I went home to my solitary dinner, and afterwards took down a volume of
Emerson and tried to read. I thought the cool and spacious philosopher
might allay a certain fever in my blood. But he did nothing of the kind.
He wrote for cool and spacious people like himself; not for corpses
like me revivified suddenly with an overcharge of vital force. I pitched
him--how much more truly companionable is a book than its author!--I
pitched him across the room, and thrusting my hands in my pockets and
stretching out my legs, stared in a certain wonder at myself.
I, Simon de Gex, was in love; and, _horribile dictu!_ in love with two
women at once. It was Oriental, Mormonic, New Century, what you will;
but there it was. I am ashamed to avow that if, at that moment, both
women had appeared before me and said “Marry us,” I should have--well,
reflected seriously on the proposal. I had passed through curious enough
experiences, Heaven knows, already; but none so baffling as this. The
two women came alternately and knocked at my heart, and whispered in my
ear their irrefutable claims to my love. I listened throbbingly to each,
and to each I said, “I love you.”
I was in an extraordinary psychological predicament. Lola had remarked,
“You are not quite alive even yet.” I had come to complete life too
suddenly. This was the result. I got up and paced the bird-cage, which
the house-agents termed a reception-room, and wondered whether I were
going mad. It was not as if one woman represented the flesh and the
other the spirit. Then I might have seen the way to a decision. But both
had the large nature that comprises all. I could not exalt one in
any way to the abasement of the other. All my inherited traditions,
prejudices, predilections, all my training ranged me on the side of
Eleanor. I was clamouring for the real. Was she not the incarnation
of the real? Her very directness piqued me to a perverse and delicious
obliquity. And I knew, as I knew when I parted from her months before,
that it was only for me to awaken things that lay virginally dormant.
On the other hand stood Lola, with her magnetic seduction, her rich
atmosphere, her great wide simplicity of heart, holding out arms into
which I longed to throw myself.
It was monstrous, abnormal. I hated the abominable indelicacy of
weighing one against the other, as I had hated the idea of their
meeting.
I paced my bird-cage until it shrank to the size of a rat-trap. Then
I clapped on my hat and fled down into the streets. I jumped into the
first cab I saw and bade the driver take me to Barbara's Building.
Campion suddenly occurred to me as the best antidote to the poison that
had entered my blood.
I found him alone, clearing from the table the remains of supper. In
spite of his soul's hospitable instincts, he stared at me.
“Why, what the----?”
“Yes, I know. You're surprised to see me bursting in on you like a wild
animal. I'm not going to do it every night, but this evening I claim a
bit of our old friendship.”
“Claim it all, my dear de Gex!” he said cordially. “What can I do for
you?”
It was characteristic of Campion to put his question in that form.
Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have asked what was the matter
with me. But Campion, who all his life had given, wanted to know what he
could co.
“Tell me fairy tales of Lambeth and idylls of the Waterloo Bridge Road.
Or light your pipe and talk to me of Barbara.”
He folded up the tablecloth and put it in the sideboard drawer.
“If it's elegant distraction you want,” said he, “I can do better
than that.” He planted himself in front of me. “Would you like to do a
night's real work?”
“Certainly,” said I.
“A gentleman of my acquaintance named Judd is in the ramping stage of
_delirium tremens_. He requires a couple of men to hold him down so as
to prevent him from getting out of bed and smashing his furniture and
his wife and things. I was going to relieve one of the fellows there
now, so that he can get a few hours' sleep, and if you like to come
and relieve the other, you'll be doing a good action. But I warn you it
won't be funny.”
“I'm in the mood for anything,” I said.
“You'll come?”
“Of course.”
“That's splendid!” he shouted. “I hardly thought you were in earnest.
Wait till I telephone for some medicine to be sent up from the
dispensary. I promised to take it round with me.”
He telephoned instructions, and presently a porter brought in the
medicine. Campion explained that it had been prescribed by the doctor
attached to the institution who was attending the case.
“You must come and see the working of our surgery and dispensary!” he
cried enthusiastically. “We charge those who can afford a sixpence for
visit and medicine. Those who can't are provided, after inquiry, with
coupons. We don't want to encourage the well-to-do to get their medical
advice gratis, or we wouldn't be able to cope with the really poor. We
pay the doctor a fixed salary, and the fees go to the general fund of
the Building, so it doesn't matter a hang to him whether a patient pays
or not.”
