Texas, and had only to sit still and let the oil work for him. It was
good fun at first. We took a big house at Kensington, and Bundy spent
his time getting cheated over horses, and I spent mine being cheated
over sham Sheraton furniture, and when we tired of that we bought
pictures, until at last the house was so full of things we couldn't get
another stick into it. 'What shall we do now?' says Bundy. 'Let us
try being fashionable,' says I." [She uttered the word
"fash-ee-on-abell," with an indescribable drawling accent of contempt.]
"So we tried that, too, and drove in the Park, and gave dinner-parties,
and Bundy had to wear dress-clothes, though he never could make out how
to tie his white tie, and made more fuss than enough of it. We got
plenty of folk to eat our dinners, but a duller lot I never met. The
men all wanted to talk oil, and the women couldn't talk of anything but
dress, and men and women alike hung round Bundy, and let him know as
plainly as they dared that all they came for was to see if they could
get any oil-shares out of him. After a time we grew tired of being
fashionable, and Bundy says, 'I think we'll have a yacht.' So we
bought a yacht, though neither of us liked the sea, and we made out a
summer that way. And all the while the oil was pouring out of those
wells in Texas, and the money was pouring in, and we saw no end to it.
Then Bundy tried being a philanthropist, and that was really
interesting while it lasted. There wasn't a crank in London--nor, one
would suppose, in Europe, from the look of his mail-bag--that didn't
find him out. They sat upon his doorstep to catch him coming out, and
hunted him down the street, and all the men he'd ever known anywhere
claimed him as an old friend, so that the poor man lived the life of a
partridge on the mountains, as the saying is. He grew quite
old-looking, and lost his sleep, and after a time he didn't even read
what the papers said about him, which is a pretty bad sign in a man."
"Poor Mr. Bundy!" said Arthur, in mock commiseration.
"Ah! you may well say it, laddie, and poor Mrs. Bundy, too, for I'd
never been so miserable in my life. You see, it was the dullness of
the thing that made us miserable. When you can get everything you
want, you don't want anything after a time."
"And how did it end?"
"Well, one morning I lay a-bed late, for there was nothing particular
to get up for, and I could hear Bundy in his dressing-room, opening and
shutting drawers, as though he couldn't make up his mind what clothes
he wanted to wear. There came a knock on the outer door, and I heard a
crumpling of paper, and then he whistled.
"'What is it?' I called out.
"He didn't answer, but I heard him rampaging round. So I jumped out of
bed, and ran into the dressing-room, and there stood Bundy laughing to
himself, and upon my word he looked happier than I had seen him for
twelve months or more.
"'What is it?' I says again.
"And then he looked at me mighty solemn and queer, and says, 'Can ye
bear it?'
"'Bear what?' says I.
"'Oh! nothing much,' says he, 'only we're bust. The oil's given out.'
"'Then we're poor?' says I.
"'Poor we are,' says he--'poor as Job. For, you see, I've been
spending everything as it came, thinking that that oil would last for
ever, and now we're bust.'
"'Hallelujah!' says I. 'That's the best news I've heard a long time.'
"He looked at me a minute, kind of doubtful, and then he burst out
laughing, and says, 'I rather think I feel that way myself.'
"'I knew you would,' says I. And then I put my arms round him, and we
danced round the room, and I give you my word that was the happiest
hour I ever spent in that big house at Kensington. You see, we'd both
been dying of dullness, though neither of us liked to say it. We'd got
where there weren't any adventures; and that's why life didn't seem
worth living."
She looked at Arthur with humorous eyes, in which also there was the
gleam of motherly affection and solicitude.
"You're dreadfully afraid of being poor, aren't you, my dear?" she
concluded. "London makes men feel like that. And it's because men get
afraid of life that they take the first comfortable groove that offers,
and then all the fun is over for them. Well, don't you be like that.
If I was you, I'd live my life, and let the question of getting a
living shift for itself. And remember what I say, for it's true--the
only people who really enjoy life are the poor, because they're the
only people who have lots to look forward to."
V
THE MAGIC NIGHT
Coming home one night along the Lonsdale Road, Arthur found Hilary
Vickars standing at his garden gate, taking the air. It was June, that
most exquisite of all months in London, when the perfume of summer
finds its way into the narrowest streets, and the imprisoned people
thrill with a new sense of freedom and deliverance. In the soft
twilight even Lonsdale Road was touched with the idyllic; its impudence
of newness was concealed under a faint wash of mauve, and its tiny
gardens were fresh with the scent of mown grass.
