then suddenly it vanished, leaving him racked by monstrous doubts. His
mind, the full exercise of which had given him such thrilling delight,
seemed to become parched and shriveled as a dried pea. Where had been
held out for him the promise of fine action was now darkness, and he
sank deeper and deeper into a muddy inertia. Fear possessed him and
brought him to agony, dug into his sides with its spur, drove him
floundering on, and when out of the depths of his soul he strove to
squeeze something of that soaring energy that had visited him or been
struck out of him (he knew not which it was) he could summon nothing
more powerful to his aid than anger. He wept tears of anger--anger at
the world, at himself, and the blind, aimless force of events, at his
own impotence to move out of the bog, at the folly and obstinacy which
had led him to submit to the affront that had been put upon him by men
who for years had been his colleagues and comrades. His anger was
blown to a white heat by disgust when he looked back and counted the
years he had spent in fatted security mechanically plying a mechanical
profession, shut out by habit and custom from both imaginative power
and the impotence of exhaustion. He raged and stormed and blubbered,
and he marveled at the commotion going on within him as he pursued his
daily tasks, read aloud with Matilda, argued with Mr. Copas, took
money at the door of the theater in the evening, sat among the dirty,
smelling, loutish audience. In his bitterness he found a sort of
comfort in reverting to his old bantering attitude toward women, to
find it a thousand times intensified. More than half the audience were
women, poor women, meanly dressed, miserably corseted; the fat women
bulged and heaved out of their corsets, and the thin women looked as
though they had been dropped into theirs and were only held up by
their armpits. There they sat, hunched and bunched, staring, gaping,
giggling, moping, chattering, chattering . . . Ach! They were silly.
And the men? God save us! these sodden, stupid clods were men. They
slouched and sprawled and yawned and spat. Their hands were dirty,
their teeth yellow, and their speech was thick, clipped, guttural,
inhuman. . . . Driven on by a merciless logic he was forced into
consideration of himself. As he sat there at the end of the front row
he turned his hands over and over; fat, stumpy hands they were, and he
put them up and felt the fleshiness of his neck, the bushy hair
growing out of his ears, and he ran them along his plump legs and
prodded the stoutness of his belly. He laughed at himself. He laughed
at the whole lot of them. And he tried to remember a single man or a
single woman whom he had encountered in his life and could think of as
beautiful. Not one.
He turned his attention to the stage. Copas was almost a dwarf, a
strutting, conceited little dwarf, pouring out revolting nonsense, a
hideous caricature of human beings who were the caricatures of
creation. He said to himself:
"I must get out of this."
And he found himself using a phrase he had employed for years in
dealing with small boys who produced slovenly work and wept when he
railed at them:
"Tut! Tut! This will never do!"
At that he gasped. He was using the phrase to himself! He was
therefore like a small boy in the presence of outraged authority, and
that authority was (words came rushing in on him) his own conscience,
his own essence, liberated, demanding, here and now, among men and
women as they are, the very fullness of life.
He had not regained his mood of delight, but rather had reached the
limit of despair, had ceased blindly and uselessly to struggle, but
cunningly, cautiously began to urge his way out of his despond.
Whatever happened, he must move forward. Whatever happened, he must
know, discover, reach out and grasp.
And he blessed the illumination that had come to him, blessed also the
blackness and misery into which, incontinently, he had fallen. He
submitted to exhaustion and was content to await an accretion of
energy.
Thereafter, for a little while, he found himself more akin to Mr.
Copas, drank with him, cracked jokes with him, walked with him and
listened to his talk. He began to appreciate Mrs. Copas and to
understand that being beaten by a man is not incompatible with a
genuine affection and sympathy for him. He speculated not at all, and
more than ever his instruction of Matilda became dependent upon her
caprice.
Her uncle now gave her a salary of five shillings a week and upon her
first payment she went out and bought a cigar for her mentor. She gave
three half-pence for it and he smoked it and she wore the band on her
little finger. To guard against such presents in the future he bought
himself a box of fifty Manilas.
Mrs. Copas began to sound him as to his resources. Losing patience
with his evasions she asked him at last bluntly if he were rich. He
turned his cigar round his tongue and said:
"It depends what you mean by rich."
"Well," she replied cautiously, feeling her ground, "could you lay
your hands on fifty pounds without selling anything?"
"Certainly I could, or a hundred."
