. “Going strong! Have a whisky, +George? No!—Wise man! Neither will I! You see me at it! At +it—hard!” +</p> + +<p> +“Hard at what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Read it,” and he thrust into my hand a label—that label that +has now become one of the most familiar objects of the chemist’s shop, +the greenish-blue rather old-fashioned bordering, the legend, the name in good +black type, very clear, and the strong man all set about with lightning flashes +above the double column of skilful lies in red—the label of Tono-Bungay. +“It’s afloat,” he said, as I stood puzzling at this. +“It’s afloat. I’m afloat!” And suddenly he burst out +singing in that throaty tenor of his— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“I’m afloat, I’m afloat on the fierce flowing tide,<br /> +The ocean’s my home and my bark is my bride! +</p> + +<p> +“Ripping song that is, George. Not so much a bark as a solution, but +still—it does! Here we are at it! By-the-by! Half a mo’! I’ve +thought of a thing.” He whisked out, leaving me to examine this nuclear +spot at leisure while his voice became dictatorial without. The den struck me +as in its large grey dirty way quite unprecedented and extraordinary. The +bottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that dear old +apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patiently “on the +shelf” than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. I saw nothing +for it but to sit down in the chair and await my uncle’s explanations. I +remarked a frock-coat with satin lapels behind the door; there was a dignified +umbrella in the corner and a clothes-brush and a hat-brush stood on a +side-table. My uncle returned in five minutes looking at his watch—a gold +watch—“Gettin’ lunch-time, George,” he said. +“You’d better come and have lunch with me!” +</p> + +<p> +“How’s Aunt Susan?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Exuberant. Never saw her so larky. This has bucked her up something +wonderful—all this.” +</p> + +<p> +“All what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is Tono-Bungay?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle hesitated. “Tell you after lunch, George,” he said. +“Come along!” and having locked up the sanctum after himself, led +the way along a narrow dirty pavement, lined with barrows and swept at times by +avalanche-like porters bearing burthens to vans, to Farringdon Street. He +hailed a passing cab superbly, and the cabman was infinitely respectful. +“Schäfer’s,” he said, and off we went side by side—and +with me more and more amazed at all these things—to Schäfer’s +Hotel, the second of the two big places with huge lace curtain-covered windows, +near the corner of Blackfriars Bridge. +</p> + +<p> +I will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions as the two +colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of Schäfers’ held open the +inner doors for us with a respectful salutation that in some manner they seemed +to confine wholly to my uncle. Instead of being about four inches taller, I +felt at least the same size as he, and very much slenderer. Still more +respectful—waiters relieved him of the new hat and the dignified +umbrella, and took his orders for our lunch. He gave them with a fine +assurance. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded to several of the waiters. +</p> + +<p> +“They know me, George, already,” he said. “Point me out. Live +place! Eye for coming men!” +</p> + +<p> +The detailed business of the lunch engaged our attention for a while, and then +I leant across my plate. “And NOW?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the secret of vigour. Didn’t you read that +label?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s selling like hot cakes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is it?” I pressed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said my uncle, and then leant forward and spoke softly +under cover of his hand, “It’s nothing more or less than...” +</p> + +<p> +(But here an unfortunate scruple intervenes. After all, Tono-Bungay is still a +marketable commodity and in the hands of purchasers, who bought it +from—among other vendors—me. No! I am afraid I cannot give it +away—) +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” said my uncle in a slow confidential whisper, with eyes +very wide and a creased forehead, “it’s nice because of the” +(here he mentioned a flavouring matter and an aromatic spirit), +“it’s stimulating because of” (here he mentioned two very +vivid tonics, one with a marked action on the kidney.) “And the” +(here he mentioned two other ingredients) “makes it pretty intoxicating. +Cocks their tails. Then there’s” (but I touch on the essential +secret.) “And there you are. I got it out of an old book of +recipes—all except the” (here he mentioned the more virulent +substance, the one that assails the kidneys), “which is my idea! Modern +touch! There you are!” +</p> + +<p> +He reverted to the direction of our lunch. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he was leading the way to the lounge—sumptuous piece in red +morocco and yellow glazed crockery, with incredible vistas of settees and sofas +and things, and there I found myself grouped with him in two excessively +upholstered chairs with an earthenware Moorish table between us bearing coffee +and Benedictine, and I was tasting the delights of a tenpenny cigar. My uncle +smoked a similar cigar in an habituated manner, and he looked energetic and +knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly a little bounder, round the end of +it. It was just a trivial flaw upon our swagger, perhaps that we both were +clear our cigars had to be “mild.” He got obliquely across the +spaces of his great armchair so as to incline confidentially to my ear, he +curled up his little legs, and I, in my longer way, adopted a corresponding +receptive obliquity. I felt that we should strike an unbiased observer as a +couple of very deep and wily and developing and repulsive persons. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to let you into +this”—puff—“George,” said my uncle round the end +of his cigar. “For many reasons.” +</p> + +<p> +His voice grew lower and more cunning. He made explanations that to my +inexperience did not completely explain. I retain an impression of a long +credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit and a +prospective share with some pirate printers, of a third share for a leading +magazine and newspaper proprietor. +</p> + +<p> +“I played ’em off one against the other,” said my uncle. I +took his point in an instant. He had gone to each of them in turn and said the +others had come in. +</p> + +<p> +“I put up four hundred pounds,” said my uncle, “myself and my +all. And you know—” +</p> + +<p> +He assumed a brisk confidence. “I hadn’t five hundred pence. At +least—” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. “I +<i>did</i>” he said, “produce capital. You see, there was that +trust affair of yours—I ought, I suppose—in strict +legality—to have put that straight first. Zzzz.... +</p> + +<p> +“It was a bold thing to do,” said my uncle, shifting the venue from +the region of honour to the region of courage. And then with a characteristic +outburst of piety, “Thank God it’s all come right! +</p> + +<p> +“And now, I suppose, you ask where do YOU come in? Well, fact is +I’ve always believed in you, George. You’ve got—it’s a +sort of dismal grit. Bark your shins, rouse you, and you’ll go! +You’d rush any position you had a mind to rush. I know a bit about +character, George—trust me. You’ve got—” He clenched +his hands and thrust them out suddenly, and at the same time said, with +explosive violence, “Wooosh! Yes. You have! The way you put away that +Latin at Wimblehurst; I’ve never forgotten it. +</p> + +<p> +“Wo-oo-oo-osh! Your science and all that! Wo-oo-oo-osh! I know my +limitations. There’s things I can do, and” (he spoke in a whisper, +as though this was the first hint of his life’s secret) +“there’s things I can’t. Well, I can create this business, +but I can’t make it go. I’m too voluminous—I’m a +boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it.<i>You</i> keep on <i>hotting up and +hotting up</i>. Papin’s digester. That’s you, steady and long and +piling up,—then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiffen these niggers. +Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That’s what I’m +after. You! Nobody else believes you’re more than a boy. Come right in +with me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun of it—a thing on the +go—a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up! Making it buzz and spin! +Whoo-oo-oo.”—He made alluring expanding circles in the air with his +hand. “Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +His proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more definite +shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and organising. +“You shan’t write a single advertisement, or give a single +assurance” he declared. “I can do all that.” And the telegram +was no flourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year. +(“That’s nothing,” said my uncle, “the thing to freeze +on to, when the time comes, is your tenth of the vendor’s share.”) +</p> + +<p> +Three hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an enormous income to me. For a +moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that much money in the whole +concern? I looked about me at the sumptuous furniture of Schäfer’s Hotel. +No doubt there were many such incomes. +</p> + +<p> +My head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me go back and look at the game again,” I said. “Let me +see upstairs and round about.” +</p> + +<p> +I did. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of it all?” my uncle asked at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, for one thing,” I said, “why don’t you have +those girls working in a decently ventilated room? Apart from any other +consideration, they’d work twice as briskly. And they ought to cover the +corks before labelling round the bottle.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“Because—they sometimes make a mucker of the cork job, and then the +label’s wasted.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come and change it, George,” said my uncle, with sudden fervour +“Come here and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all slick, and then +make it woosh. I know you can. Oh! I know you can.” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I seem to remember very quick changes of mind after that lunch. The muzzy +exaltation of the unaccustomed stimulants gave way very rapidly to a model of +pellucid and impartial clairvoyance which is one of my habitual mental states. +It is intermittent; it leaves me for weeks together, I know, but back it comes +at last like justice on circuit, and calls up all my impression, all my +illusions, all my willful and passionate proceedings. We came downstairs again +into that inner room which pretended to be a scientific laboratory through its +high glass lights, and indeed was a lurking place. My uncle pressed a cigarette +on me, and I took it and stood before the empty fireplace while he propped his +umbrella in the corner, deposited the new silk hat that was a little too big +for him on the table, blew copiously and produced a second cigar. +</p> + +<p> +It came into my head that he had shrunken very much in size since the +Wimblehurst days, that the cannon ball he had swallowed was rather more evident +and shameless than it had been, his skin less fresh and the nose between his +glasses, which still didn’t quite fit, much redder. And just then he +seemed much laxer in his muscles and not quite as alertly quick in his +movements. But he evidently wasn’t aware of the degenerative nature of +his changes as he sat there, looking suddenly quite little under my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, George!” he said, quite happily unconscious of my silent +criticism, “what do you think of it all?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” I said, “in the first place—it’s a damned +swindle!” +</p> + +<p> +“Tut! tut!” said my uncle. “It’s as straight +as—It’s fair trading!” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the worse for trading,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the sort of thing everybody does. After all, there’s no +harm in the stuff—and it may do good. It might do a lot of +good—giving people confidence, f’rinstance, against an epidemic. +See? Why not? don’t see where your swindle comes in.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m,” I said. “It’s a thing you either see or +don’t see.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d like to know what sort of trading isn’t a swindle in its +way. Everybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something common on +the strength of saying it’s uncommon. Look at Chickson—they made +him a baronet. Look at Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in +soap! Rippin’ ads those were of his too!” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and +swearing it’s the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it +at that, is straight?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not, George? How do we know it mayn’t be the quintessence to +them so far as they’re concerned?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” I said, and shrugged my shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Faith. You put Faith in ’em.... I grant our labels +are a bit emphatic. Christian Science, really. No good setting people against +the medicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that hasn’t to +be—emphatic. It’s the modern way! Everybody understands +it—everybody allows for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of +yours was run down a conduit into the Thames.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t see that, George, at all. ’Mong other things, all our +people would be out of work. Unemployed! I grant you Tono-Bungay <i>may</i> +be—not <i>quite</i> so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but +the point is, George—it <i>makes trade!</i> And the world lives on trade. +Commerce! A romantic exchange of commodities and property. Romance. +’Magination. See? You must look at these things in a broad light. Look at +the wood—and forget the trees! And hang it, George! we got to do these +things! There’s no way unless you do. What do <i>you</i> mean to +do—anyhow?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s ways of living,” I said, “Without either fraud +or lying.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a bit stiff, George. There’s no fraud in this affair, +I’ll bet my hat. But what do you propose to do? Go as chemist to some one +who <i>is</i> running a business, and draw a salary without a share like I +offer you. Much sense in that! It comes out of the swindle as you call +it—just the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some businesses are straight and quiet, anyhow; supply a sound article +that is really needed, don’t shout advertisements.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, George. There you’re behind the times. The last of that sort +was sold up ‘bout five years ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, there’s scientific research.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who pays for that? Who put up that big City and Guilds place at +South Kensington? Enterprising business men! They fancy they’ll have a +bit of science going on, they want a handy Expert ever and again, and there you +are! And what do you get for research when you’ve done it? Just a bare +living and no outlook. They just keep you to make discoveries, and if they +fancy they’ll use ’em they do.” +</p> + +<p> +“One can teach.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much a year, George? How much a year? I suppose you must respect +Carlyle! Well, you take Carlyle’s test—solvency. (Lord! what a book +that French Revolution of his is!) See what the world pays teachers and +discoverers and what it pays business men! That shows the ones it really wants. +There’s a justice in these big things, George, over and above the +apparent injustice. I tell you it wants trade. It’s Trade that makes the +world go round! Argosies! Venice! Empire!” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle suddenly rose to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“You think it over, George. You think it over! And come up on Sunday to +the new place—we got rooms in Gower Street now—and see your aunt. +She’s often asked for you, George often and often, and thrown it up at me +about that bit of property—though I’ve always said and always will, +that twenty-five shillings in the pound is what I’ll pay you and interest +up to the nail. And think it over. It isn’t me I ask you to help. +It’s yourself. It’s your aunt Susan. It’s the whole concern. +It’s the commerce of your country. And we want you badly. I tell you +straight, I know my limitations. You could take this place, you could make it +go! I can see you at it—looking rather sour. Woosh is the word, +George.” +</p> + +<p> +And he smiled endearingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I got to dictate a letter,” he said, ending the smile, and +vanished into the outer room. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +I didn’t succumb without a struggle to my uncle’s allurements. +Indeed, I held out for a week while I contemplated life and my prospects. It +was a crowded and muddled contemplation. It invaded even my sleep. +</p> + +<p> +My interview with the Registrar, my talk with my uncle, my abrupt discovery of +the hopeless futility of my passion for Marion, had combined to bring me to +sense of crisis. What was I going to do with life? +</p> + +<p> +I remember certain phases of my indecisions very well. +</p> + +<p> +I remember going home from our talk. I went down Farringdon Street to the +Embankment because I thought to go home by Holborn and Oxford Street would be +too crowded for thinking.... That piece of Embankment from Blackfriars to +Westminster still reminds me of that momentous hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +You know, from first to last, I saw the business with my eyes open, I saw its +ethical and moral values quite clearly. Never for a moment do I remember myself +faltering from my persuasion that the sale of Tono-Bungay was a thoroughly +dishonest proceeding. The stuff was, I perceived, a mischievous trash, slightly +stimulating, aromatic and attractive, likely to become a bad habit and train +people in the habitual use of stronger tonics and insidiously dangerous to +people with defective kidneys. It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle +to make, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus the +cost of the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess deterred me from +the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in this affair, was the +supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still clung to the idea that the +world of men was or should be a sane and just organisation, and the idea that I +should set myself gravely, just at the fine springtime of my life, to +developing a monstrous bottling and packing warehouse, bottling rubbish for the +consumption of foolish, credulous and depressed people, had in it a touch of +insanity. My early beliefs still clung to me. I felt assured that somewhere +there must be a hitch in the fine prospect of ease and wealth under such +conditions; that somewhere, a little overgrown, perhaps, but still traceable, +lay a neglected, wasted path of use and honour for me. +</p> + +<p> +My inclination to refuse the whole thing increased rather than diminished at +first as I went along the Embankment. In my uncle’s presence there had +been a sort of glamour that had prevented an outright refusal. It was a revival +of affection for him I felt in his presence, I think, in part, and in part an +instinctive feeling that I must consider him as my host. But much more was it a +curious persuasion he had the knack of inspiring—a persuasion not so much +of his integrity and capacity as of the reciprocal and yielding foolishness of +the world. One felt that he was silly and wild, but in some way silly and wild +after the fashion of the universe. After all, one must live somehow. I +astonished him and myself by temporising. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said I, “I’ll think it over!” +</p> + +<p> +And as I went along the embankment the first effect was all against my uncle. +He shrank—for a little while he continued to shrink—in perspective +until he was only a very small shabby little man in a dirty back street, +sending off a few hundred bottles of rubbish to foolish buyers. The great +buildings on the right of us, the Inns and the School Board place—as it +was then—Somerset House, the big hotels, the great bridges, +Westminster’s outlines ahead, had an effect of grey largeness that +reduced him to the proportions of a busy black beetle in a crack in the floor. +</p> + +<p> +And then my eye caught the advertisements on the south side of +“Sorber’s Food,” of “Cracknell’s Ferric +Wine,” very bright and prosperous signs, illuminated at night, and I +realised how astonishingly they looked at home there, how evidently part they +were in the whole thing. +</p> + +<p> +I saw a man come charging out of Palace Yard—the policeman touched his +helmet to him—with a hat and a bearing astonishingly like my +uncle’s. After all,—didn’t Cracknell himself sit in the +House? +</p> + +<p> +Tono-Bungay shouted at me from a hoarding near Adelphi Terrace; I saw it afar +off near Carfax Street; it cried out again upon me in Kensington High Street, +and burst into a perfect clamour; six or seven times I saw it as I drew near my +diggings. It certainly had an air of being something more than a dream. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I thought it over—thoroughly enough.... Trade rules the world. +Wealth rather than trade! The thing was true, and true too was my uncle’s +proposition that the quickest way to get wealth is to sell the cheapest thing +possible in the dearest bottle. He was frightfully right after all. <i>Pecunia +non olet</i>,—a Roman emperor said that. Perhaps my great heroes in +Plutarch were no more than such men, fine now only because they are distant; +perhaps after all this Socialism to which I had been drawn was only a foolish +dream, only the more foolish because all its promises were conditionally true. +Morris and these others played with it wittingly; it gave a zest, a touch of +substance, to their aesthetic pleasures. Never would there be good faith enough +to bring such things about. They knew it; every one, except a few young fools, +knew it. As I crossed the corner of St. James’s Park wrapped in thought, +I dodged back just in time to escape a prancing pair of greys. A stout, +common-looking woman, very magnificently dressed, regarded me from the carriage +with a scornful eye. “No doubt,” thought I, “a +pill-vendor’s wife....” +</p> + +<p> +Running through all my thoughts, surging out like a refrain, was my +uncle’s master-stroke, his admirable touch of praise: “Make it all +slick—and then make it go Woosh. I know you can! Oh! I <i>know</i> you +can!” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +Ewart as a moral influence was unsatisfactory. I had made up my mind to put the +whole thing before him, partly to see how he took it, and partly to hear how it +sounded when it was said. I asked him to come and eat with me in an Italian +place near Panton Street where one could get a curious, interesting, glutting +sort of dinner for eighteen-pence. He came with a disconcerting black-eye that +he wouldn’t explain. “Not so much a black-eye,” he said, +“as the aftermath of a purple patch.... What’s your +difficulty?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you with the salad,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +But as a matter of fact I didn’t tell him. I threw out that I was +doubtful whether I ought to go into trade, or stick to teaching in view of my +deepening socialist proclivities; and he, warming with the unaccustomed +generosity of a sixteen-penny Chianti, ran on from that without any further +inquiry as to my trouble. +</p> + +<p> +His utterances roved wide and loose. +</p> + +<p> +“The reality of life, my dear Ponderevo,” I remember him saying +very impressively and punctuating with the nut-crackers as he spoke, “is +Chromatic Conflict ... and Form. Get hold of that and let all these other +questions go. The Socialist will tell you one sort of colour and shape is +right, the Individualist another. What does it all amount to? What <i>does</i> +it all amount to? <i>Nothing!</i> I have no advice to give anyone,—except +to avoid regrets. Be yourself, seek after such beautiful things as your own +sense determines to be beautiful. And don’t mind the headache in the +morning.... For what, after all, is a morning, Ponderevo? It isn’t like +the upper part of a day!” +</p> + +<p> +He paused impressively. +</p> + +<p> +“What Rot!” I cried, after a confused attempt to apprehend him. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it! And it’s my bedrock wisdom in the matter! Take it +or leave it, my dear George; take it or leave it.”... He put down the +nut-crackers out of my reach and lugged a greasy-looking note-book from his +pocket. “I’m going to steal this mustard pot,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I made noises of remonstrance. +</p> + +<p> +“Only as a matter of design. I’ve got to do an old beast’s +tomb. +</p> + +<p> +“Wholesale grocer. I’ll put it on his corners,—four mustard +pots. I dare say he’d be glad of a mustard plaster now to cool him, poor +devil, where he is. But anyhow,—here goes!” +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +It came to me in the small hours that the real moral touchstone for this great +doubting of mind was Marion. I lay composing statements of my problem and +imagined myself delivering them to her—and she, goddess-like and +beautiful; giving her fine, simply-worded judgment. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, it’s just to give one’s self over to the +Capitalistic System,” I imagined myself saying in good Socialist jargon; +“it’s surrendering all one’s beliefs. We <i>may</i> succeed, +we <i>may</i> grow rich, but where would the satisfaction be?” +</p> + +<p> +Then she would say, “No! That wouldn’t be right.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the alternative is to wait!” +</p> + +<p> +Then suddenly she would become a goddess. She would turn upon me frankly and +nobly, with shining eyes, with arms held out. “No,” she would say, +“we love one another. Nothing ignoble shall ever touch us. We love one +another. Why wait to tell each other that, dear? What does it matter that we +are poor and may keep poor?” +</p> + +<p> +But indeed the conversation didn’t go at all in that direction. At the +sight of her my nocturnal eloquence became preposterous and all the moral +values altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door of the +Parsian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked home with her +thence. I remember how she emerged into the warm evening light and that she +wore a brown straw hat that made her, for once not only beautiful but pretty. +</p> + +<p> +“I like that hat,” I said by way of opening; and she smiled her +rare delightful smile at me. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you,” I said in an undertone, as we jostled closer on the +pavement. +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head forbiddingly, but she still smiled. Then—“Be +sensible!” +</p> + +<p> +The High Street pavement is too narrow and crowded for conversation and we were +some way westward before we spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” I said; “I want you, Marion. Don’t you +understand? I want you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now!” she cried warningly. +</p> + +<p> +I do not know if the reader will understand how a passionate lover, an immense +admiration and desire, can be shot with a gleam of positive hatred. Such a +gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of that +“<i>Now!</i>” It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no +warning in it of the antagonisms latent between us. +</p> + +<p> +“Marion,” I said, “this isn’t a trifling matter to me. +I love you; I would die to get you.... Don’t you care?” +</p> + +<p> +“But what is the good?” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t care,” I cried. “You don’t care a +rap!” +</p> + +<p> +“You know I care,” she answered. “If I didn’t—If +I didn’t like you very much, should I let you come and meet me—go +about with you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then,” I said, “promise to marry me!” +</p> + +<p> +“If I do, what difference will it make?” +</p> + +<p> +We were separated by two men carrying a ladder who drove between us unawares. +</p> + +<p> +“Marion,” I asked when we got together again, “I tell you I +want you to marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t marry—in the street.” +</p> + +<p> +“We could take our chance!” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you wouldn’t go on talking like this. What is the +good?” +</p> + +<p> +She suddenly gave way to gloom. “It’s no good marrying” she +said. “One’s only miserable. I’ve seen other girls. When +one’s alone one has a little pocket-money anyhow, one can go about a +little. But think of being married and no money, and perhaps children—you +can’t be sure....” +</p> + +<p> +She poured out this concentrated philosophy of her class and type in jerky +uncompleted sentences, with knitted brows, with discontented eyes towards the +westward glow—forgetful, it seemed, for a moment even of me. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, Marion,” I said abruptly, “what would you marry +on?” +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>is</i> the good?” she began. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you marry on three hundred a year?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me for a moment. “That’s six pounds a week,” +she said. “One could manage on that, easily. Smithie’s +brother—No, he only gets two hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting +girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>If!</i>” she said. +</p> + +<p> +I held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. “It’s a +bargain,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated and touched my hand for an instant. “It’s +silly,” she remarked as she did so. “It means really +we’re—” She paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Engaged. You’ll have to wait years. What good can it do +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not so many years.” I answered. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment she brooded. +</p> + +<p> +Then she glanced at me with a smile, half-sweet, half-wistful, that has stuck +in my memory for ever. +</p> + +<p> +“I like you!” she said. “I shall like to be engaged to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +And, faint on the threshold of hearing, I caught her ventured +“dear!” It’s odd that in writing this down my memory passed +over all that intervened and I feel it all again, and once again I’m +Marion’s boyish lover taking great joy in such rare and little things. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +At last I went to the address my uncle had given me in Gower Street, and found +my aunt Susan waiting tea for him. +</p> + +<p> +Directly I came into the room I appreciated the change in outlook that the +achievement of Tono-Bungay had made almost as vividly as when I saw my +uncle’s new hat. The furniture of the room struck upon my eye as almost +stately. The chairs and sofa were covered with chintz which gave it a dim, +remote flavour of Bladesover; the mantel, the cornice, the gas pendant were +larger and finer than the sort of thing I had grown accustomed to in London. +And I was shown in by a real housemaid with real tails to her cap, and great +quantities of reddish hair. There was my aunt too looking bright and pretty, in +a blue-patterned tea-wrap with bows that seemed to me the quintessence of +fashion. She was sitting in a chair by the open window with quite a pile of +yellow-labelled books on the occasional table beside her. Before the large, +paper-decorated fireplace stood a three-tiered cake-stand displaying assorted +cakes, and a tray with all the tea equipage except the teapot, was on the large +centre-table. The carpet was thick, and a spice of adventure was given it by a +number of dyed sheep-skin mats. +</p> + +<p> +“Hel-<i>lo!</i>” said my aunt as I appeared. “It’s +George!” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I serve the tea now, Mem?” said the real housemaid, +surveying our greeting coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not till Mr. Ponderevo comes, Meggie,” said my aunt, and grimaced +with extraordinary swiftness and virulence as the housemaid turned her back. +</p> + +<p> +“Meggie she calls herself,” said my aunt as the door closed, and +left me to infer a certain want of sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re looking very jolly, aunt,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of all this old Business he’s got?” asked +my aunt. +</p> + +<p> +“Seems a promising thing,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose there is a business somewhere?” +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you seen it?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Fraid I’d say something AT it George, if I did. So he +won’t let me. It came on quite suddenly. Brooding he was and writing +letters and sizzling something awful—like a chestnut going to pop. Then +he came home one day saying Tono-Bungay till I thought he was clean off his +onion, and singing—what was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘I’m afloat, I’m afloat,’” I guessed. +</p> + +<p> +“The very thing. You’ve heard him. And saying our fortunes were +made. Took me out to the Ho’burm Restaurant, George,—dinner, and we +had champagne, stuff that blows up the back of your nose and makes you go +<i>So</i>, and he said at last he’d got things worthy of me—and we +moved here next day. It’s a swell house, George. Three pounds a week for +the rooms. And he says the Business’ll stand it.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Either do that or smash,” I said profoundly. +</p> + +<p> +We discussed the question for a moment mutely with our eyes. My aunt slapped +the pile of books from Mudie’s. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been having such a Go of reading, George. You never +did!” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of the business?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, they’ve let him have money,” she said, and thought and +raised her eyebrows. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s been a time,” she went on. “The flapping about! +Me sitting doing nothing and him on the go like a rocket. He’s done +wonders. But he wants you, George—he wants you. Sometimes he’s full +of hope—talks of when we’re going to have a carriage and be in +society—makes it seem so natural and topsy-turvy, I hardly know whether +my old heels aren’t up here listening to him, and my old head on the +floor.... Then he gets depressed. Says he wants restraint. Says he can make a +splash but can’t keep on. Says if you don’t come in everything will +smash—But you are coming in?” +</p> + +<p> +She paused and looked at me. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t say you won’t come in!” +</p> + +<p> +“But look here, aunt,” I said, “do you understand quite?... +It’s a quack medicine. It’s trash.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no law against selling quack medicine that I know +of,” said my aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grave. +“It’s our only chance, George,” she said. “If it +doesn’t go...” +</p> + +<p> +There came the slamming of a door, and a loud bellowing from the next apartment +through the folding doors. “Here-er Shee <i>Rulk</i> lies <i>Poo</i> Tom +Bo—oling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Silly old Concertina! Hark at him, George!” She raised her voice. +“Don’t sing that, you old Walrus, you! Sing ‘I’m +afloat!’” +</p> + +<p> +One leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thought it over George?” he said abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Coming in?” +</p> + +<p> +I paused for a last moment and nodded yes. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” he cried. “Why couldn’t you say that a week +ago?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had false ideas about the world,” I said. “Oh! +they don’t matter now! Yes, I’ll come, I’ll take my chance +with you, I won’t hesitate again.” +</p> + +<p> +And I didn’t. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +So I made my peace with my uncle, and we set out upon this bright enterprise of +selling slightly injurious rubbish at one-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine +a bottle, including the Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought +us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my +uncle promised me proved truth and understatement; Tono-Bungay carried me to +freedoms and powers that no life of scientific research, no passionate service +of humanity could ever have given me.... +</p> + +<p> +It was my uncle’s genius that did it. No doubt he needed me,—I was, +I will admit, his indispensable right hand; but his was the brain to conceive. +He wrote every advertisement; some of them even he sketched. You must remember +that his were the days before the Time took to enterprise and the vociferous +hawking of that antiquated <i>Encyclopædia</i>. That alluring, button-holing, +let-me-just-tell-you-quite-soberly-something-you-ought-to-know style of +newspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of some +attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. “Many people +who are <small>MODERATELY</small> well think they are <small>QUITE</small> +well,” was one of his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, +“<small>DO NOT NEED DRUGS OR MEDICINE</small>,” and +“<small>SIMPLY A PROPER REGIMEN TO GET YOU IN TONE</small>.” One +was warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed “much-advertised +nostrums” on one’s attention. That trash did more harm than good. +The thing needed was regimen—and Tono-Bungay! +</p> + +<p> +Very early, too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was usually +a quarter column in the evening papers: “HILARITY—Tono-Bungay. Like +Mountain Air in the Veins.” The penetrating trio of questions: “Are +you bored with your Business? Are you bored with your Dinner. Are you bored +with your Wife?”—that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both +these we had in our first campaign when we worked London south central, and +west; and then, too, we had our first poster—the <small>HEALTH, BEAUTY, +AND STRENGTH</small> one. That was his design; I happen still to have got by me +the first sketch he made for it. I have reproduced it here with one or two +others to enable the reader to understand the mental quality that initiated +these familiar ornaments of London. +</p> + +<p> +(The second one is about eighteen months later, the germ of the well-known +“Fog” poster; the third was designed for an influenza epidemic, but +never issued.) +</p> + +<p> +These things were only incidental in my department. I had to polish them up for +the artist and arrange the business of printing and distribution, and after my +uncle had had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertising manager of +the <i>Daily Regulator</i> about the amount of display given to one of his +happy thoughts, I also took up the negotiations of advertisements for the +press. +</p> + +<p> +We discussed and worked out distribution together first in the drawing-room +floor in Gower Street with my aunt sometimes helping very shrewdly, and then, +with a steadily improving type of cigar and older and older whisky, in his +smuggery at their first house, the one in Beckenham. Often we worked far into +the night sometimes until dawn. +</p> + +<p> +We really worked infernally hard, and, I recall, we worked with a very decided +enthusiasm, not simply on my uncle’s part but mine, It was a game, an +absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were scored in cases of +bottles. People think a happy notion is enough to make a man rich, that +fortunes can be made without toil. It’s a dream, as every millionaire +(except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify; I doubt if J.D. Rockefeller in +the early days of Standard Oil, worked harder than we did. We worked far into +the night—and we also worked all day. We made a rule to be always +dropping in at the factory unannounced to keep things right—for at first +we could afford no properly responsible underlings—and we traveled +London, pretending to be our own representatives and making all sorts of +special arrangements. +</p> + +<p> +But none of this was my special work, and as soon as we could get other men in, +I dropped the traveling, though my uncle found it particularly interesting and +kept it up for years. “Does me good, George, to see the chaps behind +their counters like I was once,” he explained. My special and distinctive +duty was to give Tono-Bungay substance and an outward and visible bottle, to +translate my uncle’s great imaginings into the creation of case after +case of labelled bottles of nonsense, and the punctual discharge of them by +railway, road and steamer towards their ultimate goal in the Great Stomach of +the People. By all modern standards the business was, as my uncle would say, +“absolutely <i>bonâ fide</i>.” We sold our stuff and got the money, +and spent the money honestly in lies and clamour to sell more stuff. Section by +section we spread it over the whole of the British Isles; first working the +middle-class London suburbs, then the outer suburbs, then the home counties, +then going (with new bills and a more pious style of “ad”) into +Wales, a great field always for a new patent-medicine, and then into +Lancashire. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle had in his inner office a big map of England, and as we took up fresh +sections of the local press and our consignments invaded new areas, flags for +advertisements and pink underlines for orders showed our progress. +</p> + +<p> +“The romance of modern commerce, George!” my uncle would say, +rubbing his hands together and drawing in air through his teeth. “The +romance of modern commerce, eh? Conquest. Province by province. Like +sogers.” +</p> + +<p> +We subjugated England and Wales; we rolled over the Cheviots with a special +adaptation containing eleven per cent. of absolute alcohol; “Tono-Bungay: +Thistle Brand.” We also had the Fog poster adapted to a kilted Briton in +a misty Highland scene. +</p> + +<p> +Under the shadow of our great leading line we were presently taking subsidiary +specialties into action; “Tono-Bungay Hair Stimulant” was our first +supplement. Then came “Concentrated Tono-Bungay” for the eyes. That +didn’t go, but we had a considerable success with the Hair Stimulant. We +broached the subject, I remember, in a little catechism beginning: “Why +does the hair fall out? Because the follicles are fagged. What are the +follicles?...” So it went on to the climax that the Hair Stimulant +contained all “The essential principles of that most reviving tonic, +Tono-Bungay, together with an emollient and nutritious oil derived from crude +Neat’s Foot Oil by a process of refinement, separation and +deodorization.... It will be manifest to any one of scientific attainments that +in Neat’s Foot Oil derived from the hoofs and horns of beasts, we must +necessarily have a natural skin and hair lubricant.” +</p> + +<p> +And we also did admirable things with our next subsidiaries, “Tono-Bungay +Lozenges,” and “Tono-Bungay Chocolate.” These we urged upon +the public for their extraordinary nutritive and recuperative value in cases of +fatigue and strain. We gave them posters and illustrated advertisements showing +climbers hanging from marvelously vertical cliffs, cyclist champions upon the +track, mounted messengers engaged in Aix-to-Ghent rides, soldiers lying out in +action under a hot sun. “You can GO for twenty-four hours,” we +declared, “on Tono-Bungay Chocolate.” We didn’t say whether +you could return on the same commodity. We also showed a dreadfully +barristerish barrister, wig, side-whiskers, teeth, a horribly life-like +portrait of all existing barristers, talking at a table, and beneath, this +legend: “A Four Hours’ Speech on Tono-Bungay Lozenges, and as fresh +as when he began.” Then brought in regiments of school-teachers, +revivalist ministers, politicians and the like. I really do believe there was +an element of “kick” in the strychnine in these lozenges, +especially in those made according to our earlier formula. For we altered all +our formulae—invariably weakening them enormously as sales got ahead. +</p> + +<p> +In a little while—so it seems to me now—we were employing travelers +and opening up Great Britain at the rate of a hundred square miles a day. All +the organisation throughout was sketched in a crude, entangled, half-inspired +fashion by my uncle, and all of it had to be worked out into a practicable +scheme of quantities and expenditure by me. We had a lot of trouble finding our +travelers; in the end at least half of them were Irish-Americans, a wonderful +breed for selling medicine. We had still more trouble over our factory manager, +because of the secrets of the inner room, and in the end we got a very capable +woman, Mrs. Hampton Diggs, who had formerly managed a large millinery workroom, +whom we could trust to keep everything in good working order without finding +out anything that wasn’t put exactly under her loyal and energetic nose. +She conceived a high opinion of Tono-Bungay and took it in all forms and large +quantities so long as I knew her. It didn’t seem to do her any harm. And +she kept the girls going quite wonderfully. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle’s last addition to the Tono-Bungay group was the Tono-Bungay +Mouthwash. The reader has probably read a hundred times that inspiring inquiry +of his, “You are Young Yet, but are you Sure Nothing has Aged your +Gums?” +</p> + +<p> +And after that we took over the agency for three or four good American lines +that worked in with our own, and could be handled with it; Texan Embrocation, +and “23—to clear the system” were the chief.... +</p> + +<p> +I set down these bare facts. To me they are all linked with the figure of my +uncle. In some of the old seventeenth and early eighteenth century prayerbooks +at Bladesover there used to be illustrations with long scrolls coming out of +the mouths of the wood-cut figures. I wish I could write all this last chapter +on a scroll coming out of the head of my uncle, show it all the time as +unfolding and pouring out from a short, fattening, small-legged man with stiff +cropped hair, disobedient glasses on a perky little nose, and a round stare +behind them. I wish I could show you him breathing hard and a little through +his nose as his pen scrabbled out some absurd inspiration for a poster or a +picture page, and make you hear his voice, charged with solemn import like the +voice of a squeaky prophet, saying, “George! list’n! I got an +ideer. I got a notion! George!” +</p> + +<p> +I should put myself into the same picture. Best setting for us, I think, would +be the Beckenham snuggery, because there we worked hardest. It would be the +lamplit room of the early nineties, and the clock upon the mantel would +indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting on either side of the fire, I +with a pipe, my uncle with a cigar or cigarette. There would be glasses +standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions would be very grave. My uncle +used to sit right back in his armchair; his toes always turned in when he was +sitting down and his legs had a way of looking curved, as though they +hadn’t bones or joints but were stuffed with sawdust. +</p> + +<p> +“George, whad’yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?” he would +say. +</p> + +<p> +“No good that I can imagine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oom! No harm <i>trying</i>, George. We can but try.” +</p> + +<p> +I would suck my pipe. “Hard to get at. Unless we sold our stuff specially +at the docks. Might do a special at Cook’s office, or in the Continental +Bradshaw.” +</p> + +<p> +“It ’ud give ’em confidence, George.” +</p> + +<p> +He would Zzzz, with his glasses reflecting the red of the glowing coals. +</p> + +<p> +“No good hiding our light under a Bushel,” he would remark. +</p> + +<p> +I never really determined whether my uncle regarded Tono-Bungay as a fraud, or +whether he didn’t come to believe in it in a kind of way by the mere +reiteration of his own assertions. I think that his average attitude was one of +kindly, almost parental, toleration. I remember saying on one occasion, +“But you don’t suppose this stuff ever did a human being the +slightest good all?” and how his face assumed a look of protest, as of +one reproving harshness and dogmatism. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve a hard nature, George,” he said. “You’re +too ready to run things down. How can one <i>tell?</i> How can one venture to +<i>tell?</i>...” +</p> + +<p> +I suppose any creative and developing game would have interested me in those +years. At any rate, I know I put as much zeal into this Tono-Bungay as any +young lieutenant could have done who suddenly found himself in command of a +ship. It was extraordinarily interesting to me to figure out the advantage +accruing from this shortening of the process or that, and to weigh it against +the capital cost of the alteration. I made a sort of machine for sticking on +the labels, that I patented; to this day there is a little trickle of royalties +to me from that. I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got +the bottles, which all came sliding down a guarded slant-way, nearly filled +with distilled water at one tap, and dripped our magic ingredients in at the +next. This was an immense economy of space for the inner sanctum. For the +bottling we needed special taps, and these, too, I invented and patented. +</p> + +<p> +We had a sort of endless band of bottles sliding along an inclined glass trough +made slippery with running water. At one end a girl held them up to the light, +put aside any that were imperfect and placed the others in the trough; the +filling was automatic; at the other end a girl slipped in the cork and drove it +home with a little mallet. Each tank, the little one for the vivifying +ingredients and the big one for distilled water, had a level indicator, and +inside I had a float arrangement that stopped the slide whenever either had +sunk too low. Another girl stood ready with my machine to label the corked +bottles and hand them to the three packers, who slipped them into their outer +papers and put them, with a pad of corrugated paper between each pair, into a +little groove from which they could be made to slide neatly into position in +our standard packing-case. It sounds wild, I know, but I believe I was the +first man in the city of London to pack patent medicines through the side of +the packing-case, to discover there was a better way in than by the lid. Our +cases packed themselves, practically; had only to be put into position on a +little wheeled tray and when full pulled to the lift that dropped them to the +men downstairs, who padded up the free space and nailed on top and side. Our +girls, moreover, packed with corrugated paper and matchbook-wood box partitions +when everybody else was using expensive young men to pack through the top of +the box with straw, many breakages and much waste and confusion. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +As I look back at them now, those energetic years seem all compacted to a year +or so; from the days of our first hazardous beginning in Farringdon Street with +barely a thousand pounds’ worth of stuff or credit all told—and +that got by something perilously like snatching—to the days when my uncle +went to the public on behalf of himself and me (one-tenth share) and our silent +partners, the drug wholesalers and the printing people and the owner of that +group of magazines and newspapers, to ask with honest confidence for £150,000. +Those silent partners were remarkably sorry, I know, that they had not taken +larger shares and given us longer credit when the subscriptions came pouring +in. My uncle had a clear half to play with (including the one-tenth understood +to be mine). +</p> + +<p> +£150,000—think of it!—for the goodwill in a string of lies and a +trade in bottles of mitigated water! Do you realise the madness of the world +that sanctions such a thing? Perhaps you don’t. At times use and wont +certainly blinded me. If it had not been for Ewart, I don’t think I +should have had an inkling of the wonderfulness of this development of my +fortunes; I should have grown accustomed to it, fallen in with all its +delusions as completely as my uncle presently did. He was immensely proud of +the flotation. “They’ve never been given such value,” he +said, “for a dozen years.” But Ewart, with his gesticulating hairy +hands and bony wrists, his single-handed chorus to all this as it played itself +over again in my memory, and he kept my fundamental absurdity illuminated for +me during all this astonishing time. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just on all fours with the rest of things,” he +remarked; “only more so. You needn’t think you’re anything +out of the way.” +</p> + +<p> +I remember one disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had been +to Paris on a mysterious expedition to “rough in” some work for a +rising American sculptor. This young man had a commission for an allegorical +figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State Capitol, and he needed help. +Ewart had returned with his hair cut <i>en brosse</i> and with his costume +completely translated into French. He wore, I remember, a bicycling suit of +purplish-brown, baggy beyond ageing—the only creditable thing about it +was that it had evidently not been made for him—a voluminous black tie, a +decadent soft felt hat and several French expletives of a sinister description. +“Silly clothes, aren’t they?” he said at the sight of my +startled eye. “I don’t know why I got’m. They seemed all +right over there.” +</p> + +<p> +He had come down to our Raggett Street place to discuss a benevolent project of +mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable discourse over the heads +(I hope it was over the heads) of our bottlers. +</p> + +<p> +“What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry.... That’s +where we get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory like +this. Think!... One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very possibly +bottle things, but would he stick a label round ’em and sell ’em? +The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I’ll admit, him and his dams, but after all +there’s a sort of protection about ’em, a kind of muddy +practicality! They prevent things getting at him. And it’s not your +poetry only. It’s the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to +poet—soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty—in a +bottle—the magic philtre! Like a fairy tale.... +</p> + +<p> +“Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I’m +calling it footle, Ponderevo, out of praise,” he said in parenthesis.) +</p> + +<p> +“Think of the little clerks and jaded women and overworked people. People +overstrained with wanting to do, people overstrained with wanting to be.... +People, in fact, overstrained.... The real trouble of life, Ponderevo, +isn’t that we exist—that’s a vulgar error; the real trouble +is that we <i>don’t</i> really exist and we want to. That’s what +this—in the highest sense—just stands for! The hunger to +be—for once—really alive—to the finger tips!... +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody wants to do and be the things people are—nobody. YOU +don’t want to preside over this—this bottling; I don’t want +to wear these beastly clothes and be led about by you; nobody wants to keep on +sticking labels on silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn’t +existing! That’s—sus—<i>substratum</i>. None of us want to be +what we are, or to do what we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? +<i>You</i> know. <i>I</i> know. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is +something perpetually young and beautiful—young Joves—young Joves, +Ponderevo”—his voice became loud, harsh and +declamatory—“pursuing coy half-willing nymphs through everlasting +forests.”... +</p> + +<p> +There was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us. +</p> + +<p> +“Come downstairs,” I interrupted, “we can talk better +there.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can talk better here,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +He was just going on, but fortunately the implacable face of Mrs. Hampton Diggs +appeared down the aisle of bottling machines. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, “I’ll come.” +</p> + +<p> +In the little sanctum below, my uncle was taking a digestive pause after his +lunch and by no means alert. His presence sent Ewart back to the theme of +modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him. He behaved with +the elaborate deference due to a business magnate from an unknown man. +</p> + +<p> +“What I was pointing out to your nephew, sir,” said Ewart, putting +both elbows on the table, “was the poetry of commerce. He doesn’t, +you know, seem to see it at all.” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle nodded brightly. “Whad I tell ’im,” he said round +his cigar. +</p> + +<p> +“We are artists. You and I, sir, can talk, if you will permit me, as one +artist to another. It’s advertisement has—done it. Advertisement +has revolutionised trade and industry; it is going to revolutionise the world. +The old merchant used to tote about commodities; the new one creates values. +Doesn’t need to tote. He takes something that isn’t worth +anything—or something that isn’t particularly worth +anything—and he makes it worth something. He takes mustard that is just +like anybody else’s mustard, and he goes about saying, shouting, singing, +chalking on walls, writing inside people’s books, putting it everywhere, +‘Smith’s Mustard is the Best.’ And behold it is the +best!” +</p> + +<p> +“True,” said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of +mysticism; “true!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just like an artist; he takes a lump of white marble on the +verge of a lime-kiln, he chips it about, he makes—he makes a monument to +himself—and others—a monument the world will not willingly let die. +Talking of mustard, sir, I was at Clapham Junction the other day, and all the +banks are overgrown with horse radish that’s got loose from a garden +somewhere. You know what horseradish is—grows like +wildfire—spreads—spreads. I stood at the end of the platform +looking at the stuff and thinking about it. ‘Like fame,’ I thought, +‘rank and wild where it isn’t wanted. Why don’t the really +good things in life grow like horseradish?’ I thought. My mind went off +in a peculiar way it does from that to the idea that mustard costs a penny a +tin—I bought some the other day for a ham I had. It came into my head +that it would be ripping good business to use horseradish to adulterate +mustard. I had a sort of idea that I could plunge into business on that, get +rich and come back to my own proper monumental art again. And then I said, +‘But <i>why</i> adulterate? I don’t like the idea of +adulteration.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Shabby,” said my uncle, nodding his head. “Bound to get +found out!” +</p> + +<p> +“And totally unnecessary, too! Why not do up a +mixture—three-quarters pounded horseradish and a quarter +mustard—give it a fancy name—and sell it at twice the mustard +price. See? I very nearly started the business straight away, only something +happened. My train came along.” +</p> + +<p> +“Jolly good ideer,” said my uncle. He looked at me. “That +really is an ideer, George,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Take shavin’s, again! You know that poem of Longfellow’s, +sir, that sounds exactly like the first declension. What is +it?—‘Marr’s a maker, men say!’” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle nodded and gurgled some quotation that died away. +</p> + +<p> +“Jolly good poem, George,” he said in an aside to me. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you +know, and some shavin’s. The child made no end out of the shavin’s. +So might you. Powder ’em. They might be anything. Soak ’em in +jipper,—Xylo-tobacco! Powder’em and get a little tar and +turpentinous smell in,—wood-packing for hot baths—a Certain Cure +for the scourge of Influenza! There’s all these patent grain +foods,—what Americans call cereals. I believe I’m right, sir, in +saying they’re sawdust.” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” said my uncle, removing his cigar; “as far as I can +find out it’s really grain,—spoilt grain.... I’ve been going +into that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, there you are!” said Ewart. “Say it’s spoilt +grain. It carried out my case just as well. Your modern commerce is no more +buying and selling than sculpture. It’s mercy—it’s salvation. +It’s rescue work! It takes all sorts of fallen commodities by the hand +and raises them. Cana isn’t in it. You turn water—into +Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tono-Bungay’s all right,” said my uncle, suddenly grave. +“We aren’t talking of Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your nephew, sir, is hard; he wants everything to go to a sort of +predestinated end; he’s a Calvinist of Commerce. Offer him a dustbin full +of stuff; he calls it refuse—passes by on the other side. Now <i>you</i>, +sir you’d make cinders respect themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of +appreciation in his eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Might make ’em into a sort of sanitary brick,” he reflected +over his cigar end. +</p> + +<p> +“Or a friable biscuit. Why <i>not?</i> You might advertise: ‘Why +are Birds so Bright? Because they digest their food perfectly! Why do they +digest their food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn’t +man a gizzard? Because he can buy Ponderevo’s Asphalt Triturating, +Friable Biscuit—Which is Better.’” +</p> + +<p> +He delivered the last words in a shout, with his hairy hand flourished in the +air.... +</p> + +<p> +“Damn clever fellow,” said my uncle, after he had one. “I +know a man when I see one. He’d do. But drunk, I should say. But that +only makes some chap brighter. If he WANTS to do that poster, he can. Zzzz. +That ideer of his about the horseradish. There’s something in that, +George. I’m going to think over that....” +</p> + +<p> +I may say at once that my poster project came to nothing in the end, though +Ewart devoted an interesting week to the matter. He let his unfortunate +disposition to irony run away with him. He produced a picture of two beavers +with a subtle likeness, he said, to myself and my uncle—the likeness to +my uncle certainly wasn’t half bad—and they were bottling rows and +rows of Tono-Bungay, with the legend “Modern commerce.” It +certainly wouldn’t have sold a case, though he urged it on me one +cheerful evening on the ground that it would “arouse curiosity.” In +addition he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively and +needlessly nude, but, so far as I was able to judge, an admirable likeness, +engaged in feats of strength of a Gargantuan type before an audience of +deboshed and shattered ladies. The legend, “Health, Beauty, +Strength,” below, gave a needed point to his parody. This he hung up in +the studio over the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper; by way of a curtain +over it to accentuate its libellous offence. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br /> +MARION</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +As I look back on those days in which we built up the great Tono-Bungay +property out of human hope and credit for bottles and rent and printing, I see +my life as it were arranged in two parallel columns of unequal width, a wider, +more diffused, eventful and various one which continually broadens out, the +business side of my life, and a narrow, darker and darkling one shot ever and +again with a gleam of happiness, my home-life with Marion. For, of course, I +married Marion. +</p> + +<p> +I didn’t, as a matter of fact, marry her until a year after Tono-Bungay +was thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts and discussions of a quite +strenuous sort. By that time I was twenty-four. It seems the next thing to +childhood now. We were both in certain directions unusually ignorant and +simple; we were temperamentally antagonistic, and we hadn’t—I +don’t think we were capable of—an idea in common. She was young and +extraordinarily conventional—she seemed never to have an idea of her own +but always the idea of her class—and I was young and sceptical, +enterprising and passionate; the two links that held us together were the +intense appeal her physical beauty had for me, and her appreciation of her +importance in my thoughts. There can be no doubt of my passion for her. In her +I had discovered woman desired. The nights I have lain awake on account of her, +writhing, biting my wrists in a fever of longing! ... +</p> + +<p> +I have told how I got myself a silk hat and black coat to please her on +Sunday—to the derision of some of my fellow-students who charged to meet +me, and how we became engaged. But that was only the beginning of our +difference. To her that meant the beginning of a not unpleasant little secrecy, +an occasional use of verbal endearments, perhaps even kisses. It was something +to go on indefinitely, interfering in no way with her gossiping spells of work +at Smithie’s. To me it was a pledge to come together into the utmost +intimacy of soul and body so soon as we could contrive it.... +</p> + +<p> +I don’t know if it will strike the reader that I am setting out to +discuss the queer, unwise love relationship and my bungle of a marriage with +excessive solemnity. But to me it seems to reach out to vastly wider issues +than our little personal affair. I’ve thought over my life. In these last +few years I’ve tried to get at least a little wisdom out of it. And in +particular I’ve thought over this part of my life. I’m enormously +impressed by the ignorant, unguided way in which we two entangled ourselves +with each other. It seems to me the queerest thing in all this network of +misunderstandings and misstatements and faulty and ramshackle conventions which +makes up our social order as the individual meets it, that we should have come +together so accidentally and so blindly. Because we were no more than samples +of the common fate. Love is not only the cardinal fact in the individual life, +but the most important concern of the community; after all, the way in which +the young people of this generation pair off determines the fate of the nation; +all the other affairs of the State are subsidiary to that. And we leave it to +flushed and blundering youth to stumble on its own significance, with nothing +to guide in but shocked looks and sentimental twaddle and base whisperings and +cant-smeared examples. +</p> + +<p> +I have tried to indicate something of my own sexual development in the +preceding chapter. Nobody was ever frank and decent with me in this relation; +nobody, no book, ever came and said to me thus and thus is the world made, and +so and so is necessary. Everything came obscurely, indefinitely, perplexingly; +and all I knew of law or convention in the matter had the form of threatenings +and prohibitions. Except through the furtive, shameful talk of my coevals at +Goudhurst and Wimblehurst, I was not even warned against quite horrible +dangers. My ideas were made partly of instinct, partly of a romantic +imagination, partly woven out of a medley of scraps of suggestion that came to +me haphazard. I had read widely and confusedly “Vathek,” Shelley, +Tom Paine, Plutarch, Carlyle, Haeckel, William Morris, the Bible, the +<i>Freethinker</i>, the <i>Clarion</i>, “The Woman Who +Did,”—I mention the ingredients that come first to mind. All sorts +of ideas were jumbled up in me and never a lucid explanation. But it was +evident to me that the world regarded Shelley, for example, as a very heroic as +well as beautiful person; and that to defy convention and succumb magnificently +to passion was the proper thing to do to gain the respect and affection of all +decent people. +</p> + +<p> +And the make-up of Marion’s mind in the matter was an equally irrational +affair. Her training had been one, not simply of silences, but suppressions. An +enormous force of suggestion had so shaped her that the intense natural +fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into an absolute perversion of +instinct. For all that is cardinal in this essential business of life she had +one inseparable epithet—“horrid.” Without any such training +she would have been a shy lover, but now she was an impossible one. For the +rest she had derived, I suppose, partly from the sort of fiction she got from +the Public Library, and partly from the workroom talk at Smithie’s. So +far as the former origin went, she had an idea of love as a state of worship +and service on the part of the man and of condescension on the part of the +woman. There was nothing “horrid” about it in any fiction she had +read. The man gave presents, did services, sought to be in every way +delightful. The woman “went out” with him, smiled at him, was +kissed by him in decorous secrecy, and if he chanced to offend, denied her +countenance and presence. Usually she did something “for his good” +to him, made him go to church, made him give up smoking or gambling, smartened +him up. Quite at the end of the story came a marriage, and after that the +interest ceased. +</p> + +<p> +That was the tenor of Marion’s fiction; but I think the work-table +conversation at Smithie’s did something to modify that. At +Smithie’s it was recognised, I think, that a “fellow” was a +possession to be desired; that it was better to be engaged to a fellow than +not; that fellows had to be kept—they might be mislaid, they might even +be stolen. There was a case of stealing at Smithie’s, and many tears. +</p> + +<p> +Smithie I met before we were married, and afterwards she became a frequent +visitor to our house at Ealing. She was a thin, bright-eyed, hawk-nosed girl of +thirtyodd, with prominent teeth, a high-pitched, eager voice and a disposition +to be urgently smart in her dress. Her hats were startling and various, but +invariably disconcerting, and she talked in a rapid, nervous flow that was +hilarious rather than witty, and broken by little screams of “Oh, my +<i>dear!