Hilary Vickars himself seemed softened with the hour; when he spoke to
Arthur there was a new kindness in his voice. Perhaps he could not
have explained his mood; few of us can explain these sudden softenings
that come to us, sometimes through the influence of external things,
sometimes from the welling up in us of founts of tenderness which we
had thought for ever sealed. A gust of wind among the trees, a bird's
song in the dusk, a girl's voice at her piano, in its first fresh,
unrestrained sweetness--who of us cannot recall how things as slight as
these have had a strange power to provoke some crisis of emotion, which
perhaps has coloured all our after-life? Hilary Vickars had been
listening that night to his daughter as she sang. She had sung a song
her mother had been fond of, and in the mind of the widowed man all the
past had leapt into agonised distinctness. And from that he had passed
to the perception of the daughter's likeness to her mother, and to the
pathos of her youth. Her voice yet lingered in the air, as he stole
out of the room, and stood bareheaded at the garden gate. And then he
saw Arthur coming up the road, and as his eye rested on the slim,
graceful figure he again realised this infinite pathos of youth.
"He wants help, and I ought to help him," was his instant thought.
Hitherto a kind of pride had imposed a barrier of reserve between
himself and Arthur. He had seen him as a rich man's son, the member of
a class for which he had only scorn and anger. But now he saw him
simply as a youth launching his frail bark upon the perilous sea of
life, and he loved him. So Nature wrought within him, using his
softened mood for her own ends, and with Nature came Destiny, casting
the first threads of her inscrutable design upon the loom of life.
He held his hand with a lingering pressure, and then said, as if
obeying a resolve imposed upon his own will rather than suggested by
it, "Won't you come in?"
He led the way into the house, and Arthur followed with a glad alacrity.
The narrow hall-way opened upon a room at the back of the house, which
served both as living-room and library. The only light in the room
came from two candles on the piano brackets. Between them sat a young
girl, her fingers still upon the keys, her face, rayed with the nimbus
of the candlelight, turned upward with a charming air of expectation
and surprise.
She was not beautiful, judged by the canons of exacting art; yet there
was no artist who could have been indifferent to her, for she possessed
an element of charm much more rare than beauty. The hair, dark and
abundant, was very simply dressed above a low white forehead; the face
was beautifully moulded, and expressed a delicate fatigue; the mouth,
too large for beauty, was mobile and eager; the eyes were a stag's
eyes, brown and full and limpid. It was in these that her charm was
concentrated. They held depth beyond depth, eyes into which the gaze
sank, fathomless as water in a well.
She rose as her father and his guest entered the room.
"My daughter, Elizabeth," he said.
She bowed, and turned toward Arthur the regard of her unfathomable
eyes. Arthur stood transfixed. For a long moment his gaze clung to
hers, and a new, strange, pleasurable heat thrilled his blood. A
subtle, undecipherable telegraphy was in that clinging gaze. It was as
though soul challenged soul; the citadel of sentience in each awoke to
sudden life, and quivered at the shock of contact, with an emotion half
alarm and half delight. Then the veil fell between them, and the soul
of each receded into secrecy.
It was a relief to each when Vickars lit the gas, and began to speak in
accents of conventional courtesy.
"This is my work-room," he said.
And indeed the room told its own tale. Bookshelves, closely packed,
covered each wall; the books lay in heaps upon the floor; and in their
midst stood a wide table piled with manuscripts, proofs, and notebooks.
There was not a single picture in the room, not an ornament of any
kind. Near the window stood a typewriter and a small table, and on the
other side of the window the piano.
"I suppose there are few rooms in London that know more about
brain-toil than this room--that is, if rooms can receive impressions,
as I sometimes think they can," he continued. "Certainly none in
Lonsdale Road," he added with a smile. "Ah! that reminds me of a
story. When I first came to live here, there was the greatest
curiosity to know what I did for a living. Lonsdale Road could not
account for any man who did not go to the city every day, and therefore
refused to accept his credentials of respectability. I never knew how
far this aversion went till one day our little servant told us with
tears that she must leave us. It took a long time to draw from her her
reason. You would never guess it. At last she said, 'Mother say she
thinks you are a burglar.' And then I found that our neighbours had
actually woven this ingenious romance about us, and I am not sure that
they have discarded it even yet."
