moustache, so much on end that it looks as if it had just seen a ghost.
Not long ago he had no teeth to speak of; now they are as dazzling and
continuous, as Mr. Wordsworth said, as the stars that shine. He has
rather thin brown hair, which I will swear used to be streaked with
grey, but is so no longer, and he wears three rings with stones in them.
One is an emerald, so magnificent that it is almost impossible to
believe in it. He is dressed in the very height and zenith of provincial
fashion, and would no more be seen in shabby clothes than he would be
seen without stays. Yes; I maintain it, and even Helen, who was a
perfect St. Thomas about it for long, has admitted that occasional
creaks proceed from Mr. Holmes’s person for which it is difficult to
offer any other explanation. It was a creak, in fact, more than usually
loud that made Legs leave the room on the occasion I have referred to.
Down his trousers he has the most beautiful creases, and all his clothes
nearly fit perfectly. He wears brown boots with cloth tops, above which
when he sits down you can see socks with clocks on them stranglingly
suspended. In the winter he wears a hat with a furrow in it, and in the
summer a panama. He wears a knitted tie (just now it is rather the
fashion here for young men to have ties knitted for them by their
friends), which Helen says is certainly machine-made, with a pin in it.
His shirt always has some stripe or colour in it, and his links are
invariably the same colour as the stripe. To-day the links were
turquoise and the stripe light blue. And from top to toe it is all a
little wrong, though since I do not know how clothes are made, I cannot
tell you what is wrong. The effect, however, is that, though so
carefully arrayed, Mr. Holmes looks like a rather elderly shop-assistant
going out on Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Holmes goes out much oftener than that, for he may be seen in the
window of the club every morning from about half-past eleven till one. I
have often seen him sitting in the window there looking at illustrated
papers, and smoking a cork-tipped cigarette, ladies’ size. Then he goes
home to lunch, and after lunch either drives with his sister in a hired
fly, or else, if it is very fine, goes round the ladies’ golf-links,
which are a good deal shorter than the men’s. He has tea at the club and
sits there till dinner. Then, after a blameless day, he goes home to
dine and sleep. I suppose no one in the world has ever done less of any
description.
I have alluded to his weakness--rank; he has another, which is gossip.
He knows who was dining at the Ampses last Wednesday, and who lunched
with the Archdeacon on Sunday, and how the Bishop’s wife is. It is he
for whom also the fashionable intelligence is written in the daily
papers, and, though he never goes there, he knows who is in town, and
who lunched at Prince’s last Sunday, or walked in the Park, and how the
Marquis of God-knows-what is after his operation. (He always refers to
a Marquis _as_ a Marquis, to an Earl _as_ an Earl.) But, best of all,
perhaps, he loves infinitesimal intrigue, especially if it concerns
Rank.
And here my portentous secret must burst from me. For the fact is that
for the last three days the town has been convulsed, and I have been
holding it all back, assuming an unnatural calm, so that it might all
come in a deluge. For three days ago a Duchess came here to open a
window, or shut a door in the town-hall, which had been put up in memory
of something, and was entertained to luncheon afterwards by the
Corporation. And on this eye-opening occasion Helen was sent in before
the wife of the younger son of a Baronet. And in consequence the wife of
the younger son of the Baronet cut her afterwards, as with a knife; yet
knife was no word for it: the averted eye was more like a scimitar.
Before the assembled company, when Helen went to shake hands with her
after lunch, she cut her, and she turned from her, revolving on her own
axis like the eternal stars. Upon which, very properly, after two days’
heated discussion, and a great demand for Debrett, public opinion sided
with the wife of the younger son of the Baronet, on the ground that
Helen took her husband’s rank, which in this case happened to be none at
all. What made it worse was that the Duchess, who should have known
better, being an old friend of Helen’s, came to tea with her afterwards
in a motor-car covered with coronets for all the world to see.
You may imagine that the fat was in the fire after that. Helen had no
idea why the wife of the Baronet’s younger son had cut her, and perhaps
might never have known had not Mr. Holmes dropped in only yesterday and
told her, adding that he was sure he could clear it up. I was not at
home when this interview took place, but when he entered the room this
afternoon, after having called only yesterday, it was certain that he
must have come on this subject. He had a book in his pocket, which made
an unusual bulge.
Legs was steeped in wide-eyed contemplation as Mr. Holmes had his tea.