"A hundred pounds!"
Her eyes and mouth made three round O's and she was silenced.
Both were astonished and both sat, rather awkwardly, adjusting their
financial standards. She took up her knitting and he plied his cigar.
They were sitting on boxes outside the stage door in the warm August
sunlight. She gave a discreet little cough and said:
"You don't . . . you didn't . . . have a wife, did you?"
"No. I have never had a wife."
"Think of that now. . . . You'd have a house-keeper maybe?"
"A married couple looked after me."
"Well, I never! Well, there's never any knowing, is there?"
He had learned by this time that there was nothing at all behind Mrs.
Copas's cryptic utterances. If there were anything she could arrive at
it by circumlocution, and in her own good time would make it plain.
Her next remark might have some connection with her previous train of
thought or it might not. She said in a toneless, detached voice:
"And to think of you turning up with our Matilda. And they do say how
everything's for the best. . . . It's a pity business is so bad here,
isn't it?"
Business was very bad. The faithful few of the district who always
patronized Mr. Copas year after year attended, but they amounted to no
more than fifty, while the young people were drawn off by the
kinematograph. They even sank so far as to admit children free for
three nights in the hope that their chatter would incite their parents
to come and share the wonders they had seen. On the fourth night only
four old women and a boy paid for admission.
The situation was saved by a publican on the other side of the square
who, envious of his rival's successful enterprise with the
kinematograph, hired the theater for a week's boxing display, by his
nephew, who was an ex-champion of the Midlands with a broken nose and
reputation.
That week was one of the most miserable depression. Mr. Copas drank
freely. Mrs. Copas never stopped chatting, the company demanded their
salaries up to date, accepted a compromise and disappeared, and the
ex-champion of the Midlands took a fancy to Matilda. He followed her
in the streets, sent her half-pounds of caramels, accosted her more
than once and asked her if she did not want a new hat, and when she
snubbed him demanded loudly to know what a pretty girl like her was
doing without a lad. Chivalrously, not without a tremor, Mr. Mole
offered himself as her escort in her walks abroad. They were
invariably followed by the boxer whistling and shouting at intervals.
Sometimes he would lag behind them and embark upon a long detailed and
insulting description of Mr. Mole's back view; sometimes he would
hurry ahead, look round and leer and make unpleasant noises with his
lips or contemptuous gestures with his hands.
Matilda had found a certain spot by a canal where it passed out of the
town and made a bee-line across the country. There was a bridge over a
sluice which marked the cleavage between the sweet verdure of the
fields and the soiled growth of the outskirts of the town. It was a
lonely romantic spot and she wished to visit it again before they
left. She explained to her friend that she wanted to be alone but
dared not because of her pursuer, and her friend agreed to leave her
on the bridge and to lurk within sight and earshot.
They had to go by tram. The boxer was twenty yards behind them. They
hurried on, mounted the tram just as it was starting, and
congratulated themselves on having avoided him. When they reached the
bridge there he was sitting on the parapet, whistling and leering.
Matilda flamed scarlet and turned to go. Boiling with fury Old Mole
hunched up his shoulders, tucked down his head (the attitude familiar
to so many Thrigsbians), and bore down on the offender. He grunted
out:
"Be off."
" 'Ave you bought the bally bridge?"
And he grinned. The coarseness and beastliness of the creature
revolted Mr. Mole, roused him to such a pitch of furious disgust, that
he lost all sense of what he was doing, raised his stick, struck out,
caught the fellow in the chest and sent him toppling over into the
pool. He leaned over the parapet and watched the man floundering and
splashing and gulping and spitting and cursing, saw his face turn
greeny white with hard terror, but was entirely unmoved until he felt
Matilda's hand on his arm and heard her blubbering and crying:
"He's drowning! He's drowning!"
Then he rushed down and lay on his stomach on the bank and held out
his stick, further, further, as far as he could reach, until the lout
in the water clutched it. The boxer had lost his head. He tugged at
the stick and it looked for a moment as though there would be two men
in the water. It was a question which would first be exhausted. Grayer
and grayer and more distorted grew the boxer's face, redder and redder
and more swollen Old Mole's, until at last the strain relaxed and
Matilda's tormentor was drawn into shallow water and out on to the
bank. There he lay drenched, hiccoughing, spitting, concerned entirely
with his own discomfort and giving never a thought either to the
object of his desires or his assailant and rescuer. At last he shook
himself like a dog, squeezed the water out of his sleeves, sprang to
his feet and was off like a dart along the towpath in the direction of
the tall fuming chimneys of the town.
