Produced by David Widger
THE ISLAND PHARISEES
By John Galsworthy
“But this is a worshipful society”
KING JOHN
PREFACE
Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road. At first
he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at
nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he
can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life,
straight along this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so
pleased is he to walk. And he is charmed with everything--with the nice
flat road, all broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect
he can see on either hand. The sun shines, and he finds the road a
little hot and dusty; the rain falls, and he splashes through the muddy
puddles. It makes no matter--all is pleasant; his fathers went this way
before him; they made this road for him to tread, and, when they bred
him, passed into his fibre the love of doing things as they themselves
had done them. So he walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights
under the roofs that have been raised to shelter him, by those who went
before.
Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered. After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
day, with a beating heart, he tries one.
And this is where the fun begins.
Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say:
“No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah!
after that! The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is
obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly
tenth--I really pity him!”
And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed, bed,
he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had to spend
the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think, occur to him
that the broad road he treads all day was once a trackless heath itself.
But the poor silly tenth is faring on. It is a windy night that he
is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
nothing to help him but his courage. Nine times out of ten that courage
fails, and he goes down into the bog. He has seen the undiscovered,
and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his
spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep
in inns, was yet not tough enough. The tenth time he wins across, and on
the traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is
opened to mankind! A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right! And if all
men from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its
journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.
And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set
up business: Whatever is, is wrong! But since the Cosmic Spirit found
that matters moved too fast if those that felt “All things that are,
are wrong” equalled in number those that felt “All things that are, are
right,” It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual
way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing “All things that are,
are wrong” It decreed nine female spirits clucking “All things that are,
are right.” The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its
work, and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided
it in three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical. To all the
male-bird spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally
speaking), It gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male
and female, It gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird
spirits It gave moral courage too. But, because It knew that if all the
male-bird spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female--one
to ten--would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that
only one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of
courage; so that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking
either in moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the
poultry-run. And having started them upon these lines, it left them to
get along as best they might.
Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and
with every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
interesting question ought to be, “Am I that one?” Ninety very soon
find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should
discover, they say they are. Nine of the other ten, blinded by their
spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one they sink,
still proclaiming their virility. The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out
the play.
Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of the
truth “All things that are, are wrong,” upon the truth “All things that
are, are right.”
The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing of
the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's frock.
Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in their fashion
they are always thirty years at least behind the fashions of those
spirits who are concerned with what shall take their place. The
conditions that dictate our education, the distribution of our property,
our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things,
change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them,
being inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting,
and then are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. The ninety desiring
peace and comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds,
will have it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed,
that all is ordered and immutable, that every one will always marry,
play, and worship in the way that they themselves are marrying, playing,
worshipping. They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred
those who speculate with thought. This is the function they were made
for. They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life
which comes and works about in them. The Yeasty Stuff--the other
ten--chafed by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and
moulds, hate in their turn the comfortable ninety. Each party has
invented for the other the hardest names that it can think of:
Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
Ne'er-do-weels. So we go on! And so, as each of us is born to go his
journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the other,
and joins the choruses of name-slingers.
But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that thing
which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them both, and
positively smile to see the fun.
When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--and
so, no doubt, he is. Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in
fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten.
Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon
Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as
dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.
One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons,
of analysing human nature through the criticism that his work
evokes--criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions,
out of the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a fawn
from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy. And so, all authors
love to be abused--as any man can see.
In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
Island. JOHN GALSWORTHY.
January 1, 1908
PART I
THE TOWN
CHAPTER I
SOCIETY
A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short,
fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station. He was about
to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner of a
third-class carriage.
After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man and
wife. The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness of the
station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people, air, and
voices, all brought to him the sense of home. Meanwhile he wavered
between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he had
read and would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's French
Revolution, which he had not read and was doubtful of enjoying; he felt
that he ought to buy the latter, but he did not relish giving up the
former. While he hesitated thus, his carriage was beginning to fill
up; so, quickly buying both, he took up a position from which he
could defend his rights. “Nothing,” he thought, “shows people up like
travelling.”
The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack, he
took his seat. At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a girl
with a pale face, scrambled in.
“I was a fool to go third,” thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
from behind his journal.
They were seven. A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their lives
in the current of hard facts. Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-shouldered man
was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged person the condition
of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes till it occurred to
him how curious a look was in them--a watchful friendliness, an allied
distrust--and that their voices, cheerful, even jovial, seemed to be
cautious all the time. His glance strayed off, and almost rebounded from
the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and wholly self-complacent face of a
stout lady in a black-and-white costume, who was reading the Strand
Magazine, while her other, sleek, plump hand, freed from its black
glove, and ornamented with a thick watch-bracelet, rested on her lap. A
younger, bright-cheeked, and self-conscious female was sitting next her,
looking at the pale girl who had just got in.
“There's something about that girl,” thought Shelton, “they don't
like.” Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were of
a foreign cut. Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of eyes; these
eyes, prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle roguery from
above a thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted. They gave Shelton
the impression that he was being judged, and mocked, enticed, initiated.
His own gaze did not fall; this sanguine face, with its two-day growth
of reddish beard, long nose, full lips, and irony, puzzled him. “A
cynical face!” he thought, and then, “but sensitive!” and then, “too
cynical,” again.
The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his
yellow finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes. A strange air of
detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap of
luggage filled the rack above his head.
The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select him
for her confidence.
“Monsieur,” she asked, “do you speak French?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?
“The young man shook his head.
“No,” said he, “I am a foreigner.”
The girl sighed.
“But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?”
The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on animals
at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards the
figures of the foreigners.
“Yes,” broke out the red-faced man, “he was a bit squiffy that
evening--old Tom.”
“Ah!” replied his neighbour, “he would be.”
Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust. The
plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved convulsively;
and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating Shelton's heart.
It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be asked for something.
“Monsieur,” said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, “I am very
unhappy; can you tell me what to do? I had no money for a ticket.”
The foreign youth's face flickered.
“Yes?” he said; “that might happen to anyone, of course.”
“What will they do to me?” sighed the girl.
“Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle.” The young man slid his eyes from left
to right, and rested them on Shelton. “Although I don't as yet see your
way out.”
“Oh, monsieur!” sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none but
Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly feeling in
the carriage.
“I wish I could assist you,” said the foreign youth; “unfortunately----”
he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to Shelton.
The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.
“Can I be of any use?” he asked in English.
“Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest possible
service by lending her the money for a ticket.”
Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took. Passing it to
the girl, he said:
“A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'.”
The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he stole
covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to the girl in
a language that he did not understand. Though vagabond in essence, the
fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and irony not found upon
the face of normal man, and in turning from it to the other passengers
Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt, and questioning, that he
could not define. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he tried to
diagnose this new sensation. He found it disconcerting that the faces
and behaviour of his neighbours lacked anything he could grasp and
secretly abuse. They continued to converse with admirable and slightly
conscious phlegm, yet he knew, as well as if each one had whispered
to him privately, that this shady incident had shaken them. Something
unsettling to their notions of propriety-something dangerous and
destructive of complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.
Each had a different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour,
or sly, of showing this resentment. But by a flash of insight Shelton
saw that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
same. Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them and
with himself. He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman with the
Roman nose. The insulation and complacency of its pale skin, the passive
righteousness about its curve, the prim separation from the others of
the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly unaccountable importance.
It embodied the verdict of his fellow-passengers, the verdict of
Society; for he knew that, whether or no repugnant to the well-bred
mind, each assemblage of eight persons, even in a third-class carriage,
contains the kernel of Society.
But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be
immune from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental image
of the cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant smile that
now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination; he took out his
fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the young foreigner addressing
him in rapid French caused him to put it back abruptly.
“From what she tells me, sir,” he said, bending forward to be out of
hearing of the girl, “hers is an unhappy case. I should have been only
too glad to help her, but, as you see”--and he made a gesture by which
Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--“I am not
Rothschild. She has been abandoned by the man who brought her over to
Dover under promise of marriage. Look”--and by a subtle flicker of his
eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from the French girl
“they take good care not to let their garments touch her. They are
virtuous women. How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and finer to know you
have it, especially when you are never likely to be tempted.”
Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face grew
soft.
“Haven't you observed,” went on the youthful foreigner, “that those who
by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce judgment
are usually the first to judge? The judgments of Society are always
childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of individuals who
have never smelt the fire. And look at this: they who have money run too
great a risk of parting with it if they don't accuse the penniless of
being rogues and imbeciles.”
Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from an
utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of his
own private thoughts. Stifling his sense of the unusual for the queer
attraction this young man inspired, he said:
“I suppose you're a stranger over here?”
“I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London,” replied
the other. “I count on doing some good there--it is time!” A bitter and
pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips. “It won't be my fault if
I fail. You are English, Sir?”
Shelton nodded.
“Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly
always noticed in the English a kind of--'comment cela
s'appelle'--cocksureness, coming from your nation's greatest quality.”
“And what is that?” asked Shelton with a smile.
“Complacency,” replied the youthful foreigner.
“Complacency!” repeated Shelton; “do you call that a great quality?”
“I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a great
people. You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on the earth;
you suffer a little from the fact. If I were an English preacher my
desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency.”
Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
“Hum!” he said at last, “you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any
cockier than other nations.”
The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
“In effect,” said he, “it is a sufficiently widespread disease. Look at
these people here”--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates
of the carnage,--“very average persons! What have they done to warrant
their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do? That
old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at all--but look at
those two occupied with their stupidities about the price of hops, the
prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a thousand things all of
that sort--look at their faces; I come of the bourgeoisie myself--have
they ever shown proof of any quality that gives them the right to pat
themselves upon the back? No fear! Outside potatoes they know nothing,
and what they do not understand they dread and they despise--there
are millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'. The sole quality
these people have shown they have is cowardice. I was educated by the
Jesuits,” he concluded; “it has given me a way of thinking.”
Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred
voice, “Ah! quite so,” and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily
Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand,
he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
“Why do you say all this to me?”
The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--hesitated.
“When you've travelled like me,” he said, as if resolved to speak the
truth, “you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you speak.
It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you must learn
all that sort of thing to make face against life.”
Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but observe
the complimentary nature of these words. It was like saying “I'm not
afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal just because
I study human nature.”
“But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?”
His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
“A broken jug,” said he; “--you'll never mend her. She's going to a
cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the means
of getting there--it's all that you can do. One knows too well what'll
become of her.”
Shelton said gravely,
“Oh! that's horrible! Could n't she be induced to go back home? I should
be glad--”
The foreign vagrant shook his head.
“Mon cher monsieur,” he said, “you evidently have not yet had occasion
to know what the 'family' is like. 'The family' does not like damaged
goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands have dipped into
the till or daughters no longer to be married. What the devil would
they do with her? Better put a stone about her neck and let her drown at
once. All the world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan are
not quite the same.”
Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her hands
crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of life arose
within him.
“Yes,” said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts, “what's
called virtue is nearly always only luck.” He rolled his eyes as though
to say: “Ah! La, Conventions? Have them by all means--but don't look
like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is but cowardice and
luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!”
“Look here,” said Shelton, “I'll give her my address, and if she wants
to go back to her family she can write to me.”
“She'll never go back; she won't have the courage.”
Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of
her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young
man's words were true came over him.
“I had better not give them my private address,” he thought, glancing
at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: “Richard Paramor
Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields.”
“You're very good, sir. My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at present.
I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now.”
Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the
young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes. The
plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap;
it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her
frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her
sense of decency.
“He did n't get anything from me,” said the voice of the red-faced man,
ending a talk on tax-gatherers. The train whistled loudly, and Shelton
reverted to his paper. This time he crossed his legs, determined to
enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself looking at the
vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face. “That fellow,” he thought, “has seen
and felt ten times as much as I, although he must be ten years younger.”
He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds, trim
hedgerows, homely coverts. But strange ideas would come, and he was
discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the personality
of this young foreigner, disturbed him. It was all as though he had made
a start in some fresh journey through the fields of thought.
CHAPTER II
ANTONIA
Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer
races. He had been “down” from Oxford for some years, but these Olympian
contests still attracted him.
The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his arm
came in contact with a soft young shoulder. He saw close to him a young
girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager with
excitement. The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed
him vividly.
“Oh, we must bump them!” he heard her sigh.
“Do you know my people, Shelton?” said a voice behind his back; and
he was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the
warmer fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the dry
hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a quizzical
brown face.
“Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?” said the
lady. “Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard! He was your fag, was
n't he? How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the boats!”
“Mother, they like it!” cried the girl.
“Antonia ought to be rowing, herself,” said her father, whose name was
Dennant.
Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
life. He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a feeling
like that produced by a first glass of champagne.