From time to time I glanced at him, and saw that the corners of his
mouth were faintly twitching. His eye travelled from Mr. Holmes’s face
to his jewelled hands; it lingered about his clothes, but came back,
loverlike, to his face. In a few minutes we had learned about
everybody--how the Lord-Lieutenant of the county had driven through in
his motor--not the Daimler, but a new Panhard--yesterday afternoon,
stopping only at the fishmonger’s, and taking the London road
afterwards; how there had been a party at the barracks last night, at
which there was music; but not very good music, Mr. Holmes was afraid;
how the Bishop had not influenza at all, but only a bad cold; how The
Pines had been taken by the Hon. Alice Accrington, who had a cork
foot--so sad. A rhinoceros had trodden on the original one.
I had ceased to be able to look at Legs, but here I heard him give a
little whimper, as a dog does when it wants a door to be opened for it.
Helen all the time had been of impeccable behaviour. She had asked just
the right questions, and appeared so genuinely interested that I felt I
had never known before of what depth of hypocrisy she was capable. Then
Mr. Holmes’s wealth of information began to grow thin, even as the
stars burn thin at daybreak, and I knew that he was going to dawn, and
that the true reason for which he came was going to break forth. He put
down his cup on the tea-table, took a cigarette, and suddenly creaked.
If you can imagine a sneeze, a cough, a spit, the strangled wheeze
caused by a fish-bone in the throat, and the noise an empty siphon of
soda-water makes when you press the handle, all combined, you will
faintly grasp what Legs did. His effort to swallow the whole of this
mixed convulsion was most praiseworthy, though I should think dangerous,
and it came to my ears only as if someone had done it half a mile away.
Mr. Holmes, I am sure, heard nothing this time, and Legs left the room
with his handkerchief to his mouth in the manner of mourners in the
second coach at a funeral. There was no sound outside, but soon after a
muffled tread overhead, where is his bedroom. Then for a moment I caught
Helen’s eye. She looked so inexpressibly grave that I nearly asked her
who was dead. Then dawn came. Mr. Holmes has a high cackling voice, and
the bulgy volume in his pocket was ‘Whitaker’s Almanack.’
‘I should have come before,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to come to you last,
and really the afternoon has flown. About Tuesday now. Dear lady, you
only took your right place. There is no question about it. I have been
to the Mayor, I have been to the Archdeacon. Look.’
He found a page in Whitaker, and gave Helen the volume. It was a table
of precedence. I saw ‘Eldest sons of younger sons of peers’ underlined.
‘Look at the next column,’ he said. ‘The sister takes the rank of her
husband _or_ her elder brother. Now see where younger sons of Baronets
and their wives come!’
Far away below eldest sons of younger sons of peers, in an outer
darkness below even members of the fifth class of the Victorian Order, I
saw that obscure relationship. My emotions of various kinds almost
suffocated me. Helen was justified before all the world. It was _her_
turn to cut the wife of the younger son of the Baronet if she chose.
So we talked very pleasantly for a quarter of an hour about the
movements of the aristocracy, and then Mr. Holmes ‘rose to go.’ His cab
was waiting, and I helped him on with a very magnificent fur coat in the
hall, which in the somewhat indistinct light seemed to be made of the
purest rabbit skin. In the dimness of the landing above I thought I
could see an obscure shadow leaning over the banisters which resembled
Legs.
‘I hope, after this, your wife will take her proper place,’ said Mr.
Holmes. ‘Of course, everyone knows the Duchess came here to tea.’
He lit a cigarette, and I heard the banister tremble slightly, as if
from an infinitesimal earthquake.
‘It is so kind of you to have taken so much trouble,’ said I firmly.
‘It was nothing. I am sure you need have no further anxiety.’
* * * * *
I went back to the drawing-room. Helen’s face was buried in a
sofa-cushion, and Legs came downstairs in three jumps.
So we laughed till it was time to dress for dinner. Occasionally we
seemed to be recovering, but then somebody said ‘Creak,’ or ‘Baronet,’
and a fresh relapse took place.
I pity all poor souls who do not know Mr. Holmes. It is so sad for
them--sadder than the lady with the cork foot. Oh, think of it! This
triumphant vindication of Helen (which is all wrong, by the way) will
last him a long, long time. It has been a campaign, triumphantly
concluded, and I should not in the least wonder if he has half a bottle
of champagne to-night. And after a time the excitement will die away,
fading like a golden sunset, and he will settle down to his ordinary
life again, and read the paper in the morning, and go for a little drive
in the afternoon, and have tea and toast at the club afterwards. And in
the spring the Panama hat will come out, and the rich fur coat be put
away, and he will hand strawberries instead of buns, and iced coffee
instead of tea, and perhaps play a little croquet. But this week has
been a great week for him--it really has. If you want to understand the
gloriousness of Mr. Holmes, you must take my word for it that nothing so
engrossing has happened to him for months.
