dismiss him from his consideration. He had begun by admiring him with
youthful ardour; he sincerely liked him; but now a new question
disturbed their relationship--did Vickars approve of him? He was at
pains to understand Vickars' view of life, for he knew that whatever
his view was, it was Elizabeth's too. Had she not typewritten all his
books for him? Did not her mind speak in them as well as his? And he
knew instinctively that in both father and daughter there was a certain
resolute fibre of conviction which could not be softened by mere
sentiment. They each lived by some kind of definite creed; in a sense
they were Crusaders pledged to loyalty to that belief; and if he were
to become to either what he hoped to be, he knew that he must
understand their attitude to life.
It piqued Arthur that Vickars said so little to him on these matters.
But one night the opportunity arrived. Vickars had been busy over some
literary task; when Arthur came into the room, Elizabeth was putting
the cover on her typewriter and gathering up a mass of MSS.
"Come in," said Vickars. "You find me at a good moment. I have just
finished a piece of work that has given me a vast deal of trouble."
"Another novel?"
"No, not exactly. I suppose it is fiction in form, and no doubt most
people will regard it as fiction in essence too; but as a matter of
fact it is a plain statement of what is wrong with the world, and a
proposition for its remedy."
"That sounds rather formidable, doesn't it?"
"It would be formidable if the world would take it seriously. But they
won't. I don't suppose it will even get read. I am by no means sure
that it will even get printed. My publishers are considered bold men,
but they are only bold along lines thoroughly familiar to them. Show
them something new, really and truly new, and they will most likely be
frightened out of their wits."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"It's not bad at all. It's absolutely plain commonsense. I wonder who
the fool was who first talked of commonsense? My experience teaches me
that sense is the most uncommon thing in the world. Most men are so at
home with folly that nothing is so likely to alarm them as the
irruption of real rational sense."
"I wish you would tell me all about it," said Arthur earnestly.
"Do you?" said Vickars, with an ironic smile. "Well, I don't know
about that. You see, at heart I am a fanatic, and, like all fanatics,
I should expect you to agree with me. If you didn't, I might not--like
you. And then there's Elizabeth. I rather think she agrees with me.
And she might not--like you."
"Oh no, father," Elizabeth began, and then flushed and dropped her eyes.
"Oh yes," he retorted. "Why, don't you know that the one great
divisive force in society is opinion? I like the man who agrees with
me, and I dislike the man who doesn't; and although I may accuse myself
of intolerance, and persuade myself that he possesses all kinds of
virtues, I shall still go on disliking him, because I think him stupid.
And he will dislike me for the same reason--he will think me stupid."
He rose from his writing-table, lit a pipe, and stood with his hands
behind him, with that whimsical smile upon his face which Arthur knew
so well.
"No," he continued, with a sudden flash of passion, "I don't suppose I
shall get heard. The nearer truth you come in your writing, the less
likely are you to get heard, for above all things men hate truth. They
crucified truth two thousand years ago on Calvary; and they have been
doing it ever since. Yet truth is the most obvious thing in the world,
to any one who is sincere enough to discern it. You want to know what
I think, what I have been writing about. Well, I will tell you. I
have simply put down in plain English a series of facts which are all
indisputable. That war is folly, to begin with, and if the cost of
armies and navies were removed, the prosperity of Europe would be
instantly doubled. That the reckless growth of cities is folly, and if
you could make the people stay upon the land by giving them land on
equitable terms, three-fourths of the poverty would disappear. That
unlimited commercial competition is folly, and that if you could make
nations act as a great co-operative trust, only producing what each
nation is best fitted to produce, and only as much of any commodity as
was really needed, you would cure all the ills of labour. And I say
all this is absolutely obvious. Every one knows it, though every one
ignores it. It is so obvious that if God would make me sole dictator
of the world for a single year, I would guarantee to make the world a
Paradise. I wonder God doesn't do it Himself, instead of letting man
go on age after age mismanaging everything, with the result that a few
are rich and not happy, and the multitude are poor--and miserable. So
now you know just the sort of man I am. Didn't I tell you I was a
fanatic?" He broke off his harangue with a laugh. "Now how do you
like me?" he asked.
