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diff --git a/old/718.txt b/old/718.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc89269 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/718.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15289 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tono Bungay, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Tono Bungay + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #718] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TONO BUNGAY *** + + + + +Produced by John Bean; Diane Bean and David Widger + + + + + +TONO-BUNGAY + +by H.G Wells + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +OF BLADESOVER HOUSE, AND MY MOTHER; AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY + + +I + +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. + +And once (though it is the most incidental thing in my life) I murdered +a man.... + +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 enfamille (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. + +I'm sorry I haven't done the whole lot though.... + +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 great 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! + +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 B.... + +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.... + +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. + +II + +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--MYSELF, 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. + +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.... + +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. + +III + +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. + +Let me try and give you the effect of it. + +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. + +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. + +But of that in its place. + +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. + +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. + +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 IS 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 that!" gasped Rabbits. My mother +was speechless with horror. That was a sovereign, a mere sovereign, such +as you might get from any commoner! + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 chauffeur.... + +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.... + +IV + +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. + +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. + +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 PAINTED. 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. + +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. + +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. + +"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. + +"Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?" + +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." + +"Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits intelligently. + +"Not with anything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing +repartee, and drank. + +"What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison. + +"They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch. + +"They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors are not +recomm-an-ding it now." + +My Mother: "No, ma'am?" + +Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am." + +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." + +This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was +considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick. + +"George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" + +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. + +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. + +A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day +would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. + +Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits; +among others she read the paper--The Morning Post. 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 +Morning Post 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." + +"Ah!" said Mr. Rabbits; "dew they?" + +"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. + +"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." + +Interlude of respect. + +"'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." + +"Haw!" said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, "so am tawled." + +"'E came to Templemorton after 'e came back, and I remember them talking +'im over after 'e'd gone again." + +"Haw?" said Mrs. Mackridge, interrogatively. + +"'Is 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." + +"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." + +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. + +"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..." + +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. + +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--! + +I don't jeer now. I'm not so sure. + +V + +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. + +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. + +But such occasions were rare, and I suppose that between ten and +fourteen I averaged fifty days a year at Bladesover. + +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. + +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. + +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 HAD to kick! + +The thought of "Vathek" always brings back with it my boyish memory of +the big saloon at Bladesover. + +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.... + +The book-borrowing raid was one of extraordinary dash and danger. + +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? + +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. + +VI + +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. + +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. + +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 Boys of England, 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. + +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 memorabilia. 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 Xenophen--and please note the quantity of +the o. 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. + +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. + +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. + +VII + +And then when I had newly passed my fourteenth birthday, came my tragic +disgrace. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Nannie," she said, pointing, and Nannie left a question of my mother's +disregarded to attend to her; "is he a servant boy?" + +"S-s-sh," said Nannie. "He's Master Ponderevo." + +"Is he a servant boy?" repeated Beatrice. + +"He's a schoolboy," said my mother. + +"Then may I talk to him, Nannie?" + +Nannie surveyed me with brutal inhumanity. "You mustn't talk too much," +she said to her charge, and cut cake into fingers for her. + +"No," she added decisively, as Beatrice made to speak. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +One of the dolls, I privately decided, was like Beatrice. + +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. + +VIII + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 facade of Bladesover rose against the dappled sky. Our talk must +have been serious and business-like, for we were discussing my social +position. + +"I don't love Archie," she had said, apropos of nothing; and then in a +whisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, "I love YOU!" + +But she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and +could not be a servant. + +"You'll never be a servant--ever!" + +I swore that very readily, and it is a vow I have kept by nature. + +"What will you be?" said she. + +I ran my mind hastily over the professions. + +"Will you be a soldier?" she asked. + +"And be bawled at by duffers? No fear!" said I. "Leave that to the +plough-boys." + +"But an officer?" + +"I don't know," I said, evading a shameful difficulty. + +"I'd rather go into the navy." + +"Wouldn't you like to fight?" + +"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?" + +"Couldn't you be?" she said, and looked at me doubtfully; and the spaces +of the social system opened between us. + +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 was a +lady--and I will love you." + +We were somewhere near that when the egregious governess became audible, +calling "Beeee-atrice! Beeee-e-atrice!" + +"Snifty beast!" said my lady, and tried to get on with the conversation; +but that governess made things impossible. + +"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. + +"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. + +"I am your humble, faithful lover," I whispered back. + +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. + +"Beeee-e-e-a-trice!" fearfully close. + +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. + +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. + +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 roles, 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. + +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. + +"No," he said; "we can't have that!" + +"Can't have what?" + +"You can't be a gentleman, because you aren't. And you can't play +Beatrice is your wife. It's--it's impertinent." + +"But" I said, and looked at her. + +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." + +"What rot!" said Beatrice. "He can if he likes." + +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. + +"We don't want you to play with us at all," said Archie. + +"Yes, we do," said Beatrice. + +"He drops his aitches like anything." + +"No, 'e doesn't," said I, in the heat of the moment. + +"There you go!" he cried. "E, he says. E! E! E!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Shut up, you FOOL!" said Archie. + +"Oh, Lady Drew!" I heard Beatrice cry. "They're fighting! They're +fighting something awful!" + +I looked over my shoulder. Archie's wish to get up became irresistible, +and my resolve to go on with him vanished altogether. + +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. + +"You've never been fighting?" said Lady Drew. + +"You have been fighting." + +"It wasn't proper fighting," snapped Archie, with accusing eyes on me. + +"It's Mrs. Ponderevo's George!" said Miss Somerville, so adding a +conviction for ingratitude to my evident sacrilege. + +"How could he DARE?" cried Lady Drew, becoming very awful. + +"He broke the rules" said Archie, sobbing for breath. "I slipped, +and--he hit me while I was down. He knelt on me." + +"How could you DARE?" said Lady Drew. + +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. + +"He didn't fight fair," sobbed Archie. + +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. + +IX + +The powers of justice in Bladesover made an extraordinary mess of my +case. + +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. + +On the whole, I now perceive Lady Drew's decisions were, in the light of +the evidence, reasonable and merciful. + +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." + +"I won't beg his pardon," I said, speaking for the first time. + +My mother paused, incredulous. + +I folded my arms on her table-cloth, and delivered my wicked little +ultimatum. "I won't beg his pardon nohow," I said. "See?" + +"Then you will have to go off to your uncle Frapp at Chatham." + +"I don't care where I have to go or what I have to do, I won't beg his +pardon," I said. + +And I didn't. + +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! + +I couldn't explain. + +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. + +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. + +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... + +Well, anyhow I never said I was sorry for pounding young Garvell, and I +am not sorry to this day. + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +OF MY LAUNCH INTO THE WORLD AND THE LAST I SAW OF BLADESOVER + +I + +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. + +I ran away from the care of my cousin Nicodemus back to Bladesover +House. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + "There is a Fountain, filled with Blood + Drawn from Emmanuel's Veins," + +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. + +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. + +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 Police News 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. + +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. + +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, WHY--" + +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, WHY--?" 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! + +Well, anyhow, for a time that vocation was stilled. + +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." + +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. + +My abrupt denials certainly scared my cousin amazingly. + +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? + +"There's no hell," I said, "and no eternal punishment. No God would be +such a fool as that." + +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?" + +"If you were cad enough," said I. + +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." + +"You can pray if you like," I said, "but if you're going to cheek me in +your prayers I draw the line." + +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!" + +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. + +"You been sayin' queer things, George," he said abruptly. "You better +mind what you're saying." + +"What did he say, father?" said Mrs. Frapp. + +"Things I couldn't' repeat," said he. + +"What things?" I asked hotly. + +"Ask 'IM," 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. + +"Wuss," said my uncle. "Blarsphemy." + +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. + +"I was only talking sense," I said. + +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. + +"You sneak!" I said, and smacked his face hard forthwith. "Now then," +said I. + +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. + +"'It 'it," he said."'It 'it. I'LL forgive you." + +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. + +"You better not speak to your cousins, George," said my aunt, "till +you're in a better state of mind." + +I became an outcast forthwith. At supper that night a gloomy silence was +broken by my cousin saying, + +"'E 'it me for telling you, and I turned the other cheek, muvver." + +"'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. + +After supper my uncle, in a few ill-chosen words, prayed me to repent +before I slept. + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + +"No," I said, with a sudden confidence, "damn me if you're coward +enough.... But you're not. No! You couldn't be!" + +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. + +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. + +II + +But I didn't expect to have the whole meeting on Sunday turned on to me. + +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. + +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. + +"'Ello," he said, and fretted about. + +"D'you mean to say there isn't--no one," he said, funking the word. + +"No one?" + +"No one watching yer--always." + +"Why should there be?" I asked. + +"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." + +He hesitated and flitted away with a guilty back glance over his +shoulder.... + +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. + +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. + +III + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +My boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance. +"Coo-ee, mother" said I, coming out against the sky, "Coo-ee!" + +My mother looked up, went very white, and put her hand to her bosom. + +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. + + +IV + +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." + +She took little interest in such qualities as cleverness. + +"He married about three years ago, and set up for himself in +Wimblehurst.... So I suppose she had some money." + +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." + +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. + +"That must be him," said my mother, catching at her breath. + +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-- + + + Buy Ponderevo's Cough Linctus NOW. + NOW! + WHY? + Twopence Cheaper than in Winter. + You Store apples! why not the Medicine + You are Bound to Need? + +in which appeal I was to recognise presently my uncle's distinctive +note. + +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. + +"You don't know me?" panted my mother. + +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. + +"A glass of water, madam," said my uncle, waved his hand in a sort of +curve and shot away. + +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." + +"His father, madam?" + +"George." + +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. + +"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!" + +He shot away out of the shop through some masked door. One heard his +voice. "Susan! Susan!" + +Then he reappeared with an extended hand. "Well, how are you?" he said. +"I was never so surprised in my life. Fancy!... You!" + +He shook my mother's impassive hand and then mine very warmly holding +his glasses on with his left forefinger. + +"Come right in!" he cried--"come right in! Better late than never!" and +led the way into the parlour behind the shop. + +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'." + +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. + +"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." + +He fretted across to the hearthrug and took up a position there, +replaced his glasses and coughed. + +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 THIS 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. + +"You know," he said. "George." + +"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 HAVE 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." + +My mother shook hands stiffly, and told me to kiss my aunt.... + +"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." + +V + +As they talked I gave my attention pretty exclusively to my uncle. + +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. + +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?" + +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. + +"This place," he began, "isn't of course quite the place I ought to be +in." + +My mother nodded as though she had expected that. + +"It gives me no Scope," he went on. "It's dead-and-alive. Nothing +happens." + +"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." + +"Not they," said my uncle, buoyantly. + +"Do you find business--slack?" asked my mother. + +"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." + +"Ah!" said my mother. + +"It doesn't suit me," said my uncle. "I'm the cascading sort." + +"George was that," said my mother after a pondering moment. + +My aunt Susan took up the parable with an affectionate glance at her +husband. + +"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." + +"But it does no good," said my uncle. + +"It does no good," said his wife. "It's not his miloo..." + +Presently they came upon a wide pause. + +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. + +"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." + +"I don't mind sitting here," I said. + +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. + +"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." + +He watched me out of sight. + +So I never heard what they said about my father after all. + +VI + +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. + +The three of them regarded me. + +"We have been talking of making you a chemist, George," said my uncle. + +My mother looked at me. "I had hoped," she said, "that Lady Drew would +have done something for him--" She stopped. + +"In what way?" said my uncle. + +"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. + +"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." + +"Who's Mr. Redgrave?" + +"The Vicar." + +"A bit independent?" said my uncle, briskly. + +"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." + +My uncle stroked his cut chin and me. "Have you learnt any Latin?" he +asked abruptly. + +I said I had not. + +"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." + +"What, me learn Latin!" I cried, with emotion. + +"A little," he said. + +"I've always wanted" I said and; "LATIN!" + +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! + +"It's no good to you, of course," said my uncle, "except to pass exams +with, but there you are!" + +"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...." + +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. + +"Then shall I live here?" I asked, "with you, and study... as well as +work in the shop?" + +"That's the way of it," said my uncle. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"No, mother," I said. + +I promised carelessly. Her eyes were fixed upon me. I was wondering +whether I could by any means begin Latin that night. + +Something touched her heart then, some thought, some memory; perhaps +some premonition.... The solitary porter began slamming carriage doors. + +"George" she said hastily, almost shamefully, "kiss me!" + +I stepped up into her compartment as she bent downward. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +VII + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +And so we came to my mother's waiting grave. + +For a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered, hearing +the words of the ritual. It seemed a very curious business altogether. + +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.... + +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. + +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." + +VIII + +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. + +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 bric-a-brac 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 National Review and the Empire Review, and the Nineteenth +Century and after 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. + +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 Times, 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. + +Well--that was my last impression of Bladesover. + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE WIMBLEHURST APPRENTICESHIP + +I + +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 facade 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. + +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. + +"This place," said my uncle, surveying it from his open doorway in the +dignified stillness of a summer afternoon, "wants Waking Up!" + +I was sorting up patent medicines in the corner. + +"I'd like to let a dozen young Americans loose into it," said my uncle. +"Then we'd see." + +I made a tick against Mother Shipton's Sleeping Syrup. We had cleared +our forward stock. + +"Things must be happening SOMEWHERE, 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 SOMETHING," he said. "I can't stand it. + +"I must invent something. And shove it.... I could. + +"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. + +"Or the stog-igschange." + +He fell into that meditative whistling of his. + +"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. + +"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. + +"What sort of things do they do?" I asked. + +"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!" + +"They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ventured. + +"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. + +"Lord! there's no end of things--no end of little 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...." + +"Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. + +"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." + +He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such fragments as: +"Fifty per cent. advance sir; security--to-morrow. Zzzz." + +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 naive 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! + +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. + +"You got to be in London when these things are in hand. Down here--! + +"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. HE 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 HAVE 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. THEY don't want anything to +happen either. They're all broken in. There you are! Only what are they +all alive for?... + +"Why can't they get a clockwork chemist?" + +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, YOU think, whenever you haven't +got anything better to do. See?" + +II + +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.... + +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. WE 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. + +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 Boys of England, 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. + +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. + +Also you knew he would not understand that _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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +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 ever, +George? + +"Look at him, George, looking dignified. I'd like to put an old label +on to him round the middle like his bottles are, with Ol Pondo on it. +That's Latin for Impostor, George MUST be. He'd look lovely with a +stopper." + +"YOU want a stopper," said my uncle, projecting his face.... + +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!" + +"What's the day of the week, Susan?" my uncle would ask. + +"Old Monday, Sossidge," she would say, and add, "I got all my Old +Washing to do. Don't I KNOW it!"... + +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. + +"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 was +funny!" + +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. + +"Come to tell us about everything, Mr. Pond'revo?" some one would say +politely. + +"You wait," my uncle used to answer, disconcerted, and sulk for the rest +of his visit. + +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." + +"Earthquake and a pestilence before you get that," my uncle would +mutter, to the infinite delight of every one, and add something +inaudible about "Cold Mutton Fat."... + +III + +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. + +"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!" + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"DID you?" I said, struck by the sudden chance in his voice. "But you +don't mean?" + +I stopped and turned on him in the narrow sandy rut of pathway and he +stopped likewise. + +"I do, George. I DO mean. It's bust me! I'm a bankrupt here and now." + +"Then--?" + +"The shop's bust too. I shall have to get out of that." + +"And me?" + +"Oh, you!--YOU'RE 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." + +"But you and aunt?" + +"It isn't QUITE 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. + +I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little +while. + +"That's how it is, you see, George." I heard him after a time. + +When we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a +time we walked in silence. + +"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." + +"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. + +"What others?" I asked. + +"Damn them!" said he. + +"But what others?" + +"All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck, +the butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape! Gord! George, HOW they'll grin!" + +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. + +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. + +"You half-witted hog!" said my uncle. "You grinning hyaena"; and then, +"Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck." + +"Goin' to make your fortun' in London, then?" said Mr. Ruck, with slow +enjoyment. + +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. + +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. + +"It's these Crises, George," he said, "try Character. Your aunt's come +out well, my boy." + +He made meditative noises for a space. + +"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. + +"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! + + "'The world was all before them, where to choose + Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.' + +"It sounds, George.... Providence their guide!... Well--thank goodness +there's no imeedgit prospect of either Cain or Abel!" + +"After all, it won't be so bad up there. Not the scenery, perhaps, or +the air we get here, but--LIFE! 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." + +He threw out his chest, and the little round eyes behind his glasses +rested valiantly on imaginary employers. + +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. + +"The Battle of Life, George, my boy," he would cry, or "Ups and Downs!" + +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'LL look after them." And he would drift away towards the philosophy +and moral of the situation. What was I to do? + +"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!" + +His thoughts took a graver turn. + +"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! + +"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 WHAT he's +doing? When you most think you're doing things, they're being done right +over your head. YOU'RE being done--in a sense. Take a hundred-to one +chance, or one to a hundred--what does it matter? You're being Led." + +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? + +"I wish," said I, becoming for a moment outrageous, "YOU were being Led +to give me some account of my money, uncle." + +"Not without a bit of paper to figure on, George, I can't. But you trust +me about that never fear. You trust me." + +And in the end I had to. + +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. + +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, FULLY, +about all that affair. Fully!" + +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. + +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. + +IV + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +V + +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!" + +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. + +"Come to ask me about all THAT," he cried. "I've never written yet." + +"Oh, among other things," said I, with a sudden regrettable politeness, +and waived the topic of his trusteeship to ask after my aunt Susan. + +"We'll have her out of it," he said suddenly; "we'll go somewhere. We +don't get you in London every day." + +"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. + +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. + +"London," she said, didn't "get blacks" on her. + +She still "cheeked" my uncle, I was pleased to find. "What are you old +Poking in for at THIS time--Gubbitt?" 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. + +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. + +"You're a man, George," she said, as she released me, and continued to +look at me for a while. + +Their menage 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. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +VI + +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." + +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. + +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. + +"Been in love yet, George?" she asked suddenly, over a bun in the +tea-shop. + +"Too busy, aunt," I told her. + +She bit her bun extensively, and gesticulated with the remnant to +indicate that she had more to say. + +"How are YOU going to make your fortune?" she said so soon as she could +speak again. "You haven't told us that." + +"'Lectricity," said my uncle, taking breath after a deep draught of tea. + +"If I make it at all," I said. "For my part I think shall be satisfied +with something less than a fortune." + +"We're going to make ours--suddenly," she said. + +"So HE old says." She jerked her head at my uncle. + +"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." + +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." + +"You'll get it all right," said my uncle, who had reddened a little. + +"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." + +"You may joke," said my uncle, and hummed for a moment. + +"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." + +"I'll do something," said my uncle, "you bet! Zzzz!" and rapped with a +shilling on the marble table. + +"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. + +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." + +"What plans," I said, "are you making?" + +"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?" + +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." + +His face flushed slightly, he leant forward over the little table +towards me. + +"Listen!" he said. + +I listened. + +"Tono-Bungay," said my uncle very slowly and distinctly. + +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." + +"Oh, THAT!" I said. + +"Eh?" said he. + +"But what is it?" + +"Ah!" said my uncle, rejoicing and expanding. "What IS it? That's +what you got to ask? What won't 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." + +And that was all I could get from him. + +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. + +"Coming now to business," I said after a pause, and with a chill sense +of effort; and I opened the question of his trust. + +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." + +VII + +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--DINGY 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." + +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. + +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. + +I did not realise at all what human things might be found behind +those grey frontages, what weakness that whole forbidding facade 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +HOW I BECAME A LONDON STUDENT AND WENT ASTRAY + +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. + +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. + +London! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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?... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +II + +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 L70 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. + +Only from the very first it didn't.... + +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. + +Moreover Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction. + +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. + +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.... + +The whole illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and +sometimes outrageous possibility, of hidden but magnificent meanings. + +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.... + +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.... + +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.... + +Then on the remote hill of this boundless city-world I found Ewart. + +III + +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!" + +I walked round, wrung his hand, and we surveyed one another. + +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. + +"By Jove!" he said, "you've got quite decent-looking, Ponderevo! What do +you think of me?" + +"You're all right. What are you doing here?" + +"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." + +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. + +"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?" + +I felt a pipe was becoming after all, and that lit, I gave him a +favourable sketch of my career. + +"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?" + +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." + +"I'm just beginning--just as we were then. Things happen." + +He sucked at his pipe for a space and stared at the plaster cast of a +flayed hand that hung on the wall. + +"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. WHY?... 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?" + +"It's her way, I gather, of securing the continuity of the species." + +"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." + +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. + +"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 you make +of it?" + +"London," I began. "It's--so enormous!" + +"Isn't it! And it's all up to nothing. You find chaps keeping grocers' +shops--why the DEVIL, 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?" + +"There must be sense in it," I said. "We're young." + +"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?" + +"Where you come in?" + +"No, where you come in." + +"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." + +"Yes," he mused. "And I've got a sort of idea my sculpture,--but now it +is to come in and WHY,--I've no idea at all." He hugged his knees for a +space. "That's what puzzles me, Ponderevo, no end." + +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...." + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"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!" + +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..." + +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 might be altered. +If you could get men to work together..." + +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. + +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!" + +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." + +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. + +"I wonder why one doesn't want to," he said. + +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. + +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?" + +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.... + +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. + +"We ought to join on to other socialists," I said. + +"They've got something." + +"Let's go and look at some first." + +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. + +"How many members are there in this Fabian Society of yours?" he asked. + +The little man became at once defensive in his manner. + +"About seven hundred," he said; "perhaps eight." + +"Like--like the ones here?" + +The little man gave a nervous self-satisfied laugh. "I suppose they're +up to sample," he said. + +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 facades 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. + +"These socialists have no sense of proportion," he said. "What can you +expect of them?" + +IV + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Luckily I had some money. + +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. + +"Thank you so much," she said in a pleasant soft voice; and then less +gracefully, "Awfully kind of you, you know." + +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. + +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 Encyclopedia +Britannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an +evidently premeditated thin envelope, bulgingly confessing the coins +within. + +"It was so very kind of you," she said, "the other day. I don't know +what I should have done, Mr.