DECEMBER
This once-happy family has suddenly returned to the pit whence it was
digged, and it is impossible to imagine any more depressing spectacle
than we present. Dawn in faint flickers is beginning to shine on the
wreck, and occasionally for a moment or two, though we may be
over-sanguine, Helen and I can dimly imagine being happy again. Legs
cannot do that yet; it is still midnight gloom with him.
The intelligent reader will scarcely need to be told that it is the
influenza that has blackened the world like this. Helen began, and Legs
and I followed within twenty-four hours. That, somehow, is a relief to
her, since she feels she did not give it us. As if it mattered where it
came from! Besides, personally I would rather catch it from her than
anyone else. Legs has had the worst visitation, because, after it was
quite certain he had got it, he persisted in attending the last night of
the autumn opera season, did not enjoy it at all, of course, by reason
of a splitting headache, and was really ill for a day or two. I was
infinitely wiser. As soon as the nymph touched me with her fairy hand I
went firmly to bed, turned my face to the wall like Hezekiah, and
stopped there till the fever was over. After five days I tottered
downstairs to find an old, old woman sitting by the fire. It was Helen.
I think that was the most dreadful day I ever remember. She told me
again and again how ill I looked until I was goaded into a sort of
depressed frenzy, and said I couldn’t possibly look as ill as she. We
both had beef-tea in the middle of the morning, and to my horror, when
it was brought, it was brought not by Raikes, my man who is as
indispensable to this house as is the carburetter to a motor-car (for it
won’t run without), but by an Awful Thing that I never saw before. In
answer to an inquiry, I was told that Raikes felt very ill, and had
asked the Awful Thing to bring us our beef-tea instead of him. So I sent
her back to Raikes with a thermometer that he was to be so good as to
put under his tongue for one minute, and then return. It came back
recording 102 degrees. I gave the Awful Thing the thermometer to wash,
and she instantly dropped it on the floor. It was, of course, broken
into twenty million fragments, but I remembered that, though I was a
worm, I was a Christian worm, and said: ‘Never mind. Please tell Raikes
that he is to go to bed instantly.’ I then picked up the twenty million
fragments, and cut myself severely. I said ‘Damn!’ quite softly.
Helen winced, which was merely intended to annoy me, and it succeeded
admirably.
So there we sat exactly like that awful picture called ‘Les Frileux,’ in
which an old man and an old woman sit apart under a leafless tree. The
ground is covered with the dead leaves. Soon they will die, too.
It is impossible to depict the dreariness of that morning. Outside a
sort of jaundiced day showed the soupy mud that flooded Sloane Street,
through which motor-buses, which once I thought so fine, splashed their
way. A few sordid people under umbrellas bobbed by the windows, and as
the darkness increased a man with a long stick began to turn up the
lamps. Then it instantly got rather lighter, and another man (not the
same one) with another long stick came and turned them down again. Upon
which Egyptian darkness settled down over the town, and I must suppose
that the first man had caught the influenza, for he never turned them up
any more.
Helen was not reading; she was sitting by the fire looking mournfully at
the coals. This would not do at all, and in the intervals of a paroxysm
of coughing I asked:
‘How is Legs this morning?’
‘Worse,’ said Helen.
I took up the _Daily Telegraph_, and read the list of the people who
were dead. I knew one of them slightly. Then my cut finger began to
bleed again, which reminded me of the Awful Thing.
‘Servants are so ridiculous and tiresome,’ I said. ‘I should think your
maid might have found time to bring up our beef-tea, instead of that
dreadful girl. I don’t know where you get your servants from.’
‘Barton went to bed yesterday with influenza,’ said Helen wheezily. ‘She
is very feverish--worse than Legs.’
I can’t say why, but this news made me feel rather better, so I lit a
cigarette. It tasted exactly as if it had been made of the green weed
which grows on stagnant horse-ponds. I felt much worse again at once,
and was quite sure my temperature was going up. But I could not have the
mournful satisfaction of knowing that this was true, because the
thermometer was broken. And my finger continued to bleed. The blood was
very bright red--probably arterial. Yet, whatever was happening, it
seemed impossible that things were as desperate as I thought them, and I
made the excellent determination to do something.
‘Will it disturb you if I play the piano?’ I asked Helen.
‘Not the least.’
