The Countess of Rocksbier sat at the head of the table alone with Jacob.
Fed upon champagne and spices for at least two centuries (four, if you
count the female line), the Countess Lucy looked well fed. A
discriminating nose she had for scents, prolonged, as if in quest of
them; her underlip protruded a narrow red shelf; her eyes were small,
with sandy tufts for eyebrows, and her jowl was heavy. Behind her (the
window looked on Grosvenor Square) stood Moll Pratt on the pavement,
offering violets for sale; and Mrs. Hilda Thomas, lifting her skirts,
preparing to cross the road. One was from Walworth; the other from
Putney. Both wore black stockings, but Mrs. Thomas was coiled in furs.
The comparison was much in Lady Rocksbier's favour. Moll had more
humour, but was violent; stupid too. Hilda Thomas was mealy-mouthed, all
her silver frames aslant; egg-cups in the drawing-room; and the windows
shrouded. Lady Rocksbier, whatever the deficiencies of her profile, had
been a great rider to hounds. She used her knife with authority, tore
her chicken bones, asking Jacob's pardon, with her own hands.
"Who is that driving by?" she asked Boxall, the butler.
"Lady Firtlemere's carriage, my lady," which reminded her to send a card
to ask after his lordship's health. A rude old lady, Jacob thought. The
wine was excellent. She called herself "an old woman"--"so kind to lunch
with an old woman"--which flattered him. She talked of Joseph
Chamberlain, whom she had known. She said that Jacob must come and
meet--one of our celebrities. And the Lady Alice came in with three dogs
on a leash, and Jackie, who ran to kiss his grandmother, while Boxall
brought in a telegram, and Jacob was given a good cigar.
A few moments before a horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself
together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further
side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran
into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that
sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a
mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, eyes
accurately judging. Then the curves cease, changing to downright hammer
strokes, which jar; and you draw up with a jolt; sitting back a little,
sparkling, tingling, glazed with ice over pounding arteries, gasping:
"Ah! ho! Hah!" the steam going up from the horses as they jostle
together at the cross-roads, where the signpost is, and the woman in the
apron stands and stares at the doorway. The man raises himself from the
cabbages to stare too.
So Jacob galloped over the fields of Essex, flopped in the mud, lost the
hunt, and rode by himself eating sandwiches, looking over the hedges,
noticing the colours as if new scraped, cursing his luck.
He had tea at the Inn; and there they all were, slapping, stamping,
saying, "After you," clipped, curt, jocose, red as the wattles of
turkeys, using free speech until Mrs. Horsefield and her friend Miss
Dudding appeared at the doorway with their skirts hitched up, and hair
looping down. Then Tom Dudding rapped at the window with his whip. A
motor car throbbed in the courtyard. Gentlemen, feeling for matches,
moved out, and Jacob went into the bar with Brandy Jones to smoke with
the rustics. There was old Jevons with one eye gone, and his clothes the
colour of mud, his bag over his back, and his brains laid feet down in
earth among the violet roots and the nettle roots; Mary Sanders with her
box of wood; and Tom sent for beer, the half-witted son of the
sexton--all this within thirty miles of London.
Mrs. Papworth, of Endell Street, Covent Garden, did for Mr. Bonamy in
New Square, Lincoln's Inn, and as she washed up the dinner things in the
scullery she heard the young gentlemen talking in the room next door.
Mr. Sanders was there again; Flanders she meant; and where an
inquisitive old woman gets a name wrong, what chance is there that she
will faithfully report an argument? As she held the plates under water
and then dealt them on the pile beneath the hissing gas, she listened:
heard Sanders speaking in a loud rather overbearing tone of voice:
"good," he said, and "absolute" and "justice" and "punishment," and "the
will of the majority." Then her gentleman piped up; she backed him for
argument against Sanders. Yet Sanders was a fine young fellow (here all
the scraps went swirling round the sink, scoured after by her purple,
almost nailless hands). "Women"--she thought, and wondered what Sanders
and her gentleman did in THAT line, one eyelid sinking perceptibly as
she mused, for she was the mother of nine--three still-born and one deaf
and dumb from birth. Putting the plates in the rack she heard once more
Sanders at it again ("He don't give Bonamy a chance," she thought).