The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two
days later he drove over and paid a call. Amidst the avocations of
reading for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a
whiff of some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring Antonia's
face before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank, distant eyes.
But two years passed before he again saw her. Then, at an invitation
from Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the Manor of Holm Oaks
against a neighbouring house; in the evening there was dancing oh
the lawn. The fair hair was now turned up, but the eyes were quite
unchanged. Their steps went together, and they outlasted every other
couple on the slippery grass. Thence, perhaps, sprang her respect for
him; he was wiry, a little taller than herself, and seemed to talk of
things that interested her. He found out she was seventeen, and she
found out that he was twenty-nine. The following two years Shelton
went to Holm Oaks whenever he was asked; to him this was a period of
enchanted games, of cub-hunting, theatricals, and distant sounds of
practised music, and during it Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and
more curious, and his own more shy, and schooled, more furtive and more
ardent. Then came his father's death, a voyage round the world, and that
peculiar hour of mixed sensations when, one March morning, abandoning
his steamer at Marseilles, he took train for Hyeres.
He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines
where the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian princesses,
and Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to find her
elsewhere, but he would have been surprised. His sunburnt face and
the new beard, on which he set some undefined value, apologetically
displayed, were scanned by those blue eyes with rapid glances, at once
more friendly and less friendly. “Ah!” they seemed to say, “here you
are; how glad I am! But--what now?”
He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy
oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss
Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with
insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere. A momentary
weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at
lunch. What was it gave them their look of strange detachment? Mrs.
Dennant was bending above a camera.
“I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed,” she said.
“What a pity! The kitten was rather nice!” The maiden aunt, placing
the knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
well-bred gaze on Shelton.
“Look, Auntie,” said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, “there's the
funny little man again!”
“Oh,” said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she looked
for the funny little man (who was not English)--“he's rather nice!”
Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny upward
slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by a windy
walk. From that moment he became her slave.
“Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic binoculars?”
said Mrs. Dennant's voice; “they're splendid for buildin's, but
buildin's are so disappointin'. The thing is to get human interest,
isn't it?” and her glance wandered absently past Shelton in search of
human interest.
“You haven't put down what you've taken, mother.”
From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.
“It's so easy to forget what they're about,” she said, “that's so
annoyin'.”
Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment; he
accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite sublime
about the way that they would leave the dining-room, unconscious that
they themselves were funny to all the people they had found so funny
while they had been sitting there, and he would follow them out
unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.
In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs.
Dennant disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many drives;
he played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings after
dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs dragged
as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed so very
near her. The community of isolation drew them closer. In place of a
companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she could confide
all her home-sick aspirations. So that, even when she was sitting
silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending with an air
of cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she would not show
him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet freshness that clung
about her, by her quick, offended glances at the strange persons round,
she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way that he was necessary. He
was far from realising this; his intellectual and observant parts were
hypnotised and fascinated even by her failings. The faint freckling
across her nose, the slim and virginal severeness of her figure, with
its narrow hips and arms, the curve of her long neck-all were added
charms. She had the wind and rain look, a taste of home; and over the
glaring roads, where the palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to
pass like the very image of an English day.
One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view. Down the Toulon road
gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an evening
crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the sun's
numbing, ran gladly in the veins. On the right hand of the road was
a Frenchman playing bowls. Enormous, busy, pleased, and upright as a
soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end to end, he
delighted Shelton. But Antonia threw a single look at the huge creature,
and her face expressed disgust. She began running up towards the ruined
tower.
Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone and
throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind. She stood at the top,
and he looked up at her. Over the world, gloriously spread below, she,
like a statue, seemed to rule. The colour was brilliant in her cheeks,
her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the flowing droop of her
long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the look of one who flies.
He pulled himself up and stood beside her; his heart choked him, all the
colour had left his cheeks.
“Antonia,” he said, “I love you.”
She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his
face must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes
vanished.
They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face. Had he
a chance then? Was it possible? That evening the instinct vouchsafed at
times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack his bag and go to
Cannes. On returning, two days later, and approaching the group in the
centre of the Winter Garden, the voice of the maiden aunt reading aloud
an extract from the Morning Post reached him across the room.
“Don't you think that's rather nice?” he heard her ask, and then: “Oh,
here you aye! It's very nice to see you back!”
Shelton slipped into a wicker chair. Antonia looked up quickly from her
sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.
He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom.
With desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of
inquiry, where had he been, what had he been doing? Then once again the
maiden aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.
A touch on his sleeve startled him. Antonia was leaning forward; her
cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.
“Would you like to see my sketches?”
To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound
that he had ever listened to.
“My dear Dick,” Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, “we would
rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again until
July. Of course I know you count it an engagement and all that, and
everybody's been writin' to congratulate you. But Algie thinks you ought
to give yourselves a chance. Young people don't always know what they're
about, you know; it's not long to wait.”
“Three months!” gasped Shelton.
He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command.
There was no alternative. Antonia had acquiesced in the condition with a
queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.
“It'll be something to look forward to, Dick,” she said.
He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the end
of April that he left for England. She came alone to see him off. It
was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape looked
impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives. Desperately
he clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her smile seemed
heartless in its brilliancy. He whispered “You will write?”
“Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!”
She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear “Good-bye!”
sounded shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels. He saw her
raise her hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still amongst
receding shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.
CHAPTER III
A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage
at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of
his desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing out but a
shame-faced smile. Her figure vanished, wavering into the hurly-burly;
one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of her soon faded
from his mind. His cab, however, overtook the foreign vagrant marching
along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy stride--an observant,
disillusioned figure.
The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands.
July loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes beckoned
him faintly, hopelessly. She would not even be coming back to England
for another month.
. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected
me. Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good things
in life are your letters.... John Noble dined with me yesterday; the
poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for Parliament. Why should I
think myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one sees about in
the streets? If people's faces are a fair test of their happiness, I' d
rather not feel in any way responsible....
The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded
him much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by; the
utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-driven
women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he saw
everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the
steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos
of hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked
hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging
creatures in their broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!
One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
3, BLANK ROW
WESTMINSTER.
MY DEAR SIR,
Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I was
so fortunate as to travel with a man like you. Having beaten the whole
town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end of my
resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail myself
of your permission, knowing your good heart. Since I saw you I have run
through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot tell what door
is left at which I have not knocked. I presented myself at the business
firm with whose name you supplied me, but being unfortunately in rags,
they refused to give me your address. Is this not very much in the
English character? They told me to write, and said they would forward
the letter. I put all my hopes in you.
Believe me, my dear sir,
(whatever you may decide)
Your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week
ago. The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking,
sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly,
the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his
memories of Antonia. It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres
to London that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.
He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row. Dismissing his cab at
the corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in
question. It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in other
words, a “doss-house.” By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with
a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with
soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking
for had gone without leaving his address.
“But isn't there anybody,” asked Shelton, “of whom I can make inquiry?”
“Yes; there's a Frenchman.” And opening an inner door she bellowed:
“Frenchy! Wanted!” and disappeared.
A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and
stood, sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular
impression of some little creature in a cage.
“He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto. What do you
want with him, if I may ask?” The little man's yellow cheeks were
wrinkled with suspicion.
Shelton produced the letter.
“Ah! now I know you”--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
crow's-feet--“he spoke of you. 'If I can only find him,' he used to say,
'. 'm saved.' I liked that young man; he had ideas.”
“Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?”
The Frenchman shook his head.
“Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea.”
“Do you think he will come back here? But by that time I suppose, you'll
hardly be here yourself?”
A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
“I? Oh, yes, sir! Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging;
I no longer have illusions. I shave these specimens for a living, and
shall shave them till the day of judgment. But leave a letter with me by
all means; he will come back. There's an overcoat of his here on which
he borrowed money--it's worth more. Oh, yes; he will come back--a youth
of principle. Leave a letter with me; I'm always here.”
Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, “I'm always here,”
touched him in their simplicity. Nothing more dreadful could be said.
“Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?” he asked; “please keep the
change for the trouble I am giving you.”
“Thank you,” said the Frenchman simply; “he told me that your heart
was good. If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at your
ease.”
Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen in
company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to himself;
and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention, suspecting that he
was not sober. Just as he was about to take his leave, however, the old
fellow thus accosted him:
“Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?” he said, working at a loose
tooth with his shrivelled fingers. “I went to a dentist once, who
professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop my
teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings? No, my bhoy;
they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I shimply ask
you, d'you call that dentistry?” Fixing his eyes on Shelton's collar,
which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he resumed with drunken
scorn: “Ut's the same all over this pharisaical counthry. Talk of high
morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation! The world was never at such
low ebb! Phwhat's all this morality? Ut stinks of the shop. Look at the
condition of Art in this counthry! look at the fools you see upon th'
stage! look at the pictures and books that sell! I know what I'm talking
about, though I am a sandwich man. Phwhat's the secret of ut all? Shop,
my bhoy! Ut don't pay to go below a certain depth! Scratch the skin, but
pierce ut--Oh! dear, no! We hate to see the blood fly, eh?”
Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply;
but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
“Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think
blanks loike me ought to exist? Whoy don't they kill us off?
Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy? Because they object to th' extreme
course. Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the world. They
won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam high! They blink
the truth in this middle-class counthry. My bhoy”--and he whispered
confidentially--“ut pays 'em. Eh? you say, why shouldn't they, then?”
(But Shelton had not spoken.) “Well, let'em! let 'em! But don't tell
me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh civilisation! What can you
expect in a counthry where the crimson, emotions are never allowed to
smell the air? And what'sh the result? My bhoy, the result is sentiment,
a yellow thing with blue spots, like a fungus or a Stilton cheese. Go to
the theatre, and see one of these things they call plays. Tell me, are
they food for men and women? Why, they're pap for babes and shop-boys! I
was a blanky actor moyself!”
Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till the
old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.
“You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?” he said suddenly--“too much of 'n
Englishman, no doubt.”
“Very seldom,” said Shelton.
“Pity! Think of the pleasures of oblivion! Oi 'm dhrunk every night.”
“How long will you last at that rate?”
“There speaks the Englishman! Why should Oi give up me only pleasure
to keep me wretched life in? If you've anything left worth the keeping
shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you are dhrunk
the better--that stands to reason.”
In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came from.
“Oh, and Englishman! Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man. You
are a drunken nation”--he made a motion with his hands “he no longer
eats--no inside left. It is unfortunate-a man of spirit. If you have
never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy to show you
over it.”
Shelton took out his cigarette case.
“Yes, yes,” said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a
cigarette; “I'm accustomed to it. But you're wise to fumigate the air;
one is n't in a harem.”
And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
“This,” said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, “is
a specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the blood.”
There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air of a showman,
the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt. “They go out in the mornings,
earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off, and then begin again.
That's their life. There are people who think they ought to be reformed.
'.on cher monsieur', one must face reality a little, even in this
country. It would be a hundred times better for these people to spend
their time reforming high Society. Your high Society makes all these
creatures; there's no harvest without cutting stalks. 'Selon moi',” he
continued, putting back the quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through
his nose, “there's no grand difference between your high Society
and these individuals here; both want pleasure, both think only of
themselves, which is very natural. One lot have had the luck, the
other--well, you see.” He shrugged. “A common set! I've been robbed
here half a dozen times. If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat,
an overcoat, you want eyes in the back of your head. And they are
populated! Change your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not
sleeping alone. 'V'la ma clientele'. The half of them don't pay me!” He,
snapped his yellow sticks of fingers. “A penny for a shave, twopence
a cut! 'Quelle vie'. Here,” he continued, standing by a bed, “is a
gentleman who owes me fivepence. Here's one who was a soldier; he's done
for! All brutalised; not one with any courage left! But, believe me,
monsieur,” he went on, opening another door, “when you come down to
houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as necessary as breath is
to the lungs. No matter what, you must have a vice to give you a little
solace--'un peu de soulagement'. Ah, yes! before you judge these swine,
reflect on life! I've been through it. Monsieur, it is not nice never
to know where to get your next meal. Gentlemen who have food in their
stomachs, money in their pockets, and know where to get more, they never
think. Why should they--'pas de danger'. All these cages are the same.
Come down, and you shall see the pantry.” He took Shelton through the
kitchen, which seemed the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an
inner room furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.
Another fire was burning there. “We always have hot water,” said the
Frenchman, “and three times a week they make a fire down there”--he
pointed to a cellar--“for our clients to boil their vermin. Oh, yes, we
have all the luxuries.”
Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
trying to adopt him as a patron:
“Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have
your letter without fail. My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I am
always at your service.”
