that he sought to probe for its sources. Among the books in the
chambers were many modern English novels, and he found nearly all of
them, in varying formulæ, dealing axiomatically with woman as an
extraneous animal unaccountably attached to the species, a creature
fearfully and wonderfully ignorant of the affairs of the world, of her
own physical processes, of the most elementary rules of health,
morality, and social existence, capricious, soulless, unscrupulous,
scheming, intriguing, concerned wholly and solely with marriage, if
she were a "good" woman, with the destruction of marriage if she were
"bad"; at best being a sort of fairy--(Robert's "angel")--whose
function and destiny were to pop the sugarplum of love into the mouths
of virtuous men. The most extreme variant of this conception was to be
found in the works of Robert Wherry, who, in a syrupy medium, depicted
women as virginal mothers controlling and comforting a world of
conceited, helpless little boys. Wherry was enormously successful, and
he had many imitators, but none of them had his supreme audacity or
his canny belief in the falsehood which was his only stock in trade.
The trait of Wherry was upon all the novels in Robert's collection.
Even among the "advanced" novels the marks of the beast were there.
They advanced not by considering life, but by protest against Wherry.
They said, in effect, "Woman is not a mother, she is a huntress of
men, or a social worker, or a mistress--(the conscious audacity in
using that word!)--or a parasite, or a tyrant"; and one bold fellow
said, "She has breasts"; he said it not once, but on every fifth page
in every book. Old Mole found him even more disgusting than Wherry,
who at least, in his dexterity, might be supposed to give pleasure to
young girls and foolish, inexperienced persons of middle age--(like
Robert)--and no great harm be done.
To protect himself against the uncleanness of these books he took down
"Rabelais," which Robert kept tucked away on his highest shelf. And
when he had driven off the torpor in his blood and thoughts induced by
the slavishness of Robert's modern literature, he told himself that it
was folly to take it seriously:
"There have always been bad books," he said. "The good survive in the
love of good readers. Good taste is always the same, but vicious taste
is blown away by the cleansing winds of the soul."
All the same, he could not so easily away with modern literature, for
he was suffering from the itch to write, and had already half-planned,
being, like every one else, subject to the moral disease of the time,
an essay on Woman. Wherry and the rest brought him up sharp: they made
him very angry, but they made him perceive in himself many of the
distressing symptoms he had found in them. He gave more thought to
them, and, though he knew nothing of how these books were written, or
of the conditions under which literature was at that time produced and
marketed, he came to see these men and women as mountebanks in a fair,
each shouting outside a little tent. "Come inside and see what Woman
is like." And some showed bundles of clothes, with nobody inside them;
and some showed life-size dolls; and some showed women nude to the
waist; and some showed women with bared legs; and some showed women in
pink fleshings; and some showed naked women who had lost their
modesty, and therefore could not be gazed upon without offence.
He pondered his own essay, and recognized that its subject was not
Woman, but Matilda. In that gallery he could not show her, nor could
he, without shame, display her to the public view. And therein, it
seemed to him, he had touched the secret of all these lewd
exhibitions. The displayers of them, in their impatient haste to catch
the pennies of the public, or admiration, or whatever they might be
desiring, were presenting, raw, confused and unimagined, their own
unfelt and uncogitated experience, or, sometimes, an extension of
their experience, in which, by an appalling logic, while they limned
life as they would like to live it, they were led to the limits of
unreason and egoistic folly. In presentation or extension, only those
shows had any compelling force in which egoism was complete and entire
lack of feeling relieved the showmen of fine scruples or human
decency. Where shreds of decency were left they only served to show up
the horrible obscenity of the rest.
Looking at it in this light--and there seemed no other way of
correlating this literature with human life--Old Mole was distressed.
"It is bad enough," he thought, "when they make a public show of their
emotions, but when they parade emotions they never had, that is the
abomination of desolation."
