"Three weeks ago we published a story from the brilliant pen of Mr.
Jocelyn Dare entitled _The Damning of a Soul_, in which was given a
vivid picture of an unscrupulous, immoral, gross, and dishonest
publisher--a man capable of any vileness, who had by under-advertising
the work of a promising young author, damned him for ever. Soon after
the appearance of our issue containing Mr. Dare's contribution, writs
began to rain in upon us until there was scarcely a publisher in London
who had not instructed his solicitors to proceed against us for criminal
libel, as, in our picture of the unscrupulous publisher, he thought he
saw himself depicted.
"Although we fully recognise the obligations of the living towards the
dead, we are, in self-defence, forced to publish a letter that we have
received from the wife of the late Sylvester Mylton, the well-known
publisher, who died some months ago. It runs:--
"'DEAR SIR,
"'I have read with deep pain and regret the story in your issue of the
2nd inst., entitled _The Damning of a Soul_. In the character of the
publisher I recognise my late husband. None can mistake 'the overbearing
manner,' 'that peculiar habit of crossing and recrossing his legs,' 'the
nervous, deceitful cough,' 'the habit of spitting into the fireplace
from every conceivable angle of his room,' although I must add that his
accuracy was astonishing. With regard to the other points, I can only
say that of recent years I declined to live with him because of the
creatures with whom he associated--I do not refer to his authors. I
regret that you should have brought him so prominently before the
public, and I hope you will send me ten or a dozen copies of your issue
containing the story.
"'I am,
"'Yours sincerely,
"'ARABELLA MYLTON.'
"We can only express regret that so many publishers should have thought
our story referred to them. We thought that Mr. Dare had painted so
vile and heartless a wretch as to prevent any self-respecting publisher
from seeing in such a creature any resemblance to himself. Apparently
not. Surely Mecaenas is the most sensitive of beings. We may add that
we shall defend each of the actions threatened. We embellish this page
with portraits of the publishers who have caused us be served with
writs."
Dick Little read the page with astonishment.
"By heavens! what a score," he shouted. "And the writs?"
"All withdrawn, and the Barabbas Club has regathered and is dining me at
the Ritz tonight. God knows who'll pay the bill. I must be off to
dress."
And that evening Dick Little thought more of the sensibilities of
publishers and the brains of authors than the ailments of his patients.
"Fancy publishers bein' as bad as that," remarked Bindle reflectively,
as he took a long pull at his tankard. "They seem to beat foremen."
"Publishers," said Dare, "are pompous asses. If they were business
men--if they were only men-of-letters, I would embrace them."
"P'raps that's why they ain't," suggested Bindle.
Dare joined in the laugh against himself.
"I have known some publishers," remarked Angell Herald with
characteristic literalness, "who have been most excellent advertisers.
I fear Mr. Dare is rather prejudiced."
"Shut up, Herald," broke in Dick Little, "you're thinking 'shop.'"
"P'raps they've got 'various' veins* in their legs, or else their
missusses 'ave got religion," suggested Bindle. "It ain't fair to judge
no man till you seen 'is missus, an' a doctor's seen 'is legs--beggin'
your pardon, miss," this to Sallie.
*Bindle has been repeatedly refused for the Army on account of varicose
veins in his legs, and he shows a tendency to regard this affliction as
at the root of all evil.
*CHAPTER VI*
*I FAIL THE NIGHT CLUB*
One evening I failed the Club badly. During the previous week there had
not been a moment in which to complete the half-written story intended
for that particular Sunday. I had done my best; but I arrived at
Chelsea with the knowledge that I had let them all down.
When I had made my confession, Bindle turned to me with grave reproach
in his eyes.
"I'm surprised at you, sir," he said, "I been lookin' forward all the
week to this evenin', an' now you tell us you ain't got nothink. Wot we
goin' to do?"
My unpopularity was sufficiently obvious to penetrate the thickest of
skins.
"What about bridge?" ventured Tom Little. But Bindle was opposed to
every suggestion made. It was clear that he was greatly disappointed,
and he seemed to find solace nowhere, not even in his tankard of ale.
"You done the dirty on us to-night, sir," he said during a pause in the
fusillade of personalities and rather feeble suggestions as to how thee
evening should be spent. "Sort o' thing a foreman 'ud do."
It was Jocelyn Dare who came to the rescue. "What," he asked, "can you
expect of a publisher? He has sufficient manners to impress a
half-dipped author, and not enough morals to pay him what is his due."