CHAPTER IV
THE PLAY
Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare. “That old
actor was drunk,” thought he, “and no doubt he was an Irishman; still,
there may be truth in what he said. I am a Pharisee, like all the rest
who are n't in the pit. My respectability is only luck. What should I
have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?” and he stared at
a stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to pierce the mask of
their serious, complacent faces. If these ladies and gentlemen were put
into that pit into which he had been looking, would a single one of them
emerge again? But the effort of picturing them there was too much for
him; it was too far--too ridiculously far.
One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst of
all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and desperately
jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence, had evidently
bought some article which pleased them. There was nothing offensive in
their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at the passing of the other
people. The man had that fine solidity of shoulder and of waist, the
glossy self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and
dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept
her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled
voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic.
It was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been
exhausted, or passionate, or afraid. Their talk, like that of many
dozens of fine couples invading London from their country places, was of
where to dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what
they should buy. And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even
in their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation. They
were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his
soul. Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them. They were the
best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew everybody,
had clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such conduct as seemed
to them “impossible,” all breaches of morality, such as mistakes
of etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy (except with a
canonised class of objects--the legitimate sufferings, for instance, of
their own families and class). How healthy they were! The memory of the
doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like poison. He was conscious that
in his own groomed figure, in the undemonstrative assurance of his walk,
he bore resemblance to the couple he apostrophised. “Ah!” he thought,
“how vulgar our refinement is!” But he hardly believed in his own
outburst. These people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so
healthy, he could not really understand what irritated him. What was the
matter with them? They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites,
clear consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
animals which no longer had a need for using them. Some rare national
faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had destroyed
their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
The lady looked up at her husband. The light of quiet, proprietary
affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her
features slightly reddened by the wind. And the husband looked back
at her, calm, practical, protecting. They were very much alike. So
doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for
her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would look,
standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom.
Calm, proprietary, kind! He passed them and walked behind a second less
distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact
and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this
dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same
sensation. It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a
circle--couple after couple all the same. No heads, toes, angles of
their souls stuck out anywhere. In the sea of their environments they
were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving
at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were
all respectable. And he himself as respectable as any.
He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and
poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
... Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the matter
with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean as
caterpillars. To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole
out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us,
is what we're all after. There's something about human nature that is
awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they
seem to me to be....
He paused, biting his pen. Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel
him to see a doctor for writing in that style? How would the world go
round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability,
and the lack of sympathy?
He looked out of the open window. Down in the street a footman was
settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the
decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to
him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
He got up and walked up and down. His rooms, in a narrow square skirting
Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a
man of means. Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in
a very miscellaneous way. They were not bare, but close inspection
revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and there was
absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in it. His
goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard acquisitions of a
pressing need. Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but everything was
somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never rebuked a servant.
Above all, there was nothing that indicated hobbies.
Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
. . . I don't think I understand what you mean by “the healthier people
are, the more repulsive they seem to be”; one must be healthy to be
perfect, must n't one? I don't like unhealthy people. I had to play on
that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me feel unhappy.
I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got the back-handed
lifting stroke at last--hurrah! . . .
By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic writing:
DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few days.
If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at seven, and go
to the theatre. It's ages since I saw you.
Yours as ever,
B. M. HALIDOME.
Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend
Halidome's well-appointed dinners. At seven, therefore, he went to
Chester Square. His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold
by the light of an electric lamp. The walls of the room were hung with
costly etchings, arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from the
carving of the mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the
miraculously-coloured meerschaums to the chased fire-irons, everything
displayed an unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish significant of
life completely under rule of thumb. Everything had been collected.
The collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure of a man, clean
shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and the rather weighty
dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance that one is in the
right.
Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
where he examined him, smiling a slow smile. “Glad to see you, old chap.
I rather like your beard,” he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing,
perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent
judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the
smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and
three wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same
perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything,
except with a jovial brusqueness that was worse than the offence. The
suave and reasonable weight of his dislikes and his approvals stirred
Shelton up to feel ironical and insignificant; but whether from a sense
of the solid, humane, and healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or
merely from the fact that this friendship had been long in bottle, he
did not resent his mixed sensations.
“By the way, I congratulate you, old chap,” said Halidome, while driving
to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his congratulations, no
more than about himself. “They're awfully nice people, the Dennants.”
A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
“Where are you going to live? You ought to come down and live near
us; there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really
a ripping neighbourhood. Have you chucked the Bar? You ought to do
something, you know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do. I
tell you what, Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council.”
But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
energies were spent in sidling to their stalls. He had time to pass his
neighbours in review before the play began. Seated next to him was a
lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid liberality;
beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-grey moustache
and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had known at Eton.
One of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a weather-tanned
complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed out above the
lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful eyes, gave him
a satirical and resolute expression. “I've got hold of your tail,
old fellow,” he seemed to say, as though he were always busy with
the catching of some kind of fox. The other's goggling eyes rested on
Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair, brushed with water
and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and admirable waistcoat,
suggested the sort of dandyism that despises women. From his recognition
of these old schoolfellows Shelton turned to look at Halidome, who,
having cleared his throat, was staring straight before him at the
curtain. Antonia's words kept running in her lover's head, “I don't like
unhealthy people.” Well, all these people, anyway, were healthy; they
looked as if they had defied the elements to endow them with a spark of
anything but health. Just then the curtain rose.
Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made
for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play
unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of
the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a hundred
reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were revealed
to Shelton's eyes. These reasons issued mainly from the mouth of a
well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part of a sort of
Moral Salesman. He turned to Halidome and whispered:
“Can you stand that old woman?”
His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
“What old woman?”
“Why, the old ass with the platitudes!”
Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had
been assailed in person.
“Do you mean Pirbright?” he said. “I think he's ripping.”
Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
Antonia's words again recurred to him, “I don't like unhealthy people,”
and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play. It was healthy!
The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a
cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon
the mat.
The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking off
neat whisky. He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a match;
then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette....
Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer. He shifted his elbows, for he
felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was pitched
into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat. The husband poured more
whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the door; then,
turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret of some
tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke. He left the
room, returned, and once more filled his glass. A lady now entered, pale
of face and dark of eye--his wife. The husband crossed the stage, and
stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow
Shelton had felt sure he would assume. He spoke:
“Come in, and shut the door.”
Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of
those dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted
creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed
in a restaurant. He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman
and the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white,
emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with
yellow flowers. He remembered the curious scornful anger of their
voices, subdued so that only a few words reached him. He remembered
the cold loathing in their eyes. And, above all, he remembered his
impression that this sort of scene happened between them every other
day, and would continue so to happen; and as he put on his overcoat and
paid his bill he had asked himself, “Why in the name of decency do they
go on living together?” And now he thought, as he listened to the two
players wrangling on the stage: “What 's the good of all this talk?
There's something here past words.”
The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next him.
She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was healthy
and offended.
“I do dislike these unhealthy women,” he was saying, but catching
Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been listening
to something that had displeased him not a little. The goggle-eyed man
was yawning. Shelton turned to Halidome:
“Can you stand this sort of thing?” said he.
“No; I call that scene a bit too hot,” replied his friend.
Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
“I'll bet you anything,” he said, “I know what's going to happen now.
You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife. He'll show her
how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her hand
and say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but the good
opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself for saying
it; but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means it. And then
he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't her own but his
version of them, and show her the only way of salvation is to kiss her
husband”; and Shelton grinned. “Anyway, I'll bet you anything he takes
her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'.
Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he said,
“I think Pirbright 's ripping!”
But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great applause.
CHAPTER V
THE GOOD CITIZEN
Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their
coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors,
as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false morals and
emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants thrive and die,
human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh, impartial skies. The
lights revealed innumerable solemn faces, gleamed innumerably on
jewels, on the silk of hats, then passed to whiten a pavement wet with
newly-fallen rain, to flare on horses, on the visages of cabmen, and
stray, queer objects that do not bear the light.
“Shall we walk?” asked Halidome.
“Has it ever struck you,” answered Shelton, “that in a play nowadays
there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have acquired
the attitude of God?”
Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in the
sound.
“You're so d---d fastidious,” was his answer.
“I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate,” went on Shelton.
“That ending makes me sick.”
“Why?” replied Halidome. “What other end is possible? You don't want a
play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.”
“But this does.”
Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his walk,
as in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be in
front.
“How do you mean?” he asked urbanely; “it's better than the woman making
a fool of herself.”
“I'm thinking of the man.”
“What man?”
“The husband.”
“What 's the matter with him? He was a bit of a bounder, certainly.”
“I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't
want him.”
Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment
itself, caused his friend to reply with dignity:
“There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing. Women don't
really care; it's only what's put into their heads.”
“That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really
want anything; it's only what's put into your head!' You are begging the
question, my friend.”
But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he
was “begging the question,” for he prided himself on being strong in
logic.
“That be d---d,” he said.
“Not at all, old chap. Here is a case where a woman wants her freedom,
and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it.”
“Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court.”
Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance of
his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that she
was mad, and this struck him now as funny. But then he thought:
“Poor devil! he was bound to call her mad! If he didn't, it would be
confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a man to
consider himself that.” But a glance at his friend's eye warned him that
he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
“Surely,” he said, “even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave like
a gentleman.”
“Depends on whether she behaves like a lady.”
“Does it? I don't see the connection.”
Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door; there
was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
“My dear chap,” he said, “you're too sentimental altogether.”
The word “sentimental” nettled Shelton. “A gentleman either is a
gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
behave?”
Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his hall,
where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn towards
the blaze.
“No, Bird,” he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-tails
in his hands; “it's all very well to talk, but wait until you're
married. A man must be master, and show it, too.”
An idea occurred to Shelton.
“Look here, Hal,” he said: “what should you do if your wife got tired of
you?”
The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
contempt.
“I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation to
yourself.”
Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
“I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind up.
She'd soon come round.”
“But suppose she really loathed you?”
Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent. How
could anybody loathe him? With great composure, however, regarding
Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
“There are a great many things to be taken into consideration.”
“It appears to me,” said Shelton, “to be a question of common pride. How
can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it.”
His friend's voice became judicial.
“A man ought not to suffer,” he said, poring over his whisky, “because a
woman gets hysteria. You have to think of Society, your children, house,
money arrangements, a thousand things. It's all very well to talk. How
do you like this whisky?”
“The part of the good citizen, in fact,” said Shelton,
“self-preservation!”
“Common-sense,” returned his friend; “I believe in justice before
sentiment.” He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton. “Besides,
there are many people with religious views about it.”
“It's always seemed to me,” said Shelton, “to be quaint that people
should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an eye,'
and call themselves Christians. Did you ever know anybody stand on their
rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of their own comfort?
Let them call their reasons what they like, you know as well as I do
that it's cant.”
“I don't know about that,” said Halidome, more and more superior as
Shelton grew more warm; “when you stand on your rights, you do it for
the sake of Society as well as for your own. If you want to do away with
marriage, why don't you say so?”
“But I don't,” said Shelton, “is it likely? Why, I'm going--” He
stopped without adding the words “to be married myself,” for it suddenly
occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic
in the world. “All I can say is,” he went on soberly, “that you can't
make a horse drink by driving him. Generosity is the surest way of
tightening the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the
rest, the chief thing is to prevent their breeding.”
Halidome smiled.
“You're a rum chap,” he said.
Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
“I tell you what”--for late at night a certain power of vision came to
him--“it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's
nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water.”
But Halidome remained unruffled.
“All right,” he said, “call it that. I don't see why I should go to the
wall; it wouldn't do any good.”
“You admit, then,” said Shelton, “that our morality is the sum total of
everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?”
Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
“I don't know,” he began, “that I should quite call it that--”
But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture
of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the
perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as
ridiculous.
“Hang it, Hall” he cried, jumping from his chair, “what an old fraud you
are! I'll be off.”
“No, look here!” said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared
upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: “You're quite wrong--”
“Very likely; good-night, old chap!”
Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him. It was Saturday,
and he passed many silent couples. In every little patch of shadow he
could see two forms standing or sitting close together, and in their
presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their tongues. The wind
rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as diamonds, vanished
the next. In the lower streets a large part of the world was under the
influence of drink, but by this Shelton was far from being troubled. It
seemed better than Drama, than dressing-bagged men, unruffled women,
and padded points of view, better than the immaculate solidity of his
friend's possessions.
“So,” he reflected, “it's right for every reason, social, religious, and
convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired. There
are obviously advantages about the married state; charming to feel
respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk of life
would bring on you contempt. If old Halidome showed that he was tired of
me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of a cad; but if
his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd still consider
himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving her the burden of
his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion into it--a religion
that says, 'Do unto others!'.
But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it
was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him. He reached
his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft,
gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a moment before
entering.