"Objective something," said Bonamy; and "common ground" and something
else--all very long words, she noted. "Book learning does it," she
thought to herself, and, as she thrust her arms into her jacket, heard
something--might be the little table by the fire--fall; and then stamp,
stamp, stamp--as if they were having at each other--round the room,
making the plates dance.
"To-morrow's breakfast, sir," she said, opening the door; and there were
Sanders and Bonamy like two bulls of Bashan driving each other up and
down, making such a racket, and all them chairs in the way. They never
noticed her. She felt motherly towards them. "Your breakfast, sir," she
said, as they came near. And Bonamy, all his hair touzled and his tie
flying, broke off, and pushed Sanders into the arm-chair, and said Mr.
Sanders had smashed the coffee-pot and he was teaching Mr. Sanders--
Sure enough, the coffee-pot lay broken on the hearthrug.
"Any day this week except Thursday," wrote Miss Perry, and this was not
the first invitation by any means. Were all Miss Perry's weeks blank
with the exception of Thursday, and was her only desire to see her old
friend's son? Time is issued to spinster ladies of wealth in long white
ribbons. These they wind round and round, round and round, assisted by
five female servants, a butler, a fine Mexican parrot, regular meals,
Mudie's library, and friends dropping in. A little hurt she was already
that Jacob had not called.
"Your mother," she said, "is one of my oldest friends."
Miss Rosseter, who was sitting by the fire, holding the Spectator
between her cheek and the blaze, refused to have a fire screen, but
finally accepted one. The weather was then discussed, for in deference
to Parkes, who was opening little tables, graver matters were postponed.
Miss Rosseter drew Jacob's attention to the beauty of the cabinet.
"So wonderfully clever in picking things up," she said. Miss Perry had
found it in Yorkshire. The North of England was discussed. When Jacob
spoke they both listened. Miss Perry was bethinking her of something
suitable and manly to say when the door opened and Mr. Benson was
announced. Now there were four people sitting in that room. Miss Perry
aged 66; Miss Rosseter 42; Mr. Benson 38; and Jacob 25.
"My old friend looks as well as ever," said Mr. Benson, tapping the bars
of the parrot's cage; Miss Rosseter simultaneously praised the tea;
Jacob handed the wrong plates; and Miss Perry signified her desire to
approach more closely. "Your brothers," she began vaguely.
"Archer and John," Jacob supplied her. Then to her pleasure she
recovered Rebecca's name; and how one day "when you were all little
boys, playing in the drawing-room--"
"But Miss Perry has the kettle-holder," said Miss Rosseter, and indeed
Miss Perry was clasping it to her breast. (Had she, then, loved Jacob's
father?)
"So clever"--"not so good as usual"--"I thought it most unfair," said
Mr. Benson and Miss Rosseter, discussing the Saturday Westminster. Did
they not compete regularly for prizes? Had not Mr. Benson three times
won a guinea, and Miss Rosseter once ten and sixpence? Of course Everard
Benson had a weak heart, but still, to win prizes, remember parrots,
toady Miss Perry, despise Miss Rosseter, give tea-parties in his rooms
(which were in the style of Whistler, with pretty books on tables), all
this, so Jacob felt without knowing him, made him a contemptible ass. As
for Miss Rosseter, she had nursed cancer, and now painted water-colours.
"Running away so soon?" said Miss Perry vaguely. "At home every
afternoon, if you've nothing better to do--except Thursdays."
"I've never known you desert your old ladies once," Miss Rosseter was
saying, and Mr. Benson was stooping over the parrot's cage, and Miss
Perry was moving towards the bell....
The fire burnt clear between two pillars of greenish marble, and on the
mantelpiece there was a green clock guarded by Britannia leaning on her
spear. As for pictures--a maiden in a large hat offered roses over the
garden gate to a gentleman in eighteenth-century costume. A mastiff lay
extended against a battered door. The lower panes of the windows were of
ground glass, and the curtains, accurately looped, were of plush and
green too.