I attempted to play the ‘Etudes Symphoniques,’ beginning with the last
variation, by reason of the sky-scraping spirits of it. I don’t think I
played any correct notes at all, and Helen (again to annoy me) made the
noise which tiresome people make to show that a wrong note gets on their
highly sensitive nerves. It consists of a whistling intake of the
breath. Though I had only played a dozen bars, the white notes in the
treble were spotted with blood, as if I was a Jew and the piano was the
lintel of the door on Passover night. It was absurd to go on playing on
a blood-boltered piano, even if I could play the right notes, which I
could not. So again, with the laudable idea of doing something, I
staggered upstairs, brought down a moistened towel, and proceeded to
clean the keys. I struck notes from time to time, and Helen kept on
wincing.
‘Is that necessary?’ she asked at length.
‘Yes, because I have bled over the piano. Besides, I’m cleaning it with
the soft pedal down.’
The door was flung open, and the Awful Thing appeared.
‘Dinner,’ she said, and left the door open.
We went downstairs. ‘Dinner’ in Raikes’ indisposition was huddled on to
the table. There were pieces of moist fish under one cover. There was a
ginger pudding under another. There were large potatoes under a third;
and under the fourth a rich and red beef-steak. Then despair descended
on me.
‘Is the cook ill, too?’ I asked of the Awful Thing.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Who cooked this? Or, rather, didn’t?’
‘Please, sir, I did.’
Then quite suddenly, both for Helen and me, dawn began to break for a
little. Here was three-quarters of the establishment incapacitated, and
the Awful Thing was calmly doing everybody’s work as well as her own,
which was that of a housemaid. Helen cheered up at once.
‘Please give me some fish,’ she said to me. ‘It looks quite excellent.’
I helped her largely and sumptuously. We both understood each other at
this moment, and I put a thumping helping on to my own plate.
Helen, greatly daring, took a greedy mouthful, and spoke to the Awful
Thing, who was beginning to beam largely on us.
‘Delicious,’ she said to her. ‘I had no idea you could cook so
beautifully. You needn’t wait; we will ring. And you must have help in
at once. Will you telephone to Mrs. Watkins’ agency, asking for a--(she
paused, and I know she was going to say ‘cook’)--a housemaid?’
The Awful Thing smiled from ear to ear, and a moment afterwards we heard
the insane ringing of the telephone.
‘Oh, I _couldn’t_ send for a cook just this moment,’ said Helen, when
the girl had left the room. ‘She was bursting with pride at having
cooked this. But if I eat it I shall be sick. What are we to do?’
The girl in her enthusiasm had built the fire three-quarters of the way
up the chimney, though the day was muggy and warm beyond all telling.
Into the heart of the blaze we stuffed large pieces of fish, which
burned with a blue and oily flame.
‘Now ring,’ said Helen.
The girl returned after a long pause.
‘Please ‘m, Mrs. Watkins hasn’t a housemaid to send, by reason of so
much illness. But she can send a cook,’ she said, and her face fell.
‘It’s such a pity, when you can cook so well,’ said Helen; ‘but we must
have somebody. You can’t do all the work.’
‘A char and I could manage, ‘m,’ she said, changing the plates with an
awful clatter.
‘Oh, not with Mr. Legs ill,’ said Helen. ‘We shall have you knocked up
next, and where should we be then?’
The radiant smile returned to the girl’s face.
‘Give me some steak, Jack,’ said Helen, ‘and a potato. How delicious it
smells!’
The Awful Thing again left the room, leaving, as it were, the fragrance
of her smile behind her.
We made no attempt to eat any of the second course, but put two large
slices of steak, two potatoes, and a big spoonful of perspiring
cauliflower into the fire. Pieces of ginger-pudding followed it to the
burning ghaut, and soon the door again opened, and coffee was brought
in. This was an after-thought, I fancy, though ill-inspired and gritty.
But there was a coal-scuttle.
I am afraid we both relapsed again after lunch, though for a time the
shining example of the housemaid who had done the work of everybody else
inspired us to attempt to play piquet, bezique, and the piano. But these
were all hopeless: it did not seem worth while dealing, and, in point of
fact, the attempt at a duet came to a conclusion at the end of the first
page, for Helen only groaned and said:
‘I can’t turn over.’
But that, I am thankful to say, was our low-water mark.
* * * * *
Sunshine began to shine more strongly on the wreck when Legs, two days
afterwards, came downstairs, with the cheering remark that he felt so
ill that he was sure he couldn’t be as ill as he felt. Soon after he
burst into hoarse laughter.
‘I shall cheer up when I have counted ten,’ he remarked.