Matilda and Old Mole walked slowly out toward the setting sun and in
front of them for miles stretched the regiments of pollarded willows
like mournful distorted human beings condemned forever to stand and
watch over the still waters.
"Life," said Old Mole, "is full of astonishments. I should never have
thought it of myself."
"He was very nearly drowned," rejoined Matilda.
"It is very singular," said he, more to himself than to her, "that
one's instinct should think such a life worth saving. A more bestial
face I never saw."
"I think," said she, "you would help anybody whatever they were like."
She took his arm and they walked on, as it seemed, into the darkness.
Until they turned, neither spoke. He said:
"I am oddly miserable when I think that in a fortnight the school will
reopen and I shall not be there. I suppose it's habit, but I want to
go back and I know I never shall."
"I don't want never to go back."
"Don't you? But then you're young and I'm rather old."
"I don't think of you as old. I always think of you as some one very
good and sometimes you make me laugh."
"Oh! Matilda, often, very often, you make me want to cry. And men
don't cry."
A little scornfully Matilda answered:
"_Don't_ they!"
Through his mournfulness he felt a glow of happiness, a little aching
in his heart, a sort of longing and a pleasant pride in this excursion
with a young woman clinging to his arm and treating him with sweet
consideration and tenderness.
"After all," he thought, "it is certainly true that when they reach
middle age men do require an interest in some young life."
So, having fished out a theory, as he thought, to meet the case, he
was quite content and prepared, untroubled, to enjoy his happiness.
He did thoroughly enjoy his happiness. His newly awakened but
unpracticed imagination worked like that of a sentimental and
self-cloistered writer who, having no conception of human
relationships, binds labels about the necks of his personages--
Innocent Girlhood, Middle-aged Bachelorhood, Mother's Love, Manly
Honor, English Gentleman--and amuses himself and his readers with
propping them up in the attitudes meet and right to their affixed
characters. Except that he did not drag the Deity into it, Old Mole
lived perfectly for a short space of time in a neatly rounded
novelette, with himself as the touching, lamb-like hero and Matilda as
the radiant heroine. He basked in it, and when on her he let loose a
flood of what he thought to be emotion she only said:
"Oh! Go on!"
True to his sentimentality he was entirely unconscious of, absolutely
unconcerned with, what she might be feeling. He only knew that he had
been battered and bewildered and miserable and that now he was
comfortable and at his ease.
The appointed end of all such things, in print and out of it, is
marriage. Outside marriage there is no such thing as affection between
man and woman (in that atmosphere passion and desire do not exist and
children are not born but just crop up). True to his fiction--and how
many men are ever true to anything else?--Old Mole came in less than a
week to the idea of marriage with Matilda. It was offensive to his
common sense, so repugnant indeed that it almost shocked him back into
the world of fact and that hideous mental and spiritual flux from
which he was congratulating himself on having escaped. He held his
nose and gulped it down and sighed:
"Ah! Let us not look on the dark side of life!"
Then he asked himself:
"Do I love her? She has young dreams of love. How can I give her my
love and not shatter them?"
And much more in this egoistic strain he said, the disturbance in his
heart, or whatever organ may be the seat of the affections, having
totally upset his sense of humor. He told himself, of course, that she
was hardly the wife for a man of his position, but that was only by
way of peppering his emotions, and he was really rather amazed when he
came to the further reflection that, after all, he had no position. To
avoid the consternation it brought he decided to ask Matilda's hand in
marriage.
As it turned out, to the utter devastation of his novelette, it was
his hand that was asked.
He bought Matilda a new camisole. He had heard the word used by women
and was rather staggered when he found what it was he had purchased.
Confusedly he presented it to Innocent Girlhood. She giggled and then,
with a shout of laughter, rushed off to show Mrs. Copas her gift. He
did not on that occasion stammer out his proposal.