Matilda read some of them. She gulped them down at the rate of two in
an evening, but when he tried to discuss them with her she had nothing
to say about them. To her they were just stories, to be read and
forgotten. He tried to persuade himself that she was right, at any
rate more sensible than himself, but could get no further than the
admission of the fact that she had no feeling for literature and would
just as soon read a cash-made piece of hackwork as a masterpiece. That
led him back to the subject of his essay and woman's indifference to
ideas and idealism. He had been considering it as a general
proposition, but he was forced to admit that it was in truth only
Matilda's indifference to his own ideas, and he was not at all sure
but she possessed something much more valuable, a power to assimilate
ideas when they had taken flesh and become a part of the life that is
lived. He knew that he was using her as a test, a touchstone, and
through her he had learned to tolerate many things which his reason
scouted. As a practical criterion for life and living (two very
different things, as he was beginning dimly to perceive)--she was very
valuable to him, but it was when he passed on to the things of art and
found himself faced with the need of getting or begetting clear
conceptions of phenomena, in his search for the underlying, connecting
and resolving truth, that she failed him. She said he thought too
much. Perhaps he did, but it was a part of his way of living, and he
could not rest content with his relation with her, except he had also
his idea of her. It was a relief to him, and he felt he was greatly
advanced along the road by which he was traveling when he found her in
the National Gallery among the five singing women of the _Nativity_ of
Piero della Francesca. That discovery gave her an existence in the
world of art. He told her about the picture and took her to see it.
"Good Lord!" she said. "Is that what you think I'm like?"
She had thrilled to London. She used to say she would like to go back
into the provinces just to have again the pleasure of arriving at the
station and coming out into the roar of the traffic and the wonderful
London smell. The shops had bowled her over. Cities she had known
where there was one street of elegant shops, towns where there might
be one shop whose elegance lifted it high above all the rest, but here
there were miles and miles of them. She discovered them for herself,
and then took her husband to see the magical region of Oxford Street
and Regent Street. In Bond Street they saw a necklace just like hers,
and a most elegant young man went into the shop and the necklace was
taken out of the window. She saw hats and coats and tailor-mades that
she bought "in her mind," as she said, for she was still scared of
money, and he could not induce her to be anything but frugal. (She
would walk a mile to save a penny bus fare.) . . . When they went into
Gray's Inn and Robert removed his curtains and some of his furniture,
she asked if she might buy some of her things herself, and they
visited the great stores. She quickly lost her awe of them, and when
she had drawn two or three checks for amounts staggering to her who
had lived all her life cooped in by a weekly financial crisis, she
applied her mind to the problem, and did many little sums on scraps of
paper to reassure herself that she had not shaken the bank's faith in
her stability and honesty. It ceased to be a miracle to her, but she
hated drawing checks to herself, for cash vanished so easily and
unaccountably, while for checks made payable to tradespeople she
always had something to show. In this state of mind she decided, and,
as something momentous, announced her decision to buy an evening
dress. It was no light undertaking. A week passed before she found the
material, and when she had bought it--(for in her world you always had
dresses "made up")--she was doubtful of her taste, and as dubious of
Old Mole's. She bought the _Era_ and looked up the address of the
second girl in the pantomime, who remained to her the smartest woman
of her acquaintance. Curiosity as to the address in Gray's Inn brought
the "second girl" flying to her aid; she was delighted to be of use
and undertook to show Matilda the ins and outs of the shops and "the
dear old West End." She gave counsel as to trimming, knew of an
admirable dressmaker near Hanover Square, "ever so cheap." The
dressmaker also sold hats, and Matilda bought hats for herself and her
friend. The dressmaker also sold opera cloaks, and Matilda bought an
opera cloak. The dress and the cloak necessitated, enforced, finer
stockings, shoes, gloves than any Matilda possessed, and these also
she purchased. . . . When all these acquisitions came home she laid
them out on her bed and gazed at them in alarm and pleasure. It was
the middle of the afternoon, but she changed every stitch of her
clothing and donned everything new, the dress and the opera cloak, the
necklace, and, as she had seen the ladies do in the theater, she wore
a ribbon through her hair. In this guise Old Mole surprised her. He
was ravished by her loveliness, but was so taken aback by all these
secret doings, so tickled by her simplicity, that he laughed. He
laughed indulgently, but he sapped her confidence, reduced all her
pleasure to ashes, and there were tears, and she wished she had never
come to London, and she knew she was not good enough for him, but he
need not so plainly tell her so nor scorn her when she tried to make
herself so: other women had pretty clothes, women, too, who were hard
put to it to make a living.