“I wonder,” thought he, “if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
that chap in the play. It's natural. We all want our money's worth,
our pound of flesh! Pity we use such fine words--'Society, Religion,
Morality.' Humbug!”
He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long time,
his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of the
dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective
frown about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a
man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver.
“Yus,” the old ruffian said, “I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say
is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!”
They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose Antonia's
face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and dignity; the
forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair parted in the
centre, and brushed across. A light seemed to illumine the plane of
their existence, as the electric lamp with the green shade had illumined
the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before Shelton's vision lay
that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any kind, autocratic;
complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any Midland landscape. Healthy,
wealthy, wise! No room but for perfection, self-preservation, the
survival of the fittest! “The part of the good citizen,” he thought:
“no, if we were all alike, this would n't be a world!”
CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
“My dear Richard” (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), “I shall be glad
to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the question of
your marriage settlement....” At that hour accordingly Shelton made
his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black letters the names
“Paramor and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)” were written on the wall
of a stone entrance. He ascended the solid steps with nervousness, and
by a small red-haired boy was introduced to a back room on the first
floor. Here, seated at a table in the very centre, as if he thereby
better controlled his universe, a pug-featured gentleman, without a
beard, was writing. He paused. “Ow, Mr. Richard!” he said; “glad to see
you, sir. Take a chair. Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute”;
and in the tone of his allusion to his employer was the satirical
approval that comes with long and faithful service. “He will do
everything himself,” he went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest
eyes, “and he 's not a young man.”
Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the prosperity
deepening upon his face. In place of the look of harassment which on
most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty, his old friend's
countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation, had expanded--a
little greasily, a little genially, a little coarsely--every time he
met it. A contemptuous tolerance for people who were not getting on was
spreading beneath its surface; it left each time a deeper feeling that
its owner could never be in the wrong.
“I hope you're well, sir,” he resumed: “most important for you to have
your health now you're going-to”--and, feeling for the delicate way to
put it, he involuntarily winked--“to become a family man. We saw it
in the paper. My wife said to me the other morning at breakfast: 'Bob,
here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be married. Is that any
relative of your Mr. Shelton?' 'My dear,' I said to her, 'it's the very
man!'.
It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass the
whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the room, but
that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before his eyes) he
actually lived another life where someone called him “Bob.” Bob! And
this, too, was a revelation. Bob! Why, of course, it was the only name
for him! A bell rang.
“That's your uncle”; and again the head clerk's voice sounded ironical.
“Good-bye, sir.”
He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an enormous
room in the front where his uncle waited.
Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose
brown face was perfectly clean-shaven. His grey, silky hair was brushed
in a cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left side. He
stood before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had the springy
abruptness of men who cannot fatten. There was a certain youthfulness,
too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had been through
fire; and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising smiles. The room
was like the man--morally large, void of red-tape and almost void
of furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the walls, no papers
littered up the table; a single bookcase contained a complete edition of
the law reports, and resting on the Law Directory was a single red rose
in a glass of water. It looked the room of one with a sober magnanimity,
who went to the heart of things, despised haggling, and before whose
smiles the more immediate kinds of humbug faded.
“Well, Dick,” said he, “how's your mother?”
Shelton replied that his mother was all right.
“Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
this Brass thing. You can say it's safe, from me.”
Shelton made a face.
“Mother,” said he, “always believes things are safe.”
His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance, and
up went the corners of his mouth.
“She's splendid,” he said.
“Yes,” said Shelton, “splendid.”
The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment in
such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of questioning.
“Well, about your settlement”; and, touching a bell three times,
Mr. Paramor walked up and down the room. “Bring me the draft of Mr.
Richard's marriage settlement.”
The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--“Now then,
Dick,” said Mr. Paramor. “She 's not bringing anything into settlement,
I understand; how 's that?”
“I did n't want it,” replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.
Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a
blue pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read. The latter,
following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved when
he paused suddenly.
“If you die and she marries again,” said Mr. Paramor, “she forfeits her
life interest--see?”
“Oh!” said Shelton; “wait a minute, Uncle Ted.”
Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his mouth,
and was decorously subdued. It was Shelton's turn to walk about.
“If she marries again,” he repeated to himself.
Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might have
watched a fish he had just landed.
“It's very usual,” he remarked.
Shelton took another turn.
“She forfeits,” thought he; “exactly.”
When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she
continued to belong to him. Exactly!
Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.
“Well, my dear,” they seemed to say, “what 's the matter?”
Exactly! Why should she have his money if she married again? She would
forfeit it. There was comfort in the thought. Shelton came back and
carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely business
basis, and disguise the real significance of what was passing in his
mind.
“If I die and she marries again,” he repeated aloud, “she forfeits.”
What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly have
been devised? His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely turning
from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.
“I don't want to tie her,” said Shelton suddenly.
The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.
“You want the forfeiture out?” he asked.
The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a
piece of sentiment.
“Ye-es,” he stammered.
“Sure?”
“Quite!” The answer was a little sulky.
Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading
of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied
in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do
this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features, just
pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither
straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his
eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor
dandified; his serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of
the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance
between heart and head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.
“'During coverture,'. quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, “you
understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on
taking?”
If they didn't get on! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor did not smile, and
again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something
poised but firm. He remarked irritably:
“If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it.”
This time his uncle smiled. It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry
at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal
to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.
“If--hum--it came to the other thing,” said Mr. Paramor, “the
settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned. We 're bound to look
at every case, you know, old boy.”
The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
strong in Shelton. He was not one of those who could not face the notion
of transferred affections--at a safe distance.
“All right, Uncle Ted,” said he. For one mad moment he was attacked by
the desire to “throw in” the case of divorce. Would it not be common
chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she
wished, unhampered by monetary troubles? You only needed to take out the
words “during coverture.”
Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face. There was no meanness
there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow
with its wide sweep of hair. “Quixotism,” it seemed to say, “has merits,
but--” The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall windows, looking as
if it dealt habitually in common-sense, discouraged him. Innumerable men
of breeding and the soundest principles must have bought their wives in
here. It was perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf. The
aroma of Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.
“I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going to
be married till the autumn,” said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.
Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
glass, and sniffed at it. “Will you come with me as far as Pall Mall? I
'. going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I suppose?”
They walked into the Strand.
“Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?” asked Shelton, as they
passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.
“I never go to modern plays,” replied Mr. Paramor; “too d---d gloomy.”
Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head, his
eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.
“Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?”
“Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put in
words?”
“The French succeed in doing it,” replied Shelton, “and the Russians;
why should n't we?”
Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.
“What's right for the French and Russians, Dick,” he said “is wrong for
us. When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false. I should
like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him to your
mother.” He went in and bought a salmon:
“Now, my dear,” he continued, as they went on, “do you tell me that it's
decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels? Is n't
life bad enough already?”
It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face had
a look of crucifixion. It was, perhaps, only the stronger sunlight in
the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
“I don't know,” he said; “I think I prefer the truth.”
“Bad endings and the rest,” said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button. “Truth 's the very
devil!”
He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face;
there seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle of
tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness. Like the
lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him look at her.
“No, my dear,” he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; “feelings are
snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks. You won't come
to my club? Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother when you
see her”; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go on to his
own club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle, but from the
nation of which they were both members by birth and blood and education.
CHAPTER VII
THE CLUB
He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage.
The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been
these: “Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? She was a Penguin.”
No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there had
been an “Ah! that 's right; this is due to us” tone about the saying.
Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: “Charles Penguin, fifth Baron
Baltimore. Issue: Alice, b. 184-, m. 186-Algernon Dennant, Esq., of Holm
Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire.” He put down the Peerage and took up
the 'Landed Gentry'. “Dennant, Algernon Cuffe, eldest son of the late
Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble.
Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow; ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford,
J. P. for Oxfordshire. Residence, Holm Oaks,” etc., etc. Dropping the
'.anded Gentry', he took up a volume of the 'Arabian Nights', which some
member had left reposing on the book-rest of his chair, but instead of
reading he kept looking round the room. In almost every seat, reading
or snoozing, were gentlemen who, in their own estimation, might have
married Penguins. For the first time it struck him with what majestic
leisureliness they turned the pages of their books, trifled with their
teacups, or lightly snored. Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with
dark moustache, thick hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with
stooping shoulders; a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard
and large white waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle
age, whose face was like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a
sanguine creature fast asleep. Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat
or thin, hairy or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was
complete. They were all the creatures of good form. Staring at them or
reading the Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner. He
had not been long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection
strolled up and took the next table.
“Ah, Shelton! Back? Somebody told me you were goin' round the world.”
He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass. “Clear soup! . . . Read
Jellaby's speech? Amusing the way he squashes all those fellows. Best
man in the House, he really is.”
Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in
the habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why. The red and
shaven face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen
by good humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed
introspectively on the successful process of his eating.
“Success!” thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--“success is what we
admire in Jellaby. We all want success . . . . Yes,” he admitted, “a
successful beast.”
“Oh!” said his neighbour, “I forgot. You're in the other camp?”
“Not particularly. Where did you get that idea?”
His neighbour looked round negligently.
“Oh,” said he, “I somehow thought so”; and Shelton almost heard him
adding, “There's something not quite sound about you.”
“Why do you admire Jellaby?” he asked.
“Knows his own mind,” replied his neighbour; “it 's more than the others
do . . . . This whitebait is n't fit for cats! Clever fellow, Jellaby!
No nonsense about him! Have you ever heard him speak? Awful good sport
to watch him sittin' on the Opposition. A poor lot they are!” and
he laughed, either from appreciation of Jellaby sitting on a small
minority, or from appreciation of the champagne bubbles in his glass.
“Minorities are always depressing,” said Shelton dryly.
“Eh? what?”
“I mean,” said Shelton, “it's irritating to look at people who have n't
a chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics, and
all that.”
His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.
“Er--yes, quite,” said he; “don't you take mint sauce? It's the best
part of lamb, I always think.”
The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that every
man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began to
regain its influence on Shelton. How many times had he not sat there,
carefully nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table he was
used to, a paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip with who
was not a bounder; while the sensation of having drunk enough stole
over him. Happy! That is, happy as a horse is happy who never leaves his
stall.
“Look at poor little Bing puffin' about,” said his neighbour, pointing
to a weazened, hunchy waiter. “His asthma's awf'ly bad; you can hear him
wheezin' from the street.”
He seemed amused.
“There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?” said Shelton.
His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.
“Here, take this away; it's overdone;” said he. “Bring me some lamb.”
Shelton pushed his table back.
“Good-night,” he said; “the Stilton's excellent!”
His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
plate.
In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales and
took his weight. “Eleven stone!” he thought; “gone up!” and, clipping a
cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.
After half an hour he dropped the book. There seemed something rather
fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot, and was
full of well-connected people, it had apparently been contrived to throw
no light on anything whatever. He looked at the author's name; everyone
was highly recommending it. He began thinking, and staring at the
fire....
Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the Rifles,
bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly just a little
drunk.
“Congratulate you, old chap! I say, what made you grow that b-b-eastly
beard?”
Shelton grinned.
“Pillbottle of the Duchess!” read young Dennant, taking up the book.
“You been reading that? Rippin', is n't it?”
“Oh, ripping!” replied Shelton.
“Rippin' plot! When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused.”
“Rather!” murmured Shelton.
“That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
There's old Benjy! Hallo, Benjy!”
“Hallo, Bill, old man!”
This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice and
manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.
In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery, a
grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called Stroud,
came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a moustache
and a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be seen in the
club any night of the year when there was no racing out of reach of
London.
“You know,” began young Dennant, “that this bounder”--he slapped the
young man Benjy on the knee--“is going to be spliced to-morrow. Miss
Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate.”
“By Jove!” said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they
would understand.
“Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best. I tell you
what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you
won't get such another chance of practice. Benjy 'll give you a card.”
“Delighted!” murmured Benjy.
“Where is it?”
“St. Briabas; two-thirty. Come and see how they do the trick. I'll call
for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together”; again he patted
Benjy's knee.
Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had
made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose suavity
had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some
approaching race than in his coming marriage. But Shelton knew from his
own sensations that this could not really be the case; it was merely a
question of “good form,” the conceit of a superior breeding, the duty
not to give oneself away. And when in turn he marked the eyes of Stroud
fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows, and the curious greedy glances of
the racing man, he felt somehow sorry for him.
“Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?”
asked the racing man.
And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in his
hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.
“His name is Bayes,” said Stroud; “spends half his time among the
Chinese--must have a grudge against them! And now he 's got his leg he
can't go there any more.”
“Chinese? What does he do to them?”
