CONVERSION.
On Midsummer Eve, which was the day before his marriage, Eddy had a
number of his friends to dinner at the Moulin d’Or. It had amused him to
ask a great many, and to select them from many different quarters and
sets, and to watch how they all got on together. For many of them were
not in the habit of meeting one another. The Vicar of St. Gregory’s, for
instance, did not, in the normal course of his days, as a rule come
across Billy Raymond, or Cecil Le Moine, with whom he was conversing
courteously across the table; Bob Traherne, his curate, seldom chatted
affably with Conservative young members of Parliament such as Nevill
Bellairs; Mrs. Crawford had long since irrevocably decided against
social intercourse with Eileen Le Moine, to whom she was talking this
evening as if she was rather pleased to have the opportunity; Bridget
Hogan was wont to avoid militant desirers of votes, but to-night she was
garrulously holding forth to a lady novelist of these habits who
resided in a garden city; Eddy’s friend, the young Irish Unionist, was
confronted and probably outraged by Blake Connolly, Eileen’s father, the
Nationalist editor of the _Hibernian_, a vehement-tongued, hot-tempered,
rather witty person, with deep blue eyes like Eileen’s, and a flexible,
persuasive voice. At the same table with Bob Traherne and Jane Dawn was
a beautiful young man in a soft frilly shirt, an evangelical young man
who at Cambridge had belonged to the C.I.C.C.U., and had preached in the
Market Place. If he had known enough about them, he would have thought
Jane Dawn’s attitude towards religion and life a pity, and Bob
Traherne’s a bad mistake. But on this harmonious occasion they all met
as friends. Even James Peters, sturdy and truthful, forbore to show
Cecil Le Moine that he did not like him. Even Hillier, though it was
pain and grief to him, kept silence from good words, and did not
denounce Eileen Le Moine.
And Eddy, looking round the room at all of them, thought how well they
all got on for one evening, because they were wanting to, and because
one evening did not matter, and how they would not, many of them, get on
at all, and would not even want to, if they were put to a longer test.
And once again, at this, that he told himself was not the last,
gathering of the heterogeneous crowd of his friends together, he saw how
right they all were, in their different ways and yet at odds. He
remembered how someone had said, “The interesting quarrels of the world
are never between truth and falsehood, but between different truths.”
Ah, but must there be quarrels? More and more clearly he had come to see
lately that there must; that through the fighting of extremes something
is beaten out....
Someone thumped the table for silence, and Billy Raymond was on his
feet, proposing their host’s health and happiness. Billy was rather a
charming speaker, in his unselfconscious, unfluent, amused, quietly
allusive way, that was rather talk than speechifying. After him came
Nevill Bellairs, Eddy’s brother-in-law to be, who said the right things
in his pleasant, cordial, well-bred, young member’s manner. Then they
drank Eddy’s health, and after that Eddy got on to his feet to return
thanks. But all he said was “Thanks very much. It was very nice of all
of you to come. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this evening as much as I
have, and I hope we shall have many more like it in future, after....”
When he paused someone broke in with “He’s a jolly good fellow,” and
they shouted it till the passers by in the Soho streets took it up and
sang and whistled in chorus. That was the answer they unanimously gave
to the hope he had expressed. It was an answer so cheerful and so
friendly that it covered the fact that no one had echoed the hope, or
even admitted it as a possibility. After all, it was an absurd thing to
hope, for one dinner-party never is exactly like another; how should it
be, with so much of life and death between?