"I like you better than I ever did," said Arthur.
"Ah! you think you do. But remember my definition: you only really
like the man with whom you agree. Do you agree with me?"
"I think I do."
"Then what are you going to do with your own life?"
The abrupt question struck upon the mind with a sharp clang, like the
sudden breaking of a string on a violin. It was the old question which
Arthur had debated so often and so wearily. During this lyric month of
love it had been forgotten, his mind had been bathed in delicious
languor; but now the question returned upon him with singular and
painful force, and his mind woke from its trance. What was he to do
with his life? And as he asked the question, for the first time he
caught a full vision of the gravity and splendour of existence. Man
was born to do, not alone to feel, to act as well as love. And
beautiful as love was, he saw with instant certainty that in creatures
like Elizabeth it rested on a solid base of intellectual idealism.
That was its final evolution: it was no longer the wild, passionate
mating of forest lovers; it was a thing infinitely delicate and pure,
infinitely complex and sensitive, in which the spirit, with all its
agonies and exultations, was the dominating force.
For a breathless moment he was conscious of the grave eyes of Elizabeth
resting on him with an anxious tenderness of inquisition. Then he
answered in a low voice, "I wish to make my life worthy of the highest.
That is as far as I can see." The speech was the implied offer of
himself to Elizabeth, and she knew it. Her face was suffused with
happy light, and her breast rose and fell in a long satisfied sigh.
"That is as far as any one need see," said Vickars. And then the tense
moment broke, and the conversation flowed back into ordinary channels.
From that hour began a real intimacy with Vickars which had a great
influence over his own character. Hitherto he had admired the man
without understanding his real aims. Now he began to comprehend these
aims. Vickars had spoken truly when he described himself as a fanatic,
but his fanaticism was so wise and so gentle that it provoked love
rather than antagonism. And it had also a certain restful and
melancholy quality which was infinitely touching. He did not expect to
be heard, and he knew that he would not prevail; yet he would at any
time have suffered martyrdom with cheerful courage. Many men have
found it not difficult to die for a faith which they believed would
move on to triumph by the way of their Golgotha; but Vickars was
prepared to die for a faith which he knew must fail. He had no
illusions; he saw all things in a clear bleak light of actual fact,
knew the world ill-governed and man incurably foolish, but not the less
he was willing to sacrifice himself for convictions which the world
called absurd. His speech about what he would do were he dictator of
the world was not mere rhetoric; it was his genuine belief that life
was at bottom a very simple business, and that mankind missed available
happiness merely by perverse repudiation of the simplest principles of
happiness. So he gave himself in hopeless consecration to the
exposition of these principles; and if the martyr is great who can die
because he sees the crown and palm waiting for him in the skies, how
much greater is he who can die expecting no reward?
It was only by degrees that Arthur came to recognise these qualities in
Vickars. What he did not recognise at all was that the influence of
Vickars was slowly loosening all the moorings that held him to his own
former life. Although he had not said it openly, he knew now that he
could not join his father in the business. He was careful to frame no
accusation of his father even in his own most secret thoughts, but he
knew that their ways lay apart. This life his father loved of scheming
and of toiling, with its empty wealth and emptier social rewards, had
no attraction for him. It was too crude, too barbarous; and beside it
the life of Vickars, in its noble poverty, shone like a gem. He did
not judge his father, but he judged unmercifully the society in which
he moved, especially the church society, with its pettiness of
interest, its lack of idealism, and its honour for smooth hypocrites
like Scales; and this set him wondering why Vickars went to church at
all. He asked him the question one day.
"I go for Clark's sake principally," he replied. "He is the one
pulpit-man in the neighbourhood who has a real glimpse of truth, and I
feel it my duty to support him."
"But what about the Church itself?"
"You mean, what do I think of it?"
"Yes."
"I think that it will disappear, that, in fact, it is in process of
disappearance. Dry rot has set in, and so, though it looks stately and
stable, it is like the towering mast of a ship, only held upright by a
thin varnished skin, but rotten at the core. It will last as long as
the weather is fine; when a storm comes, it will fall."