He took her for three walks and two tram-drives at fourpence each, but
she was preoccupied and morose, and gave such vague answers to his
preliminary remarks that his hopes died within him and he discussed
the Insurance Act and Lancashire's chances of defeating Yorkshire at
Bradford. Moreover, Matilda was pale and drawn and not far from being
downright ugly, far too plain for a novelette at all events. He felt
himself sliding backward and could hear the buzz and roar of the chaos
within himself, and the novelette was unfinished and until he came to
the last jaunting little hope in the future, the last pat on the back
for the hero, the final distribution of sugar-plums all round, there
would be no sort of security, no sealed circle wherein to dwell. He
felt sick, and the nausea that came on him was worse than the fear and
doubt through which he had passed. He was like a man after a long
journey come hungry to an inn to find nothing to eat but lollipops.
When they returned from their last tram-drive they had supper with Mr.
and Mrs. Copas, who discussed the new actors whom they had engaged, as
only two of the old company were willing to return. The new comic had
acted in London, in the West End, had once made his twenty pounds a
week. They were proud of him, and Mr. Copas unblushingly denounced the
Drink as the undoing of many a nartist. Very early in the evening,
before any move had been made to clear the plates and dishes away,
Matilda declared herself tired, and withdrew. Mr. Copas went on
talking and Mrs. Copas began to make horrible faces at him, so that
Old Mole, in the vagueness of his acute discomfort, thought mistily
that perhaps they were at the beginning of an altercation, which would
end--as their altercations ended. However, the talk went on and the
grimaces went on until at last Mr. Copas perceived that he was the
object of them, stopped dead, seized his hat and left the room. Mrs.
Copas beamed on Mr. Mole. She leaned back in her chair and folded her
arms. They were bare to the elbow and fat and coarse and red. She went
on beaming, and nervously he took out a cigar and lit it. Mrs. Copas
leaned forward and with a knife began to draw patterns with the
mustard left on the edge of a plate.
"We'll be on the move again soon, Mr. Mole."
"I shall be glad of that."
"What we want to know, what I want to know and what Mr. Copas wants to
know is this. What are you going to do about it?"
"I . . . I suppose I shall go with you."
"You know what I mean, Mr. Mole. Some folk ain't particular. I am. And
Mr. Copas is very careful about what happens in his theater. If it
can't be legitimate it can't be and there's nothing more to be said.
. . . Now, Mr. Mole, what are you going to do?"
"My good woman! I haven't the least idea what you are talking about. I
have enjoyed my stay with you. I have found it very instructive and
profitable and I propose to----"
"It's Matilda, Mr. Mole. What's done is done. We're not saying
anything about that. Some says it's a curse and some says it's the
only thing worth living for. Matilda's my own husband's niece and I've
got to see her properly done by whether you're offended with a little
plain speaking or not, Mr. Mole."
She had now traced a very passable spider's web in mustard on the
plate.
"If you need to be told, I must tell you, Mr. Mole. Matilda's in the
way."
No definite idea came to Mr. Mole, but a funny little throb and
trickle began at the base of his spine. He dabbed his cigar down into
half a glass of beer that Mr. Copas had left.
"We've talked it out, Mr. Mole, and you've got to marry her or pay up
handsome."
Marry! His first thought was in terms of the novelette, but those
terms would not embrace Mrs. Copas or her present attitude. His first
glimpse of the physical fact was through the chinks of his sentimental
fiction, and he was angry and hurt and disgusted. Then, the fiction
never having been rounded off, he was able to escape from it--(rare
luck in this world of deceit)--and he shook himself free of its dust
and tinsel, and, responding to the urgency of the occasion, saw or
half-saw the circumstances from Matilda's point of view. Mentally he
swept Mrs. Copas aside. The thing lay between himself and the girl.
Out of her presence he could not either think or feel about it
clearly. Only for himself there lay here and now, before him, the
opportunity for action, for real, direct, effective action, which
would lift him out of his despond and bring his life into touch with
another life. It gave him what he most needed, movement, uplift, the
occasion for spontaneity, for being rid, though it might be only
temporarily, of his fear and doubt and sickness of mind. Healthily, or
rather, in his eagerness for health, he refused to think of the
consequences. He lit another cigar, steadying himself by a chair-back,
so dazzled was he by the splendor of his resolution and the rush of
mental energy that had brought him to it, and said:
"Of course, if Matilda is willing, I will marry her."
"I didn't expect it of you, being a gentleman," returned Mrs. Copas,
obliterating her spider's web, "and, marriage being the lottery it is,
there are worse ways of doing it than that. After all, you do know
you're not drawing an absolute blank, which, I know, happens to more
than ever lets on."