</i>” and “you never did!” She was the first woman I +ever met who used scent. Poor old Smithie! What a harmless, kindly soul she +really was, and how heartily I detested her! Out of the profits on the Persian +robes she supported a sister’s family of three children, she +“helped” a worthless brother, and overflowed in help even to her +workgirls, but that didn’t weigh with me in those youthfully-narrow +times. It was one of the intense minor irritations of my married life that +Smithie’s whirlwind chatter seemed to me to have far more influence with +Marion than anything I had to say. Before all things I coveted her grip upon +Marion’s inaccessible mind. +</p> + +<p> +In the workroom at Smithie’s, I gathered, they always spoke of me +demurely as “A Certain Person.” I was rumoured to be dreadfully +“clever,” and there were doubts—not altogether without +justification—of the sweetness of my temper. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +Well, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand the +distressful times we two had together when presently I began to feel on a +footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the mind and the +wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidity, must be in her. I think +she thought me the maddest of sane men; “clever,” in fact, which at +Smithie’s was, I suppose, the next thing to insanity, a word intimating +incomprehensible and incalculable motives.... She could be shocked at anything, +she misunderstood everything, and her weapon was a sulky silence that knitted +her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed her face of beauty. “Well, if we +can’t agree, I don’t see why you should go on talking,” she +used to say. That would always enrage me beyond measure. Or, “I’m +afraid I’m not clever enough to understand that.” +</p> + +<p> +Silly little people! I see it all now, but then I was no older than she and I +couldn’t see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable reason, +wouldn’t come alive. +</p> + +<p> +We would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sunday, and part speechless with +the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The things I tried to put +before her, my fermenting ideas about theology, about Socialism, about +aesthetics—the very words appalled her, gave her the faint chill of +approaching impropriety, the terror of a very present intellectual +impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would suppress myself for a time +and continue a talk that made her happy, about Smithie’s brother, about +the new girl who had come to the workroom, about the house we would presently +live in. But there we differed a little. I wanted to be accessible to St. +Paul’s or Cannon Street Station, and she had set her mind quite +resolutely upon Ealing.... It wasn’t by any means quarreling all the +time, you understand. She liked me to play the lover “nicely”; she +liked the effect of going about—we had lunches, we went to Earl’s +Court, to Kew, to theatres and concerts, but not often to concerts, because, +though Marion “liked” music, she didn’t like “too much +of it,” to picture shows—and there was a nonsensical sort of +babytalk I picked up—I forget where now—that became a mighty +peacemaker. +</p> + +<p> +Her worst offence for me was an occasional excursion into the Smithie style of +dressing, debased West Kensington. For she had no sense at all of her own +beauty. She had no comprehension whatever of beauty of the body, and she could +slash her beautiful lines to rags with hat-brims and trimmings. Thank Heaven! a +natural refinement, a natural timidity, and her extremely slender purse kept +her from the real Smithie efflorescence! Poor, simple, beautiful, kindly +limited Marion! Now that I am forty-five, I can look back at her with all my +old admiration and none of my old bitterness with a new affection and not a +scrap of passion, and take her part against the equally stupid, +drivingly-energetic, sensuous, intellectual sprawl I used to be. I was a young +beast for her to have married—a hound beast. With her it was my business +to understand and control—and I exacted fellowship, passion.... +</p> + +<p> +We became engaged, as I have told; we broke it off and joined again. We went +through a succession of such phases. We had no sort of idea what was wrong with +us. Presently we were formally engaged. I had a wonderful interview with her +father, in which he was stupendously grave and <i>h</i>—less, wanted to +know about my origins and was tolerant (exasperatingly tolerant) because my +mother was a servant, and afterwards her mother took to kissing me, and I +bought a ring. But the speechless aunt, I gathered, didn’t +approve—having doubts of my religiosity. Whenever we were estranged we +could keep apart for days; and to begin with, every such separation was a +relief. And then I would want her; a restless longing would come upon me. I +would think of the flow of her arms, of the soft, gracious bend of her body. I +would lie awake or dream of a transfigured Marion of light and fire. It was +indeed Dame Nature driving me on to womankind in her stupid, inexorable way; +but I thought it was the need of Marion that troubled me. So I always went back +to Marion at last and made it up and more or less conceded or ignored whatever +thing had parted us, and more and more I urged her to marry me.... +</p> + +<p> +In the long run that became a fixed idea. It entangled my will and my pride; I +told myself I was not going to be beaten. I hardened to the business. I think, +as a matter of fact, my real passion for Marion had waned enormously long +before we were married, that she had lived it down by sheer irresponsiveness. +When I felt sure of my three hundred a year she stipulated for delay, twelve +months’ delay, “to see how things would turn out.” There were +times when she seemed simply an antagonist holding out irritatingly against +something I had to settle. Moreover, I began to be greatly distracted by the +interest and excitement of Tono-Bungay’s success, by the change and +movement in things, the going to and fro. I would forget her for days together, +and then desire her with an irritating intensity at last, one Saturday +afternoon, after a brooding morning, I determined almost savagely that these +delays must end. +</p> + +<p> +I went off to the little home at Walham Green, and made Marion come with me to +Putney Common. Marion wasn’t at home when I got there and I had to fret +for a time and talk to her father, who was just back from his office, he +explained, and enjoying himself in his own way in the greenhouse. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to ask your daughter to marry me!” I said. +“I think we’ve been waiting long enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t approve of long engagements either,” said her +father. “But Marion will have her own way about it, anyhow. Seen this new +powdered fertiliser?” +</p> + +<p> +I went in to talk to Mrs. Ramboat. “She’ll want time to get her +things,” said Mrs. Ramboat.... +</p> + +<p> +I and Marion sat down together on a little seat under some trees at the top of +Putney Hill, and I came to my point abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, Marion,” I said, “are you going to marry me or +are you not?” +</p> + +<p> +She smiled at me. “Well,” she said, “we’re +engaged—aren’t we?” +</p> + +<p> +“That can’t go on for ever. Will you marry me next week?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked me in the face. “We can’t,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You promised to marry me when I had three hundred a year.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent for a space. “Can’t we go on for a time as we are? +We <i>could</i> marry on three hundred a year. But it means a very little +house. There’s Smithie’s brother. They manage on two hundred and +fifty, but that’s very little. She says they have a semi-detached house +almost on the road, and hardly a bit of garden. And the wall to next-door is so +thin they hear everything. When her baby cries—they rap. And people stand +against the railings and talk.... Can’t we wait? You’re doing so +well.” +</p> + +<p> +An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the stupendous +beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered her with immense +restraint. +</p> + +<p> +“If,” I said, “we could have a double-fronted, detached +house—at Ealing, say—with a square patch of lawn in front and a +garden behind—and—and a tiled bathroom.” +</p> + +<p> +“That would be sixty pounds a year at least.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which means five hundred a year.... Yes, well, you see, I told my uncle +I wanted that, and I’ve got it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Got what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Five hundred pounds a year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five hundred pounds!” +</p> + +<p> +I burst into laughter that had more than a taste of bitterness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “really! and <i>now</i> what do you +think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, a little flushed; “but be sensible! Do you +really mean you’ve got a Rise, all at once, of two hundred a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“To marry on—yes.” +</p> + +<p> +She scrutinised me a moment. “You’ve done this as a +surprise!” she said, and laughed at my laughter. She had become radiant, +and that made me radiant, too. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “yes,” and laughed no longer bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +She clasped her hands and looked me in the eyes. +</p> + +<p> +She was so pleased that I forgot absolutely my disgust of a moment before. I +forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds a year and that I had +bought her at that. +</p> + +<p> +“Come!” I said, standing up; “let’s go towards the +sunset, dear, and talk about it all. Do you know—this is a most beautiful +world, an amazingly beautiful world, and when the sunset falls upon you it +makes you into shining gold. No, not gold—into golden glass.... Into +something better that either glass or gold.”... +</p> + +<p> +And for all that evening I wooed her and kept her glad. She made me repeat my +assurances over again and still doubted a little. +</p> + +<p> +We furnished that double-fronted house from attic—it ran to an +attic—to cellar, and created a garden. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know Pampas Grass?” said Marion. “I love Pampas +Grass... if there is room.” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall have Pampas Grass,” I declared. And there were moments +as we went in imagination about that house together, when my whole being cried +out to take her in my arms—now. But I refrained. On that aspect of life I +touched very lightly in that talk, very lightly because I had had my lessons. +She promised to marry me within two months’ time. Shyly, reluctantly, she +named a day, and next afternoon, in heat and wrath, we “broke it +off” again for the last time. We split upon procedure. I refused flatly +to have a normal wedding with wedding cake, in white favours, carriages and the +rest of it. It dawned upon me suddenly in conversation with her and her mother, +that this was implied. I blurted out my objection forthwith, and this time it +wasn’t any ordinary difference of opinion; it was a “row.” I +don’t remember a quarter of the things we flung out in that dispute. I +remember her mother reiterating in tones of gentle remonstrance: “But, +George dear, you <i>must</i> have a cake—to send home.” I think we +all reiterated things. I seem to remember a refrain of my own: “A +marriage is too sacred a thing, too private a thing, for this display. Her +father came in and stood behind me against the wall, and her aunt appeared +beside the sideboard and stood with arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a +sternly gratified prophetess. It didn’t occur to me then! How painful it +was to Marion for these people to witness my rebellion. +</p> + +<p> +“But, George,” said her father, “what sort of marriage do you +want? You don’t want to go to one of those there registry offices?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s exactly what I’d like to do. Marriage is too private +a thing—” +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t feel married,” said Mrs. Ramboat. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, Marion,” I said; “we are going to be married at a +registry office. I don’t believe in all these fripperies and +superstitions, and I won’t submit to them. I’ve agreed to all sorts +of things to please you.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s he agreed to?” said her father—unheeded. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t marry at a registry office,” said Marion, +sallow-white. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” I said. “I’ll marry nowhere else.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t marry at a registry office.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” I said, standing up, white and tense and it amazed me, +but I was also exultant; “then we won’t marry at all.” +</p> + +<p> +She leant forward over the table, staring blankly. But presently her +half-averted face began to haunt me as she had sat at the table, and her arm +and the long droop of her shoulder. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle, +“<i>Bad temper not coming to business</i>,” and set off for +Highgate and Ewart. He was actually at work—on a bust of Millie, and +seemed very glad for any interruption. +</p> + +<p> +“Ewart, you old Fool,” I said, “knock off and come for a +day’s gossip. I’m rotten. There’s a sympathetic sort of +lunacy about you. Let’s go to Staines and paddle up to Windsor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Girl?” said Ewart, putting down a chisel. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +That was all I told him of my affair. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got no money,” he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my +invitation. +</p> + +<p> +We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart’s suggestion, two +Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the boathouse and +we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and meditation, our boat +moored in a shady place this side of Windsor. I seem to remember Ewart with a +cushion forward, only his heels and sunshade and some black ends of hair +showing, a voice and no more, against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of +the trees and bushes. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not worth it,” was the burthen of the voice. +“You’d better get yourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you +wouldn’t feel so upset.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said decidedly, “that’s not my way.” +</p> + +<p> +A thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an altar. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything’s a muddle, and you think it isn’t. Nobody knows +where we are—because, as a matter of fact we aren’t anywhere. Are +women property—or are they fellow-creatures? Or a sort of proprietary +goddesses? They’re so obviously fellow-creatures. You believe in the +goddess?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, “that’s not my idea.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is your idea?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m,” said Ewart, in my pause. +</p> + +<p> +“My idea,” I said, “is to meet one person who will belong to +me—to whom I shall belong—body and soul. No half-gods! Wait till +she comes. If she comes at all.... We must come to each other young and +pure.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no such thing as a pure person or an impure person.... +Mixed to begin with.” +</p> + +<p> +This was so manifestly true that it silenced me altogether. +</p> + +<p> +“And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponderevo—which +end’s the head?” +</p> + +<p> +I made no answer except an impatient “oh!” +</p> + +<p> +For a time we smoked in silence.... +</p> + +<p> +“Did I tell you, Ponderevo, of a wonderful discovery I’ve +made?” Ewart began presently. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, “what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no Mrs. Grundy.” +</p> + +<p> +“No?” +</p> + +<p> +“No! Practically not. I’ve just thought all that business out. +She’s merely an instrument, Ponderevo. She’s borne the blame. +Grundy’s a man. Grundy unmasked. Rather lean and out of sorts. Early +middle age. With bunchy black whiskers and a worried eye. Been good so far, and +it’s fretting him! Moods! There’s Grundy in a state of sexual +panic, for example,—‘For God’s sake cover it up! They get +together—they get together! It’s too exciting! The most dreadful +things are happening!’ Rushing about—long arms going like a +windmill. ‘They must be kept apart!’ Starts out for an absolute +obliteration of everything absolute separations. One side of the road for men, +and the other for women, and a hoarding—without posters between them. +Every boy and girl to be sewed up in a sack and sealed, just the head and hands +and feet out until twenty-one. Music abolished, calico garments for the lower +animals! Sparrows to be suppressed—ab-so-lutely.” +</p> + +<p> +I laughed abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s Mr. Grundy in one mood—and it puts Mrs. +Grundy—She’s a much-maligned person, Ponderevo—a rake at +heart—and it puts her in a most painful state of fluster—most +painful! She’s an amenable creature. When Grundy tells her things are +shocking, she’s shocked—pink and breathless. She goes about trying +to conceal her profound sense of guilt behind a haughty expression.... +</p> + +<p> +“Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of complete whirlabout. Long lean +knuckly hands pointing and gesticulating! ‘They’re still thinking +of things—thinking of things! It’s dreadful. They get it out of +books. I can’t imagine where they get it! I must watch! There’re +people over there whispering! Nobody ought to whisper!—There’s +something suggestive in the mere act! Then, pictures! In the +museum—things too dreadful for words. Why can’t we have pure +art—with the anatomy all wrong and pure and nice—and pure fiction +pure poetry, instead of all this stuff with allusions—allusions?... +Excuse me! There’s something up behind that locked door! The keyhole! In +the interests of public morality—yes, Sir, as a pure good man—I +insist—<i>I’ll</i> look—it won’t hurt me—I insist +on looking my duty—M’m’m—the keyhole!’” +</p> + +<p> +He kicked his legs about extravagantly, and I laughed again. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s Grundy in one mood, Ponderevo. It isn’t Mrs. Grundy. +That’s one of the lies we tell about women. They’re too simple. +Simple! Woman ARE simple! They take on just what men tell ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +Ewart meditated for a space. “Just exactly as it’s put to +them,” he said, and resumed the moods of Mr. Grundy. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you get old Grundy in another mood. Ever caught him nosing, +Ponderevo? Mad with the idea of mysterious, unknown, wicked, delicious things. +Things that aren’t respectable. Wow! Things he mustn’t do!... Any +one who knows about these things, knows there’s just as much mystery and +deliciousness about Grundy’s forbidden things as there is about eating +ham. Jolly nice if it’s a bright morning and you’re well and hungry +and having breakfast in the open air. Jolly unattractive if you’re off +colour. But Grundy’s covered it all up and hidden it and put mucky shades +and covers over it until he’s forgotten it. Begins to fester round it in +his mind. Has dreadful struggles—with himself about impure thoughts.... +Then you set Grundy with hot ears,—curious in undertones. Grundy on the +loose, Grundy in a hoarse whisper and with furtive eyes and convulsive +movements—making things indecent. Evolving—in dense +vapours—indecency! +</p> + +<p> +“Grundy sins. Oh, yes, he’s a hypocrite. Sneaks round a corner and +sins ugly. It’s Grundy and his dark corners that make vice, vice! We +artists—we have no vices. +</p> + +<p> +“And then he’s frantic with repentance. And wants to be cruel to +fallen women and decent harmless sculptors of the simple nude—like +me—and so back to his panic again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Grundy, I suppose, doesn’t know he sins,” I remarked. +</p> + +<p> +“No? I’m not so sure.... But, bless her heart she’s a +woman.... She’s a woman. Then again you get Grundy with a large greasy +smile—like an accident to a butter tub—all over his face, being +Liberal Minded—Grundy in his Anti-Puritan moments, ‘trying not to +see Harm in it’—Grundy the friend of innocent pleasure. He makes +you sick with the Harm he’s trying not to see in it... +</p> + +<p> +“And that’s why everything’s wrong, Ponderevo. Grundy, damn +him! stands in the light, and we young people can’t see. His moods affect +us. We catch his gusts of panic, his disease of nosing, his greasiness. We +don’t know what we may think, what we may say, he does his silly utmost +to prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one sort of discussion we +find—quite naturally and properly—supremely interesting. So we +don’t adolescence; we blunder up to sex. Dare—dare to +look—and he may dirt you for ever! The girls are terror-stricken to +silence by his significant whiskers, by the bleary something in his +eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Ewart, with an almost Jack-in-the-box effect, sat up. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s about us everywhere, Ponderevo,” he said, very +solemnly. “Sometimes—sometimes I think he is—in our blood. In +<i>mine</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +He regarded me for my opinion very earnestly, with his pipe in the corner of +his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re the remotest cousin he ever had,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +I reflected. “Look here, Ewart,” I asked, “how would you have +things different?” +</p> + +<p> +He wrinkled up his queer face, regarded the wait and made his pipe gurgle for a +space, thinking deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“There are complications, I admit. We’ve grown up under the terror +of Grundy and that innocent but docile and—yes—formidable lady, his +wife. I don’t know how far the complications aren’t a disease, a +sort of bleaching under the Grundy shadow.... It is possible there are things I +have still to learn about women.... Man has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. His +innocence is gone. You can’t have your cake and eat it. We’re in +for knowledge; let’s have it plain and straight. I should begin, I think, +by abolishing the ideas of decency and indecency....” +</p> + +<p> +“Grundy would have fits!” I injected. +</p> + +<p> +“Grundy, Ponderevo, would have cold douches—publicly—if the +sight was not too painful—three times a day.... But I don’t think, +mind you, that I should let the sexes run about together. No. The fact behind +the sexes—is sex. It’s no good humbugging. It trails +about—even in the best mixed company. Tugs at your ankle. The men get +showing off and quarrelling—and the women. Or they’re bored. I +suppose the ancestral males have competed for the ancestral females ever since +they were both some sort of grubby little reptile. You aren’t going to +alter that in a thousand years or so.... Never should you have a mixed company, +never—except with only one man or only one woman. How would that be?... +</p> + +<p> +“Or duets only?... +</p> + +<p> +“How to manage it? Some rule of etiquette, perhaps.”... He became +portentously grave. +</p> + +<p> +Then his long hand went out in weird gestures. +</p> + +<p> +“I seem to see—I seem to see—a sort of City of Women, +Ponderevo. Yes.... A walled enclosure—good stone-mason’s +work—a city wall, high as the walls of Rome, going about a garden. Dozens +of square miles of +garden—trees—fountains—arbours—lakes. Lawns on which +the women play, avenues in which they gossip, boats.... Women like that sort of +thing. Any woman who’s been to a good eventful girls’ school lives +on the memory of it for the rest of her life. It’s one of the pathetic +things about women—the superiority of school and college—to +anything they get afterwards. And this city-garden of women will have beautiful +places for music, places for beautiful dresses, places for beautiful work. +Everything a woman can want. Nurseries. Kindergartens. Schools. And no +man—except to do rough work, perhaps—ever comes in. The men live in +a world where they can hunt and engineer, invent and mine and manufacture, sail +ships, drink deep and practice the arts, and fight—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “but—” +</p> + +<p> +He stilled me with a gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m coming to that. The homes of the women, Ponderevo, will be set +in the wall of their city; each woman will have her own particular house and +home, furnished after her own heart in her own manner—with a little +balcony on the outside wall. Built into the wall—and a little balcony. +And there she will go and look out, when the mood takes her, and all round the +city there will be a broad road and seats and great shady trees. And men will +stroll up and down there when they feel the need of feminine company; when, for +instance, they want to talk about their souls or their characters or any of the +things that only women will stand.... The women will lean over and look at the +men and smile and talk to them as they fancy. And each woman will have this; +she will have a little silken ladder she can let down if she chooses—if +she wants to talk closer...” +</p> + +<p> +“The men would still be competing.” +</p> + +<p> +“There perhaps—yes. But they’d have to abide by the +women’s decisions.” +</p> + +<p> +I raised one or two difficulties, and for a while we played with this idea. +</p> + +<p> +“Ewart,” I said, “this is like Doll’s Island. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose,” I reflected, “an unsuccessful man laid siege to a +balcony and wouldn’t let his rival come near it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Move him on,” said Ewart, “by a special regulation. As one +does organ-grinders. No difficulty about that. And you could forbid +it—make it against the etiquette. No life is decent without etiquette.... +And people obey etiquette sooner than laws...” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m,” I said, and was struck by an idea that is remote in +the world of a young man. “How about children?” I asked; “in +the City? Girls are all very well. But boys, for example—grow up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said Ewart. “Yes. I forgot. They mustn’t grow up +inside.... They’d turn out the boys when they were seven. The father must +come with a little pony and a little gun and manly wear, and take the boy away. +Then one could come afterwards to one’s mother’s balcony.... It +must be fine to have a mother. The father and the son...” +</p> + +<p> +“This is all very pretty in its way,” I said at last, “but +it’s a dream. Let’s come back to reality. What I want to know is, +what are you going to do in Brompton, let us say, or Walham Green +<i>now?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! damn it!” he remarked, “Walham Green! What a chap you +are, Ponderevo!” and he made an abrupt end to his discourse. He +wouldn’t even reply to my tentatives for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“While I was talking just now,” he remarked presently, +</p> + +<p> +“I had a quite different idea.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“For a masterpiece. A series. Like the busts of the Cæsars. Only not +heads, you know. We don’t see the people who do things to us +nowadays...” +</p> + +<p> +“How will you do it, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hands—a series of hands! The hands of the Twentieth Century. +I’ll do it. Some day some one will discover it—go there—see +what I have done, and what is meant by it.” +</p> + +<p> +“See it where?” +</p> + +<p> +“On the tombs. Why not? The Unknown Master of the Highgate Slope! All the +little, soft feminine hands, the nervous ugly males, the hands of the flops, +and the hands of the snatchers! And Grundy’s loose, lean, knuckly +affair—Grundy the terror!—the little wrinkles and the thumb! Only +it ought to hold all the others together—in a slightly disturbing +squeeze....Like Rodin’s great Hand—you know the thing!” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +I forget how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our +engagement and Marion’s surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my +emotion, the concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as I read +the words of her unexpected letter—“I have thought over everything, +and I was selfish....” I rushed off to Walham Green that evening to give +back all she had given me, to beat her altogether at giving. She was +extraordinarily gentle and generous that time, I remember, and when at last I +left her, she kissed me very sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +So we were married. +</p> + +<p> +We were married with all the customary incongruity. I gave—perhaps after +a while not altogether ungrudgingly—and what I gave, Marion took, with a +manifest satisfaction. After all, I was being sensible. So that we had three +livery carriages to the church (one of the pairs of horses matched) and +coachmen—with improvised flavour and very shabby silk hats—bearing +white favours on their whips, and my uncle intervened with splendour and +insisted upon having a wedding breakfast sent in from a caterer’s in +Hammersmith. The table had a great display of chrysanthemums, and there was +orange blossom in the significant place and a wonderful cake. We also +circulated upwards of a score of wedges of that accompanied by silver-printed +cards in which Marion’s name of Ramboat was stricken out by an arrow in +favour of Ponderevo. We had a little rally of Marion’s relations, and +several friends and friends’ friends from Smithie’s appeared in the +church and drifted vestry-ward. I produced my aunt and uncle a select group of +two. The effect in that shabby little house was one of exhilarating congestion. +The side-board, in which lived the table-cloth and the “Apartments” +card, was used for a display of the presents, eked out by the unused balance of +the silver-printed cards. +</p> + +<p> +Marion wore the white raiment of a bride, white silk and satin, that did not +suit her, that made her seem large and strange to me; she obtruded bows and +unfamiliar contours. She went through all this strange ritual of an English +wedding with a sacramental gravity that I was altogether too young and +egotistical to comprehend. It was all extraordinarily central and important to +her; it was no more than an offensive, complicated, and disconcerting intrusion +of a world I was already beginning to criticise very bitterly, to me. What was +all this fuss for? The mere indecent advertisement that I had been passionately +in love with Marion! I think, however, that Marion was only very remotely aware +of my smouldering exasperation at having in the end behaved +“nicely.” I had played—up to the extent of dressing my part; +I had an admirably cut frock—coat, a new silk hat, trousers as light as I +could endure them—lighter, in fact—a white waistcoat, night tie, +light gloves. Marion, seeing me despondent had the unusual enterprise to +whisper to me that I looked lovely; I knew too well I didn’t look myself. +I looked like a special coloured supplement to <i>Men’s Wear</i>, or +<i>The Tailor and Cutter</i>, Full Dress For Ceremonial Occasions. I had even +the disconcerting sensations of an unfamiliar collar. I felt lost—in a +strange body, and when I glanced down myself for reassurance, the straight +white abdomen, the alien legs confirmed that impression. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle was my best man, and looked like a banker—a little +banker—in flower. He wore a white rose in his buttonhole. He +wasn’t, I think, particularly talkative. At least I recall very little +from him. +</p> + +<p> +“George” he said once or twice, “this is a great occasion for +you—a very great occasion.” He spoke a little doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +You see I had told him nothing about Marion until about a week before the +wedding; both he and my aunt had been taken altogether by surprise. They +couldn’t, as people say, “make it out.” My aunt was intensely +interested, much more than my uncle; it was then, I think, for the first time +that I really saw that she cared for me. She got me alone, I remember, after I +had made my announcement. “Now, George,” she said, “tell me +everything about her. Why didn’t you tell—ME at +least—before?” +</p> + +<p> +I was surprised to find how difficult it was to tell her about Marion. I +perplexed her. +</p> + +<p> +“Then is she beautiful?” she asked at last. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you’ll think of her,” I parried. +“I think—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think she might be the most beautiful person in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“And isn’t she? To you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” I said, nodding my head. “Yes. She IS...” +</p> + +<p> +And while I don’t remember anything my uncle said or did at the wedding, +I do remember very distinctly certain little things, scrutiny, solicitude, a +curious rare flash of intimacy in my aunt’s eyes. It dawned on me that I +wasn’t hiding anything from her at all. She was dressed very smartly, +wearing a big-plumed hat that made her neck seem longer and slenderer than +ever, and when she walked up the aisle with that rolling stride of hers and her +eye all on Marion, perplexed into self-forgetfulness, it wasn’t somehow +funny. She was, I do believe, giving my marriage more thought than I had done, +she was concerned beyond measure at my black rage and Marion’s blindness, +she was looking with eyes that knew what loving is—for love. +</p> + +<p> +In the vestry she turned away as we signed, and I verily believe she was +crying, though to this day I can’t say why she should have cried, and she +was near crying too when she squeezed my hand at parting—and she never +said a word or looked at me, but just squeezed my hand.... +</p> + +<p> +If I had not been so grim in spirit, I think I should have found much of my +wedding amusing. I remember a lot of ridiculous detail that still declines to +be funny in my memory. The officiating clergyman had a cold, and turned his +“n’s” to “d’s,” and he made the most +mechanical compliment conceivable about the bride’s age when the register +was signed. Every bride he had ever married had had it, one knew. And two +middle-aged spinsters, cousins of Marion’s and dressmakers at Barking, +stand out. They wore marvellously bright and gay blouses and dim old skirts, +and had an immense respect for Mr. Ramboat. They threw rice; they brought a +whole bag with them and gave handfuls away to unknown little boys at the church +door and so created a Lilliputian riot; and one had meant to throw a slipper. +It was a very warm old silk slipper, I know, because she dropped it out of a +pocket in the aisle—there was a sort of jumble in the aisle—and I +picked it up for her. I don’t think she actually threw it, for as we +drove away from the church I saw her in a dreadful, and, it seemed to me, +hopeless, struggle with her pocket; and afterwards my eye caught the missile of +good fortune lying, it or its fellow, most obviously mislaid, behind the +umbrella-stand in the hall.... +</p> + +<p> +The whole business was much more absurd, more incoherent, more human than I had +anticipated, but I was far too young and serious to let the latter quality +atone for its shortcomings. I am so remote from this phase of my youth that I +can look back at it all as dispassionately as one looks at a picture—at +some wonderful, perfect sort of picture that is inexhaustible; but at the time +these things filled me with unspeakable resentment. Now I go round it all, look +into its details, generalise about its aspects. I’m interested, for +example, to square it with my Bladesover theory of the British social scheme. +Under stress of tradition we were all of us trying in the fermenting chaos of +London to carry out the marriage ceremonies of a Bladesover tenant or one of +the chubby middling sort of people in some dependent country town. There a +marriage is a public function with a public significance. There the church is +to a large extent the gathering-place of the community, and your going to be +married a thing of importance to every one you pass on the road. It is a change +of status that quite legitimately interests the whole neighbourhood. But in +London there are no neighbours, nobody knows, nobody cares. An absolute +stranger in an office took my notice, and our banns were proclaimed to ears +that had never previously heard our names. The clergyman, even, who married us +had never seen us before, and didn’t in any degree intimate that he +wanted to see us again. +</p> + +<p> +Neighbours in London! The Ramboats did not know the names of the people on +either side of them. As I waited for Marion before we started off upon our +honeymoon flight, Mr. Ramboat, I remember, came and stood beside me and stared +out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +“There was a funeral over there yesterday,” he said, by way of +making conversation, and moved his head at the house opposite. “Quite a +smart affair it was with a glass ’earse....” +</p> + +<p> +And our little procession of three carriages with white-favour-adorned horses +and drivers, went through all the huge, noisy, indifferent traffic like a lost +china image in the coal-chute of an ironclad. Nobody made way for us, nobody +cared for us; the driver of an omnibus jeered; for a long time we crawled +behind an unamiable dust-cart. The irrelevant clatter and tumult gave a queer +flavour of indecency to this public coming together of lovers. We seemed to +have obtruded ourselves shamelessly. The crowd that gathered outside the church +would have gathered in the same spirit and with greater alacrity for a street +accident.... +</p> + +<p> +At Charing Cross—we were going to Hastings—the experienced eye of +the guard detected the significance of our unusual costume and he secured us a +compartment. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said I, as the train moved out of the station, +“<i>That’s</i> all over!” And I turned to Marion—a +little unfamiliar still, in her unfamiliar clothes—and smiled. +</p> + +<p> +She regarded me gravely, timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not cross?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Cross! Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“At having it all proper.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Marion!” said I, and by way of answer took and kissed her +white-gloved, leather-scented hand.... +</p> + +<p> +I don’t remember much else about the journey, an hour or so it was of +undistinguished time—for we were both confused and a little fatigued and +Marion had a slight headache and did not want caresses. I fell into a reverie +about my aunt, and realised as if it were a new discovery, that I cared for her +very greatly. I was acutely sorry I had not told her earlier of my marriage. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +But you will not want to hear the history of my honeymoon. I have told all that +was needed to serve my present purpose. Thus and thus it was the Will in things +had its way with me. Driven by forces I did not understand, diverted altogether +from the science, the curiosities and work to which I had once given myself, I +fought my way through a tangle of traditions, customs, obstacles and +absurdities, enraged myself, limited myself, gave myself to occupations I saw +with the clearest vision were dishonourable and vain, and at last achieved the +end of purblind Nature, the relentless immediacy of her desire, and held, far +short of happiness, Marion weeping and reluctant in my arms. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +Who can tell the story of the slow estrangement of two married people, the +weakening of first this bond and then that of that complex contact? Least of +all can one of the two participants. Even now, with an interval of fifteen +years to clear it up for me, I still find a mass of impressions of Marion as +confused, as discordant, as unsystematic and self-contradictory as life. I +think of this thing and love her, of that and hate her—of a hundred +aspects in which I can now see her with an unimpassioned sympathy. As I sit +here trying to render some vision of this infinitely confused process, I recall +moments of hard and fierce estrangement, moments of clouded intimacy, the +passage of transition all forgotten. We talked a little language together +whence were “friends,” and I was “Mutney” and she was +“Ming,” and we kept up such an outward show that till the very end +Smithie thought our household the most amiable in the world. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot tell to the full how Marion thwarted me and failed in that life of +intimate emotions which is the kernel of love. That life of intimate emotions +is made up of little things. A beautiful face differs from an ugly one by a +difference of surfaces and proportions that are sometimes almost +infinitesimally small. I find myself setting down little things and little +things; none of them do more than demonstrate those essential temperamental +discords I have already sought to make clear. Some readers will +understand—to others I shall seem no more than an unfeeling brute who +couldn’t make allowances.... It’s easy to make allowances now; but +to be young and ardent and to make allowances, to see one’s married life +open before one, the life that seemed in its dawn a glory, a garden of roses, a +place of deep sweet mysteries and heart throbs and wonderful silences, and to +see it a vista of tolerations and baby-talk; a compromise, the least effectual +thing in all one’s life. +</p> + +<p> +Every love romance I read seemed to mock our dull intercourse, every poem, +every beautiful picture reflected upon the uneventful succession of grey hours +we had together. I think our real difference was one of aesthetic sensibility. +</p> + +<p> +I do still recall as the worst and most disastrous aspect of all that time, her +absolute disregard of her own beauty. It’s the pettiest thing to record, +I know, but she could wear curl-papers in my presence. It was her idea, too, to +“wear out” her old clothes and her failures at home when “no +one was likely to see her”—“no one” being myself. She +allowed me to accumulate a store of ungracious and slovenly memories.... +</p> + +<p> +All our conceptions of life differed. I remember how we differed about +furniture. We spent three or four days in Tottenham Court Road, and she chose +the things she fancied with an inexorable resolution,—sweeping aside my +suggestions with—“Oh, <i>you</i> want such queer things.” She +pursued some limited, clearly seen and experienced ideal—that excluded +all other possibilities. Over every mantel was a mirror that was draped, our +sideboard was wonderfully good and splendid with beveled glass, we had lamps on +long metal stalks and cozy corners and plants in grog-tubs. Smithie approved it +all. There wasn’t a place where one could sit and read in the whole +house. My books went upon shelves in the dining-room recess. And we had a piano +though Marion’s playing was at an elementary level. +</p> + +<p> +You know, it was the cruelest luck for Marion that I, with my restlessness, my +scepticism, my constantly developing ideas, had insisted on marriage with her. +She had no faculty of growth or change; she had taken her mould, she had set in +the limited ideas of her peculiar class. She preserved her conception of what +was right in drawing-room chairs and in marriage ceremonial and in every +relation of life with a simple and luminous honesty and conviction, with an +immense unimaginative inflexibility—as a tailor-bird builds its nest or a +beaver makes its dam. +</p> + +<p> +Let me hasten over this history of disappointments and separation. I might tell +of waxings and waning of love between us, but the whole was waning. Sometimes +she would do things for me, make me a tie or a pair of slippers, and fill me +with none the less gratitude because the things were absurd. She ran our home +and our one servant with a hard, bright efficiency. She was inordinately proud +of house and garden. Always, by her lights, she did her duty by me. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the rapid development of Tono-Bungay began to take me into the +provinces, and I would be away sometimes for a week together. This she did not +like; it left her “dull,” she said, but after a time she began to +go to Smithie’s again and to develop an independence of me. At +Smithie’s she was now a woman with a position; she had money to spend. +She would take Smithie to theatres and out to lunch and talk interminably of +the business, and Smithie became a sort of permanent weekender with us. Also +Marion got a spaniel and began to dabble with the minor arts, with poker-work +and a Kodak and hyacinths in glasses. She called once on a neighbour. Her +parents left Walham Green—her father severed his connection with the +gas-works—and came to live in a small house I took for them near us, and +they were much with us. +</p> + +<p> +Odd the littleness of the things that exasperate when the fountains of life are +embittered! My father-in-law was perpetually catching me in moody moments and +urging me to take to gardening. He irritated me beyond measure. +</p> + +<p> +“You think too much,” he would say. “If you was to let in a +bit with a spade, you might soon ’ave that garden of yours a Vision of +Flowers. That’s better than thinking, George.” +</p> + +<p> +Or in a torrent of exasperation, “I CARN’T think, George, why you +don’t get a bit of glass ’ere. This sunny corner you c’d do +wonders with a bit of glass.” +</p> + +<p> +And in the summer time he never came in without performing a sort of conjuring +trick in the hall, and taking cucumbers and tomatoes from unexpected points of +his person. “All out o’ MY little bit,” he’d say in +exemplary tones. He left a trail of vegetable produce in the most unusual +places, on mantel boards, sideboards, the tops of pictures. Heavens! how the +sudden unexpected tomato could annoy me!... +</p> + +<p> +It did much to widen our estrangement that Marion and my aunt failed to make +friends, became, by a sort of instinct, antagonistic. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt, to begin with, called rather frequently, for she was really anxious to +know Marion. At first she would arrive like a whirlwind and pervade the house +with an atmosphere of hello! She dressed already with that cheerfully +extravagant abandon that signalised her accession to fortune, and dressed her +best for these visits. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted to play the mother to me, I fancy, to tell Marion occult secrets +about the way I wore out my boots and how I never could think to put on thicker +things in cold weather. But Marion received her with that defensive +suspiciousness of the shy person, thinking only of the possible criticism of +herself; and my aunt, perceiving this, became nervous and slangy... +</p> + +<p> +“She says such queer things,” said Marion once, discussing her. +“But I suppose it’s witty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said; “it <i>is</i> witty.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I said things like she does—” +</p> + +<p> +The queer things my aunt said were nothing to the queer things she didn’t +say. I remember her in our drawing-room one day, and how she cocked her +eye—it’s the only expression—at the India-rubber plant in a +Doulton-ware pot which Marion had placed on the corner of the piano. +</p> + +<p> +She was on the very verge of speech. Then suddenly she caught my expression, +and shrank up like a cat that has been discovered looking at the milk. +</p> + +<p> +Then a wicked impulse took her. +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t say an old word, George,” she insisted, looking me +full in the eye. +</p> + +<p> +I smiled. “You’re a dear,” I said, “not to,” as +Marion came lowering into the room to welcome her. But I felt extraordinarily +like a traitor—to the India-rubber plant, I suppose—for all that +nothing had been said... +</p> + +<p> +“Your aunt makes Game of people,” was Marion’s verdict, and, +open-mindedly: “I suppose it’s all right... for her.” +</p> + +<p> +Several times we went to the house in Beckenham for lunch, and once or twice to +dinner. My aunt did her peculiar best to be friends, but Marion was implacable. +She was also, I know, intensely uncomfortable, and she adopted as her social +method, an exhausting silence, replying compactly and without giving openings +to anything that was said to her. +</p> + +<p> +The gaps between my aunt’s visits grew wider and wider. +</p> + +<p> +My married existence became at last like a narrow deep groove in the broad +expanse of interests in which I was living. I went about the world; I met a +great number of varied personalities; I read endless books in trains as I went +to and fro. I developed social relationships at my uncle’s house that +Marion did not share. The seeds of new ideas poured in upon me and grew in me. +Those early and middle years of one’s third decade are, I suppose, for a +man the years of greatest mental growth. They are restless years and full of +vague enterprise. +</p> + +<p> +Each time I returned to Ealing, life there seemed more alien, narrow, and +unattractive—and Marion less beautiful and more limited and +difficult—until at last she was robbed of every particle of her magic. +She gave me always a cooler welcome, I think, until she seemed entirely +apathetic. I never asked myself then what heartaches she might hide or what her +discontents might be. +</p> + +<p> +I would come home hoping nothing, expecting nothing. +</p> + +<p> +This was my fated life, and I had chosen it. I became more sensitive to the +defects I had once disregarded altogether; I began to associate her sallow +complexion with her temperamental insufficiency, and the heavier lines of her +mouth and nostril with her moods of discontent. We drifted apart; wider and +wider the gap opened. I tired of baby-talk and stereotyped little fondlings; I +tired of the latest intelligence from those wonderful workrooms, and showed it +all too plainly; we hardly spoke when we were alone together. The mere +unreciprocated physical residue of my passion remained—an exasperation +between us. +</p> + +<p> +No children came to save us. Marion had acquired at Smithie’s a disgust +and dread of maternity. All that was the fruition and quintessence of the +“horrid” elements in life, a disgusting thing, a last indignity +that overtook unwary women. I doubt indeed a little if children would have +saved us; we should have differed so fatally about their upbringing. +</p> + +<p> +Altogether, I remember my life with Marion as a long distress, now hard, now +tender. It was in those days that I first became critical of my life and +burdened with a sense of error and maladjustment. I would lie awake in the +night, asking myself the purpose of things, reviewing my unsatisfying, ungainly +home-life, my days spent in rascal enterprise and rubbish-selling, contrasting +all I was being and doing with my adolescent ambitions, my Wimblehurst dreams. +My circumstances had an air of finality, and I asked myself in vain why I had +forced myself into them. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +The end of our intolerable situation came suddenly and unexpectedly, but in a +way that I suppose was almost inevitable. +</p> + +<p> +My alienated affections wandered, and I was unfaithful to Marion. +</p> + +<p> +I won’t pretend to extenuate the quality of my conduct. I was a young and +fairly vigorous male; all my appetite for love had been roused and whetted and +none of it had been satisfied by my love affair and my marriage. I had pursued +an elusive gleam of beauty to the disregard of all else, and it had failed me. +It had faded when I had hoped it would grow brighter. I despaired of life and +was embittered. And things happened as I am telling. I don’t draw any +moral at all in the matter, and as for social remedies, I leave them to the +social reformer. I’ve got to a time of life when the only theories that +interest me are generalisations about realities. +</p> + +<p> +To go to our inner office in Raggett Street I had to walk through a room in +which the typists worked. They were the correspondence typists; our books and +invoicing had long since overflowed into the premises we had had the luck to +secure on either side of us. I was, I must confess, always in a faintly +cloudily-emotional way aware of that collection of for the most part +round-shouldered femininity, but presently one of the girls detached herself +from the others and got a real hold upon my attention. I appreciated her at +first as a straight little back, a neater back than any of the others; as a +softly rounded neck with a smiling necklace of sham pearls; as chestnut hair +very neatly done—and as a side-long glance; presently as a quickly turned +face that looked for me. +</p> + +<p> +My eye would seek her as I went through on business things—I dictated +some letters to her and so discovered she had pretty, soft-looking hands with +pink nails. Once or twice, meeting casually, we looked one another for the +flash of a second in the eyes. +</p> + +<p> +That was all. But it was enough in the mysterious free-masonry of sex to say +essential things. We had a secret between us. +</p> + +<p> +One day I came into Raggett Street at lunch time and she was alone, sitting at +her desk. She glanced up as I entered, and then became very still, with a +downcast face and her hands clenched on the table. I walked right by her to the +door of the inner office, stopped, came back and stood over her. +</p> + +<p> +We neither of us spoke for quite a perceptible time. I was trembling violently. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that one of the new typewriters?” I asked at last for the sake +of speaking. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at me without a word, with her face flushed and her eyes alight, +and I bent down and kissed her lips. She leant back to put an arm about me, +drew my face to her and kissed me again and again. I lifted her and held her in +my arms. She gave a little smothered cry to feel herself so held. +</p> + +<p> +Never before had I known the quality of passionate kisses. +</p> + +<p> +Somebody became audible in the shop outside. +</p> + +<p> +We started back from one another with flushed faces and bright and burning +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t talk here,” I whispered with a confident intimacy. +“Where do you go at five?” +</p> + +<p> +“Along the Embankment to Charing Cross,” she answered as +intimately. “None of the others go that way...” +</p> + +<p> +“About half-past five?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, half-past five...” +</p> + +<p> +The door from the shop opened, and she sat down very quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad,” I said in a commonplace voice, “that these +new typewriters are all right.” +</p> + +<p> +I went into the inner office and routed out the paysheet in order to find her +name—Effie Rink. And did no work at all that afternoon. I fretted about +that dingy little den like a beast in a cage. +</p> + +<p> +When presently I went out, Effie was working with an extraordinary appearance +of calm—and there was no look for me at all.... +</p> + +<p> +We met and had our talk that evening, a talk in whispers when there was none to +overhear; we came to an understanding. It was strangely unlike any dream of +romance I had ever entertained. +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +I came back after a week’s absence to my home again—a changed man. +I had lived out my first rush of passion for Effie, had come to a contemplation +of my position. I had gauged Effie’s place in the scheme of things, and +parted from her for a time. She was back in her place at Raggett Street after a +temporary indisposition. I did not feel in any way penitent or ashamed, I know, +as I opened the little cast-iron gate that kept Marion’s front grader and +Pampas Grass from the wandering dog. Indeed, if anything, I felt as if I had +vindicated some right that had been in question. I came back to Marion with no +sense of wrong-doing at all with, indeed, a new friendliness towards her. I +don’t know how it may be proper to feel on such occasions; that is how I +felt. +</p> + +<p> +I followed her in our drawing-room, standing beside the tall lamp-stand that +half filled the bay as though she had just turned from watching for me at the +window. There was something in her pale face that arrested me. She looked as if +she had not been sleeping. She did not come forward to greet me. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve come home,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“As I wrote to you.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood very still, a dusky figure against the bright window. +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you been?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“East Coast,” I said easily. +</p> + +<p> +She paused for a moment. “I <i>know</i>,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +I stared at her. It was the most amazing moment in any life.... +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” I said at last, “I believe you do!” +</p> + +<p> +“And then you come home to me!” +</p> + +<p> +I walked to the hearthrug and stood quite still there regarding this new +situation. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t dream,” she began. “How could you do such a +thing?” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed a long interval before either of us spoke another word. +</p> + +<p> +“Who knows about it?” I asked at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Smithie’s brother. They were at Cromer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound Cromer! Yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“How could you bring yourself” +</p> + +<p> +I felt a spasm of petulant annoyance at this unexpected catastrophe. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to wring Smithie’s brother’s neck,” I +said.... +</p> + +<p> +Marion spoke in dry, broken fragments of sentences. “You... I’d +always thought that anyhow you couldn’t deceive me... I suppose all men +are horrid—about this.” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t strike me as horrid. It seems to me the most necessary +consequence—and natural thing in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of some one moving about in the passage, and went and shut the +door of the room, then I walked back to the hearthrug and turned. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rough on you,” I said. “But I didn’t mean +you to know. You’ve never cared for me. I’ve had the devil of a +time. Why should you mind?” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down in a draped armchair. “I <i>have</i> cared for you,” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +I shrugged my shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” she said, “<i>she</i> cares for you?” +</p> + +<p> +I had no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is she now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! does it matter to you?... Look here, Marion! This—this I +didn’t anticipate. I didn’t mean this thing to smash down on you +like this. But, you know, something had to happen. I’m sorry—sorry +to the bottom of my heart that things have come to this between us. But indeed, +I’m taken by surprise. I don’t know where I am—I don’t +know how we got here. Things took me by surprise. I found myself alone with her +one day. I kissed her. I went on. It seemed stupid to go back. And +besides—why should I have gone back? Why should I? From first to last, +I’ve hardly thought of it as touching you.... Damn!” +</p> + +<p> +She scrutinised my face, and pulled at the ball-fringe of the little table +beside her. +</p> + +<p> +“To think of it,” she said. “I don’t believe I can ever +touch you again.” +</p> + +<p> +We kept a long silence. I was only beginning to realise in the most superficial +way the immense catastrophe that had happened between us. Enormous issues had +rushed upon us. I felt unprepared and altogether inadequate. I was unreasonably +angry. There came a rush of stupid expressions to my mind that my rising sense +of the supreme importance of the moment saved me from saying. The gap of +silence widened until it threatened to become the vast memorable margin of some +one among a thousand trivial possibilities of speech that would vex our +relations for ever. +</p> + +<p> +Our little general servant tapped at the door—Marion always liked the +servant to tap—and appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Tea, M’m,” she said—and vanished, leaving the door +open. +</p> + +<p> +“I will go upstairs,” said I, and stopped. “I will go +upstairs” I repeated, “and put my bag in the spare room.” +</p> + +<p> +We remained motionless and silent for a few seconds. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother is having tea with us to-day,” Marion remarked at last, and +dropped the worried end of ball-fringe and stood up slowly.... +</p> + +<p> +And so, with this immense discussion of our changed relations hanging over us, +we presently had tea with the unsuspecting Mrs. Ramboat and the spaniel. Mrs. +Ramboat was too well trained in her position to remark upon our somber +preoccupation. She kept a thin trickle of talk going, and told us, I remember, +that Mr. Ramboat was “troubled” about his cannas. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t come up and they won’t come up. He’s been +round and had an explanation with the man who sold him the bulbs—and +he’s very heated and upset.” +</p> + +<p> +The spaniel was a great bore, begging and doing small tricks first at one and +then at the other of us. Neither of us used his name. You see we had called him +Miggles, and made a sort of trio in the baby-talk of Mutney and Miggles and +Ming. +</p> + +<h4>VIII</h4> + +<p> +Then presently we resumed our monstrous, momentous dialogue. I can’t now +make out how long that dialogue went on. It spread itself, I know, in heavy +fragments over either three days or four. I remember myself grouped with +Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking standing in our +dining-room, saving this thing or that. Twice we went for long walks. And we +had a long evening alone together, with jaded nerves and hearts that fluctuated +between a hard and dreary recognition of facts and, on my part at least, a +strange unwonted tenderness; because in some extraordinary way this crisis had +destroyed our mutual apathy and made us feel one another again. +</p> + +<p> +It was a dialogue that had discrepant parts that fell into lumps of talk that +failed to join on to their predecessors, that began again at a different level, +higher or lower, that assumed new aspects in the intervals and assimilated new +considerations. We discussed the fact that we two were no longer lovers; never +before had we faced that. It seems a strange thing to write, but as I look +back, I see clearly that those several days were the time when Marion and I +were closest together, looked for the first and last time faithfully and +steadfastly into each other’s soul. For those days only, there were no +pretences, I made no concessions to her nor she to me; we concealed nothing, +exaggerated nothing. We had done with pretending. We had it out plainly and +soberly with each other. Mood followed mood and got its stark expression. +</p> + +<p> +Of course there was quarreling between us, bitter quarreling, and we said +things to one another—long pent-up things that bruised and crushed and +cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate confrontation, +and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy, tear-stained, injured, +implacable and dignified. +</p> + +<p> +“You love her?” she asked once, and jerked that doubt into my mind. +</p> + +<p> +I struggled with tangled ideas and emotions. “I don’t know what +love is. It’s all sorts of things—it’s made of a dozen +strands twisted in a thousand ways.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you want her? You want her now—when you think of her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I reflected. “I want her—right enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“And me? Where do I come in?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you come in here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, but what are you going to do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do!” I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon +me. “What do you want me to do?” +</p> + +<p> +As I look back upon all that time—across a gulf of fifteen active +years—I find I see it with an understanding judgment. I see it as if it +were the business of some one else—indeed of two other +people—intimately known yet judged without passion. I see now that this +shock, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in real fact bring out a mind +and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged from habits, +timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow will-impulse, and became a +personality. +</p> + +<p> +Her ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged pride. This +situation must end. She asked me categorically to give up Effie, and I, full of +fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s too late, Marion,” I said. “It can’t be +done like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we can’t very well go on living together,” she said. +“Can we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” I deliberated “if you must have it so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, can we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Can you stay in this house? I mean—if I go away?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.... I don’t think I could.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then—what do you want?” +</p> + +<p> +Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word +“divorce” was before us. +</p> + +<p> +“If we can’t live together we ought to be free,” said Marion. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know anything of divorce,” I said—“if +you mean that. I don’t know how it is done. I shall have to ask +somebody—or look it up.... Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We +may as well face it.” +</p> + +<p> +We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent futures +might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my questions answered by +a solicitor. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t as a matter of fact,” I said, “get divorced +as things are. Apparently, so far as the law goes you’ve got to stand +this sort of thing. It’s silly but that is the law. However, it’s +easy to arrange a divorce. In addition to adultery there must be desertion or +cruelty. To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that +sort, before witnesses. That’s impossible—but it’s simple to +desert you legally. I have to go away from you; that’s all. I can go on +sending you money—and you bring a suit, what is it?—for Restitution +of Conjugal Rights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey. Then you can go +on to divorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make +me come back. If we don’t make it up within six months and if you +don’t behave scandalously the Decree is made absolute. That’s the +end of the fuss. That’s how one gets unmarried. It’s easier, you +see, to marry than unmarry.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then—how do I live? What becomes of me?