and his friends had been anticipating all that they were going to do
"after the war...." There was to be a new literature, a new poetry, a
new novel, a new criticism; and all these were to be built up by Temple
and company. "Thank God, the war's saved us from the old mess we were
in. No more Robsarts and Manisbys for us! Now we shall see!"
Peter had heard vague rumours of the things these young men were
going to do. He had not been greatly interested. He was outside their
generation, and his own ambitions were long deadened by his own
self-contempt. Nevertheless, on this particular morning, he was glad
to see Temple. There was no question but that he made as effective a
contrast with Robsart as one could find.
Temple was extremely cordial. At the same time, he was frankly
surprised to find Peter there.
"How did you track me?" asked Peter.
"Robsart told Maradick in Edinburgh, Meredith was writing to me. How
are you after all this time?"
"All right," said Peter, smiling. The conversation then was literary,
and Temple explained "how things were." Things were very bad. He used
the glories of Robsart's rooms as an illustration of his purpose. He
waved his hands about. "Look at these things," he seemed to say. "At
these temples of gold, this china of great price, these pictures, and
then look at me. Here is the contrast between true and false art."
"We want to get rid," he explained to Peter, "of all these false
valuations. This wretched war has shown us at least one thing--the
difference between the true and the false. The world is in pieces. It
is for us to build it up again."
"And how are you going to do it?" asked Peter.
Well, it seemed that Temple's prospects were especially bright just
then. It happened that Mr. Dibden, the original inventor of "Dibden's
Blue Pills," was anxious to "dabble in art." He was ready to put quite
a little of his "blue pill" money behind a new critical paper, and the
editor of this paper was to be Temple.
"Of course," said Temple. "I'm not going to agree to it unless he
guarantees us at least five years' run. A paper of the sort that I have
in mind always takes some time to make its impression. In five years
the world at least will be able to see what we are made of. I've no
fears."
Peter, who was more ingenuous than he knew, was caught by the rather
wistful eagerness in Temple's voice.
"This fellow really does care," he thought.
"We want you to come in with us," said Temple. "Of course, we shall
have nothing to do with fellows like D---- and W---- and M----; men
who've simply made successes by rotten work. No! But I flatter myself
that there will be no one of our generation of any merit who won't join
us. You must be one."
"I'm too old," said Peter, "for your young lot."
"Too old!" cried Temple. "Rot! Of course, it's a long time since _The
Vineo_, but all the better. You'll be the fresher for the pause. Not
like M---- and W----, who turn out novels twice a year as though they
were sausages. Besides, you've been in the war. You've seen at first
hand what it is. None of these ghastly high spirits about you! You'll
have the right pessimistic outlook."
"I don't know that I shall," said Peter, laughing.
"Oh, yes, you will," said Temple confidently. "I'm delighted you'll
join us. And I'll be able to pay well, too. Old Dibden's ready to stump
up any amount."
"That's a good thing," said Peter.
He remembered that Temple had not, with the best wish in the world,
been always able in the past to fulfil all his promises. In short,
Peter was touched and even excited. It was so long since anyone had
come to him or wanted him. Then Temple had caught him at the right
moment. He was out of a job; Robsart's flat was suffocating him; he
himself was feeling something of this new air that was blowing through
the world. He wondered whether after all it might not be that Temple
and his friends would be given the power. They had youth, energy, a
freedom from tradition....
He promised Temple that he would come to tea next day, and see some of
his friends.
"The paper's to be called the _Blue Moon_," said Temple. "To-morrow,
then, at five."
Peter found himself at five next day in a small room off Chancery Lane.
Temple met him at the door, greeted him with that rather eager and
timid air that was especially his, introduced him to a young man on a
green sofa, and left him.
Peter was rather amused at his own excitement. He looked about him
with eagerness. Here, at any rate, was a fine contrast to Robsart.
No gold gods and precious Rodins in this place. The room was bare to
shabbiness. The only picture on the ugly wall-paper was a copy of some
post-impressionist picture stuck on to the paper with a pin.