“You must be proud of all this, Campion?” I said.
“In a way,” he replied, lighting his pipe; “but it's mainly a question
of money--my poor old father's money which he worked for, not I.”
I reminded him that other sons had been known to put their poor old
father's money to baser uses.
“I suppose Barbara is more useful to the community that steam yachts or
racing stables; but there, you see, I hate yachting because I'm always
sea-sick, and I scarcely know which end of a horse you put the bridle
on. Every man to his job. This is mine. I like it.”
“I wonder whether holding down people suffering from _delirium tremens_
is my job,” said I. “If so, I'm afraid I shan't like it.”
“If it's really your job,” replied Campion, “you will. You must. You
can't help it. God made man so.”
It was only an hour or two later when, for the first time in my life, I
came into practical touch with human misery, that I recognised the truth
of Campion's perfervid optimism. No one could like our task that night
in its outer essence. For a time it revolted me. The atmosphere of
the close, dirty room, bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room,
bathroom, laundry--all in one, the home of man, wife and two children,
caught me by the throat. It was sour. The physical contact with the
flesh of the unclean, gibbering, shivering, maniacal brute on the foul
bed was unutterably repugnant to me. Now and again, during intervals
of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to
breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish
shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their
nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me.
A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it--the
children's bed--on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie
down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the
night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and-twenty.
In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an
atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the
window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of
her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a
broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated
dish-clout than a woman.
The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober,
could earn fair wages. The cry of the wife, before Campion awed her
into comparative silence, was a monotonous upbraiding of her husband for
bringing them down to this poverty. It seemed impossible to touch her
intelligence and make her understand that no words from her or any one
could reach his consciousness. His violence, his screams, his threats,
the horrors of his fear left her unmoved. We were there to guard her
from physical danger, and that to her was all that mattered.
In the course of an hour or so the nausea left me. I felt braced by the
grimness of the thing, and during the paroxysms I had no time to think
of anything but the mechanical work in hand. It was all that Campion and
I, both fairly able-bodied men, could do to keep the puny little tailor
in his bed. Horrible shapes menaced him from which he fought madly to
escape. He writhed and shrieked with terror. Once he caught my hand in
his teeth and bit it, and Campion had some difficulty in relaxing
the wretch's jaw. Between the paroxysms Campion and I sat on the bed
watching him, scarcely exchanging a word. The wife, poor creature,
whimpered on her mattress. It was not a pleasant vigil. It lasted till
the grey dawn crept in, pitilessly intensifying the squalor of the room,
and until the dawn was broadening into daylight. Then two of Campion's
men from Barbara's Building arrived to relieve us. Before we went,
however, the neighbour who had taken charge of the children came in to
help the slatternly wife light a fire and make some tea. I have enjoyed
few things more than the warm, bitter stuff which I drank out of the
broken mug in that strange and depressing company.
I went out into the street with racked head and nerves and muscles.
Campion kept his cloth cap in his hand, allowing the morning wind to
ruffle his shaggy black hair, and drew a long breath.
“I think the worst is over now. As soon as he can be moved, I'll get him
down to the annexe at Broadstairs. The sea air will pull him round.”
“Isn't it rather hopeless?” I asked.
He turned on me. “Nothing's hopeless. If you once start the hopeless
game down here you'd better distribute cyanide of potassium instead of
coals and groceries. I've made up my mind to get that man decent again,
and, by George, I'm going to do it! Fancy those two weaklings producing
healthy offspring. But they have. Two of the most intelligent kids
in the district. If you hold up your hands and say it's awful to
contemplate their upbringing you're speaking the blatant truth. It's
the contemplation that's awful. But why contemplate when you can do
something?”
I admitted the justice of the remark. He went on.
“Look at yourself now. If you had gone in with me last night and just
stared at the poor devil howling with D.T. in that filthy place, you'd
have come out sick and said it was awful. Instead of that, you buckled
to and worked and threw off everything save our common humanity, and
have got interested in the Judds in spite of yourself. You'll go and see
them again and do what you can for them, won't you?”
I was not in a merry mood, but I laughed. Campion had read the intention
that had vaguely formulated itself in the back of my mind.