“Bibles or guns. Don't ask me! An adventurer.”
“Looks a bit of a bounder,” said the racing man.
Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once
how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the “Woods and Forests,” and
plenty of time for “bridge” and gossip at his club, to see these people
with untidy lives. A minute later the man with the “game leg” passed
close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how intelligible
the resentment of his fellow-members was. He had eyes which, not
uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel bars; he seemed
the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that were “bad form,” a
man who might even go as far as chivalry. He looked straight at Shelton,
and his uncompromising glance gave an impression of fierce loneliness;
altogether, an improper person to belong to such a club. Shelton
remembered the words of an old friend of his father's: “Yes, Dick,
all sorts of fellows belong here, and they come here for all sorts o'
reasons, and a lot of em come because they've nowhere else to go, poor
beggars”; and, glancing from the man with the “game leg” to Stroud, it
occurred to Shelton that even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor
beggars. One never knew! A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored
him. Ah, the lucky devil! He would not have to come here any more! and
the thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long
flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.
“Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!” said young Bill Dennant.
Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left once
more to reverie.
“Good form!” thought he; “that fellow must be made of steel. They'll
go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such
foolery.”
He crossed over to the window. Rain had begun to fall; the streets
looked wild and draughty. The cabmen were putting on their coats. Two
women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-clothed,
dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly, desperate
step. Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way amongst his
fellow-members. A procession of old school and college friends came up
before his eyes. After all, what had there been in his own education, or
theirs, to give them any other standard than this “good form”? What
had there been to teach them anything of life? Their imbecility was
incredible when you came to think of it. They had all the air of knowing
everything, and really they knew nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or
the Emotions; nothing of the bonds that bind all men together. Why, even
such words were not “good form”; nothing outside their little circle was
“good form.” They had a fixed point of view over life because they came
of certain schools, and colleges, and regiments! And they were those in
charge of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.
Well, it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!
“Successful!” he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-leather
boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with gold
nose-nippers; “oh, it 's successful!”
Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
solemn pleasure as he read. In the white of his eye there was a torpid
and composed abstraction. There was nothing in that book to startle him
or make him think.
The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking of
his recent visit to the south of France. He had a scandalous anecdote or
two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold nose-nippers; he
was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly humour that it
was impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave so perfect an
impression of enjoying life, and doing himself well. “Well, good-night!”
he murmured--“An engagement!”--and the certainty he left behind that his
engagement must be charming and illicit was pleasant to the soul.
And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-being
was upon him. His superiority to these his fellow-members soothed him.
He saw through all the sham of this club life, the meanness of this
worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved novelists, “good form,”
and the terrific decency of our education. It was soothing thus to see
through things, soothing thus to be superior; and from the soft recesses
of his chair he puffed out smoke and stretched his limbs toward the
fire; and the fire burned back at him with a discreet and venerable
glow.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WEDDING
Punctual to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.
“I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap,” said he, as they got out of
their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
pavement.
The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by
her side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs of
ragged matrimony. Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price of
his tie was their board and lodging for a week. He followed his future
brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with intuitive
perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the opposing parties
to this contract had its serried battalion, the arrows of whose
suspicion kept glancing across and across the central aisle.
Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.
“There's old Benjy!” he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of the
day. A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered uniformity of
his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he bent upon the
guests had its wonted steely suavity. About his dress and his neat
figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the ruck of common
bridegrooms. There were no holes in his armour through which the
impertinent might pry.
“Good old Benjy!” whispered young Dennant; “I say, they look a bit short
of class, those Casserols.”
Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled. The sensuous
sanctity all round had begun to influence him. A perfume of flowers
and dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle of
whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the aisles,
and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in front; without
in the least desiring to make a speculation of this sort, he wondered
whether her face was as charming as the lines of her back in their
delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his glance wandered to the
chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the grave, business faces of the
presiding priests, till the organ began rolling out the wedding march.
“They're off!” whispered young Dermant.
Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain. The bride came slowly
up the aisle. “Antonia will look like that,” he thought, “and the church
will be filled with people like this . . . . She'll be a show to them!”
The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct of common chivalry he
turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at that downcast
head above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the modest head
full, doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately head where
no such thought as “How am I looking, this day of all days, before all
London?” had ever entered; the proud head, which no such fear as “How am
I carrying it off?” could surely be besmirching.
He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and set
his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice.
The words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: “For better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health--” and opening the Prayer
Book he found the Marriage Service, which he had not looked at since he
was a boy, and as he read he had some very curious sensations.
All this would soon be happening to himself! He went on reading in a
kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, “No luck!”
All around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure mount
the pulpit and stand motionless. Massive and high-featured, sunken
of eye, he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole, above the
blackness of his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for his beauty.
Shelton was still gazing at the stitching of his gloves, when once again
the organ played the Wedding March. All were smiling, and a few were
weeping, craning their heads towards the bride. “Carnival of second-hand
emotions!” thought Shelton; and he, too, craned his head and brushed his
hat. Then, smirking at his friends, he made his way towards the door.
In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the
presents with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale violet,
who had been chief bridesmaid.
“Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?” she was saying
“Oh, awfully!”
“I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
bride to come.”
“Yes,” murmured Shelton.
“Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?”
Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.
“That was my idea; I think it 's very chic. They 've had fifteen
tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?”
“By Jove!” Shelton hastened to remark.
“Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
course, you change them for those you do.”
The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this room;
he looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by the shrewd
acquisitiveness of her small eyes.
“Is that your future brother-in-law?” she asked, pointing to Bill
Dennant with a little movement of her chin; “I think he's such a bright
boy. I want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep things jolly.
It's so deadly after a wedding.”
And Shelton said they would.
They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure. Her
face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a furtive
trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd sensation of
having sinned against his manhood. Jammed close to him was her old
nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion, while tears
rolled from her eyes. She was trying to say something, but in the hubbub
her farewell was lost. There was a scamper to the carriage, a flurry
of rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against the sharply drawn-up
window. Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a moment, bland and steely;
the footman folded his arms, and with a solemn crunch the brougham
wheels rolled away. “How splendidly it went off!” said a voice on
Shelton's right. “She looked a little pale,” said a voice on Shelton's
left. He put his hand up to his forehead; behind him the old nurse
sniffed.
“Dick,” said young Dennant in his ear, “this isn't good enough; I vote
we bolt.”
Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon champagne
or to the ceremony that had gone so well.
“What's up with you?” asked Dennant; “you look as glum as any m-monkey.”
“Nothing,” said Shelton; “I was only thinking what humbugs we all are!”
Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.
“Oh,” said he, “if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off.”
CHAPTER IX
THE DINNER
The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's friends
who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities. Shelton found himself
between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the same degree.
Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white waistcoat,
black moustache, and hawk-like face. This was, in fact, one of those
interesting houses occupied by people of the upper middle class who
have imbibed a taste for smart society. Its inhabitants, by nature
acquisitive and cautious, economical, tenacious, had learnt to worship
the word “smart.” The result was a kind of heavy froth, an air of
thoroughly domestic vice. In addition to the conventionally fast,
Shelton had met there one or two ladies, who, having been divorced, or
having yet to be, still maintained their position in “society.” Divorced
ladies who did not so maintain their place were never to be found, for
the Casserols had a great respect for marriage. He had also met there
American ladies who were “too amusing”--never, of course, American men,
Mesopotamians of the financial or the racing type, and several of those
gentlemen who had been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction
which might or again might not, “come off,” and in conduct of an order
which might, or again might not be spotted. The line he knew, was always
drawn at those in any category who were actually found out, for the
value of these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to
pity--nothing so sentimental--but their “smartness,” clothes, jokes,
racing tips, their “bridge parties,” and their motors.
In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
sheltered those who were too “smart” to keep their heads for long above
the water.
His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
down the table. Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the
incoherence of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art. It was with
surprise that he found Miss Casserol addressing him.
“I always say that the great thing is to be jolly. If you can't find
anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to be
amusin'. Now don't you agree?”
The philosophy seemed excellent.
“We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly.”
Shelton hastened to look jolly.
“I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the shutters
and leave him. What's the good of mopin' and lookin' miserable? Are you
going to the Four-in-Hand Meet? We're making a party. Such fun; all the
smart people!”
The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two hours
out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but the frank
shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of voice, were
guarantees that she was part of the element at the table which was
really quite respectable. He had never realised before how “smart” she
was, and with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of gaiety that would
have killed a Frenchman.
And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes when
they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey. “What is
it,” their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say, “that makes
you so really 'smart'.” And while still seeking for the reason, he
noticed his host pointing out the merits of his port to the hawk-like
man, with a deferential air quite pitiful to see, for the hawk-like man
was clearly a “bad hat.” What in the name of goodness did these staid
bourgeois mean by making up to vice? Was it a craving to be thought
distinguished, a dread of being dull, or merely an effect of
overfeeding? Again he looked at his host, who had not yet enumerated all
the virtues of his port, and again felt sorry for him.
“So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?” said a voice on his right,
with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste. “Pretty girl!
They've a nice place, the, Dennants. D' ye know, you're a lucky feller!”
The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face,
and peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly.
He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the best
people, as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every night.
“You're a lucky feller,” he repeated; “he's got some deuced good
shootin', Dennant! They come too high for me, though; never touched a
feather last time I shot there. She's a pretty girl. You 're a lucky
feller!”
“I know that,” said Shelton humbly.
“Wish I were in your shoes. Who was that sittin' on the other side of
you? I'm so dashed short-sighted. Mrs. Carruther? Oh, ay!” An expression
which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a leer, came on his
lips.
Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-book
covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady. “The old
ogre means,” thought he, “that I'm lucky because his leaf is blank
about Antonia.” But the old baronet had turned, with his smile, and
his sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal on the other
side.
The two men to Shelton's left were talking.
“What! You don't collect anything? How's that? Everybody collects
something. I should be lost without my pictures.”
“No, I don't collect anything. Given it up; I was too awfully had over
my Walkers.”
Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
Madeira in his glass. That, had been “collected” by his host, and its
price was going up! You couldn't get it every day; worth two guineas a
bottle! How precious the idea that other people couldn't get it, made it
seem! Liquid delight; the price was going up! Soon there would be none
left; immense! Absolutely no one, then, could drink it!
“Wish I had some of this,” said the old baronet, “but I have drunk all
mine.”
“Poor old chap!” thought Shelton; “after all, he's not a bad old boy. I
wish I had his pluck. His liver must be splendid.”
The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with horses
ridden by jockeys with the latest seat. And Shelton was compelled to
help in carrying on this sport till early in the morning. At last he
left, exhausted by his animation.
He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine that
he had drunk. His mood of satisfaction fizzled out. These people were
incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most respectable;
they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and to get the most
that could be gotten for their money.
Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was overtaken
by the moment when the town is born again. The first new air had stolen
down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the trees were quivering
faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing spoke except his heart.
Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and Shelton saw that he was not
alone; an unconsidered trifle with inferior boots was asleep upon his
doorstep.
CHAPTER X
AN ALIEN
The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
knees. No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed
by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks. Shelton
endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.
“Ah, it's you, monsieur!” he said “I received your letter this evening,
and have lost no time.” He looked down at himself and tittered, as
though to say, “But what a state I 'm in!”
The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
“You can well understand,” stammered Ferrand, following his host, “that
I did n't want to miss you this time. When one is like this--” and a
spasm gripped his face.
“I 'm very glad you came,” said Shelton doubtfully.
His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan
of his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit of,
trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
“Sit down-sit down,” said Shelton; “you 're feeling ill!”
Ferrand smiled. “It's nothing,” said he; “bad nourishment.”
Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him in
some whisky.
“Clothes,” said Ferrand, when he had drunk, “are what I want. These are
really not good enough.”
The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home. While
the latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of
self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
portmanteaus. This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent of
boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying affluence.
“This is a little different,” he said. “The boots, I fear”--and, pulling
down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the size of half
a crown. “One does n't sow without reaping some harvest or another. My
stomach has shrunk,” he added simply. “To see things one must suffer.
'.oyager, c'est plus fort que moi'.”
Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the
human animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos, a
suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
“I have eaten my illusions,” said the young foreigner, smoking a
cigarette. “When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
'.avoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur'. It 's not
always the intellectuals who succeed.”
“When you get a job,” said Shelton, “you throw it away, I suppose.”
“You accuse me of restlessness? Shall I explain what I think about that?
I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent
position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's
no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere. 'Je ne
veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a
day, and save enough after forty years to drag out the remains of
an exhausted existence. That's not in my character.” This ingenious
paraphrase of the words “I soon get tired of things” he pronounced with
an air of letting Shelton into a precious secret.
