SOUND IN THE NIGHT
He passed his study door, and halted at Mr. Stone's; the thought of
the old man, so steady and absorbed in the face of all external things,
refreshed him.
Still in his brown woollen gown, Mr. Stone was sitting with his eyes
fixed on something in the corner, whence a little perfumed steam was
rising.
“Shut the door,” he said; “I am making cocoa; will you have a cup?”
“Am I disturbing you?” asked Hilary.
Mr. Stone looked at him steadily before answering:
“If I work after cocoa, I find it clogs the liver.”
“Then, if you'll let me, sir, I'll stay a little.”
“It is boiling,” said Mr. Stone. He took the saucepan off the flame,
and, distending his frail cheeks, blew. Then, while the steam mingled
with his frosty beard, he brought two cups from a cupboard, filled one
of them, and looked at Hilary.
“I should like you,” he said, “to hear three or four pages I have just
completed; you may perhaps be able to suggest a word or two.”
He placed the saucepan back on the stove, and grasped the cup he had
filled.
“I will drink my cocoa, and read them to you.”
Going to the desk, he stood, blowing at the cup.
Hilary turned up the collar of his coat against the night wind which
was visiting the room, and glanced at the empty cup, for he was rather
hungry. He heard a curious sound: Mr. Stone was blowing his own tongue.
In his haste to read, he had drunk too soon and deeply of the cocoa.
“I have burnt my mouth,” he said.
Hilary moved hastily towards him: “Badly? Try cold milk, sir.”
Mr. Stone lifted the cup.
“There is none,” he said, and drank again.
'What would I not give,' thought Hilary, 'to have his singleness of
heart!'
There was the sharp sound of a cup set down. Then, out of a rustling of
papers, a sort of droning rose:
“'The Proletariat--with a cynicism natural to those who really are in
want, and even amongst their leaders only veiled when these attained
a certain position in the public eye--desired indeed the wealth and
leisure of their richer neighbours, but in their long night of struggle
with existence they had only found the energy to formulate their
pressing needs from day to day. They were a heaving, surging sea of
creatures, slowly, without consciousness or real guidance, rising in
long tidal movements to set the limits of the shore a little farther
back, and cast afresh the form of social life; and on its pea-green
bosom '” Mr. Stone paused. “She has copied it wrong,” he said; “the
word is 'seagreen.' 'And on its sea-green bosom sailed a fleet of silver
cockle-shells, wafted by the breath of those not in themselves driven by
the wind of need. The voyage of these silver cockle-shells, all heading
across each other's bows, was, in fact, the advanced movement of that
time. In the stern of each of these little craft, blowing at the sails,
was seated a by-product of the accepted system. These by-products we
should now examine.”
Mr. Stone paused, and looked into his cup. There were some grounds in
it. He drank them, and went on:
“'The fratricidal principle of the survival of the fittest, which in
those days was England's moral teaching, had made the country one huge
butcher's shop. Amongst the carcasses of countless victims there had
fattened and grown purple many butchers, physically strengthened by the
smell of blood and sawdust. These had begotten many children. Following
out the laws of Nature providing against surfeit, a proportion of these
children were born with a feeling of distaste for blood and sawdust;
many of them, compelled for the purpose of making money to follow in
their fathers' practices, did so unwillingly; some, thanks to their
fathers' butchery, were in a position to abstain from practising; but
whether in practice or at leisure, distaste for the scent of blood
and sawdust was the common feature that distinguished them. Qualities
hitherto but little known, and generally despised--not, as we shall
see, without some reason--were developed in them. Self-consciousness,
aestheticism, a dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some
one of these, when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout
all ages to accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which
enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were
under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery
of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such
as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and
the paid representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven
occupied themselves in observing and complaining of the existing state
of thing. Each year saw more of their silver cockleshells putting out
from port, and the cheeks of those who blew the sails more violently
distended. Looking back on that pretty voyage, we see the reason why
those ships were doomed never to move, but, seated on the sea-green
bosom of that sea, to heave up and down, heading across each other's
bows in the self-same place for ever. That reason, in few words, was
this: 'The man who blew should have been in the sea, not on the ship.'”
The droning ceased. Hilary saw that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at
his sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were
surprising him. The droning instantly began again: “'In social effort,
as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a single
fertilising agent--the mysterious and wonderful attraction known as
Love. To this--that merging of one being in another--had been due all
the progressive variance of form, known by man under the name of Life.
It was this merger, this mysterious, unconscious Love, which was lacking
to the windy efforts of those who tried to sail that fleet. They were
full of reason, conscience, horror, full of impatience, contempt,
revolt; but they did not love the masses of their fellow-men. They could
not fling themselves into the sea. Their hearts were glowing; but the
wind which made them glow was not the salt and universal zephyr: it was
the desert wind of scorn. As with the flowering of the aloe-tree--so
long awaited, so strange and swift when once it comes--man had yet
to wait for his delirious impulse to Universal Brotherhood, and the
forgetfulness of Self.'”
Mr. Stone had finished, and stood gazing at his visitor with eyes that
clearly saw beyond him. Hilary could not meet those eyes; he kept his
own fixed on the empty cocoa cup. It was not, in fact, usual for those
who heard Mr. Stone read his manuscript to look him in the face. He
stood thus absorbed so long that Hilary rose at last, and glanced into
the saucepan. There was no cocoa in it. Mr. Stone had only made enough
for one. He had meant it for his visitor, but self-forgetfulness had
supervened.
“You know what happens to the aloe, sir, when it has flowered?” asked
Hilary with malice.
Mr. Stone moved, but did not answer.
“It dies,” said Hilary.
“No,” said Mr. Stone; “it is at peace.”
“When is self at peace, sir? The individual is surely as immortal as the
universal. That is the eternal comedy of life.”
“What is?” said Mr. Stone.
“The fight or game between the two.”
Mr. Stone stood a moment looking wistfully at his son-in-law. He laid
down the sheet of manuscript. “It is time for me to do my exercises.” So
saying, he undid the tasselled cord tied round the middle of his gown.
Hilary hastened to the door. From that point of vantage he looked back.
Divested of his gown and turned towards the window, Mr. Stone was
already rising on his toes, his arms were extended, his palms pressed
hard together in the attitude of prayer, his trousers slowly slipping
down.
“One, two, three, four, five!” There was a sudden sound of breath
escaping....
In the corridor upstairs, flooded with moonlight from a window at the
end, Hilary stood listening again. The only sound that came to him was
the light snoring of Miranda, who slept in the bathroom, not caring to
lie too near to anyone. He went to his room, and for a long time sat
buried in thought; then, opening the side window, he leaned out. On
the trees of the next garden, and the sloping roofs of stables and
outhouses, the moonlight had come down like a flight of milk-white
pigeons; with outspread wings, vibrating faintly as though yet in
motion, they covered everything. Nothing stirred. A clock was striking
two. Past that flight of milk-white pigeons were black walls as yet
unvisited. Then, in the stillness, Hilary seemed to hear, deep and very
faint, the sound as of some monster breathing, or the far beating of
muffed drums. From every side of the pale sleeping town it seemed to
come, under the moon's cold glamour. It rose, and fell, and rose, with
a weird, creepy rhythm, like a groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A
hansom cab rattled down the High Street; Hilary strained his ears after
the failing clatter of hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence.
Creeping nearer, drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of
that vast heart. It grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then,
emerging from that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching
sound, and knew that it was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but
only the waggons journeying to Covent Garden Market.