“Of course I will,” I said.
We walked on a few steps down the still silent, disheartening street
without speaking. Then he tugged his beard, half-halted, and glanced at
me quickly.
“See here,” said he, “the more sensible people I can get in to help
us the better. Would you like me to hand you over the Judd family _en
bloc_?”
This was startling to the amateur philanthropist. But it is the way of
all professionals to regard their own business as of absorbing interest
to the outside world. The stockbroking mind cannot conceive a sane
man indifferent to the fluctuations of the money market, and to the
professional cricketer the wide earth revolves around a wicket. How in
the world could I be fairy godfather to the Judd family? Campion took my
competence for granted.
“You may not understand exactly what I mean, my dear Campion,” said
I; “but I attribute the most unholy disasters of my life to a ghastly
attempt of mine to play Deputy Providence.”
“But who's asking you to play Deputy Providence?” he shouted. “It's the
very last idiot thing I want done. I want you to do certain definite
practical work for that family under the experienced direction of the
authorities at Barbara's Building. There, do you understand now?”
“Very well, I'll do anything you like.”
Thus it befell that I undertook to look after the moral, material, and
spiritual welfare of the family of an alcoholic tailor by the name of
Judd who dwelt in a vile slum in South Lambeth. My head was full of the
prospect when I awoke at noon, for I had gone exhausted to sleep as soon
as I reached home. If goodwill, backed by the experience of Barbara's
Building, could do aught towards the alleviation of human misery, I
determined that it should be done. And there was much misery to be
alleviated in the Judd family. I had no clear notion of the means
whereby I was to accomplish this; but I knew that it would be a
philanthropic pursuit far different from my previous eumoirous
wanderings abut London when, with a mind conscious of well-doing, I
distributed embarrassing five-pound notes to the poor and needy.
I had known--what comfortable, well-fed gentleman does not?--that within
easy walking distance of his London home thousands of human beings live
like the beasts that perish; but never before had I spent an intimate
night in one of the foul dens where the living and perishing take place.
The awful pity of it entered my soul.
So deeply was I impressed with the responsibility of what I had
undertaken, so grimly was I haunted by the sight of the pallid, howling
travesty of a man and the squeezed-out, whimpering woman, that the
memory of the conflicting emotions that had driven me to Campion the
night before returned to me with a shock.
“It strikes me,” I murmured, as I shaved, “that I am living very
intensely indeed. Here am I in love with two women at once, and almost
hysterically enthusiastic over a delirious tailor.” Then I cut my cheek
and murmured no more, until the operation was concluded.
I had arranged to accompany Lola that afternoon to the Zoological
Gardens. This was a favourite resort of hers. She was on intimate terms
with keepers and animals, and her curious magnetism allowed her to play
such tricks with lions and tigers and other ferocious beasts as made
my blood run cold. As for the bears, they greeted her approach with
shrieking demonstrations of affection. On such occasions I felt the same
curious physical antipathy as I did when she had dominated Anastasius's
ill-conditioned cat. She seemed to enter another sphere of being in
which neither I nor anything human had a place.
With some such dim thoughts in my head, I reached her door in Cadogan
Gardens. The sight of her electric brougham that stood waiting switched
my thoughts into another groove, but one running oddly parallel.
Electric broughams also carried her out of my sphere. I had humbly
performed the journey thither in an omnibus.
She received me in her big, expansive way.
“Lord! How good it is to see you. I was getting the--I was going to say
'the blind hump'--but you don't like it. I was going to turn crazy and
bite the furniture.”
“Why?” I asked with masculine directness.
“I've been trying to educate myself--to read poetry. Look here”--she
caught a small brown-covered octavo volume from the table. “I can't make
head or tail of it. It proved to me that it was no use. If I couldn't
understand poetry, I couldn't understand anything. It was no good trying
to educate myself. I gave it up. And then I got what you don't like me
to call the hump.”
“You dear Lola!” I cried, laughing. “I don't believe any one has ever
made head or tail out of 'Sordello.' There once was a man who said
there were only two intelligible lines in the poem--the first and the
last--and that both were lies. 'Who will, may hear Sordello's story
told,' and 'Who would, has heard Sordello's story told.' Don't worry
about not understanding it.”
“Don't you?”
“Not a bit,” said I.