--" + +I supplied my name. "I knew," I said, "you were a student here." + +"Not exactly a student. I--" + +"Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I'm a student myself +at the Consolidated Technical Schools." + +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. + +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. + +V + +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. + +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. + +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. + +When Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for +tea, a card bearing the word "APARTMENTS" 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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?" + +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." + +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." + +I quite understood the workgirls were dreadfully common. + +I don't remember that the Walham Green menage 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. + +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.... + +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. + +"You mustn't," she said feebly. + +"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. + +"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...." + +Then two other people got in with us and terminated my wooing for a +time. + +When we found ourselves alone together, walking towards Battersea, she +had decided to be offended. I parted from her unforgiven and terribly +distressed. + +When we met again, she told me I must never say "that" again. + +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. + +"But," she said, "you're not in a position--What's the good of talking +like that?" + +I stared at her. "I mean to," I said. + +"You can't," she answered. "It will be years" + +"But I love you," I insisted. + +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. + +"I love you," I said. "Don't you love me?" + +She looked me in the face with grave irresponsive eyes. + +"I don't know," she said. "I LIKE you, of course.... One has to be +sensibl..." + +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.... + +"But," I said "Love--!" + +"One has to be sensible," she replied. "I like going about with you. +Can't we keep as we are?'" + +VI + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"I ask you," the Registrar had said, "what will become of you when your +scholarship runs out?" + +It certainly was an interesting question. What was going to become of +me? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 trained 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? + +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! + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +THE DAWN COMES, AND MY UNCLE APPEARS IN A NEW SILK HAT + +I + +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: + + THE SECRET OF VIGOUR, + TONO-BUNGAY. + +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;--"BUN--gay!" + +Then came my uncle's amazing telegram, his answer to my hostile +note: "Come to me at once you are wanted three hundred a year certain +tono-bungay." + +"By Jove!" I cried, "of course! + +"It's something--. A patent-medicine! I wonder what he wants with me." + +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. + +"Where are you?" I asked. + +His reply came promptly: + +"192A, Raggett Street, E.C." + +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. + +"Here we are, George! What did I tell you? Needn't whisper it now, my +boy. Shout it--LOUD! spread it about! Tell every one! Tono--TONO--, +TONO-BUNGAY!" + +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. + +"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. + +"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!" + +"Hard at what?" + +"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-- + +"I'm afloat, I'm afloat on the fierce flowing tide, The ocean's my home +and my bark is my bride! + +"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!" + +"How's Aunt Susan?" I asked. + +"Exuberant. Never saw her so larky. This has bucked her up something +wonderful--all this." + +"All what?" + +"Tono-Bungay." + +"What is Tono-Bungay?" I asked. + +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. "Schafer's," he said, and off we went side by side--and with +me more and more amazed at all these things--to Schafer's Hotel, the +second of the two big places with huge lace curtain-covered windows, +near the corner of Blackfriars Bridge. + +I will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions as the +two colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of Schafers' 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. + +He nodded to several of the waiters. + +"They know me, George, already," he said. "Point me out. Live place! Eye +for coming men!" + +The detailed business of the lunch engaged our attention for a while, +and then I leant across my plate. "And NOW?" said I. + +"It's the secret of vigour. Didn't you read that label?" + +"Yes, but--" + +"It's selling like hot cakes." + +"And what is it?" I pressed. + +"Well," said my uncle, and then leant forward and spoke softly under +cover of his hand, "It's nothing more or less than..." + +(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--) + +"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!" + +He reverted to the direction of our lunch. + +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. + +"I want to let you into this"--puff--"George," said my uncle round the +end of his cigar. "For many reasons." + +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. + +"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. + +"I put up four hundred pounds," said my uncle, "myself and my all. And +you know--" + +He assumed a brisk confidence. "I hadn't five hundred pence. At least--" + +For a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. "I DID" 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.... + +"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! + +"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. + +"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. You keep on +HOTTING UP AND HOTTING UP. 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?" + +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.") + +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 +Schafer's Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes. + +My head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy. + +"Let me go back and look at the game again," I said. "Let me see +upstairs and round about." + +I did. + +"What do you think of it all?" my uncle asked at last. + +"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." + +"Why?" said my uncle. + +"Because--they sometimes make a mucker of the cork job, and then the +label's wasted." + +"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." + +II + +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. + +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. + +"Well, George!" he said, quite happily unconscious of my silent +criticism, "what do you think of it all?" + +"Well," I said, "in the first place--it's a damned swindle!" + +"Tut! tut!" said my uncle. "It's as straight as--It's fair trading!" + +"So much the worse for trading," I said. + +"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." + +"H'm," I said. "It's a thing you either see or don't see." + +"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!" + +"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?" + +"Why not, George? How do we know it mayn't be the quintessence to them +so far as they're concerned?" + +"Oh!" I said, and shrugged my shoulders. + +"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." + +"But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of +yours was run down a conduit into the Thames." + +"Don't see that, George, at all. 'Mong other things, all our people +would be out of work. Unemployed! I grant you Tono-Bungay MAY be--not +QUITE so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but the point +is, George--it MAKES TRADE! 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 YOU mean to do--anyhow?" + +"There's ways of living," I said, "Without either fraud or lying." + +"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 IS +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." + +"Some businesses are straight and quiet, anyhow; supply a sound article +that is really needed, don't shout advertisements." + +"No, George. There you're behind the times. The last of that sort was +sold up 'bout five years ago." + +"Well, there's scientific research." + +"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." + +"One can teach." + +"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!" + +My uncle suddenly rose to his feet. + +"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." + +And he smiled endearingly. + +"I got to dictate a letter," he said, ending the smile, and vanished +into the outer room. + +III + +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. + +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? + +I remember certain phases of my indecisions very well. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"No," said I, "I'll think it over!" + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. Pecunnia non olet,--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...." + +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 KNOW you can!" + +IV + +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?" + +"I'll tell you with the salad," I said. + +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. + +His utterances roved wide and loose. + +"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 DOES it all amount to? NOTHING! 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!" + +He paused impressively. + +"What Rot!" I cried, after a confused attempt to apprehend him. + +"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. + +I made noises of remonstrance. + +"Only as a matter of design. I've got to do an old beast's tomb. + +"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!" + +V + +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. + +"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 MAY succeed, we MAY grow rich, but where would the +satisfaction be?" + +Then she would say, "No! That wouldn't be right." + +"But the alternative is to wait!" + +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?" + +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. + +"I like that hat," I said by way of opening; and she smiled her rare +delightful smile at me. + +"I love you," I said in an undertone, as we jostled closer on the +pavement. + +She shook her head forbiddingly, but she still smiled. Then--"Be +sensible!" + +The High Street pavement is too narrow and crowded for conversation and +we were some way westward before we spoke again. + +"Look here," I said; "I want you, Marion. Don't you understand? I want +you." + +"Now!" she cried warningly. + +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 "NOW!" It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no warning in +it of the antagonisms latent between us. + +"Marion," I said, "this isn't a trifling matter to me. I love you; I +would die to get you.... Don't you care?" + +"But what is the good?" + +"You don't care," I cried. "You don't care a rap!" + +"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?" + +"Well then," I said, "promise to marry me!" + +"If I do, what difference will it make?" + +We were separated by two men carrying a ladder who drove between us +unawares. + +"Marion," I asked when we got together again, "I tell you I want you to +marry me." + +"We can't." + +"Why not?" + +"We can't marry--in the street." + +"We could take our chance!" + +"I wish you wouldn't go on talking like this. What is the good?" + +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...." + +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. + +"Look here, Marion," I said abruptly, "what would you marry on?" + +"What IS the good?" she began. + +"Would you marry on three hundred a year?" + +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." + +"Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?" + +She looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope. + +"IF!" she said. + +I held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. "It's a bargain," I said. + +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. + +"Yes?" said I. + +"Engaged. You'll have to wait years. What good can it do you?" + +"Not so many years." I answered. + +For a moment she brooded. + +Then she glanced at me with a smile, half-sweet, half-wistful, that has +stuck in my memory for ever. + +"I like you!" she said. "I shall like to be engaged to you." + +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. + +VI + +At last I went to the address my uncle had given me in Gower Street, and +found my aunt Susan waiting tea for him. + +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. + +"Hello!" said my aunt as I appeared. "It's George!" + +"Shall I serve the tea now, Mem?" said the real housemaid, surveying our +greeting coldly. + +"Not till Mr. Ponderevo comes, Meggie," said my aunt, and grimaced with +extraordinary swiftness and virulence as the housemaid turned her back. + +"Meggie she calls herself," said my aunt as the door closed, and left me +to infer a certain want of sympathy. + +"You're looking very jolly, aunt," said I. + +"What do you think of all this old Business he's got?" asked my aunt. + +"Seems a promising thing," I said. + +"I suppose there is a business somewhere?" + +"Haven't you seen it?" + +"'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?" + +"'I'm afloat, I'm afloat,'" I guessed. + +"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 +SO, 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." + +She looked at me doubtfully. + +"Either do that or smash," I said profoundly. + +We discussed the question for a moment mutely with our eyes. My aunt +slapped the pile of books from Mudie's. + +"I've been having such a Go of reading, George. You never did!" + +"What do you think of the business?" I asked. + +"Well, they've let him have money," she said, and thought and raised her +eyebrows. + +"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?" + +She paused and looked at me. + +"Well--" + +"You don't say you won't come in!" + +"But look here, aunt," I said, "do you understand quite?... It's a quack +medicine. It's trash." + +"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..." + +There came the slamming of a door, and a loud bellowing from the next +apartment through the folding doors. "Here-er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom +Bo--oling." + +"Silly old Concertina! Hark at him, George!" She raised her voice. +"Don't sing that, you old Walrus, you! Sing 'I'm afloat!'" + +One leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared. + +"Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan?" + +"Thought it over George?" he said abruptly. + +"Yes," said I. + +"Coming in?" + +I paused for a last moment and nodded yes. + +"Ah!" he cried. "Why couldn't you say that a week ago?" + +"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." + +And I didn't. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years. + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM + +I + +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.... + +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 +Encyclopedia. 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 MODERATELY well think they are QUITE well," was one of +his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, "DO NOT NEED DRUGS OR +MEDICINE," and "SIMPLY A PROPER REGIMEN TO GET YOU IN TONE." 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! + +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 HEALTH, BEAUTY, +AND STRENGTH 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. + +(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.) + +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 Daily Regulator +about the amount of display given to one of his happy thoughts, I also +took up the negotiations of advertisements for the press. + +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. + +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. + +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 bona +fide." 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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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?" + +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.... + +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!" + +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. + +"George, whad'yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?" he would say. + +"No good that I can imagine." + +"Oom! No harm TRYING, George. We can but try." + +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." + +"It 'ud give 'em confidence, George." + +He would Zzzz, with his glasses reflecting the red of the glowing coals. + +"No good hiding our light under a Bushel," he would remark. + +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. + +"You've a hard nature, George," he said. "You're too ready to run things +down. How can one TELL? How can one venture to TELL!..." + +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. + +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. + +II + +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 L150,000. 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). + +L150,000--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. + +"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." + +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 en brosse 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." + +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. + +"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.... + +"Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I'm calling it +footle, Ponderevo, out of praise," he said in parenthesis.) + +"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 DON'T 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!... + +"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--substratum. 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? You know. 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."... + +There was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us. + +"Come downstairs," I interrupted, "we can talk better there." + +"I can talk better here," he answered. + +He was just going on, but fortunately the implacable face of Mrs. +Hampton Diggs appeared down the aisle of bottling machines. + +"All right," he said, "I'll come." + +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. + +"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." + +My uncle nodded brightly. "Whad I tell 'im," he said round his cigar. + +"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!" + +"True," said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of mysticism; +"true!" + +"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 +why adulterate? I don't like the idea of adulteration.'" + +"Shabby," said my uncle, nodding his head. "Bound to get found out!" + +"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." + +"Jolly good ideer," said my uncle. He looked at me. "That really is an +ideer, George," he said. + +"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!'" + +My uncle nodded and gurgled some quotation that died away. + +"Jolly good poem, George," he said in an aside to me. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"Tono-Bungay's all right," said my uncle, suddenly grave. "We aren't +talking of Tono-Bungay." + +"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 YOU, +sir you'd make cinders respect themselves." + +My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of +appreciation in his eye. + +"Might make 'em into a sort of sanitary brick," he reflected over his +cigar end. + +"Or a friable biscuit. Why NOT? 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.'" + +He delivered the last words in a shout, with his hairy hand flourished +in the air.... + +"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...." + +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. + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +MARION I + +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. + +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! ... + +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.... + +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. + +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 Freethinker, the +Clarion, "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. + +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. + +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. + +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 dear!" 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. + +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. + +II + +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." + +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. + +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 Eating.... 