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have an income. They call it alimony. From a third to a +half of my present income—more if you like—I don’t +mind—three hundred a year, say. You’ve got your old people to keep +and you’ll need all that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then—then you’ll be free?” +</p> + +<p> +“Both of us.” +</p> + +<p> +“And all this life you’ve hated” +</p> + +<p> +I looked up at her wrung and bitter face. “I haven’t hated +it,” I lied, my voice near breaking with the pain of it all. “Have +you?” +</p> + +<h4>IX</h4> + +<p> +The perplexing thing about life is the irresolvable complexity of reality, of +things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong done has a certain +justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil. As for us, young still, +and still without self-knowledge, resounded a hundred discordant notes in the +harsh angle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with +each other, callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing. +</p> + +<p> +I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn’t hang +together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were, +nevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see them now +as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the crumpled confusions +of our complex moral landslide. Some I found irritating beyond measure. I +answered her—sometimes quite abominably. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she would say again and again, “my life has been +a failure.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve besieged you for three years,” I would retort +“asking it not to be. You’ve done as you pleased. If I’ve +turned away at last—” +</p> + +<p> +Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage. +</p> + +<p> +“How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well now—I suppose you have +your revenge.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Revenge!</i>” I echoed. +</p> + +<p> +Then she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives. +</p> + +<p> +“I ought to earn my own living,” she would insist. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to be quite independent. I’ve always hated London. Perhaps +I shall try a poultry farm and bees. You won’t mind at first my being a +burden. Afterwards—” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve settled all that,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you will hate me anyhow...” +</p> + +<p> +There were times when she seemed to regard our separation with absolute +complacency, when she would plan all sorts of freedoms and characteristic +interests. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go out a lot with Smithie,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed hate her for that I cannot +even now quite forgive her. +</p> + +<p> +“Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me...” +</p> + +<p> +Into my memory of these pains and stresses comes the figure of Smithie, +full-charged with emotion, so breathless in the presence of the horrid villain +of the piece that she could make no articulate sounds. She had long tearful +confidences with Marion, I know, sympathetic close clingings. There were +moments when only absolute speechlessness prevented her giving me a stupendous +“talking-to”—I could see it in her eye. The wrong things she +would have said! And I recall, too, Mrs. Ramboat’s slow awakening to +something in, the air, the growing expression of solicitude in her eye, only +her well-trained fear of Marion keeping her from speech. +</p> + +<p> +And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether beyond +our control, parting came to Marion and me. +</p> + +<p> +I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came to +Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all other things, +had turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time the prospect of +moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on her proprietorship and +pride. For the first time in her life she really showed strong emotions in +regard to me, for the first time, perhaps, they really came to her. She began +to weep slow, reluctant tears. I came into her room, and found her asprawl on +the bed, weeping. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know,” she cried. “Oh! I didn’t +understand!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been a fool. All my life is a wreck! +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be alone!...<i>Mutney!</i> Mutney, don’t leave me! Oh! +Mutney! I didn’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +I had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in those last +hours together that at last, too late, the longed-for thing had happened and +Marion had come alive. A new-born hunger for me lit her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t leave me!” she said, “don’t leave +me!” She clung to me; she kissed me with tear-salt lips. +</p> + +<p> +I was promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this impossible +dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it needed but a cry, but +one word to have united us again for all our lives. Could we have united again? +Would that passage have enlightened us for ever or should we have fallen back +in a week or so into the old estrangement, the old temperamental opposition? +</p> + +<p> +Of that there is now no telling. Our own resolve carried us on our predestined +way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers, parting inexorably, but +all the preparations we had set going worked on like a machine, and we made no +attempt to stop them. My trunks and boxes went to the station. I packed my bag +with Marion standing before me. We were like children who had hurt each other +horribly in sheer stupidity, who didn’t know now how to remedy it. We +belonged to each other immensely—immensely. The cab came to the little +iron gate. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye!” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment we held one another in each other’s arms and +kissed—incredibly without malice. We heard our little servant in the +passage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves to one +another. We were not lovers nor enemies, but two human souls in a frank +community of pain. I tore myself from her. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away,” I said to the servant, seeing that Marion had followed +me down. +</p> + +<p> +I felt her standing behind me as I spoke to the cab man. +</p> + +<p> +I got into the cab, resolutely not looking back, and then as it started jumped +up, craned out and looked at the door. +</p> + +<p> +It was wide open, but she had disappeared.... +</p> + +<p> +I wonder—I suppose she ran upstairs. +</p> + +<h4>X</h4> + +<p> +So I parted from Marion at an extremity of perturbation and regret, and went, +as I had promised and arranged, to Effie, who was waiting for me in apartments +near Orpington. I remember her upon the station platform, a bright, flitting +figure looking along the train for me, and our walk over the fields in the +twilight. I had expected an immense sense of relief where at last the stresses +of separation were over, but now I found I was beyond measure wretched and +perplexed, full of the profoundest persuasion of irreparable error. The dusk +and somber Marion were so alike, her sorrow seemed to be all about me. I had to +hold myself to my own plans, to remember that I must keep faith with Effie, +with Effie who had made no terms, exacted no guarantees, but flung herself into +my hands. +</p> + +<p> +We went across the evening fields in silence, towards a sky of deepening gold +and purple, and Effie was close beside me always, very close, glancing up ever +and again at my face. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly she knew I grieved for Marion, that ours was now no joyful reunion. +But she showed no resentment and no jealousy. Extraordinarily, she did not +compete against Marion. Never once in all our time together did she say an +adverse word of Marion.... +</p> + +<p> +She set herself presently to dispel the shadow that brooded over me with the +same instinctive skill that some women will show with the trouble of a child. +She made herself my glad and pretty slave and handmaid; she forced me at last +to rejoice in her. Yet at the back of it all Marion remained, stupid and +tearful and infinitely distressful, so that I was almost intolerably unhappy +for her—for her and the dead body of my married love. +</p> + +<p> +It is all, as I tell it now, unaccountable to me. I go back into these remote +parts, these rarely visited uplands and lonely tares of memory, and it seems to +me still a strange country. I had thought I might be going to some sensuous +paradise with Effie, but desire which fills the universe before its +satisfaction, vanishes utterly like the going of daylight—with +achievement. All the facts and forms of life remain darkling and cold. It was +an upland of melancholy questionings, a region from which I saw all the world +at new angles and in new aspects; I had outflanked passion and romance. +</p> + +<p> +I had come into a condition of vast perplexities. For the first time in my +life, at least so it seems to me now in this retrospect, I looked at my +existence as a whole. +</p> + +<p> +Since this was nothing, what was I doing? What was I for? +</p> + +<p> +I was going to and fro about Tono-Bungay—the business I had taken up to +secure Marion and which held me now in spite of our intimate +separation—and snatching odd week-ends and nights for Orpington, and all +the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations. I used to fall into +musing in the trains, I became even a little inaccurate and forgetful about +business things. I have the clearest memory of myself sitting thoughtful in the +evening sunlight on a grassy hillside that looked toward Seven Oaks and +commanded a wide sweep of country, and that I was thinking out my destiny. I +could almost write my thought down now, I believe, as they came to me that +afternoon. Effie, restless little cockney that she was, rustled and struggled +in a hedgerow below, gathering flowers, discovering flowers she had never seen +before. I had. I remember, a letter from Marion in my pocket. I had even made +some tentatives for return, for a reconciliation; Heaven knows now how I had +put it! but her cold, ill-written letter repelled me. I perceived I could never +face that old inconclusive dullness of life again, that stagnant +disappointment. That, anyhow, wasn’t possible. But what was possible? I +could see no way of honour or fine living before me at all. +</p> + +<p> +“What am I to do with life?” that was the question that besieged +me. +</p> + +<p> +I wondered if all the world was even as I, urged to this by one motive and to +that by another, creatures of chance and impulse and unmeaning traditions. Had +I indeed to abide by what I had said and done and chosen? Was there nothing for +me in honour but to provide for Effie, go back penitent to Marion and keep to +my trade in rubbish—or find some fresh one—and so work out the +residue of my days? I didn’t accept that for a moment. But what else was +I to do? I wondered if my case was the case of many men, whether in former +ages, too, men had been so guideless, so uncharted, so haphazard in their +journey into life. In the Middle Ages, in the old Catholic days, one went to a +priest, and he said with all the finality of natural law, this you are and this +you must do. I wondered whether even in the Middle Ages I should have accepted +that ruling without question. +</p> + +<p> +I remember too very distinctly how Effie came and sat beside me on a little +box: that was before the casement window of our room. +</p> + +<p> +“Gloomkins,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +I smiled and remained head on hand, looking out of the window forgetful of her. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you love your wife so well?” she whispered softly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” I cried, recalled again; “I don’t know. I +don’t understand these things. Life is a thing that hurts, my dear! It +hurts without logic or reason. I’ve blundered! I didn’t understand. +Anyhow—there is no need to go hurting you, is there?” +</p> + +<p> +And I turned about and drew her to me, and kissed her ear.... +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I had a very bad time—I still recall. I suffered, I suppose, from a +sort of <i>ennui</i> of the imagination. I found myself without an object to +hold my will together. I sought. I read restlessly and discursively. I tried +Ewart and got no help from him. As I regard it all now in this retrospect, it +seems to me as if in those days of disgust and abandoned aims I discovered +myself for the first time. Before that I had seen only the world and things in +it, had sought them self-forgetful of all but my impulse. Now I found myself +<i>grouped</i> with a system of appetites and satisfactions, with much work to +do—and no desire, it seemed, left in me. +</p> + +<p> +There were moments when I thought of suicide. At times my life appeared before +me in bleak, relentless light, a series of ignorances, crude blunderings, +degradation and cruelty. I had what the old theologians call a +“conviction of sin.” I sought salvation—not perhaps in the +formula a Methodist preacher would recognise but salvation nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +Men find their salvation nowadays in many ways. Names and forms don’t, I +think, matter very much; the real need is something that we can hold and that +holds one. I have known a man find that determining factor in a dry-plate +factory, and another in writing a history of the Manor. So long as it holds +one, it does not matter. Many men and women nowadays take up some concrete +aspect of Socialism or social reform. But Socialism for me has always been a +little bit too human, too set about with personalities and foolishness. It +isn’t my line. I don’t like things so human. I don’t think +I’m blind to the fun, the surprises, the jolly little coarsenesses and +insufficiency of life, to the “humour of it,” as people say, and to +adventure, but that isn’t the root of the matter with me. There’s +no humour in my blood. I’m in earnest in warp and woof. I stumble and +flounder, but I know that over all these merry immediate things, there are +other things that are great and serene, very high, beautiful things—the +reality. I haven’t got it, but it’s there nevertheless. I’m a +spiritual guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses. I’ve never +seen the goddesses nor ever shall—but it takes all the fun out of the +mud—and at times I fear it takes all the kindliness, too. +</p> + +<p> +But I’m talking of things I can’t expect the reader to understand, +because I don’t half understand them myself. There is something links +things for me, a sunset or so, a mood or so, the high air, something there was +in Marion’s form and colour, something I find and lose in +Mantegna’s pictures, something in the lines of these boats I make. (You +should see X2, my last and best!) +</p> + +<p> +I can’t explain myself, I perceive. Perhaps it all comes to this, that I +am a hard and morally limited cad with a mind beyond my merits. Naturally I +resist that as a complete solution. Anyhow, I had a sense of inexorable need, +of distress and insufficiency that was unendurable, and for a time this +aeronautical engineering allayed it.... +</p> + +<p> +In the end of this particular crisis of which I tell so badly, I idealised +Science. I decided that in power and knowledge lay the salvation of my life, +the secret that would fill my need; that to these things I would give myself. +</p> + +<p> +I emerged at last like a man who has been diving in darkness, clutching at a +new resolve for which he had groped desperately and long. +</p> + +<p> +I came into the inner office suddenly one day—it must have been just +before the time of Marion’s suit for restitution—and sat down +before my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” I said, “I’m sick of this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hul<i>lo!</i>” he answered, and put some papers aside. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s up, George?” +</p> + +<p> +“Things are wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“As how?” +</p> + +<p> +“My life,” I said, “it’s a mess, an infinite +mess.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s been a stupid girl, George,” he said; “I partly +understand. But you’re quit of her now, practically, and there’s +just as good fish in the sea—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! it’s not that!” I cried. “That’s only the +part that shows. I’m sick—I’m sick of all this damned +rascality.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh? Eh?” said my uncle. “<i>What</i>—rascality?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, <i>you</i> know. I want some <i>stuff</i>, man. I want something to +hold on to. I shall go amok if I don’t get it. I’m a different sort +of beast from you. You float in all this bunkum. <i>I</i> feel like a man +floundering in a universe of soapsuds, up and downs, east and west. I +can’t stand it. I must get my foot on something solid or—I +don’t know what.” +</p> + +<p> +I laughed at the consternation in his face. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean it,” I said. “I’ve been thinking it over. +I’ve made up my mind. It’s no good arguing. I shall go in for +work—real work. No! this isn’t work; it’s only laborious +cheating. But I’ve got an idea! It’s an old idea—I thought of +years ago, but it came back to me. Look here! Why should I fence about with +you? I believe the time has come for flying to be possible. Real flying!” +</p> + +<p> +“Flying!” +</p> + +<p> +I stuck to that, and it helped me through the worst time in my life. My uncle, +after some half-hearted resistance and a talk with my aunt, behaved like the +father of a spoilt son. He fixed up an arrangement that gave me capital to play +with, released me from too constant a solicitude for the newer business +developments—this was in what I may call the later Moggs period of our +enterprises—and I went to work at once with grim intensity. +</p> + +<p> +But I will tell of my soaring and flying machines in the proper place. +I’ve been leaving the story of my uncle altogether too long. I wanted +merely to tell how it was I took to this work. I took to these experiments +after I had sought something that Marion in some indefinable way had seemed to +promise. I toiled and forgot myself for a time, and did many things. Science +too has been something of an irresponsive mistress since, though I’ve +served her better than I served Marion. But at the time Science, with her +order, her inhuman distance, yet steely certainties, saved me from despair. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I have still to fly; but incidentally I have invented the lightest +engines in the world. +</p> + +<p> +I am trying to tell of all the things that happened to me. It’s hard +enough simply to get it put down in the remotest degree right. But this is a +novel, not a treatise. Don’t imagine that I am coming presently to any +sort of solution of my difficulties. Here among my drawings and hammerings +<i>now</i>, I still question unanswering problems. All my life has been at +bottom, <i>seeking</i>, disbelieving always, dissatisfied always with the thing +seen and the thing believed, seeking something in toil, in force, in danger, +something whose name and nature I do not clearly understand, something +beautiful, worshipful, enduring, mine profoundly and fundamentally, and the +utter redemption of myself; I don’t know—all I can tell is that it +is something I have ever failed to find. +</p> + +<h4>XI</h4> + +<p> +But before I finish this chapter and book altogether and go on with the great +adventure of my uncle’s career. I may perhaps tell what else remains to +tell of Marion and Effie, and then for a time set my private life behind me. +</p> + +<p> +For a time Marion and I corresponded with some regularity, writing friendly but +rather uninforming letters about small business things. The clumsy process of +divorce completed itself. +</p> + +<p> +She left the house at Ealing and went into the country with her aunt and +parents, taking a small farm near Lewes in Sussex. She put up glass, she put in +heat for her father, happy man! and spoke of figs and peaches. The thing seemed +to promise well throughout a spring and summer, but the Sussex winter after +London was too much for the Ramboats. They got very muddy and dull; Mr. Ramboat +killed a cow by improper feeding, and that disheartened them all. A twelvemonth +saw the enterprise in difficulties. I had to help her out of this, and then +they returned to London and she went into partnership with Smithie at +Streatham, and ran a business that was intimated on the firm’s stationery +as “Robes.” The parents and aunt were stowed away in a cottage +somewhere. After that the letters became infrequent. But in one I remember a +postscript that had a little stab of our old intimacy: “Poor old Miggles +is dead.” +</p> + +<p> +Nearly eight years slipped by. I grew up. I grew in experience, in capacity, +until I was fully a man, but with many new interests, living on a larger scale +in a wider world than I could have dreamt of in my Marion days. Her letters +become rare and insignificant. At last came a gap of silence that made me +curious. For eighteen months or more I had nothing from Marion save her +quarterly receipts through the bank. Then I damned at Smithie, and wrote a card +to Marion. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Marion,” I said, “how goes it?” +</p> + +<p> +She astonished me tremendously by telling me she had married +again—“a Mr. Wachorn, a leading agent in the paper-pattern +trade.” But she still wrote on the Ponderevo and Smith (Robes) notepaper, +from the Ponderevo and Smith address. +</p> + +<p> +And that, except for a little difference of opinion about the continuance of +alimony which gave me some passages of anger, and the use of my name by the +firm, which also annoyed me, is the end of Marion’s history for me, and +she vanishes out of this story. I do not know where she is or what she is +doing. I do not know whether she is alive or dead. It seems to me utterly +grotesque that two people who have stood so close to one another as she and I +should be so separated, but so it is between us. +</p> + +<p> +Effie, too, I have parted from, though I still see her at times. Between us +there was never any intention of marriage nor intimacy of soul. She had a +sudden, fierce, hot-blooded passion for me and I for her, but I was not her +first lover nor her last. She was in another world from Marion. She had a +queer, delightful nature; I’ve no memory of ever seeing her sullen or +malicious. She was—indeed she was magnificently—eupeptic. That, I +think, was the central secret of her agreeableness, and, moreover, that she was +infinitely kind-hearted. I helped her at last into an opening she coveted, and +she amazed me by a sudden display of business capacity. She has now a +typewriting bureau in Riffle’s Inn, and she runs it with a brisk vigour +and considerable success, albeit a certain plumpness has overtaken her. And she +still loves her kind. She married a year or so ago a boy half her age—a +wretch of a poet, a wretched poet, and given to drugs, a thing with lank fair +hair always getting into his blue eyes, and limp legs. She did it, she said, +because he needed nursing.... +</p> + +<p> +But enough of this disaster of my marriage and of my early love affairs; I have +told all that is needed for my picture to explain how I came to take up +aeroplane experiments and engineering science; let me get back to my essential +story, to Tono-Bungay and my uncle’s promotions and to the vision of the +world these things have given me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="book03"></a>BOOK THE THIRD<br /> +THE GREAT DAYS OF TONO-BUNGAY</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +THE HARDINGHAM HOTEL, AND HOW WE BECAME BIG PEOPLE</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +But now that I resume the main line of my story it may be well to describe the +personal appearance of my uncle as I remember him during those magnificent +years that followed his passage from trade to finance. The little man plumped +up very considerably during the creation of the Tono-Bungay property, but with +the increasing excitements that followed that first flotation came dyspepsia +and a certain flabbiness and falling away. His abdomen—if the reader will +pardon my taking his features in the order of their value—had at first a +nice full roundness, but afterwards it lost tone without, however, losing size. +He always went as though he was proud of it and would make as much of it as +possible. To the last his movements remained quick and sudden, his short firm +legs, as he walked, seemed to twinkle rather than display the scissors-stride +of common humanity, and he never seemed to have knees, but instead, a dispersed +flexibility of limb. +</p> + +<p> +There was, I seem to remember, a secular intensification of his features; his +nose developed character, became aggressive, stuck out at the world more and +more; the obliquity of his mouth, I think, increased. From the face that +returns to my memory projects a long cigar that is sometimes cocked jauntily up +from the higher corner, that sometimes droops from the lower;—it was as +eloquent as a dog’s tail, and he removed it only for the more emphatic +modes of speech. He assumed a broad black ribbon for his glasses, and wore them +more and more askew as time went on. His hair seemed to stiffen with success, +but towards the climax it thinned greatly over the crown, and he brushed it +hard back over his ears where, however, it stuck out fiercely. It always stuck +out fiercely over his forehead, up and forward. +</p> + +<p> +He adopted an urban style of dressing with the onset of Tono-Bungay and rarely +abandoned it. He preferred silk hats with ample rich brims, often a trifle +large for him by modern ideas, and he wore them at various angles to his axis; +his taste in trouserings was towards fairly emphatic stripes and his trouser +cut was neat; he liked his frock-coat long and full, although that seemed to +shorten him. He displayed a number of valuable rings, and I remember one upon +his left little finger with a large red stone bearing Gnostic symbols. +“Clever chaps, those Gnostics, George,” he told me. “Means a +lot. Lucky!” He never had any but a black mohair watch-chair. In the +country he affected grey and a large grey cloth top-hat, except when motoring; +then he would have a brown deer-stalker cap and a fur suit of esquimaux cut +with a sort of boot-end to the trousers. Of an evening he would wear white +waistcoats and plain gold studs. He hated diamonds. “Flashy,” he +said they were. “Might as well wear—an income tax-receipt. All very +well for Park Lane. Unsold stock. Not my style. Sober financier, George.” +</p> + +<p> +So much for his visible presence. For a time it was very familiar to the world, +for at the crest of the boom he allowed quite a number of photographs and at +least one pencil sketch to be published in the sixpenny papers. +</p> + +<p> +His voice declined during those years from his early tenor to a flat rich +quality of sound that my knowledge of music is inadequate to describe. His +Zzz-ing inrush of air became less frequent as he ripened, but returned in +moments of excitement. Throughout his career, in spite of his increasing and at +last astounding opulence, his more intimate habits remained as simple as they +had been at Wimblehurst. He would never avail himself of the services of a +valet; at the very climax of his greatness his trousers were folded by a +housemaid and his shoulders brushed as he left his house or hotel. He became +wary about breakfast as life advanced, and at one time talked much of Dr. Haig +and uric acid. But for other meals he remained reasonably omnivorous. He was +something of a gastronome, and would eat anything he particularly liked in an +audible manner, and perspire upon his forehead. He was a studiously moderate +drinker—except when the spirit of some public banquet or some great +occasion caught him and bore him beyond his wariness—there he would, as +it were, drink inadvertently and become flushed and talkative—about +everything but his business projects. +</p> + +<p> +To make the portrait complete one wants to convey an effect of sudden, quick +bursts of movement like the jumps of a Chinese-cracker to indicate that his +pose whatever it is, has been preceded and will be followed by a rush. If I +were painting him, I should certainly give him for a background that +distressed, uneasy sky that was popular in the eighteenth century, and at a +convenient distance a throbbing motor-car, very big and contemporary, a +secretary hurrying with papers, and an alert chauffeur. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the figure that created and directed the great property of +Tono-Bungay, and from the successful reconstruction of that company passed on +to a slow crescendo of magnificent creations and promotions until the whole +world of investors marveled. I have already I think, mentioned how, long before +we offered Tono Bungay to the public, we took over the English agency of +certain American specialties. To this was presently added our exploitation of +Moggs’ Domestic Soap, and so he took up the Domestic Convenience Campaign +that, coupled with his equatorial rotundity and a certain resolute convexity in +his bearings won my uncle his Napoleonic title. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +It illustrates the romantic element in modern commerce that my uncle met young +Moggs at a city dinner—I think it was the Bottle-makers’ +Company—when both were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety of +the occasion. This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a very typical +instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His people had taken +him about in his youth as the Ruskins took their John and fostered a passion +for history in him, and the actual management of the Moggs’ industry had +devolved upon a cousin and a junior partner. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moggs, being of a studious and refined disposition, had just +decided—after a careful search for a congenial subject in which he would +not be constantly reminded of soap—to devote himself to the History of +the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated responsibilities +upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs bewailed the uncongenial task +thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle offered to lighten his burden by a +partnership then and there. They even got to terms—extremely muzzy terms, +but terms nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +Each gentleman wrote the name and address of the other on his cuff, and they +separated in a mood of brotherly carelessness, and next morning neither seems +to have thought to rescue his shirt from the wash until it was too late. My +uncle made a painful struggle—it was one of my business mornings—to +recall name and particulars. +</p> + +<p> +“He was an aquarium-faced, long, blond sort of chap, George, with glasses +and a genteel accent,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I was puzzled. “Aquarium-faced?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know how they look at you. His stuff was soap, I’m pretty +nearly certain. And he had a name—And the thing was the straightest +Bit-of-All-right you ever. I was clear enough to spot that...” +</p> + +<p> +We went out at last with knitted brows, and wandered up into Finsbury seeking a +good, well-stocked looking grocer. We called first on a chemist for a +pick-me-up for my uncle, and then we found the shop we needed. +</p> + +<p> +“I want,” said my uncle, “half a pound of every sort of soap +you got. Yes, I want to take them now. Wait a moment, George.... Now what sort +of soap d’you call <i>that?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +At the third repetition of that question the young man said, +“Moggs’ Domestic.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” said my uncle. “You needn’t guess again. Come +along, George, let’s go to a telephone and get on to Moggs. Oh—the +order? Certainly. I confirm it. Send it all—send it all to the Bishop of +London; he’ll have some good use for it—(First-rate man, George, he +is—charities and all that)—and put it down to me, here’s a +card—Ponderevo—Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +Then we went on to Moggs and found him in a camel-hair dressing-jacket in a +luxurious bed, drinking China tea, and got the shape of everything but the +figures fixed by lunch time. +</p> + +<p> +Young Moggs enlarged my mind considerably; he was a sort of thing I +hadn’t met before; he seemed quite clean and well-informed and he assured +me to never read newspapers nor used soap in any form at all, “Delicate +skin,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No objection to our advertising you wide and free?” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“I draw the line at railway stations,” said Moggs, +“south-coast cliffs, theatre programmes, books by me and poetry +generally—scenery—oh!—and the <i>Mercure de +France</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll get along,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“So long as you don’t annoy me,” said Moggs, lighting a +cigarette, “you can make me as rich as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +We certainly made him no poorer. His was the first firm that was advertised by +a circumstantial history; we even got to illustrated magazine articles telling +of the quaint past of Moggs. We concocted Moggsiana. Trusting to our +partner’s preoccupation with the uncommercial aspects of life, we gave +graceful history—of Moggs the First, Moggs the Second, Moggs the Third, +and Moggs the Fourth. You must, unless you are very young, remember some of +them and our admirable block of a Georgian shop window. My uncle brought early +nineteenth-century memoirs, soaked himself in the style, and devised stories +about old Moggs the First and the Duke of Wellington, George the Third and the +soap dealer (“almost certainly old Moggs”). Very soon we had added +to the original Moggs’ Primrose several varieties of scented and +superfatted, a “special nurseries used in the household of the Duke of +Kent and for the old Queen in Infancy,” a plate powder, “the +Paragon,” and a knife powder. We roped in a good little second-rate +black-lead firm, and carried their origins back into the mists of antiquity. It +was my uncle’s own unaided idea that we should associate that commodity +with the Black Prince. He became industriously curious about the past of +black-lead. I remember his button-holing the president of the Pepys Society. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, is there any black-lead in Pepys? You +know—black-lead—for grates! <i>Or does he pass it over as a matter +of course?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He became in those days the terror of eminent historians. “Don’t +want your drum and trumpet history—no fear,” he used to say. +“Don’t want to know who was who’s mistress, and why so-and-so +devastated such a province; that’s bound to be all lies and upsy-down +anyhow. Not my affair. Nobody’s affair now. Chaps who did it didn’t +clearly know.... What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do +anything for Housemaid’s Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after +jousting, and was the Black Prince—you know the Black Prince—was he +enameled or painted, or what? I think myself, black-leaded—very +likely—like pipe-clay—but <i>did</i> they use blacking so +early?” +</p> + +<p> +So it came about that in designing and writing those Moggs’ Soap +Advertisements, that wrought a revolution in that department of literature, my +uncle was brought to realise not only the lost history, but also the enormous +field for invention and enterprise that lurked among the little articles, the +dustpans and mincers, the mousetraps and carpet-sweepers that fringe the shops +of the oilman and domestic ironmonger. He was recalled to one of the dreams of +his youth, to his conception of the Ponderevo Patent Flat that had been in his +mind so early as the days before I went to serve him at Wimblehurst. “The +Home, George,” he said, “wants straightening up. Silly muddle! +Things that get in the way. Got to organise it.” +</p> + +<p> +For a time he displayed something like the zeal of a genuine social reformer in +relation to these matters. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve got to bring the Home Up to Date? That’s my idee, +George. We got to make a civilised domestic machine out of these relics of +barbarism. I’m going to hunt up inventors, make a corner in +d’mestic ideas. Everything. Balls of string that won’t dissolve +into a tangle, and gum that won’t dry into horn. See? Then after +conveniences—beauty. Beauty, George! All these few things ought to be +made fit to look at; it’s your aunt’s idea, that. Beautiful +jam-pots! Get one of those new art chaps to design all the things they make +ugly now. Patent carpet-sweepers by these greenwood chaps, housemaid’s +boxes it’ll be a pleasure to fall over—rich coloured +house-flannels. Zzzz. Pails, f’rinstance. Hang ’em up on the walls +like warming-pans. All the polishes and things in such tins—you’ll +want to cuddle ’em, George! See the notion? ‘Sted of all the silly +ugly things we got.”... +</p> + +<p> +We had some magnificent visions; they so affected me that when I passed +ironmongers and oil-shops they seemed to me as full of promise as trees in late +winter, flushed with the effort to burst into leaf and flower.... And really we +did do much towards that very brightness these shops display. They were dingy +things in the eighties compared to what our efforts have made them now, grey +quiet displays. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I don’t intend to write down here the tortuous financial history of +Moggs’ Limited, which was our first development of Moggs and Sons; nor +will I tell very much of how from that we spread ourselves with a larger and +larger conception throughout the chandlery and minor ironmongery, how we became +agents for this little commodity, partners in that, got a tentacle round the +neck of a specialised manufacturer or so, secured a pull upon this or that +supply of raw material, and so prepared the way for our second flotation, +Domestic Utilities; “Do it,” they reordered it in the city. And +then came the reconstruction of Tono-Bungay, and then “Household +services” and the Boom! +</p> + +<p> +That sort of development is not to be told in detail in a novel. I have, +indeed, told much of it elsewhere. It is to be found set out at length, +painfully at length, in my uncle’s examination and mine in the bankruptcy +proceedings, and in my own various statements after his death. Some people know +everything in that story, some know it all too well, most do not want the +details, it is the story of a man of imagination among figures, and unless you +are prepared to collate columns of pounds, shillings and pence, compare dates +and check additions, you will find it very unmeaning and perplexing. And after +all, you wouldn’t find the early figures so much wrong as +<i>strained</i>. In the matter of Moggs and Do Ut, as in the first Tono-Bungay +promotion and in its reconstruction, we left the court by city standards +without a stain on our characters. The great amalgamation of Household Services +was my uncle’s first really big-scale enterprise and his first display of +bolder methods: for this we bought back Do Ut, Moggs (going strong with a seven +per cent. dividend) and acquired Skinnerton’s polishes, the Riffleshaw +properties and the Runcorn’s mincer and coffee-mill business. To that +Amalgamation I was really not a party; I left it to my uncle because I was then +beginning to get keen upon the soaring experiments I had taken on from the +results then to hand of Lilienthal, Pilcher and the Wright brothers. I was +developing a glider into a flyer. I meant to apply power to this glider as soon +as I could work out one or two residual problems affecting the longitudinal +stability. I knew that I had a sufficiently light motor in my own modification +of Bridger’s light turbine, but I knew too that until I had cured my +aeroplane of a tendency demanding constant alertness from me, a tendency to +jerk up its nose at unexpected moments and slide back upon me, the application +of an engine would be little short of suicide. +</p> + +<p> +But that I will tell about later. The point I was coming to was that I did not +realise until after the crash how recklessly my uncle had kept his promise of +paying a dividend of over eight per cent. on the ordinary shares of that hugely +over-capitalised enterprise, Household Services. +</p> + +<p> +I drifted out of business affairs into my research much more than either I or +my uncle had contemplated. Finance was much less to my taste than the +organisation of the Tono-Bungay factory. In the new field of enterprise there +was a great deal of bluffing and gambling, of taking chances and concealing +material facts—and these are hateful things to the scientific type of +mind. It wasn’t fear I felt so much as an uneasy inaccuracy. I +didn’t realise dangers, I simply disliked the sloppy, relaxing quality of +this new sort of work. I was at last constantly making excuses not to come up +to him in London. The latter part of his business career recedes therefore +beyond the circle of any particular life. I lived more or less with him; I +talked, I advised, I helped him at times to fight his Sunday crowd at Crest +Hill, but I did not follow nor guide him. From the Do Ut time onward he rushed +up the financial world like a bubble in water and left me like some busy +water-thing down below in the deeps. +</p> + +<p> +Anyhow, he was an immense success. The public was, I think, particularly +attracted by the homely familiarity of his field of work—you never lost +sight of your investment they felt, with the name on the house-flannel and +shaving-strop—and its allegiance was secured by the Egyptian solidity of +his apparent results. Tono-Bungay, after its reconstruction, paid thirteen, +Moggs seven, Domestic Utilities had been a safe-looking nine; here was +Household Services with eight; on such a showing he had merely to buy and sell +Roeburn’s Antiseptic fluid, Razor soaks and Bath crystals in three weeks +to clear twenty thousand pounds. +</p> + +<p> +I do think that as a matter of fact Roeburn’s was good value at the price +at which he gave it to the public, at least until it was strained by +ill-conserved advertisement. It was a period of expansion and confidence; much +money was seeking investment and “Industrials” were the fashion. +Prices were rising all round. There remained little more for my uncle to do +therefore, in his climb to the high unstable crest of Financial Greatness but, +as he said, to “grasp the cosmic oyster, George, while it gaped,” +which, being translated, meant for him to buy respectable businesses +confidently and courageously at the vendor’s estimate, add thirty or +forty thousand to the price and sell them again. His sole difficulty indeed was +the tactful management of the load of shares that each of these transactions +left upon his hands. But I thought so little of these later things that I never +fully appreciated the peculiar inconveniences of that until it was too late to +help him. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +When I think of my uncle near the days of his Great Boom and in connection with +the actualities of his enterprises, I think of him as I used to see him in the +suite of rooms he occupied in the Hardingham Hotel, seated at a great old oak +writing-table, smoking, drinking, and incoherently busy; that was his typical +financial aspect—our evenings, our mornings, our holidays, our motor-car +expeditions, Lady Grove and Crest Hill belong to an altogether different set of +memories. +</p> + +<p> +These rooms in the Hardingham were a string of apartments along one handsome +thick-carpeted corridor. All the doors upon the corridor were locked except the +first; and my uncle’s bedroom, breakfast-room and private sanctum were +the least accessible and served by an entrance from the adjacent passage, which +he also used at times as a means of escape from importunate callers. The most +eternal room was a general waiting-room and very business-like in quality; it +had one or two uneasy sofas, a number of chairs, a green baize table, and a +collection of the very best Moggs and Tone posters: and the plush carpets +normal to the Hardingham had been replaced by a grey-green cork linoleum; Here +I would always find a remarkable miscellany of people presided over by a +peculiarly faithful and ferocious looking commissioner, Ropper, who guarded the +door that led a step nearer my uncle. Usually there would be a parson or so, +and one or two widows; hairy, eyeglassy, middle-aged gentlemen, some of them +looking singularly like Edward Ponderevos who hadn’t come off, a variety +of young and youngish men more or less attractively dressed, some with papers +protruding from their pockets, others with their papers decently concealed. And +wonderful, incidental, frowsy people. +</p> + +<p> +All these persons maintained a practically hopeless siege—sometimes for +weeks together; they had better have stayed at home. Next came a room full of +people who had some sort of appointment, and here one would find smart-looking +people, brilliantly dressed, nervous women hiding behind magazines, +nonconformist divines, clergy in gaiters, real business men, these latter for +the most part gentlemen in admirable morning dress who stood up and scrutinised +my uncle’s taste in water colours manfully and sometimes by the hour +together. Young men again were here of various social origins, young Americans, +treasonable clerks from other concerns, university young men, keen-looking, +most of them, resolute, reserved, but on a sort of hair trigger, ready at any +moment to be most voluble, most persuasive. +</p> + +<p> +This room had a window, too, looking out into the hotel courtyard with its +fern-set fountains and mosaic pavement, and the young men would stand against +this and sometimes even mutter. One day I heard one repeating in all urgent +whisper as I passed “But you don’t quite see, Mr. Ponderevo, the +full advantages, the <i>full</i> advantages—” I met his eye and he +was embarrassed. +</p> + +<p> +Then came a room with a couple of secretaries—no typewriters, because my +uncle hated the clatter—and a casual person or two sitting about, +projectors whose projects were being entertained. Here and in a further room +nearer the private apartments, my uncle’s correspondence underwent an +exhaustive process of pruning and digestion before it reached him. Then the two +little rooms in which my uncle talked; my magic uncle who had got the investing +public—to whom all things were possible. As one came in we would find him +squatting with his cigar up and an expression of dubious beatitude upon his +face, while some one urged him to grow still richer by this or that. +</p> + +<p> +“That’ju, George?” he used to say. “Come in. +Here’s a thing. Tell him—Mister—over again. Have a drink, +George? No! Wise man! Liss’n.” +</p> + +<p> +I was always ready to listen. All sorts of financial marvels came out of the +Hardingham, more particularly during my uncle’s last great flurry, but +they were nothing to the projects that passed in. It was the little brown and +gold room he sat in usually. He had had it redecorated by Bordingly and half a +dozen Sussex pictures by Webster hung about it. Latterly he wore a velveteen +jacket of a golden-brown colour in this apartment that I think over-emphasised +its esthetic intention, and he also added some gross Chinese bronzes. +</p> + +<p> +He was, on the whole, a very happy man throughout all that wildly enterprising +time. He made and, as I shall tell in its place, spent great sums of money. He +was constantly in violent motion, constantly stimulated mentally and physically +and rarely tired. About him was an atmosphere of immense deference much of his +waking life was triumphal and all his dreams. I doubt if he had any +dissatisfaction with himself at all until the crash bore him down. Things must +have gone very rapidly with him.... I think he must have been very happy. +</p> + +<p> +As I sit here writing about all these things, jerking down notes and throwing +them aside in my attempt to give some literary form to the tale of our +promotions, the marvel of it all comes to me as if it came for the first time +the supreme unreason of it. At the climax of his Boom, my uncle at the most +sparing estimate must have possessed in substance and credit about two million +pounds’-worth of property to set off against his vague colossal +liabilities, and from first to last he must have had a controlling influence in +the direction of nearly thirty millions. +</p> + +<p> +This irrational muddle of a community in which we live gave him that, paid him +at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling it lies. For he +created nothing, he invented nothing, he economised nothing. I cannot claim +that a single one of the great businesses we organised added any real value to +human life at all. Several like Tono-Bungay were unmitigated frauds by any +honest standard, the giving of nothing coated in advertisements for money. And +the things the Hardingham gave out, I repeat, were nothing to the things that +came in. I think of the long procession of people who sat down before us and +propounded this and that. Now it was a device for selling bread under a fancy +name and so escaping the laws as to weight—this was afterwards floated as +the Decorticated Health-Bread Company and bumped against the law—now it +was a new scheme for still more strident advertisement, now it was a story of +unsuspected deposits of minerals, now a cheap and nasty substitute for this or +that common necessity, now the treachery of a too well-informed employee, +anxious to become our partner. It was all put to us tentatively, persuasively. +Sometimes one had a large pink blusterous person trying to carry us off our +feet by his pseudo-boyish frankness, now some dyspeptically yellow whisperer, +now some earnest, specially dressed youth with an eye-glass and a buttonhole, +now some homely-speaking, shrewd Manchester man or some Scotchman eager to be +very clear and full. +</p> + +<p> +Many came in couples or trios, often in tow of an explanatory solicitor. Some +were white and earnest, some flustered beyond measure at their opportunity. +Some of them begged and prayed to be taken up. My uncle chose what he wanted +and left the rest. He became very autocratic to these applicants. +</p> + +<p> +He felt he could make them, and they felt so too. He had but to say +“No!” and they faded out of existence.... He had become a sort of +vortex to which wealth flowed of its own accord. His possessions increased by +heaps; his shares, his leaseholds and mortgages and debentures. +</p> + +<p> +Behind his first-line things he found it necessary at last, and sanctioned by +all the precincts, to set up three general trading companies, the London and +African Investment Company, the British Traders’ Loan Company, and +Business Organisations Limited. This was in the culminating time when I had +least to do with affairs. I don’t say that with any desire to exculpate +myself; I admit I was a director of all three, and I will confess I was +willfully incurious in that capacity. Each of these companies ended its +financial year solvent by selling great holdings of shares to one or other of +its sisters, and paying a dividend out of the proceeds. I sat at the table and +agreed. That was our method of equilibrium at the iridescent climax of the +bubble. +</p> + +<p> +You perceive now, however, the nature of the services for which this fantastic +community have him unmanageable wealth and power and real respect. It was all a +monstrous payment for courageous fiction, a gratuity in return for the one +reality of human life—illusion. We gave them a feeling of hope and +profit; we sent a tidal wave of water and confidence into their stranded +affairs. “We mint Faith, George,” said my uncle one day. +“That’s what we do. And by Jove we got to keep minting! We been +making human confidence ever since I drove the first cork of +Tono-Bungay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Coining” would have been a better word than minting! And yet, you +know, in a sense he was right. Civilisation is possible only through +confidence, so that we can bank our money and go unarmed about the streets. The +bank reserve or a policeman keeping order in a jostling multitude of people, +are only slightly less impudent bluffs than my uncle’s prospectuses. They +couldn’t for a moment “make good” if the quarter of what they +guarantee was demanded of them. The whole of this modern mercantile investing +civilisation is indeed such stuff as dreams are made of. A mass of people +swelters and toils, great railway systems grow, cities arise to the skies and +spread wide and far, mines are opened, factories hum, foundries roar, ships +plough the seas, countries are settled; about this busy striving world the rich +owners go, controlling all, enjoying all, confident and creating the confidence +that draws us all together into a reluctant, nearly unconscious brotherhood. I +wonder and plan my engines. The flags flutter, the crowds cheer, the +legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me indeed at times that all this present +commercial civilisation is no more than my poor uncle’s career writ +large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances; that its arithmetic is just +as unsound, its dividends as ill-advised, its ultimate aim as vague and +forgotten; that it all drifts on perhaps to some tremendous parallel to his +individual disaster... +</p> + +<p> +Well, so it was we Boomed, and for four years and a half we lived a life of +mingled substance and moonshine. Until our particular unsoundness overtook us +we went about in the most magnificent of motor-cars upon tangible high roads, +made ourselves conspicuous and stately in splendid houses, ate sumptuously and +had a perpetual stream of notes and money trickling into our pockets; hundreds +of thousands of men and women respected us, saluted us and gave us toil and +honour; I asked, and my worksheets rose, my aeroplanes swooped out of +nothingness to scare the downland pe-wits; my uncle waved his hand and Lady +Grove and all its associations of chivalry and ancient peace were his; waved +again, and architects were busy planning the great palace he never finished at +Crest Hill and an army of folkmen gathered to do his bidding, blue marble came +from Canada, and timber from New Zealand; and beneath it all, you know, there +was nothing but fictitious values as evanescent as rainbow gold. +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +I pass the Hardingham ever and again and glance aside through the great archway +at the fountain and the ferns, and think of those receding days when I was so +near the centre of our eddy of greed and enterprise. I see again my +uncle’s face, white and intent, and hear him discourse, hear him make +consciously Napoleonic decisions, “grip” his nettles, put his +“finger on the spot,” “bluff,” say “snap.” +He became particularly addicted to the last idiom. Towards the end every +conceivable act took the form of saying “snap!” +</p> + +<p> +The odd fish that came to us! And among others came Gordon-Nasmyth, that queer +blend of romance and illegality who was destined to drag me into the most +irrelevant adventure in my life the Mordet Island affair; and leave me, as they +say, with blood upon my hands. It is remarkable how little it troubles my +conscience and how much it stirs my imagination, that particular memory of the +life I took. The story of Mordet Island has been told in a government report +and told all wrong; there are still excellent reasons for leaving it wrong in +places, but the liveliest appeals of discretion forbid my leaving it out +altogether. +</p> + +<p> +I’ve still the vividest memory of Gordon-Nasmyth’s appearance in +the inner sanctum, a lank, sunburnt person in tweeds with a yellow-brown +hatchet face and one faded blue eye—the other was a closed and sunken +lid—and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible +story of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered on the +beach behind Mordet’s Island among white dead mangroves and the black +ooze of brackish water. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s quap?” said my uncle on the fourth repetition of the +word. +</p> + +<p> +“They call it quap, or quab, or quabb,” said Gordon-Nasmyth; +“but our relations weren’t friendly enough to get the accent +right.... +</p> + +<p> +“But there the stuff is for the taking. They don’t know about it. +Nobody knows about it. I got down to the damned place in a canoe alone. The +boys wouldn’t come. I pretended to be botanising.” ... +</p> + +<p> +To begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” he said when he first came in, shutting the door +rather carefully behind him as he spoke, “do you two men—yes or +no—want to put up six thousand—for—a clear good chance of +fifteen hundred per cent. on your money in a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re always getting chances like that,” said my uncle, +cocking his cigar offensively, wiping his glasses and tilting his chair back. +“We stick to a safe twenty.” +</p> + +<p> +Gordon-Nasmyth’s quick temper showed in a slight stiffening of his +attitude. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you believe him,” said I, getting up before he could +reply. “You’re different, and I know your books. We’re very +glad you’ve come to us. Confound it, uncle! Its Gordon-Nasmyth! Sit down. +What is it? Minerals?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quap,” said Gordon-Nasmyth, fixing his eye on me, “in +heaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“In heaps,” said my uncle softly, with his glasses very oblique. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re only fit for the grocery,” said Gordon-Nasmyth +scornfully, sitting down and helping himself to one of my uncle’s cigars. +“I’m sorry I came. But, still, now I’m here.... And first as +to quap; quap, sir, is the most radio-active stuff in the world. That’s +quap! It’s a festering mass of earths and heavy metals, polonium, radium, +ythorium, thorium, carium, and new things, too. There’s a stuff called +Xk—provisionally. There they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting +sand. What it is, how it got made, I don’t know. It’s like as if +some young creator had been playing about there. There it lies in two heaps, +one small, one great, and the world for miles about it is blasted and scorched +and dead. You can have it for the getting. You’ve got to take +it—that’s all!” +</p> + +<p> +“That sounds all right,” said I. “Have you samples?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—<i>should</i> I? You can have anything—up to two +ounces.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is it?”... +</p> + +<p> +His blue eye smiled at me and scrutinised me. He smoked and was fragmentary for +a time, fending off my questions; then his story began to piece itself +together. He conjured up a vision of this strange forgotten kink in the +world’s littoral, of the long meandering channels that spread and +divaricate and spend their burden of mud and silt within the thunderbelt of +Atlantic surf, of the dense tangled vegetation that creeps into the shimmering +water with root and sucker. He gave a sense of heat and a perpetual reek of +vegetable decay, and told how at last comes a break among these things, an +arena fringed with bone-white dead trees, a sight of the hard-blue sea line +beyond the dazzling surf and a wide desolation of dirty shingle and mud, +bleached and scarred.... A little way off among charred dead weeds stands the +abandoned station,—abandoned because every man who stayed two months at +that station stayed to die, eaten up mysteriously like a leper with its +dismantled sheds and its decaying pier of wormrotten and oblique piles and +planks, still insecurely possible. +</p> + +<p> +And in the midst, two clumsy heaps shaped like the backs of hogs, one small, +one great, sticking out under a rib of rock that cuts the space +across,—quap! +</p> + +<p> +“There it is,” said Gordon-Nasmyth, “worth three pounds an +ounce, if it’s worth a penny; two great heaps of it, rotten stuff and +soft, ready to shovel and wheel, and you may get it by the ton!” +</p> + +<p> +“How did it get there?” +</p> + +<p> +“God knows! ... There it is—for the taking! In a country where you +mustn’t trade. In a country where the company waits for good kind men to +find it riches and then take ’em away from ’em. There you have +it—derelict.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you do any sort of deal?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re too damned stupid. You’ve got to go and take it. +That’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“They might catch you.” +</p> + +<p> +“They might, of course. But they’re not great at catching.” +</p> + +<p> +We went into the particulars of that difficulty. “They wouldn’t +catch me, because I’d sink first. Give me a yacht,” said +Gordon-Nasmyth; “that’s all I need.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if you get caught,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +I am inclined to think Gordon-Nasmyth imagined we would give him a cheque for +six thousand pounds on the strength of his talk. It was very good talk, but we +didn’t do that. I stipulated for samples of his stuff for analysis, and +he consented—reluctantly. +</p> + +<p> +I think, on the whole, he would rather I didn’t examine samples. He made +a motion pocketwards, that gave us an invincible persuasion that he had a +sample upon him, and that at the last instant he decided not to produce it +prematurely. +</p> + +<p> +There was evidently a curious strain of secretiveness in him. He didn’t +like to give us samples, and he wouldn’t indicate within three hundred +miles the position of this Mordet Island of his. He had it clear in his mind +that he had a secret of immense value, and he had no idea at all of just how +far he ought to go with business people. And so presently, to gain time for +these hesitations of his, he began to talk of other things. He talked very +well. He talked of the Dutch East Indies and of the Congo, of Portuguese East +Africa and Paraguay, of Malays and rich Chinese merchants, Dyaks and negroes +and the spread of the Mahometan world in Africa to-day. And all this time he +was trying to judge if we were good enough to trust with his adventure. Our +cosy inner office became a little place, and all our business cold and lifeless +exploits beside his glimpses of strange minglings of men, of slayings unavenged +and curious customs, of trade where no writs run, and the dark treacheries of +eastern ports and uncharted channels. +</p> + +<p> +We had neither of us gone abroad except for a few vulgar raids on Paris; our +world was England, are the places of origin of half the raw material of the +goods we sold had seemed to us as remote as fairyland or the forest of Arden. +But Gordon-Nasmyth made it so real and intimate for us that afternoon—for +me, at any rate—that it seemed like something seen and forgotten and now +again remembered. +</p> + +<p> +And in the end he produced his sample, a little lump of muddy clay speckled +with brownish grains, in a glass bottle wrapped about with lead and +flannel—red flannel it was, I remember—a hue which is, I know, +popularly supposed to double all the mystical efficacies of flannel. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t carry it about on you,” said Gordon-Nasmyth. “It +makes a sore.” +</p> + +<p> +I took the stuff to Thorold, and Thorold had the exquisite agony of discovering +two new elements in what was then a confidential analysis. He has christened +them and published since, but at the time Gordon-Nasmyth wouldn’t hear +for a moment of our publication of any facts at all; indeed, he flew into a +violent passion and abused me mercilessly even for showing the stuff to +Thorold. “I thought you were going to analyse it yourself,” he said +with the touching persuasion of the layman that a scientific man knows and +practises at the sciences. +</p> + +<p> +I made some commercial inquiries, and there seemed even then much truth in +Gordon-Nasmyth’s estimate of the value of the stuff. It was before the +days of Capern’s discovery of the value of canadium and his use of it in +the Capern filament, but the cerium and thorium alone were worth the money he +extracted for the gas-mantles then in vogue. There were, however, doubts. +Indeed, there were numerous doubts. What were the limits of the gas-mantle +trade? How much thorium, not to speak of cerium, could they take at a maximum. +Suppose that quantity was high enough to justify our shipload, came doubts in +another quarter. Were the heaps up to sample? Were they as big as he said? Was +Gordon-Nasmyth—imaginative? And if these values held, could we after all +get the stuff? It wasn’t ours. It was on forbidden ground. You see, there +were doubts of every grade and class in the way of this adventure. +</p> + +<p> +We went some way, nevertheless, in the discussion of his project, though I +think we tried his patience. Then suddenly he vanished from London, and I saw +no more of him for a year and a half. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle said that was what he had expected, and when at last Gordon-Nasmyth +reappeared and mentioned in an incidental way that he had been to Paraguay on +private (and we guessed passionate) affairs, the business of the +“quap” expedition had to be begun again at the beginning. My uncle +was disposed to be altogether sceptical, but I wasn’t so decided. I think +I was drawn by its picturesque aspects. But we neither of us dreamt of touching +it seriously until Capern’s discovery. +</p> + +<p> +Nasmyth’s story had laid hold of my imagination like one small, intense +picture of tropical sunshine hung on a wall of grey business affairs. I kept it +going during Gordon-Nasmyth’s intermittent appearances in England. Every +now and then he and I would meet and reinforce its effect. We would lunch in +London, or he would cone to see my gliders at Crest Hill, and make new projects +for getting at those heaps again now with me, now alone. +</p> + +<p> +At times they became a sort of fairy-story with us, an imaginative exercise. +And there came Capern’s discovery of what he called the ideal filament +and with it an altogether less problematical quality about the business side of +quap. For the ideal filament needed five per cent. of canadium, and canadium +was known to the world only as a newly separated constituent of a variety of +the rare mineral rutile. But to Thorold it was better known as an element in a +mysterious sample brought to him by me, and to me it was known as one of the +elements in quap. I told my uncle, and we jumped on to the process at once. We +found that Gordon-Nasmyth, still unaware of the altered value of the stuff, and +still thinking of the experimental prices of radium and the rarity value of +cerium, had got hold of a cousin named Pollack, made some extraordinary +transaction about his life insurance policy, and was buying a brig. We put in, +put down three thousand pounds, and forthwith the life insurance transaction +and the Pollack side of this finance vanished into thin air, leaving Pollack, I +regret to say, in the brig and in the secret—except so far as canadium +and the filament went—as residuum. We discussed earnestly whether we +should charter a steamer or go on with the brig, but we decided on the brig as +a less conspicuous instrument for an enterprise that was after all, to put it +plainly, stealing. +</p> + +<p> +But that was one of our last enterprises before our great crisis, and I will +tell of it in its place. +</p> + +<p> +So it was quap came into our affairs, came in as a fairy-tale and became real. +More and more real it grew until at last it was real, until at last I saw with +my eyes the heaps my imagination had seen for so long, and felt between my +fingers again that half-gritty, half soft texture of quap, like sanded +moist-sugar mixed with clay in which there stirs something— +</p> + +<p> +One must feel it to understand. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +All sorts of things came to the Hardingham and offered themselves to my uncle. +Gordon-Nasmyth stands but only because he played a part at last in the crisis +of our fortunes. So much came to us that it seemed to me at times as though the +whole world of human affairs was ready to prostitute itself to our real and +imaginary millions. As I look back, I am still dazzled and incredulous to think +of the quality of our opportunities. +</p> + +<p> +We did the most extraordinary things; things that it seems absurd to me to +leave to any casual man of wealth and enterprise who cares to do them. I had +some amazing perceptions of just how modern thought and the supply of fact to +the general mind may be controlled by money. Among other things that my uncle +offered for, he tried very hard to buy the <i>British Medical Journal</i> and +the <i>Lancet</i>, and run them on what he called modern lines, and when they +resisted him he talked very vigorously for a time of organising a rival +enterprise. That was a very magnificent idea indeed in its way; it would have +given a tremendous advantage in the handling of innumerable specialties and +indeed I scarcely know how far it would not have put the medical profession in +our grip. It still amazes me—I shall die amazed—that such a thing +can be possible in the modern state. If my uncle failed to bring the thing off, +some one else may succeed. But I doubt, even if he had got both these weeklies, +whether his peculiar style would have suited them. The change of purpose would +have shown. He would have found it difficult to keep up their dignity. +</p> + +<p> +He certainly did not keep up the dignity of the <i>Sacred Grove</i>, an +important critical organ which he acquired one day—by saying +“snap”—for eight hundred pounds. He got it “lock, stock +and barrel”—under one or other of which three aspects the editor +was included. Even at that price it didn’t pay. If you are a literary +person you will remember the bright new cover he gave that representative organ +of British intellectual culture, and how his sound business instincts jarred +with the exalted pretensions of a vanishing age. One old wrapper I discovered +the other day runs:— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +“THE SACRED GROVE.” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>A Weekly Magazine of Art, Philosophy, Science and Belles Lettres.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center"> +H<small>AVE YOU A</small> N<small>ASTY</small> T<small>ASTE IN YOUR</small> +M<small>OUTH</small>?<br /> +I<small>T IS</small> L<small>IVER</small>. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +Y<small>OU NEED</small> ONE T<small>WENTY</small>-T<small>HREE</small> +P<small>ILL</small>.<br /> +(J<small>UST ONE</small>.)<br /> +N<small>OT A</small> D<small>RUG BUT A</small> L<small>IVE</small> +A<small>MERICAN</small> R<small>EMEDY</small>. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center"> +CONTENTS. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +A Hitherto Unpublished Letter from Walter Pater.<br /> +Charlotte Brontë’s Maternal Great Aunt.<br /> +A New Catholic History of England.<br /> +The Genius of Shakespeare.<br /> +Correspondence:—The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive; +“Commence,” or “Begin;” Claverhouse; Socialism and the +Individual; The Dignity of Letters.<br /> +Folk-lore Gossip.<br /> +The Stage; the Paradox of Acting.<br /> +Travel Biography, Verse, Fiction, etc. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +T<small>HE</small> B<small>EST</small> P<small>ILL IN THE</small> W<small>ORLD +FOR AN</small> I<small>RREGULAR</small> L<small>IVER</small> +</p> + +<p> +I suppose it is some lingering traces of the Bladesover tradition to me that +makes this combination of letters and pills seem so incongruous, just as I +suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish +imagination that at bottom our State should be wise, sane and dignified, that +makes me think a country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or +indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private enterprise and +open to the advances of any purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition. +These are ideal conceptions of mine. +</p> + +<p> +As a matter of fact, nothing would be more entirely natural and representative +of the relations of learning, thought and the economic situation in the world +at the present time than this cover of the <i>Sacred Grove</i>—the quiet +conservatism of the one element embedded in the aggressive brilliance of the +other; the contrasted notes of bold physiological experiment and extreme mental +immobility. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +There comes back, too, among these Hardingham memories, an impression of a +drizzling November day, and how we looked out of the windows upon a procession +of the London unemployed. +</p> + +<p> +It was like looking down a well into some momentarily revealed nether world. +Some thousands of needy ineffectual men had been raked together to trail their +spiritless misery through the West Eire with an appeal that was also in its way +a weak and insubstantial threat: “It is Work we need, not Charity.” +</p> + +<p> +There they were, half-phantom through the fog, a silent, foot-dragging, +interminable, grey procession. They carried wet, dirty banners, they rattled +boxes for pence; these men who had not said “snap” in the right +place, the men who had “snapped” too eagerly, the men who had never +said “snap,” the men who had never had a chance of saying +“snap.” A shambling, shameful stream they made, oozing along the +street, the gutter waste of competitive civilisation. And we stood high out of +it all, as high as if we looked godlike from another world, standing in a room +beautifully lit and furnished, skillfully warmed, filled with costly things. +</p> + +<p> +“There,” thought I, “but for the grace of God, go George and +Edward Ponderevo.” +</p> + +<p> +But my uncle’s thoughts ran in a different channel, and he made that +vision the test of a spirited but inconclusive harangue upon Tariff Reform. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +OUR PROGRESS FROM CAMDEN TOWN TO CREST HILL</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +So far my history of my aunt and uncle has dealt chiefly with his industrial +and financial exploits. But side by side with that history of inflation from +the infinitesimal to the immense is another development, the change year by +year from the shabby impecuniosity of the Camden Town lodging to the lavish +munificence of the Crest Hill marble staircase and my aunt’s golden bed, +the bed that was facsimiled from Fontainebleau. And the odd thing is that as I +come to this nearer part of my story I find it much more difficult to tell than +the clear little perspective memories of the earlier days. Impressions crowd +upon one another and overlap one another; I was presently to fall in love +again, to be seized by a passion to which I still faintly respond, a passion +that still clouds my mind. I came and went between Ealing and my aunt and +uncle, and presently between Effie and clubland, and then between business and +a life of research that became far more continuous, infinitely more consecutive +and memorable than any of these other sets of experiences. I didn’t +witness a regular social progress therefore; my aunt and uncle went up in the +world, so far as I was concerned, as if they were displayed by an early +cinematograph, with little jumps and flickers. +</p> + +<p> +As I recall this side of our life, the figure of my round-eyes, button-nosed, +pink-and-white Aunt Susan tends always to the central position. We drove the +car and sustained the car, she sat in it with a magnificent variety of headgear +poised upon her delicate neck, and always with that faint ghost of a lisp no +misspelling can render—commented on and illuminated the new aspects. +</p> + +<p> +I’ve already sketched the little home behind the Wimblehurst +chemist’s shop, the lodging near the Cobden statue, and the apartments in +Gower Street. Thence my aunt and uncle went into a flat in Redgauntlet +Mansions. There they lived when I married. It was a compact flat, with very +little for a woman to do in it In those days my aunt, I think, used to find the +time heavy upon her hands, and so she took to books and reading, and after a +time even to going to lectures in the afternoon. I began to find unexpected +books upon her table: sociological books, travels, Shaw’s plays. +“Hullo!” I said, at the sight of some volume of the latter. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m keeping a mind, George,” she explained. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Keeping a mind. Dogs I never cared for. It’s been a toss-up +between setting up a mind and setting up a soul. It’s jolly lucky for Him +and you it’s a mind. I’ve joined the London Library, and I’m +going in for the Royal Institution and every blessed lecture that comes along +next winter. You’d better look out.”... +</p> + +<p> +And I remember her coming in late one evening with a note-book in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Where ya been, Susan?” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“Birkbeck—Physiology. I’m getting on.” She sat down and +took off her gloves. “You’re just glass to me,” she sighed, +and then in a note of grave reproach: “You old <i>Package!</i> I had no +idea! The Things you’ve kept from me!” +</p> + +<p> +Presently they were setting; up the house at Beckengham, and my aunt +intermitted her intellectual activities. The house at Beckengham was something +of an enterprise for them at that time, a reasonably large place by the +standards of the early years of Tono-Bungay. It was a big, rather gaunt villa, +with a conservatory and a shrubbery, a tennis-lawn, a quite considerable +vegetable garden, and a small disused coach-house. I had some glimpses of the +excitements of its inauguration, but not many because of the estrangement +between my aunt and Marion. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt went into that house with considerable zest, and my uncle distinguished +himself by the thoroughness with which he did the repainting and replumbing. He +had all the drains up and most of the garden with them, and stood +administrative on heaps—administrating whisky to the workmen. I found him +there one day, most Napoleonic, on a little Elba of dirt, in an atmosphere that +defies print. He also, I remember, chose what he considered cheerful contrasts +of colours for the painting of the woodwork. This exasperated my aunt +extremely—she called him a “Pestilential old Splosher” with +an unusual note of earnestness—and he also enraged her into novelties of +abuse by giving each bedroom the name of some favourite hero—Cliff, +Napoleon, Cæsar, and so forth—and having it painted on the door in gilt +letters on a black label. “Martin Luther” was kept for me. Only her +respect for domestic discipline, she said, prevented her retaliating with +“Old Pondo” on the housemaid’s cupboard. +</p> + +<p> +Also he went and ordered one of the completest sets of garden requisites I have +ever seen—and had them all painted a hard clear blue. My aunt got herself +large tins of a kindlier hued enamel and had everything secretly recoated, and +this done, she found great joy in the garden and became an ardent rose grower +and herbaceous borderer, leaving her Mind, indeed, to damp evenings and the +winter months. When I think of her at Beckenham, I always think first of her as +dressed in that blue cotton stuff she affected, with her arms in huge +gauntleted gardening gloves, a trowel in one hand and a small but no doubt +hardy and promising annual, limp and very young-looking and sheepish, in the +other. +</p> + +<p> +Beckenham, in the persons of a vicar, a doctor’s wife, and a large proud +lady called Hogberry, “called” on my uncle and aunt almost at once, +so soon in fact as the lawn was down again, and afterwards my aunt made friends +with a quiet gentlewoman next door, a propos of an overhanging cherry tree and +the need of repairing the party fence. So she resumed her place in society from +which she had fallen with the disaster of Wimblehurst. She made a partially +facetious study of the etiquette of her position, had cards engraved and +retaliated calls. And then she received a card for one of Mrs. Hogberry’s +At Homes, gave an old garden party herself, participated in a bazaar and sale +of work, and was really becoming quite cheerfully entangled in Beckenham +society when she was suddenly taken up by the roots again by my uncle and +transplanted to Chiselhurst. +</p> + +<p> +“Old Trek, George,” she said compactly, “Onward and +Up,” when I found her superintending the loading of two big furniture +vans. “Go up and say good-bye to ‘Martin Luther,’ and then +I’ll see what you can do to help me.” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I look into the jumbled stores of the middle distance of memory, and Beckenham +seems to me a quite transitory phase. But really they were there several years; +through nearly all my married life, in fact, and far longer than the year and +odd months we lived together at Wimblehurst. But the Wimblehurst time with them +is fuller in my memory by far then the Beckenham period. There comes back to me +with a quite considerable amount of detail the effect of that garden party of +my aunt’s and of a little social misbehaviour of which I was guilty on +that occasion. It’s like a scrap from another life. It’s all set in +what is for me a kind of cutaneous feeling, the feeling of rather ill-cut city +clothes, frock coat and grey trousers, and of a high collar and tie worn in +sunshine among flowers. I have still a quite vivid memory of the little +trapezoidal lawn, of the gathering, and particularly of the hats and feathers +of the gathering, of the parlour-maid and the blue tea-cups, and of the +magnificent presence of Mrs. Hogberry and of her clear, resonant voice. It was +a voice that would have gone with a garden party on a larger scale; it went +into adjacent premises; it included the gardener who was far up the vegetable +patch and technically out of play. The only other men were my aunt’s +doctor, two of the clergy, amiable contrasted men, and Mrs. Hogberry’s +imperfectly grown-up son, a youth just bursting into collar. The rest were +women, except for a young girl or so in a state of speechless good behaviour. +Marion also was there. +</p> + +<p> +Marion and I had arrived a little estranged, and I remember her as a silent +presence, a shadow across all that sunlit emptiness of intercourse. We had +embittered each other with one of those miserable little disputes that seemed +so unavoidable between us. She had, with the help of Smithie, dressed rather +elaborately for the occasion, and when she saw me prepared to accompany her in, +I think it was a grey suit, she protested that silk hat and frock coat were +imperative. I was recalcitrant, she quoted an illustrated paper showing a +garden party with the King present, and finally I capitulated—but after +my evil habit, resentfully.... Eh, dear! those old quarrels, how pitiful they +were, how trivial! And how sorrowful they are to recall! I think they grow more +sorrowful as I grow older, and all the small passionate reasons for our mutual +anger fade and fade out of memory. +</p> + +<p> +The impression that Beckenham company has left on my mind is one of a modest +unreality; they were all maintaining a front of unspecified social pretension, +and evading the display of the economic facts of the case. Most of the husbands +were “in business” off stage, it would have been outrageous to ask +what the business was—and the wives were giving their energies to +produce, with the assistance of novels and the illustrated magazines, a +moralised version of the afternoon life of the aristocratic class. They +hadn’t the intellectual or moral enterprise of the upper-class woman, +they had no political interests, they had no views about anything, and +consequently they were, I remember, extremely difficult to talk to. They all +sat about in the summer-house and in garden-chairs, and were very hatty and +ruffley and sunshady. Three ladies and the curate played croquet with a general +immense gravity, broken by occasional loud cries of feigned distress from the +curate. “Oh! Whacking me about again! Augh!” +</p> + +<p> +The dominant social fact that afternoon was Mrs. Hogberry; she took up a +certain position commanding the croquet and went on, as my aunt said to me in +an incidental aside, “like an old Roundabout.” She talked of the +way in which Beckenham society was getting mixed, and turned on to a touching +letter she had recently received from her former nurse at Little Gossdean. +Followed a loud account of Little Gossdean and how much she and her eight +sisters had been looked up to there. “My poor mother was quite a little +Queen there,” she said. “And such <i>nice</i> Common people! People +say the country labourers are getting disrespectful nowadays. It isn’t +so—not if they’re properly treated. Here of course in Beckenham +it’s different. I won’t call the people we get here a +Poor—they’re certainly not a proper Poor. They’re Masses. I +always tell Mr. Bugshoot they’re Masses, and ought to be treated as +such.”... +</p> + +<p> +Dim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to her.... +</p> + +<p> +I was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall +off into a <i>tête-à-tête</i> with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. +Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, +either by way of humour or necessity. +</p> + +<p> +That must have been one of my earliest essays in the art of polite +conversation, and I remember that I began by criticising the local railway +service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs. Mumble said in a +distinctly bright and encouraging way that she feared I was a very +“frivolous” person. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder now what it was I said that was “frivolous.” +</p> + +<p> +I don’t know what happened to end that conversation, or if it had an end. +I remember talking to one of the clergy for a time rather awkwardly, and being +given a sort of topographical history of Beckenham, which he assured me time +after time was “Quite an old place. <i>Quite</i> an old place.” As +though I had treated it as new and he meant to be very patient but very +convincing. Then we hung up in a distinct pause, and my aunt rescued me. +“George,” she said in a confidential undertone, “keep the pot +a-boiling.” And then audibly, “I say, will you both old trot about +with tea a bit?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only too delighted to <i>trot</i> for you, Mrs. Ponderevo,” said +the clergyman, becoming fearfully expert and in his elements; “only too +delighted.” +</p> + +<p> +I found we were near a rustic table, and that the housemaid was behind us in a +suitable position to catch us on the rebound with the tea things. +</p> + +<p> +“Trot!” repeated the clergyman to me, much amused; “excellent +expression!” And I just saved him from the tray as he turned about. +</p> + +<p> +We handed tea for a while.... +</p> + +<p> +“Give ’em cakes,” said my aunt, flushed, but well in hand. +“Helps ’em to talk, George. Always talk best after a little +nourishment. Like throwing a bit of turf down an old geyser.” +</p> + +<p> +She surveyed the gathering with a predominant blue eye and helped herself to +tea. +</p> + +<p> +“They keep on going stiff,” she said in an undertone.... +“I’ve done my best.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s been a huge success,” I said encouragingly. +</p> + +<p> +“That boy has had his legs crossed in that position and hasn’t +spoken for ten minutes. Stiffer and stiffer. Brittle. He’s beginning a +dry cough—always a bad sign, George.... Walk ’em about, shall +I?—rub their noses with snow?” +</p> + +<p> +Happily she didn’t. I got myself involved with the gentlewoman from next +door, a pensive, languid-looking little woman with a low voice, and fell +talking; our topic, Cats and Dogs, and which it was we liked best. +</p> + +<p> +“I always feel,” said the pensive little woman, “that +there’s something about a dog—A cat hasn’t got it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I found myself admitting with great enthusiasm, “there +is something. And yet again—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I know there’s something about a cat, too. But it isn’t +the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not quite the same,” I admitted; “but still it’s +something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! But such a different something!” +</p> + +<p> +“More sinuous.” +</p> + +<p> +“Much more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ever so much more.” +</p> + +<p> +“It makes all the difference, don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “<i>all</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +She glanced at me gravely and sighed a long, deeply felt +“<i>Yes</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +A long pause. +</p> + +<p> +The thing seemed to me to amount to a stale-mate. Fear came into my heart and +much perplexity. +</p> + +<p> +“The—er—Roses,” I said. I felt like a drowning man. +“Those roses—don’t you think they are—very beautiful +flowers?” +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they!” she agreed gently. “There seems to be +something in roses—something—I don’t know how to express +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Something,” I said helpfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “something. Isn’t there?” +</p> + +<p> +“So few people see it,” I said; “more’s the +pity!” +</p> + +<p> +She sighed and said again very softly, “<i>Yes</i>.”... +</p> + +<p> +There was another long pause. I looked at her and she was thinking dreamily. +The drowning sensation returned, the fear and enfeeblement. I perceived by a +sort of inspiration that her tea-cup was empty. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me take your cup,” I said abruptly, and, that secured, made +for the table by the summer-house. I had no intention then of deserting my +aunt. But close at hand the big French window of the drawing-room yawned +inviting and suggestive. I can feel all that temptation now, and particularly +the provocation of my collar. In an instant I was lost. I would—Just for +a moment! +</p> + +<p> +I dashed in, put down the cup on the keys of the grand piano and fled upstairs, +softly, swiftly, three steps at a time, to the sanctuary of my uncle’s +study, his snuggery. I arrived there breathless, convinced there was no return +for me. I was very glad and ashamed of myself, and desperate. By means of a +penknife I contrived to break open his cabinet of cigars, drew a chair to the +window, took off my coat, collar and tie, and remained smoking guiltily and +rebelliously, and peeping through the blind at the assembly on the lawn until +it was altogether gone.... +</p> + +<p> +The clergymen, I thought, were wonderful. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +A few such pictures of those early days at Beckenham stand out, and then I find +myself among the Chiselhurst memories. The Chiselhurst mansion had +“grounds” rather than a mere garden, and there was a +gardener’s cottage and a little lodge at the gate. The ascendant movement +was always far more in evidence there than at Beckenham. The velocity was +increasing. +</p> + +<p> +One night picks itself out as typical, as, in its way, marking an epoch. I was +there, I think, about some advertisement stuff, on some sort of business +anyhow, and my uncle and aunt had come back in a fly from a dinner at the +Runcorns. (Even there he was nibbling at Runcorn with the idea of our great +Amalgamation budding in his mind.) I got down there, I suppose, about eleven. I +found the two of them sitting in the study, my aunt on a chair-arm with a +whimsical pensiveness on her face, regarding my uncle, and he, much extended +and very rotund, in the low arm-chair drawn up to the fender. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, George,” said my uncle, after my first greetings. +“I just been saying: We aren’t Oh Fay!” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not Oh Fay! Socially!” +</p> + +<p> +“Old <i>Fly</i>, he means, George—French!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Didn’t think of French. One never knows where to have him. +What’s gone wrong to-night?” +</p> + +<p> +“I been thinking. It isn’t any particular thing. I ate too much of +that fishy stuff at first, like salt frog spawn, and was a bit confused by +olives; and—well, I didn’t know which wine was which. Had to say +<i>that</i> each time. It puts your talk all wrong. And she wasn’t in +evening dress, not like the others. We can’t go on in that style, +George—not a proper ad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure you were right,” I said, “in having a +fly.” +</p> + +<p> +“We got to do it all better,” said my uncle, “we got to do it +in Style. Smart business, smart men. She tries to pass it off as +humorous”—my aunt pulled a grimace—“it isn’t +humorous! See! We’re on the up-grade now, fair and square. We’re +going to be big. We aren’t going to be laughed at as Poovenoos, +see!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody laughed at you,” said my aunt. “Old Bladder!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody isn’t going to laugh at me,” said my uncle, glancing +at his contours and suddenly sitting up. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt raised her eyebrows slightly, swung her foot, and said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“We aren’t keeping pace with our own progress, George. We got to. +We’re bumping against new people, and they set up to be +gentlefolks—etiquette dinners and all the rest of it. They give +themselves airs and expect us to be fish-out-of-water. We aren’t going to +be. They think we’ve no Style. Well, we give them Style for our +advertisements, and we’re going to give ’em Style all through.... +You needn’t be born to it to dance well on the wires of the Bond Street +tradesmen. See?” +</p> + +<p> +I handed him the cigar-box. +</p> + +<p> +“Runcorn hadn’t cigars like these,” he said, truncating one +lovingly. “We beat him at cigars. We’ll beat him all round.” +</p> + +<p> +My aunt and I regarded him, full of apprehensions. +</p> + +<p> +“I got idees,” he said darkly to the cigar, deepening our dread. +</p> + +<p> +He pocketed his cigar-cutter and spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“We got to learn all the rotten little game first. See, +F’rinstance, we got to get samples of all the blessed wines there +are—and learn ’em up. Stern, Smoor, Burgundy, all of ’em! She +took Stern to-night—and when she tasted it first—you pulled a face, +Susan, you did. I saw you. It surprised you. You bunched your nose. We got to +get used to wine and not do that. We got to get used to wearing evening +dress—<i>you</i>, Susan, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Always have had a tendency to stick out of my clothes,” said my +aunt. “However—Who cares?” She shrugged her shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +I had never seen my uncle so immensely serious. +</p> + +<p> +“Got to get the hang of etiquette,” he went on to the fire. +“Horses even. Practise everything. Dine every night in evening dress.... +Get a brougham or something. Learn up golf and tennis and things. Country +gentleman. Oh Fay. It isn’t only freedom from Goochery.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!—Gawshery, if you like!” +</p> + +<p> +“French, George,” said my aunt. “But <i>I’m</i> not +ol’ Gooch. I made that face for fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t only freedom from Gawshery. We got to have Style. See! +Style! Just all right and one better. That’s what I call Style. We can do +it, and we will.” +</p> + +<p> +He mumbled his cigar and smoked for a space, leaning forward and looking into +the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it,” he asked, “after all? What is it? Tips about +eating; tips about drinking. Clothes. How to hold yourself, and not say +jes’ the few little things they know for certain are +wrong—jes’ the shibboleth things.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent again, and the cigar crept up from the horizontal towards the +zenith as the confidence of his mouth increased. +</p> + +<p> +“Learn the whole bag of tricks in six months.” he said, becoming +more cheerful. “Ah, Susan? Beat it out! George, you in particular ought +to get hold of it. Ought to get into a good club, and all that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Always ready to learn!” I said. “Ever since you gave me the +chance of Latin. So far we don’t seem to have hit upon any Latin-speaking +stratum in the population.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve come to French,” said my aunt, “anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a very useful language,” said my uncle. “Put a +point on things. Zzzz. As for accent, no Englishman has an accent. No +Englishman pronounces French properly. Don’t you tell <i>me</i>. +It’s a Bluff.—It’s all a Bluff. Life’s a +Bluff—practically. That’s why it’s so important, Susan, for +us to attend to Style. Le Steel Say Lum. The Style it’s the man. Whad you +laughing at, Susan? George, you’re not smoking. These cigars are good for +the mind.... What do <i>you</i> think of it all? We got to adapt ourselves. We +have—so far.... Not going to be beat by these silly things.” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +“What do you think of it, George?” he insisted. +</p> + +<p> +What I said I thought of it I don’t now recall. Only I have very +distinctly the impression of meeting for a moment my aunt’s impenetrable +eye. And anyhow he started in with his accustomed energy to rape the mysteries +of the Costly Life, and become the calmest of its lords. On the whole, I think +he did it—thoroughly. I have crowded memories, a little difficult to +disentangle, of his experimental stages, his experimental proceedings. +It’s hard at times to say which memory comes in front of which. I recall +him as presenting on the whole a series of small surprises, as being again and +again, unexpectedly, a little more self-confident, a little more polished, a +little richer and finer, a little more aware of the positions and values of +things and men. +</p> + +<p> +There was a time—it must have been very early—when I saw him deeply +impressed by the splendours of the dining-room of the National Liberal Club. +Heaven knows who our host was or what that particular little “feed” +was about now!—all that sticks is the impression of our straggling entry, +a string of six or seven guests, and my uncle looking about him at the numerous +bright red-shaded tables, at the exotics in great Majolica jars, at the shining +ceramic columns and pilasters, at the impressive portraits of Liberal statesmen +and heroes, and all that contributes to the ensemble of that palatial +spectacle. He was betrayed into a whisper to me, “This is all Right, +George!” he said. That artless comment seems almost incredible as I set +it down; there came a time so speedily when not even the clubs of New York +could have overawed my uncle, and when he could walk through the bowing +magnificence of the Royal Grand Hotel to his chosen table in that aggressively +exquisite gallery upon the river, with all the easy calm of one of +earth’s legitimate kings. +</p> + +<p> +The two of them learnt the new game rapidly and well; they experimented abroad, +they experimented at home. At Chiselhurst, with the aid of a new, very costly, +but highly instructive cook, they tried over everything they heard of that +roused their curiosity and had any reputation for difficulty, from asparagus to +plover’s eggs. They afterwards got a gardener who could wait at +table—and he brought the soil home to one. Then there came a butler. +</p> + +<p> +I remember my aunt’s first dinner-gown very brightly, and how she stood +before the fire in the drawing-room confessing once unsuspected pretty arms +with all the courage she possessed, and looking over her shoulder at herself in +a mirror. +</p> + +<p> +“A ham,” she remarked reflectively, “must feel like this. +Just a necklace.”... +</p> + +<p> +I attempted, I think, some commonplace compliment. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle appeared at the door in a white waistcoat and with his hands in his +trouser pockets; he halted and surveyed her critically. +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t tell you from a duchess, Susan,” he remarked. +“I’d like to have you painted, standin’ at the fire like +that. Sargent! You look—spirited, somehow. Lord!—I wish some of +those damned tradesmen at Wimblehurst could see you.”... +</p> + +<p> +They did a lot of week-ending at hotels, and sometimes I went down with them. +We seemed to fall into a vast drifting crowd of social learners. I don’t +know whether it is due simply to my changed circumstances, but it seems to me +there have been immensely disproportionate developments of the +hotel-frequenting and restaurant-using population during the last twenty years. +It is not only, I think, that there are crowds of people who, like we were, are +in the economically ascendant phase, but whole masses of the prosperous section +of the population must be altering its habits, giving up high-tea for dinner +and taking to evening dress, using the week-end hotels as a practise-ground for +these new social arts. A swift and systematic conversion to gentility has been +going on, I am convinced, throughout the whole commercial upper-middle class +since I was twenty-one. Curiously mixed was the personal quality of the people +one saw in these raids. There were conscientiously refined and low-voiced +people reeking with proud bashfulness; there were aggressively smart people +using pet diminutives for each other loudly and seeking fresh occasions for +brilliant rudeness; there were awkward husbands and wives quarrelling furtively +about their manners and ill at ease under the eye of the winter; cheerfully +amiable and often discrepant couples with a disposition to inconspicuous +corners, and the jolly sort, affecting an unaffected ease; plump happy ladies +who laughed too loud, and gentlemen in evening dress who subsequently +“got their pipes.” And nobody, you knew, was anybody, however +expensively they dressed and whatever rooms they took. +</p> + +<p> +I look back now with a curious remoteness of spirit to those crowded +dining-rooms with their dispersed tables and their inevitable red-shaded lights +and the unsympathetic, unskillful waiters, and the choice of “Thig or +Glear, Sir?” I’ve not dined in that way, in that sort of place, now +for five years—it must be quite five years, so specialised and narrow is +my life becoming. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle’s earlier motor-car phases work in with these associations, and +there stands out a little bright vignette of the hall of the Magnificent, +Bexhill-on-Sea, and people dressed for dinner and sitting about amidst the +scarlet furniture—satin and white-enameled woodwork until the gong should +gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust +cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very +alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the +office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my +uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already +mentioned, a short figure, compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of +brown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a table-land of motoring cap. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +So it was we recognised our new needs as fresh invaders of the upper levels of +the social system, and set ourselves quite consciously to the acquisition of +Style and <i>Savoir Faire</i>. We became part of what is nowadays quite an +important element in the confusion of our world, that multitude of economically +ascendant people who are learning how to spend money. It is made up of +financial people, the owners of the businesses that are eating up their +competitors, inventors of new sources of wealth, such as ourselves; it includes +nearly all America as one sees it on the European stage. It is a various +multitude having only this in common: they are all moving, and particularly +their womankind are moving, from conditions in which means were insistently +finite, things were few, and customs simple, towards a limitless expenditure +and the sphere of attraction of Bond Street, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. Their +general effect is one of progressive revolution, of limitless rope. +</p> + +<p> +They discover suddenly indulgences their moral code never foresaw and has no +provision for, elaborations, ornaments, possessions beyond their wildest +dreams. With an immense astonished zest they begin <i>shopping</i>, begin a +systematic adaptation to a new life crowded and brilliant with things shopped, +with jewels, maids, butlers, coachmen, electric broughams, hired town and +country houses. They plunge into it as one plunges into a career; as a class, +they talk, think, and dream possessions. Their literature, their Press, turns +all on that; immense illustrated weeklies of unsurpassed magnificence guide +them in domestic architecture, in the art of owning a garden, in the +achievement of the sumptuous in motor-cars, in an elaborate sporting equipment, +in the purchase and control of their estates, in travel and stupendous hotels. +Once they begin to move they go far and fast. Acquisition becomes the substance +of their lives. They find a world organised to gratify that passion. In a brief +year or so they are connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the eighteenth +century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures, good old furniture. Their first +crude conception of dazzling suites of the newly perfect is replaced almost +from the outset by a jackdaw dream of accumulating costly discrepant old +things. +</p> + +<p> +I seem to remember my uncle taking to shopping quite suddenly. In the Beckenham +days and in the early Chiselhurst days he was chiefly interested in getting +money, and except for his onslaught on the Beckenham house, bothered very +little about his personal surroundings and possessions. I forget now when the +change came and he began to spend. Some accident must have revealed to him this +new source of power, or some subtle shifting occurred in the tissues of his +brain. He began to spend and “shop.” So soon as he began to shop, +he began to shop violently. He began buying pictures, and then, oddly enough, +old clocks. For the Chiselhurst house he bought nearly a dozen grandfather +clocks and three copper warming pans. After that he bought much furniture. Then +he plunged into art patronage, and began to commission pictures and to make +presents to churches and institutions. His buying increased with a regular +acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes that came to him +in the wild excitements of the last four years of his ascent. Towards the +climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with large unexpected purchases, he +shopped like a mind seeking expression, he shopped to astonish and dismay; +shopped <i>crescendo</i>, shopped <i>fortissimo, con molto espressione</i> +until the magnificent smash of Crest Hill eroded his shopping for ever. Always +it was he who shopped. My aunt did not shine as a purchaser. It is a curious +thing, due to I know not what fine strain in her composition, that my aunt +never set any great store upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded +bazaar of Vanity Fair during those feverish years, spending no doubt freely and +largely, but spending with detachment and a touch of humorous contempt for the +things, even the “old” things, that money can buy. It came to me +suddenly one afternoon just how detached she was, as I saw her going towards +the Hardingham, sitting up, as she always did, rather stiffly in her electric +brougham, regarding the glittering world with interested and ironically +innocent blue eyes from under the brim of a hat that defied comment. “No +one,” I thought, “would sit so apart if she hadn’t +dreams—and what are her dreams?” +</p> + +<p> +I’d never thought. +</p> + +<p> +And I remember, too, an outburst of scornful description after she had lunched +with a party of women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She came round to my rooms +on the chance of finding me there, and I gave her tea. She professed herself +tired and cross, and flung herself into my chair.... +</p> + +<p> +“George,” she cried, “the Things women are! Do <i>I</i> stink +of money?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lunching?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +She nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“Plutocratic ladies?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oriental type?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Like a burst hareem!... Bragging of possessions.... They feel you. +They feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good!” +</p> + +<p> +I soothed her as well as I could. “They <i>are</i> Good aren’t +they?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the old pawnshop in their blood,” she said, drinking +tea; and then in infinite disgust, “They run their hands over your +clothes—they paw you.” +</p> + +<p> +I had a moment of doubt whether perhaps she had not been discovered in +possession of unsuspected forgeries. I don’t know. After that my eyes +were quickened, and I began to see for myself women running their hands over +other women’s furs, scrutinising their lace, even demanding to handle +jewelry, appraising, envying, testing. They have a kind of etiquette. The woman +who feels says, “What beautiful sables?” “What lovely +lace?” The woman felt admits proudly: “It’s Real, you +know,” or disavows pretension modestly and hastily, “It’s Rot +Good.” In each other’s houses they peer at the pictures, handle the +selvage of hangings, look at the bottoms of china.... +</p> + +<p> +I wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood. +</p> + +<p> +I doubt if Lady Drew and the Olympians did that sort of thing, but here I may +be only clinging to another of my former illusions about aristocracy and the +State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty, and never anywhere has there +been such a thing as house and furnishings native and natural to the women and +men who made use of them.... +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +For me, at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle’s career when I learnt +one day that he had “shopped” Lady Grove. I realised a fresh, wide, +unpreluded step. He took me by surprise with the sudden change of scale from +such portable possessions as jewels and motor-cars to a stretch of countryside. +The transaction was Napoleonic; he was told of the place; he said +“snap”; there were no preliminary desirings or searchings. Then he +came home and said what he had done. Even my aunt was for a day or so +measurably awestricken by this exploit in purchase, and we both went down with +him to see the house in a mood near consternation. It struck us then as a very +lordly place indeed. I remember the three of us standing on the terrace that +looked westward, surveying the sky-reflecting windows of the house, and a +feeling of unwarrantable intrusion comes back to me. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Grove, you know, is a very beautiful house indeed, a still and gracious +place, whose age-long seclusion was only effectively broken with the toot of +the coming of the motor-car. An old Catholic family had died out in it, century +by century, and was now altogether dead. Portions of the fabric are thirteenth +century, and its last architectural revision was Tudor; within, it is for the +most part dark and chilly, save for two or three favoured rooms and its +tall-windowed, oak-galleried hall. Its terrace is its noblest feature; a very +wide, broad lawn it is, bordered by a low stone battlement, and there is a +great cedar in one corner under whose level branches one looks out across the +blue distances of the Weald, blue distances that are made extraordinarily +Italian in quality by virtue of the dark masses of that single tree. It is a +very high terrace; southward one looks down upon the tops of wayfaring trees +and spruces, and westward on a steep slope of beechwood, through which the road +comes. One turns back to the still old house, and sees a grey and lichenous +façade with a very finely arched entrance. It was warmed by the afternoon light +and touched with the colour of a few neglected roses and a pyracanthus. It +seemed to me that the most modern owner conceivable in this serene fine place +was some bearded scholarly man in a black cassock, gentle-voiced and +white-handed, or some very soft-robed, grey gentlewoman. And there was my uncle +holding his goggles in a sealskin glove, wiping the glass with a +pocket-handkerchief, and asking my aunt if Lady Grove wasn’t a “Bit +of all Right.” +</p> + +<p> +My aunt made him no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“The man who built this,” I speculated, “wore armour and +carried a sword.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some of it inside still,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +We went inside. An old woman with very white hair was in charge of the place +and cringed rather obviously to the new master. She evidently found him a very +strange and frightful apparition indeed, and was dreadfully afraid of him. But +if the surviving present bowed down to us, the past did not. We stood up to the +dark, long portraits of the extinguished race—one was a Holbein—and +looked them in their sidelong eyes. They looked back at us. We all, I know, +felt the enigmatical quality in them. Even my uncle was momentarily +embarrassed, I think, by that invincibly self-complacent expression. It was +just as though, after all, he had <i>not</i> bought them up and replaced them +altogether; as though that, secretly, they knew better and could smile at him. +</p> + +<p> +The spirit of the place was akin to Bladesover, but touched with something +older and remoter. That armour that stood about had once served in tilt-yards, +if indeed it had not served in battle, and this family had sent its blood and +treasure, time after time, upon the most romantic quest in history, to +Palestine. Dreams, loyalties, place and honour, how utterly had it all +evaporated, leaving, at last, the final expression of its spirit, these quaint +painted smiles, these smiles of triumphant completion! It had evaporated, +indeed, long before the ultimate Durgan had died, and in his old age he had +cumbered the place with Early Victorian cushions and carpets and tapestry +table-cloths and invalid appliances of a type even more extinct, it seemed to +us, than the crusades.... Yes, it was different from Bladesover. +</p> + +<p> +“Bit stuffy, George,” said my uncle. “They hadn’t much +idea of ventilation when this was built.” +</p> + +<p> +One of the panelled rooms was half-filled with presses and a four-poster bed. +“Might be the ghost room,” said my uncle; but it did not seem to me +that so retiring a family as the Durgans, so old and completely exhausted a +family as the Durgans, was likely to haunt anybody. What living thing now had +any concern with their honour and judgments and good and evil deeds? Ghosts and +witchcraft were a later innovation—that fashion came from Scotland with +the Stuarts. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a broken nose, +under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the restricted limits of the +present Duffield church, and half buried in nettles. “Ichabod,” +said my uncle. “Eh? We shall be like that, Susan, some day.... I’m +going to clean him up a bit and put a railing to keep off the children.” +</p> + +<p> +“Old saved at the eleventh hour,” said my aunt, quoting one of the +less successful advertisements of Tono-Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +But I don’t think my uncle heard her. +</p> + +<p> +It was by our captured crusader that the vicar found us. He came round the +corner at us briskly, a little out of breath. He had an air of having been +running after us since the first toot of our horn had warned the village of our +presence. He was an Oxford man, clean-shaven, with a cadaverous complexion and +a guardedly respectful manner, a cultivated intonation, and a general air of +accommodation to the new order of things. These Oxford men are the Greeks of +our plutocratic empire. He was a Tory in spirit, and what one may call an +adapted Tory by stress of circumstances; that is to say, he was no longer a +legitimist; he was prepared for the substitution of new lords for old. We were +pill vendors he knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul; but then it might +have been some polygamous Indian rajah, a great strain on a good man’s +tact, or some Jew with an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were +English, and neither Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully prepared +to do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us. He might have preferred +Americans for some reasons; they are not so obviously taken from one part of +the social system and dumped down in another, and they are more teachable; but +in this world we cannot always be choosers. So he was very bright and pleasant +with us, showed us the church, gossiped informingly about our neighbours on the +countryside—Tux, the banker; Lord Boom, the magazine and newspaper +proprietor; Lord Carnaby, that great sportsman, and old Lady Osprey. And +finally he took us by way of a village lane—three children bobbed +convulsively with eyes of terror for my uncle—through a meticulous garden +to a big, slovenly Vicarage with faded Victorian furniture and a faded +Victorian wife, who gave us tea and introduced us to a confusing family +dispersed among a lot of disintegrating basket chairs upon the edge of a +well-used tennis lawn. +</p> + +<p> +These people interested me. They were a common type, no doubt, but they were +new to me. There were two lank sons who had been playing singles at tennis, +red-eared youths growing black moustaches, and dressed in conscientiously +untidy tweeds and unbuttoned and ungirt Norfolk jackets. There were a number of +ill-nourished-looking daughters, sensible and economical in their costume, the +younger still with long, brown-stockinged legs, and the eldest +present—there were, we discovered, one or two hidden +away—displaying a large gold cross and other aggressive ecclesiastical +symbols; there were two or three fox-terriers, a retrieverish mongrel, and an +old, bloody-eyed and very evil-smelling St. Bernard. There was a jackdaw. There +was, moreover, an ambiguous, silent lady that my aunt subsequently decided must +be a very deaf paying guest. Two or three other people had concealed themselves +at our coming and left unfinished teas behind them. Rugs and cushions lay among +the chairs, and two of the latter were, I noted, covered with Union Jacks. +</p> + +<p> +The vicar introduced us sketchily, and the faded Victorian wife regarded my +aunt with a mixture of conventional scorn and abject respect, and talked to her +in a languid, persistent voice about people in the neighbourhood whom my aunt +could not possibly know. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt received these personalia cheerfully, with her blue eyes flitting from +point to point, and coming back again and again to the pinched faces of the +daughters and the cross upon the eldest’s breast. Encouraged by my +aunt’s manner, the vicar’s wife grew patronising and kindly, and +made it evident that she could do much to bridge the social gulf between +ourselves and the people of family about us. +</p> + +<p> +I had just snatches of that conversation. “Mrs. Merridew brought him +quite a lot of money. Her father, I believe, had been in the Spanish wine +trade—quite a lady though. And after that he fell off his horse and +cracked his brain pan and took to fishing and farming. I’m sure +you’ll like to know them. He’s <i>most</i> amusing.... The daughter +had a disappointment and went to China as a missionary and got mixed up in a +massacre.”... +</p> + +<p> +“The most beautiful silks and things she brought back, you’d hardly +believe!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, they gave them to propitiate her. You see, they didn’t +understand the difference, and they thought that as they’d been +massacring people, <i>they’d</i> be massacred. They didn’t +understand the difference Christianity makes.”... +</p> + +<p> +“Seven bishops they’ve had in the family!” +</p> + +<p> +“Married a Papist and was quite lost to them.”... +</p> + +<p> +“He failed some dreadful examination and had to go into the +militia.”... +</p> + +<p> +“So she bit his leg as hard as ever she could and he let go.”... +</p> + +<p> +“Had four of his ribs amputated.”... +</p> + +<p> +“Caught meningitis and was carried off in a week.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had to have a large piece of silver tube let into his throat, and if he +wants to talk he puts his finger on it. It makes him so interesting, I think. +You feel he’s sincere somehow. A most charming man in every way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Preserved them both in spirits very luckily, and there they are in his +study, though of course he doesn’t show them to everybody.” +</p> + +<p> +The silent lady, unperturbed by these apparently exciting topics, scrutinised +my aunt’s costume with a singular intensity, and was visibly moved when +she unbuttoned her dust cloak and flung it wide. Meanwhile we men conversed, +one of the more spirited daughters listened brightly, and the youths lay on the +grass at our feet. My uncle offered them cigars, but they both +declined,—out of bashfulness, it seemed to me, whereas the vicar, I +think, accepted out of tact. When we were not looking at them directly, these +young men would kick each other furtively. +</p> + +<p> +Under the influence of my uncle’s cigar, the vicar’s mind had +soared beyond the limits of the district. “This Socialism,” he +said, “seems making great headway.” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle shook his head. “We’re too individualistic in this country +for that sort of nonsense,” he said “Everybody’s business is +nobody’s business. That’s where they go wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“They have some intelligent people in their ranks, I am told,” said +the vicar, “writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished playwright, my +eldest daughter was telling me—I forget his name. +</p> + +<p> +“Milly, dear! Oh! she’s not here. Painters, too, they have. This +Socialist, it seems to me, is part of the Unrest of the Age.... But, as you +say, the spirit of the people is against it. In the country, at any rate. The +people down here are too sturdily independent in their small way—and too +sensible altogether.”... +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a great thing for Duffield to have Lady Grove occupied +again,” he was saying when my wandering attention came back from some +attractive casualty in his wife’s discourse. “People have always +looked up to the house and considering all things, old Mr. Durgan really was +extraordinarily good—extraordinarily good. You intend to give us a good +deal of your time here, I hope.” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean to do my duty by the Parish,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sincerely glad to hear it—sincerely. We’ve +missed—the house influence. An English village isn’t +complete—People get out of hand. Life grows dull. The young people drift +away to London.” +</p> + +<p> +He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall look to you to liven things up,” he said, poor man! +</p> + +<p> +My uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“What you think the place wants?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +He did not wait for an answer. “I been thinking while you been +talking—things one might do. Cricket—a good English +game—sports. Build the chaps a pavilion perhaps. Then every village ought +to have a miniature rifle range.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ye-ees,” said the vicar. “Provided, of course, there +isn’t a constant popping.”... +</p> + +<p> +“Manage <i>that</i> all right,” said my uncle. “Thing’d +be a sort of long shed. Paint it red. British colour. Then there’s a +Union Jack for the church and the village school. Paint the school red, too, +p’raps. Not enough colour about now. Too grey. Then a maypole.” +</p> + +<p> +“How far our people would take up that sort of thing—” began +the vicar. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m all for getting that good old English spirit back +again,” said my uncle. “Merrymakings. Lads and lasses dancing on +the village green. Harvest home. Fairings. Yule Log—all the rest of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“How would old Sally Glue do for a May Queen?” asked one of the +sons in the slight pause that followed. +</p> + +<p> +“Or Annie Glassbound?” said the other, with the huge virile guffaw +of a young man whose voice has only recently broken. +</p> + +<p> +“Sally Glue is eighty-five,” explained the vicar, “and Annie +Glassbound is well—a young lady of extremely generous proportions. And +not quite right, you know. Not quite right—here.” He tapped his +brow. +</p> + +<p> +“Generous proportions!” said the eldest son, and the guffaws were +renewed. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” said the vicar, “all the brisker girls go into +service in or near London. The life of excitement attracts them. And no doubt +the higher wages have something to do with it. And the liberty to wear finery. +And generally—freedom from restraint. So that there might be a little +difficulty perhaps to find a May Queen here just at present who was really +young and er—pretty.... Of course I couldn’t think of any of my +girls—or anything of that sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“We got to attract ’em back,” said my uncle. +“That’s what I feel about it. We got to Buck-Up the country. The +English country is a going concern still; just as the Established +Church—if you’ll excuse me saying it, is a going concern. Just as +Oxford is—or Cambridge. Or any of those old, fine old things. Only it +wants fresh capital, fresh idees and fresh methods. Light railways, +f’rinstance—scientific use of drainage. Wire fencing +machinery—all that.” +</p> + +<p> +The vicar’s face for one moment betrayed dismay. Perhaps he was thinking +of his country walks amids the hawthorns and honeysuckle. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s great things,” said my uncle, “to be done on +Mod’un lines with Village Jam and Pickles—boiled in the +country.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the reverberation of this last sentence in my mind, I think, that +sharpened my sentimental sympathy as we went through the straggling village +street and across the trim green on our way back to London. It seemed that +afternoon the most tranquil and idyllic collection of creeper-sheltered homes +you can imagine; thatch still lingered on a whitewashed cottage or two, +pyracanthus, wall-flowers, and daffodils abounded, and an unsystematic orchard +or so was white with blossom above and gay with bulbs below. I noted a row of +straw beehives, beehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since condemned as +inefficient by all progressive minds, and in the doctor’s acre of grass a +flock of two whole sheep was grazing,—no doubt he’d taken them on +account. Two men and one old woman made gestures of abject vassalage, and my +uncle replied with a lordly gesture of his great motoring glove.... +</p> + +<p> +“England’s full of Bits like this,” said my uncle, leaning +over the front seat and looking back with great satisfaction. The black glare +of his goggles rested for a time on the receding turrets of Lady Grove just +peeping over the trees. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall have a flagstaff, I think,” he considered. “Then one +could show when one is in residence. The villagers will like to know.”... +</p> + +<p> +I reflected. “They will” I said. “They’re used to +liking to know.”... +</p> + +<p> +My aunt had been unusually silent. Suddenly she spoke. “He says +Snap,” she remarked; “he buys that place. And a nice old job of +Housekeeping he gives me! He sails through the village swelling like an old +turkey. And who’ll have to scoot the butler? Me! Who’s got to +forget all she ever knew and start again? Me! Who’s got to trek from +Chiselhurst and be a great lady? Me! ... You old Bother! Just when I was +settling down and beginning to feel at home.” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle turned his goggles to her. “Ah! <i>this</i> time it is home, +Susan.... We got there.” +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +It seems to me now but a step from the buying of Lady Grove to the beginning of +Crest Hill, from the days when the former was a stupendous achievement to the +days when it was too small and dark and inconvenient altogether for a great +financier’s use. For me that was a period of increasing detachment from +our business and the great world of London; I saw it more and more in broken +glimpses, and sometimes I was working in my little pavilion above Lady Grove +for a fortnight together; even when I came up it was often solely for a meeting +of the aeronautical society or for one of the learned societies or to consult +literature or employ searchers or some such special business. For my uncle it +was a period of stupendous inflation. Each time I met him I found him more +confident, more comprehensive, more consciously a factor in great affairs. Soon +he was no longer an associate of merely business men; he was big enough for the +attentions of greater powers. +</p> + +<p> +I grew used to discovering some item of personal news about him in my evening +paper, or to the sight of a full-page portrait of him in a sixpenny magazine. +Usually the news was of some munificent act, some romantic piece of buying or +giving or some fresh rumour of reconstruction. He saved, you will remember, the +Parbury Reynolds for the country. Or at times, it would be an interview or my +uncle’s contribution to some symposium on the “Secret of +Success,” or such-like topic. Or wonderful tales of his power of work, of +his wonderful organisation to get things done, of his instant decisions and +remarkable power of judging his fellow-men. They repeated his great <i>mot:</i> +“Eight hour working day—I want eighty hours!” +</p> + +<p> +He became modestly but resolutely “public.” They cartooned him in +<i>Vanity Fair</i>. One year my aunt, looking indeed a very gracious, slender +lady, faced the portrait of the King in the great room at Burlington House, and +the next year saw a medallion of my uncle by Ewart, looking out upon the world, +proud and imperial, but on the whole a trifle too prominently convex, from the +walls of the New Gallery. +</p> + +<p> +I shared only intermittently in his social experiences. People knew of me, it +is true, and many of them sought to make through me a sort of flank attack upon +him, and there was a legend, owing, very unreasonably, partly to my growing +scientific reputation and partly to an element of reserve in my manner, that I +played a much larger share in planning his operations than was actually the +case. This led to one or two very intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in +one or two house parties and various odd offers of introductions and services +that I didn’t for the most part accept. Among other people who sought me +in this way was Archie Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no +particular distinction, who would, I think, have been quite prepared to develop +any sporting instincts I possessed, and who was beautifully unaware of our +former contact. He was always offering me winners; no doubt in a spirit of +anticipatory exchange for some really good thing in our more scientific and +certain method of getting something for nothing.... +</p> + +<p> +In spite of my preoccupation with my experiments, work, I did, I find now that +I come to ransack my impressions, see a great deal of the great world during +those eventful years; I had a near view of the machinery by which an astounding +Empire is run, rubbed shoulders and exchanged experiences with bishops and +statesmen, political women and women who were not political, physicians and +soldiers, artists and authors, the directors of great journals, philanthropists +and all sorts of eminent, significant people. I saw the statesmen without their +orders and the bishops with but a little purple silk left over from their +canonicals, inhaling, not incensen but cigar smoke. I could look at them all +the better because, for the most part, they were not looking at me but at my +uncle, and calculating consciously or unconsciously how they might use him and +assimilate him to their system, the most unpremeditated, subtle, successful and +aimless plutocracy that ever encumbered the destinies of mankind. Not one of +them, so far as I could see, until disaster overtook him, resented his lies, +his almost naked dishonesty of method, the disorderly disturbance of this trade +and that, caused by his spasmodic operations. I can see them now about him, see +them polite, watchful, various; his stiff compact little figure always a centre +of attention, his wiry hair, his brief nose, his under-lip, electric with +self-confidence. Wandering marginally through distinguished gatherings, I would +catch the whispers: “That’s Mr. Ponderevo!” +</p> + +<p> +“The little man?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the little bounder with the glasses.” +</p> + +<p> +“They say he’s made—“... +</p> + +<p> +Or I would see him on some parterre of a platform beside my aunt’s +hurraying hat, amidst titles and costumes, “holding his end up,” as +he would say, subscribing heavily to obvious charities, even at times making +brief convulsive speeches in some good cause before the most exalted audiences. +“Mr. Chairman, your Royal Highness, my Lords, Ladies and +Gentlemen,” he would begin amidst subsiding applause and adjust those +obstinate glasses and thrust back the wings of his frock-coat and rest his +hands upon his hips and speak his fragment with ever and again an incidental +Zzzz. His hands would fret about him as he spoke, fiddle his glasses, feel in +his waistcoat pockets; ever and again he would rise slowly to his toes as a +sentence unwound jerkily like a clockwork snake, and drop back on his heels at +the end. They were the very gestures of our first encounter when he had stood +before the empty fireplace in his minute draped parlour and talked of my future +to my mother. +</p> + +<p> +In those measurelessly long hot afternoons in the little shop at Wimblehurst he +had talked and dreamt of the Romance of Modern Commerce. Here, surely, was his +romance come true. +</p> + +<h4>VIII</h4> + +<p> +People say that my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes, but if one +may tell so much truth of a man one has in a manner loved, he never had very +much head to lose. He was always imaginative, erratic, inconsistent, recklessly +inexact, and his inundation of wealth merely gave him scope for these +qualities. It is true, indeed, that towards the climax he became intensely +irritable at times and impatient of contradiction, but that, I think, was +rather the gnawing uneasiness of sanity than any mental disturbance. But I find +it hard either to judge him or convey the full development of him to the +reader. I saw too much of him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and +aspects. Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is +quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, +fragmentary, energetic, and—in some subtle fundamental way that I find +difficult to define—absurd. +</p> + +<p> +There stands out—because of the tranquil beauty of its setting +perhaps—a talk we had in the veranda of the little pavilion near my +worksheds behind Crest Hill in which my aeroplanes and navigable balloons were +housed. It was one of many similar conversations, and I do not know why it in +particular should survive its fellows. It happens so. He had come up to me +after his coffee to consult me about a certain chalice which in a moment of +splendour and under the importunity of a countess he had determined to give to +a deserving church in the east-end. I, in a moment of even rasher generosity, +had suggested Ewart as a possible artist. Ewart had produced at once an +admirable sketch for the sacred vessel surrounded by a sort of wreath of +Millies with open arms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of +it. After that came a series of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and +less of a commercial man’s chalice, acquired more and more the elusive +quality of the Holy Grail, and at last even the drawing receded. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle grew restive.... “You see, George, they’ll begin to want +the blasted thing!” +</p> + +<p> +“What blasted thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“That chalice, damn it! They’re beginning to ask questions. It +isn’t Business, George.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s art,” I protested, “and religion.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all very well. But it’s not a good ad for us, George, +to make a promise and not deliver the goods.... I’ll have to write off +your friend Ewart as a bad debt, that’s what it comes to, and go to a +decent firm.”... +</p> + +<p> +We sat outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank +whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated. His temporary annoyance +passed. It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, +indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, +one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, +and in the foreground the little stage from which I used to start upon my +gliders gleamed like wet steel. The season must have been high June, for down +in the woods that hid the lights of the Lady Grove windows, I remember the +nightingales thrilled and gurgled.... +</p> + +<p> +“We got here, George,” said my uncle, ending a long pause. +“Didn’t I say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Say!—when?