“That's a comfort,” she said, with a generous sigh of relief. “How well
you're looking!” she cried suddenly. “You're a different man. What have
you been doing to yourself?”
“I've grown quite alive.”
“Good! Delightful! So am I. Quite alive now, thank you.”
She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume. But there was a
dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in
her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a
Gainsborough swagger on the mass of her bronze hair.
“It's the spring,” she added.
“Yes,” said I, “it's the spring.”
She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder.
“You want a new suit of clothes, Simon.”
“Dear me!” said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I
had lounged at Mustapha Superieur. “I suppose I do.”
It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing. I had
been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his
predecessors having done most of the thinking for me.
“I'll go to Poole's at once,” said I.
And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present
precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to
abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I
could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor.
“I shouldn't have mentioned it,” said Lola apologetically, “but you're
always so spick and span.”
“And now I'm getting shabby!”
I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of
Simon de Gex down at heel.
“Oh, not shabby!” echoed Lola.
“Yes, my dear. The days of purple and fine linen are _vorbei_. You'll
have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged
hems to my trousers.”
Lola declared that I was talking rubbish.
“Not quite such rubbish as you may think, my dear. Shall you mind?”
“It would break my heart. But why do you talk so? You can't be--as
poor--as that?”
Her face manifested such tragic concern that I laughed. Besides, the
idea of personal poverty amused me. When I gave up my political work
I should only have what I had saved from my wreck--some two hundred a
year--to support me until I should find some other means of livelihood.
It was enough to keep me from starvation, and the little economies I had
begun to practise afforded me enjoyment. On the other hand, how folks
regulated their balance-sheets so as to live on two hundred a year I had
but a dim notion. In the course of our walk from Barbara's Building to
the Judds the night before I had asked Campion. He had laughed somewhat
grimly.
“I don't know. I don't run an asylum for spendthrift plutocrats; but if
you want to see how people live and bring up large families on fifteen
shillings a week, I can show you heaps of examples.”
This I felt would, in itself, be knowledge of the deepest interest; but
it would in no way aid me to solve my own economic difficulty. I was
always being brought up suddenly against the problem in some form or
another, and, as I say, it caused me considerable amusement.
“I shall go on happily enough,” said I, reassuringly. “In the meantime
let us go and see the lions and tigers.”
We started. The electric brougham glided along comfortably through the
sunlit streets. A feeling of physical and spiritual content stole over
me. Our hands met and lingered a long time in a sympathetic clasp.
Whatever fortune held in store for me here at least I had an inalienable
possession. For some time we said nothing, and when our eyes met she
smiled. I think she had never felt my heart so near to hers. At last we
broke the silence and talked of ordinary things. I told her of my vigil
overnight and my undertaking to look after the Judds. She listened
with great interest. When I had finished my tale, she said almost
passionately:
“Oh, I wish I could do something like that!”
“You?”
“Why not? I came from those people. My grandfather swept the cages in
Jamrach's down by the docks. He died of drink. He used to live in one
horrible, squalid room near by. I remember my father taking me to see
him when I was a little girl--we ourselves weren't very much better off
at that time. I've been through it,” she shivered. “I know what that
awful poverty is. Sometimes it seems immoral of me to live luxuriously
as I do now without doing a hand's turn to help.”
“_Chacun a son metier_, my dear,” said I. “There's no need to reproach
yourself.”
“But I think it might be my _metier_,” she replied earnestly, “if only I
could learn it.”
“Why haven't you tried, then?”
“I've been lazy and the opportunity hasn't come my way.”
“I'll introduce you to Campion,” I said, “and doubtless he'll be able to
find something for you to do. He has made a science of the matter. I'll
take you down to see him.”
“Will you?”
“Certainly,” said I. There was a pause. Then an idea struck me. “I
wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you
have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans.”
“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully.
“I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of
jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such
pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged.”
“Oh, Simon!” she exclaimed reproachfully. “I quite thought you were
serious.”
“So I am, my dear,” I returned quickly, “as serious as I can be.”
She laughed. “Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said
that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I
wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head.”
“It wasn't. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the
impression that you were a dangerous seductress.”
“And I'm not?”
Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing
impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then
driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the
dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to
hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook.
“You're a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress.”
The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes.
“What else am I?” she murmured.