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. + +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.... + +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 H--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.... + +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. + +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. + +"I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me!" I said. "I think we've +been waiting long enough." + +"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?" + +I went in to talk to Mrs. Ramboat. "She'll want time to get her things," +said Mrs. Ramboat.... + +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. + +"Look here, Marion," I said, "are you going to marry me or are you not?" + +She smiled at me. "Well," she said, "we're engaged--aren't we?" + +"That can't go on for ever. Will you marry me next week?" + +She looked me in the face. "We can't," she said. + +"You promised to marry me when I had three hundred a year." + +She was silent for a space. "Can't we go on for a time as we are? We +COULD 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." + +An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the +stupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered +her with immense restraint. + +"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." + +"That would be sixty pounds a year at least." + +"Which means five hundred a year.... Yes, well, you see, I told my uncle +I wanted that, and I've got it." + +"Got what?" + +"Five hundred pounds a year." + +"Five hundred pounds!" + +I burst into laughter that had more than a taste of bitterness. + +"Yes," I said, "really! and NOW what do you think?" + +"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?" + +"To marry on--yes." + +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. + +"Yes," I said, "yes," and laughed no longer bitterly. + +She clasped her hands and looked me in the eyes. + +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. + +"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."... + +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. + +We furnished that double-fronted house from attic--it ran to an +attic--to cellar, and created a garden. + +"Do you know Pampas Grass?" said Marion. "I love Pampas Grass... if +there is room." + +"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 must 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. + +"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?" + +"That's exactly what I'd like to do. Marriage is too private a thing--" + +"I shouldn't feel married," said Mrs. Ramboat. + +"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." + +"What's he agreed to?" said her father--unheeded. + +"I can't marry at a registry office," said Marion, sallow-white. + +"Very well," I said. "I'll marry nowhere else." + +"I can't marry at a registry office." + +"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." + +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. + +III + +The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle, +"Bad temper not coming to business," and set off for Highgate and Ewart. +He was actually at work--on a bust of Millie, and seemed very glad for +any interruption. + +"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." + +"Girl?" said Ewart, putting down a chisel. + +"Yes." + +That was all I told him of my affair. + +"I've got no money," he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my +invitation. + +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. + +"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." + +"No," I said decidedly, "that's not my way." + +A thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an +altar. + +"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?" + +"No," I said, "that's not my idea." + +"What is your idea?" + +"Well" + +"H'm," said Ewart, in my pause. + +"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." + +"There's no such thing as a pure person or an impure person.... Mixed to +begin with." + +This was so manifestly true that it silenced me altogether. + +"And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponderevo--which end's the +head?" + +I made no answer except an impatient "oh!" + +For a time we smoked in silence.... + +"Did I tell you, Ponderevo, of a wonderful discovery I've made?" Ewart +began presently. + +"No," I said, "what is it?" + +"There's no Mrs. Grundy." + +"No?" + +"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." + +I laughed abruptly. + +"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.... + +"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'LL look--it won't hurt me--I insist on +looking my duty--M'm'm--the keyhole!'" + +He kicked his legs about extravagantly, and I laughed again. + +"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." + +Ewart meditated for a space. "Just exactly as it's put to them," he +said, and resumed the moods of Mr. Grundy. + +"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! + +"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. + +"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." + +"Mrs. Grundy, I suppose, doesn't know he sins," I remarked. + +"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... + +"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." + +Suddenly Ewart, with an almost Jack-in-the-box effect, sat up. + +"He's about us everywhere, Ponderevo," he said, very solemnly. +"Sometimes--sometimes I think he is--in our blood. In MINE." + +He regarded me for my opinion very earnestly, with his pipe in the +corner of his mouth. + +"You're the remotest cousin he ever had," I said. + +I reflected. "Look here, Ewart," I asked, "how would you have things +different?" + +He wrinkled up his queer face, regarded the wait and made his pipe +gurgle for a space, thinking deeply. + +"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...." + +"Grundy would have fits!" I injected. + +"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?... + +"Or duets only?... + +"How to manage it? Some rule of etiquette, perhaps."... He became +portentously grave. + +Then his long hand went out in weird gestures. + +"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--" + +"Yes," I said, "but--" + +He stilled me with a gesture. + +"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..." + +"The men would still be competing." + +"There perhaps--yes. But they'd have to abide by the women's decisions." + +I raised one or two difficulties, and for a while we played with this +idea. + +"Ewart," I said, "this is like Doll's Island. + +"Suppose," I reflected, "an unsuccessful man laid siege to a balcony and +wouldn't let his rival come near it?" + +"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..." + +"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." + +"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..." + +"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 NOW?" + +"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. + +"While I was talking just now," he remarked presently, + +"I had a quite different idea." + +"What?" + +"For a masterpiece. A series. Like the busts of the Caesars. Only +not heads, you know. We don't see the people who do things to us +nowadays..." + +"How will you do it, then?" + +"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." + +"See it where?" + +"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!" + +IV + +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. + +So we were married. + +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. + +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 Men's Wear, or The Tailor +and Cutter, 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. + +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. + +"George" he said once or twice, "this is a great occasion for you--a +very great occasion." He spoke a little doubtfully. + +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?" + +I was surprised to find how difficult it was to tell her about Marion. I +perplexed her. + +"Then is she beautiful?" she asked at last. + +"I don't know what you'll think of her," I parried. "I think--" + +"Yes?" + +"I think she might be the most beautiful person in the world." + +"And isn't she? To you?" + +"Of course," I said, nodding my head. "Yes. She IS..." + +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. + +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.... + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +"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...." + +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.... + +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. + +"Well," said I, as the train moved out of the station, "That's all +over!" And I turned to Marion--a little unfamiliar still, in her +unfamiliar clothes--and smiled. + +She regarded me gravely, timidly. + +"You're not cross?" she asked. + +"Cross! Why?" + +"At having it all proper." + +"My dear Marion!" said I, and by way of answer took and kissed her +white-gloved, leather-scented hand.... + +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. + +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. + +V + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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, YOU 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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!... + +It did much to widen our estrangement that Marion and my aunt failed to +make friends, became, by a sort of instinct, antagonistic. + +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. + +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... + +"She says such queer things," said Marion once, discussing her. "But I +suppose it's witty." + +"Yes," I said; "it IS witty." + +"If I said things like she does--" + +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. + +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. + +Then a wicked impulse took her. + +"Didn't say an old word, George," she insisted, looking me full in the +eye. + +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... + +"Your aunt makes Game of people," was Marion's verdict, and, +open-mindedly: "I suppose it's all right... for her." + +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. + +The gaps between my aunt's visits grew wider and wider. + +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. + +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. + +I would come home hoping nothing, expecting nothing. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +VI + +The end of our intolerable situation came suddenly and unexpectedly, but +in a way that I suppose was almost inevitable. + +My alienated affections wandered, and I was unfaithful to Marion. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That was all. But it was enough in the mysterious free-masonry of sex to +say essential things. We had a secret between us. + +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. + +We neither of us spoke for quite a perceptible time. I was trembling +violently. + +"Is that one of the new typewriters?" I asked at last for the sake of +speaking. + +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. + +Never before had I known the quality of passionate kisses. + +Somebody became audible in the shop outside. + +We started back from one another with flushed faces and bright and +burning eyes. + +"We can't talk here," I whispered with a confident intimacy. "Where do +you go at five?" + +"Along the Embankment to Charing Cross," she answered as intimately. +"None of the others go that way..." + +"About half-past five?" + +"Yes, half-past five..." + +The door from the shop opened, and she sat down very quickly. + +"I'm glad," I said in a commonplace voice, "that these new typewriters +are all right." + +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. + +When presently I went out, Effie was working with an extraordinary +appearance of calm--and there was no look for me at all.... + +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. + +VII + +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. + +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. + +"You've come home," she said. + +"As I wrote to you." + +She stood very still, a dusky figure against the bright window. + +"Where have you been?" she asked. + +"East Coast," I said easily. + +She paused for a moment. "I KNOW," she said. + +I stared at her. It was the most amazing moment in any life.... + +"By Jove!" I said at last, "I believe you do!" + +"And then you come home to me!" + +I walked to the hearthrug and stood quite still there regarding this new +situation. + +"I didn't dream," she began. "How could you do such a thing?" + +It seemed a long interval before either of us spoke another word. + +"Who knows about it?" I asked at last. + +"Smithie's brother. They were at Cromer." + +"Confound Cromer! Yes!" + +"How could you bring yourself" + +I felt a spasm of petulant annoyance at this unexpected catastrophe. + +"I should like to wring Smithie's brother's neck," I said.... + +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." + +"It doesn't strike me as horrid. It seems to me the most necessary +consequence--and natural thing in the world." + +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. + +"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?" + +She sat down in a draped armchair. "I HAVE cared for you," she said. + +I shrugged my shoulders. + +"I suppose," she said, "SHE cares for you?" + +I had no answer. + +"Where is she now?" + +"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!" + +She scrutinised my face, and pulled at the ball-fringe of the little +table beside her. + +"To think of it," she said. "I don't believe I can ever touch you +again." + +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. + +Our little general servant tapped at the door--Marion always liked the +servant to tap--and appeared. + +"Tea, M'm," she said--and vanished, leaving the door open. + +"I will go upstairs," said I, and stopped. "I will go upstairs" I +repeated, "and put my bag in the spare room." + +We remained motionless and silent for a few seconds. + +"Mother is having tea with us to-day," Marion remarked at last, and +dropped the worried end of ball-fringe and stood up slowly.... + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +VIII + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"You love her?" she asked once, and jerked that doubt into my mind. + +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." + +"But you want her? You want her now--when you think of her?" + +"Yes," I reflected. "I want her--right enough." + +"And me? Where do I come in?" + +"I suppose you come in here." + +"Well, but what are you going to do?" + +"Do!" I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon me. +"What do you want me to do?" + +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. + +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. + +"It's too late, Marion," I said. "It can't be done like that." + +"Then we can't very well go on living together," she said. "Can we?" + +"Very well," I deliberated "if you must have it so." + +"Well, can we?" + +"Can you stay in this house? I mean--if I go away?" + +"I don't know.... I don't think I could." + +"Then--what do you want?" + +Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word +"divorce" was before us. + +"If we can't live together we ought to be free," said Marion. + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"And then--how do I live? What becomes of me?" + +"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." + +"And then--then you'll be free?" + +"Both of us." + +"And all this life you've hated" + +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?" + +IX + +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. + +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. + +"Of course," she would say again and again, "my life has been a +failure." + +"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--" + +Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage. + +"How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well now--I suppose you have +your revenge." + +"REVENGE!" I echoed. + +Then she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives. + +"I ought to earn my own living," she would insist. + +"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--" + +"We've settled all that," I said. + +"I suppose you will hate me anyhow..." + +There were times when she seemed to regard our separation with +absolute complacency, when she would plan all sorts of freedoms and +characteristic interests. + +"I shall go out a lot with Smithie," she said. + +And once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed hate her for that I +cannot even now quite forgive her. + +"Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me..." + +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. + +And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether +beyond our control, parting came to Marion and me. + +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. + +"I didn't know," she cried. "Oh! I didn't understand!" + +"I've been a fool. All my life is a wreck! + +"I shall be alone!...MUTNEY! Mutney, don't leave me! Oh! Mutney! I +didn't understand." + +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. + +"Don't leave me!" she said, "don't leave me!" She clung to me; she +kissed me with tear-salt lips. + +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? + +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. + +"Good-bye!" I said. + +"Good-bye." + +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. + +"Go away," I said to the servant, seeing that Marion had followed me +down. + +I felt her standing behind me as I spoke to the cab man. + +I got into the cab, resolutely not looking back, and then as it started +jumped up, craned out and looked at the door. + +It was wide open, but she had disappeared.... + +I wonder--I suppose she ran upstairs. + +X + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Since this was nothing, what was I doing? What was I for? + +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. + +"What am I to do with life?" that was the question that besieged me. + +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. + +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. + +"Gloomkins," said she. + +I smiled and remained head on hand, looking out of the window forgetful +of her. + +"Did you love your wife so well?" she whispered softly. + +"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?" + +And I turned about and drew her to me, and kissed her ear.... + +Yes, I had a very bad time--I still recall. I suffered, I suppose, from +a sort of ennui 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 GROUPED with a system of appetites and +satisfactions, with much work to do--and no desire, it seemed, left in +me. + +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. + +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. + +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!) + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Look here," I said, "I'm sick of this." + +"HulLO!" he answered, and put some papers aside. + +"What's up, George?" + +"Things are wrong." + +"As how?" + +"My life," I said, "it's a mess, an infinite mess." + +"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--" + +"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." + +"Eh? Eh?" said my uncle. "WHAT--rascality?" + +"Oh, YOU know. I want some STUFF, 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_ 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." + +I laughed at the consternation in his face. + +"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!" + +"Flying!" + +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. + +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. + +Well, I have still to fly; but incidentally I have invented the lightest +engines in the world. + +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 NOW, I still question unanswering problems. All my life has +been at bottom, SEEKING, 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. + +XI + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"Dear Marion," I said, "how goes it?" + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE GREAT DAYS OF TONO-BUNGAY + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE HARDINGHAM HOTEL, AND HOW WE BECAME BIG PEOPLE + +I + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +II + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"He was an aquarium-faced, long, blond sort of chap, George, with +glasses and a genteel accent," he said. + +I was puzzled. "Aquarium-faced?" + +"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..." + +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. + +"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 THAT?" + +At the third repetition of that question the young man said, "Moggs' +Domestic." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"No objection to our advertising you wide and free?" said my uncle. + +"I draw the line at railway stations," said Moggs, "south-coast cliffs, +theatre programmes, books by me and poetry generally--scenery--oh!--and +the Mercure de France." + +"We'll get along," said my uncle. + +"So long as you don't annoy me," said Moggs, lighting a cigarette, "you +can make me as rich as you like." + +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. + +"I say, is there any black-lead in Pepys? You know--black-lead--for +grates! OR DOES HE PASS IT OVER AS A MATTER OF COURSE?" + +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 DID they use blacking so early?" + +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." + +For a time he displayed something like the zeal of a genuine social +reformer in relation to these matters. + +"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."... + +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. + +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! + +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 STRAINED. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +III + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 FULL advantages--" I met his eye +and he was embarrassed. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +"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... + +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. + +IV + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +"What's quap?" said my uncle on the fourth repetition of the word. + +"They call it quap, or quab, or quabb," said Gordon-Nasmyth; "but our +relations weren't friendly enough to get the accent right.... + +"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." ... + +To begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic. + +"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?" + +"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." + +Gordon-Nasmyth's quick temper showed in a slight stiffening of his +attitude. + +"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?" + +"Quap," said Gordon-Nasmyth, fixing his eye on me, "in heaps." + +"In heaps," said my uncle softly, with his glasses very oblique. + +"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!" + +"That sounds all right," said I. "Have you samples?" + +"Well--should I? You can have anything--up to two ounces." + +"Where is it?"... + +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. + +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! + +"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!" + +"How did it get there?" + +"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." + +"Can't you do any sort of deal?" + +"They're too damned stupid. You've got to go and take it. That's all." + +"They might catch you." + +"They might, of course. But they're not great at catching." + +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." + +"But if you get caught," said my uncle. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Don't carry it about on you," said Gordon-Nasmyth. "It makes a sore." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +But that was one of our last enterprises before our great crisis, and I +will tell of it in its place. + +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-- + +One must feel it to understand. + +V + +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. + +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 +British Medical Journal and the Lancet, 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. + +He certainly did not keep up the dignity of the Sacred Grove, +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:-- + + "THE SACRED GROVE." + + Weekly Magazine of Art, Philosophy, Science and + Belles Lettres. + ---------------------------------------------- + + HAVE YOU A NASTY TASTE IN YOUR MOUTH? + IT IS LIVER. + + YOU NEED ONE TWENTY-THREE PILL. + + (JUST ONE.) + + NOT A DRUG BUT A LIVE AMERICAN REMEDY. + ----------------------------------------------- + + CONTENTS. + + A Hitherto Unpublished Letter from Walter Pater. + Charlotte Bronte's Maternal Great Aunt. + A New Catholic History of England. + The Genius of Shakespeare. + Correspondence:--The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive; + + "Commence," or "Begin;" Claverhouse; Socialism and the + + Individual; The Dignity of Letters. + Folk-lore Gossip. + The Stage; the Paradox of Acting. + Travel Biography, Verse, Fiction, etc. + ---------------------------------------------------- + THE BEST PILL IN THE WORLD FOR AN IRREGULAR LIVER + +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. + +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 +Sacred Grove--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. + +VI + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"There," thought I, "but for the grace of God, go George and Edward +Ponderevo." + +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. + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +OUR PROGRESS FROM CAMDEN TOWN TO CREST HILL + +I + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"I'm keeping a mind, George," she explained. + +"Eh?" + +"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."... + +And I remember her coming in late one evening with a note-book in her +hand. + +"Where ya been, Susan?" said my uncle. + +"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 PACKAGE! I had no idea! The Things you've kept +from me!" + +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. + +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, Caesar, +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +II + +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. + +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. + +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!" + +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 NICE 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."... + +Dim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to +her.... + +I was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to +fall off into a tete-a-tete 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. + +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. + +I wonder now what it was I said that was "frivolous." + +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. Quite 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?" + +"Only too delighted to TROT for you, Mrs. Ponderevo," said the +clergyman, becoming fearfully expert and in his elements; "only too +delighted." + +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. + +"Trot!" repeated the clergyman to me, much amused; "excellent +expression!" And I just saved him from the tray as he turned about. + +We handed tea for a while.... + +"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." + +She surveyed the gathering with a predominant blue eye and helped +herself to tea. + +"They keep on going stiff," she said in an undertone.... "I've done my +best." + +"It's been a huge success," I said encouragingly. + +"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?" + +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. + +"I always feel," said the pensive little woman, "that there's something +about a dog--A cat hasn't got it." + +"Yes," I found myself admitting with great enthusiasm, "there is +something. And yet again--" + +"Oh! I know there's something about a cat, too. But it isn't the same." + +"Not quite the same," I admitted; "but still it's something." + +"Ah! But such a different something!" + +"More sinuous." + +"Much more." + +"Ever so much more." + +"It makes all the difference, don't you think?" + +"Yes," I said, "ALL." + +She glanced at me gravely and sighed a long, deeply felt "Yes." A long +pause. + +The thing seemed to me to amount to a stale-mate. Fear came into my +heart and much perplexity. + +"The--er--Roses," I said. I felt like a drowning man. "Those +roses--don't you think they are--very beautiful flowers?" + +"Aren't they!" she agreed gently. "There seems to be something in +roses--something--I don't know how to express it." + +"Something," I said helpfully. + +"Yes," she said, "something. Isn't there?" + +"So few people see it," I said; "more's the pity!" + +She sighed and said again very softly, "Yes."... + +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. + +"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! + +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.... + +The clergymen, I thought, were wonderful. + +III + +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. + +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. + +"Look here, George," said my uncle, after my first greetings. "I just +been saying: We aren't Oh Fay!" + +"Eh?" + +"Not Oh Fay! Socially!" + +"Old FLY, he means, George--French!" + +"Oh! Didn't think of French. One never knows where to have him. What's +gone wrong to-night?" + +"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 THAT +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." + +"I'm not sure you were right," I said, "in having a fly." + +"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!" + +"Nobody laughed at you," said my aunt. "Old Bladder!" + +"Nobody isn't going to laugh at me," said my uncle, glancing at his +contours and suddenly sitting up. + +My aunt raised her eyebrows slightly, swung her foot, and said nothing. + +"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?" + +I handed him the cigar-box. + +"Runcorn hadn't cigars like these," he said, truncating one lovingly. +"We beat him at cigars. We'll beat him all round." + +My aunt and I regarded him, full of apprehensions. + +"I got idees," he said darkly to the cigar, deepening our dread. + +He pocketed his cigar-cutter and spoke again. + +"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--YOU, Susan, too." + +"Always have had a tendency to stick out of my clothes," said my aunt. +"However--Who cares?" She shrugged her shoulders. + +I had never seen my uncle so immensely serious. + +"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." + +"Eh?" I said. + +"Oh!--Gawshery, if you like!" + +"French, George," said my aunt. "But I'M not ol' Gooch. I made that face +for fun." + +"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." + +He mumbled his cigar and smoked for a space, leaning forward and looking +into the fire. + +"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." + +He was silent again, and the cigar crept up from the horizontal towards +the zenith as the confidence of his mouth increased. + +"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." + +"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." + +"We've come to French," said my aunt, "anyhow." + +"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 ME. 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 YOU think of it all? We got to adapt +ourselves. We have--so far.... Not going to be beat by these silly +things." + +IV + +"What do you think of it, George?" he insisted. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"A ham," she remarked reflectively, "must feel like this. Just a +necklace."... + +I attempted, I think, some commonplace compliment. + +My uncle appeared at the door in a white waistcoat and with his hands in +his trouser pockets; he halted and surveyed her critically. + +"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."... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +V + +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 Savoir Faire. 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. + +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 shopping +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. + +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 crescendo, shopped +fortissimo, con molto espressione 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?" + +I'd never thought. + +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.... + +"George," she cried, "the Things women are! Do _I_ stink of money?" + +"Lunching?" I asked. + +She nodded. + +"Plutocratic ladies?" + +"Yes." + +"Oriental type?" + +"Oh! Like a burst hareem!... Bragging of possessions.... They feel you. +They feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good!" + +I soothed her as well as I could. "They ARE Good aren't they?" I said. + +"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." + +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.... + +I wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood. + +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.... + +VI + +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. + +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 facade 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." + +My aunt made him no answer. + +"The man who built this," I speculated, "wore armour and carried a +sword." + +"There's some of it inside still," said my uncle. + +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 not bought them up and replaced them altogether; as though +that, secretly, they knew better and could smile at him. + +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. + +"Bit stuffy, George," said my uncle. "They hadn't much idea of +ventilation when this was built." + +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. + +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." + +"Old saved at the eleventh hour," said my aunt, quoting one of the less +successful advertisements of Tono-Bungay. + +But I don't think my uncle heard her. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 most amusing.... The daughter had a +disappointment and went to China as a missionary and got mixed up in a +massacre."... + +"The most beautiful silks and things she brought back, you'd hardly +believe!" + +"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, +THEY'D be massacred. They didn't understand the difference Christianity +makes."... + +"Seven bishops they've had in the family!" + +"Married a Papist and was quite lost to them."... + +"He failed some dreadful examination and had to go into the militia."... + +"So she bit his leg as hard as ever she could and he let go."... + +"Had four of his ribs amputated."... + +"Caught meningitis and was carried off in a week." + +"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." + +"Preserved them both in spirits very luckily, and there they are in his +study, though of course he doesn't show them to everybody." + +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. + +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." + +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." + +"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. + +"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."... + +"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." + +"I mean to do my duty by the Parish," said my uncle. + +"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." + +He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment. + +"We shall look to you to liven things up," he said, poor man! + +My uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth. + +"What you think the place wants?" he asked. + +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." + +"Ye-ees," said the vicar. "Provided, of course, there isn't a constant +popping."... + +"Manage that 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." + +"How far our people would take up that sort of thing--" began the vicar. + +"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." + +"How would old Sally Glue do for a May Queen?" asked one of the sons in +the slight pause that followed. + +"Or Annie Glassbound?" said the other, with the huge virile guffaw of a +young man whose voice has only recently broken. + +"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. + +"Generous proportions!" said the eldest son, and the guffaws were +renewed. + +"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." + +"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." + +The vicar's face for one moment betrayed dismay. Perhaps he was thinking +of his country walks amids the hawthorns and honeysuckle. + +"There's great things," said my uncle, "to be done on Mod'un lines with +Village Jam and Pickles--boiled in the country." + +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.... + +"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. + +"I shall have a flagstaff, I think," he considered. "Then one could show +when one is in residence. The villagers will like to know."... + +I reflected. "They will" I said. "They're used to liking to know."... + +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." + +My uncle turned his goggles to her. "Ah! THIS time it is home, Susan.... +We got there." + +VII + +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. + +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 mot: "Eight +hour working day--I want eighty hours!" + +He became modestly but resolutely "public." They cartooned him in Vanity +Fair. 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. + +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.... + +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!" + +"The little man?" + +"Yes, the little bounder with the glasses." + +"They say he's made--"... + +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. + +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. + +VIII + +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. + +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. + +My uncle grew restive.... "You see, George, they'll begin to want the +blasted thing!" + +"What blasted thing?" + +"That chalice, damn it! They're beginning to ask questions. It isn't +Business, George." + +"It's art," I protested, "and religion." + +"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."... + +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.... + +"We got here, George," said my uncle, ending a long pause. "Didn't I +say?" + +"Say!--when?" I asked. + +"In that hole in the To'nem Court Road, eh? It's been a Straight Square +Fight, and here we are!" + +I nodded. + +"'Member me telling you--Tono-Bungay?.... Well.... I'd just that +afternoon thought of it!" + +"I've fancied at times;" I admitted. + +"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."... + +He meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly. Then he became still. + +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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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. + +"It seems quiet to--night. But if we could see and hear." He waved his +cigar towards Leatherhead and London. + +"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." + +He paused. "It's wonderful, George," he said. + +"Anglo-Saxon energy," I said softly to the night. + +"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."... + +He mused for a space. "Cuttin' canals," murmured my uncle. "Making +tunnels.... New countries.... New centres.... Zzzz.... Finance.... Not +only Palestine. + +"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!"... + +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. + +"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."