"Well, but what has happened? I don't think I understand."
"Something has happened that very few persons have observed. Wealth
has bought the Church; it is in the proprietorship of the rich. They
finance it, they dictate its policies, and naturally those policies are
not going to be hostile to themselves. Then it has ceased to be
democratic in any true sense. It will be charitable to the poor, but
it will not be just. Thus its very charity is a bribe to make men
forget justice. And besides this, the note of conviction has left the
pulpit. Half the preachers spend their time in apologies for
Christianity, and the apologetic person soon finds himself despised.
The centre of gravity has shifted, and the people who do believe most
heartily in Christianity are people outside the churches--men like
Tolstoi, for example. Why is it that the Church is always complaining
of its want of success? It ought to succeed as nothing else can. It
has privileges and attractions which no other institution has. The
reason is that its vitality has run out. It has the dry rot, as I
said, and the only skin that holds the thing together is the custom of
worship. That also is becoming spotted with decay, and when the decay
eats through the outer skin, the end will come."
"But we must have religion."
"Yes, we must have religion; but the Church and religion are not
synonymous terms. The Founder of the Christian religion stood outside
the Church." He paused a moment, with that curious hesitation which
marked the movement of emotion in him. Then he laid his hand upon
Arthur's shoulder, and said in a gentle voice, "Do you remember what
you said you would do with your life? You said you wished to make it
worthy of the highest. 'The utmost for the highest'--that's it, isn't
it? Well, you needn't bother your head about the Church. That saying
of yours is a tolerably complete definition of religion. You'll find
it more than sufficient, if you'll be true to it."
There were many conversations such as this between Arthur and Vickars
in this wonderful summer month. Life and love, like twin flowers on
one stem, were opening, their petals simultaneously for Arthur. His
mind flowered in contact with Vickars, his heart in contact with
Elizabeth; for though the girl said little, her silence was eloquent of
the bond of complete sympathy which existed between her father and
herself. He tacitly included her in all his views of life. And it was
clear that she gave him adoring discipleship--the discipleship of a
young girl, long motherless, who had drawn from him all the elements of
thought and will in her own character. It was a beautiful
relationship, rare always, but especially rare in that conventional
society which surrounded them, in which women were merely the butterfly
appendages of men whose chief work in life was to provide them with the
means of easy gaiety.
Vickars did not press his opinions upon Arthur; he was much too wise
and gentle to play the pedant. If Arthur learned much from him, it was
by indirection; knowledge came to him unconsciously, as an atmosphere
to be breathed, rather than as a lesson to be mastered. Vickars had a
curious knack of evading controversy. He would flash a winged sentence
on the air, satisfied that it would find its mark; and then dismiss the
subject with a laugh, or with the usual comment, "But we are growing
too serious; let us have some music." Then Elizabeth would open the
piano, and find her way to some solemn theme of Beethoven or
Tchaikowsky, and the soft, perfumed wind would blow across the room
from the open window, and the divine melodies would lift the spirit
into worlds of unimaginable agony or rapture. But all the time the
word that had been spoken would vibrate through the music, till the
music seemed its real interpretation; and thus it was endowed with new
vitality and emphasis by Elizabeth's playing. "How well she
understands him!" Arthur would reflect, wondering at the perfect bond
of sympathy between them; and then, with a pang of yearning, "Will she
ever understand me like that?"
In such moments he trod the lover's hell, which is as real as the
lover's heaven. He could never attain to her. He saw the miraculous
freshness and richness of her nature, and knew the crudeness of his
own. What was there in him that she should desire him? This very bond
of sympathy between her and her father, so rare and sensitive, became
his menace. She could not _want_ him; but, O God! with what an agony
of yearning did he want her! And then, as he sat disconsolate, with
head resting on his hand, she would turn to him, as if she divined his
thoughts, with a gaze infinitely pitiful and kind; and his eyes clung
to hers for an instant in mute appeal and adoration, and something told
him that there was yet a void in that virgin heart that he alone could
fill. O exquisite terrors, authentic agonies, brief sky-daring hopes,
surely it were worth all the millions of years of slow evolution from
the brute to touch but for an instant so painful and delicate a bliss!