When the singing and the cheering and the toasting was over, they all
sat on and talked and smoked till late. Eddy talked too. And under his
talking his perceptions were keenly working. The vivid, alive
personalities of all these people, these widely differing men and women,
boys and girls, struck sharply on his consciousness. There were vast
differences between them, yet in nearly all was a certain fine, vigorous
effectiveness, a power of achieving, getting something done. They all
had their weapons, and used them in the battles of the world. They all,
artists and philosophers, journalists and politicians, poets and
priests, workers among the poor, players among the rich, knew what they
would be at, where they thought they were going and how, and what they
were up against. They made their choices; they selected, preferred,
rejected ... hated.... The sharp, hard word brought him up. That was it;
they hated. They all, probably, hated something or other. Even the
tolerant, large-minded Billy, even the gentle Jane, hated what they
considered bad literature, bad art. They not only sought good, but
eschewed evil; if they had not realised the bad, the word “good” would
have been meaningless to them.
With everyone in the room it was the same. Blake Connolly hated the
Union--that was why he could be the force for Nationalism that he was;
John Macleod, the Ulsterman, hated Nationalists and Papists--that was
why he spoke so well on platforms for the Union; Bob Traherne hated
capitalism--that was why he could fight so effectively for the economic
betterment that he believed in; Nevill Bellairs hated Liberalism--that
was why he got in at elections; the vicar of St. Gregory’s hated
disregard of moral laws--that was why he was a potent force for their
observance among his parishioners; Hillier hated agnosticism--that was
why he could tell his people without flinching that they would go to
hell if they didn’t belong to the Church; (he also, Eddy remembered,
hated some writers of plays--and that, no doubt, was why he looked at
Cecil Le Moine as he did;) Cecil Le Moine hated the commonplace and the
stupid--that was why he never lapsed into either in his plays; Mrs.
Crawford hated errors of breeding (such as discordant clothes,
elopements, incendiarism, and other vulgar violence)--that was why her
house was so select; Bridget Hogan hated being bored--that was why she
succeeded in finding life consistently amusing; James Peters hated men
of his own class without collars, men of any class without backbones, as
well as lies, unwholesomeness, and all morbid rot--that was probably why
his short, unsubtle, boyish sermons had a force, a driving-power, that
made them tell, and why the men and boys he worked and played with loved
him.
And Arnold, who was not there but ought to have been, had hated many
things, and that was why he wasn’t there.
Yes, they all hated something; they all rejected; all recognised without
shirking the implied negations in what they loved. That was how and why
they got things done, these vivid, living people. That was how and why
anyone ever got anything done, in this perplexing, unfinished,
rough-hewn world, with so much to do to it, and for it. An imperfect
world, of course; if it were not, hate and rejections would not be
necessary; a rough and ready, stupid muddle of a world, an incoherent,
astonishing chaos of contradictions--but, after all, the world one has
to live in and work in and fight in, using the weapons ready to hand. If
one does not use them, if one rejects them as too blunt, too rough and
ready, too inaccurate, for one’s fine sense of truth, one is left
weaponless, a non-combatant, a useless drifter from company to company,
cast out of all in turn.... Better than that, surely, is any absurdity
of party and creed, dogma and system. After all, when all is said in
their despite, it is these that do the work.
Such were Eddy’s broken and detached reflections in the course of this
cheerful evening. The various pieces of counsel offered him by others
were to the same effect. Blake Connolly, who, meeting him to-night for
the first time, had taken a strong fancy to him, said confidentially and
regretfully, “I hear the bride’s a Tory; that’s a pity, now. Don’t let
her have you corrupted. You’ve some fine Liberal sentiments; I used to
read them in that queer paper of yours.” (He ignored the fine Unionist
sentiments he had also read in the queer paper.) “Don’t let them run to
waste. You should go on writing; you’ve a gift. Go on writing for the
right things, sticking up for the right side. Be practical; get
something done. As they used to say in the old days:
‘Take a business tour through Munster,
Shoot a landlord; be of use.’ ”
“I will try,” said Eddy, modestly. “Though I don’t know that that is
exactly in my line at present ... I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but
I want to get some newspaper work.”
“That’s right. Write, the way you’ll have public interest stirred up in
the right things. I know you’re of good dispositions from what Eily’s
told me of you. And why you want to go marrying a Tory passes me. But if
you must you must, and I wouldn’t for the world have you upset about it
now at the eleventh hour.”