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“In that hole in the To’nem Court Road, eh? It’s been a +Straight Square Fight, and here we are!” +</p> + +<p> +I nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“’Member me telling you—Tono-Bungay?.... Well.... I’d +just that afternoon thought of it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve fancied at times;” I admitted. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a great world, George, nowadays, with a fair chance for every +one who lays hold of things. The career ouvert to the Talons—eh? +Tono-Bungay. Think of it! It’s a great world and a growing world, and +I’m glad we’re in it—and getting a pull. We’re getting +big people, George. Things come to us. Eh? This Palestine thing.”... +</p> + +<p> +He meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly. Then he became still. +</p> + +<p> +His theme was taken up by a cricket in the grass until he himself was ready to +resume it. The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some scheme of its own it +had got there. “Chirrrrrrup” it said; “chirrrrrrup.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, what a place that was at Wimblehurst!” he broke out. +“If ever I get a day off we’ll motor there, George, and run over +that dog that sleeps in the High Street. Always was a dog asleep +there—always. Always... I’d like to see the old shop again. I +daresay old Ruck still stands between the sheep at his door, grinning with all +his teeth, and Marbel, silly beggar! comes out with his white apron on and a +pencil stuck behind his ear, trying to look awake... Wonder if they know +it’s me? I’d like ’em somehow to know it’s me.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll have had the International Tea Company and all sorts of +people cutting them up,” I said. “And that dog’s been on the +pavement this six years—can’t sleep even there, poor dear, because +of the motor-horns and its shattered nerves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Movin’ everywhere,” said my uncle. “I expect +you’re right.... It’s a big time we’re in, George. It’s +a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time. This Palestine business—the +daring of it.... It’s, it’s a Process, George. And we got our hands +on it. Here we sit—with our hands on it, George. Entrusted. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems quiet to—night. But if we could see and hear.” He +waved his cigar towards Leatherhead and London. +</p> + +<p> +“There they are, millions, George. Jes’ think of what they’ve +been up to to-day—those ten millions—each one doing his own +particular job. You can’t grasp it. It’s like old Whitman +says—what is it he says? Well, anyway it’s like old Whitman. Fine +chap, Whitman! Fine old chap! Queer, you can’t quote him. ... And these +millions aren’t anything. There’s the millions over seas, hundreds +of millions, Chinese, M’rocco, Africa generally, ’Merica.... Well, +here we are, with power, with leisure, picked out—because we’ve +been energetic, because we’ve seized opportunities, because we’ve +made things hum when other people have waited for them to hum. See? Here we +are—with our hands on it. Big people. Big growing people. In a sort of +way,—Forces.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. “It’s wonderful, George,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Anglo-Saxon energy,” I said softly to the night. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, George—energy. It’s put things in our +grip—threads, wires, stretching out and out, George, from that little +office of ours, out to West Africa, out to Egypt, out to Inja, out east, west, +north and south. Running the world practically. Running it faster and faster. +Creative. There’s that Palestine canal affair. Marvellous idee! Suppose +we take that up, suppose we let ourselves in for it, us and the others, and run +that water sluice from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea Valley—think +of the difference it will make! All the desert blooming like a rose, Jericho +lost for ever, all the Holy Places under water.... Very likely destroy +Christianity.”... +</p> + +<p> +He mused for a space. “Cuttin’ canals,” murmured my uncle. +“Making tunnels.... New countries.... New centres.... Zzzz.... +Finance.... Not only Palestine. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder where we shall get before we done, George? We got a lot of big +things going. We got the investing public sound and sure. I don’t see why +in the end we shouldn’t be very big. There’s difficulties but +I’m equal to them. We’re still a bit soft in our bones, but +they’ll harden all right.... I suppose, after all, I’m worth +something like a million, George, cleared up and settled. If I got out of +things now. It’s a great time, George, a wonderful time!”... +</p> + +<p> +I glanced through the twilight at his convexity and I must confess it struck me +that on the whole he wasn’t particularly good value. +</p> + +<p> +“We got our hands on things, George, us big people. We got to hang +together, George run the show. Join up with the old order like that mill-wheel +of Kipling’s. (Finest thing he ever wrote, George; I jes’ been +reading it again. Made me buy Lady Grove.) Well, we got to run the country, +George. It’s ours. Make it a Scientific Organised Business Enterprise. +Put idees into it. ’Lectrify it. Run the Press. Run all sorts of +developments. All sorts of developments. I been talking to Lord Boom. I been +talking to all sorts of people. Great things. Progress. The world on business +lines. Only jes’ beginning.”... +</p> + +<p> +He fell into a deep meditation. +</p> + +<p> +He Zzzzed for a time and ceased. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Yes</i>,” he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last +emerged with ultimate solutions to the profoundest problems. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” I said after a seemly pause. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle hung fire for a moment and it seemed to me the fate of nations +trembled in the balance. Then he spoke as one who speaks from the very bottom +of his heart—and I think it was the very bottom of his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d jes’ like to drop into the Eastry Arms, jes’ when +all those beggars in the parlour are sittin’ down to whist, Ruck and +Marbel and all, and give ’em ten minutes of my mind, George. Straight +from the shoulder. Jes’ exactly what I think of them. It’s a little +thing, but I’d like to do it jes’ once before I die.”... +</p> + +<p> +He rested on that for some time Zzzz-ing. +</p> + +<p> +Then he broke out at a new place in a tone of detached criticism. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Boom,” he reflected. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a wonderful system this old British system, George. +It’s staid and stable and yet it has a place for new men. We come up and +take our places. It’s almost expected. We take a hand. That’s where +our Democracy differs from America. Over there a man succeeds; all he gets is +money. Here there’s a system open to every one—practically.... +Chaps like Boom—come from nowhere.” +</p> + +<p> +His voice ceased. I reflected upon the spirit of his words. Suddenly I kicked +my feet in the air, rolled on my side and sat up suddenly on my deck chair with +my legs down. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean it!” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Mean what, George?” +</p> + +<p> +“Subscription to the party funds. Reciprocal advantage. Have we got to +that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Whad you driving at, George?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know. They’d never do it, man!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do what?” he said feebly; and, “Why shouldn’t +they?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’d not even go to a baronetcy. <i>No!</i>.... And yet, of +course, there’s Boom! And Collingshead and Gorver. They’ve done +beer, they’ve done snippets! After all Tono-Bungay—it’s not +like a turf commission agent or anything like that!... There have of course +been some very gentlemanly commission agents. It isn’t like a fool of a +scientific man who can’t make money!” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle grunted; we’d differed on that issue before. +</p> + +<p> +A malignant humour took possession of me. “What would they call +you?” I speculated. “The vicar would like Duffield. Too much like +Duffer! Difficult thing, a title.” I ran my mind over various +possibilities. “Why not take a leaf from a socialist tract I came upon +yesterday. Chap says we’re all getting delocalised. Beautiful +word—delocalised! Why not be the first delocalised peer? That gives +you—Tono-Bungay! There is a Bungay, you know. Lord Tono of +Bungay—in bottles everywhere. Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +My uncle astonished me by losing his temper. +</p> + +<p> +“Damn it. George, you don’t seem to see I’m serious! +You’re always sneering at Tono-Bungay! As though it was some sort of +swindle. It was perfec’ly legitimate trade, perfec’ly legitimate. +Good value and a good article.... When I come up here and tell you plans and +exchange idees—you sneer at me. You <i>do</i>. You don’t +see—it’s a big thing. It’s a big thing. You got to get used +to new circumstances. You got to face what lies before us. You got to drop that +tone.” +</p> + +<h4>IX</h4> + +<p> +My uncle was not altogether swallowed up in business and ambition. He kept in +touch with modern thought. For example, he was, I know, greatly swayed by what +he called “This Overman idee, Nietzsche—all that stuff.” +</p> + +<p> +He mingled those comforting suggestions of a potent and exceptional human being +emancipated from the pettier limitations of integrity with the Napoleonic +legend. It gave his imagination a considerable outlet. That Napoleonic legend! +The real mischief of Napoleon’s immensely disastrous and accidental +career began only when he was dead and the romantic type of mind was free to +elaborate his character. I do believe that my uncle would have made a far less +egregious smash if there had been no Napoleonic legend to misguide him. He was +in many ways better and infinitely kinder than his career. But when in doubt +between decent conduct and a base advantage, that cult came in more and more +influentially: “think of Napoleon; think what the inflexibly-wilful +Napoleon would have done with such scruples as yours;” that was the rule, +and the end was invariably a new step in dishonour. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle was in an unsystematic way a collector of Napoleonic relics; the +bigger the book about his hero the more readily he bought it; he purchased +letters and tinsel and weapons that bore however remotely upon the Man of +Destiny, and he even secured in Geneva, though he never brought home, an old +coach in which Buonaparte might have ridden; he crowded the quiet walls of Lady +Grove with engravings and figures of him, preferring, my aunt remarked, the +more convex portraits with the white vest and those statuettes with the hands +behind the back which threw forward the figure. The Durgans watched him through +it all, sardonically. +</p> + +<p> +And he would stand after breakfast at times in the light of the window at Lady +Grove, a little apart, with two fingers of one hand stuck between his +waistcoat-buttons and his chin sunken, thinking,—the most preposterous +little fat man in the world. It made my aunt feel, she said, “like an old +Field Marshal—knocks me into a cocked hat, George!” +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps this Napoleonic bias made him a little less frequent with his cigars +than he would otherwise have been, but of that I cannot be sure, and it +certainly caused my aunt a considerable amount of vexation after he had read +<i>Napoleon and the Fair Sex</i>, because for a time that roused him to a sense +of a side of life he had in his commercial preoccupations very largely +forgotten. Suggestion plays so great a part in this field. My uncle took the +next opportunity and had an “affair”! +</p> + +<p> +It was not a very impassioned affair, and the exact particulars never of course +reached me. It is quite by chance I know anything of it at all. One evening I +was surprised to come upon my uncle in a mixture of Bohemia and smart people at +an At Home in the flat of Robbert, the R.A. who painted my aunt, and he was +standing a little apart in a recess, talking or rather being talked to in +undertones by a plump, blond little woman in pale blue, a Helen Scrymgeour who +wrote novels and was organising a weekly magazine. I elbowed a large lady who +was saying something about them, but I didn’t need to hear the thing she +said to perceive the relationship of the two. It hit me like a placard on a +hoarding. I was amazed the whole gathering did not see it. Perhaps they did. +She was wearing a remarkably fine diamond necklace, much too fine for +journalism, and regarding him with that quality of questionable proprietorship, +of leashed but straining intimacy, that seems inseparable from this sort of +affair. It is so much more palpable than matrimony. If anything was wanted to +complete my conviction it was my uncles’s eyes when presently he became +aware of mine, a certain embarrassment and a certain pride and defiance. And +the next day he made an opportunity to praise the lady’s intelligence to +me concisely, lest I should miss the point of it all. +</p> + +<p> +After that I heard some gossip—from a friend of the lady’s. I was +much too curious to do anything but listen. I had never in all my life imagined +my uncle in an amorous attitude. It would appear that she called him her +“God in the Car”—after the hero in a novel of Anthony +Hope’s. It was essential to the convention of their relations that he +should go relentlessly whenever business called, and it was generally arranged +that it did call. To him women were an incident, it was understood between +them; Ambition was the master-passion. A great world called him and the noble +hunger for Power. I have never been able to discover just how honest Mrs. +Scrymgeour was in all this, but it is quite possible the immense glamour of his +financial largeness prevailed with her and that she did bring a really romantic +feeling to their encounters. There must have been some extraordinary +moments.... +</p> + +<p> +I was a good deal exercised and distressed about my aunt when I realised what +was afoot. I thought it would prove a terrible humiliation to her. I suspected +her of keeping up a brave front with the loss of my uncle’s affections +fretting at her heart, but there I simply underestimated her. She didn’t +hear for some time and when she did hear she was extremely angry and energetic. +The sentimental situation didn’t trouble her for a moment. She decided +that my uncle “wanted smacking.” She accentuated herself with an +unexpected new hat, went and gave him an inconceivable talking-to at the +Hardingham, and then came round to “blow-up” me for not telling her +what was going on before.... +</p> + +<p> +I tried to bring her to a proper sense of the accepted values in this affair, +but my aunt’s originality of outlook was never so invincible. “Men +don’t tell on one another in affairs of passion,” I protested, and +such-like worldly excuses. +</p> + +<p> +“Women!” she said in high indignation, “and men! It +isn’t women and men—it’s him and me, George! Why don’t +you talk sense? +</p> + +<p> +“Old passion’s all very well, George, in its way, and I’m the +last person to be jealous. But this is old nonsense.... I’m not going to +let him show off what a silly old lobster he is to other women.... I’ll +mark every scrap of his underclothes with red letters, +‘Ponderevo-Private’—every scrap. +</p> + +<p> +“Going about making love indeed,—in abdominal belts!—at his +time of life!” +</p> + +<p> +I cannot imagine what passed between her and my uncle. But I have no doubt that +for once her customary badinage was laid aside. How they talked then I do not +know, for I who knew them so well had never heard that much of intimacy between +them. At any rate it was a concerned and preoccupied “God in the +Car” I had to deal with in the next few days, unusually Zzzz-y and given +to slight impatient gestures that had nothing to do with the current +conversation. And it was evident that in all directions he was finding things +unusually difficult to explain. +</p> + +<p> +All the intimate moments in this affair were hidden from me, but in the end my +aunt triumphed. He did not so much throw as jerk over Mrs. Scrymgeour, and she +did not so much make a novel of it as upset a huge pailful of attenuated and +adulterated female soul upon this occasion. My aunt did not appear in that, +even remotely. So that it is doubtful if the lady knew the real causes of her +abandonment. The Napoleonic hero was practically unmarried, and he threw over +his lady as Napoleon threw over Josephine for a great alliance. +</p> + +<p> +It was a triumph for my aunt, but it had its price. For some time it was +evident things were strained between them. He gave up the lady, but he resented +having to do so, deeply. She had meant more to his imagination than one could +have supposed. He wouldn’t for a long time “come round.” He +became touchy and impatient and secretive towards my aunt, and she, I noted, +after an amazing check or so, stopped that stream of kindly abuse that had +flowed for so long and had been so great a refreshment in their lives. They +were both the poorer for its cessation, both less happy. She devoted herself +more and more to Lady Grove and the humours and complications of its +management. The servants took to her—as they say—she god-mothered +three Susans during her rule, the coachman’s, the gardener’s, and +the Up Hill gamekeeper’s. She got together a library of old household +books that were in the vein of the place. She revived the still-room, and +became a great artist in jellies and elder and cowslip wine. +</p> + +<h4>X</h4> + +<p> +And while I neglected the development of my uncle’s finances—and my +own, in my scientific work and my absorbing conflict with the difficulties of +flying,—his schemes grew more and more expansive and hazardous, and his +spending wilder and laxer. I believe that a haunting sense of the intensifying +unsoundness of his position accounts largely for his increasing irritability +and his increasing secretiveness with my aunt and myself during these crowning +years. He dreaded, I think, having to explain, he feared our jests might pierce +unwittingly to the truth. Even in the privacy of his mind he would not face the +truth. He was accumulating unrealisable securities in his safes until they hung +a potential avalanche over the economic world. But his buying became a fever, +and his restless desire to keep it up with himself that he was making a +triumphant progress to limitless wealth gnawed deeper and deeper. A curious +feature of this time with him was his buying over and over again of similar +things. His ideas seemed to run in series. Within a twelve-month he bought five +new motor-cars, each more swift and powerful than its predecessor, and only the +repeated prompt resignation of his chief chauffeur at each moment of danger, +prevented his driving them himself. He used them more and more. He developed a +passion for locomotion for its own sake. +</p> + +<p> +Then he began to chafe at Lady Grove, fretted by a chance jest he had overheard +at a dinner. “This house, George,” he said. “It’s a +misfit. There’s no elbow-room in it; it’s choked with old memories. +And I can’t stand all these damned Durgans! +</p> + +<p> +“That chap in the corner, George. No! the other corner! The man in a +cherry-coloured coat. He watched you! He’d look silly if I stuck a poker +through his Gizzard!” +</p> + +<p> +“He’d look,” I reflected, “much as he does now. As +though he was amused.” +</p> + +<p> +He replaced his glasses, which had fallen at his emotion, and glared at his +antagonists. “What are they? What are they all, the lot of ’em? +Dead as Mutton! They just stuck in the mud. They didn’t even rise to the +Reformation. The old out-of-date Reformation! Move with the times!—they +moved against the times. +</p> + +<p> +“Just a Family of Failure,—they never even tried! +</p> + +<p> +“They’re jes’, George, exactly what I’m not. Exactly. +It isn’t suitable.... All this living in the Past. +</p> + +<p> +“And I want a bigger place too, George. I want air and sunlight and room +to move about and more service. A house where you can get a Move on things! +Zzzz. Why! it’s like a discord—it jars—even to have the +telephone.... There’s nothing, nothing except the terrace, that’s +worth a Rap. It’s all dark and old and dried up and full of old-fashioned +things—musty old idees—fitter for a silver-fish than a modern +man.... I don’t know how I got here.” +</p> + +<p> +He broke out into a new grievance. “That damned vicar,” he +complained, “thinks I ought to think myself lucky to get this place! +Every time I meet him I can see him think it.... One of these days, George +I’ll show him what a Mod’un house is like!” +</p> + +<p> +And he did. +</p> + +<p> +I remember the day when he declared, as Americans say, for Crest Hill. He had +come up to see my new gas plant, for I was then only just beginning to +experiment with auxiliary collapsible balloons, and all the time the shine of +his glasses was wandering away to the open down beyond. “Let’s go +back to Lady Grove over the hill,” he said. “Something I want to +show you. Something fine!” +</p> + +<p> +It was an empty sunlit place that summer evening, sky and earth warm with +sundown, and a pe-wit or so just accentuating the pleasant stillness that ends +a long clear day. A beautiful peace, it was, to wreck for ever. And there was +my uncle, the modern man of power, in his grey top-hat and his grey suit and +his black-ribboned glasses, short, thin-legged, large-stomached, pointing and +gesticulating, threatening this calm. +</p> + +<p> +He began with a wave of his arm. “That’s the place, George,” +he said. “See?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh!” I cried—for I had been thinking of remote things. +</p> + +<p> +“I got it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Got what?” +</p> + +<p> +“For a house!—a Twentieth Century house! That’s the place for +it!” +</p> + +<p> +One of his characteristic phrases was begotten in him. +</p> + +<p> +“Four-square to the winds of heaven, George!” he said. “Eh? +Four-square to the winds of heaven!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll get the winds up here,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“A mammoth house it ought to be, George—to suit these hills.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Great galleries and things—running out there and there—See? +I been thinking of it, George! Looking out all this way—across the Weald. +With its back to Lady Grove.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the morning sun in its eye.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like an eagle, George,—like an eagle!” +</p> + +<p> +So he broached to me what speedily became the leading occupation of his +culminating years, Crest Hill. But all the world has heard of that extravagant +place which grew and changed its plans as it grew, and bubbled like a salted +snail, and burgeoned and bulged and evermore grew. I know not what delirium of +pinnacles and terraces and arcades and corridors glittered at last upon the +uplands of his mind; the place, for all that its expansion was terminated +abruptly by our collapse, is wonderful enough as it stands,—that empty +instinctive building of a childless man. His chief architect was a young man +named Westminster, whose work he had picked out in the architecture room of the +Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him he +associated from time to time a number of fellow professionals, stonemasons, +sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes, metal workers, wood carvers, +furniture designers, ceramic specialists, landscape gardeners, and the man who +designs the arrangement and ventilation of the various new houses in the London +Zoological Gardens. In addition he had his own ideas. The thing occupied his +mind at all times, but it held it completely from Friday night to Monday +morning. He would come down to Lady Grove on Friday night in a crowded +motor-car that almost dripped architects. He didn’t, however, confine +himself to architects; every one was liable to an invitation to week-end and +view Crest Hill, and many an eager promoter, unaware of how Napoleonically and +completely my uncle had departmentalised his mind, tried to creep up to him by +way of tiles and ventilators and new electric fittings. Always on Sunday +mornings, unless the weather was vile, he would, so soon as breakfast and his +secretaries were disposed of, visit the site with a considerable retinue, and +alter and develop plans, making modifications, Zzzz-ing, giving immense new +orders verbally—an unsatisfactory way, as Westminster and the contractors +ultimately found. +</p> + +<p> +There he stands in my memory, the symbol of this age for me, the man of luck +and advertisement, the current master of the world. There he stands upon the +great outward sweep of the terrace before the huge main entrance, a little +figure, ridiculously disproportionate to that forty-foot arch, with the granite +ball behind him—the astronomical ball, brass coopered, that represented +the world, with a little adjustable tube of lenses on a gun-metal arm that +focussed the sun upon just that point of the earth on which it chanced to be +shining vertically. There he stands, Napoleonically grouped with his retinue +men in tweeds and golfing-suits, a little solicitor, whose name I forget, in +grey trousers and a black jacket, and Westminster in Jaeger underclothing, a +floriferous tie, and peculiar brown cloth of his own. +</p> + +<p> +The downland breeze flutters my uncle’s coat-tails, disarranges his stiff +hair, and insists on the evidence of undisciplined appetites in face and form, +as he points out this or that feature in the prospect to his attentive +collaborator. +</p> + +<p> +Below are hundreds of feet of wheeling-planks, ditches, excavations, heaps of +earth, piles of garden stone from the Wealden ridges. On either hand the walls +of his irrelevant unmeaning palace rise at one time he had working in that +place—disturbing the economic balance of the whole countryside by their +presence—upwards of three thousand men.... +</p> + +<p> +So he poses for my picture amidst the raw beginnings that were never to be +completed. He did the strangest things about that place, things more and more +detached from any conception of financial scale, things more and more apart +from sober humanity. He seemed to think himself, at last, released from any +such limitations. He moved a quite considerable hill, and nearly sixty mature +trees were moved with it to open his prospect eastward, moved it about two +hundred feet to the south. At another time he caught a suggestion from some +city restaurant and made a billiard-room roofed with plate glass beneath the +waters of his ornamental lake. He furnished one wing while its roof still +awaited completion. He had a swimming bath thirty feet square next to his +bedroom upstairs, and to crown it all he commenced a great wall to hold all his +dominions together, free from the invasion of common men. It was a ten-foot +wall, glass surmounted, and had it been completed as he intended it, it would +have had a total length of nearly eleven miles. Some of it towards the last was +so dishonestly built that it collapsed within a year upon its foundations, but +some miles of it still stand. I never think of it now but what I think of the +hundreds of eager little investors who followed his “star,” whose +hopes and lives, whose wives’ security and children’s prospects are +all mixed up beyond redemption with that flaking mortar.... +</p> + +<p> +It is curious how many of these modern financiers of chance and bluff have +ended their careers by building. It was not merely my uncle. Sooner or later +they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation, try to make their +fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar, bring moonshine into +relations with a weekly wages-sheet. Then the whole fabric of confidence and +imagination totters—and down they come.... +</p> + +<p> +When I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of bricks and +mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the general +quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I am reminded of a +chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had witnessed a glide. He +talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey and shorts beside my machine, +fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous face failed to conceal a peculiar +desolation that possessed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Almost you convince me,” he said, coming up to me, “against +my will.... A marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir, +before you can emulate that perfect mechanism—the wing of a bird.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at my sheds. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve changed the look of this valley, too,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Temporary defilements,” I remarked, guessing what was in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But—H’m. +I’ve just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo’s +new house. That—that is something more permanent. A magnificent +place!—in many ways. Imposing. I’ve never somehow brought myself to +go that way before. Things are greatly advanced.... We find—the great +number of strangers introduced into the villages about here by these +operations, working-men chiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They +bring a new spirit into the place; betting—ideas—all sorts of queer +notions. Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in +one’s outhouses—and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The +other morning I couldn’t sleep—a slight dyspepsia—and I +looked out of the window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A +silent procession. I counted ninety-seven—in the dawn. All going up to +the new road for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I’ve been up +to see what they were doing.” +</p> + +<p> +“They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago,” I +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at +all—comparatively. And that big house—” +</p> + +<p> +He raised his eyebrows. “Really stupendous! Stupendous. +</p> + +<p> +“All the hillside—the old turf—cut to ribbons!” +</p> + +<p> +His eye searched my face. “We’ve grown so accustomed to look up to +Lady Grove,” he said, and smiled in search of sympathy. “It shifts +our centre of gravity.” +</p> + +<p> +“Things will readjust themselves,” I lied. +</p> + +<p> +He snatched at the phrase. “Of course,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll readjust themselves—settle down again. Must. In the +old way. It’s bound to come right again—a comforting thought. Yes. +After all, Lady Grove itself had to be built once upon a +time—was—to begin with—artificial.” +</p> + +<p> +His eye returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver +preoccupations. “I should think twice,” he remarked, “before +I trusted myself to that concern.... But I suppose one grows accustomed to the +motion.” +</p> + +<p> +He bade me good morning and went his way, bowed and thoughtful.... +</p> + +<p> +He had kept the truth from his mind a long time, but that morning it had forced +its way to him with an aspect that brooked no denial that this time it was not +just changes that were coming in his world, but that all his world lay open and +defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as he could see, root and +branch, scale and form alike, to change. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +SOARING</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +For nearly all the time that my uncle was incubating and hatching Crest Hill I +was busy in a little transverse valley between that great beginning and Lady +Grove with more and more costly and ambitious experiments in aerial navigation. +This work was indeed the main substance of my life through all the great time +of the Tono-Bungay symphony. +</p> + +<p> +I have told already how I came to devote myself to this system of inquiries, +how in a sort of disgust with the common adventure of life I took up the +dropped ends of my college studies, taking them up again with a man’s +resolution instead of a boy’s ambition. From the first I did well at this +work. It—was, I think, largely a case of special aptitude, of a peculiar +irrelevant vein of faculty running through my mind. It is one of those things +men seem to have by chance, that has little or nothing to do with their general +merit, and which it is ridiculous to be either conceited or modest about. I did +get through a very big mass of work in those years, working for a time with a +concentrated fierceness that left little of such energy or capacity as I +possess unused. I worked out a series of problems connected with the stability +of bodies pitching in the air and the internal movements of the wind, and I +also revolutionised one leading part at last of the theory of explosive +engines. These things are to be found in the <i>Philosophical Transactions</i>, +the <i>Mathematical Journal</i>, and less frequently in one or two other such +publications, and they needn’t detain us here. Indeed, I doubt if I could +write about them here. One acquires a sort of shorthand for one’s notes +and mind in relation to such special work. I have never taught; nor lectured, +that is to say, I have never had to express my thoughts about mechanical things +in ordinary everyday language, and I doubt very much if I could do so now +without extreme tedium. +</p> + +<p> +My work was, to begin with, very largely theoretical. I was able to attack such +early necessities of verification as arose with quite little models, using a +turntable to get the motion through the air, and cane, whalebone and silk as +building material. But a time came when incalculable factors crept in, factors +of human capacity and factors of insufficient experimental knowledge, when one +must needs guess and try. Then I had to enlarge the scale of my operations, and +soon I had enlarged them very greatly. I set to work almost concurrently on the +balance and stability of gliders and upon the steering of inflated bags, the +latter a particularly expensive branch of work. I was no doubt moved by +something of the same spirit of lavish expenditure that was running away with +my uncle in these developments. Presently my establishment above Lady Grove had +grown to a painted wood chalet big enough to accommodate six men, and in which +I would sometimes live for three weeks together; to a gasometer, to a +motor-house, to three big corrugated-roofed sheds and lock-up houses, to a +stage from which to start gliders, to a workshop and so forth. A rough road was +made. We brought up gas from Cheaping and electricity from Woking, which place +I found also afforded a friendly workshop for larger operations than I could +manage. I had the luck also to find a man who seemed my heaven-sent +second-in-command—Cothope his name was. He was a self-educated-man; he +had formerly been a sapper and he was one of the best and handiest working +engineers alive. Without him I do not think I could have achieved half what I +have done. At times he has been not so much my assistant as my collaborator, +and has followed my fortunes to this day. Other men came and went as I needed +them. +</p> + +<p> +I do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not +experienced it, the peculiar interest, the peculiar satisfaction that lies in a +sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money. It is a different +thing from any other sort of human effort. You are free from the exasperating +conflict with your fellow-creatures altogether—at least so far as the +essential work goes; that for me is its peculiar merit. Scientific truth is the +remotest of mistresses; she hides in strange places, she is attained by +tortuous and laborious roads, but <i>she is always there!</i> Win to her and +she will not fail you; she is yours and mankind’s for ever. She is +reality, the one reality I have found in this strange disorder of existence. +She will not sulk with you nor misunderstand you nor cheat you of your reward +upon some petty doubt. You cannot change her by advertisement or clamour, nor +stifle her in vulgarities. Things grow under your hands when you serve her, +things that are permanent as nothing else is permanent in the whole life of +man. That, I think, is the peculiar satisfaction of science and its enduring +reward.... +</p> + +<p> +The taking up of experimental work produced a great change in my personal +habits. I have told how already once in my life at Wimblehurst I had a period +of discipline and continuous effort, and how, when I came to South Kensington, +I became demoralised by the immense effect of London, by its innumerable +imperative demands upon my attention and curiosity. And I parted with much of +my personal pride when I gave up science for the development of Tono-Bungay. +But my poverty kept me abstinent and my youthful romanticism kept me chaste +until my married life was well under way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I +did a large amount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my +maximum nor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were +avoidable things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, +drank freely and followed my impulses more and more carelessly. I felt no +reason why I should do anything else. Never at any point did I use myself to +the edge of my capacity. The emotional crisis of my divorce did not produce any +immediate change in these matters of personal discipline. I found some +difficulty at first in concentrating my mind upon scientific work, it was so +much more exacting than business, but I got over that difficulty by smoking. I +became an inordinate cigar smoker; it gave me moods of profound depression, but +I treated these usually by the homeopathic method,—by lighting another +cigar. I didn’t realise at all how loose my moral and nervous fibre had +become until I reached the practical side of my investigations and was face to +face with the necessity of finding out just how it felt to use a glider and +just what a man could do with one. +</p> + +<p> +I got into this relaxed habit of living in spite of very real tendencies in my +nature towards discipline. I’ve never been in love with self-indulgence. +That philosophy of the loose lip and the lax paunch is one for which I’ve +always had an instinctive distrust. I like bare things, stripped things, plain, +austere and continent things, fine lines and cold colours. But in these +plethoric times when there is too much coarse stuff for everybody and the +struggle for life takes the form of competitive advertisement and the effort to +fill your neighbour’s eye, when there is no urgent demand either for +personal courage, sound nerves or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident. +Always before these times the bulk of the people did not over-eat themselves, +because they couldn’t, whether they wanted to do so or not, and all but a +very few were kept “fit” by unavoidable exercise and personal +danger. Now, if only he pitch his standard low enough and keep free from pride, +almost any one can achieve a sort of excess. You can go through contemporary +life fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry nor +frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest moment a mere sentimental +orgasm, and your first real contact with primary and elemental necessities, the +sweat of your death-bed. So I think it was with my uncle; so, very nearly, it +was with me. +</p> + +<p> +But the glider brought me up smartly. I had to find out how these things went +down the air, and the only way to find out is to go down with one. And for a +time I wouldn’t face it. +</p> + +<p> +There is something impersonal about a book, I suppose. At any rate I find +myself able to write down here just the confession I’ve never been able +to make to any one face to face, the frightful trouble it was to me to bring +myself to do what I suppose every other coloured boy in the West Indies could +do without turning a hair, and that is to fling myself off for my first soar +down the wind. The first trial was bound to be the worst; it was an experiment +I made with life, and the chance of death or injury was, I supposed, about +equal to the chance of success. I believed that with a dawn-like lucidity. I +had begun with a glider that I imagined was on the lines of the Wright +brothers’ aeroplane, but I could not be sure. It might turn over. I might +upset it. It might burrow its nose at the end and smash itself and me. The +conditions of the flight necessitated alert attention; it wasn’t a thing +to be done by jumping off and shutting one’s eyes or getting angry or +drunk to do it. One had to use one’s weight to balance. And when at last +I did it it was horrible—for ten seconds. For ten seconds or so, as I +swept down the air flattened on my infernal framework and with the wind in my +eyes, the rush of the ground beneath me filled me with sick and helpless +terror; I felt as though some violent oscillatory current was throbbing in +brain and back bone, and I groaned aloud. I set my teeth and groaned. It was a +groan wrung out of me in spite of myself. My sensations of terror swooped to a +climax. And then, you know, they ended! +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly my terror was over and done with. I was soaring through the air right +way up, steadily, and no mischance had happened. I felt intensely alive and my +nerves were strung like a bow. I shifted a limb, swerved and shouted between +fear and triumph as I recovered from the swerve and heeled the other way and +steadied myself. +</p> + +<p> +I thought I was going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me,—it was +queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of nothingness, and +I yelled helplessly, “Get out of the way!” The bird doubled itself +up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the right abruptly and +vanished from my circle of interest. Then I saw the shadow of my aeroplane +keeping a fixed distance before me and very steady, and the turf as it seemed +streaming out behind it. The turf!—it wasn’t after all streaming so +impossibly fast. +</p> + +<p> +When I came gliding down to the safe spread of level green I had chosen, I was +as cool and ready as a city clerk who drops off an omnibus in motion, and I had +learnt much more than soaring. I tilted up her nose at the right moment, +levelled again and grounded like a snowflake on a windless day. I lay flat for +an instant and then knelt up and got on my feet atremble, but very satisfied +with myself. Cothope was running down the hill to me. ... +</p> + +<p> +But from that day I went into training, and I kept myself in training for many +months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various +excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of +body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that +cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably altogether my own +secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might suspect. Well,—he +shouldn’t suspect again. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious that I remember that shame and self accusation and its +consequences far more distinctly than I recall the weeks of vacillation before +I soared. For a time I went altogether without alcohol, I stopped smoking +altogether and ate very sparingly, and every day I did something that called a +little upon my nerves and muscles. I soared as frequently as I could. I +substituted a motor-bicycle for the London train and took my chances in the +southward traffic, and I even tried what thrills were to be got upon a horse. +But they put me on made horses, and I conceived a perhaps unworthy contempt for +the certitudes of equestrian exercise in comparison with the adventures of +mechanism. Also I walked along the high wall at the back of Lady Grove garden, +and at last brought myself to stride the gap where the gate comes. If I +didn’t altogether get rid of a certain giddy instinct by such exercises, +at least I trained my will until it didn’t matter. And soon I no longer +dreaded flight, but was eager to go higher into the air, and I came to esteem +soaring upon a glider, that even over the deepest dip in the ground had barely +forty feet of fall beneath it, a mere mockery of what flight might be. I began +to dream of the keener freshness in the air high above the beechwoods, and it +was rather to satisfy that desire than as any legitimate development of my +proper work that presently I turned a part of my energies and the bulk of my +private income to the problem of the navigable balloon. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I had gone far beyond that initial stage; I had had two smashes and a broken +rib which my aunt nursed with great energy, and was getting some reputation in +the aeronautic world when, suddenly, as though she had never really left it, +the Honourable Beatrice Normandy, dark-eyed, and with the old disorderly wave +of the hair from her brow, came back into my life. She came riding down a grass +path in the thickets below Lady Grove, perched up on a huge black horse, and +the old Earl of Carnaby and Archie Garvell, her half-brother, were with her. My +uncle had been bothering me about the Crest Hill hot-water pipes, and we were +returning by a path transverse to theirs and came out upon them suddenly. Old +Carnaby was trespassing on our ground, and so he hailed us in a friendly +fashion and pulled up to talk to us. +</p> + +<p> +I didn’t note Beatrice at all at first. I was interested in Lord Carnaby, +that remarkable vestige of his own brilliant youth. I had heard of him, but +never seen him. For a man of sixty-five who had sinned all the sins, so they +said, and laid waste the most magnificent political debut of any man of his +generation, he seemed to me to be looking remarkably fit and fresh. He was a +lean little man with grey-blue eyes in his brown face, and his cracked voice +was the worst thing in his effect. +</p> + +<p> +“Hope you don’t mind us coming this way, Ponderevo,” he +cried; and my uncle, who was sometimes a little too general and generous with +titles, answered, “Not at all, my lord, not at all! Glad you make use of +it!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re building a great place over the hill,” said Carnaby. +</p> + +<p> +“Thought I’d make a show for once,” said my uncle. “It +looks big because it’s spread out for the sun.” +</p> + +<p> +“Air and sunlight,” said the earl. “You can’t have too +much of them. But before our time they used to build for shelter and water and +the high road.” +</p> + +<p> +Then I discovered that the silent figure behind the earl was Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +I’d forgotten her sufficiently to think for a moment that she +hadn’t changed at all since she had watched me from behind the skirts of +Lady Drew. She was looking at me, and her dainty brow under her broad brimmed +hat—she was wearing a grey hat and loose unbuttoned coat—was knit +with perplexity, trying, I suppose, to remember where she had seen me before. +Her shaded eyes met mine with that mute question.... +</p> + +<p> +It seemed incredible to me she didn’t remember. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the earl and touched his horse. +</p> + +<p> +Garvell was patting the neck of his horse, which was inclined to fidget, and +disregarding me. He nodded over his shoulder and followed. His movement seemed +to release a train of memories in her. She glanced suddenly at him and then +back at me with a flash of recognition that warmed instantly to a faint smile. +She hesitated as if to speak to me, smiled broadly and understandingly and +turned to follow the others. All three broke into a canter and she did not look +back. I stood for a second or so at the crossing of the lanes, watching her +recede, and then became aware that my uncle was already some paces off and +talking over his shoulder in the belief that I was close behind. I turned about +and strode to overtake him. My mind was full of Beatrice and this surprise. I +remembered her simply as a Normandy. I’d clean forgotten that Garvell was +the son and she the step-daughter of our neighbour, Lady Osprey. Indeed, +I’d probably forgotten at that time that we had Lady Osprey as a +neighbour. There was no reason at all for remembering it. It was amazing to +find her in this Surrey countryside, when I’d never thought of her as +living anywhere in the world but at Bladesover Park, near forty miles and +twenty years away. She was so alive—so unchanged! The same quick warm +blood was in her cheeks. It seemed only yesterday that we had kissed among the +bracken stems.... +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I say he’s good stuff,” said my uncle. “You can say +what you like against the aristocracy, George; Lord Carnaby’s rattling +good stuff. There’s a sort of <i>Savoir Faire</i>, +something—it’s an old-fashioned phrase, George, but a good one +there’s a Bong-Tong.... It’s like the Oxford turf, George, you +can’t grow it in a year. I wonder how they do it. It’s living +always on a Scale, George. It’s being there from the beginning.”... +</p> + +<p> +“She might,” I said to myself, “be a picture by Romney come +alive!” +</p> + +<p> +“They tell all these stories about him,” said my uncle, “but +what do they all amount to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gods!” I said to myself; “but why have I forgotten for so +long? Those queer little brows of hers, the touch of mischief in her +eyes—the way she breaks into a smile!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t blame him,” said my uncle. “Mostly it’s +imagination. That and leisure, George. When I was a young man I was kept pretty +busy. So were you. Even then—!” +</p> + +<p> +What puzzled me more particularly was the queer trick of my memory that had +never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I met Garvell again +that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish antagonism and our fight. +Now when my senses were full of her, it seemed incredible that I could ever +have forgotten.... +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +“Oh, Crikey!” said my aunt, reading a letter behind her +coffee-machine. “<i>Here’s</i> a young woman, George!” +</p> + +<p> +We were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that looks +upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London. +</p> + +<p> +I sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg. +</p> + +<p> +“Who’s Beatrice Normandy?” asked my aunt. “I’ve +not heard of her before.” +</p> + +<p> +“She the young woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Says she knows you. I’m no hand at old etiquette, George, but +her line is a bit unusual. Practically she says she’s going to make her +mother—” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh? Step-mother, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to know a lot about her. She says +‘mother’—Lady Osprey. They’re to call on me, anyhow, +next Wednesday week at four, and there’s got to be you for tea.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“You—for tea. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m. She had rather—force of character. When I knew her +before.” +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of my aunt’s head sticking out obliquely from behind the +coffee-machine and regarding me with wide blue curiosity. I met her gaze for a +moment, flinched, coloured, and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve known her longer than I’ve known you,” I said, +and explained at length. +</p> + +<p> +My aunt kept her eye on me over and round the coffee-machine as I did so. She +was greatly interested, and asked several elucidatory questions. +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t you tell me the day you saw her? You’ve had her +on your mind for a week,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It IS odd I didn’t tell you,” I admitted. +</p> + +<p> +“You thought I’d get a Down on her,” said my aunt +conclusively. “That’s what you thought” and opened the rest +of her letters. +</p> + +<p> +The two ladies came in a pony-carriage with conspicuous punctuality, and I had +the unusual experience of seeing my aunt entertaining callers. We had tea upon +the terrace under the cedar, but old Lady Osprey, being an embittered +Protestant, had never before seen the inside of the house, and we made a sort +of tour of inspection that reminded me of my first visit to the place. In spite +of my preoccupation with Beatrice, I stored a queer little memory of the +contrast between the two other women; my aunt, tall, slender and awkward, in a +simple blue homekeeping dress, an omnivorous reader and a very authentic wit, +and the lady of pedigree, short and plump, dressed with Victorian fussiness, +living at the intellectual level of palmistry and genteel fiction, pink in the +face and generally flustered by a sense of my aunt’s social strangeness +and disposed under the circumstances to behave rather like an imitation of the +more queenly moments of her own cook. The one seemed made of whalebone, the +other of dough. My aunt was nervous, partly through the intrinsic difficulty of +handling the lady and partly because of her passionate desire to watch Beatrice +and me, and her nervousness took a common form with her, a wider clumsiness of +gesture and an exacerbation of her habitual oddity of phrase which did much to +deepen the pink perplexity of the lady of title. For instance, I heard my aunt +admit that one of the Stuart Durgan ladies did look a bit “balmy on the +crumpet”; she described the knights of the age of chivalry as +“korvorting about on the off-chance of a dragon”; she explained she +was “always old mucking about the garden,” and instead of offering +me a Garibaldi biscuit, she asked me with that faint lisp of hers, to +“have some squashed flies, George.” I felt convinced Lady Osprey +would describe her as “a most eccentric person” on the very first +opportunity;—“a most eccentric person.” One could see her, as +people say, “shaping” for that. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice was dressed very quietly in brown, with a simple but courageous +broad-brimmed hat, and an unexpected quality of being grown-up and responsible. +She guided her step-mother through the first encounter, scrutinised my aunt, +and got us all well in movement through the house, and then she turned her +attention to me with a quick and half-confident smile. +</p> + +<p> +“We haven’t met,” she said, “since—” +</p> + +<p> +“It was in the Warren.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “the Warren! I remembered it all +except just the name.... I was eight.” +</p> + +<p> +Her smiling eyes insisted on my memories being thorough. I looked up and met +them squarely, a little at a loss for what I should say. +</p> + +<p> +“I gave you away pretty completely,” she said, meditating upon my +face. “And afterwards I gave way Archie.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned her face away from the others, and her voice fell ever so little. +</p> + +<p> +“They gave him a licking for telling lies!” she said, as though +that was a pleasant memory. “And when it was all over I went to our +wigwam. You remember the wigwam?” +</p> + +<p> +“Out in the West Wood?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and cried—for all the evil I had done you, I suppose.... +I’ve often thought of it since.”... +</p> + +<p> +Lady Osprey stopped for us to overtake her. “My dear!” she said to +Beatrice. “Such a beautiful gallery!” Then she stared very hard at +me, puzzled in the most naked fashion to understand who I might be. +</p> + +<p> +“People say the oak staircase is rather good,” said my aunt, and +led the way. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Osprey, with her skirts gathered for the ascent to the gallery and her +hand on the newel, turned and addressed a look full of meaning overflowing +indeed with meanings—at her charge. The chief meaning no doubt was +caution about myself, but much of it was just meaning at large. I chanced to +catch the response in a mirror and detected Beatrice with her nose wrinkled +into a swift and entirely diabolical grimace. Lady Osprey became a deeper shade +of pink and speechless with indignation—it was evident she disavowed all +further responsibility, as she followed my aunt upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s dark, but there’s a sort of dignity,” said +Beatrice very distinctly, regarding the hall with serene tranquillity, and +allowing the unwilling feet on the stairs to widen their distance from us. She +stood a step up, so that she looked down a little upon me and over me at the +old hall. +</p> + +<p> +She turned upon me abruptly when she thought her step-mother was beyond +ear-shot. +</p> + +<p> +“But how did you get here?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Here?” +</p> + +<p> +“All this.” She indicated space and leisure by a wave of the hand +at hall and tall windows and sunlit terrace. “Weren’t you the +housekeeper’s son?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve adventured. My uncle has become—a great financier. He +used to be a little chemist about twenty miles from Bladesover. We’re +promoters now, amalgamators, big people on the new model.” +</p> + +<p> +“I understand.” She regarded me with interested eyes, visibly +thinking me out. +</p> + +<p> +“And you recognised me?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“After a second or so. I saw you recognised me. I couldn’t place +you, but I knew I knew you. Then Archie being there helped me to +remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad to meet again,” I ventured. “I’d never +forgotten you.” +</p> + +<p> +“One doesn’t forget those childish things.” +</p> + +<p> +We regarded one another for a moment with a curiously easy and confident +satisfaction in coming together again. I can’t explain our ready zest in +one another. The thing was so. We pleased each other, we had no doubt in our +minds that we pleased each other. From the first we were at our ease with one +another. “So picturesque, so very picturesque,” came a voice from +above, and then: “Bee-atrice!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve a hundred things I want to know about you,” she said +with an easy intimacy, as we went up the winding steps.... +</p> + +<p> +As the four of us sat at tea together under the cedar on the terrace she asked +questions about my aeronautics. My aunt helped with a word or so about my +broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most indesirable and +improper topic—a blasphemous intrusion upon the angels. “It +isn’t flying,” I explained. “We don’t fly yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“You never will,” she said compactly. “You never will.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” I said, “we do what we can.” +</p> + +<p> +The little lady lifted a small gloved hand and indicated a height of about four +feet from the ground. “Thus far,” she said, “thus +far—<i>and no farther!</i> No!” +</p> + +<p> +She became emphatically pink. “<i>No</i>,” she said again quite +conclusively, and coughed shortly. “Thank you,” she said to her +ninth or tenth cake. Beatrice burst into cheerful laughter with her eye on me. +I was lying on the turf, and this perhaps caused a slight confusion about the +primordial curse in Lady Osprey’s mind. +</p> + +<p> +“Upon his belly shall he go,” she said with quiet distinctness, +“all the days of his life.” +</p> + +<p> +After which we talked no more of aeronautics. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice sat bunched together in a chair and regarded me with exactly the same +scrutiny, I thought, the same adventurous aggression, that I had faced long ago +at the tea-table in my mother’s room. She was amazingly like that little +Princess of my Bladesover memories, the wilful misbehaviours of her hair seemed +the same—her voice; things one would have expected to be changed +altogether. She formed her plans in the same quick way, and acted with the same +irresponsible decision. +</p> + +<p> +She stood up abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“What is there beyond the terrace?” she said, and found me promptly +beside her. +</p> + +<p> +I invented a view for her. +</p> + +<p> +At the further corner from the cedar she perched herself up upon the parapet +and achieved an air of comfort among the lichenous stones. “Now tell +me,” she said, “all about yourself. Tell me about yourself; I know +such duffers of men! They all do the same things. How did you get—here? +All my men <i>were</i> here. They couldn’t have got here if they +hadn’t been here always. They wouldn’t have thought it right. +You’ve climbed.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it’s climbing,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She went off at a tangent. “It’s—I don’t know if +you’ll understand—interesting to meet you again. I’ve +remembered you. I don’t know why, but I have. I’ve used you as a +sort of lay figure—when I’ve told myself stories. But you’ve +always been rather stiff and difficult in my stories—in ready-made +clothes—a Labour Member or a Bradlaugh, or something like that. +You’re not like that a bit. And yet you <i>are!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me. “Was it much of a fight? They make out it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know why.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was shot up here by an accident,” I said. “There was no +fight at all. Except to keep honest, perhaps and I made no great figure in +that. I and my uncle mixed a medicine and it blew us up. No merit in that! But +you’ve been here all the time. Tell me what you have done first.” +</p> + +<p> +“One thing we didn’t do.” She meditated for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Produce a little half-brother for Bladesover. So it went to the +Phillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and my step-mother—we let, too. +And live in a little house.” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded her head vaguely over her shoulder and turned to me again. +“Well, suppose it was an accident. Here you are! Now you’re here, +what are you going to do? You’re young. Is it to be Parliament? heard +some men the other day talking about you. Before I knew you were you. They said +that was what you ought to do.”... +</p> + +<p> +She put me through my intentions with a close and vital curiosity. It was just +as she had tried to imagine me a soldier and place me years ago. She made me +feel more planless and incidental than ever. “You want to make a +flying-machine,” she pursued, “and when you fly? What then? Would +it be for fighting?” +</p> + +<p> +I told her something of my experimental work. She had never heard of the +soaring aeroplane, and was excited by the thought, and keen to hear about it. +She had thought all the work so far had been a mere projecting of impossible +machines. For her Pilcher and Lilienthal had died in vain. She did not know +such men had lived in the world. +</p> + +<p> +“But that’s dangerous!” she said, with a note of discovery. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!—it’s dangerous.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bee-atrice!” Lady Osprey called. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice dropped from the wall to her feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Where do you do this soaring?” +</p> + +<p> +“Beyond the high Barrows. East of Crest Hill and the wood.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind people coming to see?” +</p> + +<p> +“Whenever you please. Only let me know” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll take my chance some day. Some day soon.” She looked at +me thoughtfully, smiled, and our talk was at an end. +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +All my later work in aeronautics is associated in my memory with the quality of +Beatrice, with her incidental presence, with things she said and did and things +I thought of that had reference to her. +</p> + +<p> +In the spring of that year I had got to a flying machine that lacked nothing +but longitudinal stability. My model flew like a bird for fifty or a hundred +yards or so, and then either dived and broke its nose or, what was commoner, +reared up, slid back and smashed its propeller. The rhythm of the pitching +puzzled me. I felt it must obey some laws not yet quite clearly stated. I +became therefore a student of theory and literature for a time; I hit upon the +string of considerations that led me to what is called Ponderevo’s +Principle and my F.R.S., and I worked this out in three long papers. Meanwhile +I made a lot of turn-table and glider models and started in upon an idea of +combining gas-bags and gliders. Balloon work was new to me. I had made one or +two ascents in the balloons of the Aëro Club before I started my gasometer and +the balloon shed and gave Cothope a couple of months with Sir Peter Rumchase. +My uncle found part of the money for these developments; he was growing +interested and competitive in this business because of Lord Boom’s prize +and the amount of <i>réclame</i> involved, and it was at his request that I +named my first navigable balloon Lord Roberts Alpha. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Roberts A very nearly terminated all my investigations. My idea both in +this and its more successful and famous younger brother, Lord Roberts β, +was to utilise the idea of a contractile balloon with a rigid flat base, a +balloon shaped rather like an inverted boat that should almost support the +apparatus, but not quite. The gas-bag was of the chambered sort used for these +long forms, and not with an internal balloonette. The trouble was to make the +thing contractile. This I sought to do by fixing a long, fine-meshed silk net +over it that was fastened to be rolled up on two longitudinal rods. Practically +I contracted my sausage gas-bag by netting it down. The ends were too complex +for me to describe here, but I thought them out elaborately and they were very +carefully planned. Lord Roberts A was furnished with a single big screw +forward, and there was a rudder aft. The engine was the first one to be, so to +speak, right in the plane of the gas-bag. I lay immediately under the balloon +on a sort of glider framework, far away from either engine or rudder, +controlling them by wire-pulls constructed on the principle of the well-known +Bowden brake of the cyclist. +</p> + +<p> +But Lord Roberts A has been pretty exhaustively figured and described in +various aeronautical publications. The unforeseen defect was the badness of the +work in the silk netting. It tore aft as soon as I began to contract the +balloon, and the last two segments immediately bulged through the hole, exactly +as an inner tube will bulge through the ruptured outer cover of a pneumatic +tire, and then the sharp edge of the torn net cut the oiled-silk of the +distended last segment along a weak seam and burst it with a loud report. +</p> + +<p> +Up to that point the whole thing had been going on extremely well. As a +navigable balloon and before I contracted it, the Lord Roberts A was an +unqualified success. It had run out of the shed admirably at nine or ten miles +an hour or more, and although there was a gentle southwester blowing, it had +gone up and turned and faced it as well as any craft of the sort I have ever +seen. +</p> + +<p> +I lay in my customary glider position, horizontal and face downward, and the +invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of independent +levitation. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I +see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, +swish, swish, swish of the vans of the propeller. I made a wide circle over +Lady Grove and Duffield and out towards Effingham and came back quite +successfully to the starting-point. +</p> + +<p> +Down below in the October sunlight were my sheds and the little group that had +been summoned to witness the start, their faces craned upward and most of them +scrutinising my expression through field-glasses. I could see Carnaby and +Beatrice on horseback, and two girls I did not know with them; Cothope and +three or four workmen I employed; my aunt and Mrs. Levinstein, who was staying +with her, on foot, and Dimmock, the veterinary surgeon, and one or two others. +My shadow moved a little to the north of them like the shadow of a fish. At +Lady Grove the servants were out on the lawn, and the Duffield school +playground swarmed with children too indifferent to aeronautics to cease their +playing. But in the Crest Hill direction—the place looked extraordinarily +squat and ugly from above—there were knots and strings of staring workmen +everywhere—not one of them working, but all agape. (But now I write it, +it occurs to me that perhaps it was their dinner hour; it was certainly near +twelve.) I hung for a moment or so enjoying the soar, then turned about to face +a clear stretch of open down, let the engine out to full speed and set my +rollers at work rolling in the net, and so tightening the gas-bags. Instantly +the pace quickened with the diminished resistance... +</p> + +<p> +In that moment before the bang I think I must have been really flying. Before +the net ripped, just in the instant when my balloon was at its systole, the +whole apparatus was, I am convinced, heavier than air. That, however, is a +claim that has been disputed, and in any case this sort of priority is a very +trivial thing. +</p> + +<p> +Then came a sudden retardation, instantly followed by an inexpressibly +disconcerting tilt downward of the machine. That I still recall with horror. I +couldn’t see what was happening at all and I couldn’t imagine. It +was a mysterious, inexplicable dive. The thing, it seemed, without rhyme or +reason, was kicking up its heels in the air. The bang followed immediately, and +I perceived I was falling rapidly. +</p> + +<p> +I was too much taken by surprise to think of the proper cause of the report. I +don’t even know what I made of it. I was obsessed, I suppose, by that +perpetual dread of the modern aeronaut, a flash between engine and balloon. Yet +obviously I wasn’t wrapped in flames. I ought to have realised instantly +it wasn’t that. I did, at any rate, whatever other impressions there +were, release the winding of the outer net and let the balloon expand again, +and that no doubt did something to break my fall. I don’t remember doing +that. Indeed, all I do remember is the giddy effect upon the landscape of +falling swiftly upon it down a flat spiral, the hurried rush of fields and +trees and cottages on my left shoulder and the overhung feeling as if the whole +apparatus was pressing down the top of my head. I didn’t stop or attempt +to stop the screw. That was going on, swish, swish, swish all the time. +</p> + +<p> +Cothope really knows more about the fall than I do. He describes the easterly +start, the tilt, and the appearance and bursting of a sort of bladder aft. Then +down I swooped, very swiftly, but not nearly so steeply as I imagined I was +doing. “Fifteen or twenty degrees,” said Cothope, “to be +exact.” From him it was that I learnt that I let the nets loose again, +and so arrested my fall. He thinks I was more in control of myself than I +remember. +</p> + +<p> +But I do not see why I should have forgotten so excellent a resolution. His +impression is that I was really steering and trying to drop into the Farthing +Down beeches. “You hit the trees,” he said, “and the whole +affair stood on its nose among them, and then very slowly crumpled up. I saw +you’d been jerked out, as I thought, and I didn’t stay for more. I +rushed for my bicycle.” +</p> + +<p> +As a matter of fact, it was purely accidental that I came down in the woods. I +am reasonably certain that I had no more control then than a thing in a parcel. +I remember I felt a sort of wincing, “Now it comes!” as the trees +rushed up to me. If I remember that, I should remember steering. Then the +propeller smashed, everything stopped with a jerk, and I was falling into a +mass of yellowing leaves, and Lord Roberts A, so it seemed to me, was going +back into the sky. +</p> + +<p> +I felt twigs and things hit me in the face, but I didn’t feel injured at +the time; I clutched at things that broke, tumbled through a froth of green and +yellow into a shadowy world of great bark-covered arms, and there, snatching +wildly, got a grip on a fair round branch, and hung. +</p> + +<p> +I became intensely alert and clear-headed. I held by that branch for a moment +and then looked about me, and caught at another, and then found myself holding +to a practicable fork. I swung forward to that and got a leg around it below +its junction, and so was able presently to clamber down, climbing very coolly +and deliberately. I dropped ten feet or so from the lowest branch and fell on +my feet. “That’s all right,” I said, and stared up through +the tree to see what I could of the deflated and crumpled remains that had once +been Lord Roberts A festooned on the branches it had broken. +“Gods!” I said, “what a tumble!” +</p> + +<p> +I wiped something that trickled from my face and was shocked to see my hand +covered with blood. I looked at myself and saw what seemed to me an astonishing +quantity of blood running down my arm and shoulder. I perceived my mouth was +full of blood. It’s a queer moment when one realises one is hurt, and +perhaps badly hurt, and has still to discover just how far one is hurt. I +explored my face carefully and found unfamiliar contours on the left side. The +broken end of a branch had driven right through my cheek, damaging my cheek and +teeth and gums, and left a splinter of itself stuck, like an explorer’s +fartherest-point flag, in the upper maxillary. That and a sprained wrist were +all my damage. But I bled as though I had been chopped to pieces, and it seemed +to me that my face had been driven in. I can’t describe just the horrible +disgust I felt at that. +</p> + +<p> +“This blood must be stopped, anyhow,” I said, thickheadedly. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder where there’s a spider’s web”—an odd +twist for my mind to take. But it was the only treatment that occurred to me. +</p> + +<p> +I must have conceived some idea of going home unaided, because I was thirty +yards from the tree before I dropped. +</p> + +<p> +Then a kind of black disc appeared in the middle of the world and rushed out to +the edge of things and blotted them out. I don’t remember falling down. I +fainted from excitement, disgust at my injury and loss of blood, and lay there +until Cothope found me. +</p> + +<p> +He was the first to find me, scorching as he did over the downland turf, and +making a wide course to get the Carnaby plantations at their narrowest. Then +presently, while he was trying to apply the methodical teachings of the St. +John’s Ambulance classes to a rather abnormal case, Beatrice came +galloping through the trees full-tilt, with Lord Carnaby hard behind her, and +she was hatless, muddy from a fall, and white as death. “And cool as a +cucumber, too,” said Cothope, turning it over in his mind as he told me. +</p> + +<p> +(“They never seem quite to have their heads, and never seem quite to lose +’em,” said Cothope, generalising about the sex.) +</p> + +<p> +Also he witnessed she acted with remarkable decision. The question was whether +I should be taken to the house her step-mother occupied at Bedley Corner, the +Carnaby dower house, or down to Carnaby’s place at Easting. Beatrice had +no doubt in the matter, for she meant to nurse me. Carnaby didn’t seem to +want that to happen. “She <i>would</i> have it wasn’t half so +far,” said Cothope. “She faced us out.... +</p> + +<p> +“I hate to be faced out of my opinion, so I’ve taken a pedometer +over it since. It’s exactly forty-three yards further. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord Carnaby looked at her pretty straight,” said Cothope, +finishing the picture; “and then he give in.” +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +But my story has made a jump from June to October, and during that time my +relations with Beatrice and the countryside that was her setting had developed +in many directions. She came and went, moving in an orbit for which I had no +data, going to London and Paris, into Wales and Northampton, while her +stepmother, on some independent system of her own, also vanished and recurred +intermittently. At home they obeyed the rule of an inflexible old maid, +Charlotte, and Beatrice exercised all the rights of proprietorship in +Carnaby’s extensive stables. Her interest in me was from the first +undisguised. She found her way to my worksheds and developed rapidly, in spite +of the sincere discouragement of Cothope, into a keen amateur of aeronautics. +She would come sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes +afoot with an Irish terrier, sometimes riding. She would come for three or four +days every day, vanish for a fortnight or three weeks, return. +</p> + +<p> +It was not long before I came to look for her. From the first I found her +immensely interesting. To me she was a new feminine type altogether—I +have made it plain, I think, how limited was my knowledge of women. But she +made me not simply interested in her, but in myself. She became for me +something that greatly changes a man’s world. How shall I put it? She +became an audience. Since I’ve emerged from the emotional developments of +the affair I have thought it out in a hundred aspects, and it does seem to me +that this way in which men and women make audiences for one another is a +curiously influential force in their lives. For some it seems an audience is a +vital necessity, they seek audiences as creatures seek food; others again, my +uncle among them, can play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and +can live without one. In my adolescence I was my own audience and my own court +of honour. And to have an audience in one’s mind is to play a part, to +become self-conscious and dramatic. For many years I had been self-forgetful +and scientific. I had lived for work and impersonal interests until I found +scrutiny, applause and expectation in Beatrice’s eyes. Then I began to +live for the effect I imagined I made upon her, to make that very soon the +principal value in my life. I played to her. I did things for the look of them. +I began to dream more and more of beautiful situations and fine poses and +groupings with her and for her. +</p> + +<p> +I put these things down because they puzzle me. I think I was in love with +Beatrice, as being in love is usually understood; but it was quite a different +state altogether from my passionate hunger for Marion, or my keen, sensuous +desire for and pleasure in Effie. These were selfish, sincere things, +fundamental and instinctive, as sincere as the leap of a tiger. But until +matters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was an immense imaginative +insurgence of a quite different quality. I am setting down here very gravely, +and perhaps absurdly, what are no doubt elementary commonplaces for innumerable +people. This love that grew up between Beatrice and myself was, I think—I +put it quite tentatively and rather curiously—romantic love. That +unfortunate and truncated affair of my uncle and the Scrymgeour lady was really +of the same stuff, if a little different in quality. I have to admit that. The +factor of audience was of primary importance in either else. +</p> + +<p> +Its effect upon me was to make me in many respects adolescent again. It made me +keener upon the point of honour, and anxious and eager to do high and splendid +things, and in particular, brave things. So far it ennobled and upheld me. But +it did also push me towards vulgar and showy things. At bottom it was +disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of stage scenery, with one side to +the audience, another side that wasn’t meant to show, and an economy of +substance. It certainly robbed my work of high patience and quality. I cut down +the toil of research in my eagerness and her eagerness for fine flourishes in +the air, flights that would tell. I shirked the longer road. +</p> + +<p> +And it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity. +</p> + +<p> +Yet that was not everything in our relationship. The elemental thing was there +also. It came in very suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +It was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without reference to +my experimental memoranda whether it was in July or August. I was working with +a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing curvatures studied from +Lilienthal, Pilcher and Phillips, that I thought would give a different rhythm +for the pitching oscillations than anything I’d had before. I was soaring +my long course from the framework on the old barrow by my sheds down to +Tinker’s Corner. It is a clear stretch of downland, except for two or +three thickets of box and thorn to the right of my course; one transverse +trough, in which there is bush and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the +east. I had started, and was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which +any new arrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me +appeared Beatrice, riding towards Tinker’s Corner to waylay and talk to +me. She looked round over her shoulder, saw me coming, touched her horse to a +gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my machine. +</p> + +<p> +There was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn’t all smash +together. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up and +drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undamaged—a poor +chance it would have been—in order to avoid any risk to her, or whether I +would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This latter I did. She had +already got her horse in hand when I came up to her. Her woman’s body lay +along his neck, and she glanced up as I, with wings aspread, and every nerve in +a state of tension, swept over her. +</p> + +<p> +Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and +trembling. +</p> + +<p> +We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and for one +instant I held her. +</p> + +<p> +“Those great wings,” she said, and that was all. +</p> + +<p> +She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted. +</p> + +<p> +“Very near a nasty accident,” said Cothope, coming up and regarding +our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. “Very +dangerous thing coming across us like that.” +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and then sat +down on the turf “I’ll just sit down for a moment,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She covered her face with her hands, while Cothope looked at her with an +expression between suspicion and impatience. +</p> + +<p> +For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he’d +better get her water. +</p> + +<p> +As for me, I was filled with a new outrageous idea, begotten I scarcely know +how from this incident, with its instant contacts and swift emotions, and that +was that I must make love to and possess Beatrice. I see no particular reason +why that thought should have come to me in that moment, but it did. I do not +believe that before then I had thought of our relations in such terms at all. +Suddenly, as I remember it, the factor of passion came. She crouched there, and +I stood over her, and neither of us said a word. But it was just as though +something had been shouted from the sky. +</p> + +<p> +Cothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. “I +shan’t want any water,” she said. “Call him back.” +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +After that the spirit of our relations changed. The old ease had gone. She came +to me less frequently, and when she came she would have some one with her, +usually old Carnaby, and he would do the bulk of the talking. All through +September she was away. When we were alone together there was a curious +constraint. We became clouds of inexpressible feeling towards one another; we +could think of nothing that was not too momentous for words. +</p> + +<p> +Then came the smash of Lord Roberts A, and I found myself with a bandaged face +in a bedroom in the Bedley Corner dower-house with Beatrice presiding over an +inefficient nurse, Lady Osprey very pink and shocked in the background, and my +aunt jealously intervening. +</p> + +<p> +My injuries were much more showy than serious, and I could have been taken to +Lady Grove next day, but Beatrice would not permit that, and kept me at Bedley +Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the second day she became +extremely solicitous for the proper aeration of the nurse, packed her off for +an hour in a brisk rain, and sat by me alone. +</p> + +<p> +I asked her to marry me. +</p> + +<p> +All the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to +eloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages, and with some little +difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was feverish and in +pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long with regard to her +became now an unendurable impatience. +</p> + +<p> +“Comfortable?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I read to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I want to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t. I’d better talk to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, “I want to talk to you.” +</p> + +<p> +She came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. “I +don’t—I don’t want you to talk to me,” she said. +“I thought you couldn’t talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“I get few chances—of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better not talk. Don’t talk now. Let me chatter +instead. You ought not to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t much,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather you didn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not going to be disfigured,” I said. “Only a +scar.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she said, as if she had expected something quite different. +“Did you think you’d become a sort of gargoyle?” +</p> + +<p> +“L’Homme qui Rit!—I didn’t know. But that’s all +right. Jolly flowers those are!” +</p> + +<p> +“Michaelmas daisies,” she said. “I’m glad you’r +not disfigured, and those are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at +all? When I saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought +to have been, by all the rules of the game.” +</p> + +<p> +She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we social equals?” I said abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +She stared at me. “Queer question,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“But are we?” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a +courtesy Baron who died—of general disreputableness, I +believe—before his father—? I give it up. Does it matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her. +“Damn these bandages!” I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile +rage. +</p> + +<p> +She roused herself to her duties as nurse. “What are you doing? Why are +you trying to sit up? Sit down! Don’t touch your bandages. I told you not +to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders and +pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I had raised +to my face. +</p> + +<p> +“I told you not to talk,” she whispered close to my face. “I +asked you not to talk. Why couldn’t you do as I asked you?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve been avoiding me for a month,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I know. You might have known. Put your hand back—down by your +side.” +</p> + +<p> +I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her cheeks, and +her eyes were very bright. “I asked you,” she repeated, “not +to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +My eyes questioned her mutely. +</p> + +<p> +She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented. +</p> + +<p> +“How can I answer you now?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“How can I say anything now?” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +She made no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean it must be ‘No’?” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“But” I said, and my whole soul was full of accusations. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” she said. “I can’t explain. I can’t. +But it has to be ‘No!’ It can’t be. It’s utterly, +finally, for ever impossible.... Keep your hands still!” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” I said, “when we met again—” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t marry. I can’t and won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood up. “Why did you talk?” she cried, “couldn’t +you <i>see?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed to have something it was impossible to say. +</p> + +<p> +She came to the table beside my bed and pulled the Michaelmas daisies awry. +“Why did you talk like that?” she said in a tone of infinite +bitterness. “To begin like that!” +</p> + +<p> +“But what is it?” I said. “Is it some circumstance—my +social position?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, <i>damn</i> your social position!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +She went and stood at the further window, staring out at the rain. For a long +time we were absolutely still. The wind and rain came in little gusts upon the +pane. She turned to me abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t ask me if I loved you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if it’s <i>that!</i>” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not that,” she said. “But if you want to +know—” She paused. +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +We stared at one another. +</p> + +<p> +“I do—with all my heart, if you want to know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, why the devil—?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +She made no answer. She walked across the room to the piano and began to play, +rather noisily and rapidly, with odd gusts of emphasis, the shepherd’s +pipe music from the last act in “Tristan and Isolde.” Presently she +missed a note, failed again, ran her finger heavily up the scale, struck the +piano passionately with her fist, making a feeble jar in the treble, jumped up, +and went out of the room.... +</p> + +<p> +The nurse found me still wearing my helmet of bandages, partially dressed, and +pottering round the room to find the rest of my clothes. I was in a state of +exasperated hunger for Beatrice, and I was too inflamed and weakened to conceal +the state of my mind. I was feebly angry because of the irritation of dressing, +and particularly of the struggle to put on my trousers without being able to +see my legs. I was staggering about, and once I had fallen over a chair and I +had upset the jar of Michaelmas daisies. +</p> + +<p> +I must have been a detestable spectacle. “I’ll go back to +bed,” said I, “if I may have a word with Miss Beatrice. I’ve +got something to say to her. That’s why I’m dressing.” +</p> + +<p> +My point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the household had my +ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do not know, and what Lady +Osprey can have made of it in the former case I don’t imagine. +</p> + +<p> +At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. “Well?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“All I want to say,” I said with the querulous note of a +misunderstood child, “is that I can’t take this as final. I want to +see you and talk when I’m better, and write. I can’t do anything +now. I can’t argue.” +</p> + +<p> +I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, “I can’t rest. +You see? I can’t do anything.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down beside me again and spoke softly. “I promise I will talk it +all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I will meet you somewhere +so that we can talk. You can’t talk now. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know... Will +that do?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d like to know” +</p> + +<p> +She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it. +</p> + +<p> +Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly with +her face close to me. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear,” she said, “I love you. If it will make you happy to +marry me, I will marry you. I was in a mood just now—a stupid, +inconsiderate mood. Of course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. +Women are such things of mood—or I would have behaved differently. We say +‘No’ when we mean ‘Yes’—and fly into crises. So +now, Yes—yes—yes. I will. I can’t even kiss you. Give me your +hand to kiss that. Understand, I am yours. Do you understand? I am yours just +as if we had been married fifty years. Your wife—Beatrice. Is that +enough? Now—now will you rest?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “but why?” +</p> + +<p> +“There are complications. There are difficulties. When you are better you +will be able to—understand them. But now they don’t matter. Only +you know this must be secret—for a time. Absolutely secret between us. +Will you promise that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “I understand. I wish I could kiss you.” +</p> + +<p> +She laid her head down beside mine for a moment and then she kissed my hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care what difficulties there are,” I said, and I +shut my eyes. +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +But I was only beginning to gauge the unaccountable elements in Beatrice. For a +week after my return to Lady Grove I had no sign of her, and then she called +with Lady Osprey and brought a huge bunch of perennial sunflowers and +Michaelmas daisies, “just the old flowers there were in your room,” +said my aunt, with a relentless eye on me. I didn’t get any talk alone +with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us she was going to London +for some indefinite number of weeks. I couldn’t even pledge her to write +to me, and when she did it was a brief, enigmatical, friendly letter with not a +word of the reality between us. +</p> + +<p> +I wrote back a love letter—my first love letter—and she made no +reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: “I can’t write letters. +Wait till we can talk. Are you better?” +</p> + +<p> +I think the reader would be amused if he could see the papers on my desk as I +write all this, the mangled and disfigured pages, the experimental arrangements +of notes, the sheets of suggestions balanced in constellations, the blottesque +intellectual battlegrounds over which I have been fighting. I find this account +of my relations to Beatrice quite the most difficult part of my story to write. +I happen to be a very objective-minded person, I forget my moods, and this was +so much an affair of moods. And even such moods and emotions as I recall are +very difficult to convey. To me it is about as difficult as describing a taste +or a scent. +</p> + +<p> +Then the objective story is made up of little things that are difficult to set +in a proper order. And love in an hysterical passion, now high, now low, now +exalted, and now intensely physical. No one has ever yet dared to tell a love +story completely, its alternations, its comings and goings, its debased +moments, its hate. The love stories we tell, tell only the net consequence, the +ruling effect.... +</p> + +<p> +How can I rescue from the past now the mystical quality of Beatrice; my intense +longing for her; the overwhelming, irrational, formless desire? How can I +explain how intimately that worship mingled with a high, impatient resolve to +make her mine, to take her by strength and courage, to do my loving in a +violent heroic manner? And then the doubts, the puzzled arrest at the fact of +her fluctuations, at her refusal to marry me, at the fact that even when at +last she returned to Bedley Corner she seemed to evade me? +</p> + +<p> +That exasperated me and perplexed me beyond measure. +</p> + +<p> +I felt that it was treachery. I thought of every conceivable explanation, and +the most exalted and romantic confidence in her did not simply alternate, but +mingled with the basest misgivings. +</p> + +<p> +And into the tangle of memories comes the figure of Carnaby, coming out slowly +from the background to a position of significance, as an influence, as a +predominant strand in the nets that kept us apart, as a rival. What were the +forces that pulled her away from me when it was so clearly manifest she loved +me? Did she think of marrying him? Had I invaded some long-planned scheme? It +was evident he did not like me, that in some way I spoilt the world for him. +She returned to Bedley Corner, and for some weeks she was flitting about me, +and never once could I have talk with her alone. When she came to my sheds +Carnaby was always with her, jealously observant. (Why the devil couldn’t +she send him about his business?) The days slipped by and my anger gathered. +</p> + +<p> +All this mingles with the making of Lord Roberts β. I had resolved upon +that one night as I lay awake at Bedley Corner; I got it planned out before the +bandages were off my face. I conceived this second navigable balloon in a +grandiose manner. It was to be a second Lord Roberts α, only more so; it +was to be three times as big, large enough to carry three men, and it was to be +an altogether triumphant vindication of my claims upon the air. The framework +was to be hollow like a bird’s bones, airtight, and the air pumped in or +out, and the weight of fuel I carried changed. I talked much and boasted to +Cothope—whom I suspected of scepticisms about this new type—of what +it would do, and it progressed—slowly. It progressed slowly because I was +restless and uncertain. At times I would go away to London to snatch some +chance of seeing Beatrice there, at times nothing but a day of gliding and hard +and dangerous exercise would satisfy me. And now in the newspapers, in +conversation, in everything about me, arose a new invader of my mental states. +Something was happening to the great schemes of my uncle’s affairs; +people were beginning to doubt, to question. It was the first quiver of his +tremendous insecurity, the first wobble of that gigantic credit top he had kept +spinning so long. +</p> + +<p> +There were comings and goings, November and December slipped by. I had two +unsatisfactory meetings with Beatrice, meetings that had no privacy—in +which we said things of the sort that need atmosphere, baldly and furtively. I +wrote to her several times and she wrote back notes that I would sometimes +respond to altogether, sometimes condemn as insincere evasions. “You +don’t understand. I can’t just now explain. Be patient with me. +Leave things a little while to me.” She wrote. +</p> + +<p> +I would talk aloud to these notes and wrangle over them in my +workroom—while the plans of Lord Roberts β waited. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t give me a chance!” I would say. “Why +don’t you let me know the secret? That’s what I’m +for—to settle difficulties! to tell difficulties to!” +</p> + +<p> +And at last I could hold out no longer against these accumulating pressures. +</p> + +<p> +I took an arrogant, outrageous line that left her no loopholes; I behaved as +though we were living in a melodrama. +</p> + +<p> +“You must come and talk to me,” I wrote, “or I will come and +take you. I want you—and the time runs away.” +</p> + +<p> +We met in a ride in the upper plantations. It must have been early in January, +for there was snow on the ground and on the branches of the trees. We walked to +and fro for an hour or more, and from the first I pitched the key high in +romance and made understandings impossible. It was our worst time together. I +boasted like an actor, and she, I know not why, was tired and spiritless. +</p> + +<p> +Now I think over that talk in the light of all that has happened since, I can +imagine how she came to me full of a human appeal I was too foolish to let her +make. I don’t know. I confess I have never completely understood +Beatrice. I confess I am still perplexed at many things she said and did. That +afternoon, anyhow, I was impossible. I posed and scolded. I was—I said +it—for “taking the Universe by the throat!” +</p> + +<p> +“If it was only that,” she said, but though I heard, I did not heed +her. +</p> + +<p> +At last she gave way to me and talked no more. Instead she looked at +me—as a thing beyond her controlling, but none the less +interesting—much as she had looked at me from behind the skirts of Lady +Drew in the Warren when we were children together. +</p> + +<p> +Once even I thought she smiled faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“What are the difficulties” I cried, “there’s no +difficulty I will not overcome for you! Do your people think I’m no equal +for you? Who says it? My dear, tell me to win a title! I’ll do it in five +years!... +</p> + +<p> +“Here am I just grown a man at the sight of you. I have wanted something +to fight for. Let me fight for you!... +</p> + +<p> +“I’m rich without intending it. Let me mean it, give me an +honourable excuse for it, and I’ll put all this rotten old Warren of +England at your feet!” +</p> + +<p> +I said such things as that. I write them down here in all their resounding base +pride. I said these empty and foolish things, and they are part of me. Why +should I still cling to pride and be ashamed? I shouted her down. +</p> + +<p> +I passed from such megalomania to petty accusations. +</p> + +<p> +“You think Carnaby is a better man than I?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she cried, stung to speech. “No!” +</p> + +<p> +“You think we’re unsubstantial. You’ve listened to all these +rumours Boom has started because we talked of a newspaper of our own. When you +are with me you know I’m a man; when you get away from me you think +I’m a cheat and a cad.... There’s not a word of truth in the things +they say about us. I’ve been slack. I’ve left things. But we have +only to exert ourselves. You do not know how wide and far we have spread our +nets. Even now we have a coup—an expedition—in hand. It will put us +on a footing.”... +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes asked mutely and asked in vain that I would cease to boast of the very +qualities she admired in me. +</p> + +<p> +In the night I could not sleep for thinking of that talk and the vulgar things +I had said in it. I could not understand the drift my mind had taken. I was +acutely disgusted. And my unwonted doubts about myself spread from a merely +personal discontent to our financial position. It was all very well to talk as +I had done of wealth and power and peerages, but what did I know nowadays of my +uncle’s position? Suppose in the midst of such boasting and confidence +there came some turn I did not suspect, some rottenness he had concealed from +me? I resolved I had been playing with aeronautics long enough; that next +morning I would go to him and have things clear between us. +</p> + +<p> +I caught an early train and went up to the Hardingham. +</p> + +<p> +I went up to the Hardingham through a dense London fog to see how things really +stood. Before I had talked to my uncle for ten minutes I felt like a man who +has just awakened in a bleak, inhospitable room out of a grandiose dream. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br /> +HOW I STOLE THE HEAPS OF QUAP FROM MORDET ISLAND</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +“We got to make a fight for it,” said my uncle. “We got to +face the music!” +</p> + +<p> +I remember that even at the sight of him I had a sense of impending calamity. +He sat under the electric light with the shadow of his hair making bars down +his face. He looked shrunken, and as though his skin had suddenly got loose and +yellow. The decorations of the room seemed to have lost freshness, and outside +the blinds were up—there was not so much fog as a dun darkness. One saw +the dingy outlines of the chimneys opposite quite distinctly, and then a sky of +such brown as only London can display. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw a placard,” I said: “‘More +Ponderevity.’” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s Boom,” he said. “Boom and his damned +newspapers. He’s trying to fight me down. Ever since I offered to buy the +<i>Daily Decorator</i> he’s been at me. And he thinks consolidating Do Ut +cut down the ads. He wants everything, damn him! He’s got no sense of +dealing. I’d like to bash his face!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” I said, “what’s to be done?” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep going,” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll smash Boom yet,” he said, with sudden savagery. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing else?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“We got to keep going. There’s a scare on. Did you notice the +rooms? Half the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they +touch it up!... They didn’t used to touch things up! Now they put in +character touches—insulting you. Don’t know what journalism’s +coming to. It’s all Boom’s doing.” +</p> + +<p> +He cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said I, “what can he do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been +handling a lot of money—and he tightens us up.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re sound?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, we’re sound, George. Trust me for that! But all the +same—There’s such a lot of imagination in these things.... +We’re sound enough. That’s not it.” +</p> + +<p> +He blew. “Damn Boom!” he said, and his eyes over his glasses met +mine defiantly. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop +expenditure?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,—Crest Hill” +</p> + +<p> +“What!” he shouted. “Me stop Crest Hill for Boom!” He +waved a fist as if to hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty. +He spoke at last in a reasonable voice. “If I did,” he said, +“he’d kick up a fuss. It’s no good, even if I wanted to. +Everybody’s watching the place. If I was to stop building we’d be +down in a week.” +</p> + +<p> +He had an idea. “I wish I could do something to start a strike or +something. No such luck. Treat those workmen a sight too well. No, sink or +swim, Crest Hill goes on until we’re under water.” +</p> + +<p> +I began to ask questions and irritated him instantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dash these explanations, George!” he cried; “You only +make things look rottener than they are. It’s your way. It isn’t a +case of figures. We’re all right—there’s only one thing we +got to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Show value, George. That’s where this quap comes in; that’s +why I fell in so readily with what you brought to me week before last. Here we +are, we got our option on the perfect filament, and all we want’s +canadium. Nobody knows there’s more canadium in the world than will go on +the edge of a sixpence except me and you. Nobody has an idee the perfect +filament’s more than just a bit of theorising. Fifty tons of quap and +we’d turn that bit of theorising into something. We’d make the lamp +trade sit on its tail and howl. We’d put Ediswan and all of ’em +into a parcel without last year’s trousers and a hat, and swap ’em +off for a pot of geraniums. See? We’d do it through Business +Organisations, and there you are! See? Capern’s Patent Filament! +</p> + +<p> +“The Ideal and the Real! George, we’ll do it! We’ll bring it +off! And then we’ll give such a facer to Boom, he’ll think for +fifty years. He’s laying up for our London and African meeting. Let him. +He can turn the whole paper on to us. He says the Business Organisations shares +aren’t worth fifty-two and we quote ’em at eighty-four. Well, here +we are gettin’ ready for him—loading our gun.” +</p> + +<p> +His pose was triumphant. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “that’s all right. But I can’t +help thinking where should we be if we hadn’t just by accident got +Capern’s Perfect Filament. Because, you know it was an accident—my +buying up that.” +</p> + +<p> +He crumpled up his nose into an expression of impatient distaste at my +unreasonableness. +</p> + +<p> +“And after all, the meeting’s in June, and you haven’t begun +to get the quap! After all, we’ve still got to load our gun.” +</p> + +<p> +“They start on Toosday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have they got the brig?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve got a brig.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gordon-Nasmyth!” I doubted. +</p> + +<p> +“Safe as a bank,” he said. “More I see of that man the more I +like him. All I wish is we’d got a steamer instead of a sailing +ship.” +</p> + +<p> +“And,” I went on, “you seem to overlook what used to weigh +with us a bit. This canadium side of the business and the Capern chance has +rushed you off your legs. After all—it’s stealing, and in its way +an international outrage. They’ve got two gunboats on the coast.” +</p> + +<p> +I jumped up and went and stared out at the fog. +</p> + +<p> +“And, by Jove, it’s about our only chance! I didn’t +dream.” +</p> + +<p> +I turned on him. “I’ve been up in the air,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven knows where I haven’t been. And here’s our only +chance—and you give it to that adventurous lunatic to play in his own +way—in a brig!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you had a voice—” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I’d been in this before. We ought to have run out a steamer +to Lagos or one of those West Coast places and done it from there. Fancy a brig +in the channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest!” +</p> + +<p> +“I dessay you’d have shoved it, George. Still you know, George.... +I believe in him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. +Still—” +</p> + +<p> +We took up a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it. His face became +a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow, reluctant movement +and took off his glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“George,” he said, “the luck’s against us.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +He grimaced with his mouth—in the queerest way at the telegram. +</p> + +<p> +“That.” +</p> + +<p> +I took it up and read: +</p> + +<p> +“Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon nasmyth what price +mordet now” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment neither of us spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right,” I said at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I’m</i> going. I’ll get that quap or bust.” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +I had a ridiculous persuasion that I was “saving the situation.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going,” I said quite consciously and dramatically. I saw +the whole affair—how shall I put it?—in American colours. +</p> + +<p> +I sat down beside him. “Give me all the data you’ve got,” I +said, “and I’ll pull this thing off.” +</p> + +<p> +“But nobody knows exactly where—” +</p> + +<p> +“Nasmyth does, and he’ll tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been very close,” said my uncle, and regarded me. +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll tell me all right, now he’s smashed.” +</p> + +<p> +He thought. “I believe he will.” +</p> + +<p> +“George,” he said, “if you pull this thing off—Once or +twice before you’ve stepped in—with that sort of Woosh of +yours—” +</p> + +<p> +He left the sentence unfinished. +</p> + +<p> +“Give me that note-book,” I said, “and tell me all you know. +Where’s the ship? Where’s Pollack? And where’s that telegram +from? If that quap’s to be got, I’ll get it or bust. If +you’ll hold on here until I get back with it.”... +</p> + +<p> +And so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life. +</p> + +<p> +I requisitioned my uncle’s best car forthwith. I went down that night to +the place of despatch named on Nasmyth’s telegram, Bampton S.O. Oxon, +routed him out with a little trouble from that centre, made things right with +him and got his explicit directions; and I was inspecting the <i>Maud Mary</i> +with young Pollack, his cousin and aide, the following afternoon. She was +rather a shock to me and not at all in my style, a beast of a brig inured to +the potato trade, and she reeked from end to end with the faint, subtle smell +of raw potatoes so that it prevailed even over the temporary smell of new +paint. She was a beast of a brig, all hold and dirty framework, and they had +ballasted her with old iron and old rails and iron sleepers, and got a +miscellaneous lot of spades and iron wheelbarrows against the loading of the +quap. I thought her over with Pollack, one of those tall blond young men who +smoke pipes and don’t help much, and then by myself, and as a result I +did my best to sweep Gravesend clean of wheeling planks, and got in as much +cord and small rope as I could for lashing. I had an idea we might need to run +up a jetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort of +inadvertent way a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn’t +examine, but which I gathered were a provision against the need of a trade. +</p> + +<p> +The captain was a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we were +after copper ore; he was a Roumanian Jew, with twitching, excitable features, +who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary naval experiences +in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of impenetrable reserve. The crew +were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute and dirty; most of them youths, +unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook was a mulatto; and one, the best-built +fellow of them all, was a Breton. There was some subterfuge about our position +on board—I forget the particulars now—I was called the supercargo +and Pollack was the steward. This added to the piratical flavour that +insufficient funds and Gordon-Nasmyth’s original genius had already given +the enterprise. +</p> + +<p> +Those two days of bustle at Gravesend, under dingy skies, in narrow, dirty +streets, were a new experience for me. It is like nothing else in my life. I +realised that I was a modern and a civilised man. I found the food filthy and +the coffee horrible; the whole town stank in my nostrils, the landlord of the +Good Intent on the quay had a stand-up quarrel with us before I could get even +a hot bath, and the bedroom I slept in was infested by a quantity of exotic but +voracious flat parasites called locally “bugs,” in the walls, in +the woodwork, everywhere. I fought them with insect powder, and found them +comatose in the morning. I was dipping down into the dingy underworld of the +contemporary state, and I liked it no better than I did my first dip into it +when I stayed with my Uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at +Chatham—where, by-the-by, we had to deal with cockroaches of a smaller, +darker variety, and also with bugs of sorts. +</p> + +<p> +Let me confess that through all this time before we started I was immensely +self-conscious, and that Beatrice played the part of audience in my imagination +throughout. I was, as I say, “saving the situation,” and I was +acutely aware of that. The evening before we sailed, instead of revising our +medicine-chest as I had intended, I took the car and ran across country to Lady +Grove to tell my aunt of the journey I was making, dress, and astonish Lady +Osprey by an after dinner call. +</p> + +<p> +The two ladies were at home and alone beside a big fire that seemed wonderfully +cheerful after the winter night. I remember the effect of the little parlour in +which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady Osprey, in a costume of mauve +and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played an elaborately spread-out patience by +the light of a tall shaded lamp; Beatrice, in a whiteness that showed her +throat, smoked a cigarette in an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow. +The room was white-panelled and chintz-curtained. About those two bright +centres of light were warm dark shadow, in which a circular mirror shone like a +pool of brown water. I carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of +etiquette. There were moments when I think I really made Lady Osprey believe +that my call was an unavoidable necessity, that it would have been negligent of +me not to call just how and when I did. But at the best those were transitory +moments. +</p> + +<p> +They received me with disciplined amazement. Lady Osprey was interested in my +face and scrutinised the scar. Beatrice stood behind her solicitude. Our eyes +met, and in hers I could see startled interrogations. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going,” I said, “to the west coast of +Africa.” +</p> + +<p> +They asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don’t +know when I may return.” +</p> + +<p> +After that I perceived Beatrice surveyed me steadily. +</p> + +<p> +The conversation was rather difficult. I embarked upon lengthy thanks for their +kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady Osprey’s +game of patience, but it didn’t appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for +me to understand her patience. I came to the verge of taking my leave. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t go yet,” said Beatrice, abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +She walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet near, +surveyed Lady Osprey’s back, and with a gesture to me dropped it all +deliberately on to the floor. +</p> + +<p> +“Must talk,” she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick +it up. “Turn my pages. At the piano.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t read music.” +</p> + +<p> +“Turn my pages.” +</p> + +<p> +Presently we were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy inaccuracy. +She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey had resumed her patience. The old +lady was very pink, and appeared to be absorbed in some attempt to cheat +herself without our observing it. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t West Africa a vile climate?” “Are you going to +live there?” “Why are you going?” +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to answer. +Then taking a rhythm from the music before her, she said— +</p> + +<p> +“At the back of the house is a garden—a door in the wall—on +the lane. Understand?” +</p> + +<p> +I turned over the pages without any effect on her playing. +</p> + +<p> +“When?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +She dealt in chords. “I wish I <i>could</i> play this!” she said. +“Midnight.” +</p> + +<p> +She gave her attention to the music for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“You may have to wait.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll wait.” +</p> + +<p> +She brought her playing to an end by—as school boys +say—“stashing it up.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t play to-night,” she said, standing up and meeting my +eyes. “I wanted to give you a parting voluntary.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was that Wagner, Beatrice?” asked Lady Osprey looking up from her +cards. “It sounded very confused.” +</p> + +<p> +I took my leave. I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from Lady +Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience in romantic +affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect of +invading this good lady’s premises from the garden door. I motored up to +the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told him for the first time of West +Africa, spent an hour with him in settling all the outstanding details of Lord +Roberts β, and left that in his hands to finish against my return. I sent +the motor back to Lady Grove, and still wearing my fur coat—for the +January night was damp and bitterly cold—walked to Bedley Corner. I found +the lane to the back of the Dower House without any difficulty, and was at the +door in the wall with ten minutes to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking +up and down. This queer flavour of intrigue, this nocturnal garden-door +business, had taken me by surprise and changed my mental altitudes. I was +startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of Beatrice, of that +elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that always took me by surprise, +that had made her for example so instantly conceive this meeting. +</p> + +<p> +She came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she appeared, +a short, grey figure in a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded to the cold +drizzle. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in her dusky face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you going to West Africa?” she asked at once. +</p> + +<p> +“Business crisis. I have to go.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not going—? You’re coming back?” +</p> + +<p> +“Three or four months,” I said, “at most.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, it’s nothing to do with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” I said. “Why should it have?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that’s all right. One never knows what people think or what +people fancy.” She took me by the arm, “Let’s go for a +walk,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +I looked about me at darkness and rain. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right,” she laughed. “We can go along the +lane and into the Old Woking Road. Do you mind? Of course you don’t. My +head. It doesn’t matter. One never meets anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve wandered like this before.... Of course. Did you +think”—she nodded her head back at her +home—“that’s all?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, by Jove!” I cried; “it’s manifest it +isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She took my arm and turned me down the lane. “Night’s my +time,” she said by my side. “There’s a touch of the werewolf +in my blood. One never knows in these old families.... I’ve wondered +often.... Here we are, anyhow, alone in the world. Just darkness and cold and a +sky of clouds and wet. And we—together. +</p> + +<p> +“I like the wet on my face and hair, don’t you? When do you +sail?” +</p> + +<p> +I told her to-morrow. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, there’s no to-morrow now. You and I!” She stopped +and confronted me. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t say a word except to answer!” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Last time you did all the talking.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like a fool. Now—” +</p> + +<p> +We looked at each other’s two dim faces. “You’re glad to be +here?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad—I’m beginning to be—it’s more +than glad.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one +another. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all,” she said, releasing herself. “What +bundles of clothes we are to-night. I felt we should kiss some day again. +Always. The last time was ages ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Among the fern stalks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold. Were mine? The +same lips—after so long—after so much!... And now let’s +trudge through this blotted-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take +your arm. Just trudge. See? Hold tight to me because I know the way—and +don’t talk—don’t talk. Unless you want to talk.... Let me +tell you things! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out—it’s +dead and gone, and we’re in this place. This dark wild place.... +We’re dead. Or all the world is dead. No! We’re dead. No one can +see us. We’re shadows. We’ve got out of our positions, out of our +bodies—and together. That’s the good thing of it—together. +But that’s why the world can’t see us and why we hardly see the +world. Sssh! Is it all right?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all right,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit, +rain-veiled window. +</p> + +<p> +“The silly world,” she said, “the silly world! It eats and +sleeps. If the wet didn’t patter so from the trees we’d hear it +snoring. It’s dreaming such stupid things—stupid judgments. It +doesn’t know we are passing, we two—free of it—clear of it. +You and I!” +</p> + +<p> +We pressed against each other reassuringly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad we’re dead,” she whispered. “I’m +glad we’re dead. I was tired of it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and +so entangled.” +</p> + +<p> +She stopped abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +We splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember things I had meant +to say. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here!” I cried. “I want to help you beyond measure. You +are entangled. What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me. You said you +would. But there’s something.” +</p> + +<p> +My thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it something about my position?... Or is it +something—perhaps—about some other man?” +</p> + +<p> +There was an immense assenting silence. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve puzzled me so. At first—I mean quite early—I +thought you meant to make me marry you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-night,” she said after a long pause, “I can’t +explain. No! I can’t explain. I love you! But—explanations! +To-night my dear, here we are in the world alone—and the world +doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Here I am in the cold with you and my +bed away there deserted. I’d tell you—I <i>will</i> tell you when +things enable me to tell you, and soon enough they will. But to-night—I +won’t—I won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She left my side and went in front of me. +</p> + +<p> +She turned upon me. “Look here,” she said, “I insist upon +your being dead. Do you understand? I’m not joking. To-night you and I +are out of life. It’s our time together. There may be other times, but +this we won’t spoil. We’re—in Hades if you like. Where +there’s nothing to hide and nothing to tell. No bodies even. No bothers. +We loved each other—down there—and were kept apart, but now it +doesn’t matter. It’s over.... If you won’t agree to +that—I will go home.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted,” I began. +</p> + +<p> +“I know. Oh! my dear, if you’d only understand I understand. If +you’d only not care—and love me to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do love you,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then <i>love</i> me,” she answered, “and leave all the +things that bother you. Love me! Here I am!” +</p> + +<p> +“But!—” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, have your way.” +</p> + +<p> +So she carried her point, and we wandered into the night together and Beatrice +talked to me of love.... +</p> + +<p> +I’d never heard a woman before in all my life who could talk of love, who +could lay bare and develop and touch with imagination all that mass of fine +emotion every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love, she had thought of +love, a thousand sweet lyrics had sounded through her brain and left fine +fragments in her memory; she poured it out, all of it, shamelessly, skilfully, +for me. I cannot give any sense of that talk, I cannot even tell how much of +the delight of it was the magic of her voice, the glow of her near presence. +And always we walked swathed warmly through a chilly air, along dim, +interminable greasy roads—with never a soul abroad it seemed to us, never +a beast in the fields. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do people love each other?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“But why do I love you? Why is your voice better than any voice, your +face sweeter than any face?” +</p> + +<p> +“And why do I love you?” she asked; “not only what is fine in +you, but what isn’t? Why do I love your dullness, your arrogance? For I +do. To—night I love the very raindrops on the fur of your coat!”... +</p> + +<p> +So we talked; and at last very wet, still glowing but a little tired, we parted +at the garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in our strange +irrational community of happiness, and all the world about us, and particularly +Lady Osprey and her household, had been asleep—and dreaming of anything +rather than Beatrice in the night and rain. +</p> + +<p> +She stood in the doorway, a muffled figure with eyes that glowed. +</p> + +<p> +“Come back,” she whispered. “I shall wait for you.” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +She touched the lapel of my coat. “I love you NOW,” she said, and +lifted her face to mine. +</p> + +<p> +I held her to me and was atremble from top to toe. “O God!” I +cried. “And I must go!” +</p> + +<p> +She slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the world +seemed full of fantastic possibilities. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, <i>Go!</i>” she said, and vanished and slammed the door upon +me, leaving me alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black darkness +of the night. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +That expedition to Mordet Island stands apart from all the rest of my life, +detached, a piece by itself with an atmosphere of its own. It would, I suppose, +make a book by itself—it has made a fairly voluminous official +report—but so far as this novel of mine goes it is merely an episode, a +contributory experience, and I mean to keep it at that. +</p> + +<p> +Vile weather, an impatient fretting against unbearable slowness and delay, +sea—sickness, general discomfort and humiliating self—revelation +are the master values of these memories. +</p> + +<p> +I was sick all through the journey out. I don’t know why. It was the only +time I was ever sea-sick, and I have seen some pretty bad weather since I +became a boat-builder. But that phantom smell of potatoes was peculiarly vile +to me. Coming back on the brig we were all ill, every one of us, so soon as we +got to sea, poisoned, I firmly believe, by quap. On the way out most of the +others recovered in a few days, but the stuffiness below, the coarse food, the +cramped dirty accommodation kept me, if not actually sea-sick, in a state of +acute physical wretchedness the whole time. The ship abounded in cockroaches +and more intimate vermin. I was cold all the time until after we passed Cape +Verde, then I became steamily hot; I had been too preoccupied with Beatrice and +my keen desire to get the <i>Maud Mary</i> under way at once, to consider a +proper wardrobe for myself, and in particular I lacked a coat. Heavens! how I +lacked that coat! And, moreover, I was cooped up with two of the worst bores in +Christendom, Pollack and the captain. Pollack, after conducting his illness in +a style better adapted to the capacity of an opera house than a small +compartment, suddenly got insupportably well and breezy, and produced a manly +pipe in which he smoked a tobacco as blond as himself, and divided his time +almost equally between smoking it and trying to clean it. “There’s +only three things you can clean a pipe with,” he used to remark with a +twist of paper in hand. “The best’s a feather, the second’s a +straw, and the third’s a girl’s hairpin. I never see such a ship. +You can’t find any of ’em. Last time I came this way I did find +hairpins anyway, and found ’em on the floor of the captain’s cabin. +Regular deposit. Eh?... Feelin’ better?” +</p> + +<p> +At which I usually swore. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you’ll be all right soon. Don’t mind my puffin’ a +bit? Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +He never tired of asking me to “have a hand at Nap. Good game. Makes you +forget it, and that’s half the battle.” +</p> + +<p> +He would sit swaying with the rolling of the ship and suck at his pipe of blond +tobacco and look with an inexpressibly sage but somnolent blue eye at the +captain by the hour together. “Captain’s a Card,” he would +say over and over again as the outcome of these meditations. “He’d +like to know what we’re up to. He’d like to know—no +end.” +</p> + +<p> +That did seem to be the captain’s ruling idea. But he also wanted to +impress me with the notion that he was a gentleman of good family and to air a +number of views adverse to the English, to English literature, to the English +constitution, and the like. +</p> + +<p> +He had learnt the sea in the Roumanian navy, and English out of a book; he +would still at times pronounce the e’s at the end of “there” +and “here”; he was a naturalised Englishman, and he drove me into a +reluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his everlasting carping at things +English. Pollack would set himself to “draw him out.” Heaven alone +can tell how near I came to murder. +</p> + +<p> +Fifty-three days I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and +profoundly depressed mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the rest of +his leisure in lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up in a perpetual +smell, in a persistent sick hunger that turned from the sight of food, in +darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship that rolled and pitched and +swayed. And all the time the sands in the hour-glass of my uncle’s +fortunes were streaming out. Misery! Amidst it all I remember only one thing +brightly, one morning of sunshine in the Bay of Biscay and a vision of frothing +waves, sapphire green, a bird following our wake and our masts rolling about +the sky. Then wind and rain close in on us again. +</p> + +<p> +You must not imagine they were ordinary days, days, I mean, of an average +length; they were not so much days as long damp slabs of time that stretched +each one to the horizon, and much of that length was night. One paraded the +staggering deck in a borrowed sou’-wester hour after hour in the chilly, +windy, splashing and spitting darkness, or sat in the cabin, bored and ill, and +looked at the faces of those inseparable companions by the help of a lamp that +gave smell rather than light. Then one would see going up, up, up, and then +sinking down, down, down, Pollack, extinct pipe in mouth, humorously observant, +bringing his mind slowly to the seventy-seventh decision that the captain was a +Card, while the words flowed from the latter in a nimble incessant good. +“Dis England eet is not a country aristocratic, no! Eet is a glorified +bourgeoisie! Eet is plutocratic. In England dere is no aristocracy since de +Wars of Roses. In the rest of Europe east of the Latins, yes; in England, no. +</p> + +<p> +“Eet is all middle-class, youra England. Everything you look at, +middle-class. Respectable! Everything good—eet is, you say, shocking. +Madame Grundy! Eet is all limited and computing and self-seeking. Dat is why +your art is so limited, youra fiction, your philosophin, why you are all so +inartistic. You want nothing but profit! What will pay! What would +you?”... +</p> + +<p> +He had all those violent adjuncts to speech we Western Europeans have +abandoned, shruggings of the shoulders, waving of the arms, thrusting out of +the face, wonderful grimaces and twiddlings of the hands under your nose until +you wanted to hit them away. Day after day it went on, and I had to keep any +anger to myself, to reserve myself for the time ahead when it would be +necessary to see the quap was got aboard and stowed—knee deep in this +man’s astonishment. I knew he would make a thousand objections to all we +had before us. He talked like a drugged man. It ran glibly over his tongue. And +all the time one could see his seamanship fretting him, he was gnawed by +responsibility, perpetually uneasy about the ship’s position, perpetually +imagining dangers. If a sea hit us exceptionally hard he’d be out of the +cabin in an instant making an outcry of inquiries, and he was pursued by a +dread of the hold, of ballast shifting, of insidious wicked leaks. As we drew +near the African coast his fear of rocks and shoals became infectious. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not know dis coast,” he used to say. “I cama hera +because Gordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den he does not come!” +</p> + +<p> +“Fortunes of war,” I said, and tried to think in vain if any motive +but sheer haphazard could have guided Gordon-Nasmyth in the choice of these two +men. I think perhaps Gordon-Nasmyth had the artistic temperament and wanted +contrasts, and also that the captain helped him to express his own malignant +Anti-Britishism. +</p> + +<p> +He was indeed an exceptionally inefficient captain. On the whole I was glad I +had come even at the eleventh hour to see to things. +</p> + +<p> +(The captain, by-the-by, did at last, out of sheer nervousness, get aground at +the end of Mordet’s Island, but we got off in an hour or so with a swell +and a little hard work in the boat.) +</p> + +<p> +I suspected the mate of his opinion of the captain long before he expressed it. +He was, I say, a taciturn man, but one day speech broke through him. He had +been sitting at the table with his arms folded on it, musing drearily, pipe in +mouth, and the voice of the captain drifted down from above. +</p> + +<p> +The mate lifted his heavy eyes to me and regarded me for a moment. Then he +began to heave with the beginnings of speech. He disembarrassed himself of his +pipe. I cowered with expectation. Speech was coming at last. Before he spoke he +nodded reassuringly once or twice. +</p> + +<p> +“E—” +</p> + +<p> +He moved his head strangely and mysteriously, but a child might have known he +spoke of the captain. +</p> + +<p> +“E’s a foreigner.” +</p> + +<p> +He regarded me doubtfully for a time, and at last decided for the sake of +lucidity to clench the matter. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what E is—a <i>Dago!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded like a man who gives a last tap to a nail, and I could see he +considered his remark well and truly laid. His face, though still resolute, +became as tranquil and uneventful as a huge hall after a public meeting has +dispersed out of it, and finally he closed and locked it with his pipe. +</p> + +<p> +“Roumanian Jew, isn’t he?