He spoke lightly, and yet with an accent of resentment and of hurt
pride. To Arthur the story was a revelation of the social loneliness
of Vickars's life. But he was thinking less of the father than the
daughter. Once more his eyes sought that fair face, and he was
surprised to find no laughter in it; it was evident the story had
pained her.
"Elizabeth does not like that story," said her father, noticing her
silence.
"No, father, I do not. It makes me hate the world to think it treats
you unjustly."
"Oh! the world's very well, little girl," he replied. "One doesn't
expect justice from it. One should be content if the world merely
allows him to live."
"Yet you are always fighting for justice. You know you are, father."
"Ah! justice for other people--that's a different thing. But the
condition of such a fight as that is to be indifferent to the question
of justice to one's self. That is a very small matter indeed."
"That is how he always talks," she answered, with a charming
friendliness of appeal to Arthur. "He never thinks about himself."
"There, there! we're getting very serious, little girl," Vickars
replied. "Suppose we change the subject. We don't often have a guest.
Don't you think a little supper and some music afterwards might fit the
occasion?"
"How forgetful of me!" she said. She rose and left the room.
"You mustn't take my fine sentiments too seriously, so I give you due
warning," he remarked. "Men who write books get into the way of
talking their own books. You'll find, as you come to know me better,
that there's a good deal of--of the artificial in me. The only merit I
have above other men is that I am conscious of it."
"I have read your last book," said Arthur, "and I found nothing
artificial in it. I thought it a great book."
"Have you? Well, I'm glad." His pale face was illumined for an
instant by the boy's ingenuous praise. "No, Arthur," he added, "it's
not great. It is merely true. And I think I can say this with real
sincerity--I care much more for its truth than for its greatness."
"Are they not the same?" said Arthur.
"Not for this generation. This is the age of 'best sellers,' and the
book that is called great is usually the book that has least to say
about the truth of life."
"I was not thinking of contemporary opinion."
"Contemporary opinion is the only court of appeal we have. A book must
justify itself to the generation in which it is written, or be sure of
it no other generation will know anything about it. Yet I do sometimes
think that truth must make itself heard. I cherish the belief, in
spite of history and experience."
He spoke with an accent of infinite dejection. Arthur could find no
words of reply. If, an hour before, he had been asked what kind of
life came nearest his ideal, perhaps he would have replied, "The
literary life," and he would have instanced Vickars. Now, as he looked
at the writer's tired face, it was as though the naked realities of
such a life lay before him, stripped of all delusive trappings. To
drain one's life-blood into books that no one read, to prophesy to deaf
ears and undiscerning eyes, ah! surely there must be a better way of
life than this; and on the instant he knew what that way was. That
warmth which still pierced his veins spoke to him more clearly than any
voice. To love--that was life. To live the lyric life of love--that
was better than to write of it. And straightway there came to him a
vision of wide plains and deep forests, dotted with the homes of men,
beneath whose roofs lip met lip in faithful kisses, and heart beat to
heart through long nights of sleep, and all the primeval life of man
went on in birth and death, as it had done since the gates of Eden
closed. Ah! infinite desirable delight of love, strong, and natural,
and enduring, on which the great seal of God had always rested! In
that moment he ceased to be a boy; his manhood rushed upon him; he
blushed, and in his heart a voice cried, "Elizabeth!"
She re-entered the room at that moment, carrying a supper-tray, and
Arthur could not but observe the supple poise and grace of her young
figure. She moved easily, with a soft gliding motion; she was dressed
wholly in white, and conveyed an impression of a creature inimitably
virginal. The face had not lost its look of delicate fatigue, but it
was clear that this fatigue was of the mind rather than the body, and
owed itself to no physical defect. Both he and Vickars rose together
to clear a place upon the littered writing-table for the supper-tray,
and in performing this act his hand touched hers. It was but a
feather's touch, but it thrilled him, and his very flesh seemed to
dissolve in a fire of rapture. Again he sought her eyes, but now they
were averted. The moment passed like a chord of music that left the
air vibrating. It seemed to him that all the world must know what had
happened.
Then the current of his life ran back into its normal channels, and he
found himself talking with excited eagerness. The meal was as simple
as a meal could be, but for him it had ambrosial flavours. She sat
quite silent, listening, apparently unaware that he talked for her
alone. Vickars caught the gaiety of his good spirits, and talked as
eagerly as he. The conversation soon found its accustomed
grooves--books, and London, and the interminable comedy and tragedy of
man. Presently Vickars happened to mention a young poet who had lately
died, and Arthur asked if he had known him.