Well, on the whole, when it was put simply and firmly like that, it
seemed the best thing to do. Legs took change of the cheering process,
and ordered a basin, soap, and three churchwarden pipes, and we blew
soap-bubbles, which, though it may not be in itself a work of high
endeavour, had at least the result of making us do something, which is
always a good thing. So, when that was over, in order to contribute to
the wholesome atmosphere of employment, I brought in and read to him and
Helen what I had written that morning, and had designed to appear in the
book you I are now reading. It was--I will not deceive you--a string (a
long one) of cheap and gloomy reflections on the mutability of life, the
reality of suffering, and the certainty of death. I had taken some
trouble with it, but the most poignant and searing sentences made Legs
simply roll in his chair with laughter that was noiseless merely because
his throat was in such a state of relaxation that it could not make
sounds. But with eyes streaming and in a strangled whisper he said:
‘Oh, do stop a moment till I don’t hurt so much with laughing, and then
read it again.’
I looked at Helen. She had a handkerchief to her face, and her shoulders
shook with incontrollable laughter.
‘It’s much the funniest thing you ever wrote,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it, now?
Begin again at “All the pain and sorrow with which we are
surrounded”--oh, no, before that--something about “It is when we are
racked with suffering ourselves.” Oh, Legs, isn’t it heavenly?’
Legs had recovered himself a little, but still drummed with his feet on
the carpet.
‘I never knew I could feel so much better so quickly,’ he said. ‘I felt
a mere worm when I proposed soap-bubbles. I want it all again from the
beginning, where what you thought was sunlight was barred with strange
shadows. O Lor!’
So I gave them this intellectual--or should I say spiritual?--treat once
more, and then threw the manuscript into the fire, amid the shrill
expostulations of the others. Legs made heroic attempts to save it, but
fruitlessly, or, indeed, I would print it here, as a warning to those
who do not feel very well to postpone their meditations upon life and
death until they feel a little better. Also, I do not think that one’s
reflections on any subject are likely to be of much value unless they
are founded on some sort of experience, and, to be quite honest, I had
founded my views that morning on the mutability of life and the anguish
of the world on the depression which was the result of a feverish cold.
They were depressing enough, but I do not think that they were of
sufficiently solid foundations. They proved, it is true, extraordinarily
cheering to Helen and Legs, but one cannot be certain that the rest of
the world would be equally exhilarated. They might be taken seriously,
though Helen says I need not have been afraid of that.
Every man, even a pessimist, is supposed to have a perfect right to form
his own opinions, but if I had my way (there is not the least likelihood
of it) I should establish a censorship of the press, which should be in
the hands of six young and cheerful optimists, who should decide whether
such opinions were fit for publication. Quite rightly literature of an
indecent nature, and work which may be supposed to have a tendency
encouraging to criminals, is not allowed to be disseminated. I should
put a similar prohibition on the dissemination of discouraging books,
books which might be expected to suggest or foster the opinion that the
world is a poor sort of place, and that God isn’t in His heaven at all.
Even if this was proved to be true, I would count it criminal to attempt
to convince anybody of it; it would be a murderous assault on the
happiness of private individuals. The law does not allow one to poison a
man’s bread with impunity, so how much more stringently should it forbid
the poisoning of the inward health of his soul! Nothing but harm ever
came from the dissemination of depressing truths, nothing but good from
the dissemination of innocent and joyful beliefs, even should it be
proved that they had no foundation whatever. For if the world is a
dreary and painful place, so much more need is there of courage and a
high heart to render it the least tolerable, and if we are to be snuffed
out like candles when we come to the end of our few and evil years, how
much more is it the part of wisdom to snatch a little happiness out of
the circumambient annihilation!
And to think that only this morning I had actually tried to commit this
crime, and was only saved from it by Legs’ unutterable laughter. To be
truthful, I felt a little offended when he first began to laugh, and
inwardly hoped that he would soon grow depressed and thoughtful as I
continued to tell my rosary of discouraging things. But I need not have
indulged that hope; it was forlorn from the beginning.
Instead, it made both him and Helen feel much better. I am so content to
leave it at that. I had hoped--I had, indeed--when I wrote those
depressing pages (which I wish to Heaven I had not burned) that possible
readers might see part of the serious side of things under the
discouragement of my winged words. But now--two days later--I am far
more content that those two darlings should have laughed at what was
written with such seriousness, than that all those into whose hands the
printed record of that manuscript might have fallen should have sighed
once over my jaundiced views about life and death, and sickness and
mutability.