"My dear Dare," it was Windover who spoke, "are you not inverting the
values? Our friend Bindle here, for instance, might reasonably conceive
that you place morals on a higher plane than manners. Bindle is young
and unsophisticated, you must remember he has arrived at an
impressionable age."
Bindle grinned. He scented a battle between Windover and Dare, both
brilliant and amusing talkers.
"I'm a Victorian," replied Dare, accepting the challenge with alacrity,
"a member of the middle-classes, the acknowledged backbone of the
English nation."
"Yes, and like all other respectable backbones should be covered up,"
retorted Windover.
"Alas!" murmured Dare, gazing at the ceiling. "Once youth was content
with Arcadia, now it demands a Burlington Arcadia."
That was characteristic of Dare. An epigram to him justified the most
flagrant irrelevancy. Then turning to Windover he added, "But I
interrupted you. Let us have your views on morals and manners, or
should I say manners and morals?"
"Yes do, sir," broke in Bindle eagerly, "My missus once said I 'adn't no
more morals than Pottyfer's wife, I dunno the lady, but p'raps you can
'elp me."
"The association of morals and manners is merely a verbal coincidence,"
began Windover. "As a matter of fact they exist best apart. Morals are
geographical, the result of climate and environment. The morals of
Streatham, for instance, are not the morals of Stamboul, although the
manners of the one place will pass fairly well in the other. Manners are
like English gold, current in all countries: morals, on the other hand,
are like French pennies, they must not be circulated in any but the
country of their origin."
"Yes; but is this the age of manners or of morals?" asked Dare. "That's
what we want to get at."
"Of neither, I regret to say," responded Windover. "We have too many
morals at home, and too few manners abroad."
"Excuse me, sir," broke in Bindle, "but wot do you exactly mean by
morals an' manners?"
"You are right, Bindle, you invariably are," replied Windover.
"Definition should always precede disquisition." He proceeded to light
a cigarette, obviously with a view to gaining time. "Observing this
rule," he continued, "I will define morals as originally an ethical
conception of man's duty towards his neighbour's wife: they are now in
use merely as a standard by which we measure failure." Windover paused
and gazed meditatively at the end of his cigarette.
"And manners?" I queried.
"Oh! manners," he replied lightly, "are a thin gauze with which we have
clothed primaeval man and primitive woman."
"But why," enquired Sallie, leaning forward eagerly, "why should the
primitive and primaeval require covering?"
It was Dare who answered Sallie's question. "Mark Twain said, 'Be good;
but you'll be lonely,'" he observed. "Man probably found it impossible
to be good, being gregarious by instinct. He saw that Nature was always
endeavouring to get him involved in difficulties with morals, and like
the detective of romance, determined to adopt a disguise. He therefore
invented manners."
"I will not venture to question Dare's brilliant hypothesis," continued
Windover. "With the aid of good manners a man may do anything, and a
woman quite a lot of things otherwise denied her. It is manners not
morals that make a society. Manners will open for you all doors; but
morals only the gates of heaven."
"As a eugenist I am with you, Windover," said Dare; "because both
manners and eugenics are the study of good breeding."
"Excuse me, sir," broke in Bindle, "but do yer think yer could use a few
words wot I've 'eard before? I'd sort o' feel more at 'ome like."
There was a laugh at Windover's expense, and a promise from him to
Bindle to correct his phraseology.
"Morals," continued Windover, "are merely the currency of deferred
payment--you will reap in another world."
"That's wot Mrs. B. says," broke in Bindle; "but wot if she gets
disappointed? It 'ud be like goin' dry all the week to 'ave a big lush
up on Sunday, an' then findin' the pubs closed."
"Excellent! Bindle," said Windover, "you prove conclusively that the
future is for the proletariat."
"Fancy me a-provin' all that," said Bindle with unaccustomed dryness.
"Morality," continued Windover with a smile, "is merely post-dated
self-indulgence. There is a tendency to expect too much from the other
world. Think of the tragedy of the elderly spinster who apparently
regulated her life upon a misreading of a devotional work. She denied
herself all the joys of this world in anticipation of the great
immorality to come."
"That's jest like Mrs. B.," remarked Bindle, "Outside a tin o' salmon,
an' maybe an egg for 'er tea, there ain't much wot 'olds 'er among what
she calls the joys o' mammon."
"Mrs. Bindle," said Windover, picking out another cigarette from the box
and tapping it meditatively, "is in all probability intense. Most moral
people are intense. They either have missions or help to support them.
They wear ugly and sombre clothing adorned with crewel-work stoles.
They frequently subsist entirely upon vegetables and cereals, they live
in garden-cities and praise God for it----"
"I, too, praise God that they should live there," broke in Dare.