... + +He fell into a deep meditation. + +He Zzzzed for a time and ceased. + +"YES," he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with +ultimate solutions to the profoundest problems. + +"What?" I said after a seemly pause. + +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. + +"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."... + +He rested on that for some time Zzzz-ing. + +Then he broke out at a new place in a tone of detached criticism. + +"There's Boom," he reflected. + +"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." + +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. + +"You don't mean it!" I said. + +"Mean what, George?" + +"Subscription to the party funds. Reciprocal advantage. Have we got to +that?" + +"Whad you driving at, George?" + +"You know. They'd never do it, man!" + +"Do what?" he said feebly; and, "Why shouldn't they?" + +"They'd not even go to a baronetcy. NO!.... 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!" + +My uncle grunted; we'd differed on that issue before. + +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?" + +My uncle astonished me by losing his temper. + +"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 do. 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." + +IX + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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!" + +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 Napoleon and the Fair Sex, 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"! + +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. + +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.... + +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.... + +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. + +"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? + +"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. + +"Going about making love indeed,--in abdominal belts!--at his time of +life!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +X + +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. + +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! + +"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!" + +"He'd look," I reflected, "much as he does now. As though he was +amused." + +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. + +"Just a Family of Failure,--they never even tried! + +"They're jes', George, exactly what I'm not. Exactly. It isn't +suitable.... All this living in the Past. + +"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." + +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!" + +And he did. + +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!" + +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. + +He began with a wave of his arm. "That's the place, George," he said. +"See?" + +"Eh!" I cried--for I had been thinking of remote things. + +"I got it." + +"Got what?" + +"For a house!--a Twentieth Century house! That's the place for it!" + +One of his characteristic phrases was begotten in him. + +"Four-square to the winds of heaven, George!" he said. "Eh? Four-square +to the winds of heaven!" + +"You'll get the winds up here," I said. + +"A mammoth house it ought to be, George--to suit these hills." + +"Quite," I said. + +"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." + +"And the morning sun in its eye." + +"Like an eagle, George,--like an eagle!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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.... + +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.... + +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. + +"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." + +He looked at my sheds. + +"You've changed the look of this valley, too," he said. + +"Temporary defilements," I remarked, guessing what was in his mind. + +"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." + +"They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago," I said. + +"Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at +all--comparatively. And that big house--" + +He raised his eyebrows. "Really stupendous! Stupendous. + +"All the hillside--the old turf--cut to ribbons!" + +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." + +"Things will readjust themselves," I lied. + +He snatched at the phrase. "Of course," he said. + +"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." + +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." + +He bade me good morning and went his way, bowed and thoughtful.... + +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. + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +SOARING + +I + +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. + +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 +Philosophical Transactions, the Mathematical Journal, 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. + +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. + +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 SHE IS ALWAYS THERE! 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.... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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. ... + +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. + +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. + +II + +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. + +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. + +"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!" + +"You're building a great place over the hill," said Carnaby. + +"Thought I'd make a show for once," said my uncle. "It looks big because +it's spread out for the sun." + +"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." + +Then I discovered that the silent figure behind the earl was Beatrice. + +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.... + +It seemed incredible to me she didn't remember. + +"Well," said the earl and touched his horse. + +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.... + +"Eh?" I said. + +"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 Savoir Faire, 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."... + +"She might," I said to myself, "be a picture by Romney come alive!" + +"They tell all these stories about him," said my uncle, "but what do +they all amount to?" + +"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!" + +"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--!" + +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.... + +III + +"Oh, Crikey!" said my aunt, reading a letter behind her coffee-machine. +"HERE'S a young woman, George!" + +We were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that +looks upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London. + +I sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg. + +"Who's Beatrice Normandy?" asked my aunt. "I've not heard of her +before." + +"She the young woman?" + +"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--" + +"Eh? Step-mother, isn't it?" + +"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." + +"Eh?" + +"You--for tea. + +"H'm. She had rather--force of character. When I knew her before." + +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. + +"I've known her longer than I've known you," I said, and explained at +length. + +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. + +"Why didn't you tell me the day you saw her? You've had her on your mind +for a week," she said. + +"It IS odd I didn't tell you," I admitted. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +"We haven't met," she said, "since--" + +"It was in the Warren." + +"Of course," she said, "the Warren! I remembered it all except just the +name.... I was eight." + +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. + +"I gave you away pretty completely," she said, meditating upon my face. +"And afterwards I gave way Archie." + +She turned her face away from the others, and her voice fell ever so +little. + +"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?" + +"Out in the West Wood?" + +"Yes--and cried--for all the evil I had done you, I suppose.... I've +often thought of it since."... + +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. + +"People say the oak staircase is rather good," said my aunt, and led the +way. + +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. + +"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. + +She turned upon me abruptly when she thought her step-mother was beyond +ear-shot. + +"But how did you get here?" she asked. + +"Here?" + +"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?" + +"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." + +"I understand." She regarded me with interested eyes, visibly thinking +me out. + +"And you recognised me?" I asked. + +"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." + +"I'm glad to meet again," I ventured. "I'd never forgotten you." + +"One doesn't forget those childish things." + +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!" + +"I've a hundred things I want to know about you," she said with an easy +intimacy, as we went up the winding steps.... + +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." + +"You never will," she said compactly. "You never will." + +"Well," I said, "we do what we can." + +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--AND NO +FARTHER! No!" + +She became emphatically pink. "NO," 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. + +"Upon his belly shall he go," she said with quiet distinctness, "all the +days of his life." + +After which we talked no more of aeronautics. + +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. + +She stood up abruptly. + +"What is there beyond the terrace?" she said, and found me promptly +beside her. + +I invented a view for her. + +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 WERE here. They couldn't have got here if they hadn't been +here always. They wouldn't have thought it right. You've climbed." + +"If it's climbing," I said. + +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 ARE!" + +She looked at me. "Was it much of a fight? They make out it is." + +"I don't know why." + +"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." + +"One thing we didn't do." She meditated for a moment. + +"What?" said I. + +"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." + +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."... + +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?" + +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. + +"But that's dangerous!" she said, with a note of discovery. + +"Oh!--it's dangerous." + +"Bee-atrice!" Lady Osprey called. + +Beatrice dropped from the wall to her feet. + +"Where do you do this soaring?" + +"Beyond the high Barrows. East of Crest Hill and the wood." + +"Do you mind people coming to see?" + +"Whenever you please. Only let me know" + +"I'll take my chance some day. Some day soon." She looked at me +thoughtfully, smiled, and our talk was at an end. + +IV + +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. + +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 Aero 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 reclame involved, and it was at his +request that I named my first navigable balloon Lord Roberts Alpha. + +Lord Roberts A very nearly terminated all my investigations. My idea +both in this and its more successful and famous younger brother, Lord +Roberts B, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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... + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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!" + +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. + +"This blood must be stopped, anyhow," I said, thickheadedly. + +"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. + +I must have conceived some idea of going home unaided, because I was +thirty yards from the tree before I dropped. + +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. + +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. + +("They never seem quite to have their heads, and never seem quite to +lose 'em," said Cothope, generalising about the sex.) + +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 WOULD have it wasn't +half so far," said Cothope. "She faced us out.... + +"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. + +"Lord Carnaby looked at her pretty straight," said Cothope, finishing +the picture; "and then he give in." + +V + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +And it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity. + +Yet that was not everything in our relationship. The elemental thing was +there also. It came in very suddenly. + +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. + +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. + +Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and +trembling. + +We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and +for one instant I held her. + +"Those great wings," she said, and that was all. + +She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted. + +"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." + +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. + +"Oh!" she said. + +She covered her face with her hands, while Cothope looked at her with an +expression between suspicion and impatience. + +For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he'd +better get her water. + +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. + +Cothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. "I +shan't want any water," she said. "Call him back." + +VI + +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. + +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. + +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. + +I asked her to marry me. + +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. + +"Comfortable?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"Shall I read to you?" + +"No. I want to talk." + +"You can't. I'd better talk to you." + +"No," I said, "I want to talk to you." + +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." + +"I get few chances--of you." + +"You'd better not talk. Don't talk now. Let me chatter instead. You +ought not to talk." + +"It isn't much," I said. + +"I'd rather you didn't." + +"I'm not going to be disfigured," I said. "Only a scar." + +"Oh!" she said, as if she had expected something quite different. "Did +you think you'd become a sort of gargoyle?" + +"L'Homme qui Rit!--I didn't know. But that's all right. Jolly flowers +those are!" + +"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." + +She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move. + +"Are we social equals?" I said abruptly. + +She stared at me. "Queer question," she said. + +"But are we?" + +"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?" + +"No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me." + +She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her. +"Damn these bandages!" I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage. + +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." + +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. + +"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?" + +"You've been avoiding me for a month," I said. + +"I know. You might have known. Put your hand back--down by your side." + +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." + +My eyes questioned her mutely. + +She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented. + +"How can I answer you now?" she said. + +"How can I say anything now?" + +"What do you mean?" I asked. + +She made no answer. + +"Do you mean it must be 'No'?" + +She nodded. + +"But" I said, and my whole soul was full of accusations. + +"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!" + +"But," I said, "when we met again--" + +"I can't marry. I can't and won't." + +She stood up. "Why did you talk?" she cried, "couldn't you SEE?" + +She seemed to have something it was impossible to say. + +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!" + +"But what is it?" I said. "Is it some circumstance--my social position?" + +"Oh, DAMN your social position!" she cried. + +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. + +"You didn't ask me if I loved you," she said. + +"Oh, if it's THAT!" said I. + +"It's not that," she said. "But if you want to know--" She paused. + +"I do," she said. + +We stared at one another. + +"I do--with all my heart, if you want to know." + +"Then, why the devil--?" I asked. + +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.... + +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. + +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." + +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. + +At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. "Well?" she said. + +"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." + +I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, "I can't rest. You +see? I can't do anything." + +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. + +"I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know... Will +that do?" + +"I'd like to know" + +She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it. + +Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly +with her face close to me. + +"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?" + +"Yes," I said, "but why?" + +"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?" + +"Yes," I said, "I understand. I wish I could kiss you." + +She laid her head down beside mine for a moment and then she kissed my +hand. + +"I don't care what difficulties there are," I said, and I shut my eyes. + +VII + +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. + +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?" + +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. + +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.... + +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? + +That exasperated me and perplexed me beyond measure. + +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. + +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. + +All this mingles with the making of Lord Roberts B. 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 A, +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. + +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. + +I would talk aloud to these notes and wrangle over them in my +workroom--while the plans of Lord Roberts B waited. + +"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!" + +And at last I could hold out no longer against these accumulating +pressures. + +I took an arrogant, outrageous line that left her no loopholes; I +behaved as though we were living in a melodrama. + +"You must come and talk to me," I wrote, "or I will come and take you. I +want you--and the time runs away." + +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. + +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!" + +"If it was only that," she said, but though I heard, I did not heed her. + +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. + +Once even I thought she smiled faintly. + +"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!... + +"Here am I just grown a man at the sight of you. I have wanted something +to fight for. Let me fight for you!... + +"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!" + +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. + +I passed from such megalomania to petty accusations. + +"You think Carnaby is a better man than I?" I said. + +"No!" she cried, stung to speech. "No!" + +"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."