Then came Traherne, wanting him to help in a boys’ camp in September and
undertake a night a week with clubs in the winter; and the elegant
C.I.C.C.U. young man wanted him to promise his assistance to a
Prayer-and-Total-Abstinence mission in November; and Nevill Bellairs
wanted to introduce him to-morrow morning before the wedding to the
editor of the _Conservative_, who had vacancies on his staff. To all
these people who offered him fields for his energies he gave, not the
ready acceptance he would have given of old, but indefinite answers.
“I can’t tell you yet. I don’t know. I’m going to think about it.” For
though he still knew that all of them were right, he knew also that he
was going to make a choice, a series of choices, and he didn’t know yet
what in each case he would choose.
The party broke up at midnight. When the rest had dispersed, Eddy went
home with Billy to Chelsea. He had given up the rooms he had shared with
Arnold in Soho, and was staying with Billy till his marriage. They
walked to Chelsea by way of the Embankment. By the time they got to
Battersea Bridge (Billy lived at the river end of Beaufort Street) the
beginnings of the dawn were paling the river. They stood for a little
and watched it; watched London sprawling east and west in murmuring
sleep, vast and golden-eyed.
“One must,” speculated Eddy aloud, after a long silence, “be content,
then, to shut one’s eyes to all of it--to all of everything--except one
little piece. One has got to be deaf and blind--a bigot, seeing only one
thing at once. That, it seems, is the only way to get to work in this
extraordinary world. One’s got to turn one’s back on nearly all truth.
One leaves it, I suppose, to the philosophers and artists and poets.
Truth is for them. Truth, Billy, is perhaps for you. But it’s not for
the common person like me. For us it is a choice between truth and life;
they’re not compatible. Well, one’s got to live; that seems certain....
What do _you_ think?”
“I’m not aware,” said Billy, drowsily watching the grey dream-city, “of
the incompatibility you mention.”
“I didn’t suppose you were,” said Eddy. “Your business is to see and
record. You can look at all life at once--all of it you can manage, that
is. My job isn’t to see or talk, but (I am told) to ‘take a business
tour through Munster, shoot a landlord, be of use.’ ... Well, I suppose
truth can look after itself without my help; that’s one comfort. The
synthesis is there all right, even if we all say it isn’t.... After
to-night I am going to talk, not of Truth but of _the_ Truth; my own
particular brand of it.”
Billy looked sceptical. “And which is your own particular brand?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I’m going to find out before morning. I must know
before to-morrow. Molly must have a bigot to marry.”
“I take it your marriage is upsetting your mental balance,” said Billy
tranquilly, with the common sense of the poet. “You’d better go to bed.”
Eddy laughed. “Upsetting my balance! Well, it reasonably might. What
should, if not marriage? After all, it has its importance. Come in,
Billy, and while you sleep I will decide on my future opinions. It will
be much more exciting than choosing a new suit of clothes, because I’m
going to wear them for always.”
Billy murmured some poetry as they turned up Beaufort Street.
“The brute, untroubled by gifts of soul,
Sees life single and sees it whole.
Man, the better of brutes by wit,
Sees life double and sees it split.”
“I don’t see,” he added, “that it can matter very much what opinions one
has, if any, about party politics, for instance.”
Eddy said, “No, you wouldn’t see it, of course, because you’re a poet.
I’m not.”
“You’d better become one,” said Billy, “if it would solve your
difficulties. It’s very little trouble indeed really, you know. Anyone
can be a poet; in fact, practically all Cambridge people are, except
you; I can’t imagine why you’re not. It’s really rather a refreshing
change; only I should think it often leads people to mistake you for an
Oxford man, which must be rather distressing for you. Now I’m going to
bed. Hadn’t you better, too?”
