Philip looked forward to his return to London with impatience. During
the two months he spent at Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently,
long letters in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour she
described the little events of the daily round, the domestic troubles
of her landlady, rich food for laughter, the comic vexations of her
rehearsals—she was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the
London theatres—and her odd adventures with the publishers of
novelettes. Philip read a great deal, bathed, played tennis, and
sailed. At the beginning of October he settled down in London to work
for the Second Conjoint examination. He was eager to pass it, since
that ended the drudgery of the curriculum; after it was done with the
student became an out-patients’ clerk, and was brought in contact with
men and women as well as with text-books. Philip saw Norah every day.
Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and had a number of
sketches to show of the harbour and of the beach. He had a couple of
commissions for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the bad
light drove him away. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the
winter abroad, but remained week after week from sheer inability to
make up his mind to go. Hayward had run to fat during the last two or
three years—it was five years since Philip first met him in
Heidelberg—and he was prematurely bald. He was very sensitive about it
and wore his hair long to conceal the unsightly patch on the crown of
his head. His only consolation was that his brow was now very noble.
His blue eyes had lost their colour; they had a listless droop; and his
mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and pale. He still talked
vaguely of the things he was going to do in the future, but with less
conviction; and he was conscious that his friends no longer believed in
him: when he had drank two or three glasses of whiskey he was inclined
to be elegiac.
“I’m a failure,” he murmured, “I’m unfit for the brutality of the
struggle of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar
throng hustle by in their pursuit of the good things.”
He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more
exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that his aloofness was
due to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully
of Plato.
“I should have thought you’d got through with Plato by now,” said
Philip impatiently.
“Would you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late
the effective dignity of silence.
“I don’t see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,”
said Philip. “That’s only a laborious form of idleness.”
“But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that
you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?”
“I don’t want to understand him, I’m not a critic. I’m not interested
in him for his sake but for mine.”
“Why d’you read then?”
“Partly for pleasure, because it’s a habit and I’m just as
uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know
myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now
and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a
meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all
that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a
dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most
of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain
things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a
petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is
there.”
Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how
else to explain a thing which he felt and yet was not clear about.
“You want to do things, you want to become things,” said Hayward, with
a shrug of the shoulders. “It’s so vulgar.”
Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak and vain, so vain
that you had to be on the watch constantly not to hurt his feelings; he
mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At
Lawson’s studio one day he met a journalist, who was charmed by his
conversation, and a week later the editor of a paper wrote to suggest
that he should do some criticism for him. For forty-eight hours Hayward
lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of
this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the
thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined
the offer and breathed freely.
“It would have interfered with my work,” he told Philip.
“What work?” asked Philip brutally.
“My inner life,” he answered.
Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the professor of
Geneva, whose brilliancy promised achievement which was never
fulfilled; till at his death the reason of his failure and the excuse
were at once manifest in the minute, wonderful journal which was found
among his papers. Hayward smiled enigmatically.
But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was
exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant
interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant
nothing to him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he
treated them as he might have pieces of china in an auction-room,
handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing
them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their case, thought
of them no more.
And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery. One evening, after
due preparation, he took Philip and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak
Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its history—it had
memories of eighteenth-century glories which excited the romantic
imagination—but for its snuff, which was the best in London, and above
all for its punch. Hayward led them into a large, long room, dingily
magnificent, with huge pictures on the walls of nude women: they were
vast allegories of the school of Haydon; but smoke, gas, and the London
atmosphere had given them a richness which made them look like old
masters. The dark panelling, the massive, tarnished gold of the
cornice, the mahogany tables, gave the room an air of sumptuous
comfort, and the leather-covered seats along the wall were soft and
easy. There was a ram’s head on a table opposite the door, and this
contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered punch. They drank it. It
was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the
excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this
narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled,
exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and
cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the
mind at once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had
the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of
its qualities was comparable to anything else: it had the warmth of a
good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be
described in words. Charles Lamb, with his infinite tact, attempting
to, might have drawn charming pictures of the life of his day; Lord
Byron in a stanza of Don Juan, aiming at the impossible, might have
achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde, heaping jewels of Ispahan upon
brocades of Byzantium, might have created a troubling beauty.
Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the feasts of
Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled with the musty,
fragrant romance of chests in which have been kept old clothes, ruffs,
hose, doublets, of a forgotten generation, and the wan odour of lilies
of the valley and the savour of Cheddar cheese.
Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless beverage was to
be obtained by meeting in the street a man called Macalister who had
been at Cambridge with him. He was a stockbroker and a philosopher. He
was accustomed to go to the tavern once a week; and soon Philip,
Lawson, and Hayward got into the habit of meeting there every Tuesday
evening: change of manners made it now little frequented, which was an
advantage to persons who took pleasure in conversation. Macalister was
a big-boned fellow, much too short for his width, with a large, fleshy
face and a soft voice. He was a student of Kant and judged everything
from the standpoint of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his
doctrines. Philip listened with excited interest. He had long come to
the conclusion that nothing amused him more than metaphysics, but he
was not so sure of their efficacy in the affairs of life. The neat
little system which he had formed as the result of his meditations at
Blackstable had not been of conspicuous use during his infatuation for
Mildred. He could not be positive that reason was much help in the
conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself. He remembered
very vividly the violence of the emotion which had possessed him and
his inability, as if he were tied down to the ground with ropes, to
react against it. He read many wise things in books, but he could only
judge from his own experience (he did not know whether he was different
from other people); he did not calculate the pros and cons of an
action, the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm which
might result from the omission; but his whole being was urged on
irresistibly. He did not act with a part of himself but altogether. The
power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all
that reason did was to point out the methods of obtaining what his
whole soul was striving for.
Macalister reminded him of the Categorical Imperative.
“Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming a
universal rule of action for all men.”
“That seems to me perfect nonsense,” said Philip.
“You’re a bold man to say that of anything stated by Immanuel Kant,”
retorted Macalister.
“Why? Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying quality:
there’s a damned sight too much reverence in the world. Kant thought
things not because they were true, but because he was Kant.”
“Well, what is your objection to the Categorical Imperative?” (They
talked as though the fate of empires were in the balance.)
“It suggests that one can choose one’s course by an effort of will. And
it suggests that reason is the surest guide. Why should its dictates be
any better than those of passion? They’re different. That’s all.”
“You seem to be a contented slave of your passions.”
“A slave because I can’t help myself, but not a contented one,” laughed
Philip.
While he spoke he thought of that hot madness which had driven him in
pursuit of Mildred. He remembered how he had chafed against it and how
he had felt the degradation of it.
“Thank God, I’m free from all that now,” he thought.
And yet even as he said it he was not quite sure whether he spoke
sincerely. When he was under the influence of passion he had felt a
singular vigour, and his mind had worked with unwonted force. He was
more alive, there was an excitement in sheer being, an eager vehemence
of soul, which made life now a trifle dull. For all the misery he had
endured there was a compensation in that sense of rushing, overwhelming
existence.
But Philip’s unlucky words engaged him in a discussion on the freedom
of the will, and Macalister, with his well-stored memory, brought out
argument after argument. He had a mind that delighted in dialectics,
and he forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners
from which he could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him
up with logic and battered him with authorities.
At last Philip said:
“Well, I can’t say anything about other people. I can only speak for
myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can’t
get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an
illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I
do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do;
but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was
inevitable from all eternity.”
“What do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward.
“Why, merely the futility of regret. It’s no good crying over spilt
milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”