"Exactly, my dear Dare, probably the only approval that providence ever
receives from you is of a negative order."
"You forget the heroes and heroines of morals, Windover," said Dare
gently. "Penelope, Lucrece, Clarissa Harlowe, Sir Galahad."
"Manners, too, have had as doughty champions," was the reply, "for
instance, the Good Samaritan, Lord Chesterfield, and the wedding guest
in _The Ancient Mariner_. Manners are social and public, whilst morals
are national and private. All attractive people have good manners,
whereas--well there were the Queen of Sheba, Byron and Dr. Crippen."
Bindle looked from Windover to Dare, hopelessly bewildered. He
refrained from interrupting, however.
"Our morals affect so few," continued Windover, "whereas our manners
react upon the whole fabric of society. A man may be a most notorious
evil-liver, and yet pass among his fellows without inconveniencing them;
on the other hand, if he be a noisy eater he will render himself
obnoxious to hundreds. Manners are for the rose-bed of life, morals for
the deathbed of repentance."
"All this is very pretty verbal pyrotechnics," said Dare with a smile;
"but you forget that the greatness of England is due to her moral fibre.
I grant you that morality is very ugly, and its exponents dour of look
and rough of speech, still it is the foundation of the country's
greatness."
"There you are wrong," was Windover's retort, "it is not her morality
that has made for this country's greatness, but her moral standard,
coupled with the determination of her far-seeing people not to allow it
to interfere with their individual pleasures. They decided that theirs
should be a standard by which to measure failure. The result of this
has been to earn for us in Europe the reputation of being a dour and
godly people, who regard the flesh and the devil through a stained-glass
window. They forget that to preserve the purity of his home life, the
Englishman invented the continental excursion."
"But what about puritan America?" broke in Dare. "If we are smug, they
are superlative in their smugness."
"You forget, Dare," said Windover reproachfully, "that they have their
'unwritten law,' said to be the only really popular law in the country,
with which to punish moral lapses. To explain the punishment, they
created 'brain storm'; but it cannot compare with our incomparable moral
standard. It is England's greatest inheritance."
Windover paused to light the cigarette with which he had been toying.
It was obvious that he was enjoying himself. Bindle seized the moment
in which to break in upon the duologue.
"I don't rightly understand all the things wot you been sayin', you
bein' rather given to usin' fancy words; but it reminds me o' Charlie
Dunn."
Bindle paused. He has a strong sense of the dramatic.
"J.B.," said Dare, "we demand the story of Charlie Dunn."
'Well, sir, 'im an' 'is missus couldn't 'it it off no 'ow, so Charlie
thought it might make matters better if they took a lodger. 'E thought
it might save 'em jawin' each other so much. One day Charlie's missus
nips off wi' the lodger, and poor ole Charlie goes round a-vowin' 'is
life was ruined, an' sayin' wot 'e'd do to Mr. Lodger when 'e caught
'im.
"'But,' ses I, 'you ought to be glad, Charlie.'
"'So I am,' says 'e in a whisper like; 'but if I let on, it wouldn't be
respectable, see? Come an' 'ave a drink.'"
"There you are," said Windover, "the poison of appearances has
penetrated to the working-classes. To the blind all things are pure."
I reminded Windover that Colonel Charters said that he would not give
one fig for virtue, but he would cheerfully give L10,000 for a good
character.
I could see that Bindle had been waiting to join more actively in the
discussion, and my remark gave him his opportunity.
"A character," he remarked oracularly, "depends on 'oos givin' it. I
s'pose I taken an' lost more jobs than any other cove in my line, yet I
never 'ad a character in my life, good or bad.
"Now, if you was to ask 'Earty, 'e'd say I ain't got no manners; an'
Mrs. B. 'ud say I ain't got no morals, an' why?" Bindle looked round
the room with a grin of challenge on his face. "'Cause I says wot I
thinks to 'Earty, an' 'e don't like it, an' I talks about babies before
young gals, an' Mrs. Bindle thinks it ain't decent.
"As I ain't got neither manners or morals, I ought to be able to judge
like between 'em. Now look at 'Earty, 'e's as moral as a swan, though 'e
ain't as pretty, an' why?"
Again Bindle looked round the circle.
"'Cause 'e's afraid!" Having made this statement Bindle proceeded to
light his pipe. This concluded in silence, he continued:
"'E's afraid o' bein' disgraced in this world and roasted in the next.
You should see the way 'e looks at them young women in the choir. If
'Earty was an 'Un on the loose, well----" Bindle buried his face in his
tankard.