Mr. Mole found that it is much easier to get married in life than in
sentimental fiction. He never proposed to Matilda, never discussed the
matter with her, only after the interview with Mrs. Copas she kissed
him in the morning and in the evening, and as often in between as she
felt inclined. He made arrangements with the registrar, bought a
special license and a ring. He said: "I take you, Matilda Burn, to be
my lawful wedded wife," and she said: "I take you, Herbert Jocelyn
Beenham, to be my lawful wedded husband." Mrs. Copas sat on the
registrar's hat, and, without any other incident, they were made two
in one and one in two.
In view of the approaching change in his condition he had written to
his lawyer and his banker in Thrigsby, giving orders to have all his
personal property realized and placed on deposit, also for five
hundred pounds to be placed on account for Mrs. H. J. Beenham.
The day after his wedding came this letter from the Head Master:
"MY DEAR BEENHAM:--I am delighted that your whereabouts has been
discovered. All search for you has been unavailing--one would not have
thought it so easy for a man to disappear--and I had begun to be
afraid that you had gone abroad. As I say, I am delighted, and I trust
you are having a pleasant vacation. I owe you, I am afraid, a profound
apology. If there be any excuse, it must be put down to the heat and
the strain of the end of the scholastic year. I was thinking, I
protest, only of the ancient foundation which you and I have for so
long served. The Chairman of the Governors, always, as you know, your
friend, has denounced what he is pleased to call my Puritanical
cowardice. The Police have made inquiries about the young woman and
state that she is a domestic servant who left her situation in
distressing circumstances without her box and without a character. I
do apologize most humbly, my dear Beenham, and I look to see you in
your place at the commencement of the approaching term."
Old Mole read this letter three times, and the description of his wife
stabbed him on each perusal more deeply to the heart. He tore the
sheet across and across and burned the pieces on the hearth. Matilda
came in and found him at it: and when she spoke to him he gave no
answer, but remained kneeling by the fender, turning the poker from
one hand to the other.
"Are you cross with me?" she said.
"No. Not with you. Not with you. Not with you."
"You don't often say things three times."
She came and laid her hands on his shoulders, and he took them and
kissed them, for now he adored her.
In the evening came a knock at the front door. Mr. Mole was at the
theater arranging for a new play with which to reopen when the boxing
season, which had been extended, was over. The slut of a landlady took
no notice, and the knock was repeated thrice. Matilda went down and
opened the door and found on the step a short, plump, rotund, elegant
little man with spectacles and a huge mustache. He asked for Mr.
Beenham, and she said she was Mrs. Beenham. He drew himself up and was
very stiff and said at the back of his throat:
"I am your husband's brother."
She took him upstairs to their sitting-room, and he told her how
distressed he was at the news that had reached him and to find his
brother living in such a humble place. He added that it was a serious
blow to all his family, but that, for his part, the world being what
it was and life on it being also what it was, he hoped that all might
be for the best. Matilda let him have his say and tactfully led him on
to talk about himself, and he told her all about his practice at the
Chancery Bar, and the wine at his club, and his rooms in Gray's Inn,
and his collection of Battersea china, and his trouble with the
committee of his golf club, and his dislike for most of his relations
except his brother Herbert, who was the last man in the world, as he
said, he had ever expected to go off the rails. She assured him then
that Herbert was the best and kindest of men, and that it would not be
her fault if their subsequent career did not astonish and delight him.
She did not drop a single aitch, and, noticing carefully his London
pronunciation, she mentally resolved to change her broad a's and in
future to call a schoolmaster a schoolmarster. . . . Their
conversation came abruptly to an end, and she produced a pack of cards
and taught him how to play German whist. From that he led her to
double-dummy Bridge, and they were still at it when his brother
returned. Matilda was scolded for being up so late, kissed, by both
men, and packed off to bed.
Whisky was produced. Said brother Robert:
"Well, of all the lunatics!"
"So you've been shocked and amazed and horrified. Do the others know?"
"Not yet. . . . I thought I'd better see you first."
"All right. Tell them that I'm married and have become a rogue and a
vagabond."
"You're not going on with this?"
"I am."
"Don't be a fool. Your wife's perfectly charming. There's nothing
against her."
"That's had nothing to do with it. I'm going on for my own
satisfaction. I've spent half my life in teaching. I want to spend the
rest of it in learning."
"From play-actors? Oh! come!"