"Yes, he came here once. It was in his last days, when he had finally
discovered that the world had rejected him. But he never knew why he
was rejected."
"Why was he rejected?"
"Because he could only sing of the past. He had no vision of the
modern world. He despised it, and his contempt blinded him to its real
significance.
"I do not think that is quite just, father," said Elizabeth.
"Ah! I forgot to say," said Vickars, with an admiring glance at his
daughter, "that Elizabeth is a much better critic than I. She is a
better critic because she is a kinder."
"No, it's not that, father. My criticism, such as it is, is only
feeling, and I felt that poor Lawson was just finding his way to the
right method when he died. Don't you remember those lines on London in
his last sonnet?--
O Calvaries of the poor, dim hills of pain,
Whose utmost anguish is not nail or thorn,
The beaten blood-smeared brow, the soft flesh torn,
But this, that ye are crucified in vain.
The man who wrote those lines surely saw the modern world, and realised
its significance."
She recited the lines slowly, in a low fluty voice which would have
imparted dignity and music to much worse lines. Arthur listened
entranced. Surely there was magic in this summer's night, a magic of
the soul as well as of the flesh. His hand had touched hers, but now
her mind revealed itself, and thrilled his with a subtler contact. In
one swift glimpse he understood her exquisite sensitiveness, her
pitifulness and tenderness, her strength and goodness; it was as though
the Madonna's halo rested for an instant on that fair brow, and awed
him into worship. He drew a long breath, and now, when his eyes sought
hers, her gaze was not averted. She accepted the challenge of his eyes
with complete sincerity, and with a frankness which was the last effect
of complete innocence and modesty.
The voice of Vickars broke the spell.
"Yes, you are right," he said; "you usually are." And then, turning to
Arthur with a whimsical smile, "Do you know Elizabeth writes my books
for me?"
"Typewrites, he means. That is all, I assure you," she said.
"And corrects my blunders, which are many."
"Only the spelling. Father never could spell, and when he is in
difficulties he makes a hieroglyphic with his pen, and leaves me to
decipher it."
"I am afraid the critics find it hieroglyphic too," said Vickars, with
a return to his dejected manner. "I sometimes wish we had Grub Street
back again, with all its tribe of famished hacks; they at least would
understand a book that deals with poverty. But who are the critics
to-day? They are gentlemen with settled incomes who write in
comfortable armchairs, and know as little about real life as the
tadpole knows of the ocean. The result is they simply cannot
understand the things I write about. They persuade themselves that
such things don't exist. What can one say of them but the accusation
which is as old as time--'having eyes they see not, and ears they hear
not, and hearts they do not understand'?"
"They will surely understand one day," said Arthur.
"Ah! one day--but when? When the common people have forced them to see
and understand. For there is my real hope, after all--the common
people. They know what they want, and don't go to the critics for
their opinions. A venomous review may do much to injure a young
author; but if he goes on writing undismayed, the time comes when
reviews, whether bad or good, don't affect him. If he can justify
himself to the common people, he is certain to triumph in the long run.
But there, we are getting too serious again. Let us forget books, and
have some music. One can find solace for any kind of disappointment in
music. It is the only art that makes a universal appeal."
Elizabeth rose and went to the piano, stooping as she went to kiss her
father's brow.
She played nothing that was not familiar, but it seemed to Arthur that
all she played was the expression of her own personality. She played
on and on, wandering at will from Chopin to Tchaikowsky, and in the
profound melodies of the great Russian her whole spirit spoke. And it
seemed to Arthur that the Spirit of the World spoke too--a romantic and
enchanted world, and yet a world of infinite yearning and pain, of love
and battle and heroism, till he saw, as it were, the weird procession
of human life, with white faces strained in final kisses, hands that
rose above encroaching waves to touch and part, hearts that broke in
ecstasies of love and joy and sorrow. The cool night breeze came in at
the open window, the leaves whispered as it passed, and at intervals
the deep voice of London ran like an undertone inwoven with the music.