It was a warm spring day, and the room was very close. Some half a
dozen men and two girls were present; very much bad tobacco was being
smoked. Somewhere near the untidy fire-place was a table with tea on
it. "Perhaps," thought Peter, "these _are_ the men who will make the
new world.... At any rate, no false prosperity here. These men mean
what they say." Looking about him, the first thing that he discovered
was a strange family likeness that there seemed to be amongst the men.
They all wore old, shabby, ill-fitting clothes. No hair was brushed, no
collars were clean, all boots were dusty. "That's all right," thought
Peter. "There's no time to waste thinking about clothes these days."
All the same he _did_ like cleanliness, and what distressed him was
that all the young men looked unwell. One of them, indeed, was fat.
But it was an unhealthy stoutness, pale, blotchy, pimpled. Complexions
were sallow, bodies undeveloped and uncared-for. It was not that they
looked ill-fed--simply that they seemed to have been living in close
atmospheres and taking no exercise.... Listening then to the talk he
discovered that the tone of the voices was strangely the same. It was
as though one man were speaking, as though the different bodies were
vehicles for the same voice. The high, querulous, faint, scornful voice
ran on. It seemed as though, did it cease, the room would cease with
it--the room, the sofa, the wall-paper, the tea-table cease with it,
and vanish. One of the pale young men was on the sofa stroking a tiny,
ragged moustache with his rather dirty fingers. He raised sad, heavy
eyes to Peter's face, then, with a kind of spiritual shudder as though
he did not like what he had seen there, dropped them.
"It's rather close in here, isn't it?" said Peter at last.
"Maybe," said the young man....
One of the young women, directed apparently by Temple, came over to
Peter. She sat down on the sofa and began eagerly to talk to him. She
said how glad she was that he was going to join them. Although she
spoke eagerly, her voice was tired, with a kind of angry, defiant ring
in it. She spoke so rapidly that Peter had difficulty in following
her. He asked who the men in the room were.
"That's Somers," she said, pointing to the stout man, "Hacket Somers.
Of course, you know his work? I've got his new poem here. Like to see
it? We shall have it in the first number of the _Blue Moon_."
She handed Peter a page of typed manuscript. He read it eagerly. Here,
then, was the new literature. It was apparently a poem. It was headed
"Wild West--Remittance Man."
The first three verses were as follows:
"_Schlemihl no mother weep for
doomed for a certain time--
Rye whisky--a fungus
Works into each face--line--
The Bond-street exterior--
tears at his vitals--
gravely the whisker droops
his eyes are cold.
Immaculate meteor
Inside a thick ichos
outside a thick ether
quenched the bright music...._"
Peter read these three verses; then a second time, then a third. The
young woman was talking fiercely as he read. She turned to him:
"Aren't they splendid?" she said. "Hacket at his best. I was a little
doubtful of him, but now there's no question...."
"Frankly," said Peter, "I don't understand them. It's about a drunkard,
isn't it? I see that, but...."
"Don't understand it!" cried the young woman. "What don't you
understand?"
"Well, for instance," said Peter, "'Immaculate meteor.' Is that the
world, or Bond Street, or the whisky?" He felt her contempt.
She laughed.
"Well, of course, Hacket's poems aren't for everybody," she said.
She got up then, and left him. He knew the report that she would make
of him to Temple. He sat there bewildered. He began to feel lonely
and a little angry. After all it was not his fault that he had not
understood the poem. Or was it the heat of the room? He wished that
someone would offer him some tea, but everyone was talking, talking,
talking. He sat back and listened. The talk eddied about him, dazing
him, retreating, rolling back again. He listened. Every kind of topic
was there--men, women, the war, Germany, poetry, homo-sexuality,
divorce, adultery, Walt Whitman, Sapho, names, strange names, American
names, French names, Russian names, condemning Him, condemning Her,
condemning It, the war, Man ... Woman....
Once and again he caught popular names. How _they_ were condemned! The
scorn, the languid, insolent scorn. Then pacifism.... He gathered that
two of the men in the room had been forced to dig potatoes for the
Government because they didn't believe in war. Patriotism! The room
quivered with scorn. Patriots! It was as though you had said murderers
or adulterers! His anger grew. Robsart was better than this, far, far
better. At least Robsart tried to make something out of life. He was
not ashamed to be happy. He did not condemn. He was doubtful about
himself, too. He would not have asked Peter to lunch had he not been
doubtful.... And the arrogance here. The room was thick with it. The
self-applause mounted higher and higher. The fat man read one of his
poems. Only a few words reached Peter. "Buttock ... blood ... cobra ...
loins ... mud ... shrill ... bovine...."