Laurette and Jacob sat with their toes in the fender side by side, in
two large chairs covered in green plush. Laurette's skirts were short,
her legs long, thin, and transparently covered. Her fingers stroked her
ankles.
"It's not exactly that I don't understand them," she was saying
thoughtfully. "I must go and try again."
"What time will you be there?" said Jacob.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"To-morrow?"
No, not to-morrow.
"This weather makes me long for the country," she said, looking over her
shoulder at the back view of tall houses through the window.
"I wish you'd been with me on Saturday," said Jacob.
"I used to ride," she said. She got up gracefully, calmly. Jacob got up.
She smiled at him. As she shut the door he put so many shillings on the
mantelpiece.
Altogether a most reasonable conversation; a most respectable room; an
intelligent girl. Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her
that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes
chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with
difficulty held together, over the pavement. In short, something was
wrong.
Not so very long ago the workmen had gilt the final "y" in Lord
Macaulay's name, and the names stretched in unbroken file round the dome
of the British Museum. At a considerable depth beneath, many hundreds of
the living sat at the spokes of a cart-wheel copying from printed books
into manuscript books; now and then rising to consult the catalogue;
regaining their places stealthily, while from time to time a silent man
replenished their compartments.
There was a little catastrophe. Miss Marchmont's pile overbalanced and
fell into Jacob's compartment. Such things happened to Miss Marchmont.
What was she seeking through millions of pages, in her old plush dress,
and her wig of claret-coloured hair, with her gems and her chilblains?
Sometimes one thing, sometimes another, to confirm her philosophy that
colour is sound--or, perhaps, it has something to do with music. She
could never quite say, though it was not for lack of trying. And she
could not ask you back to her room, for it was "not very clean, I'm
afraid," so she must catch you in the passage, or take a chair in Hyde
Park to explain her philosophy. The rhythm of the soul depends on
it--("how rude the little boys are!" she would say), and Mr. Asquith's
Irish policy, and Shakespeare comes in, "and Queen Alexandra most
graciously once acknowledged a copy of my pamphlet," she would say,
waving the little boys magnificently away. But she needs funds to
publish her book, for "publishers are capitalists--publishers are
cowards." And so, digging her elbow into her pile of books it fell over.
Jacob remained quite unmoved.
But Fraser, the atheist, on the other side, detesting plush, more than
once accosted with leaflets, shifted irritably. He abhorred
vagueness--the Christian religion, for example, and old Dean Parker's
pronouncements. Dean Parker wrote books and Fraser utterly destroyed
them by force of logic and left his children unbaptized--his wife did it
secretly in the washing basin--but Fraser ignored her, and went on
supporting blasphemers, distributing leaflets, getting up his facts in
the British Museum, always in the same check suit and fiery tie, but
pale, spotted, irritable. Indeed, what a work--to destroy religion!
Jacob transcribed a whole passage from Marlowe.
Miss Julia Hedge, the feminist, waited for her books. They did not come.
She wetted her pen. She looked about her. Her eye was caught by the
final letters in Lord Macaulay's name. And she read them all round the
dome--the names of great men which remind us--"Oh damn," said Julia
Hedge, "why didn't they leave room for an Eliot or a Bronte?"
Unfortunate Julia! wetting her pen in bitterness, and leaving her shoe
laces untied. When her books came she applied herself to her gigantic
labours, but perceived through one of the nerves of her exasperated
sensibility how composedly, unconcernedly, and with every consideration
the male readers applied themselves to theirs. That young man for
example. What had he got to do except copy out poetry? And she must
study statistics. There are more women than men. Yes; but if you let
women work as men work, they'll die off much quicker. They'll become
extinct. That was her argument. Death and gall and bitter dust were on
her pen-tip; and as the afternoon wore on, red had worked into her
cheek-bones and a light was in her eyes.
But what brought Jacob Flanders to read Marlowe in the British Museum?