“Yes; it must be hard,” agreed the latter.
Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
“It's not all butter,” he replied; “one is obliged to do things that are
not too delicate. There's nothing I pride myself on but frankness.”
Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could stand
in a judicious way. “Yes, yes,” he seemed to say, “you'd like me
to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality, no
prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel yourself
on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another, without any
barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca c'est un peu trop
fort'. You're as good an imitation as I 've come across in your class,
notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and I 'm grateful to you,
but to tell you everything, as it passes through my mind would damage my
prospects. You can hardly expect that.”
In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air
of natural, almost sensitive refinement. The room looked as if it were
accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of familiarity
that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's soul. It came
as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond had taken such a
place within his thoughts. The pose of his limbs and head, irregular but
not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the rings of smoke that issued
from them--all signified rebellion, and the overthrow of law and order.
His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid glances of his goggling, prominent
eyes, were subtlety itself; he stood for discontent with the accepted.
“How do I live when I am on the tramp?” he said, “well, there are
the consuls. The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created for
the purpose. There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living entirely
upon consuls.” He hesitated for the fraction of a second, and resumed:
“Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can try six or
seven consuls in a single town. You must know a language or two; but
most of these gentlemen are not too well up in the tongues of the
country they represent. Obtaining money under false pretences? Well,
it is. But what's the difference at bottom between all this honourable
crowd of directors, fashionable physicians, employers of labour,
ferry-builders, military men, country priests, and consuls themselves
perhaps, who take money and give no value for it, and poor devils who
do the same at far greater risk? Necessity makes the law. If those
gentlemen were in my position, do you think that they would hesitate?”
Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: “You're
right; they would, from fear, not principle. One must be hard pressed
before committing these indelicacies. Look deep enough, and you will see
what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable for not half so
good a reason as the want of meals.”
Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from property
for which he gave no value in labour.
“I can give you an instance,” said Ferrand, “of what can be done by
resolution. One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I decided
to try the French consul. Well, as you know, I am a Fleming, but
something had to be screwed out somewhere. He refused to see me; I sat
down to wait. After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't the brute
gone?' and my consul appears. 'I 've nothing for fellows like you,' says
he; 'clear out!'
“'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
assistance.'
“'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'
“I don't budge. Another hour passes, and back he comes again.
“'Still here?' says he. 'Fetch a sergeant.'
“The sergeant comes.
“'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'
“'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!' Naturally, I had calculated
upon that. In Germany they're not too fond of those who undertake the
business of the French.
“'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'
“'You refuse?'
“'Absolutely.' And he went away.
“'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.
“'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.
“'What will you go for?'
“'Ten marks.'
“'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls.”
His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his
ironical lips flickered. Shelton thought of his own ignorance of life.
He could not recollect ever having gone without a meal.
“I suppose,” he said feebly, “you've often starved.” For, having always
been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.
Ferrand smiled.
“Four days is the longest,” said he. “You won't believe that story....
It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course. There was
some due from home which didn't come. Four days and nights I lived on
water. My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery; but I never even
thought of pawning them. I suffered most from the notion that people
might guess my state. You don't recognise me now?”
“How old were you then?” said Shelton.
“Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age.”
By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with sensitive,
smooth face, always on the move about the streets of Paris, for fear
that people should observe the condition of his stomach. The story was a
valuable commentary. His thoughts were brusquely interrupted; looking in
Ferrand's face, he saw to his dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.
“I 've suffered too much,” he stammered; “what do I care now what
becomes of me?”
Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,' but,
being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.
“Your turn 's coming,” he said at last.
“Ah! when you've lived my life,” broke out his visitor, “nothing 's
any good. My heart's in rags. Find me anything worth keeping, in this
menagerie.”
Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that forbade
him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the revelation of
other people's. He could stand it on the stage, he could stand it in a
book, but in real life he could not stand it. When Ferrand had gone off
with a portmanteau in each hand, he sat down and told Antonia:
. . . The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and instead
of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone. The more sympathetic I
wanted to be, the gruffer I grew. Is it fear of ridicule, independence,
or consideration, for others that prevents one from showing one's
feelings?
He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than face
a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it,
the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before
him--Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's face,
a little creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's somewhat too
thin-and they seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous, and the words
“That's rather nice!” rang in his ears. He went out to post the letter,
and buying a five-shilling order enclosed it to the little barber,
Carolan, as a reward for delivering his note to Ferrand. He omitted to
send his address with this donation, but whether from delicacy or from
caution he could not have said. Beyond doubt, however, on receiving
through Ferrand the following reply, he felt ashamed and pleased.
3, BLANK ROW, WESTMINSTER.
From every well-born soul humanity is owing. A thousand thanks. I
received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
will be placed beyond all praise.
J. CAROLAN.
CHAPTER XI
THE VISION
A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him with
excitement:
. . . Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we can go
home-hurrah! But she says that you and I must keep to our arrangement
not to see each other till July. There will be something fine in being
so near and having the strength to keep apart . . . All the English are
gone. I feel it so empty out here; these people are so funny-all foreign
and shallow. Oh, Dick! how splendid to have an ideal to look up to!
Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and tell me you think the same....
We arrive at Charing Cross on Sunday at half-past seven, stay at
Brewer's for a couple of nights, and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.
Always your
ANTONIA.
“To-morrow!” he thought; “she's coming tomorrow!” and, leaving his
neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion. His square
ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the most
distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd
assembled round a dogfight. One of the dogs was being mauled, but the
day was muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a horror
of making himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he looked for
a policeman. One was standing by, to see fair play, and Shelton made
appeal to him. The official suggested that he should not have brought
out a fighting dog, and advised him to throw cold water over them.
“It is n 't my dog,” said Shelton.
“Then I should let 'em be,” remarked the policeman with evident
surprise.
Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders. The lower orders,
however, were afraid of being bitten.
“I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you,” said one.
“Nasty breed o' dawg is that.”
He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his trousers
and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud, and
separate the dogs. At the conclusion of the “job,” the lower orders said
to him in a rather shamefaced spanner:
“Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir”; but, like all men
of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.
“D----n it!” he said, “one can't let a dog be killed”; and he marched
off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and looking
scornfully at harmless passers-by. Having satisfied for once the
smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low opinion of
these men in the street. “The brutes,” he thought, “won't stir a finger
to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen--” But, growing
cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by “honest toil” could
not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten hand, and that even
the policeman, though he had looked so like a demi-god, was absolutely
made of flesh and blood. He took the dog home, and, sending for a vet.,
had him sewn up.
He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture to
meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with the dog
to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to go and see
his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him to decide.
She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road, he was soon
amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose structure architects
have wrought the motto: “Keep what you have--wives, money, a good
address, and all the blessings of a moral state!”
Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them. His blood was
still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the loftiest
philosophy. He had been reading in his favourite review an article
eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper middle
class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to side he
nodded his head ironically. “Expansion and freedom,” ran his thoughts:
“Freedom and expansion!”
Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against
the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity. “Conscious
of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is
necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world. The
person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five
pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax.” Such seemed the
legend of these houses.
Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping, or
to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance. Hardly any men were seen, and
they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned children were being
wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses, accompanied by a great
army of hairy or of hairless dogs.
There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs.
Shelton, a tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly
feet; fond as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy
that has no insight. She kissed her son at once with rapture, and, as
usual, began to talk of his engagement. For the first time a tremor of
doubt ran through her son; his mother's view of it grated on him like
the sight of a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy. Her splendid optimism,
damped him; it had too little traffic with the reasoning powers.
“What right,” he asked himself, “has she to be so certain? It seems to
me a kind of blasphemy.”
“The dear!” she cooed. “And she is coming back to-morrow? Hurrah! how I
long to see her!”
“But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July.”
Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like a
little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.
“Dear old Dick!” she said, “how happy you must be!”
Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
indifferent--beamed from her.
“I suppose,” said Shelton gloomily, “I ought not to go and see her at
the station.”
“Cheer up!” replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully depressed.
That “Cheer-up!”--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
flavour.
“And how is your sciatica?” he asked.
“Oh, pretty bad,” returned his mother; “I expect it's all right, really.
Cheer up!” She stretched her little figure, canting her head still more.
“Wonderful woman!” Shelton thought. She had, in fact, like many of her
fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and, enjoying
the benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept as young in
heart as any girl of thirty.
Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as when
he entered it. He spent a restless afternoon.
The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday. He had made Ferrand a
promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching
at any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it. The
preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an original
method of distributing the funds that he obtained. To male sheep he gave
nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep
the rest. Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner. The
Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely
abstract love of beauty. His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable,
and Shelton came out feeling sick.
It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to kill
the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of wine for
his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a cigarette,
compressed his lips. There was a strange, sweet sinking in his heart.
His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his wine, crumbled his
roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils, glancing caustically at
the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors, the hot, red velvet, the
chandeliers. His juicy lips seemed to be murmuring, “Ah! if you only
knew of the dirt behind these feathers!” Shelton watched him with
disgust. Though his clothes were now so nice, his nails were not quite
clean, and his fingertips seemed yellow to the bone. An anaemic waiter
in a shirt some four days old, with grease-spots on his garments and
a crumpled napkin on his arm, stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful
fruits, and reading an Italian journal. Resting his tired feet in
turn, he looked like overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb
accused the sordid smartness of the walls. In the far corner sat a lady
eating, and, mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round
face, its coat of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of
disgust. His companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.
“Excuse me, monsieur,” he said at length. “I think I know that lady!”
And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and
sat down. With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking. But
presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she
had been crying. The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he
did not touch his wine.
“I was right,” he said; “she is the wife of an old friend. I used to
know her well.”
He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced with
tragic sauce, to set before his patron.
“You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
hinders these paragons of virtue”--he nodded at the stream of
carriages--“from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her sort
pass. She came to London--just three years ago. After a year one of her
little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband caught it, and
died. There she was, left with two children and everything gone to pay
the debts. She tried to get work; no one helped her. There was no money
to pay anyone to stay with the children; all the work she could get in
the house was not enough to keep them alive. She's not a strong woman.
Well, she put the children out to nurse, and went to the streets. The
first week was frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to
anything.”
“Can nothing be done?” asked Shelton, startled.
“No,” returned his companion. “I know that sort; if they once take to
it all's over. They get used to luxury. One does n't part with luxury,
after tasting destitution. She tells me she does very nicely; the
children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them sometimes. She
was a girl of good family, too, who loved her husband, and gave up much
for him. What would you have? Three quarters of your virtuous ladies
placed in her position would do the same if they had the necessary
looks.”
It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
vagabond.
“This is her beat,” said the young foreigner, as they passed the
illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and
women fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to the
station of Charing Cross. There, as he stood waiting in the shadow, his
heart was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he should have
come to this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.
Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia. She was
close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them
were a maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags.
Antonia's figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape,
slender, tall, severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the bustle.
Her eyes, shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about, welcoming all
she saw; a wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her cheeks glowed cold
and rosy. She caught sight of Shelton, and bending her neck, stag-like,
stood looking at him; a brilliant smile parted her lips, and Shelton
trembled. Here was the embodiment of all he had desired for weeks. He
could not tell what was behind that smile of hers--passionate aching or
only some ideal, some chaste and glacial intangibility. It seemed to
be shining past him into the gloomy station. There was no trembling and
uncertainty, no rage of possession in that brilliant smile; it had the
gleam of fixedness, like the smiling of a star. What did it matter? She
was there, beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was
his, only divided from him by a space of time. He took a step; her eyes
fell at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by
mother, footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away. It was
over; she had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his delight lurked
another feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face came up before him
but the face of that lady in the restaurant--short, round, and powdered,
with black-circled eyes. What right had we to scorn them? Had they
mothers, footmen, porters, maids? He shivered, but this time with
physical disgust; the powdered face with dark-fringed eyes had vanished;
the fair, remote figure of the railway-station came back again.
He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after, smoking,
dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams fumed in his
brain. The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the rays of clean wet
light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the cab bell, the whirring
wheels, the night air and the branches--it was all so good! He threw
back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the warm breeze. The crowds
on the pavement gave him strange delight; they were like shadows, in
some great illusion, happy shadows, thronging, wheeling round the single
figure of his world.
CHAPTER XII
ROTTEN ROW
With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy,
Shelton mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.
In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the spring.
The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of light that
came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds. The air was
rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of tranquil
carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their responsibility of
the firmament.
Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.
Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up in
lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings
that it would have been noticeable anywhere. It belonged to Ferrand,
obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron. Shelton
found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly on his
horse, hidden behind a tree.
It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the bird
of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them cantering,
trotting, wheeling up and down.
Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats before a
horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the same air,
as though in the modish performance of this ancient rite they were
satisfying some instinct very dear to them.
Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight. “Many
thanks, gentlemen,” it seemed to say; “in that charming little action
you have shown me all your souls.”
What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people
of their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
phylacteries! Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.
He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge
a violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
and--Antonia herself!
They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she stood
on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance different from
the calm and conquering radiance of that other moment. To Shelton's
delight they fell into line with him, and all three went galloping along
the strip between the trees and rails. The look she gave him seemed to
say, “I don't care if it is forbidden!” but she did not speak. He could
not take his eyes off her. How lovely she looked, with the resolute
curve of her figure, the glimpse of gold under her hat, the glorious
colour in her cheeks, as if she had been kissed.
“It 's so splendid to be at home! Let 's go faster, faster!” she cried
out.
“Take a pull. We shall get run in,” grumbled her brother, with a
chuckle.
They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn
spoke only to Bill Dennant. He was afraid to speak to her, for he knew
that her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a way
quite different from his own.
Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing against
the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered a shock
when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure. He was about
to raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting his
instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it. They passed
again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition; followed by
unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called. But the feeling
of idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated at this silence.
It tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant had lagged behind
to chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were alone, walking their
horses, without a word, not even looking at each other. At one moment he
thought of galloping ahead and leaving her, then of breaking the vow
of muteness she seemed to be imposing on him, and he kept thinking:
“It ought to be either one thing or the other. I can't stand this.” Her
calmness was getting on his nerves; she seemed to have determined just
how far she meant to go, to have fixed cold-bloodedly a limit. In
her happy young beauty and radiant coolness she summed up that sane
consistent something existing in nine out of ten of the people Shelton
knew. “I can't stand it long,” he thought, and all of a sudden spoke;
but as he did so she frowned and cantered on. When he caught her she
was smiling, lifting her face to catch the raindrops which were falling
fast. She gave him just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to
go; and when he would not, she frowned. He saw Bill Dennant, posting
after them, and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat,
and galloped off.
The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying
for shelter. He looked back from the bend, and could still make out
Antonia riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the
shower. Why had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the sweets
the gods had sent? It seemed wicked to have wasted such a chance, and,
ploughing back to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head to see if by any
chance she had relented.
His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed. Was ever anything
so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the rain? She
seemed to love the rain. It suited her--suited her ever so much better
than the sunshine of the South. Yes, she was very English! Puzzling and
fretting, he reached his rooms. Ferrand had not arrived, in fact did not
turn up that day. His non-appearance afforded Shelton another proof of
the delicacy that went hand in hand with the young vagrant's cynicism.
In the afternoon he received a note.
. . . You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt too
crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old London.
Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of things one
can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry afterwards. I told
mother. She said I was quite right, but I don't think she took it in.
Don't you feel that the only thing that really matters is to have an
ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can always look forward and feel
that you have been--I can't exactly express my meaning.
Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned. It seemed to him queer that she
should set more store by an “ideal” than by the fact that they had met
for the first and only time in many weeks.
“I suppose she 's right,” he thought--“I suppose she 's right. I ought
not to have tried to speak to her!” As a matter of fact, he did not at
all feel that she was right.
CHAPTER XIII
AN “AT HOME”
On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a
chance view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep
him from actually entering the station and lurking about until she came.
With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed Street to
the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her. He paid a round
of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations; and, seeking out
Aunt Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter in the Row. But
she found it “rather nice,” and on his pressing her with his views, she
murmured that it was “quite romantic, don't you know.”
“Still, it's very hard,” said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.
As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the “at
home” of one of his own cousins. Her husband was a composer, and he had
a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer some quite
unusually free kind of atmosphere. After dining at the club, therefore,
he set out for Chelsea. The party was held in a large room on the
ground-floor, which was already crowded with people when Shelton
entered. They stood or sat about in groups with smiles fixed on their
lips, and the light from balloon-like lamps fell in patches on their
heads and hands and shoulders. Someone had just finished rendering on
the piano a composition of his own. An expert could at once have picked
out from amongst the applauding company those who were musicians by
profession, for their eyes sparkled, and a certain acidity pervaded
their enthusiasm. This freemasonry of professional intolerance flew from
one to the other like a breath of unanimity, and the faint shrugging of
shoulders was as harmonious as though one of the high windows had been
opened suddenly, admitting a draught of chill May air.
Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman in
black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him, until
her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings, obliged her to
break off conversation just as it began to interest him. He was passed
on to another lady who was already talking to two gentlemen, and, their
volubility being greater than his own, he fell into the position of
observer. Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to
hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such
topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling
with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way
as his society friends of the other night had dissected the
fellow--“smart”; and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the
piano were reflected on all the faces around. Shelton moved from group
to group disconsolate.
A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of
one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert
to his ingratiating voice.
“War,” he was saying, “is not necessary. War is not necessary. I hope I
make myself clear. War is not necessary; it depends on nationality, but
nationality is not necessary.” He inclined his head to one side, “Why
do we have nationality? Let us do away with boundaries--let us have the
warfare of commerce. If I see France looking at Brighton”--he laid his
head upon one side, and beamed at Shelton,--“what do I do? Do I say
'.ands off'. No. 'Take it,' I say--take it!'. He archly smiled. “But do
you think they would?”
And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.
“The soldier,” the person underneath the print resumed, “is necessarily
on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--than the
philanthropist. His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys the
compensations of advertisement--you admit that?” he breathed
persuasively. “For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do I
talk about it?” But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat, he put
his thesis in another form: “I have one acre and one cow, my brother has
one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from him?”
Shelton hazarded, “Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother.”
“Come, come! Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage laws
are barbarous.”
For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of
another group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned. Here an
Irish sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously, “Bees are
not bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!” A Scotch painter, who listened with
a curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which
appeared to have relation to the middle classes; and though agreeing
with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of
electricity. Next to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent
of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions
aroused in them by Wagner's operas.
“They produce a strange condition of affairs in me,” said the thinner
one.
“They 're just divine,” said the fatter.
“I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine,” replied the
thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.
Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of
formality was haunting Shelton. Sandwiched between a Dutchman and
a Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours;
so, assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that
an assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of
exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of
having no ideas to traffic in. He could not help wondering whether,
in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the
inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run
at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and what
would be left when the steam had all escaped. Somebody ceased
playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics.
Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts. He
realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes from
ideas which haunt the soul.
Again the violinist played.
“Cock gracious!” said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
fiddle ceased: “Colossal! 'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'.”
“Have you read that thing of Besom's?” asked shrill voice behind.
“Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!”
“The man's dreadful,” pursued the voice, shriller than ever; “nothing
but a volcanic eruption would cure him.”
Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They
were two men of letters talking of a third.
“'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'. said the second speaker.
“These fellows don't exist,” resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed
with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself.
Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from
those eyes what joy it was to say those words: “These fellows don't
exist!”
“Poor Besom! You know what Moulter said . . .”
Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair
smelt of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned. With
the exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of English
blood. Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and
Russians. He was not contemptuous of them for being foreigners; it was
simply that God and the climate had made him different by a skin or so.
But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes happen)
by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who, with smooth
hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes, seemed a little
anxious at his own presence there. Shelton took a liking to him, partly
from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of the gentle smile with which
he was looking at his wife. Almost before he had said “How do you do?”
he was plunged into a discussion on imperialism.
“Admitting all that,” said Shelton, “what I hate is the humbug with
which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-called
civilising methods.”
The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.
“But is it humbug?”
Shelton saw his argument in peril. If we really thought it, was it
humbug? He replied, however:
“Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume that
our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race? If it 's not
humbug, it 's sheer stupidity.”
The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and just,
re-replied:
“Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation that
we are.”
Shelton felt dazed. The conversation buzzed around him; he heard
the smiling prophet saying, “Altruism, altruism,” and in his voice a
something seemed to murmur, “Oh, I do so hope I make a good impression!”
He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes, the
tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he envied
the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted hair.
“I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen,” he muttered;
“I think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand
illusions.”
“If you come to that,” said the soldier, “the world lives by illusions.
I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the creation of
illusions has always been her business, don't you know.”
This Shelton was unable to deny.
“So,” continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man),
“if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been
properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in fact,
they're what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's crescendo,”
he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it--“why do you
want to destroy them?”
Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded arms,
replied:
“The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be destroyed;
but how about the future? It 's surely time to let in air. Cathedrals
are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of incense; but when they
'.e been for centuries without ventilation you know what the atmosphere
gets like.”
The soldier smiled.
“By your own admission,” he said, “you'll only be creating a fresh set
of illusions.”
“Yes,” answered Shelton, “but at all events they'll be the honest
necessities of the present.”
The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:
“I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us any
good!”
An “At Home!”
Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to
the remark:
“One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I believe
in what I don't.”
A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and Shelton
watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.
“Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?” said his cousin's
voice behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a
fresh-cheeked youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying nervously:
“How do you do? Yes, I am very well, thank you!”
He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
smiles. He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with life--as
though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put questions
to the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions. He looked
diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was evidently
English.
“Are you good at argument?” said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.
The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:
“Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough
for argument. You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to each
remark. It 's awfully interesting”; and, bending from the waist in a
mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and started to
explain.
Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he
gave his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he was
intensely interested. The youth broke off, looked at his watch, and,
blushing brightly, said:
“I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven.”
“I must be off, too,” said Shelton. Making their adieux together, they
sought their hats and coats.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NIGHT CLUB
“May I ask,” said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the chilly
street, “What it is you call the 'Den'.”
His companion smilingly answered:
“Oh, the night club. We take it in turns. Thursday is my night. Would
you like to come? You see a lot of types. It's only round the corner.”
Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:
“Yes, immensely.”
They reached the corner house in an angle of a dismal street, through
the open door of which two men had just gone in. Following, they
ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large boarded
room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes. It was
furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables, some
wooden forms, and a wooden bookcase. Seated on these wooden chairs, or
standing up, were youths, and older men of the working class, who seemed
to Shelton to be peculiarly dejected. One was reading, one against the
wall was drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing
chess, and a group of four made a ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.
A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-set,
black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with an
anaemic smile.
“You 're rather late,” he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: “Do you play chess?
There 's young Smith wants a game.”
A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown
chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white. Shelton
took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.
The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
attitude, and watched:
“Your play's improving, young Smith,” he said; “I should think you'd be
able to give Banks a knight.” His eyes rested on Shelton, fanatical and
dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal; he was continually
sucking in his lips, as though determined to subdue 'the flesh. “You
should come here often,” he said to Shelton, as the latter received
checkmate; “you 'd get some good practice. We've several very fair
players. You're not as good as Jones or Bartholomew,” he added to
Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a duty to put the latter in his
place. “You ought to come here often,” he repeated to Shelton; “we have
a lot of very good young fellows”; and, with a touch of complacence, he
glanced around the dismal room. “There are not so many here tonight as
usual. Where are Toombs and Body?”
Shelton, too, looked anxiously around. He could not help feeling
sympathy with Toombs and Body.
“They 're getting slack, I'm afraid,” said the little deep-eyed man.
“Our principle is to amuse everyone. Excuse me a minute; I see that
Carpenter is doing nothing.” He crossed over to the man who had been
drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his opponent
and try to think of a remark, before the little man was back. “Do you
know anything about astronomy?” he asked of Shelton. “We have several
very interested in astronomy; if you could talk to them a little it
would help.”
Shelton made a motion of alarm.
“Please-no,” said he; “I--”
“I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
talks, and a service afterwards. We're always anxious to get new blood”;
and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking face, as
though trying to see how much blood there was in it. “Young Curly says
you 've just been around the world; you could describe your travels.”
“May I ask,” said Shelton, “how your club is made up?”
Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the little
man.
“Oh,” he said, “we take anybody, unless there 's anything against them.
The Day Society sees to that. Of course, we shouldn't take anyone if
they were to report against them. You ought to come to our committee
meetings; they're on Mondays at seven. The women's side, too--”
“Thank you,” said Shelton; “you 're very kind--”
“We should be pleased,” said the little man; and his face seemed to
suffer more than ever. “They 're mostly young fellows here to-night, but
we have married men, too. Of course, we 're very careful about that,”
he added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
prejudices--“that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know.”
“And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?”
“Oh yes,” replied the little man; “if you were to come to our committee
meetings you would see for yourself. Everything is most carefully gone
into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff.”
“I suppose,” said Shelton, “you find a great deal of chaff?”
The little man smiled a suffering smile. The twang of his toneless voice
sounded a trifle shriller.
“I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
people, with three small children. He was ill and out of work; but on
inquiry we found that they were not man and wife.”
There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.
“And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?” he
said.