"'Is Lordship 'as been sayin' a lot o' clever things to-night; but 'e
don't believe a word of 'em."
Windover screwed his glass into his eye and gazed at Bindle with
interest.
"'E loves to 'ear 'imself talk, same as me."
Windover joined the laugh at his own expense.
"'E talks with 'is tongue, not from 'is 'eart, same as 'Earty forgives.
A man ain't goin' to feel better 'cause 'e's always doin' wot other
people ses 'e ought to do, while 'e wants to do somethink else. If a
man's got a rotten 'eart, a silver tongue ain't goin' to 'elp 'im to get
to 'eaven."
Bindle was unusually serious that night, and it was evident that he, at
least, was speaking from his heart.
After a pause he continued, "My mate, Bill Peters, got an allotment to
grow vegetables, at least such vegetables as the slugs didn't want. Bill
turns up in the evenin's, arter 'is job was done, wi' spade an' 'oe an'
rake. But every time 'e got to work on 'is allotment, a goat came for
'im from a back yard near by. Bill ain't a coward, and there used to be
a rare ole fight; but the goat was as wily as a foreman, an' Bill always
got the worst of it. 'E'd wait till Bill wasn't lookin', and then 'e'd
charge from be'ind, an' it sort o' got on Bill's nerves.
"At last Bill 'eard that 'is allotment was where the goat fed, an',
bein' a sport, 'e said it wasn't fair to turn Billy out, so 'e give up
the allotment and 'is missus 'll 'ave to buy 'er vegetables same as
before." Bindle paused to let the moral of his tale soak in.
"But what has that to do with morals and manners, J.B.?" asked Dick
Little, determined that Bindle should expound his little allegory.
"For Bill read England and for goat read niggers," said one of Tims'
men.
"You got it, sir," said Bindle approvingly. "As I told 'Earty last week,
it ain't convincin' when yer starts squirtin' lead with a machine-gun
a-tellin' the poor devils wot stops the bullets that there's a dove
a-comin'. Them niggers get a sort of idea that maybe the dove's missed
the train."
"Talkin' of goats----" began Angell Herald.
"We wasn't talkin' o' goats," remarked Bindle quietly, "we was talkin'
o' Gawd."
Whereat Angell Herald at first looked nonplussed and finally laughed!
*CHAPTER VII*
*A SURPRISE BEHIND THE VEIL*
Windover, or to give him his full name, the Hon. Anthony Charles
(afterwards Lord) Windover, apart from possessing a charming
personality, has a delightfully epigrammatic turn of speech. It was he
who said that a man begins life with ideals about his mother; but ends
it with convictions about his wife. On that occasion Bindle had left
his seat and, solemnly walking over to Windover, had shaken him warmly
by the hand, returning to his chair again without a word.
It was Windover, too, who had once striven to justify celibacy for men
by saying that a benedict lived in a fool's paradise; a bachelor in some
other fool's paradise.
Windover's meeting with Bindle was most dramatic. Immediately on
entering the room with Carruthers, Windover's eye caught sight of Bindle
seated at his small table, the customary large tankard of ale before
him, blowing clouds of smoke from his short pipe. Windover had stopped
dead and, screwing his glass into the corner of his left eye, a habit of
his, gazed fixedly at him who later became our chairman. We were all
feeling a little embarrassed, all save Bindle, who returned the gaze
with a grin of unconcern. It was he who broke the tension by remarking
to Windover.
"You don't 'appen to 'ave a nut about yer, do you sir?"
Windover had laughed and the two shook hands heartily, Windover perhaps
a little ashamed of having shown such obvious surprise. As a rule his
face is a mask.
"I'm awfully sorry, I was trying to remember where we had met," he said
rather lamely.
"'Ush, sir, 'ush!" said Bindle looking round him apprehensively, then in
a loud whisper, "It was in Brixton, sir. You was pinched 'alf an 'our
after me."
From that time Bindle and Windover became the best of friends.
When, on the death of his elder brother, killed in a bombing-raid,
Windover had succeeded to the title, we were all at a loss how to
express our sympathy. He is not a man with whom it is easy to condole.
He and his brother had been almost inseparables, and both had joined the
army immediately on the outbreak of war.
On the Sunday following the tragedy, Windover turned up as usual. He
greeted us in his customary manner, and no one liked to say anything
about his loss. Bindle, however, seems to possess a genius for solving
difficult problems. As he shook hands with Windover he said, "I won't
call yer m'lord jest yet, sir, it'll only sort o' remind yer."