Suddenly he felt as though in another moment he would rush into their
midst, striking them apart, crying out against them, as condemnatory,
as arrogant as they. He got from his sofa and crept from the room.
No one noticed him. In the street the beautiful, cool, evening air
could not comfort him. He was wretched, lonely, angry, above all, most
bitterly disappointed. It seemed to him as he walked along slowly up
Fleet Street that life was really hopeless and useless. On the one
side, Robsart; on the other, these arrogant fools, and in the middle,
himself, no better than they--worse, indeed--for they at least stood
for something, and he for nothing, absolutely nothing. That absurd
poem had, at any rate, effort behind it, striving, ambition, hope. He
had cared all his life for intellectual things, had longed to achieve
some form of beauty, however tiny, however insignificant.... He had
achieved nothing. Well, that knowledge would not have beaten him down
had he felt the true spirit of greatness in these others. He realised
now how deeply he had hoped from that meeting. He had believed in the
new world of which they were all talking; he had believed that its
creation would be brought about by the forces of art, of brotherhood,
of kindliness, and charity, and nobility. And then to go and listen
to a meeting like Temple's? But what right had he to judge them, or
Robsart, or anyone?
Only too ready to believe himself a failure, it seemed now that the
world too was a failure; that the worst things that the pessimists had
said during the war were now justified. Above all he detested his own
arrogance in judging these other men.
He had come by now to Piccadilly Circus. He was held by the crowd for
a moment on the kerb outside Swan & Edgar's. The Circus was wrapped in
a pale, honey-coloured evening glow. The stir of the movement of the
traffic was dimmed as though it came through a half-open door. Peter
felt calm touch his bitter unhappiness as he stood there. He stayed as
though someone had a hand on his shoulder and was holding him there. He
was conscious for the second time that day of anticipation. Now, having
been cheated once, he tried to drive it away, but it would not leave
him, and he waited almost as though he were expecting some procession
to pass. The shops were closing, and many people were going home. As he
stood there Big Ben struck six o'clock, and was echoed from St. James's
and St. Martin's. People were coming in prepared for an evening's
amusement. The last shoppers were waiting for the omnibuses to take
them up Regent Street.
Opposite Peter there were the Criterion posters _Our Mr. Hepplewhite_,
and opposite Mr. Hepplewhite Mlle. Delysia was swinging her name in
mid-air to entice the world into the Pavilion. Every kind of shop
crowded there round the Circus--barbers', and watch-makers', and
bag-makers', and hosiers', and jewellers', and tobacconists', and
restaurants, and tea-shops--there they all were; and the omnibuses,
like lumbering mastodons or ichthyosauri, came tottering and tumbling
into the centre, finding their heavy, thick-headed way out again as
though they were blinded by this dazzling, lighted world.
He was struck, as he watched, by the caution, the hesitation, the
apparent helplessness of all the world. Londoners had always been
represented as so self-confident, self-assured, but if you watched
to-night, it seemed that everyone hesitated. Young men with their
girls, women with babies, men, boys; again and again Peter saw in faces
that same half-timid, half-friendly glance; felt on every side of him a
kindliness that was born of a little terror, a little dread. There was
some parallel to the scene in his mind. He could not catch it, his mind
strove back. Suddenly, with the big form of a policeman who stepped
in front of him to control the traffic, he knew of what it was that
he was thinking. Years ago, when he had first come up to London, he
had lived in a boarding-house, and there had been there a large family
of children with whom he had been very friendly. The parents of the
children had been poor, but their single living-room had been a nursery
of a happy, discordant kind. Every sort of toy had found its way in
there, and Peter could see the half-dozen children, now trembling,
fighting, laughing, crying, the mother watching them and guarding them.