O wonderful, various, inscrutable world, what, bliss to be alive in it,
even though it be for the briefest moment! But there was a bliss
beyond bliss, unspeakable, unimaginable, not to live alone, but to love
as the greatest hearts have loved, and surely that was the final
message of this magic hour! Time, and the years, and all the
centuries, and all events and histories, seemed to concentrate
themselves in one fair girl, from whose slender fingers came this music
of the world; she alone was important; she was the race itself in its
final flower of love and loveliness. So ran the incoherent thoughts of
youth, songs rather than thoughts, the wordless musical out-cries of a
heart waking to a knowledge of itself, and finding all outer objects
lit with the glamour of the magic hour.
The music ceased abruptly. There was a dull repeated thud upon the
wall.
"What on earth is that?" cried Arthur.
"Oh, merely our neighbours," said Vickars. "Poor souls! they rise
early and work hard, and I suppose they want to go to bed."
"Why, I shouldn't have thought they could have heard as plainly as
that."
"That's because you don't live in Lonsdale Road," said Vickars with a
smile. "Why, I can hear the children sneeze next door. And there's a
crack in the party wall, big enough for light to shine through, and I
know when the light appears that they are going to bed. My dear
fellow, I honestly believe it's only the paper that holds the walls
together at all."
Arthur blushed furiously, for he had remembered what Vickars had
forgotten, that the house was the work of Archibold Masterman. It was
a horrible irruption of the commonplace upon the magic hour.
Vickars, recognising his mistake, turned the conversation into ordinary
channels. Arthur still clung to the vanishing skirts of his romance.
Once more he thrilled as he touched Elizabeth's hand in farewell, but
as he went out into the cool dusk it seemed as though Life strode
beside him, a dark and menacing figure, no longer lyrical and friendly.
"What can they think of my father?" he thought, as he walked home. And
behind this lay another thought: "If they think ill of my father, as
they have a right to, can they think well of me?"
VI
YOUNG LOVE
A month had passed, a wonderful month; it was as though the whole of
life had flowered in that month. All the days and years that had
preceded it had been but so many roots and tendrils which had stored
the strong essences of life, that at last they might display themselves
in this miraculous bloom! It is the flower that blooms but once, this
exquisite flower of young, adoring love. Maturer years may bring the
strength of calm affection, the heat of turbulent passion, but, in the
incredible romance of sex, once only comes the wonder-hour, when the
whole world is dipped in splendour, winged with song, glittering with
the fresh dew of young desire. We who are older recall that hour with
a kind of mournful wonder. Just to wake and think she wakes too, she
breathes the same morning air, was an intoxicating thought. And what
beautiful and foolish things we did: how we kissed the scrap of paper
that bore the adored name, watched the adored shadow on the blind, were
at once so bold and shy, so determined and so fearful, so daring and so
absurdly sensitive. No one else had ever loved as we loved; we alone
possessed the immortal secret, and the knowledge of that secret
separated us from common men and common life. Yes, we are older now,
wiser and colder too, and the flesh no longer thrills with ecstasy at
the touch of lip or hand; but who would not give all this late-found
wisdom to recapture for a moment this divine folly of first love?
Arthur gave himself to the divine folly with complete abandonment. He
did all the foolish things that lovers do: sat night after night in
Vickars' room, pretending interest in the father while his eyes never
left the daughter; trembled when she spoke, shivered when her dress
touched his hand, shrank from her as if unworthy to touch the hem of
her garment, and in the same moment longed to clasp her in his arms.
He waited long hours just to gaze an instant into the depths of her
timid eyes; gazed with ardour, and then flushed for shame, as one
convicted of an outrage. When he left the house he walked only to the
end of the street, came back again, and in the darkness watched the
house, wondering what room was hers, and picturing her silent in the
innocence of sleep. What if the house should burn? What if some
outrageous wrong should violate her slumber? What if she should die in
the night? When he went home at last, to the grim silence of Eagle
House, it was to dream of her; and no sooner did he wake than he must
seek Lonsdale Road, finding fresh joy and amazement in the impossible
fact that she was still alive.
All this time his father said not a word to him, and made no question
of his comings and goings. He passed him with averted face, his eyes
not unkindly but absorbed, for it was a time of panic in the city, when
richer men than he watched the trembling balance of events, which meant
sudden triumph or sudden ruin. But with the unconscious cruelty of
youth Arthur discerned none of these things. The material life had
practically ceased for him; wealth and poverty were alike terms of no
significance; they belonged to a world so far removed that he no longer
apprehended it. It was enough for him that the punctual day awoke him
with a new cup of happiness; with its first beam he mounted to the
heaven of his romance, and there dwelt among rosy clouds, with the
singing of the morning stars in his ears.