But Eddy had something to do before he went to bed. By the grey light
that came through the open window of the sitting-room, he found a pack
of cards, and sat down to decide his opinions. First he wrote a list of
all the societies he belonged to; they filled a sheet of note-paper.
Then he went through them, coupling each two which, he had discovered,
struck the ordinary person as incompatible; then, if he had no
preference for either of the two, he cut. He cut, for instance, between
the League of Young Liberals and the Primrose League. The Young Liberals
had it.
“Molly will be a little disappointed in me,” he murmured, and crossed
off the Primrose League from his list. “And I expect it would be
generally thought that I ought to cross off the Tariff Reform League,
too.” He did so, then proceeded to weigh the Young Liberals against all
the Socialist societies he belonged to (such as the Anti-sweating
League, the National Service League, the Eugenics Society, and many
others), for even he could see that these two ways of thought did not go
well together. He might possibly have been a Socialist and a Primrose
Leaguer, but he could not, as the world looks at such things, be a
Socialist and a Liberal. He chose to be a Socialist, believing that that
was the way, at the moment, to get most done.
“Very good,” he commented, writing it down. “A bigoted Socialist. That
will have the advantage that Traherne will let me help with the clubs.
Now for the Church.”
The Church question also he decided without recourse to chance. As he
meant to continue to belong to the Church of England, he crossed off
from the list the Free Thought League and the Theosophist Society. It
remained that he should choose between the various Church societies he
belonged to, such as the Church Progress Society (High and Modernist),
the E. C. U. (High and not Modernist), the Liberal Churchmen’s League
(Broad), and the Evangelical Affiance (Low). Of these he selected that
system of thought that seemed to him to go most suitably with the
Socialism he was already pledged to; he would be a bigoted High Church
Modernist, and hate Broad Churchmen, Evangelicals, Anglican
Individualists, Ultramontane Romans, Atheists, and (particularly) German
Liberal Protestants.
“Father will be disappointed in me, I’m afraid,” he reflected.
Then he weighed the Church Defence Society against the Society for the
Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, found neither
wanting, but concluded that as a Socialist he ought to support the
former, so wrote himself down an enemy of Disestablishment, remarking,
“Father will be better pleased this time.” Then he dealt with the Sunday
Society (for the opening of museums, etc., on that day) as incongruous
with the Lord’s Day Observance Society; the Sunday Society had it.
Turning to the arts, he supposed regretfully that some people would
think it inconsistent to belong both to the League for the Encouragement
and Better Appreciation of Post Impressionism, and to that for the
Maintenance of the Principles of Classical Art; or to the Society for
Encouraging the Realistic School of Modern Verse, and to the Poetry
Society (which does not do this.) Then it struck him that the Factory
Increase League clashed with the Coal Smoke Abatement Society, that the
Back to the Land League was perhaps incompatible with the Society for
the Preservation of Objects of Historic Interest in the Countryside;
that one should not subscribe both to the National Arts Collections
Fund, and to the Maintenance of Cordial Trans-Atlantic Relations; to the
Charity Organisation Society, and to the Salvation Army Shelters Fund.