He soothed her and said if she would wear her silks and fine array he
would take her out next time Robert came.
"I don't want to go out with Robert."
"Why not?"
"If I'm not good enough to know your sister, I'm not good enough to
know your brother."
"That isn't reasonable."
She was ruffled and hot, and in her heart annoyed with him for coming
in on her like that, for she had planned to take him by surprise on
their first evening's pleasuring. She did not want to be soothed, and
preferred sparring.
"Your sister's in town, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen her?"
"No."
"You have."
"I have not."
He knew why she was sparring; he knew that to disappoint a woman in
the vanity of her clothes is more immediately dangerous than to treat
her with deliberate insult or cruelty, but he was exacerbated by her
unfair onslaught on Robert, and he was sore at the attitude taken
toward him by his family. Robert had done his best, but the rest were
implacable; they would not admit his right to his own actions
independent of their opinion. Not content with holding their opinion,
they communicated it to him in the most injurious letters, written at
intervals most nicely calculated for his annoyance. To a philosopher
in search of tolerance and an open mind all this had been ruffling.
The quarrel blew over. Matilda dried away her tears, and he begged her
pardon and promised to give her another evening dress finer even than
that, made at a real, smart, fashionable, expensive dressmaker's.
. . . Shyly and diffidently they entered a famous house in Albemarle
Street and were told that without an introduction the firm could not
make for madam. A splendid cocotte in glorious raiment swept by them
and out into the street. She had a little spaniel in her arms and a
silver-gray motorcar was awaiting her. Into this she mounted and was
whirled away. With something of both contempt and envy the stately
young woman who had received them gazed after this vision of wealth
and insolence. Old Mole and Matilda felt very small and crept away.
Old Mole said:
"The wealth of London is amazing. A man would need at least ten
thousand a year to amuse himself with a woman like that."
Matilda said:
"A creature like that!"
And a little later she said:
"I think I'll wait for my dress."
However, she had not to wait, for Old Mole gave the story to Robert,
who, with a nice sense of the fitness of things, told his sister that
he wished to buy a dress for a friend of his, and, armed with her
introduction, he and Matilda went and ordered a gown at an
establishment even more exclusive than that in Albemarle Street. This
establishment was so select that only the most indubitably married or
otherwise guaranteed ladies were served; one there obtained the French
style without the suspicion of French Frenchness.
The quarrel blew over, but the sensibilities of both were rasped, and
they were cautious and wary with one another, which is perhaps the
greatest trial of the blessed state of matrimony. He labored to be
just to her, to endeavor to understand her. She was, he confessed, in
a difficult position, lifted above her kind--though it was
inconceivable that she could ever have met the fate or assumed the
condition of her sister, Mrs. Boothroyd--and not adopted into his. He
was self-outlawed, driven out of the common mind of his class, and, so
far as he could see, of his country, into his own, and therein he had
as yet discovered no habitation, not even a site whereon to build. She
could not share his adventures and sorrows, and, except himself and
Robert, had no companionship. He asked her if she had no acquaintance
in London, and she confessed to the "second girl," Milly Dufresne. He
proposed that she should ask Miss Dufresne to dinner to provide the
occasion for the wearing of her new gown. She said she did not suppose
he would care for Miss Dufresne, but he protested that her friends
were of course his and he was only too delighted that she had a
companion of her own sex and age.
The day was fixed (her birthday), the dinner ordered and arranged, a
man hired for the evening to do the waiting. Without a word being
said, it was assumed that there should be the ceremony due to the
necklace and the French (style) gown.
As he considered all these preparations, Old Mole thought amusedly
that they were not at all for Miss Dufresne and Robert (who had been
invited), but rather a homage paid to their possessions, and,
searching within himself for the causes of the comfort and
satisfaction he felt, he found that this dinner was the first action
which had brought them into harmony with the London atmosphere.