Youth, youth--something savage--something pedantic. For example, there
is Mr. Masefield, there is Mr. Bennett. Stuff them into the flame of
Marlowe and burn them to cinders. Let not a shred remain. Don't palter
with the second rate. Detest your own age. Build a better one. And to
set that on foot read incredibly dull essays upon Marlowe to your
friends. For which purpose one most collate editions in the British
Museum. One must do the thing oneself. Useless to trust to the
Victorians, who disembowel, or to the living, who are mere publicists.
The flesh and blood of the future depends entirely upon six young men.
And as Jacob was one of them, no doubt he looked a little regal and
pompous as he turned his page, and Julia Hedge disliked him naturally
enough.
But then a pudding-faced man pushed a note towards Jacob, and Jacob,
leaning back in his chair, began an uneasy murmured conversation, and
they went off together (Julia Hedge watched them), and laughed aloud
(she thought) directly they were in the hall.
Nobody laughed in the reading-room. There were shirtings, murmurings,
apologetic sneezes, and sudden unashamed devastating coughs. The lesson
hour was almost over. Ushers were collecting exercises. Lazy children
wanted to stretch. Good ones scribbled assiduously--ah, another day over
and so little done! And now and then was to be heard from the whole
collection of human beings a heavy sigh, after which the humiliating old
man would cough shamelessly, and Miss Marchmont hinnied like a horse.
Jacob came back only in time to return his books.
The books were now replaced. A few letters of the alphabet were
sprinkled round the dome. Closely stood together in a ring round the
dome were Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Shakespeare; the literature
of Rome, Greece, China, India, Persia. One leaf of poetry was pressed
flat against another leaf, one burnished letter laid smooth against
another in a density of meaning, a conglomeration of loveliness.
"One does want one's tea," said Miss Marchmont, reclaiming her shabby
umbrella.
Miss Marchmont wanted her tea, but could never resist a last look at the
Elgin Marbles. She looked at them sideways, waving her hand and
muttering a word or two of salutation which made Jacob and the other man
turn round. She smiled at them amiably. It all came into her
philosophy--that colour is sound, or perhaps it has something to do with
music. And having done her service, she hobbled off to tea. It was
closing time. The public collected in the hall to receive their
umbrellas.
For the most part the students wait their turn very patiently. To stand
and wait while some one examines white discs is soothing. The umbrella
will certainly be found. But the fact leads you on all day through
Macaulay, Hobbes, Gibbon; through octavos, quartos, folios; sinks deeper
and deeper through ivory pages and morocco bindings into this density of
thought, this conglomeration of knowledge.
Jacob's walking-stick was like all the others; they had muddled the
pigeon-holes perhaps.
There is in the British Museum an enormous mind. Consider that Plato is
there cheek by jowl with Aristotle; and Shakespeare with Marlowe. This
great mind is hoarded beyond the power of any single mind to possess it.
Nevertheless (as they take so long finding one's walking-stick) one
can't help thinking how one might come with a notebook, sit at a desk,
and read it all through. A learned man is the most venerable of all--a
man like Huxtable of Trinity, who writes all his letters in Greek, they
say, and could have kept his end up with Bentley. And then there is
science, pictures, architecture,--an enormous mind.
They pushed the walking-stick across the counter. Jacob stood beneath
the porch of the British Museum. It was raining. Great Russell Street
was glazed and shining--here yellow, here, outside the chemist's, red
and pale blue. People scuttled quickly close to the wall; carriages
rattled rather helter-skelter down the streets. Well, but a little rain
hurts nobody. Jacob walked off much as if he had been in the country;
and late that night there he was sitting at his table with his pipe and
his book.
The rain poured down. The British Museum stood in one solid immense
mound, very pale, very sleek in the rain, not a quarter of a mile from
him. The vast mind was sheeted with stone; and each compartment in the
depths of it was safe and dry. The night-watchmen, flashing their
lanterns over the backs of Plato and Shakespeare, saw that on the
twenty-second of February neither flame, rat, nor burglar was going to
violate these treasures--poor, highly respectable men, with wives and
families at Kentish Town, do their best for twenty years to protect
Plato and Shakespeare, and then are buried at Highgate.