The little man's eyes began to smoulder.
“We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course. Excuse me a minute;
I see they've finished bagatelle.”
He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again. He
himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after the
balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden acquiescence
seemed to fall.
Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly. He was sitting on
a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.
“Are you staying here much longer?” Shelton asked.
Young Curly rose with nervous haste.
“I 'm afraid,” he said, “there 's nobody very interesting here
to-night.”
“Oh, not at all!” said Shelton; “on the contrary. Only I 've had a
rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here.”
His new acquaintance smiled.
“Oh, really! do you think--that is--”
But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls
ceased, and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying:
“Anybody who wants a book will put his name down. There will be the
usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next. Will you all go quietly? I am
going to turn the lights out.”
One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly. By its
harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The
figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man
was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the
backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the
turncock of the metre.
“Do you know this part?” asked young Curly as they emerged into the
street. “It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it is
really. If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous place
where the police never go.” He seemed so anxious for the honour that
Shelton was loath to disappoint him. “I come here pretty often,” he went
on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly between a wall and
row of houses.
“Why?” asked Shelton; “it does n't smell too nice.”
The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any new
scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.
“No, that's one of the reasons, you know,” he said; “one must find out.
The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here. Last week there
was a murder; there 's always the chance of one.”
Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against this
fresh-cheeked stripling.
“There's a splendid drain just here,” his guide resumed; “the people are
dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses”; and under the first
light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the houses. “If
we were in the East End, I could show you other places quite as good.
There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all the thieves
in London; he 's a splendid type, but,” he added, looking a little
anxiously at Shelton, “it might n't be safe for you. With me it's
different; they 're beginning to know me. I've nothing to take, you
see.”
“I'm afraid it can't be to-night,” said Shelton; “I must get back.”
“Do you mind if I walk with you? It's so jolly now the stars are out.”
“Delighted,” said Shelton; “do you often go to that club?”
His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“They 're rather too high-class for me,” he said. “I like to go where
you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the country.
It does one good to see them eat. They don't get enough, you see, as
a rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and muscle. There are
some places in the winter where they give them bread and cocoa; I like
to go to those.”
“I went once,” said Shelton, “but I felt ashamed for putting my nose
in.”
“Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know.
You see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs . . . . It 's useful to
me,” he went on as they passed a police-station, “to walk about at
night; one can take so much more notice. I had a jolly night last week
in Hyde Park; a chance to study human nature there.”
“And do you find it interesting?” asked Shelton.
His companion smiled.
“Awfully,” he replied; “I saw a fellow pick three pockets.”
“What did you do?”
“I had a jolly talk with him.”
Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
encouraging sin.
“He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me
his life. Never had a chance, of course. The most interesting part was
telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into a cave,
when you can't tell what 's inside.”
“Well?”
“He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny.”
“And what became of your friend?” asked Shelton.
“Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead.”
They had reached Shelton's rooms.
“Will you come in,” said the latter, “and have a drink?”
The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
“No, thank you,” he said; “I have to walk to Whitechapel. I 'm living
on porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone. I generally live on
porridge for a week at the end of every month. It 's the best diet if
you're hard up”; once more blushing and smiling, he was gone.
Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed. He felt a little
miserable. Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white tie,
disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed wonderingly
on him. And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--just as that
morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a passer-by stop
suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him in a flash that
that man had thoughts and feelings of his own. He would never know what
Antonia really felt and thought. “Till I saw her at the station, I did
n't know how much I loved her or how little I knew her”; and, sighing
deeply, he hurried into bed.
CHAPTER XV
POLE TO POLE
The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable
to Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to
breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropolis. On June first the
latter presented himself rather later than was his custom, and announced
that, through a friend, he had heard of a position as interpreter to an
hotel at Folkestone.
“If I had money to face the first necessities,” he said, swiftly turning
over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers, as if
searching for his own identity, “I 'd leave today. This London blackens
my spirit.”
“Are you certain to get this place,” asked Shelton.
“I think so,” the young foreigner replied; “I 've got some good enough
recommendations.”
Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand. A
hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
moustache.
“You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft. No, no; I shall
never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities,” said he, with pride
and bitterness. “That's not in my character. I never do harm to anyone.
This”--he touched the papers--“is not delicate, but it does harm to no
one. If you have no money you must have papers; they stand between you
and starvation. Society, has an excellent eye for the helpless--it never
treads on people unless they 're really down.” He looked at Shelton.
“You 've made me what I am, amongst you,” he seemed to say; “now put up
with me!”
“But there are always the workhouses,” Shelton remarked at last.
“Workhouses!” returned Ferrand; “certainly there are--regular palaces:
I will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so discouraging as
your workhouses; they take one's very heart out.”
“I always understood,” said Shelton coldly; “that our system was better
than that of other countries.”
Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
attitude when particularly certain of his point.
“Well,” he replied, “it 's always permissible to think well of your own
country. But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with little
strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why.” His lips lost
their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the result of
his experience. “You spend your money freely, you have fine buildings,
self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of hospitality. The
reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy. You invite us--and
when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers,
criminals, beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted a personal injury on
you; and when we get out again, we are naturally degraded.”
Shelton bit his lips.
“How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?” he
asked.
The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how far
the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no money in
their pockets. He took the note that Shelton proffered him.
“A thousand thanks,” said he; “I shall never forget what you have done
for me”; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true emotion
behind his titter of farewell.
He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again; then
looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of things that
had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless friends, the
old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes. Into him restlessness had
passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's damp hand. To wait
about in London was unbearable.
He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the river.
It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers before
it. During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank Street. “I
wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting on!” he thought.
On a fine day he would probably have passed by on the other side; he now
entered and tapped upon the wicket.
No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry. Yes, Carolan was
always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go into
the street! To her call the little Frenchman made his appearance as
punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer. His face was as
yellow as a guinea.
“Ah! it's you, monsieur!” he said.
“Yes,” said Shelton; “and how are you?”
“It 's five days since I came out of hospital,” muttered the little
Frenchman, tapping on his chest; “a crisis of this bad atmosphere. I
live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South. If
there's anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me pleasure.”
“Nothing,” replied Shelton, “I was just passing, and thought I should
like to hear how you were getting on.”
“Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there. 'Brr! Il
fait un froid etonnant'.”
“What sort of customers have you just now?” asked Shelton, as they
passed into the kitchen.
“Always the same clientele,” replied the little man; “not so numerous,
of course, it being summer.”
“Could n't you find anything better than this to do?”
The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
“When I first came to London,” said he, “I secured an engagement at
one of your public institutions. I thought my fortune made. Imagine,
monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten
a penny! Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the time; but when I'm
paid, I 'm paid. In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't
make experiments. I shall finish my days here. Have you seen that
young man who interested you? There 's another! He has spirit, as I had
once--'il fait de la philosophie', as I do--and you will see, monsieur,
it will finish him. In this world what you want is to have no spirit.
Spirit ruins you.”
Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word “spirit” in his mouth
struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it than
any burst of tears.
“Shall we 'sit down?” he said, offering a cigarette.
“Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette. You
remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad? Well, he's dead. I
was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'. He was another who had
spirit. And you will see, monsieur, that young man in whom you take an
interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some hole or other, or even on
the highroad; having closed his eyes once too often some cold night; and
all because he has something in him which will not accept things as they
are, believing always that they should be better. 'Il n'y a riens de
plus tragique'.”
“According to you, then,” said Shelton--and the conversation seemed to
him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--“rebellion of any
sort is fatal.”
“Ah!” replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal it
is to sit under the awning of a cafe, and talk life upside down, “you
pose me a great problem there! If one makes rebellion; it is always
probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's self. The
law of the majority arranges that. But I would draw your attention
to this”--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to blow smoke
through his nose--“if you rebel it is in all likelihood because you are
forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the most certain things
in life. In any case, it is necessary to avoid falling between two
stools--which is unpardonable,” he ended with complacence.
Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as if
he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to feel
that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action logically
required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.
“By nature,” went on the little man, “I am an optimist; it is in
consequence of this that I now make pessimism. I have always had ideals;
seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to complain,
monsieur, is very sweet!”
Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready;
so he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
“The greatest pleasure in life,” continued the Frenchman, with a bow,
“is to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you. At
present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead. Ah! there
was a man who was rebellion incarnate! He made rebellion as other men
make money, 'c'etait son metier'. when he was no longer capable of
active revolution, he made it getting drunk. At the last this was his
only way of protesting against Society. An interesting personality,
'.e le regrette beaucoup'. But, as you see, he died in great distress,
without a soul to wave him farewell, because as you can well understand,
monsieur, I don't count myself. He died drunk. 'C'etait un homme'.”
Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber added
hastily:
“It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of weakness.”
“Yes,” assented Shelton, “one has indeed.”
The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.
“Oh!” he said, “it 's to the destitute that such things are important.
When one has money, all these matters--”
He shrugged his shoulders. A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-feet;
he waved his hand as though to end the subject.
A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.
“You think, then,” said he, “that discontent is peculiar to the
destitute?”
“Monsieur,” replied the little barber, “a plutocrat knows too well that
if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets more lost
than he.”
Shelton rose.
“The rain is over. I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll accept
this in memory of that old actor,” and he slipped a sovereign into the
little Frenchman's hand.
The latter bowed.
“Whenever you are passing, monsieur,” he said eagerly, “I shall be
charmed to see you.”
And Shelton walked away. “'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'. thought
he; “now what did he mean by that?”
Something of that “lost dog” feeling had gripped his spirit. Another
month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might even
kill his love. In the excitement of his senses and his nerves, caused by
this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all was beyond
life size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily use, are thus,
unpopular with healthy people. As will the bones in a worn face, the
spirit underlying things had reached the surface; the meanness and
intolerable measure of hard facts, were too apparent. Some craving for
help, some instinct, drove him into Kensington, for he found himself
before his, mother's house. Providence seemed bent on flinging him from
pole to pole.
Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour,
was crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not
rebellion. She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round her
eyes twinkled, with vitality.
“Well, my dear boy,” she said, “it's lovely to see you. And how is that
sweet girl?”
“Very well, thank you,” replied Shelton.
“She must be such a dear!”
“Mother,” stammered Shelton, “I must give it up.”
“Give it up? My dear Dick, give what up? You look quite worried. Come
and sit down, and have a cosy chat. Cheer up!” And Mrs. Shelton; with
her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.
“Mother,” said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never,
since his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, “I can't go
on waiting about like this.”
“My dear boy, what is the matter?”;
“Everything is wrong!”
“Wrong?” cried Mrs. Shelton. “Come, tell me all, about it!”
But Shelton, shook his head.
“You surely have not had a quarrel----”
Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have
asked it of a groom.
“No,” said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.
“You know, my dear old Dick,” murmured his mother, “it seems a little
mad.”
“I know it seems mad.”
“Come!” said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; “you never
used to be like this.”
“No,” said Shelton, with a laugh; “I never used to be like this.”
Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.
“Oh,” she said, with cheery sympathy, “I know exactly how you feel!”
Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and bubbled
like his mother's face.
“But you're so fond of each other,” she began again. “Such a sweet
girl!”
“You don't understand,” muttered Shelton gloomily; “it 's not her--it's
nothing--it's--myself!”
Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her
soft, warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.
“Oh!” she cried again; “I understand. I know exactly what you 're
feeling.” But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she had
not an inkling. To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to try to
give her one. Mrs. Shelton sighed. “It would be so lovely if you could
wake up to-morrow and think differently. If I were you, my dear, I would
have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how beautifully
it'll all come straight”; and in the enthusiasm of advice Mrs. Shelton
rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure, still so young,
clasped her hands together. “Now do, that 's a dear old Dick! You 'll
just see how lovely it'll be!” Shelton smiled; he had not the heart to
chase away this vision. “And give her my warmest love, and tell her I 'm
longing for the wedding. Come, now, my dear boy, promise me that's what
you 'll do.”
And Shelton said: “I'll think about it.”
Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in
spite of her sciatica.
“Cheer up!” she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
sympathy.
Wonderful woman! The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
good and ill had not descended to her son.
From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French barber,
whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose little
fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his own
mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with sufficient
glow, but who, until she died, would never stir a finger. When Shelton
reached his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:
I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford to
start a walking tour. I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay there till
I may come to Holm Oaks. I shall send you my address; do write as usual.
He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken
by Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-jacket.
There was one where she was standing just below her little brother,
who was perched upon a wall. In her half-closed eyes, round throat, and
softly tilted chin, there was something cool and watchful, protecting
the ragamuffin up above her head. This he kept apart to be looked at
daily, as a man says his prayers.
PART II
THE COUNTRY