Many other such discrepancies of thought and ideal he found in himself
and corrected, either by choice or, more often (so equally good did both
alternatives as a rule seem to him to be) by the hand of chance. It was
not till after four o’clock on his wedding morning, when the
midsummer-day sunrise was gilding the river and breaking into the room,
that he stood up, cramped and stiff and weary, but a homogeneous and
consistent whole, ready at last for bigotry to seal him for her own. He
would yield himself unflinchingly to her hand; she should, in the course
of the long years, stamp him utterly into shape. He looked ahead, as he
leant out of the window and breathed in the clear morning air, and saw
his future life outspreading. What a lot he would be able to accomplish,
now that he was going to see one angle only of life and believe in it so
exclusively that he would think it the whole. Already he felt the
approaches of this desirable state. It would approach, he believed,
rapidly, now that he was no longer to be distracted by divergent
interests, torn by opposing claims on his sympathy. He saw himself a
writer for the press (but he really must remember to write no more for
the Conservative press, or the Liberal). He would hate Conservatism,
detest Liberalism; he would believe that Socialists alone were actuated
by their well-known sense of political equity and sound economics. In
working, as he meant to do, in Datcherd’s settlement, he would be as
fanatically political as Datcherd himself had been. Molly might slightly
regret this, because of the different tenets of Nevill and the rest of
her family; but she was too sensible really to mind. He saw her and
himself living their happy, and, he hoped, not useless life, in the
little house they had taken in Elm Park Road, Chelsea (they had not
succeeded in ousting the inhabitants of the Osiers). He would be writing
for some paper, and working every evening in the Lea Bridge Settlement,
and Molly would help him there with the girls’ clubs; she was keen on
that sort of thing, and did it well. They would have many friends; the
Bellairs’ relations and connections were numerous, and often military or
naval; and there would be Nevill and his friends, so hard-working, so
useful, so tidy, so well-bred; and their own friends, the friends they
made, the friends they had had before.... It was at this point that the
picture grew a little less vivid and clearly-outlined, and had to be
painted in with great decision. Of course they came into the picture,
Jane and Billy and the rest, and perhaps sometime, when she and Molly
had both changed their minds about it, Eileen; of course they would all
be there, coming in and out and mixing up amicably with the Bellairs
contingent, and pleasing and being pleased by Nevill and his
well-behaved friends, and liking to talk to Molly and she to them. Why
not? Eileen had surely been wrong about that; his friendships weren’t,
couldn’t be, part of the price he had to pay for his marriage, or even
for his bigotry. With a determined hand he painted them into the
picture, and produced a surprising, crowded jumble of visitors in the
little house--artists, colonels, journalists, civil servants, poets,
members of Parliament, settlement workers, actors, and clergymen.... He
must remember, of course, that he disliked Conservatism, Atheism, and
Individualism; but that, he thought, need be no barrier between him and
the holders of these unfortunate views. And any surprisingness, any lack
of realism, in the picture he had painted, he was firmly blind to.
So Molly and he would live and work together; work for the right things,
war against the wrong. He had learnt how to set about working now;
learnt to use the weapons ready to hand, the only weapons provided by
the world for its battles. Using them, he would get accustomed to them;
gradually he would become the Complete Bigot, as to the manner born,
such a power has doing to react on the vision of those who do. Then and
only then, when, for him, many-faced Truth had resolved itself into one,
when he should see but little here below but see that little clear, when
he could say from the heart, “I believe Tariff Reformers, Unionists,
Liberals, Individualists, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Dissenters,
Vegetarians, and all others with whom I disagree, to be absolutely in
the wrong; I believe that I and those who think like me possess not
merely truth but _the_ truth”--then, and only then would he be able to
set to work and get something done....
Who should say it was not worth the price?
Having completed the task he had set himself, Eddy was now free to
indulge in reflections more suited to a wedding morning. These
reflections were of the happy and absorbing nature customary in a person
in his situation; they may, in fact, be so easily imagined that they
need not here be set down. Having abandoned himself to them for half an
hour, he went to bed, to rest before his laborious life. For let no one
think he can become a bigot without much energy of mind and will. It is
not a road one can slip into unawares, as it were, like the primrose
paths of life--the novelist’s, for example, the poet’s, or the tramp’s.
It needs fibre; a man has to brace himself, set his teeth, shut his
eyes, and plunge with a courageous blindness.
Five o’clock struck before Eddy went to bed. He hoped to leave it at
seven, in order to start betimes upon so strenuous a career.
_Jarrold & Sons, Ltd., Printers, The Empire Press, Norwich._
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
I believe her mother neglected her when he was ill=> I believe her
mother neglected her when she was ill {pg 130}
omniverous=> omnivorous {pg 154}
incompatability=> incompatibility {pg 250}