Stone lies solid over the British Museum, as bone lies cool over the
visions and heat of the brain. Only here the brain is Plato's brain and
Shakespeare's; the brain has made pots and statues, great bulls and
little jewels, and crossed the river of death this way and that
incessantly, seeking some landing, now wrapping the body well for its
long sleep; now laying a penny piece on the eyes; now turning the toes
scrupulously to the East. Meanwhile, Plato continues his dialogue; in
spite of the rain; in spite of the cab whistles; in spite of the woman
in the mews behind Great Ormond Street who has come home drunk and cries
all night long, "Let me in! Let me in!"
In the street below Jacob's room voices were raised.
But he read on. For after all Plato continues imperturbably. And Hamlet
utters his soliloquy. And there the Elgin Marbles lie, all night long,
old Jones's lantern sometimes recalling Ulysses, or a horse's head; or
sometimes a flash of gold, or a mummy's sunk yellow cheek. Plato and
Shakespeare continue; and Jacob, who was reading the Phaedrus, heard
people vociferating round the lamp-post, and the woman battering at the
door and crying, "Let me in!" as if a coal had dropped from the fire, or
a fly, falling from the ceiling, had lain on its back, too weak to turn
over.
The Phaedrus is very difficult. And so, when at length one reads
straight ahead, falling into step, marching on, becoming (so it seems)
momentarily part of this rolling, imperturbable energy, which has driven
darkness before it since Plato walked the Acropolis, it is impossible to
see to the fire.
The dialogue draws to its close. Plato's argument is done. Plato's
argument is stowed away in Jacob's mind, and for five minutes Jacob's
mind continues alone, onwards, into the darkness. Then, getting up, he
parted the curtains, and saw, with astonishing clearness, how the
Springetts opposite had gone to bed; how it rained; how the Jews and the
foreign woman, at the end of the street, stood by the pillar-box,
arguing.
Every time the door opened and fresh people came in, those already in
the room shifted slightly; those who were standing looked over their
shoulders; those who were sitting stopped in the middle of sentences.
What with the light, the wine, the strumming of a guitar, something
exciting happened each time the door opened. Who was coming in?
"That's Gibson."
"The painter?"
"But go on with what you were saying."
They were saying something that was far, far too intimate to be said
outright. But the noise of the voices served like a clapper in little
Mrs. Withers's mind, scaring into the air blocks of small birds, and
then they'd settle, and then she'd feel afraid, put one hand to her
hair, bind both round her knees, and look up at Oliver Skelton
nervously, and say:
"Promise, PROMISE, you'll tell no one." ... so considerate he was, so
tender. It was her husband's character that she discussed. He was cold,
she said.
Down upon them came the splendid Magdalen, brown, warm, voluminous,
scarcely brushing the grass with her sandalled feet. Her hair flew; pins
seemed scarcely to attach the flying silks. An actress of course, a line
of light perpetually beneath her. It was only "My dear" that she said,
but her voice went jodelling between Alpine passes. And down she tumbled
on the floor, and sang, since there was nothing to be said, round ah's
and oh's. Mangin, the poet, coming up to her, stood looking down at her,
drawing at his pipe. The dancing began.
Grey-haired Mrs. Keymer asked Dick Graves to tell her who Mangin was,
and said that she had seen too much of this sort of thing in Paris
(Magdalen had got upon his knees; now his pipe was in her mouth) to be
shocked. "Who is that?" she said, staying her glasses when they came to
Jacob, for indeed he looked quiet, not indifferent, but like some one on
a beach, watching.
"Oh, my dear, let me lean on you," gasped Helen Askew, hopping on one
foot, for the silver cord round her ankle had worked loose. Mrs. Keymer
turned and looked at the picture on the wall.
"Look at Jacob," said Helen (they were binding his eyes for some game).
And Dick Graves, being a little drunk, very faithful, and very
simple-minded, told her that he thought Jacob the greatest man he had
ever known. And down they sat cross-legged upon cushions and talked
about Jacob, and Helen's voice trembled, for they both seemed heroes to
her, and the friendship between them so much more beautiful than women's
friendships. Anthony Pollett now asked her to dance, and as she danced
she looked at them, over her shoulder, standing at the table, drinking
together.