The Circus was a nursery. The blue evening sky was closed down, a
radiant roof. Everywhere were the toys. Now it seemed that balls were
danced in the air; now that someone sang or rang bells; now that some
new game was suddenly proposed and greeted with a shout of joy. The
children filled the Circus; the policemen were toy policemen, the
omnibuses toy omnibuses, the theatres toy theatres.
On every side of him Peter felt the kindliness, the helplessness, the
pathos of his vision. They were children; he was a child; the world
was only a nursery, after all. The sense of his earlier indignation
had left him. It seemed now that anger and condemnation, whether
of Robsart, or Temple and his friends, or of himself, were absurd.
They were all children together, children in their ignorance, their
helplessness, children in their love for one another, their generosity,
and their hope.
For the first time in his life that sense of disappointment that had
been for so long a stumbling-block to all his effort left him. He felt
as though, like Pilgrim, he had suddenly dropped his pack. Children
in the nursery--the lot of them. No place in this world for high
indignation, for bitterness, for denunciation.
The injustice, the ill-humour, the passions of life were like the
quarrels in children's play; the wisest man alive knew just as much as
his nursery-walls could show him.
He laughed and turned homewards.
The new world? Perhaps. The progress of the world? Perhaps. Meanwhile,
there were nursery-tea, a game of pirates, and a fairy-tale by the
fire ... and after it all, that sound, dreamless sleep that only
children know. Would one wake in the morning and find that one was
leaving the nursery for school? Who could tell? No one returned with
any story....
Meanwhile, there was enough to do to help in keeping the nursery in
order, in seeing that the weaker babies were not trodden upon, in
making sure that no one cried himself to sleep.
Anger and condemnation would never be possible again; no, nor would he
expect the Millennium.
VI
LUCY MOON
Lucy Moon was the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Moon, Rector of
Little Hawkesworth in North Yorkshire. She was twenty-one years of age,
and pretty. She was so pretty indeed that she reminded one young man in
Hawkesworth of "a cornfield under a red moon," and the Reverend Simon
Laud, to whom she was engaged, thought of her privately as his "golden
goddess," from which it will be seen that she had yellow hair and a
peach-like complexion.
She had lived always a very quiet and retired life, the nearest to
adventure being two or three expeditions to Scarborough. She did not
know, however, that her life was retired. She was never dull. She had
two younger brothers, and was devoted to her father and mother. She
never questioned their authority. She read the books that they advised,
and wished to read no others. The life that ebbed and flowed around
the rectory seemed to her a very exciting one, and it was not until
the Reverend Simon Laud, rector of a neighbouring parish, proposed to
her, and she found that she accepted him, although she did not love
him, that she began to wonder, a little uncertainly, with a little
bewilderment, about herself. She had accepted him because everyone had
agreed that it was so obviously the right thing for her to do. She
had known him ever since she could remember. He was older than she,
and kindly, although he had asthma and his knees cracked. He had been
rector of his parish for twenty years, and everyone said that he was
a very good man indeed. He had a sense of humour too, and his Penny
Readings were the best in all North Yorkshire. It was not until Simon
had kissed her that Lucy wondered whether she were doing right. She did
not like him to kiss her. His nose seemed so large when near to her,
and his lips tried to catch hers and hold them with a kind of sucking
motion that was quite distressing to her. She looked ridiculously young
when Mr. Laud proposed to her, with her fair gold hair piled up in
coils on the top of her head, her cheeks crimsoned with her natural
agitation, and her young, childish body, like a boy's, slender and
strong under her pink cotton gown.
"My little girl!" Mr. Laud said, and kissed her again. She went up to
her room and cried for quite a long time. Then, when she saw how happy
her mother was, she was happy too. Perhaps he would not want to kiss
her after they were married.
Then came the marvellous event. Her Aunt Harriet, Mrs. Comstock, her
mother's sister, and a rich widow, asked her to come and stay with her
for a month in London. Mrs. Comstock was a good-natured, chattering
widow, fond of food and bright attire; Mrs. Moon hesitated about
committing Lucy to her care, but she felt perhaps it would do the child
no harm to give her a peep at worldly ways, before the long black
arms of Simon Laud closed her in for ever. Lucy was terrified and
delighted both at once. It meant that she would see London, where she
had never in all her life been. Even the war had not altered her. She
had worked in the village institute, knitted and sewed, helped in the
village concerts. The war had seemed very remote to her. She had lost
no one whom she loved. She was vaguely distressed by it, as she might
have been by the news of an earthquake at Naples. The Moon household
believed in tranquillity. Mr. Moon was engaged in a series of village
addresses on "The Nativity." The war, after all, he felt, "is probably
a blessing in disguise!"