Ethically there was nothing to be said for such a pretence at
hospitality; but as submission to the æsthetic pressure of their
surroundings, as expedience, it was quite wonderfully right. It was
the thin end of the wedge, the first turn of the gimlet in the boring
of the bunghole of the fat barrel of London existence; and, if it were
their fate to become Londoners, they were setting about it with
sufficient adroitness. He was only afraid that Miss Dufresne would
lead him back into the atmosphere of the theater from which he was so
relieved to have escaped. The theater that he had known was only an
excrescence on English life, a whelk or a wen on its reputable bald
head. He had perched on it like a fly, but his concern, his absorbing
concern, was to get at the brains inside that head and the thoughts
inside the brain.
On the morning of the day fixed for the dinner Robert wired that he
could not come, and Old Mole was left with the awful prospect of
tackling Miss Dufresne alone. His recollection of her was of a most
admirably typical minx with an appetite for admiration and flattery
that had consumed all her other desires.
"Lord save us!" he said. "I was baffled by that type as a young man;
what on earth can I do with it in my fifties?"
And in his heart he was fearful of spoiling Matilda's pleasure. This
dread so oppressed him that, finding her flurried and irritable with
the work of preparation, he decided to absent himself, to lunch at
Robert's club, of which he had just been elected a member, and to
soothe himself with a walk through Whitehall and the parks in the
afternoon.
As he walked--it was a fine spring day with the most beautiful
changing lights and a sweet breeze--he congratulated himself on the
wisdom of having come to London. Marriage might be difficult--there
was no warrant, Scriptural or other, for expecting it to be easy--but
at least in London there was interest. There was not the unrelieved
sordidness of other English cities. There was a tradition, some
attempt to maintain it, graciousness, a kind of dignity--it might be
the dignity of a roast sirloin of beef, but dignity it certainly
was--here and there traces of manners, and leisure not altogether
swamped by luxury. Coming from Thrigsby was like leaving the racket of
the factory for the elegant shop in which the finished articles were
sold. He liked that simile, and there he left his speculations
concerning London. He was not at his ease in this kind of thinking; a
thought was only valuable to him when it was successfully married to
an emotion to produce an image. For London he could find no image, and
when he thought of England he was taken back to his most vivid
emotion, that when in the caravan with Copas they had breasted the
hill and come in view of the Pennine Range: but this was a mere
emotion mated with no thought. As for the Empire, it simply had no
significance. It was a misnomer, or rather, a name given to an
illusion, or, at best, a generalization. It was certainly not an
entity, but only the impossible probability of a universally accepted
fiction. He could not accept it, nor could he accept the loose
terminology of the politicians. For this reason he could never now
read the newspapers except for the cricket and football news in which
his interest was maintained by habit.
Less and less was he interested in things and ideas that were not
immediately human, and therefore fluid and varying in form and color
as clouds and trees in the wind and birds in the air--and human beings
on the earth. Rigid theory and fixed conceptions actually hurt him;
they were detached, dead, like windfall fruit rotting on the ground,
and everywhere, in books, in the newspapers, in public speeches, he
saw them gathered up and stored, because it was too much trouble to
take the ripe fruit from the tree, or to wait for the hanging fruit to
ripen, or because (he thought) men walk with their eyes to the ground,
even as he had done, and see nothing of the beauty above and around
them. And, thinking so, he would feel an impulse to arise and shout
and waken men, but then, regretfully, he would admit that he was too
old to surrender to this impulse, and would think too much before he
spoke, and would end by prating like Gladstone or roaring like Tom
Paine.
It seemed to him that the character of London was changed or changing.
He delighted especially in the young men and women, who walked with a
new swagger, almost with freedom, and adorned themselves with gay,
bold colors. The young women especially were limber in their
movements, marvelously adroit in dodging their hampering garments.
Their bodies were freer. They had not the tight, trussed appearance of
the young women of his own day and generation. He delighted especially
in the young women of London. They gave him hopefulness.
He was pleased to see that the young men delighted in them, also. They
walked with their arms in the arms of the young women in a fine, warm
comradeship, whereas, in his day, and not so long ago neither, the
girls had placed a timid little hand in the arms of their swains and
been towed along in a sort of condescension. It pleased him to see the
young men frankly, and in spite of themselves and their dignity and
breeding, give the proper involuntary salute to passing youth and
beauty. . . . As he sat in St. James's Park a deliciously pretty girl
passed by him, and she repeated nothing of the full homage he paid
her, but then came a tall young man, sober and stiff, in silk hat and
tail coat. They passed, the young man and the young woman: a lifting
of the shoulders in the young man, a tilt of the head in the young
woman, a half-smile of pleasure, and they went their ways. The young
man approached Old Mole. He gave a little start and up went his hand
in the old school salute. Old Mole rose to his feet.