The magnificent world--the live, sane, vigorous world .... These words
refer to the stretch of wood pavement between Hammersmith and Holborn in
January between two and three in the morning. That was the ground
beneath Jacob's feet. It was healthy and magnificent because one room,
above a mews, somewhere near the river, contained fifty excited,
talkative, friendly people. And then to stride over the pavement (there
was scarcely a cab or policeman in sight) is of itself exhilarating. The
long loop of Piccadilly, diamond-stitched, shows to best advantage when
it is empty. A young man has nothing to fear. On the contrary, though he
may not have said anything brilliant, he feels pretty confident he can
hold his own. He was pleased to have met Mangin; he admired the young
woman on the floor; he liked them all; he liked that sort of thing. In
short, all the drums and trumpets were sounding. The street scavengers
were the only people about at the moment. It is scarcely necessary to
say how well-disposed Jacob felt towards them; how it pleased him to let
himself in with his latch-key at his own door; how he seemed to bring
back with him into the empty room ten or eleven people whom he had not
known when he set out; how he looked about for something to read, and
found it, and never read it, and fell asleep.
Indeed, drums and trumpets is no phrase. Indeed, Piccadilly and Holborn,
and the empty sitting-room and the sitting-room with fifty people in it
are liable at any moment to blow music into the air. Women perhaps are
more excitable than men. It is seldom that any one says anything about
it, and to see the hordes crossing Waterloo Bridge to catch the non-stop
to Surbiton one might think that reason impelled them. No, no. It is the
drums and trumpets. Only, should you turn aside into one of those little
bays on Waterloo Bridge to think the matter over, it will probably seem
to you all a muddle--all a mystery.
They cross the Bridge incessantly. Sometimes in the midst of carts and
omnibuses a lorry will appear with great forest trees chained to it.
Then, perhaps, a mason's van with newly lettered tombstones recording
how some one loved some one who is buried at Putney. Then the motor car
in front jerks forward, and the tombstones pass too quick for you to
read more. All the time the stream of people never ceases passing from
the Surrey side to the Strand; from the Strand to the Surrey side. It
seems as if the poor had gone raiding the town, and now trapesed back to
their own quarters, like beetles scurrying to their holes, for that old
woman fairly hobbles towards Waterloo, grasping a shiny bag, as if she
had been out into the light and now made off with some scraped chicken
bones to her hovel underground. On the other hand, though the wind is
rough and blowing in their faces, those girls there, striding hand in
hand, shouting out a song, seem to feel neither cold nor shame. They are
hatless. They triumph.
The wind has blown up the waves. The river races beneath us, and the men
standing on the barges have to lean all their weight on the tiller. A
black tarpaulin is tied down over a swelling load of gold. Avalanches of
coal glitter blackly. As usual, painters are slung on planks across the
great riverside hotels, and the hotel windows have already points of
light in them. On the other side the city is white as if with age; St.
Paul's swells white above the fretted, pointed, or oblong buildings
beside it. The cross alone shines rosy-gilt. But what century have we
reached? Has this procession from the Surrey side to the Strand gone on
for ever? That old man has been crossing the Bridge these six hundred
years, with the rabble of little boys at his heels, for he is drunk, or
blind with misery, and tied round with old clouts of clothing such as
pilgrims might have worn. He shuffles on. No one stands still. It seems
as if we marched to the sound of music; perhaps the wind and the river;
perhaps these same drums and trumpets--the ecstasy and hubbub of the
soul. Why, even the unhappy laugh, and the policeman, far from judging
the drunk man, surveys him humorously, and the little boys scamper back
again, and the clerk from Somerset House has nothing but tolerance for
him, and the man who is reading half a page of Lothair at the bookstall
muses charitably, with his eyes off the print, and the girl hesitates at
the crossing and turns on him the bright yet vague glance of the young.
Bright yet vague. She is perhaps twenty-two. She is shabby. She crosses
the road and looks at the daffodils and the red tulips in the florist's
window. She hesitates, and makes off in the direction of Temple Bar. She
walks fast, and yet anything distracts her. Now she seems to see, and
now to notice nothing.