One night--it was a Sunday night--the three sat together in the little
room.
Vickars was unusually silent.
"You look depressed, father. What is it?" said Elizabeth.
"Oh, nothing personal, my child. I think it's merely the spectacle of
the congregation at church to-night that has disturbed me."
"What was wrong with the congregation?"
"Nothing was right, I think. Didn't you notice how stolid they
looked--and in the presence of truths and hopes so vast, that had they
believed them, they must have leapt to their feet and shouted in
ecstasy?"
"That would be a novelty indeed," she smiled.
"It would have been natural," he replied. "But alas! who is natural?
Most people never live at first-hand. They are plagiarists. Arthur,
don't be a plagiarist. It cuts the fibre of sincerity. It's like
drinking stale water from a dirty cup. But there," and then came the
usual comment, "let us have some music."
And Elizabeth began to play. Perhaps it was the suggestion of the
Sabbath evening that made her play sweet and solemn airs from Handel.
Presently she wandered into old hymn-tunes, and finally began to play
"Nearer, my God, to Thee."
Suddenly she stopped, for Vickars had left the room.
"Oh, I forgot!" she cried. "I ought not to have played that."
While she spoke, her father returned. His face was pale: he held in
his hand a miniature of a woman.
"Do you remember what to-day is?" he said in a soft, shaken voice.
"Twenty years ago to-day. And that was the last thing she played ...
and then she went ... in the night ... upon her long journey. And it
all seems but an hour ago. O my child! you are so like your mother."
He kissed her forehead.
Twenty years ago, and love still fresh! Arthur bowed his head before
the sacred vision. He rose to go. He felt he had no right to look on
that unveiled immortal sorrow.
Elizabeth stood for a moment with him at the garden gate.
"Could you?" ... He stopped, for emotion choked him. "Could you ...
love me like that?"
He could see her tremble, and in the dim light he could divine her
startled gaze. His hand clasped hers.
She pressed his for a single moment, turned, and fled.
VII
ENTER SCALES
August had come with its heavy, brooding heat, and the idyllic weather
had disappeared. There were no more fresh breezes, tempering the hot
sunlight, no more cool nights of lingering twilight; over the weary
city spread a pall of stifling haze, and the atmosphere had the
flatness of an unaired room. The trees turned brown, and the leaves
began to fall, as though it were autumn, not summer. The greenness of
the parks had vanished, and the pleasant sward had become a dirty gray,
upon which vast tribes of ragged children camped. August in London,
when from countless miles of brick walls and stone pavements heat is
radiated; when roads steam beneath the casual visitations of the
water-cart, and barefooted urchins paddle in the gutters, and the city
sprawls like a languid drab too tired to be conscious of her
dishevelment; August, when a million hearts feel a dull ache of
yearning for green fields and open spaces, and in fortunate homes
guide-books are being studied, routes of travel discussed, boxes
packed, fishing-tackle and golf-clubs overhauled, and carriages, piled
high with trunks, with pale, excited children gazing from their
windows, day by day roll down every street, and converge at last in the
wild pandemonium of the great terminal stations which are the doorways
of the country.
In Eagle House such preparations were in process, but it was a joyless
business. Masterman had informed his family that there would be no
Scotland for them this year; times were hard, and they must make the
best they could of Brighton.
"I'm sure Brighton will cost just as much as Scotland," objected his
daughter.
"It's near London, and I can't afford to be far from town this year,"
he replied.
"We don't know any one there, father. All the people we know are going
north. Why can't we?"
For this young lady was accustomed to get her own way in most things,
and to consider every one her enemy who opposed her. There was not
much of her physically; she was _petite_ and graceful, with irregular
features, pretty hair, and shallow blue eyes which showed no evidence
of a soul; but like many small persons, she had a wonderful gift of
obstinacy. As a rule, she could do as she liked with her father in
small ways, by means of a childish wheedling manner, which concealed
her obstinacy; but every now and again she came upon a hard strata in
his nature which turned the edge of her assaults, and it was so now.