But, alas! I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the
gates of the Zoological Gardens. We both awakened from our foolishness.
My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me.
“What's the good of a mind if you can't change it? I don't feel in a
mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don't care to see me fooling
about with them. I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you.”
With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing.
Besides, I had no desire to dispute. I acquiesced. We agreed to continue
our drive.
“We'll go round by Hampstead Heath,” she said to the chauffeur. As soon
as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in
her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on
account of its frankness:
“What were we talking of before we pulled up?”
“I don't know what we were talking of,” I said, “but we seem to have
trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale.”
“Can't we tread on it again?” She laughed happily.
“You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again.”
She drew yet a little nearer and whispered: “I'm trying to do it as hard
as I can.”
An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively
closed round mine in its boneless clasp. The long pent-up longing of
the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul. My senses
swam. Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world. Her lips
were parted. Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue
Road, St. John's Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only
noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips.
All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins.
“I told you I was quite alive!” I said with idiotic exultation.
She closed her eyes and leaned back. “Why did you do that?” she
murmured.
“Because I love you,” said I. “It has come at last.”
Where we drove I have no recollection. Presumably an impression of green
rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we passed
along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on
either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy,
noisy suburb may have been Kilburn: the street leading thence to
the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale. To me they were paths in
Dreamland. We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple,
commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life.
There was no doubt now of my choice. I loved her. Love had come to me at
last. That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know.
Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland. She shivered. I asked
whether she felt cold.
“No. I can't believe that you love me. I can't. I can't.”
I smiled in a masterful way. “I can soon show you that I do.”
She shook her head. “I'm afraid, Simon, I'm afraid.”
“What of?”
“Myself.”
“Why?”
“I can't tell you. I can't explain. I don't know how to. I've been
wrong--horribly wrong. I'm ashamed.”
She gripped her hands together and looked down at them. I bent forward
so as to see her face, which was full of pain.
“But, dearest of all women,” I cried, “what in the world have you to be
ashamed of?”
She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out:
“I'll tell you. A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn't tell.
But I can't keep these things in. Didn't you begin by saying I was a
seductress? No, no, let me talk. Didn't you say I could make a man do
what I wanted? Well, I wanted you to kiss me. And now you've done it,
you think you love me; but you don't, you can't.”
“You're talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the
lips of a loving woman,” I said aghast. “I repeat in the most solemn way
that I love you with all my heart.”
“In common decency you couldn't say otherwise.”
Again I saw the futility of disputation. I put my hand on hers.
“Time will show, dear. At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland.”
“I wish we hadn't,” she said. “Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as
you call it, that took us there? I meant us to go.”
At last we reached Cadogan Gardens. I descended and handed her out, and
we entered the hall of the mansions. The porter stood with the lift-door
open.
“I'm coming up to knock all this foolishness out of your head.”
“No, don't, please, for Heaven's sake!” she whispered imploringly. “I
must be alone--to think it all out. It's only because I love you so. And
don't come to see me for a day or two--say two days. This is Wednesday.
Come on Friday. You think it over as well. And if it's really true--I'll
know then--when you come. Good-bye, dear. Make Gray drive you wherever
you want to go.”
She wrung my hand, turned and entered the lift. The gates swung to and
she mounted out of sight. I went slowly back to the brougham, and gave
the chauffeur the address of my eyrie. He touched his hat. I got in
and we drove off. And then, for the first time, it struck me that an
about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought
not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a
wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a
stone in the midriff.
What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the _deux ex
machina_ in the melodrama and forbade the banns. To live on Lola's
money--the idea was intolerable. Equally intolerable was the idea
of earning an income by means against the honesty of which my soul
clamoured aloud.
“Good God!” I cried. “Is life, now I've got to it, nothing but an
infinite series of dilemmas? No sooner am I off one than I'm on another.
No sooner do I find that Lola and not Eleanor Faversham is the
woman sent down by Heaven to be my mate than I realise the same old
dilemma--Lola on one horn and Eleanor replaced on the other by Pride
and Honour and all sorts of capital-lettered considerations. Life is
the very Deuce,” said I, with a wry appreciation of the subtlety of
language.
Why did Lola say: “Your Eleanor Faversham?”
I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept
peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for
the first time love that was not light had come into my life.