I saw Bindle wince at the grip Windover gave him. Later in the evening
Windover remarked to Carruthers, "J.B. always makes me feel exotic," and
we knew he was referring to Bindle's way of expressing sympathy at his
bereavement.
Curiously enough, to the end of the chapter Bindle continued to address
Windover as "sir", possibly as a protest against Angell Herald's
inveterate "my lordliness."
Windover's story was just Windover and nobody else, and it is printed
just as he narrated it, with injunctions "not to add or omit, lengthen
or shorten a single garment." I have not done so.
How long I had been dead I could not conjecture. I remembered buying a
newspaper of the old man who stands at the corner of Piccadilly Place.
I recollected that it was my intention to justify, to the smallest
possible extent compatible with my instinctive sense of delicacy, the
letter of patient optimism that I had received that morning from my
tailor. That was all. There had been no death-bed scene, with its
pathos of farewells, no Rogers moaning piteously about his future, as he
invariably did when my health showed the least deviation from the
normal. Yet here was I dead--dead as Free Silver.
In a dingy apartment of four garishly papered walls, upon a
straight-backed, black oak settle, I sat gazing into my top hat. That I
was dressed for calling did not seem to cause me any very great
surprise, nor was I conscious of any tremor, or feeling of diffidence as
to my fate. It seemed much as if I were waiting to see my solicitor
upon some unimportant matter of business. I knew that I was there to be
interrogated as to my past life. I was vaguely conscious that awkward
questions would be asked, and that the utmost tact and diplomacy would
be required to answer or evade them.
I was speculating as to the probable cause of my death, weighing the
claims of a taxi, the end of the world and a bomb, when the door
opposite to me opened and a tall angular woman appeared. Given a dusty
crape bonnet, she would have passed admirably for a Bayswater caretaker.
I was taken aback: in my mind post-mortem interrogation had always been
associated with the male sex.
Marvelling that this unattractive Vestal should be an attribute to
Eternity, I rose and bowed. My imagination had always pictured the
women of the Hereafter as draped in long, white, clinging garments, and
possessed of beautiful fluffy wings and a gaze of ineffable love and
wonder. The thought of the surprise in store for the sentimental
ballad-writers induced a chuckle!
With a gesture of her lean hand, the Vestal motioned me from the room.
At the extreme end of a gloomy corridor along which we passed, there
appeared a grained door bearing in letters of white the words:--
MRS. GRUNDY
PRIVATE
My interest immediately became stimulated. Here was an entirely
unlooked-for development.
"Shall we go in?" I enquired, rather out of a spirit of bravado than
anything else.
The Vestal rebuked me with an expressionless stare. Presently the door
opened with a startling suddenness and later closed behind us of its own
accord.
The second room seemed strangely familiar. On the mantel-piece was a
large gilt clock in a glass case, flanked on either side by an enormous
pink lustre with its abominable crystal drops. The furniture was either
ponderous or "what-notty", and every possible thing was covered, as if
to be undraped were indelicate. On the chairs were antimacassars,
table-cloths hid the shameless polish of the wood, the pattern of the
Brussels carpet was modified in its flamboyancy by innumerable mats.
The walls were a mass of pictures, and in front of the only window were
lace curtains of a tint known technically as "ecru." There were two
collections of impossible wax fruits covered by oval glasses, a square
case of incredibly active-looking stuffed birds, and a bewildering mass
of photographs in frames. Here and there on tables were a few select
volumes, ostentatiously laid open with silk hand-painted bookmarks
threading through their virgin pages. I identified "The Lady of the
Lake," Smiles, "Self Help," "Holy Living and Holy Dying," the works of
Martin Tupper, and the inevitable family bible.
At a large round-table opposite to the door sat a presence--a woman in
form, in clothing, in everything but sex. It was quizzing Disapproval
in black silk, with a gold chain round its neck from which hung a large
cameo locket. Its grey hair, very thin on top, was stowed away in a net
with appalling precision. It had three chins, and grey eyes, behind
which lurked neither soul nor emotion. It was the personification of
the triumph of virtue untempted.
I bowed. The eyes regarded me impassively, then turned to the massive
volume before them. It was bound in embossed black leather with gilt
edges and a heavy gilt clasp. I was incredulous that the Sins of
Society could be all contained in one book; but decided that it was made
possible by the use of the word "ditto." Society is never original in
anything, least of all its sinning.
In the hope of attracting to myself the attention hitherto considered my
due, I began to fidget. Presently, and without looking up, Mrs. Grundy,
as I judged her to be, demanded in a smooth, colourless voice:--
"Your name?"
"Anthony Charles Windover," I responded glibly.
"Age?"