Of course, she did not so much as perceive the grim lines that had
written themselves upon his tired face during the past two months.
Neither did she believe his plea of poverty. It was merely a selfish
whim of his to be near London through August, and she must needs be
sacrificed to his whim.
"At any rate, you might choose a better place than Brighton," she
retorted petulantly.
"I might choose, but I don't," he retorted. "There's a good train
service to Brighton, and it suits me. It will have to suit you, too."
"I'm sure I would just as soon stay in London," Arthur interrupted; and
he was rewarded by a glance of intense disdain from his sister's eyes.
"No; you'll go to Brighton with the others." And Masterman, not
knowing the private thoughts of Arthur, was gratified with his remark.
He saw in it the evidence of that serious sense of duty which was
presently to make him the kind of man for whom business is an imperious
master. "You see, we must go somewhere. If we didn't, folk might
talk. I've had a pretty hard time, my boy, but it's nearly over now.
And I want you to go to Brighton for a reason of my own. There are
some people there I'd like you to meet."
"Of course I'll do as you wish, father."
"That's the proper spirit," he replied kindly.
But when Masterman left the room, Helen turned upon her brother
spitefully.
"Oh! you needn't think I don't know why you want to stop in London,"
she cried. "I know where you spend your evenings. You're not nearly
so clever as you think you are."
"Do you?" he replied, trying in vain to subdue the hot blood that
rushed to his cheeks.
"Yes, I do. And you just wait until father knows. I've a great mind
to tell him."
"You can tell him anything you wish," he replied proudly.
"And do you wish it?"
And with this Parthian shot she drew her small figure up in anger, and
left the room.
But the Parthian arrow left its wound, for it was tipped with subtle
poison. Magic months are exquisite experiences; but the pity of it is
that the magic is rarely so complete that the outlines of the plain
world are totally obliterated. Helen's words were a sword that slashed
a great rent in the purple curtains of young love, and the outer world
lay visible. No use to turn the eyes away or to patch the rent; there
lay the fact of things, palpable enough. Did he wish his father to
know his love for Elizabeth? He had never yet faced the question. But
the moment it was asked he saw with fatal prescience all that it
implied. He had chosen not alone Elizabeth, but with her a path of
life, an ideal of conduct. That path led out into a strange, uncharted
world, the very existence of which his father had not so much as
surmised. And he knew that his father never could be brought to see it.
He knew this, but he knew also that he himself had reached a clearness
of vision of which nothing could deprive him. He had seen the land
very far off, and henceforth his eyes could see no other. He was vowed
to the highest, as men had been in days of knighthood, and he must
follow the gleam wheresoever it led. To his father it would all seem
the wildest folly; no doubt in that forgotten dream-time of the world,
to men bartering in the market-place or reaping in the fields, young
Sir Galahad must have seemed mad as he rode past singing, into the
haunted forest. It would be no better now; nay, it would be far worse,
for was not the world one vast clamorous marketplace, no longer merely
disdainful but actively antagonistic to the dreamer? Not that he was
worthy to rank himself with the Sir Galahads; he was merely a boy,
intoxicated with the new wine of love and life; but nevertheless he had
his ideal of what life should be, and he meant to pursue it. To one
thing at least he had attained--he was not afraid of poverty. Hilary
Vickars had taught him that, by showing him how little outward
circumstance can affect the inner peace of the soul. And when all
things are said and done, perhaps that is the greatest truth that a
youth can learn, for if it does not necessarily produce heroism, it at
least makes it possible. For it is through fear of poverty that men
sell their souls; and not until that ignoble fear is gone does the soul
have a chance to live.
But he did not wish to challenge his father to the conflict till the
proper hour came. The clash must come, but he would leave the foreseen
moment in the hands of time. It could not be long delayed, but he
would not anticipate it. And in so determining he was thinking of his
father rather than himself. His father might be wholly wrong in his
method of life, but that old sense of his father's bigness still
dominated him. Primeval, proud, scarred with savage conflict, he saw
his father rise before him; he could not but admire even while he
censured; and simply because he knew that it was in his power to wound
the giant in a vital part, he was afraid to strike.