... + +Her eyes asked mutely and asked in vain that I would cease to boast of +the very qualities she admired in me. + +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. + +I caught an early train and went up to the Hardingham. + +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. + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +HOW I STOLE THE HEAPS OF QUAP FROM MORDET ISLAND + +I + +"We got to make a fight for it," said my uncle. "We got to face the +music!" + +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. + +"I saw a placard," I said: "'More Ponderevity.'" + +"That's Boom," he said. "Boom and his damned newspapers. He's trying to +fight me down. Ever since I offered to buy the Daily Decorator 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!" + +"Well," I said, "what's to be done?" + +"Keep going," said my uncle. + +"I'll smash Boom yet," he said, with sudden savagery. + +"Nothing else?" I asked. + +"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." + +He cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour. + +"Well," said I, "what can he do?" + +"Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been +handling a lot of money--and he tightens us up." + +"We're sound?" + +"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." + +He blew. "Damn Boom!" he said, and his eyes over his glasses met mine +defiantly. + +"We can't, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop expenditure?" + +"Where?" + +"Well,--Crest Hill" + +"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." + +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." + +I began to ask questions and irritated him instantly. + +"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." + +"Yes?" + +"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! + +"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." + +His pose was triumphant. + +"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." + +He crumpled up his nose into an expression of impatient distaste at my +unreasonableness. + +"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." + +"They start on Toosday." + +"Have they got the brig?" + +"They've got a brig." + +"Gordon-Nasmyth!" I doubted. + +"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." + +"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." + +I jumped up and went and stared out at the fog. + +"And, by Jove, it's about our only chance! I didn't dream." + +I turned on him. "I've been up in the air," I said. + +"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!" + +"Well, you had a voice--" + +"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!" + +"I dessay you'd have shoved it, George. Still you know, George.... I +believe in him." + +"Yes," I said. "Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. Still--" + +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. + +"George," he said, "the luck's against us." + +"What?" + +He grimaced with his mouth--in the queerest way at the telegram. + +"That." + +I took it up and read: + +"Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon nasmyth what price +mordet now" + +For a moment neither of us spoke. + +"That's all right," I said at last. + +"Eh?" said my uncle. + +"I'M going. I'll get that quap or bust." + +II + +I had a ridiculous persuasion that I was "saving the situation." + +"I'm going," I said quite consciously and dramatically. I saw the whole +affair--how shall I put it?--in American colours. + +I sat down beside him. "Give me all the data you've got," I said, "and +I'll pull this thing off." + +"But nobody knows exactly where--" + +"Nasmyth does, and he'll tell me." + +"He's been very close," said my uncle, and regarded me. + +"He'll tell me all right, now he's smashed." + +He thought. "I believe he will." + +"George," he said, "if you pull this thing off--Once or twice before +you've stepped in--with that sort of Woosh of yours--" + +He left the sentence unfinished. + +"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."... + +And so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life. + +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 Maud +Mary 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"I'm going," I said, "to the west coast of Africa." + +They asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague. + +"We've interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don't know when I +may return." + +After that I perceived Beatrice surveyed me steadily. + +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. + +"You needn't go yet," said Beatrice, abruptly. + +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. + +"Must talk," she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick it +up. "Turn my pages. At the piano." + +"I can't read music." + +"Turn my pages." + +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. + +"Isn't West Africa a vile climate?" "Are you going to live there?" "Why +are you going?" + +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-- + +"At the back of the house is a garden--a door in the wall--on the lane. +Understand?" + +I turned over the pages without any effect on her playing. + +"When?" I asked. + +She dealt in chords. "I wish I COULD play this!" she said. "Midnight." + +She gave her attention to the music for a time. + +"You may have to wait." + +"I'll wait." + +She brought her playing to an end by--as school boys say--"stashing it +up." + +"I can't play to-night," she said, standing up and meeting my eyes. "I +wanted to give you a parting voluntary." + +"Was that Wagner, Beatrice?" asked Lady Osprey looking up from her +cards. "It sounded very confused." + +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 B, 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. + +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. + +"Why are you going to West Africa?" she asked at once. + +"Business crisis. I have to go." + +"You're not going--? You're coming back?" + +"Three or four months," I said, "at most." + +"Then, it's nothing to do with me?" + +"Nothing," I said. "Why should it have?" + +"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. + +I looked about me at darkness and rain. + +"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." + +"How do you know?" + +"I've wandered like this before.... Of course. Did you think"--she +nodded her head back at her home--"that's all?" + +"No, by Jove!" I cried; "it's manifest it isn't." + +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. + +"I like the wet on my face and hair, don't you? When do you sail?" + +I told her to-morrow. + +"Oh, well, there's no to-morrow now. You and I!" She stopped and +confronted me. + +"You don't say a word except to answer!" + +"No," I said. + +"Last time you did all the talking." + +"Like a fool. Now--" + +We looked at each other's two dim faces. "You're glad to be here?" + +"I'm glad--I'm beginning to be--it's more than glad." + +She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her. + +"Ah!" she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one another. + +"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." + +"Among the fern stalks." + +"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?" + +"It's all right," I said. + +We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit, +rain-veiled window. + +"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!" + +We pressed against each other reassuringly. + +"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." + +She stopped abruptly. + +We splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember things I +had meant to say. + +"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." + +My thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them. + +"Is it something about my position?... Or is it +something--perhaps--about some other man?" + +There was an immense assenting silence. + +"You've puzzled me so. At first--I mean quite early--I thought you meant +to make me marry you." + +"I did." + +"And then?" + +"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 +will tell you when things enable me to tell you, and soon enough they +will. But to-night--I won't--I won't." + +She left my side and went in front of me. + +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." + +"I wanted," I began. + +"I know. Oh! my dear, if you'd only understand I understand. If you'd +only not care--and love me to-night." + +"I do love you," I said. + +"Then LOVE me," she answered, "and leave all the things that bother you. +Love me! Here I am!" + +"But!--" + +"No!" she said. + +"Well, have your way." + +So she carried her point, and we wandered into the night together and +Beatrice talked to me of love.... + +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. + +"Why do people love each other?" I said. + +"Why not?" + +"But why do I love you? Why is your voice better than any voice, your +face sweeter than any face?" + +"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!"... + +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. + +She stood in the doorway, a muffled figure with eyes that glowed. + +"Come back," she whispered. "I shall wait for you." + +She hesitated. + +She touched the lapel of my coat. "I love you NOW," she said, and lifted +her face to mine. + +I held her to me and was atremble from top to toe. "O God!" I cried. +"And I must go!" + +She slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the +world seemed full of fantastic possibilities. + +"Yes, GO!" 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. + +III + +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. + +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. + +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 Maud Mary 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?" + +At which I usually swore. + +"Oh, you'll be all right soon. Don't mind my puffin' a bit? Eh?" + +He never tired of asking me to "have a hand at Nap. Good game. Makes you +forget it, and that's half the battle." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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?"... + +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. + +"I do not know dis coast," he used to say. "I cama hera because +Gordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den he does not come!" + +"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. + +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. + +(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.) + +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. + +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. + +"E--" + +He moved his head strangely and mysteriously, but a child might have +known he spoke of the captain. + +"E's a foreigner." + +He regarded me doubtfully for a time, and at last decided for the sake +of lucidity to clench the matter. + +"That's what E is--a DAGO!" + +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. + +"Roumanian Jew, isn't he?" I said. + +He nodded darkly and almost forbiddingly. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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.... + +IV + +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. + +There we go in my memory still, a blistered dirty ship with patched +sails and a battered mermaid to present Maud Mary, 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. + +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. + +We took the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty slowly and +carefully. The captain came and talked. + +"This is eet?" he said. + +"Yes," said I. + +"Is eet for trade we have come?" + +This was ironical. + +"No," said I. + +"Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf come." + +"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." + +"May I presume to ask--is eet gold?" + +"No," I said incivilly, "it isn't." + +"Then what is it?" + +"It's stuff--of some commercial value." + +"We can't do eet," he said. + +"We can," I answered reassuringly. + +"We can't," he said as confidently. "I don't mean what you mean. You +know so liddle--But--dis is forbidden country." + +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." + +His eyes glittered and he shook his head.... + +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." + +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.... + +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. + +"Pollack!" I cried and hammered the partition. + +"What's up?" asked Pollack. + +I stated the case concisely. + +There came a silence. + +"He's a Card," said Pollack. "Let's give him his commission. I don't +mind." + +"Eh?" I cried. + +"I said he was a Card, that's all," said Pollack. "I'm coming." + +He appeared in my doorway a faint white figure joined our vehement +whisperings. + +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. + +"All right," I acquiesced, "in the form of a letter. Here goes! Get a +light!" + +"And the apology," he said, folding up the letter. + +"All right," I said; "Apology." + +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. + +The malaria of the quap was already in my blood. + +V + +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 Geological Magazine 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 CANCEROUS--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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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!..." + +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. + +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. + +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!..." + +VI + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +I became aware of him perhaps forty feet off standing quite still and +regarding me. + +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. + +He stepped back a pace or so, stumbled and turned to run. + +"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. + +I had a preposterous idea. "He mustn't get away and tell them!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +A practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one heard the gun? + +I reloaded. + +After a time I felt securer, and gave my mind again to the dead I had +killed. What must I do? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +In the night, however, it took on enormous and portentous forms. "By +God!" I cried suddenly, starting wide awake; "but it was murder!" + +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. + +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. + +Some evil and detestable beast had been at him, and he lay disinterred. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +VII + +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. + +She sighted the Maud Mary at once, and fired some sort of popgun to +arrest us. + +The mate turned to me. + +"Shall I tell the captain?" + +"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. + +We were clear of Africa--and with the booty aboard I did not see what +stood between us and home. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"The captain says the damned thing's going down right now;" he remarked, +chewing his mouthpiece. "Eh?" + +"Good idea!" I said. "One can't go on pumping for ever." + +And without hurry or alacrity, sullenly and wearily we got into the +boats and pulled away from the Maud Mary 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. + +"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!" + +I stared at the slow eddies that circled above the departed Maud Mary, +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'LL go," and of all the ineffectual months I had spent after this +headlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself and fate. + +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.... + +As all the world knows we were picked up by the Union Castle liner, +Portland Castle. + +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. + +"Now," I said, "are there any newspapers? I want to know what's been +happening in the world." + +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. + +The newspapers I bought, the placards I saw, all England indeed +resounded to my uncle's bankruptcy. + + + + + +BOOK THE FOURTH + +THE AFTERMATH OF TONO-BUNGAY + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE STICK OF THE ROCKET + +I + +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. + +"Lord!" he said at the sight of me. "You're lean, George. It makes that +scar of yours show up." + +We regarded each other gravely for a time. + +"Quap," I said, "is at the bottom of the Atlantic. There's some +bills--We've got to pay the men." + +"Seen the papers?" + +"Read 'em all in the train." + +"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." + +He blew and wiped his glasses. + +"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." + +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. + +"Yes," he said, wiping his lips and recorking the bottle. "You've done +your best, George. The luck's been against us." + +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." + +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. + +"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." + +"What has happened?" + +"Oh! Boom!--infernal things." + +"Yes, but--how? I'm just off the sea, remember." + +"It'd worry me too much to tell you now. It's tied up in a skein." + +He muttered something to himself and mused darkly, and roused himself to +say-- + +"Besides--you'd better keep out of it. It's getting tight. Get 'em +talking. Go down to Crest Hill and fly. That's YOUR affair." + +For a time his manner set free queer anxieties in my brain again. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"You might," I began. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +"You might go down now and talk to her," he said, in a directer voice. +"I shall be down to-morrow night, I think." + +He looked up as though he hoped that would end our talk. + +"For the week-end?" I asked. + +"For the week-end. Thank God for week-ends, George!" + +II + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +"There he is--I don't know what he's doing. He won't have me near +him.... + +"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?..." + +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. + +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 B. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +It came like a blow in the face now; all that, too, had to end! + +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.... + +Should I perhaps presently happen upon her? + +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." + +He was sincerely glad to see me. "It's been a rum go," he said. + +He had been there without wages for a month, a man forgotten in the rush +of events. + +"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? '" + +"How's Lord Roberts B?" + +Cothope lifted his eyebrows. "I've had to refrain," he said. "But he's +looking very handsome." + +"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?" + +"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." + +"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?" + +"Just about quarter full. That last oil glaze of yours holds the gas +something beautiful. He's not lost a cubic metre a week."... + +Cothope returned to Socialism as we went toward the sheds. + +"Glad to think you're a Socialist, sir," he said, "it's the only +civilised state. I been a Socialist some years--off the Clarion. 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!" + +Lord Roberts B, 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. + +"We'll fill her," I said concisely. + +"It's all ready," said Cothope, and added as an afterthought, "unless +they cut off the gas."... + +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 B, 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. + +Both Beatrice and Lady Osprey were out. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +"Great God!" I cried, "but is this Life?" + +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. + +III + +I was roused from such thoughts by the sound of footsteps behind me. + +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. + +"Hullo!" I said, and stared. "Why aren't you in London?" + +"It's all up," he said.... + +"Adjudicated?" + +"No!" + +I stared at him for a moment, and then got off the stile. + +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! + +"It's cruel," he blubbered at last. "They asked me questions. They KEP' +asking me questions, George." + +He sought for utterance, and spluttered. + +"The Bloody bullies!" he shouted. "The Bloody Bullies." + +He ceased to weep. He became suddenly rapid and explanatory. + +"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. + +"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.... + +"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!" + +"But" I said, looking down at him, perplexed. + +"It's abscondin'. They'll have a warrant." + +"I don't understand," I said. + +"It's all up, George--all up and over. + +"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--" + +I stood thinking him over. + +"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?" + +"Haven't I told you?" + +"Yes, but they won't do very much to you for that. They'll only bring +you up for the rest of your examination." + +He remained silent for a time. At last he spoke--speaking with +difficulty. + +"It's worse than that. I've done something. They're bound to get it out. +Practically they HAVE got it out." + +"What?" + +"Writin' things down--I done something." + +For the first time in his life, I believe, he felt and looked ashamed. +It filled me with remorse to see him suffer so. + +"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." + +"No. That's partly why I went to Richmond. But I never thought--" + +His little bloodshot eyes stared at Crest Hill. + +"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." + +IV + +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 B 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. + +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. + +"What's he done?" she said. + +"D'you mind knowing?" + +"No conscience left, thank God!" + +"I think--forgery!" + +There was just a little pause. "Can you carry this bundle?" she asked. + +I lifted it. + +"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." + +She carried some rugs for me through the shrubbery in the darkling. + +"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." + +I turned at something in her voice, and got a moon light gleam of tears +upon her face. + +"Could SHE have helped?" she asked abruptly. + +"SHE?" + +"That woman." + +"My God!" I cried, "HELPED! Those--things don't help!" + +"Tell me again what I ought to do," she said after a silence. + +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. + +"But you must act for yourself," I insisted. + +"Roughly," I said, "it's a scramble. You must get what you can for us, +and follow as you can." + +She nodded. + +She came right up to the pavilion and hovered for a time shyly, and then +went away. + +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. + +"I lef' my drops," he said. + +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. + +V + +The incidents of our flight in Lord Roberts B 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 B 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. + +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 B, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Neither I nor my uncle spent the night in ejaculations, nor in humorous +allusions, nor any of these things. We remained lumpish. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Something must have intervened here that I have forgotten. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +It was never found, and there was never a report of anyone seeing it +after it escaped from me. + +VI + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"I'm ill," he said, "I'm damnably ill! I can feel it in my skin!" + +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. + +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. + +"It's all very well," he protested; "I'm not young enough--" + +"Lift up your head," I interrupted, and put his knapsack under it. + +"They'll catch us here, just as much as in an inn," he grumbled and then +lay still. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 la grippe 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 religieuse 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. + +VII + +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 religieuse 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 Somatose 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. + +Usually he was propped up against pillows, because so he breathed more +easily. He slept hardly at all. + +I have a confused memory of vigils and mornings and afternoons spent by +that bedside, and how the religieuse 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. + +My uncle is central to all these impressions. + +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. + +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. + +"It has been a great career, George," he said, "but I shall be glad to +rest. Glad to rest!... Glad to rest." + +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. + +"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 Caesar never knew.... A great poet, George. Zzzz. +Kingdoms Caesar never knew.... Under entirely new management. + +"Greatness....Millions... Universities.... He stands on the terrace--on +the upper terrace--directing--directing--by the globe--directing--the +trade." + +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.... + +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_ had taken his money." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +"Good Lord!" I cried; "is THAT still going on!" + +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-- + +"If you want to see your uncle before he goes, you must come now." + +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: + +"Mr. Ponderevo, Mr. Ponderevo, it is all right. It is all right. + +"Only Believe! 'Believe on me, and ye shall be saved'!" + +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 religieuse 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. + +And my uncle spoilt the climax, and did not die. + +I replaced the little clergyman on the chair by the bedside, and he +hovered about the room. + +"I think," he whispered to me mysteriously, as he gave place to me, "I +believe--it is well with him." + +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 religieuse, 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. + +"Good Heavens!" I said, "we must clear these people out," and with a +certain urgency I did. + +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. + +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." + +"Didn't bother you?" I asked. + +"Wanted something," he said. + +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. + +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. + +"George," he said. + +"I'm here," I said, "close beside you." + +"George. You have always been responsible for the science. George. You +know better than I do. Is--Is it proved?" + +"What proved?" + +"Either way?" + +"I don't understand." + +"Death ends all. After so much--Such splendid beginnin's. Somewhere. +Something." + +I stared at him amazed. His sunken eyes were very grave. + +"What do you expect?" I said in wonder. + +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." + +For a long time there was silence. + +Then he made a gesture that he wished to speak. + +"Seems to me, George" + +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. + +"It seems to me, George, always--there must be something in me--that +won't die." + +He looked at me as though the decision rested with me. + +"I think," he said; "--something." + +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. + +"Some other world" + +"Perhaps," I said. "Who knows?" + +"Some other world." + +"Not the same scope for enterprise," I said. + +"No." + +He became silent. I sat leaning down to him, and following out my own +thoughts, and presently the religieuse 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! + +"George," he whispered, and his weak little hand came out. "PERHAPS--" + +He said no more, but I perceived from the expression of his eyes that he +thought the question had been put. + +"Yes, I think so;" I said stoutly. + +"Aren't you sure?" + +"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 him 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. + +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.... + +VIII + +It was dark night when I left his deathbed and went back to my own inn +down the straggling street of Luzon. + +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. + +Death! + +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. + +It came to me like a discovery that none of these things existed. + +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.... + +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. + +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? + +IX + +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. + +"It isn't like him," she whispered, awed by this alien dignity. + +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. + +"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! Ol Amjig, and Snap! 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!" + +She choked, and the tears flowed unrestrained. She wept, and I was glad +to see her weeping. + +She stood leaning over the bridge; her tear-wet handkerchief gripped in +her clenched hand. + +"Just an hour in the old shop again--and him talking. Before things got +done. Before they got hold of him. And fooled him. + +"Men oughtn't to be so tempted with business and things.... + +"They didn't hurt him, George?" she asked suddenly. + +For a moment I was puzzled. + +"Here, I mean," she said. + +"No," I lied stoutly, suppressing the memory of that foolish injection +needle I had caught the young doctor using. + +"I wonder, George, if they'll let him talk in Heaven...." + +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 WE could see the lightness of +it-- + +"Why couldn't they leave him alone?" she repeated in a whisper as we +went towards the inn. + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +LOVE AMONG THE WRECKAGE + +I + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +I did not instantly rise. I stared at her. "YOU!" I said. + +She looked at me steadily. "Me," she said + +I did not trouble about any civilities. I stood up and asked point blank +a question that came into my head. + +"Whose horse is that?" I said. + +She looked me in the eyes. "Carnaby's," she answered. + +"How did you get here--this way?" + +"The wall's down." + +"Down? Already?" + +"A great bit of it between the plantations." + +"And you rode through, and got here by chance?" + +"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. + +"I'm a mere vestige," I said. + +She made no answer, but remained regarding me steadfastly with a curious +air of proprietorship. + +"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." + +"The sun," she remarked irrelevantly, "has burnt you.... I'm getting +down." + +She swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face. + +"Where's Cothope?" she asked. + +"Gone." + +Her eyes flitted to the pavilion and back to me. We stood close +together, extraordinarily intimate, and extraordinarily apart. + +"I've never seen this cottage of yours," she said, "and I want to." + +She flung the bridle of her horse round the veranda post, and I helped +her tie it. + +"Did you get what you went for to Africa?" she asked. + +"No," I said, "I lost my ship." + +"And that lost everything?" + +"Everything." + +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. + +"It's comfortable," she remarked. + +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. + +"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." + +She flitted to my colour prints and my little case of books. Then she +went to the pianola. I watched her intently. + +"Does this thing play?" she said. + +"What?" I asked. + +"Does this thing play?" + +I roused myself from my preoccupation. + +"Like a musical gorilla with fingers all of one length. And a sort of +soul.... It's all the world of music to me." + +"What do you play?" + +"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." + +Silence again between us. She spoke with an effort. + +"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!" + +She gave me Brahms' Second Concerto, Op. 58, and curled up on the sofa +watching me as I set myself slowly to play.... + +"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..." + +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. + +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. + +"Beatrice!" I said. "Beatrice!" + +"My dear," she whispered, nearly breathless, with her arms about me. +"Oh! my dear!" + +II + +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 debris 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. + +Twelve days it lasted from that encounter in my chalet until our +parting. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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." + +She paused. "Then Carnaby came along." + +I remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one finger +just touching the water. + +"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." + +She stopped. + +"You knew?"--she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded. + +"Since when?" + +"Those last days.... It hasn't seemed to matter really. I was a little +surprised." + +She looked at me quietly. "Cothope knew," she said. "By instinct. I +could feel it." + +"I suppose," I began, "once, this would have mattered immensely. Now--" + +"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." + +And suddenly she dropped her face upon her hands, and sobbed +passionately-- + +"I forgot--I forgot," she cried, and became still.... + +I dabbled my paddle in the water. "Look here!" I said; "forget again! +Here am I--a ruined man. Marry me." + +She shook her head without looking up. + +We were still for a long time. "Marry me!" I whispered. + +She looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered +dispassionately-- + +"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." + +"Why?" I asked. "Marry me! Why should we two--" + +"You think," she said, "I could take courage and come to you and be your +everyday wife--while you work and are poor?" + +"Why not?" said I. + +She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. "Do you really think +that--of me? Haven't you seen me--all?" + +I hesitated. + +"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." + +She stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my +movement. + +"I don't care," I said. "I want to marry you and make you my wife!" + +"No," she said, "don't spoil things. That is impossible!" + +"Impossible!" + +"Think! I can't do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a maid?" + +"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--" + +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!" + +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. + +"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." + +She drew me to her and our lips met. + +III + +I asked her to marry me once again. + +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. + +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. + +"And now," I cried, "will you marry me?" + +"No," she said, "I shall keep to my life here." + +I asked her to marry me in a year's time. She shook her head. + +"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." + +"No," she said, "I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby." + +"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. + +"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--" + +"The rest of life together," I said. + +"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." + +"Nor I." + +"And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else +is there to do?" + +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 cabinet particulier?" + +"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." + +I looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry her +yet. I spluttered for words. + +"My God! Beatrice!" I cried; "but this is cowardice and folly! Are you +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--" + +She shook her head and stopped me abruptly. "It's all," she said. + +"All!" I protested. + +"I'm wiser than you. Wiser beyond words." She turned her eyes to me and +they shone with tears. + +"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." + +I tried to keep up the heroic note, but she would not listen to it. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"A woman, when she's spoilt, is SPOILT. She's dirty in grain. She's +done." + +She walked on weeping. + +"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--" + +She dashed the tears from her eyes and turned upon me. "Don't you +understand?" she challenged. "Don't you know?" + +We faced one another in silence for a moment. + +"Yes," I said, "I know." + +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. + +"I've had you," she said. + +"Heaven and hell," I said, "can't alter that." + +"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..." + +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. + +We came to the door of Lady Osprey's garden at last, and it was +beginning to drizzle. + +She held out her hands and I took them. + +"Yours," she said, in a weary unimpassioned voice; "all that I had--such +as it was. Will you forget?" + +"Never," I answered. + +"Never a touch or a word of it?" + +"No." + +"You will," she said. + +We looked at one another in silence, and her face full of fatigue and +misery. + +What could I do? What was there to do? + +"I wish--" I said, and stopped. + +"Good-bye." + +IV + +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. + +They passed out of sight and left me by the roadside.... + +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. + +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. + +Abruptly, ridiculously, I dissembled before him and went on and caught +my train.... + +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. + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +NIGHT AND THE OPEN SEA + +I + +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 MYSELF 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. + +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 Tono-Bungay, but I +had far better have called it Waste. 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! + +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. + +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. + +II + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +"This," it came to me, "is England. That is what I wanted to give in my +book. This!" + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +I have thought much of that bright afternoon's panorama. + +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. + +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. + +And then comes Astor's strong box and the lawyers' Inns. + +(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....) + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +I remember how I laughed aloud at the glimpse of the name of a London +County Council steamboat that ran across me. Caxton it was called, and +another was Pepys, and another was Shakespeare. 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 facade 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. + +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... + +III + +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. + +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. + +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.... + +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. + +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. + +IV + +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.... + +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. + +We are all things that make and pass striving upon a hidden mission, out +to the open sea. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tono Bungay, by H. G. Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TONO BUNGAY *** + +***** This file should be named 718.txt or 718.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/1/718/ + +Produced by John Bean; Diane Bean and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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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