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded darkly and almost forbiddingly. +</p> + +<p> +More would have been too much. The thing was said. But from that time forth I +knew I could depend upon him and that he and I were friends. It happens I never +did have to depend upon him, but that does not affect our relationship. +</p> + +<p> +Forward the crew lived lives very much after the fashion of ours, more crowded, +more cramped and dirty, wetter, steamier, more verminous. The coarse food they +had was still not so coarse but that they did not think they were living +“like fighting cocks.” So far as I could make out they were all +nearly destitute men; hardly any of them had a proper sea outfit, and what +small possessions they had were a source of mutual distrust. And as we pitched +and floundered southward they gambled and fought, were brutal to one another, +argued and wrangled loudly, until we protested at the uproar. +</p> + +<p> +There’s no romance about the sea in a small sailing ship as I saw it. The +romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer. These brigs and schooners and +brigantines that still stand out from every little port are relics from an age +of petty trade, as rotten and obsolescent as a Georgian house that has sunken +into a slum. They are indeed just floating fragments of slum, much as icebergs +are floating fragments of glacier. The civilised man who has learnt to wash, +who has developed a sense of physical honour, of cleanly temperate feeding, of +time, can endure them no more. They pass, and the clanking coal-wasting +steamers will follow them, giving place to cleaner, finer things.... +</p> + +<p> +But so it was I made my voyage to Africa, and came at last into a world of +steamy fogs and a hot smell of vegetable decay, and into sound and sight of +surf and distant intermittent glimpses of the coast. I lived a strange +concentrated life through all that time, such a life as a creature must do that +has fallen in a well. All my former ways ceased, all my old vistas became +memories. +</p> + +<p> +The situation I was saving was very small and distant now; I felt its urgency +no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove, my uncle and the Hardingham, my soaring in +the air and my habitual wide vision of swift effectual things, became as remote +as if they were in some world I had left for ever.... +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +All these African memories stand by themselves. It was for me an expedition +into the realms of undisciplined nature out of the world that is ruled by men, +my first bout with that hot side of our mother that gives you the +jungle—that cold side that gives you the air-eddy I was beginning to know +passing well. They are memories woven upon a fabric of sunshine and heat and a +constant warm smell of decay. They end in rain—such rain as I had never +seen before, a vehement, a frantic downpouring of water, but our first slow +passage through the channels behind Mordet’s Island was in incandescent +sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +There we go in my memory still, a blistered dirty ship with patched sails and a +battered mermaid to present <i>Maud Mary</i>, sounding and taking thought +between high ranks of forest whose trees come out knee-deep at last in the +water. There we go with a little breeze on our quarter, Mordet Island rounded +and the quap, it might be within a day of us. +</p> + +<p> +Here and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities of green with a +trumpet call of colour. Things crept among the jungle and peeped and dashed +back rustling into stillness. Always in the sluggishly drifting, opaque water +were eddyings and stirrings; little rushes of bubbles came chuckling up +light-heartedly from this or that submerged conflict and tragedy; now and again +were crocodiles like a stranded fleet of logs basking in the sun. Still it was +by day, a dreary stillness broken only by insect sounds and the creaking and +flapping of our progress, by the calling of the soundings and the +captain’s confused shouts; but in the night as we lay moored to a clump +of trees the darkness brought a thousand swampy things to life and out of the +forest came screaming and howlings, screaming and yells that made us glad to be +afloat. And once we saw between the tree stems long blazing fires. We passed +two or three villages landward, and brown-black women and children came and +stared at us and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a boat from a creek +and hailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at last we came to a great open +place, a broad lake rimmed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse and +dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living +thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of the +deserted station, and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued rubbish under a +great rib of rock, the quap! The forest receded. The land to the right of us +fell away and became barren, and far on across notch in its backbone was surf +and the sea. +</p> + +<p> +We took the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty slowly and +carefully. The captain came and talked. +</p> + +<p> +“This is eet?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Is eet for trade we have come?” +</p> + +<p> +This was ironical. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf +come.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “We are going to lay in as +close as we can to those two heaps of stuff—you see them?—under the +rock. Then we are going to chuck all our ballast overboard and take those in. +Then we’re going home.” +</p> + +<p> +“May I presume to ask—is eet gold?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said incivilly, “it isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s stuff—of some commercial value.” +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t do eet,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“We can,” I answered reassuringly. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t,” he said as confidently. “I don’t mean +what you mean. You know so liddle—But—dis is forbidden +country.” +</p> + +<p> +I turned on him suddenly angry and met bright excited eyes. For a minute we +scrutinised one another. Then I said, “That’s our risk. Trade is +forbidden. But this isn’t trade.... This thing’s got to be +done.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes glittered and he shook his head.... +</p> + +<p> +The brig stood in slowly through the twilight toward this strange scorched and +blistered stretch of beach, and the man at the wheel strained his ears to +listening the low-voiced angry argument that began between myself and the +captain, that was presently joined by Pollack. We moored at last within a +hundred yards of our goal, and all through our dinner and far into the night we +argued intermittently and fiercely with the captain about our right to load +just what we pleased. “I will haf nothing to do with eet,” he +persisted. “I wash my hands.” It seemed that night as though we +argued in vain. “If it is not trade,” he said, “it is +prospecting and mining. That is worse. Any one who knows anything—outside +England—knows that is worse.” +</p> + +<p> +We argued and I lost my temper and swore at him. Pollack kept cooler and chewed +his pipe watchfully with that blue eye of his upon the captain’s +gestures. Finally I went on deck to cool. The sky was overcast I discovered all +the men were in a knot forward, staring at the faint quivering luminosity that +had spread over the heaps of quap, a phosphorescence such as one sees at times +on rotting wood. And about the beach east and west there were patches and +streaks of something like diluted moonshine.... +</p> + +<p> +In the small hours I was still awake and turning over scheme after scheme in my +mind whereby I might circumvent the captain’s opposition. I meant to get +that quap aboard if I had to kill some one to do it. Never in my life had I +been so thwarted! After this intolerable voyage! There came a rap at my cabin +door and then it opened and I made out a bearded face. “Come in,” I +said, and a black voluble figure I could just see obscurely came in to talk in +my private ear and fill my cabin with its whisperings and gestures. It was the +captain. He, too, had been awake and thinking things over. He had come to +explain—enormously. I lay there hating him and wondering if I and Pollack +could lock him in his cabin and run the ship without him. “I do not want +to spoil dis expedition,” emerged from a cloud of protestations, and then +I was able to disentangle “a commission—shush a small +commission—for special risks!” “Special risks” became +frequent. I let him explain himself out. It appeared he was also demanding an +apology for something I had said. No doubt I had insulted him generously. At +last came definite offers. I broke my silence and bargained. +</p> + +<p> +“Pollack!” I cried and hammered the partition. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s up?” asked Pollack. +</p> + +<p> +I stated the case concisely. +</p> + +<p> +There came a silence. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a Card,” said Pollack. “Let’s give him his +commission. I don’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” I cried. +</p> + +<p> +“I said he was a Card, that’s all,” said Pollack. +“I’m coming.” +</p> + +<p> +He appeared in my doorway a faint white figure joined our vehement whisperings. +</p> + +<p> +We had to buy the captain off; we had to promise him ten per cent. of our +problematical profits. We were to give him ten per cent. on what we sold the +cargo for over and above his legitimate pay, and I found in my out-bargained +and disordered state small consolation in the thought that I, as the +Gordon-Nasmyth expedition, was to sell the stuff to myself as Business +Organisations. And he further exasperated me by insisting on having our bargain +in writing. “In the form of a letter,” he insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” I acquiesced, “in the form of a letter. Here +goes! Get a light!” +</p> + +<p> +“And the apology,” he said, folding up the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” I said; “Apology.” +</p> + +<p> +My hand shook with anger as I wrote, and afterwards I could not sleep for hate +of him. At last I got up. I suffered, I found, from an unusual clumsiness. I +struck my toe against my cabin door, and cut myself as I shaved. I found myself +at last pacing the deck under the dawn in a mood of extreme exasperation. The +sun rose abruptly and splashed light blindingly into my eyes and I swore at the +sun. I found myself imagining fresh obstacles with the men and talking aloud in +anticipatory rehearsal of the consequent row. +</p> + +<p> +The malaria of the quap was already in my blood. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +Sooner or later the ridiculous embargo that now lies upon all the coast +eastward of Mordet Island will be lifted and the reality of the deposits of +quap ascertained. I am sure that we were merely taking the outcrop of a stratum +of nodulated deposits that dip steeply seaward. Those heaps were merely the +crumbled out contents of two irregular cavities in the rock; they are as +natural as any talus or heap of that kind, and the mud along the edge of the +water for miles is mixed with quap, and is radio-active and lifeless and +faintly phosphorescent at night. But the reader will find the full particulars +of my impression of all this in the <i>Geological Magazine</i> for October, +1905, and to that I must refer him. There, too, he will find my unconfirmed +theories of its nature. If I am right it is something far more significant from +the scientific point of view than those incidental constituents of various rare +metals, pitchblende, rutile, and the like, upon which the revolutionary +discoveries of the last decade are based. Those are just little molecular +centres of disintegration, of that mysterious decay and rotting of those +elements, elements once regarded as the most stable things in nature. But there +is something—the only word that comes near it is +<i>cancerous</i>—and that is not very near, about the whole of quap, +something that creeps and lives as a disease lives by destroying; an elemental +stirring and disarrangement, incalculably maleficent and strange. +</p> + +<p> +This is no imaginative comparison of mine. To my mind radio-activity is a real +disease of matter. Moreover, it is a contagious disease. It spreads. You bring +those debased and crumbling atoms near others and those too presently catch the +trick of swinging themselves out of coherent existence. It is in matter exactly +what the decay of our old culture is in society, a loss of traditions and +distinctions and assured reactions. When I think of these inexplicable +dissolvent centres that have come into being in our globe—these quap +heaps are surely by far the largest that have yet been found in the world; the +rest as yet mere specks in grains and crystals—I am haunted by a +grotesque fancy of the ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of +all our world. So that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance +will change and crumble from beneath him. I mention this here as a queer +persistent fancy. Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no +splendid climax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but +just—atomic decay! I add that to the ideas of the suffocating comet, the +dark body out of space, the burning out of the sun, the distorted orbit, as a +new and far more possible end—as Science can see ends—to this +strange by-play of matter that we call human life. I do not believe this can be +the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on living, but to it +science points as a possible thing, science and reason alike. If single human +beings—if one single ricketty infant—can be born as it were by +accident and die futile, why not the whole race? These are questions I have +never answered, that now I never attempt to answer, but the thought of quap and +its mysteries brings them back to me. +</p> + +<p> +I can witness that the beach and mud for two miles or more either way was a +lifeless beach—lifeless as I could have imagined no tropical mud could +ever be, and all the dead branches and leaves and rotting dead fish and so +forth that drifted ashore became presently shrivelled and white. Sometimes +crocodiles would come up out of the water and bask, and now and then water +birds would explore the mud and rocky ribs that rose out of it, in a mood of +transitory speculation. That was its utmost admiration. And the air felt at +once hot and austere, dry and blistering, and altogether different the warm +moist embrace that had met us at our first African landfall and to which we had +grown accustomed. +</p> + +<p> +I believe that the primary influence of the quap upon us was to increase the +conductivity of our nerves, but that is a mere unjustifiable speculation on my +part. At any rate it gave a sort of east wind effect to life. We all became +irritable, clumsy, languid and disposed to be impatient with our languor. We +moored the brig to the rocks with difficulty, and got aground on mud and +decided to stick there and tow off when we had done—the bottom was as +greasy as butter. Our efforts to fix up planks and sleepers in order to wheel +the quap aboard were as ill-conceived as that sort of work can be—and +that sort of work can at times be very ill-conceived. The captain had a +superstitious fear of his hold: he became wildly gesticulatory and expository +and incompetent at the bare thought of it. His shouts still echo in my memory, +becoming as each crisis approached less and less like any known tongue. +</p> + +<p> +But I cannot now write the history of those days of blundering and toil: of how +Milton, one of the boys, fell from a plank to the beach, thirty feet perhaps, +with his barrow and broke his arm and I believe a rib, of how I and Pollack set +the limb and nursed him through the fever that followed, of how one man after +another succumbed to a feverish malaria, and how I—by virtue of my +scientific reputation—was obliged to play the part of doctor and dose +them with quinine, and then finding that worse than nothing, with rum and small +doses of Easton’s Syrup, of which there chanced to be a case of bottles +aboard—Heaven and Gordon-Nasmyth know why. For three long days we lay in +misery and never shipped a barrow-load. Then, when they resumed, the +men’s hands broke out into sores. There were no gloves available; and I +tried to get them, while they shovelled and wheeled, to cover their hands with +stockings or greased rags. They would not do this on account of the heat and +discomfort. This attempt of mine did, however, direct their attention to the +quap as the source of their illness and precipitated what in the end finished +our lading, an informal strike. “We’ve had enough of this,” +they said, and they meant it. They came aft to say as much. They cowed the +captain. +</p> + +<p> +Through all these days the weather was variously vile, first a furnace heat +under a sky of a scowling intensity of blue, then a hot fog that stuck in +one’s throat like wool and turned the men on the planks into colourless +figures of giants, then a wild burst of thunderstorms, mad elemental uproar and +rain. Through it all, against illness, heat, confusion of mind, one master +impetus prevailed with me, to keep the shipping going, to maintain one motif at +least, whatever else arose or ceased, the chuff of the spades, the squeaking +and shriek of the barrows, the pluppa, pluppa, pluppa, as the men came trotting +along the swinging high planks, and then at last, the dollop, dollop, as the +stuff shot into the hold. “Another barrow-load, thank God! Another +fifteen hundred, or it may be two thousand pounds, for the saving of +Ponderevo!...” +</p> + +<p> +I found out many things about myself and humanity in those weeks of effort +behind Mordet Island. I understand now the heart of the sweater, of the harsh +employer, of the nigger-driver. I had brought these men into a danger they +didn’t understand, I was fiercely resolved to overcome their opposition +and bend and use them for my purpose, and I hated the men. But I hated all +humanity during the time that the quap was near me. +</p> + +<p> +And my mind was pervaded, too, by a sense of urgency and by the fear that we +should be discovered and our proceedings stopped. I wanted to get out to sea +again—to be beating up northward with our plunder. I was afraid our masts +showed to seaward and might betray us to some curious passer on the high sea. +And one evening near the end I saw a canoe with three natives far off down the +lake; I got field-glasses from the captain and scrutinised them, and I could +see them staring at us. One man might have been a half-breed and was dressed in +white. They watched us for some time very quietly and then paddled off into +some channel in the forest shadows. +</p> + +<p> +And for three nights running, so that it took a painful grip upon my inflamed +imagination, I dreamt of my uncle’s face, only that it was ghastly white +like a clown’s, and the throat was cut from ear to ear—a long +ochreous cut. “Too late,” he said; “Too late!...” +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +A day or so after we had got to work upon the quap I found myself so sleepless +and miserable that the ship became unendurable. Just before the rush of sunrise +I borrowed Pollack’s gun, walked down the planks, clambered over the quap +heaps and prowled along the beach. I went perhaps a mile and a half that day +and some distance beyond the ruins of the old station. I became interested in +the desolation about me, and found when I returned that I was able to sleep for +nearly an hour. It was delightful to have been alone for so long,—no +captain, no Pollack, no one. Accordingly I repeated this expedition the next +morning and the next until it became a custom with me. There was little for me +to do once the digging and wheeling was organised, and so these prowlings of +mine grew longer and longer, and presently I began to take food with me. +</p> + +<p> +I pushed these walks far beyond the area desolated by the quap. On the edges of +that was first a zone of stunted vegetation, then a sort of swampy jungle that +was difficult to penetrate, and then the beginnings of the forest, a scene of +huge tree stems and tangled creeper ropes and roots mingled with oozy mud. Here +I used to loaf in a state between botanising and reverie—always very +anxious to know what was up above in the sunlight—and here it was I +murdered a man. +</p> + +<p> +It was the most unmeaning and purposeless murder imaginable. Even as I write +down its well-remembered particulars there comes again the sense of its +strangeness, its pointlessness, its incompatibility with any of the neat and +definite theories people hold about life and the meaning of the world. I did +this thing and I want to tell of my doing it, but why I did it and particularly +why I should be held responsible for it I cannot explain. +</p> + +<p> +That morning I had come upon a track in the forest, and it had occurred to me +as a disagreeable idea that this was a human pathway. I didn’t want to +come upon any human beings. The less our expedition saw of the African +population the better for its prospects. Thus far we had been singularly free +from native pestering. So I turned back and was making my way over mud and +roots and dead fronds and petals scattered from the green world above when +abruptly I saw my victim. +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of him perhaps forty feet off standing quite still and regarding +me. +</p> + +<p> +He wasn’t by any means a pretty figure. He was very black and naked +except for a dirty loin-cloth, his legs were ill-shaped and his toes spread +wide and the upper edge of his cloth and a girdle of string cut his clumsy +abdomen into folds. His forehead was low, his nose very flat and his lower lip +swollen and purplish-red. His hair was short and fuzzy, and about his neck was +a string and a little purse of skin. He carried a musket, and a powder-flask +was stuck in his girdle. It was a curious confrontation. There opposed to him +stood I, a little soiled, perhaps, but still a rather elaborately civilised +human being, born, bred and trained in a vague tradition. In my hand was an +unaccustomed gun. And each of us was essentially a teeming, vivid brain, +tensely excited by the encounter, quite unaware of the other’s mental +content or what to do with him. +</p> + +<p> +He stepped back a pace or so, stumbled and turned to run. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop,” I cried; “stop, you fool!” and started to run +after him, shouting such things in English. But I was no match for him over the +roots and mud. +</p> + +<p> +I had a preposterous idea. “He mustn’t get away and tell +them!” +</p> + +<p> +And with that instantly I brought both feet together, raised my gun, aimed +quite coolly, drew the trigger carefully and shot him neatly in the back. +</p> + +<p> +I saw, and saw with a leap of pure exaltation, the smash of my bullet between +his shoulder blades. “Got him,” said I, dropping my gun and down he +flopped and died without a groan. “By Jove!” I cried with note of +surprise, “I’ve killed him!” I looked about me and then went +forward cautiously, in a mood between curiosity and astonishment, to look at +this man whose soul I had flung so unceremoniously out of our common world. I +went to him, not as one goes to something one has made or done, but as one +approaches something found. +</p> + +<p> +He was frightfully smashed out in front; he must have died in the instant. I +stooped and raised him by his shoulder and realised that. I dropped him, and +stood about and peered about me through the trees. “My word!” I +said. He was the second dead human being—apart, I mean, from surgical +properties and mummies and common shows of that sort—that I have ever +seen. I stood over him wondering, wondering beyond measure. +</p> + +<p> +A practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one heard the gun? +</p> + +<p> +I reloaded. +</p> + +<p> +After a time I felt securer, and gave my mind again to the dead I had killed. +What must I do? +</p> + +<p> +It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to bury him. At any rate, I ought to +hide him. I reflected coolly, and then put my gun within easy reach and dragged +him by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft, and thrust him in. +His powder-flask slipped from his loin-cloth, and I went back to get it. Then I +pressed him down with the butt of my rifle. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards this all seemed to me most horrible, but at the time it was entirely +a matter-of-fact transaction. I looked round for any other visible evidence of +his fate, looked round as one does when one packs one’s portmanteau in an +hotel bedroom. +</p> + +<p> +When I got my bearings, and carefully returned towards the ship. I had the mood +of grave concentration of a boy who has lapsed into poaching. And the business +only began to assume proper proportions for me as I got near the ship, to seem +any other kind of thing than the killing of a bird or rabbit. +</p> + +<p> +In the night, however, it took on enormous and portentous forms. “By +God!” I cried suddenly, starting wide awake; “but it was +murder!” +</p> + +<p> +I lay after that wide awake, staring at my memories. In some odd way these +visions mixed up with my dream of in my uncle in his despair. The black body +which saw now damaged and partly buried, but which, nevertheless, I no longer +felt was dead but acutely alive and perceiving, I mixed up with the ochreous +slash under my uncle’s face. I tried to dismiss this horrible obsession +from my mind, but it prevailed over all my efforts. +</p> + +<p> +The next day was utterly black with my sense of that ugly creature’s +body. I am the least superstitious of men, but it drew me. It drew me back into +those thickets to the very place where I had hidden him. +</p> + +<p> +Some evil and detestable beast had been at him, and he lay disinterred. +</p> + +<p> +Methodically I buried his swollen and mangled carcass again, and returned to +the ship for another night of dreams. Next day for all the morning I resisted +the impulse to go to him, and played nap with Pollack with my secret gnawing at +me, and in the evening started to go and was near benighted. I never told a +soul of them of this thing I had done. +</p> + +<p> +Next day I went early, and he had gone, and there were human footmarks and ugly +stains round the muddy hole from which he had been dragged. +</p> + +<p> +I returned to the ship, disconcerted and perplexed. That day it was the men +came aft, with blistered hands and faces, and sullen eyes. When they +proclaimed, through Edwards, their spokesman, “We’ve had enough of +this, and we mean it,” I answered very readily, “So have I. +Let’s go.” +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +We were none too soon. People had been reconnoitring us, the telegraph had been +at work, and we were not four hours at sea before we ran against the gunboat +that had been sent down the coast to look for us and that would have caught us +behind the island like a beast in a trap. It was a night of driving cloud that +gave intermittent gleams of moonlight; the wind and sea were strong and we were +rolling along through a drift of rails and mist. Suddenly the world was white +with moonshine. The gunboat came out as a long dark shape wallowing on the +water to the east. +</p> + +<p> +She sighted the <i>Maud Mary</i> at once, and fired some sort of popgun to +arrest us. +</p> + +<p> +The mate turned to me. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I tell the captain?” +</p> + +<p> +“The captain be damned” said I, and we let him sleep through two +hours of chase till a rainstorm swallowed us up. Then we changed our course and +sailed right across them, and by morning only her smoke was showing. +</p> + +<p> +We were clear of Africa—and with the booty aboard I did not see what +stood between us and home. +</p> + +<p> +For the first time since I had fallen sick in the Thames my spirits rose. I was +sea-sick and physically disgusted, of course, but I felt kindly in spite of my +qualms. So far as I could calculate then the situation was saved. I saw myself +returning triumphantly into the Thames, and nothing on earth to prevent old +Capern’s Perfect Filament going on the market in fortnight. I had the +monopoly of electric lamps beneath my feet. +</p> + +<p> +I was released from the spell of that bloodstained black body all mixed up with +grey-black mud. I was going back to baths and decent food and aeronautics and +Beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and my real life again—out of this +well into which I had fallen. It would have needed something more than +sea-sickness and quap fever to prevent my spirits rising. +</p> + +<p> +I told the captain that I agreed with him that the British were the scum of +Europe, the westward drift of all the people, a disgusting rabble, and I lost +three pounds by attenuated retail to Pollack at ha’penny nap and euchre. +</p> + +<p> +And then you know, as we got out into the Atlantic this side of Cape Verde, the +ship began to go to pieces. I don’t pretend for one moment to understand +what happened. But I think Greiffenhagen’s recent work on the effects of +radium upon ligneous tissue does rather carry out my idea that emanations from +quap have rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre. +</p> + +<p> +From the first there had been a different feel about the ship, and as the big +winds and waves began to strain her she commenced leaking. Soon she was +leaking—not at any particular point, but everywhere. She did not spring a +leak, I mean, but water came in first of all near the decaying edges of her +planks, and then through them. +</p> + +<p> +I firmly believe the water came through the wood. First it began to ooze, then +to trickle. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin paper bag. Soon +we were taking in water as though we had opened a door in her bottom. +</p> + +<p> +Once it began, the thing went ahead beyond all fighting. For a day or so we did +our best, and I can still remember in my limbs and back the pumping—the +fatigue in my arms and the memory of a clear little dribble of water that +jerked as one pumped, and of knocking off and the being awakened to go on +again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At last we ceased to think of +anything but pumping; one became a thing of torment enchanted, doomed to pump +for ever. I still remember it as pure relief when at last Pollack came to me +pipe in mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“The captain says the damned thing’s going down right now;” +he remarked, chewing his mouthpiece. “Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Good idea!” I said. “One can’t go on pumping for +ever.” +</p> + +<p> +And without hurry or alacrity, sullenly and wearily we got into the boats and +pulled away from the <i>Maud Mary</i> until we were clear of her, and then we +stayed resting on our oars, motionless upon a glassy sea, waiting for her to +sink. We were all silent, even the captain was silent until she went down. And +then he spoke quite mildly in an undertone. +</p> + +<p> +“Dat is the first ship I haf ever lost.... And it was not a fair game! It +wass not a cargo any man should take. No!” +</p> + +<p> +I stared at the slow eddies that circled above the departed <i>Maud Mary</i>, +and the last chance of Business Organisations. I felt weary beyond emotion. I +thought of my heroics to Beatrice and my uncle, of my prompt +“<i>I’ll</i> go,” and of all the ineffectual months I had +spent after this headlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself and fate. +</p> + +<p> +But the captain and the men did not laugh. The men scowled at me and rubbed +their sore and blistered hands, and set themselves to row.... +</p> + +<p> +As all the world knows we were picked up by the Union Castle liner, <i>Portland +Castle</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The hairdresser aboard was a wonderful man, and he even improvised me a dress +suit, and produced a clean shirt and warm underclothing. I had a hot bath, and +dressed and dined and drank a bottle of Burgundy. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” I said, “are there any newspapers? I want to know +what’s been happening in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +My steward gave me what he had, but I landed at Plymouth still largely ignorant +of the course of events. I shook off Pollack, and left the captain and mate in +an hotel, and the men in a Sailor’s Home until I could send to pay them +off, and I made my way to the station. +</p> + +<p> +The newspapers I bought, the placards I saw, all England indeed resounded to my +uncle’s bankruptcy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="book04"></a>BOOK THE FOURTH<br /> +THE AFTERMATH OF TONO-BUNGAY</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +THE STICK OF THE ROCKET</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +That evening I talked with my uncle in the Hardingham for the last time. The +atmosphere of the place had altered quite shockingly. Instead of the crowd of +importunate courtiers there were just half a dozen uninviting men, journalists +waiting for an interview. Ropper the big commissionaire was still there, but +now indeed he was defending my uncle from something more than time-wasting +intrusions. I found the little man alone in the inner office pretending to +work, but really brooding. He was looking yellow and deflated. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord!” he said at the sight of me. “You’re lean, +George. It makes that scar of yours show up.” +</p> + +<p> +We regarded each other gravely for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“Quap,” I said, “is at the bottom of the Atlantic. +There’s some bills—We’ve got to pay the men.” +</p> + +<p> +“Seen the papers?” +</p> + +<p> +“Read ’em all in the train.” +</p> + +<p> +“At bay,” he said. “I been at bay for a week.... Yelping +round me.... And me facing the music. I’m feelin’ a bit +tired.” +</p> + +<p> +He blew and wiped his glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“My stomack isn’t what it was,” he explained. “One +finds it—these times. How did it all happen, George? Your +Marconigram—it took me in the wind a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +I told him concisely. He nodded to the paragraphs of my narrative and at the +end he poured something from a medicine bottle into a sticky little wineglass +and drank it. I became aware of the presence of drugs, of three or four small +bottles before him among his disorder of papers, of a faint elusively familiar +odour in the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, wiping his lips and recorking the bottle. +“You’ve done your best, George. The luck’s been against +us.” +</p> + +<p> +He reflected, bottle in hand. “Sometimes the luck goes with you and +sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it doesn’t. And then where are you? +Grass in the oven! Fight or no fight.” +</p> + +<p> +He asked a few questions and then his thoughts came back to his own urgent +affairs. I tried to get some comprehensive account of the situation from him, +but he would not give it. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I wish I’d had you. I wish I’d had you, George. +I’ve had a lot on my hands. You’re clear headed at times.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Boom!—infernal things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but—how? I’m just off the sea, remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’d worry me too much to tell you now. It’s tied up in a +skein.” +</p> + +<p> +He muttered something to himself and mused darkly, and roused himself to +say— +</p> + +<p> +“Besides—you’d better keep out of it. It’s getting +tight. Get ’em talking. Go down to Crest Hill and fly. That’s +<i>your</i> affair.” +</p> + +<p> +For a time his manner set free queer anxieties in my brain again. +</p> + +<p> +I will confess that that Mordet Island nightmare of mine returned, and as I +looked at him his hand went out for the drug again. “Stomach, +George,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I been fightin’ on that. Every man fights on some +thing—gives way somewheres—head, heart, liver—something. +Zzzz. Gives way somewhere. Napoleon did at last. All through the Waterloo +campaign, his stomach—it wasn’t a stomach! Worse than mine, no +end.” +</p> + +<p> +The mood of depression passed as the drug worked within him. His eyes +brightened. He began to talk big. He began to dress up the situation for my +eyes, to recover what he had admitted to me. He put it as a retreat from +Russia. There were still the chances of Leipzig. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a battle, George—a big fight. We’re fighting for +millions. I’ve still chances. There’s still a card or so. I +can’t tell all my plans—like speaking on the stroke.” +</p> + +<p> +“You might,” I began. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t, George. It’s like asking to look at some embryo. +You got to wait. I know. In a sort of way, I know. But to tell it—No! You +been away so long. And everything’s got complicated.” +</p> + +<p> +My perception of disastrous entanglements deepened with the rise of his +spirits. It was evident that I could only help to tie him up in whatever net +was weaving round his mind by forcing questions and explanations upon him. My +thoughts flew off at another angle. “How’s Aunt Susan?” said +I. +</p> + +<p> +I had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped for a moment, +and he answered in the note of one who repeats a formula. +</p> + +<p> +“She’d like to be in the battle with me. She’d like to be +here in London. But there’s corners I got to turn alone.” His eye +rested for a moment on the little bottle beside him. “And things have +happened. +</p> + +<p> +“You might go down now and talk to her,” he said, in a directer +voice. “I shall be down to-morrow night, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up as though he hoped that would end our talk. +</p> + +<p> +“For the week-end?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“For the week-end. Thank God for week-ends, George!” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +My return home to Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I had +anticipated when I had got out to sea with my load of quap and fancied the +Perfect-Filament was safe within my grasp. As I walked through the evening +light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the stillness of +something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen any more, no cyclists on +the high road. +</p> + +<p> +Cessation was manifest everywhere. There had been, I learnt from my aunt, a +touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill work had come to +an end and the men had drawn their last pay; they had cheered my uncle and +hooted the contractors and Lord Boom. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot now recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted one another. I +must have been very tired there, but whatever impression was made has gone out +of my memory. But I recall very clearly how we sat at the little round table +near the big window that gave on the terrace, and dined and talked. I remember +her talking of my uncle. +</p> + +<p> +She asked after him, and whether he seemed well. “I wish I could +help,” she said. “But I’ve never helped him much, never. His +way of doing things was never mine. And since—since—. Since he +began to get so rich, he’s kept things from me. In the old days—it +was different.... +</p> + +<p> +“There he is—I don’t know what he’s doing. He +won’t have me near him.... +</p> + +<p> +“More’s kept from me than anyone. The very servants won’t let +me know. They try and stop the worst of the papers—Boom’s +things—from coming upstairs.... I suppose they’ve got him in a +corner, George. Poor old Teddy! Poor old Adam and Eve we are! Ficial Receivers +with flaming swords to drive us out of our garden! I’d hoped we’d +never have another Trek. Well—anyway, it won’t be Crest Hill.... +But it’s hard on Teddy. He must be in such a mess up there. Poor old +chap. I suppose we can’t help him. I suppose we’d only worry him. +Have some more soup George—while there is some?...” +</p> + +<p> +The next day was one of those days of strong perception that stand out clear in +one’s memory when the common course of days is blurred. I can recall now +the awakening in the large familiar room that was always kept for me, and how I +lay staring at its chintz-covered chairs, its spaced fine furniture, its +glimpse of the cedars without, and thought that all this had to end. +</p> + +<p> +I have never been greedy for money, I have never wanted to be rich, but I felt +now an immense sense of impending deprivation. I read the newspapers after +breakfast—I and my aunt together—and then I walked up to see what +Cothope had done in the matter of Lord Roberts β. Never before had I +appreciated so acutely the ample brightness of the Lady Grove gardens, the +dignity and wide peace of all about me. It was one of those warm mornings in +late May that have won all the glory of summer without losing the gay delicacy +of spring. The shrubbery was bright with laburnum and lilac, the beds swarmed +with daffodils and narcissi and with lilies of the valley in the shade. +</p> + +<p> +I went along the well-kept paths among the rhododendra and through the private +gate into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were in profusion. +Never before had I tasted so completely the fine sense of privilege and +ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all this has to end. +</p> + +<p> +Neither my uncle nor I had made any provision for disaster; all we had was in +the game, and I had little doubt now of the completeness of our ruin. For the +first time in my life since he had sent me that wonderful telegram of his I had +to consider that common anxiety of mankind,—Employment. I had to come off +my magic carpet and walk once more in the world. +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly I found myself at the cross drives where I had seen Beatrice for +the first time after so many years. It is strange, but so far as I can +recollect I had not thought of her once since I had landed at Plymouth. No +doubt she had filled the background of my mind, but I do not remember one +definite, clear thought. I had been intent on my uncle and the financial +collapse. +</p> + +<p> +It came like a blow in the face now; all that, too, had to end! +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly I was filled with the thought of her and a great longing for her. What +would she do when she realised our immense disaster? What would she do? How +would she take it? It filled me with astonishment to realise how little I could +tell.... +</p> + +<p> +Should I perhaps presently happen upon her? +</p> + +<p> +I went on through the plantations and out upon the downs, and thence I saw +Cothope with a new glider of his own design soaring down wind to my old +familiar “grounding” place. To judge by its long rhythm it was a +very good glider. “Like Cothope’s cheek,” thought I, +“to go on with the research. I wonder if he’s keeping notes.... But +all this will have to stop.” +</p> + +<p> +He was sincerely glad to see me. “It’s been a rum go,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +He had been there without wages for a month, a man forgotten in the rush of +events. +</p> + +<p> +“I just stuck on and did what I could with the stuff. I got a bit of +money of my own—and I said to myself, ‘Well, here you are with the +gear and no one to look after you. You won’t get such a chance again, my +boy, not in all your born days. Why not make what you can with it? +‘” +</p> + +<p> +“How’s Lord Roberts β?” +</p> + +<p> +Cothope lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve had to refrain,” he said. +“But he’s looking very handsome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gods!” I said, “I’d like to get him up just once +before we smash. You read the papers? You know we’re going to +smash?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I read the papers. It’s scandalous, sir, such work as ours +should depend on things like that. You and I ought to be under the State, sir, +if you’ll excuse me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing to excuse,” I said. “I’ve always been a +Socialist—of a sort—in theory. Let’s go and have a look at +him. How is he? Deflated?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just about quarter full. That last oil glaze of yours holds the gas +something beautiful. He’s not lost a cubic metre a week.”... +</p> + +<p> +Cothope returned to Socialism as we went toward the sheds. +</p> + +<p> +“Glad to think you’re a Socialist, sir,” he said, +“it’s the only civilised state. I been a Socialist some +years—off the <i>Clarion</i>. It’s a rotten scramble, this world. +It takes the things we make and invent and it plays the silly fool with +’em. We scientific people, we’ll have to take things over and stop +all this financing and advertisement and that. It’s too silly. It’s +a noosance. Look at us!” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Roberts <i>B</i>, even in his partially deflated condition in his shed, +was a fine thing to stare up at. I stood side by side with Cothope regarding +him, and it was borne in upon me more acutely than ever that all this had to +end. I had a feeling just like the feeling of a boy who wants to do wrong, that +I would use up the stuff while I had it before the creditors descended. I had a +queer fancy, too, I remember, that if I could get into the air it would +advertise my return to Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll fill her,” I said concisely. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all ready,” said Cothope, and added as an afterthought, +“unless they cut off the gas.”... +</p> + +<p> +I worked and interested myself with Cothope all the morning and for a time +forgot my other troubles. But the thought of Beatrice flooded me slowly and +steadily. It became an unintelligent sick longing to see her. I felt that I +could not wait for the filling of Lord Roberts β, that I must hunt her up +and see her soon. I got everything forward and lunched with Cothope, and then +with the feeblest excuses left him in order to prowl down through the woods +towards Bedley Corner. I became a prey to wretched hesitations and diffidence. +Ought I to go near her now? I asked myself, reviewing all the social abasements +of my early years. At last, about five, I called at the Dower House. I was +greeted by their Charlotte—with a forbidding eye and a cold astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +Both Beatrice and Lady Osprey were out. +</p> + +<p> +There came into my head some prowling dream of meeting her. I went along the +lane towards Woking, the lane down which we had walked five months ago in the +wind and rain. +</p> + +<p> +I mooned for a time in our former footsteps, then swore and turned back across +the fields, and then conceived a distaste for Cothope and went Downward. At +last I found myself looking down on the huge abandoned masses of the Crest Hill +house. +</p> + +<p> +That gave my mind a twist into a new channel. My uncle came uppermost again. +What a strange, melancholy emptiness of intention that stricken enterprise +seemed in the even evening sunlight, what vulgar magnificence and crudity and +utter absurdity! It was as idiotic as the pyramids. I sat down on the stile, +staring at it as though I had never seen that forest of scaffold poles, that +waste of walls and bricks and plaster and shaped stones, that wilderness of +broken soil and wheeling tracks and dumps before. It struck me suddenly as the +compactest image and sample of all that passes for Progress, of all the +advertisement-inflated spending, the aimless building up and pulling down, the +enterprise and promise of my age. This was our fruit, this was what he had +done, I and my uncle, in the fashion of our time. We were its leaders and +exponents, we were the thing it most flourishingly produced. For this futility +in its end, for an epoch of such futility, the solemn scroll of history had +unfolded.... +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” I cried, “but is this Life?” +</p> + +<p> +For this the armies drilled, for this the Law was administered and the prisons +did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in suffering, in +order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make +billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch +about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen +such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and +make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me +then, and for a time I could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! +It came to me like a revelation, a revelation at once incredible and +indisputable of the abysmal folly of our being. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +I was roused from such thoughts by the sound of footsteps behind me. +</p> + +<p> +I turned half hopeful—so foolish is a lover’s imagination, and +stopped amazed. It was my uncle. His face was white—white as I had seen +it in my dream. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” I said, and stared. “Why aren’t you in +London?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all up,” he said.... +</p> + +<p> +“Adjudicated?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” +</p> + +<p> +I stared at him for a moment, and then got off the stile. +</p> + +<p> +We stood swaying and then came forward with a weak motion of his arms like a +man who cannot see distinctly, and caught at and leant upon the stile. For a +moment we were absolutely still. He made a clumsy gesture towards the great +futility below and choked. I discovered that his face was wet with tears, that +his wet glasses blinded him. He put up his little fat hand and clawed them off +clumsily, felt inefficiently for his pocket-handkerchief, and then, to my +horror, as he clung to me, he began to weep aloud, this little, old worldworn +swindler. It wasn’t just sobbing or shedding tears, it was crying as a +child cries. It was oh! terrible! +</p> + +<p> +“It’s cruel,” he blubbered at last. “They asked me +questions. They <i>kep</i>’ asking me questions, George.” +</p> + +<p> +He sought for utterance, and spluttered. +</p> + +<p> +“The Bloody bullies!” he shouted. “The Bloody Bullies.” +</p> + +<p> +He ceased to weep. He became suddenly rapid and explanatory. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not a fair game, George. They tire you out. And I’m not +well. My stomach’s all wrong. And I been and got a cold. I always been +li’ble to cold, and this one’s on my chest. And then they tell you +to speak up. They bait you—and bait you, and bait you. It’s +torture. The strain of it. You can’t remember what you said. You’re +bound to contradict yourself. It’s like Russia, George.... It isn’t +fair play.... Prominent man. I’ve been next at dinners with that chap, +Neal; I’ve told him stories—and he’s bitter! Sets out to ruin +me. Don’t ask a civil question—bellows.” He broke down again. +“I’ve been bellowed at, I been bullied, I been treated like a dog. +Dirty cads they are! Dirty cads! I’d rather be a Three-Card Sharper than +a barrister; I’d rather sell cat’s-meat in the streets. +</p> + +<p> +“They sprung things on me this morning, things I didn’t expect. +They rushed me! I’d got it all in my hands and then I was jumped. By +Neal! Neal I’ve given city tips to! Neal! I’ve helped Neal.... +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t swallow a mouthful—not in the lunch hour. I +couldn’t face it. It’s true, George—I couldn’t face it. +I said I’d get a bit of air and slipped out and down to the Embankment, +and there I took a boat to Richmond. Some idee. I took a rowing boat when I got +there and I rowed about on the river for a bit. A lot of chaps and girls there +was on the bank laughed at my shirt-sleeves and top hat. Dessay they thought it +was a pleasure trip. Fat lot of pleasure! I rowed round for a bit and came in. +Then I came on here. Windsor way. And there they are in London doing what they +like with me.... I don’t care!” +</p> + +<p> +“But” I said, looking down at him, perplexed. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s abscondin’. They’ll have a warrant.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all up, George—all up and over. +</p> + +<p> +“And I thought I’d live in that place, George and die a lord! +It’s a great place, reely, an imperial—if anyone has the sense to +buy it and finish it. That terrace—” +</p> + +<p> +I stood thinking him over. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here!” I said. “What’s that about—a +warrant? Are you sure they’ll get a warrant? I’m sorry uncle; but +what have you done?” +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t I told you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but they won’t do very much to you for that. They’ll +only bring you up for the rest of your examination.” +</p> + +<p> +He remained silent for a time. At last he spoke—speaking with difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s worse than that. I’ve done something. They’re +bound to get it out. Practically they <i>have</i> got it out.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“Writin’ things down—I done something.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time in his life, I believe, he felt and looked ashamed. It +filled me with remorse to see him suffer so. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve all done things,” I said. “It’s part of +the game the world makes us play. If they want to arrest you—and +you’ve got no cards in your hand—! They mustn’t arrest +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. That’s partly why I went to Richmond. But I never +thought—” +</p> + +<p> +His little bloodshot eyes stared at Crest Hill. +</p> + +<p> +“That chap Wittaker Wright,” he said, “he had his stuff +ready. I haven’t. Now you got it, George. That’s the sort of hole +I’m in.” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +That memory of my uncle at the gate is very clear and full. I am able to recall +even the undertow of my thoughts while he was speaking. I remember my pity and +affection for him in his misery growing and stirring within me, my realisation +that at any risk I must help him. But then comes indistinctness again. I was +beginning to act. I know I persuaded him to put himself in my hands, and began +at once to plan and do. I think that when we act most we remember least, that +just in the measure that the impulse of our impressions translates itself into +schemes and movements, it ceases to record itself in memories. I know I +resolved to get him away at once, and to use the Lord Roberts β in +effecting that. It was clear he was soon to be a hunted man, and it seemed to +me already unsafe for him to try the ordinary Continental routes in his flight. +I had to evolve some scheme, and evolve it rapidly, how we might drop most +inconspicuously into the world across the water. My resolve to have one flight +at least in my airship fitted with this like hand to glove. It seemed to me we +might be able to cross over the water in the night, set our airship adrift, and +turn up as pedestrian tourists in Normandy or Brittany, and so get away. That, +at any rate, was my ruling idea. +</p> + +<p> +I sent off Cothope with a dummy note to Woking, because I did not want to +implicate him, and took my uncle to the pavilion. I went down to my aunt, and +made a clean breast of the situation. She became admirably competent. We went +into his dressing-room and ruthlessly broke his locks. I got a pair of brown +boots, a tweed suit and a cap of his, and indeed a plausible walking outfit, +and a little game bag for his pedestrian gear; and, in addition, a big motoring +overcoat and a supply of rugs to add to those I had at the pavilion. I also got +a flask of brandy, and she made sandwiches. I don’t remember any servants +appearing, and I forget where she got those sandwiches. Meanwhile we talked. +Afterwards I thought with what a sure confidence we talked to each other. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s he done?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“D’you mind knowing?” +</p> + +<p> +“No conscience left, thank God!” +</p> + +<p> +“I think—forgery!” +</p> + +<p> +There was just a little pause. “Can you carry this bundle?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +I lifted it. +</p> + +<p> +“No woman ever has respected the law—ever,” she said. +“It’s too silly.... The things it lets you do! And then pulls you +up—like a mad nurse minding a child.” +</p> + +<p> +She carried some rugs for me through the shrubbery in the darkling. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll think we’re going mooning,” she said, jerking +her head at the household. “I wonder what they make of +us—criminals.” ... An immense droning note came as if in answer to +that. It startled us both for a moment. “The dears!” she said. +“It’s the gong for dinner!... But I wish I could help little Teddy, +George. It’s awful to think of him there with hot eyes, red and dry. And +I know—the sight of me makes him feel sore. Things I said, George. If I +could have seen, I’d have let him have an omnibusful of Scrymgeours. I +cut him up. He’d never thought I meant it before.... I’ll help all +I can, anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +I turned at something in her voice, and got a moon light gleam of tears upon +her face. +</p> + +<p> +“Could <i>she</i> have helped?” she asked abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“That woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“My God!” I cried, “<i>helped!</i> Those—things +don’t help!” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me again what I ought to do,” she said after a silence. +</p> + +<p> +I went over the plans I had made for communicating, and the things I thought +she might do. I had given her the address of a solicitor she might put some +trust in. +</p> + +<p> +“But you must act for yourself,” I insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Roughly,” I said, “it’s a scramble. You must get what +you can for us, and follow as you can.” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded. +</p> + +<p> +She came right up to the pavilion and hovered for a time shyly, and then went +away. +</p> + +<p> +I found my uncle in my sitting-room in an arm-chair, with his feet upon the +fender of the gas stove, which he had lit, and now he was feebly drunken with +my whisky, and very weary in body and spirit, and inclined to be cowardly. +</p> + +<p> +“I lef’ my drops,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He changed his clothes slowly and unwillingly. I had to bully him, I had almost +to shove him to the airship and tuck him up upon its wicker flat. Single-handed +I made but a clumsy start; we scraped along the roof of the shed and bent a van +of the propeller, and for a time I hung underneath without his offering a hand +to help me to clamber up. If it hadn’t been for a sort of anchoring +trolley device of Cothope’s, a sort of slip anchor running on a rail, we +should never have got clear at all. +</p> + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p> +The incidents of our flight in Lord Roberts β do not arrange themselves in +any consecutive order. To think of that adventure is like dipping haphazard +into an album of views. One is reminded first of this and then of that. We were +both lying down on a horizontal plate of basketwork; for Lord Roberts β +had none of the elegant accommodation of a balloon. I lay forward, and my uncle +behind me in such a position that he could see hardly anything of our flight. +We were protected from rolling over simply by netting between the steel stays. +It was impossible for us to stand up at all; we had either to lie or crawl on +all fours over the basket work. Amidships were lockers made of Watson’s +Aulite material,—and between these it was that I had put my uncle, +wrapped in rugs. I wore sealskin motoring boots and gloves, and a motoring fur +coat over my tweeds, and I controlled the engine by Bowden wires and levers +forward. +</p> + +<p> +The early part of that night’s experience was made up of warmth, of +moonlit Surrey and Sussex landscape, and of a rapid and successful flight, +ascending and swooping, and then ascending again southward. I could not watch +the clouds because the airship overhung me; I could not see the stars nor gauge +the meteorological happening, but it was fairly clear to me that a wind +shifting between north and northeast was gathering strength, and after I had +satisfied myself by a series of entirely successful expansions and contractions +of the real air-worthiness of Lord Roberts β, I stopped the engine to save +my petrol, and let the monster drift, checking its progress by the dim +landscape below. My uncle lay quite still behind me, saying little and staring +in front of him, and I was left to my own thoughts and sensations. +</p> + +<p> +My thoughts, whatever they were, have long since faded out of memory, and my +sensations have merged into one continuous memory of an countryside lying, as +it seemed, under snow, with square patches of dimness, white phantoms of roads, +rents and pools of velvety blackness, and lamp-jewelled houses. I remember a +train boring its way like a hastening caterpillar of fire across the landscape, +and how distinctly I heard its clatter. Every town and street was buttoned with +street lamps. I came quite close to the South Downs near Lewes, and all the +lights were out in the houses, and the people gone to bed. We left the land a +little to the east of Brighton, and by that time Brighton was well abed. and +the brightly lit sea-front deserted. Then I let out the gas chamber to its +fullest extent and rose. I like to be high above water. +</p> + +<p> +I do not clearly know what happened in the night. I think I must have dozed, +and probably my uncle slept. I remember that once or twice I heard him talking +in an eager, muffled voice to himself, or to an imaginary court. But there can +be no doubt the wind changed right round into the east, and that we were +carried far down the Channel without any suspicion of the immense leeway we +were making. I remember the kind of stupid perplexity with which I saw the dawn +breaking over a grey waste of water, below, and realised that something was +wrong. I was so stupid that it was only after the sunrise I really noticed the +trend of the foam caps below, and perceived we were in a severe easterly gale. +Even then, instead of heading southeasterly, I set the engine going, headed +south, and so continued a course that must needs have either just hit Ushant, +or carry us over the Bay of Biscay. I thought I was east of Cherbourg, when I +was far to the west and stopped my engine in that belief, and then set it going +again. I did actually sight the coast of Brittany to the southeast in the late +afternoon, and that it was woke me up to the gravity of our position. I +discovered it by accident in the southeast, when I was looking for it in the +southwest. I turned about east and faced the wind for some time, and finding I +had no chance in its teeth, went high, where it seemed less violent, and tried +to make a course southeast. It was only then that I realised what a gale I was +in. I had been going westward, and perhaps even in gusts north of west, at a +pace of fifty or sixty miles an hour. +</p> + +<p> +Then I began what I suppose would be called a Fight against the east wind. One +calls it a Fight, but it was really almost as unlike a fight as plain sewing. +The wind tried to drive me westwardly, and I tried to get as much as I could +eastwardly, with the wind beating and rocking us irregularly, but by no means +unbearably, for about twelve hours. My hope lay in the wind abating, and our +keeping in the air and eastward of Finisterre until it did, and the chief +danger was the exhaustion of our petrol. It was a long and anxious and almost +meditative time; we were fairly warm, and only slowly getting hungry, and +except that my uncle grumbled a little and produced some philosophical +reflections, and began to fuss about having a temperature, we talked very +little. I was tired and sulky, and chiefly worried about the engine. I had to +resist a tendency to crawl back and look at it. I did not care to risk +contracting our gas chamber for fear of losing gas. Nothing was less like a +fight. I know that in popular magazines, and so forth, all such occasions as +this are depicted in terms of hysteria. Captains save their ships engineers +complete their bridges, generals conduct their battles, in a state of dancing +excitement, foaming recondite technicalities at the lips. I suppose that sort +of thing works up the reader, but so far as it professes to represent reality, +I am convinced it is all childish nonsense, schoolboys of fifteen, girls of +eighteen, and literary men all their lives, may have these squealing fits, but +my own experience is that most exciting scenes are not exciting, and most of +the urgent moments in life are met by steady-headed men. +</p> + +<p> +Neither I nor my uncle spent the night in ejaculations, nor in humorous +allusions, nor any of these things. We remained lumpish. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle stuck in his place and grumbled about his stomach, and occasionally +rambled off into expositions of his financial position and denunciations of +Neal—he certainly struck out one or two good phrases for Neal—and I +crawled about at rare intervals in a vague sort of way and grunted, and our +basketwork creaked continually, and the wind on our quarter made a sort of +ruffled flapping in the wall of the gas chamber. For all our wraps we got +frightfully cold as the night wore on. +</p> + +<p> +I must have dozed, and it was still dark when I realised with a start that we +were nearly due south of, and a long way from, a regularly-flashing lighthouse, +standing out before the glow of some great town, and then that the thing that +had awakened me was the cessation of our engine, and that we were driving back +to the west. +</p> + +<p> +Then, indeed, for a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I crawled forward to +the cords of the release valves, made my uncle crawl forward too, and let out +the gas until we were falling down through the air like a clumsy glider towards +the vague greyness that was land. +</p> + +<p> +Something must have intervened here that I have forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +I saw the lights of Bordeaux when it was quite dark, a nebulous haze against +black; of that I am reasonably sure. But certainly our fall took place in the +cold, uncertain light of early dawn. I am, at least, equally sure of that. And +Mimizan, near where we dropped, is fifty miles from Bordeaux, whose harbour +lights I must have seen. +</p> + +<p> +I remember coming down at last with a curious indifference, and actually +rousing myself to steer. But the actual coming to earth was exciting enough. I +remember our prolonged dragging landfall, and the difficulty I had to get +clear, and how a gust of wind caught Lord Roberts B as my uncle stumbled away +from the ropes and litter, and dropped me heavily, and threw me on to my knees. +Then came the realisation that the monster was almost consciously disentangling +itself for escape, and then the light leap of its rebound. The rope slipped out +of reach of my hand. I remember running knee-deep in a salt pool in hopeless +pursuit of the airship. +</p> + +<p> +As it dragged and rose seaward, and how only after it had escaped my uttermost +effort to recapture it, did I realise that this was quite the best thing that +could have happened. It drove swiftly over the sandy dunes, lifting and +falling, and was hidden by a clump of windbitten trees. Then it reappeared much +further off, and still receding. It soared for a time, and sank slowly, and +after that I saw it no more. I suppose it fell into the sea and got wetted with +salt water and heavy, and so became deflated and sank. +</p> + +<p> +It was never found, and there was never a report of anyone seeing it after it +escaped from me. +</p> + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p> +But if I find it hard to tell the story of our long flight through the air +overseas, at least that dawn in France stands cold and clear and full. I see +again almost as if I saw once more with my bodily eyes the ridges of sand +rising behind ridges of sand, grey and cold and black-browed, with an +insufficient grass. I feel again the clear, cold chill of dawn, and hear the +distant barking of a dog. I find myself asking again, “What shall we do +now?” and trying to scheme with brain tired beyond measure. +</p> + +<p> +At first my uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering a good deal, and it +was all I could do to resist my desire to get him into a comfortable bed at +once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in this part of the world. I felt it +would not do to turn up anywhere at dawn and rest, it would be altogether too +conspicuous; we must rest until the day was well advanced, and then appear as +road-stained pedestrians seeking a meal. I gave him most of what was left of +the biscuits, emptied our flasks, and advised him to sleep, but at first it was +too cold, albeit I wrapped the big fur rug around him. +</p> + +<p> +I was struck now by the flushed weariness of his face, and the look of age the +grey stubble on his unshaved chin gave him. He sat crumpled up, shivering and +coughing, munching reluctantly, but drinking eagerly, and whimpering a little, +a dreadfully pitiful figure to me. But we had to go through with it; there was +no way out for us. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the sun rose over the pines, and the sand grew rapidly warm. My uncle +had done eating, and sat with his wrists resting on his knees, the most +hopeless looking of lost souls. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m ill,” he said, “I’m damnably ill! I can feel +it in my skin!” +</p> + +<p> +Then—it was horrible to me—he cried, “I ought to be in bed; I +ought to be in bed... instead of flying about,” and suddenly he burst +into tears. +</p> + +<p> +I stood up. “Go to sleep, man!” I said, and took the rug from him, +and spread it out and rolled him up in it. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all very well,” he protested; “I’m not +young enough—” +</p> + +<p> +“Lift up your head,” I interrupted, and put his knapsack under it. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll catch us here, just as much as in an inn,” he +grumbled and then lay still. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, after a long time, I perceived he was asleep. His breath came with +peculiar wheezings, and every now and again he would cough. I was very stiff +and tired myself, and perhaps I dozed. I don’t remember. I remember only +sitting, as it seemed, nigh interminably, beside him, too weary even to think +in that sandy desolation. +</p> + +<p> +No one came near us; no creature, not even a dog. I roused myself at last, +feeling that it was vain to seek to seem other than abnormal, and with an +effort that was like lifting a sky of lead, we made our way through the +wearisome sand to a farmhouse. There I feigned even a more insufficient French +than I possess naturally, and let it appear that we were pedestrians from +Biarritz who had lost our way along the shore and got benighted. +</p> + +<p> +This explained us pretty well, I thought, and we got most heartening coffee and +a cart to a little roadside station. My uncle grew more and more manifestly ill +with every stage of our journey. I got him to Bayonne, where he refused at +first to eat, and was afterwards very sick, and then took him shivering and +collapsed up a little branch line to a frontier place called Luzon Gare. +</p> + +<p> +We found one homely inn with two small bedrooms, kept by a kindly Basque woman. +I got him to bed, and that night shared his room, and after an hour or so of +sleep he woke up in a raging fever and with a wandering mind, cursing Neal and +repeating long, inaccurate lists of figures. He was manifestly a case for a +doctor, and in the morning we got one in. He was a young man from Montpelier, +just beginning to practise, and very mysterious and technical and modern and +unhelpful. He spoke of cold and exposure, and <i>la grippe</i> and pneumonia. +He gave many explicit and difficult directions.... I perceived it devolved upon +me to organise nursing and a sick-room. I installed a <i>religieuse</i> in the +second bedroom of the inn, and took a room for myself in the inn of Port de +Luzon, a quarter of a mile away. +</p> + +<h4>VII</h4> + +<p> +And now my story converges on what, in that queer corner of refuge out of the +world, was destined to be my uncle’s deathbed. There is a background of +the Pyrenees, of blue hills and sunlit houses, of the old castle of Luzon and a +noisy cascading river, and for a foreground the dim, stuffy room whose windows +both the <i>religieuse</i> and hostess conspired to shut, with its waxed floor, +its four-poster bed, its characteristically French chairs and fireplace, its +champagne bottles and dirty basins and used towels and packets of +<i>Somatosé</i> on the table. And in the sickly air of the confined space in +behind the curtains of the bed lay my little uncle, with an effect of being +enthroned and secluded, or sat up, or writhed and tossed in his last dealings +of life. One went and drew back the edge of the curtains if one wanted to speak +to him or look at him. +</p> + +<p> +Usually he was propped up against pillows, because so he breathed more easily. +He slept hardly at all. +</p> + +<p> +I have a confused memory of vigils and mornings and afternoons spent by that +bedside, and how the <i>religieuse</i> hovered about me, and how meek and good +and inefficient she was, and how horribly black were her nails. Other figures +come and go, and particularly the doctor, a young man plumply rococo, in +bicycling dress, with fine waxen features, a little pointed beard, and the long +black frizzy hair and huge tie of a minor poet. Bright and clear-cut and +irrelevant are memories of the Basque hostess of my uncle’s inn and of +the family of Spanish people who entertained me and prepared the most amazingly +elaborate meals for me, with soup and salad and chicken and remarkable sweets. +They were all very kind and sympathetic people, systematically so. And +constantly, without attracting attention, I was trying to get newspapers from +home. +</p> + +<p> +My uncle is central to all these impressions. +</p> + +<p> +I have tried to make you picture him, time after time, as the young man of the +Wimblehurst chemist’s shop, as the shabby assistant in Tottenham Court +Road, as the adventurer of the early days of Tono-Bungay, as the confident, +preposterous plutocrat. And now I have to tell of him strangely changed under +the shadow of oncoming death, with his skin lax and yellow and glistening with +sweat, his eyes large and glassy, his countenance unfamiliar through the growth +of a beard, his nose pinched and thin. Never had he looked so small as now. And +he talked to me in a whispering, strained voice of great issues, of why his +life had been, and whither he was going. Poor little man! that last phase is, +as it were, disconnected from all the other phases. It was as if he crawled out +from the ruins of his career, and looked about him before he died. For he had +quite clear-minded states in the intervals of his delirium. +</p> + +<p> +He knew he was almost certainly dying. In a way that took the burthen of his +cares off his mind. There was no more Neal to face, no more flights or +evasions, no punishments. +</p> + +<p> +“It has been a great career, George,” he said, “but I shall +be glad to rest. Glad to rest!... Glad to rest.” +</p> + +<p> +His mind ran rather upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a +note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he would most often +exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splendours. He would pluck +at the sheet and stare before him, and whisper half-audible fragments of +sentences. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this great place, these cloud-capped towers, these any +pinnacles?... Ilion. Sky-pointing.... Ilion House, the residence of one of our +great merchant princes.... Terrace above terrace. Reaching to the heavens.... +Kingdoms Cæsar never knew.... A great poet, George. Zzzz. Kingdoms Cæsar never +knew.... Under entirely new management. +</p> + +<p> +“Greatness....Millions... Universities.... He stands on the +terrace—on the upper terrace—directing—directing—by the +globe—directing—the trade.” +</p> + +<p> +It was hard at times to tell when his sane talk ceased and his delirium began. +The secret springs of his life, the vain imaginations were revealed. I +sometimes think that all the life of man sprawls abed, careless and unkempt, +until it must needs clothe and wash itself and come forth seemly in act and +speech for the encounter with one’s fellow-men. I suspect that all things +unspoken in our souls partake somewhat of the laxity of delirium and dementia. +Certainly from those slimy, tormented lips above the bristling grey beard came +nothing but dreams and disconnected fancies.... +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes he raved about Neal, threatened Neal. “What has he got +invested?” he said. “Does he think he can escape me?... If I +followed him up.... Ruin. Ruin.... One would think <i>I</i> had taken his +money.” +</p> + +<p> +And sometimes he reverted to our airship flight. “It’s too long, +George, too long and too cold. I’m too old a man—too old—for +this sort of thing.... You know you’re not saving—you’re +killing me.” +</p> + +<p> +Towards the end it became evident our identity was discovered. I found the +press, and especially Boom’s section of it, had made a sort of hue and +cry for us, sent special commissioners to hunt for us, and though none of these +emissaries reached us until my uncle was dead, one felt the forewash of that +storm of energy. The thing got into the popular French press. People became +curious in their manner towards us, and a number of fresh faces appeared about +the weak little struggle that went on in the closeness behind the curtains of +the bed. The young doctor insisted on consultations, and a motor-car came up +from Biarritz, and suddenly odd people with questioning eyes began to poke in +with inquiries and help. Though nothing was said, I could feel that we were no +longer regarded as simple middle-class tourists; about me, as I went, I +perceived almost as though it trailed visibly, the prestige of Finance and a +criminal notoriety. Local personages of a plump and prosperous quality appeared +in the inn making inquiries, the Luzon priest became helpful, people watched +our window, and stared at me as I went to and fro; and then we had a raid from +a little English clergyman and his amiable, capable wife in severely Anglican +blacks, who swooped down upon us like virtuous but resolute vultures from the +adjacent village of Saint Jean de Pollack. +</p> + +<p> +The clergyman was one of those odd types that oscillate between remote country +towns in England and the conduct of English Church services on mutual terms in +enterprising hotels abroad, a tremulous, obstinate little being with sporadic +hairs upon his face, spectacles, a red button nose, and aged black raiment. He +was evidently enormously impressed by my uncle’s monetary greatness, and +by his own inkling of our identity, and he shone and brimmed over with tact and +fussy helpfulness. He was eager to share the watching of the bedside with me, +he proffered services with both hands, and as I was now getting into touch with +affairs in London again, and trying to disentangle the gigantic details of the +smash from the papers I had succeeded in getting from Biarritz, I accepted his +offers pretty generously, and began the studies in modern finance that lay +before me. I had got so out of touch with the old traditions of religion that I +overlooked the manifest possibility of his attacking my poor, sinking vestiges +of an uncle with theological solicitudes. My attention was called to that, +however, very speedily by a polite but urgent quarrel between himself and the +Basque landlady as to the necessity of her hanging a cheap crucifix in the +shadow over the bed, where it might catch my uncle’s eye, where, indeed, +I found it had caught his eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord!” I cried; “is <i>that</i> still going on!” +</p> + +<p> +That night the little clergyman watched, and in the small hours he raised a +false alarm that my uncle was dying, and made an extraordinary fuss. He raised +the house. I shall never forget that scene, I think, which began with a tapping +at my bedroom door just after I had fallen asleep, and his voice— +</p> + +<p> +“If you want to see your uncle before he goes, you must come now.” +</p> + +<p> +The stuffy little room was crowded when I reached it, and lit by three +flickering candles. I felt I was back in the eighteenth century. There lay my +poor uncle amidst indescribably tumbled bedclothes, weary of life beyond +measure, weary and rambling, and the little clergyman trying to hold his hand +and his attention, and repeating over and over again: +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Ponderevo, Mr. Ponderevo, it is all right. It is all right. +</p> + +<p> +“Only Believe! ‘Believe on me, and ye shall be saved’!” +</p> + +<p> +Close at hand was the doctor with one of those cruel and idiotic injection +needles modern science puts in the hands of these half-educated young men, +keeping my uncle flickeringly alive for no reason whatever. The +<i>religieuse</i> hovered sleepily in the background with an overdue and +neglected dose. In addition, the landlady had not only got up herself, but +roused an aged crone of a mother and a partially imbecile husband, and there +was also a fattish, stolid man in grey alpaca, with an air of +importance—who he was and how he got there, I don’t know. I rather +fancy the doctor explained him to me in French I did not understand. And they +were all there, wearily nocturnal, hastily and carelessly dressed, intent upon +the life that flickered and sank, making a public and curious show of its +going, queer shapes of human beings lit by three uncertain candles, and every +soul of them keenly and avidly resolved to be in at the death. The doctor +stood, the others were all sitting on chairs the landlady had brought in and +arranged for them. +</p> + +<p> +And my uncle spoilt the climax, and did not die. +</p> + +<p> +I replaced the little clergyman on the chair by the bedside, and he hovered +about the room. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” he whispered to me mysteriously, as he gave place to me, +“I believe—it is well with him.” +</p> + +<p> +I heard him trying to render the stock phrases of Low Church piety into French +for the benefit of the stolid man in grey alpaca. Then he knocked a glass off +the table, and scrabbled for the fragments. From the first I doubted the theory +of an immediate death. I consulted the doctor in urgent whispers. I turned +round to get champagne, and nearly fell over the clergyman’s legs. He was +on his knees at the additional chair the Basque landlady had got on my arrival, +and he was praying aloud, “Oh, Heavenly Father, have mercy on this thy +Child....” I hustled him up and out of the way, and in another minute he +was down at another chair praying again, and barring the path of the +<i>religieuse</i>, who had found me the corkscrew. Something put into my head +that tremendous blasphemy of Carlyle’s about “the last mew of a +drowning kitten.” He found a third chair vacant presently; it was as if +he was playing a game. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Heavens!” I said, “we must clear these people +out,” and with a certain urgency I did. +</p> + +<p> +I had a temporary lapse of memory, and forgot all my French. I drove them out +mainly by gesture, and opened the window, to the universal horror. I intimated +the death scene was postponed, and, as a matter of fact, my uncle did not die +until the next night. +</p> + +<p> +I did not let the little clergyman come near him again, and I was watchful for +any sign that his mind had been troubled. But he made none. He talked once +about “that parson chap.” +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t bother you?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Wanted something,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I kept silence, listening keenly to his mutterings. I understood him to say, +“They wanted too much.” His face puckered like a child’s +going to cry. “You can’t get a safe six per cent.,” he said. +I had for a moment a wild suspicion that those urgent talks had not been +altogether spiritual, but that, I think, was a quite unworthy and unjust +suspicion. The little clergyman was as simple and honest as the day. My uncle +was simply generalising about his class. +</p> + +<p> +But it may have been these talks that set loose some long dormant string of +ideas in my uncle’s brain, ideas the things of this world had long +suppressed and hidden altogether. Near the end he suddenly became clearminded +and lucid, albeit very weak, and his voice was little, but clear. +</p> + +<p> +“George,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m here,” I said, “close beside you.” +</p> + +<p> +“George. You have always been responsible for the science. George. You +know better than I do. Is—Is it proved?” +</p> + +<p> +“What proved?” +</p> + +<p> +“Either way?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Death ends all. After so much—Such splendid beginnin’s. +Somewhere. Something.” +</p> + +<p> +I stared at him amazed. His sunken eyes were very grave. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you expect?” I said in wonder. +</p> + +<p> +He would not answer. “Aspirations,” he whispered. He fell into a +broken monologue, regardless of me. “Trailing clouds of glory,” he +said, and “first-rate poet, first-rate....George was always hard. +Always.” +</p> + +<p> +For a long time there was silence. +</p> + +<p> +Then he made a gesture that he wished to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Seems to me, George” +</p> + +<p> +I bent my head down, and he tried to lift his hand to my shoulder. I raised him +a little on his pillows, and listened. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me, George, always—there must be something in +me—that won’t die.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at me as though the decision rested with me. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” he said; “—something.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, for a moment, his mind wandered. “Just a little link,” he +whispered almost pleadingly, and lay quite still, but presently he was uneasy +again. +</p> + +<p> +“Some other world” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” I said. “Who knows?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some other world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not the same scope for enterprise,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +He became silent. I sat leaning down to him, and following out my own thoughts, +and presently the <i>religieuse</i> resumed her periodic conflict with the +window fastening. For a time he struggled for breath.... It seemed such +nonsense that he should have to suffer so—poor silly little man! +</p> + +<p> +“George,” he whispered, and his weak little hand came out. +“<i>Perhaps</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +He said no more, but I perceived from the expression of his eyes that he +thought the question had been put. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think so;” I said stoutly. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you sure?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—practically sure,” said I, and I think he tried to +squeeze my hand. And there I sat, holding his hand tight, and trying to think +what seeds of immortality could be found in all his being, what sort of ghost +there was in <i>him</i> to wander out into the bleak immensities. Queer fancies +came to me.... He lay still for a long time, save for a brief struggle or so +for breath and ever and again I wiped his mouth and lips. +</p> + +<p> +I fell into a pit of thought. I did not remark at first the change that was +creeping over his face. He lay back on his pillow, made a faint zzzing sound +that ceased, and presently and quite quietly he died—greatly comforted by +my assurance. I do not know when he died. His hand relaxed insensibly. +Suddenly, with a start, with a shock, I found that his mouth had fallen open, +and that he was dead.... +</p> + +<h4>VIII</h4> + +<p> +It was dark night when I left his deathbed and went back to my own inn down the +straggling street of Luzon. +</p> + +<p> +That return to my inn sticks in my memory also as a thing apart, as an +experience apart. Within was a subdued bustle of women, a flitting of lights, +and the doing of petty offices to that queer, exhausted thing that had once +been my active and urgent little uncle. For me those offices were irksome and +impertinent. I slammed the door, and went out into the warm, foggy drizzle of +the village street lit by blurred specks of light in great voids of darkness, +and never a soul abroad. That warm veil of fog produced an effect of vast +seclusion. The very houses by the roadside peered through it as if from another +world. The stillness of the night was marked by an occasional remote baying of +dogs; all these people kept dogs because of the near neighbourhood of the +frontier. +</p> + +<p> +Death! +</p> + +<p> +It was one of those rare seasons of relief, when for a little time one walks a +little outside of and beside life. I felt as I sometimes feel after the end of +a play. I saw the whole business of my uncle’s life as something familiar +and completed. It was done, like a play one leaves, like a book one closes. I +thought of the push and the promotions, the noise of London, the crowded, +various company of people through which our lives had gone, the public +meetings, the excitements, the dinners and disputations, and suddenly it +appeared to me that none of these things existed. +</p> + +<p> +It came to me like a discovery that none of these things existed. +</p> + +<p> +Before and after I have thought and called life a phantasmagoria, but never +have I felt its truth as I did that night.... We had parted; we two who had +kept company so long had parted. But there was, I knew, no end to him or me. He +had died a dream death, and ended a dream; his pain dream was over. It seemed +to me almost as though I had died, too. What did it matter, since it was +unreality, all of it, the pain and desire, the beginning and the end? There was +no reality except this solitary road, this quite solitary road, along which one +went rather puzzled, rather tired.... +</p> + +<p> +Part of the fog became a big mastiff that came towards me and stopped and slunk +round me, growling, barked gruffly, and shortly and presently became fog again. +</p> + +<p> +My mind swayed back to the ancient beliefs and fears of our race. My doubts and +disbeliefs slipped from me like a loosely fitting garment. I wondered quite +simply what dogs bayed about the path of that other walker in the darkness, +what shapes, what lights, it might be, loomed about him as he went his way from +our last encounter on earth—along the paths that are real, and the way +that endures for ever? +</p> + +<h4>IX</h4> + +<p> +Last belated figure in that grouping round my uncle’s deathbed is my +aunt. When it was beyond all hope that my uncle could live I threw aside +whatever concealment remained to us and telegraphed directly to her. But she +came too late to see him living. She saw him calm and still, strangely unlike +his habitual garrulous animation, an unfamiliar inflexibility. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t like him,” she whispered, awed by this alien +dignity. +</p> + +<p> +I remember her chiefly as she talked and wept upon the bridge below the old +castle. We had got rid of some amateurish reporters from Biarritz, and had +walked together in the hot morning sunshine down through Port Luzon. There, for +a time, we stood leaning on the parapet of the bridge and surveying the distant +peeks, the rich blue masses of the Pyrenees. For a long time we said nothing, +and then she began talking. +</p> + +<p> +“Life’s a rum Go, George!” she began. “Who would have +thought, when I used to darn your stockings at old Wimblehurst, that this would +be the end of the story? It seems far away now—that little shop, his and +my first home. The glow of the bottles, the big coloured bottles! Do you +remember how the light shone on the mahogany drawers? The little gilt letters! +<i>Ol Amjig</i>, and <i>S’nap!</i> I can remember it all—bright and +shining—like a Dutch picture. Real! And yesterday. And here we are in a +dream. You a man—and me an old woman, George. And poor little Teddy, who +used to rush about and talk—making that noise he did—Oh!” +</p> + +<p> +She choked, and the tears flowed unrestrained. She wept, and I was glad to see +her weeping. +</p> + +<p> +She stood leaning over the bridge; her tear-wet handkerchief gripped in her +clenched hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Just an hour in the old shop again—and him talking. Before things +got done. Before they got hold of him. And fooled him. +</p> + +<p> +“Men oughtn’t to be so tempted with business and things.... +</p> + +<p> +“They didn’t hurt him, George?” she asked suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment I was puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“Here, I mean,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I lied stoutly, suppressing the memory of that foolish +injection needle I had caught the young doctor using. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder, George, if they’ll let him talk in Heaven....” +</p> + +<p> +She faced me. “Oh! George, dear, my heart aches, and I don’t know +what I say and do. Give me your arm to lean on—it’s good to have +you, dear, and lean upon you.... Yes, I know you care for me. That’s why +I’m talking. We’ve always loved one another, and never said +anything about it, and you understand, and I understand. But my heart’s +torn to pieces by this, torn to rags, and things drop out I’ve kept in +it. It’s true he wasn’t a husband much for me at the last. But he +was my child, George, he was my child and all my children, my silly child, and +life has knocked him about for me, and I’ve never had a say in the +matter; never a say; it’s puffed him up and smashed him—like an old +bag—under my eyes. I was clever enough to see it, and not clever enough +to prevent it, and all I could do was to jeer. I’ve had to make what I +could of it. Like most people. Like most of us.... But it wasn’t fair, +George. It wasn’t fair. Life and Death—great serious +things—why couldn’t they leave him alone, and his lies and ways? If +<i>we</i> could see the lightness of it— +</p> + +<p> +“Why couldn’t they leave him alone?” she repeated in a +whisper as we went towards the inn. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +LOVE AMONG THE WRECKAGE</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +When I came back I found that my share in the escape and death of my uncle had +made me for a time a notorious and even popular character. For two weeks I was +kept in London “facing the music,” as he would have said, and +making things easy for my aunt, and I still marvel at the consideration with +which the world treated me. For now it was open and manifest that I and my +uncle were no more than specimens of a modern species of brigand, wasting the +savings of the public out of the sheer wantonness of enterprise. I think that +in a way, his death produced a reaction in my favour and my flight, of which +some particulars now appeared stuck in the popular imagination. It seemed a +more daring and difficult feat than it was, and I couldn’t very well +write to the papers to sustain my private estimate. There can be little doubt +that men infinitely prefer the appearance of dash and enterprise to simple +honesty. No one believed I was not an arch plotter in his financing. Yet they +favoured me. I even got permission from the trustee to occupy my chalet for a +fortnight while I cleared up the mass of papers, calculations, notes of work, +drawings and the like, that I left in disorder when I started on that impulsive +raid upon the Mordet quap heaps. +</p> + +<p> +I was there alone. I got work for Cothope with the Ilchesters, for whom I now +build these destroyers. They wanted him at once, and he was short of money, so +I let him go and managed very philosophically by myself. +</p> + +<p> +But I found it hard to fix my attention on aeronautics, I had been away from +the work for a full half-year and more, a half-year crowded with intense +disconcerting things. For a time my brain refused these fine problems of +balance and adjustment altogether; it wanted to think about my uncle’s +dropping jaw, my aunt’s reluctant tears, about dead negroes and +pestilential swamps, about the evident realities of cruelty and pain, about +life and death. Moreover, it was weary with the frightful pile of figures and +documents at the Hardingham, a task to which this raid to Lady Grove was simply +an interlude. And there was Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +On the second morning, as I sat out upon the veranda recalling memories and +striving in vain to attend to some too succinct pencil notes of +Cothope’s, Beatrice rode up suddenly from behind the pavilion, and pulled +rein and became still; Beatrice, a little flushed from riding and sitting on a +big black horse. +</p> + +<p> +I did not instantly rise. I stared at her. “<i>You!</i>” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me steadily. “Me,” she said +</p> + +<p> +I did not trouble about any civilities. I stood up and asked point blank a +question that came into my head. +</p> + +<p> +“Whose horse is that?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked me in the eyes. “Carnaby’s,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you get here—this way?” +</p> + +<p> +“The wall’s down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Down? Already?” +</p> + +<p> +“A great bit of it between the plantations.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you rode through, and got here by chance?” +</p> + +<p> +“I saw you yesterday. And I rode over to see you.” I had now come +close to her, and stood looking up into her face. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m a mere vestige,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She made no answer, but remained regarding me steadfastly with a curious air of +proprietorship. +</p> + +<p> +“You know I’m the living survivor now of the great smash. I’m +rolling and dropping down through all the scaffolding of the social system.... +It’s all a chance whether I roll out free at the bottom, or go down a +crack into the darkness out of sight for a year or two.” +</p> + +<p> +“The sun,” she remarked irrelevantly, “has burnt you.... +I’m getting down.” +</p> + +<p> +She swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Cothope?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Gone.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes flitted to the pavilion and back to me. We stood close together, +extraordinarily intimate, and extraordinarily apart. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve never seen this cottage of yours,” she said, “and +I want to.” +</p> + +<p> +She flung the bridle of her horse round the veranda post, and I helped her tie +it. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you get what you went for to Africa?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said, “I lost my ship.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that lost everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything.” +</p> + +<p> +She walked before me into the living-room of the chalet, and I saw that she +gripped her riding-whip very tightly in her hand. She looked about her for a +moment,—and then at me. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s comfortable,” she remarked. +</p> + +<p> +Our eyes met in a conversation very different from the one upon our lips. A +sombre glow surrounded us, drew us together; an unwonted shyness kept us apart. +She roused herself, after an instant’s pause, to examine my furniture. +</p> + +<p> +“You have chintz curtains. I thought men were too feckless to have +curtains without a woman. But, of course, your aunt did that! And a couch and a +brass fender, and—is that a pianola? That is your desk. I thought +men’s desks were always untidy, and covered with dust and tobacco +ash.” +</p> + +<p> +She flitted to my colour prints and my little case of books. Then she went to +the pianola. I watched her intently. +</p> + +<p> +“Does this thing play?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Does this thing play?” +</p> + +<p> +I roused myself from my preoccupation. +</p> + +<p> +“Like a musical gorilla with fingers all of one length. And a sort of +soul.... It’s all the world of music to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you play?” +</p> + +<p> +“Beethoven, when I want to clear up my head while I’m working. He +is—how one would always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those others, +but Beethoven. Beethoven mainly. Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence again between us. She spoke with an effort. +</p> + +<p> +“Play me something.” She turned from me and explored the rack of +music rolls, became interested and took a piece, the first part of the Kreutzer +Sonata, hesitated. “No,” she said, “that!” +</p> + +<p> +She gave me Brahms’ Second Concerto, Op. 58, and curled up on the sofa +watching me as I set myself slowly to play.... +</p> + +<p> +“I say,” he said when I had done, “that’s fine. I +didn’t know those things could play like that. I’m all +astir...” +</p> + +<p> +She came and stood over me, looking at me. “I’m going to have a +concert,” she said abruptly, and laughed uneasily and hovered at the +pigeon-holes. “Now—now what shall I have?” She chose more of +Brahms. Then we came to the Kreutzer Sonata. It is queer how Tolstoy has loaded +that with suggestions, debauched it, made it a scandalous and intimate symbol. +When I had played the first part of that, she came up to the pianola and +hesitated over me. I sat stiffly—waiting. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she seized my downcast head and kissed my hair. She caught at my face +between her hands and kissed my lips. I put my arms about her and we kissed +together. I sprang to my feet and clasped her. +</p> + +<p> +“Beatrice!” I said. “Beatrice!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear,” she whispered, nearly breathless, with her arms about +me. “Oh! my dear!” +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +Love, like everything else in this immense process of social disorganisation in +which we live, is a thing adrift, a fruitless thing broken away from its +connexions. I tell of this love affair here because of its irrelevance, because +it is so remarkable that it should mean nothing, and be nothing except itself. +It glows in my memory like some bright casual flower starting up amidst the +<i>débris</i> of a catastrophe. For nearly a fortnight we two met and made love +together. Once more this mighty passion, that our aimless civilisation has +fettered and maimed and sterilised and debased, gripped me and filled me with +passionate delights and solemn joys—that were all, you know, futile and +purposeless. Once more I had the persuasion “This matters. Nothing else +matters so much as this.” We were both infinitely grave in such happiness +as we had. I do not remember any laughter at all between us. +</p> + +<p> +Twelve days it lasted from that encounter in my chalet until our parting. +</p> + +<p> +Except at the end, they were days of supreme summer, and there was a waxing +moon. We met recklessly day by day. We were so intent upon each other at first +so intent upon expressing ourselves to each other, and getting at each other, +that we troubled very little about the appearance of our relationship. We met +almost openly.... We talked of ten thousand things, and of ourselves. We loved. +We made love. There is no prose of mine that can tell of hours transfigured. +The facts are nothing. Everything we touched, the meanest things, became +glorious. How can I render bare tenderness and delight and mutual possession? I +sit here at my desk thinking of untellable things. +</p> + +<p> +I have come to know so much of love that I know now what love might be. We +loved, scarred and stained; we parted—basely and inevitably, but at least +I met love. +</p> + +<p> +I remember as we sat in a Canadian canoe, in a reedy, bush-masked shallow we +had discovered operating out of that pine-shaded Woking canal, how she fell +talking of the things that happened to her before she met me again.... +</p> + +<p> +She told me things, and they so joined and welded together other things that +lay disconnected in my memory, that it seemed to me I had always known what she +told me. And yet indeed I had not known nor suspected it, save perhaps for a +luminous, transitory suspicion ever and again. +</p> + +<p> +She made me see how life had shaped her. She told me of her girlhood after I +had known her. “We were poor and pretending and managing. We hacked about +on visits and things. I ought to have married. The chances I had weren’t +particularly good chances. I didn’t like ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +She paused. “Then Carnaby came along.” +</p> + +<p> +I remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one finger just +touching the water. +</p> + +<p> +“One gets bored, bored beyond redemption. One does about to these huge +expensive houses I suppose—the scale’s immense. One makes +one’s self useful to the other women, and agreeable to the men. One has +to dress.... One has food and exercise and leisure, It’s the leisure, and +the space, and the blank opportunity it seems a sin not to fill. Carnaby +isn’t like the other men. He’s bigger.... They go about making +love. Everybody’s making love. I did.... And I don’t do things by +halves.” +</p> + +<p> +She stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“You knew?”—she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“Since when?” +</p> + +<p> +“Those last days.... It hasn’t seemed to matter really. I was a +little surprised.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me quietly. “Cothope knew,” she said. “By +instinct. I could feel it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” I began, “once, this would have mattered +immensely. Now—” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing matters,” she said, completing me. “I felt I had to +tell you. I wanted you to understand why I didn’t marry you—with +both hands. I have loved you”—she paused—“have loved +you ever since the day I kissed you in the bracken. Only—I forgot.” +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly she dropped her face upon her hands, and sobbed +passionately— +</p> + +<p> +“I forgot—I forgot,” she cried, and became still.... +</p> + +<p> +I dabbled my paddle in the water. “Look here!” I said; +“forget again! Here am I—a ruined man. Marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head without looking up. +</p> + +<p> +We were still for a long time. “Marry me!” I whispered. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered dispassionately— +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I could. Anyhow, we have had this time. It has been a fine +time—has it been—for you also? I haven’t nudged you all I had +to give. It’s a poor gift—except for what it means and might have +been. But we are near the end of it now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” I asked. “Marry me! Why should we two—” +</p> + +<p> +“You think,” she said, “I could take courage and come to you +and be your everyday wife—while you work and are poor?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. “Do you really think +that—of me? Haven’t you seen me—all?” +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +“Never once have I really meant marrying you,” she insisted. +“Never once. I fell in love with you from the first. But when you seemed +a successful man, I told myself I wouldn’t. I was love-sick for you, and +you were so stupid, I came near it then. But I knew I wasn’t good enough. +What could I have been to you? A woman with bad habits and bad associations, a +woman smirched. And what could I do for you or be to you? If I wasn’t +good enough to be a rich man’s wife, I’m certainly not good enough +to be a poor one’s. Forgive me for talking sense to you now, but I wanted +to tell you this somehow.” +</p> + +<p> +She stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my movement. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care,” I said. “I want to marry you and make +you my wife!” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “don’t spoil things. That is +impossible!” +</p> + +<p> +“Impossible!” +</p> + +<p> +“Think! I can’t do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a +maid?” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God!” I cried, disconcerted beyond measure, +“won’t you learn to do your own hair for me? Do you mean to say you +can love a man—” +</p> + +<p> +She flung out her hands at me. “Don’t spoil it,” she cried. +“I have given you all I have, I have given you all I can. If I could do +it, if I was good enough to do it, I would. But I am a woman spoilt and ruined, +dear, and you are a ruined man. When we are making love we’re +lovers—but think of the gulf between us in habits and ways of thought, in +will and training, when we are not making love. Think of it—and +don’t think of it! Don’t think of it yet. We have snatched some +hours. We still may have some hours!” +</p> + +<p> +She suddenly knelt forward toward me, with a glowing darkness in her eyes. +“Who cares if it upsets?” she cried. “If you say another word +I will kiss you. And go to the bottom clutching you. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not afraid of that. I’m not a bit afraid of that. +I’ll die with you. Choose a death, and I’ll die with +you—readily. Do listen to me! I love you. I shall always love you. +It’s because I love you that I won’t go down to become a dirty +familiar thing with you amidst the grime. I’ve given all I can. +I’ve had all I can.... Tell me,” and she crept nearer, “have +I been like the dusk to you, like the warm dusk? Is there magic still? Listen +to the ripple of water from your paddle. Look at the warm evening light in the +sky. Who cares if the canoe upsets? Come nearer to me. Oh, my love! come near! +So.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew me to her and our lips met. +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +I asked her to marry me once again. +</p> + +<p> +It was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about sunrise, +knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky was overcast, the +morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless light. A heavy dampness in +the air verged close on rain. When I think of that morning, it has always the +quality of greying ashes wet with rain. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it came to +me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She had become one +flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness had gone from her voice +and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had gone. I saw these things with +perfect clearness, and they made me sorry for them and for her. But they +altered my love not a whit, abated it nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly +for half a dozen sentences, I came dully to my point. +</p> + +<p> +“And now,” I cried, “will you marry me?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “I shall keep to my life here.” +</p> + +<p> +I asked her to marry me in a year’s time. She shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“This world is a soft world,” I said, “in spite of my present +disasters. I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for—in a +year I could be a prosperous man.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “I will put it brutally, I shall go back to +Carnaby.” +</p> + +<p> +“But—!” I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no +wounded pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of +hopeless cross-purposes. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” she said. “I have been awake all night and every +night. I have been thinking of this—every moment when we have not been +together. I’m not answering you on an impulse. I love you. I love you. +I’ll say that over ten thousand times. But here we are—” +</p> + +<p> +“The rest of life together,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“It wouldn’t be together. Now we are together. Now we have been +together. We are full of memories I do not feel I can ever forget a single +one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else is +there to do?” +</p> + +<p> +She turned her white face to me. “All I know of love, all I have ever +dreamt or learnt of love I have packed into these days for you. You think we +might live together and go on loving. No! For you I will have no vain +repetitions. You have had the best and all of me. Would you have us, after +this, meet again in London or Paris or somewhere, scuffle to some wretched +dressmaker’s, meet in a <i>cabinet particulier?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I said. “I want you to marry me. I want you to play the +game of life with me as an honest woman should. Come and live with me. Be my +wife and squaw. Bear me children.” +</p> + +<p> +I looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry her yet. I +spluttered for words. +</p> + +<p> +“My God! Beatrice!” I cried; “but this is cowardice and +folly! Are <i>you</i> afraid of life? You of all people! What does it matter +what has been or what we were? Here we are with the world before us! Start +clean and new with me. We’ll fight it through! I’m not such a +simple lover that I’ll not tell you plainly when you go wrong, and fight +our difference out with you. It’s the one thing I want, the one thing I +need—to have you, and more of you and more! This +love-making—it’s love-making. It’s just a part of us, an +incident—” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head and stopped me abruptly. “It’s all,” she +said. +</p> + +<p> +“All!” I protested. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m wiser than you. Wiser beyond words.” She turned her eyes +to me and they shone with tears. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t have you say anything—but what you’re +saying,” she said. “But it’s nonsense, dear. You know +it’s nonsense as you say it.” +</p> + +<p> +I tried to keep up the heroic note, but she would not listen to it. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no good,” she cried almost petulantly. “This +little world has made us what we are. Don’t you see—don’t you +see what I am? I can make love. I can make love and be loved, prettily. Dear, +don’t blame me. I have given you all I have. If I had anything +more—I have gone through it all over and over again—thought it out. +This morning my head aches, my eyes ache. +</p> + +<p> +“The light has gone out of me and I am a sick and tired woman. But +I’m talking wisdom—bitter wisdom. I couldn’t be any sort of +helper to you, any sort of wife, any sort of mother. I’m spoilt. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m spoilt by this rich idle way of living, until every habit is +wrong, every taste wrong. The world is wrong. People can be ruined by wealth +just as much as by poverty. Do you think I wouldn’t face life with you if +I could, if I wasn’t absolutely certain I should be down and dragging in +the first half-mile of the journey? Here I am—damned! Damned! But I +won’t damn you. You know what I am! You know. You are too clear and +simple not to know the truth. You try to romance and hector, but you know the +truth. I am a little cad—sold and done. I’m—. My dear, you +think I’ve been misbehaving, but all these days I’ve been on my +best behaviour.... You don’t understand, because you’re a man. +</p> + +<p> +“A woman, when she’s spoilt, is <i>spoilt</i>. She’s dirty in +grain. She’s done.” +</p> + +<p> +She walked on weeping. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a fool to want me,” she said. “You’re a +fool to want me—for my sake just as much as yours. We’ve done all +we can. It’s just romancing—” +</p> + +<p> +She dashed the tears from her eyes and turned upon me. “Don’t you +understand?” she challenged. “Don’t you know?” +</p> + +<p> +We faced one another in silence for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “I know.” +</p> + +<p> +For a long time we spoke never a word, but walked on together, slowly and +sorrowfully, reluctant to turn about towards our parting. When at last we did, +she broke silence again. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven and hell,” I said, “can’t alter that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve wanted—” she went on. “I’ve talked to +you in the nights and made up speeches. Now when I want to make them I’m +tongue-tied. But to me it’s just as if the moments we have had lasted for +ever. Moods and states come and go. To-day my light is out...” +</p> + +<p> +To this day I cannot determine whether she said or whether I imagined she said +“chloral.” Perhaps a half-conscious diagnosis flashed it on my +brain. Perhaps I am the victim of some perverse imaginative freak of memory, +some hinted possibility that scratched and seared. There the word stands in my +memory, as if it were written in fire. +</p> + +<p> +We came to the door of Lady Osprey’s garden at last, and it was beginning +to drizzle. +</p> + +<p> +She held out her hands and I took them. +</p> + +<p> +“Yours,” she said, in a weary unimpassioned voice; “all that +I had—such as it was. Will you forget?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never,” I answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Never a touch or a word of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +We looked at one another in silence, and her face full of fatigue and misery. +</p> + +<p> +What could I do? What was there to do? +</p> + +<p> +“I wish—” I said, and stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye.” +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +That should have been the last I saw of her, but, indeed, I was destined to see +her once again. Two days after I was at Lady Grove, I forget altogether upon +what errand, and as I walked back to the station believing her to be gone away +she came upon me, and she was riding with Carnaby, just as I had seen them +first. The encounter jumped upon us unprepared. She rode by, her eyes dark in +her white face, and scarcely noticed me. She winced and grew stiff at the sight +of me and bowed her head. But Carnaby, because he thought I was a broken and +discomfited man, saluted me with an easy friendliness, and shouted some genial +commonplace to me. +</p> + +<p> +They passed out of sight and left me by the roadside.... +</p> + +<p> +And then, indeed, I tasted the ultimate bitterness of life. For the first time +I felt utter futility, and was wrung by emotion that begot no action, by shame +and pity beyond words. I had parted from her dully and I had seen my uncle +break and die with dry eyes and a steady mind, but this chance sight of my lost +Beatrice brought me to tears. My face was wrung, and tears came pouring down my +cheeks. All the magic she had for me had changed to wild sorrow. “Oh +God!” I cried, “this is too much,” and turned my face after +her and made appealing gestures to the beech trees and cursed at fate. I wanted +to do preposterous things, to pursue her, to save her, to turn life back so +that she might begin again. I wonder what would have happened had I overtaken +them in pursuit, breathless with running, uttering incoherent words, weeping, +expostulatory. I came near to doing that. +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing in earth or heaven to respect my curses or weeping. In the +midst of it a man who had been trimming the opposite hedge appeared and stared +at me. +</p> + +<p> +Abruptly, ridiculously, I dissembled before him and went on and caught my +train.... +</p> + +<p> +But the pain I felt then I have felt a hundred times; it is with me as I write. +It haunts this book, I see, that is what haunts this book, from end to end. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +NIGHT AND THE OPEN SEA</h3> + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p> +I have tried throughout all this story to tell things as they happened to me. +In the beginning—the sheets are still here on the table, grimy and +dogs-eared and old-looking—I said I wanted to tell <i>myself</i> and the +world in which I found myself, and I have done my best. But whether I have +succeeded I cannot imagine. All this writing is grey now and dead and trite and +unmeaning to me; some of it I know by heart. I am the last person to judge it. +</p> + +<p> +As I turn over the big pile of manuscript before me certain things become +clearer to me, and particularly the immense inconsequences of my experiences. +It is, I see now that I have it all before me, a story of activity and urgency +and sterility. I have called it <i>Tono-Bungay</i>, but I had far better have +called it <i>Waste</i>. I have told of childless Marion, of my childless aunt, +of Beatrice wasted and wasteful and futile. What hope is there for a people +whose women become fruitless? I think of all the energy I have given to vain +things. I think of my industrious scheming with my uncle, of Crest Hill’s +vast cessation, of his resonant strenuous career. Ten thousand men have envied +him and wished to live as he lived. It is all one spectacle of forces running +to waste, of people who use and do not replace, the story of a country hectic +with a wasting aimless fever of trade and money-making and pleasure-seeking. +And now I build destroyers! +</p> + +<p> +Other people may see this country in other terms; this is how I have seen it. +In some early chapter in this heap I compared all our present colour and +abundance to October foliage before the frosts nip down the leaves. That I +still feel was a good image. Perhaps I see wrongly. It may be I see decay all +about me because I am, in a sense, decay. To others it may be a scene of +achievement and construction radiant with hope. I, too, have a sort of hope, +but it is a remote hope, a hope that finds no promise in this Empire or in any +of the great things of our time. +</p> + +<p> +How they will look in history I do not know, how time and chance will prove +them I cannot guess; that is how they have mirrored themselves on one +contemporary mind. +</p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p> +Concurrently with writing the last chapter of this book I have been much +engaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been an +oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago this +novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time day and night +to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday X 2, for so we call +her, was done and I took her down the Thames and went out nearly to Texel for a +trial of speed. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious how at times one’s impressions will all fuse and run +together into a sort of unity and become continuous with things that have +hitherto been utterly alien and remote. That rush down the river became +mysteriously connected with this book. +</p> + +<p> +As I passed down the Thames I seemed in a new and parallel manner to be passing +all England in review. I saw it then as I had wanted my readers to see it. The +thought came to me slowly as I picked my way through the Pool; it stood out +clear as I went dreaming into the night out upon the wide North Sea. +</p> + +<p> +It wasn’t so much thinking at the time as a sort of photographic thought +that came and grew clear. X2 went ripping through the dirty oily water as +scissors rip through canvas, and the front of my mind was all intent with +getting her through under the bridges and in and out among the steam-boats and +barges and rowing-boats and piers. I lived with my hands and eyes hard ahead. I +thought nothing then of any appearances but obstacles, but for all that the +back of my mind took the photographic memory of it complete and vivid.... +</p> + +<p> +“This,” it came to me, “is England. That is what I wanted to +give in my book. This!” +</p> + +<p> +We started in the late afternoon. We throbbed out of our yard above Hammersmith +Bridge, fussed about for a moment, and headed down stream. We came at an easy +rush down Craven Reach, past Fulham and Hurlingham, past the long stretches of +muddy meadow And muddy suburb to Battersea and Chelsea, round the cape of tidy +frontage that is Grosvenor Road and under Vauxhall Bridge, and Westminster +opened before us. We cleared a string of coal barges and there on the left in +the October sunshine stood the Parliament houses, and the flag was flying and +Parliament was sitting. +</p> + +<p> +I saw it at the time unseeingly; afterwards it came into my mind as the centre +of the whole broad panoramic effect of that afternoon. The stiff square lace of +Victorian Gothic with its Dutch clock of a tower came upon me suddenly and +stared and whirled past in a slow half pirouette and became still, I know, +behind me as if watching me recede. “Aren’t you going to respect +me, then?” it seemed to say. +</p> + +<p> +Not I! There in that great pile of Victorian architecture the landlords and the +lawyers, the bishops, the railway men and the magnates of commerce go to and +fro—in their incurable tradition of commercialised Bladesovery, of +meretricious gentry and nobility sold for riches. I have been near enough to +know. The Irish and the Labour-men run about among their feet, making a fuss, +effecting little, they’ve got no better plans that I can see. Respect it +indeed! There’s a certain paraphernalia of dignity, but whom does it +deceive? The King comes down in a gilt coach to open the show and wears long +robes and a crown; and there’s a display of stout and slender legs in +white stockings and stout and slender legs in black stockings and artful old +gentlemen in ermine. I was reminded of one congested afternoon I had spent with +my aunt amidst a cluster of agitated women’s hats in the Royal Gallery of +the House of Lords and how I saw the King going to open Parliament, and the +Duke of Devonshire looking like a gorgeous pedlar and terribly bored with the +cap of maintenance on a tray before him hung by slings from his shoulder. A +wonderful spectacle! +</p> + +<p> +It is quaint, no doubt, this England—it is even dignified in +places—and full of mellow associations. That does not alter the quality +of the realities these robes conceal. The realities are greedy trade, base +profit—seeking, bold advertisement; and kingship and chivalry, spite of +this wearing of treasured robes, are as dead among it all as that crusader my +uncle championed against the nettles outside the Duffield church. +</p> + +<p> +I have thought much of that bright afternoon’s panorama. +</p> + +<p> +To run down the Thames so is to run one’s hand over the pages in the book +of England from end to end. One begins in Craven Reach and it is as if one were +in the heart of old England. Behind us are Kew and Hampton Court with their +memories of Kings and Cardinals, and one runs at first between Fulham’s +episcopal garden parties and Hurlingham’s playground for the sporting +instinct of our race. The whole effect is English. There is space, there are +old trees and all the best qualities of the home-land in that upper reach. +Putney, too, looks Anglican on a dwindling scale. And then for a stretch the +newer developments slop over, one misses Bladesover and there come first +squalid stretches of mean homes right and left and then the dingy industrialism +of the south side, and on the north bank the polite long front of nice houses, +artistic, literary, administrative people’s residences, that stretches +from Cheyne Walk nearly to Westminster and hides a wilderness of slums. What a +long slow crescendo that is, mile after mile, with the houses crowding +closelier, the multiplying succession of church towers, the architectural +moments, the successive bridges, until you come out into the second movement of +the piece with Lambeth’s old palace under your quarter and the houses of +Parliament on your bow! Westminster Bridge is ahead of you then, and through it +you flash, and in a moment the round-faced clock tower cranes up to peer at you +again and New Scotland Yard squares at you, a fat beef-eater of a policeman +disguised miraculously as a Bastille. +</p> + +<p> +For a stretch you have the essential London; you have Charing Cross railway +station, heart of the world, and the Embankment on the north side with its new +hotels overshadowing its Georgian and Victorian architecture, and mud and great +warehouses and factories, chimneys, shot towers, advertisements on the south. +The northward skyline grows more intricate and pleasing, and more and more does +one thank God for Wren. Somerset House is as picturesque as the civil war, one +is reminded again of the original England, one feels in the fretted sky the +quality of Restoration Lace. +</p> + +<p> +And then comes Astor’s strong box and the lawyers’ Inns. +</p> + +<p> +(I had a passing memory of myself there, how once I had trudged along the +Embankment westward, weighing my uncle’s offer of three hundred pounds a +year....) +</p> + +<p> +Through that central essential London reach I drove, and X2 bored her nose +under the foam regardless of it all like a black hound going through +reeds—on what trail even I who made her cannot tell. +</p> + +<p> +And in this reach, too, one first meets the seagulls and is reminded of the +sea. Blackfriars one takes—just under these two bridges and just between +them is the finest bridge moment in the world—and behold, soaring up, +hanging in the sky over a rude tumult of warehouses, over a jostling +competition of traders, irrelevantly beautiful and altogether remote, Saint +Paul’s! “Of course!” one says, “Saint +Paul’s!” It is the very figure of whatever fineness the old +Anglican culture achieved, detached, a more dignified and chastened Saint +Peter’s, colder, greyer, but still ornate; it has never been over thrown, +never disavowed, only the tall warehouses and all the roar of traffic have +forgotten it, every one has forgotten it; the steamships, the barges, go +heedlessly by regardless of it, intricacies of telephone wires and poles cut +blackly into its thin mysteries, and presently, when in a moment the traffic +permits you and you look round for it, it has dissolved like a cloud into the +grey blues of the London sky. +</p> + +<p> +And then the traditional and ostensible England falls from you altogether. The +third movement begins, the last great movement in the London symphony, in which +the trim scheme of the old order is altogether dwarfed and swallowed up. Comes +London Bridge, and the great warehouses tower up about you, waving stupendous +cranes, the gulls circle and scream in your ears, large ships lie among their +lighters, and one is in the port of the world. Again and again in this book I +have written of England as a feudal scheme overtaken by fatty degeneration and +stupendous accidents of hypertrophy. +</p> + +<p> +For the last time I must strike that note as the memory of the dear neat little +sunlit ancient Tower of London lying away in a gap among the warehouses comes +back to me, that little accumulation of buildings so provincially pleasant and +dignified, overshadowed by the vulgarest, most typical exploit of modern +England, the sham Gothic casings to the ironwork of the Tower Bridge. That +Tower Bridge is the very balance and confirmation of Westminster’s dull +pinnacles and tower. That sham Gothic bridge; in the very gates of our mother +of change, the Sea! +</p> + +<p> +But after that one is in a world of accident and nature. For the third part of +the panorama of London is beyond all law, order, and precedence; it is the +seaport and the sea. One goes down the widening reaches through a monstrous +variety of shipping, great steamers, great sailing-ships, trailing the flags of +all the world, a monstrous confusion of lighters, witches’ conferences of +brown-sailed barges, wallowing tugs, a tumultuous crowding and jostling of +cranes and spars, and wharves and stores, and assertive inscriptions. Huge +vistas of dock open right and left of one, and here and there beyond and amidst +it all are church towers, little patches of indescribably old-fashioned and +worn-out houses, riverside pubs and the like, vestiges of townships that were +long since torn to fragments and submerged in these new growths. And amidst it +all no plan appears, no intention, no comprehensive desire. That is the very +key of it all. Each day one feels that the pressure of commerce and traffic +grew, grew insensibly monstrous, and first this man made a wharf and that +erected a crane, and then this company set to work and then that, and so they +jostled together to make this unassimilable enormity of traffic. Through it we +dodged and drove eager for the high seas. +</p> + +<p> +I remember how I laughed aloud at the glimpse of the name of a London County +Council steamboat that ran across me. <i>Caxton</i> it was called, and another +was <i>Pepys</i>, and another was <i>Shakespeare</i>. They seemed so wildly out +of place, splashing about in that confusion. One wanted to take them out and +wipe them and put them back in some English gentleman’s library. +Everything was alive about them, flash ing, splashing, and passing, ships +moving, tugs panting, hawsers taut, barges going down with men toiling at the +sweeps, the water all a-swirl with the wash of shipping, scaling into millions +of little wavelets, curling and frothing under the whip of the unceasing wind. +Past it all we drove. And at Greenwich to the south, you know, there stands a +fine stone frontage where all the victories are recorded in a Painted Hall, and +beside it is the “Ship” where once upon a time those gentlemen of +Westminster used to have an annual dinner—before the port of London got +too much for them altogether. The old façade of the Hospital was just warming +to the sunset as we went by, and after that, right and left, the river opened, +the sense of the sea increased and prevailed, reach after reach from Northfleet +to the Nore. +</p> + +<p> +And out you come at last with the sun behind you into the eastern sea. You +speed up and tear the oily water louder and faster, siroo, siroo-swish-siroo, +and the hills of Kent—over which I once fled from the Christian teachings +of Nicodemus Frapp—fall away on the right hand and Essex on the left. +They fall away and vanish into blue haze, and the tall slow ships behind the +tugs, scarce moving ships and wallowing sturdy tugs, are all wrought of wet +gold as one goes frothing by. They stand out, bound on strange missions of life +and death, to the killing of men in unfamiliar lands. And now behind us is blue +mystery and the phantom flash of unseen lights, and presently even these are +gone, and I and my destroyer tear out to the unknown across a great grey space. +We tear into the great spaces of the future and the turbines fall to talking in +unfamiliar tongues. Out to the open we go, to windy freedom and trackless ways. +Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, +the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the +horizon, pass—pass. The river passes—London passes, England +passes... +</p> + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p> +This is the note I have tried to emphasise, the note that sounds clear in my +mind when I think of anything beyond the purely personal aspects of my story. +</p> + +<p> +It is a note of crumbling and confusion, of change and seemingly aimless +swelling, of a bubbling up and medley of futile loves and sorrows. But through +the confusion sounds another note. Through the confusion something drives, +something that is at once human achievement and the most inhuman of all +existing things. Something comes out of it.... How can I express the values of +a thing at once so essential and so immaterial. It is something that calls upon +such men as I with an irresistible appeal. +</p> + +<p> +I have figured it in my last section by the symbol of my destroyer, stark and +swift, irrelevant to most human interests. Sometimes I call this reality +Science, sometimes I call it Truth. But it is something we draw by pain and +effort ont of the heart of life, that we disentangle and make clear. Other men +serve it, I know, in art, in literature, in social invention, and see it in a +thousand different figures, under a hundred names. I see it always as +austerity, as beauty. This thing we make clear is the heart of life. It is the +one enduring thing. Men and nations, epochs and civilisation pass each making +its contribution I do not know what it is, this something, except that it is +supreme. It is, a something, a quality, an element, one may find now in +colours, now in norms, now in sounds, now in thoughts. It emerges from life +with each year one lives and feels, and generation by generation and age by +age, but the how and why of it are all beyond the compass of my mind.... +</p> + +<p> +Yet the full sense of it was with me all that night as I drove, lonely above +the rush and murmur of my engines, out upon the weltering circle of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +Far out to the northeast there came the flicker of a squadron of warships +waving white swords of light about the sky. I kept them hull-down, and +presently they were mere summer lightning over the watery edge of the globe.... +I fell into thought that was nearly formless, into doubts and dreams that have +no words, and it seemed good to me to drive ahead and on and or through the +windy starlight, over the long black waves. +</p> + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p> +It was morning and day before I returned with the four sick and starving +journalists who had got permission to come with me, up the shining river, and +past the old grey Tower.... +</p> + +<p> +I recall the back views of those journalists very distinctly, going with a +certain damp weariness of movement, along a side street away from the river. +They were good men and bore me no malice, and they served me up to the public +in turgid degenerate Kiplingese, as a modest button on the complacent stomach +of the Empire. Though as a matter of fact, X2 isn’t intended for the +empire, or indeed for the hands of any European power. We offered it to our own +people first, but they would have nothing to do with me, and I have long since +ceased to trouble much about such questions. I have come to see myself from the +outside, my country from the outside—without illusions. We make and pass. +</p> + +<p> +We are all things that make and pass striving upon a hidden mission, out to the +open sea. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TONO-BUNGAY ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 718-h.htm or 718-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/7/1/718/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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