"My dear fellow. . . ."
It was A. Z. Panoukian.
He said:
"Well, sir----"
They sat down together. Panoukian bore the old expression which had
always overcast his face when there were discoverable laches in his
conduct, and Old Mole felt himself groping for the mood of jocular
severity with which he had been wont to meet that expression.
"Well, sir, I never thought----"
Old Mole found the formula:
"Panoukian, what have you been up to?"
"Well, sir, I'm jolly glad to have met you, because I didn't know what
you might have heard."
"Pray, Panoukian, forget that I was ever your schoolmaster. I am no
longer an academic person, though there are distressing traces of my
old profession in my outlook."
Panoukian had heard the story, and a grin spread across his face. That
made things easier. He plumped out a full confession and personal
history.
He had been a rank failure at Oxford. He had no one but himself to
blame, of course. Perhaps he had not given the place a fair trial, but
at the end of his fourth term he had decided that it was no use going
on, and removed himself. It was partly, he thought, that he could not
endure Tibster, and partly that he had lost all power of concentrating
on his work.
"I don't know," he said, "but at school there was always something to
work for, to get to Oxford. When I got there I seemed to shoot ahead
of it, to see beyond it, and in the place itself I could find nothing
but Tibster and the Tibsterian mind, cut off from the world outside
and annoyed because that world has a voluptuousness which is not in
its own little box. I think I changed physically, grew a new kidney or
another lobe of the brain. Anyhow, the world shrank and I became very
large and unwieldy, and there was nothing positive in my existence
except my dislike of Tibster."
"Did you smoke a great deal?" asked Old Mole.
"Only after the crisis."
"Did you make a verse translation of the Odyssey?"
"Only the first four books."
"I imagine, if you had taken your symptoms to Tibster, he would have
put you right. The university has that effect on sensitive
undergraduates, especially on non-Public School men. A sudden growth,
a swift shooting from boyhood into the beginnings of manhood. It is
very touching to watch; but Tibster must have seen it happen so often
that it would be difficult for him to notice that it was happening to
you more violently than usual."
"I never thought of it from Tibster's point of view."
"My dear Panoukian, I am only just beginning to see your affairs from
your point of view, or, indeed, to admit that you have a point of view
at all. . . . I hope it was not a great disappointment to your
father."
Panoukian said his father had died during his second term. He had been
attached to his father and was with him at the end, and perhaps that
was what began the crisis. The business had gone to his brothers, but
he was left enough to live on, and that was how he came to be in
London. For the time being he was acting as secretary, unpaid, to
Tyler Harbottle, M. P. for North Thrigsby and an old friend of his
father's. Old Mole remembered Harbottle, a butter merchant in Thrigsby
and president of the Literary Society, the Field Society, the Linnæan
Society, the Darwin Club, the Old Fogies, and the Ancient Codgers, and
formerly a member of the Art Gallery Committee, and, in that capacity,
provocative of the outcry on the purchase of a picture by so advanced
and startling a painter as Puvis de Chavannes. He asked Panoukian how
he liked the House of Commons, and Panoukian said it was full of
Tibsters with soap and chemicals and money on their brains instead of
Greek and Latin and book philosophy.
"Harbottle is a Tibster, with a little nibbling mind, picking here and
there, not because he is hungry, but because he is afraid some one
else will get the pieces if he doesn't. I went to him because I wanted
to work; but it isn't work, it's just getting in other people's way.
And there are swarms of Harbottles in the House. I sometimes think
that the whole of politics is nothing but Harbottling. It would be all
very well to have the brake hard on if the country were going to Hell,
but when it is a matter of a long, stiff hill it is heartrending."
And with a magnificent gesture he swept all the Tibsters and
Harbottles away. Old Mole found his enthusiastic, sweeping
condemnation very refreshing. There was youth in it, and he was
beginning to value youth above all things. Above wisdom and
experience? At least above the caution of inexperience.