So Lucy saw it. I think, as the day of her departure drew near, that
she had some slight premonition of future events. The village, the
fields, the lanes, the church, were touched suddenly by some new and
pathetic splendour. The spring came late to Yorkshire that year, and
the lanes were coloured with a faint shadow of purple behind the
green, so light and shining that it seemed to be glass in its texture.
The bright spaces of the moon were uncertain in their dim shadows,
and there were soft spongy marshes where the frost had released the
underground streams, and long stretches of upland grass, grey-white
beneath the pale spring skies. Space was infinite. The village, tucked
under the rim of the moor with its grey church, its wild, shaggy, tiny
graveyard, its spreading village street, was like a rough Yorkshire
child huddling for protection beneath its father's shoulder. This
had pathos and an appeal for love, and a cry of motherhood. The
clouds, carried by the fresh spring wind, raced above the church
steeple, swinging the young birds in their flight, throwing joyfully,
contemptuously, shadows across the long street, shadows coloured and
trembling like banners.
Lucy had known these beauties all her life; now they appealed to her
with a new urgency. "When you come back," they seemed to say to her,
"we shall not be the same. Now you are free as we. When you come back
you will be a prisoner."
It was strange to her, and horrible, that the thought of her
approaching marriage should haunt her as it did. There were things
about it that she had not realised. She had not understood that her
parents, the village, her relations would all make so momentous an
affair of it. When Mr. Laud had proposed to her, and she had accepted
him, it had seemed to her a matter simply between themselves. Now
everyone had a concern in it; everyone accepted it as so absolutely
settled. Did Lucy for a single instant contemplate the breaking of an
engagement she saw with an almost agonised terror the whole village
tumbling upon her head. The very church steeple would fall down and
crush her. She was beginning too, to see her father and mother now in
a new light. They had always been very sweet to her, and she had loved
them dearly, but they had been sweet to her, she could not help but
see, very largely because she had shown so absolute an obedience. Her
mind now would persistently return to certain occasions in her young
history when she had hinted ever so slightly at having an opinion of
her own. Had that opinion been given a moment's opportunity? Never.
Never once.
Of her two parents, her father was perhaps the more resolute. His mild,
determined surprise at the expression of an individual opinion was a
terrible thing to witness. He did wish not to be dogmatic with her,
but, after all, things were as they were. How could bad be good or good
bad? There you were. A thing was either right, or it wasn't.... _There_
you were.
And so around Lucy and her Simon a huge temple was erected by the
willing hands of her parents, relations, and friends. There _she_ was
right inside with the doors locked and the windows closed, and Simon
with his long black arms, his large nose, and his damp red mouth
waiting for her.
It was her own fault. There was nothing to be done.
It must not be supposed, however, that she was unhappy when she set off
on her London visit. She was entirely resigned to the future; she loved
her mother and father and the village, and Mr. Laud had been assigned
to her by God. She would enjoy her month, and then make the best of it.
After all, he would not want always to kiss her. She knew enough about
married life to be sure of that.
She went up to London with a neat black trunk, a new hat with roses on
it, and a little umbrella, green and white, that her mother gave her.
Mrs. Comstock had a flat at Hortons, in Duke Street.
To Lucy Duke Street meant nothing. Jermyn Street meant nothing. Even
Piccadilly did not mean very much. St. James's Palace, however, did
mean a good deal, and the first sight of that pearl-grey dignity and
beauty, with the round friendly clock, little clouds like white pillows
in the blue sky above, the sentry in his box, the grace and courtesy of
the Mall, these brought a sob into her throat, and made her eyes dry
and hot.
That sight of the palace gave her the setting for the rest of the
wonderful new world. Had Mrs. Comstock allowed her, she would have
spent the whole of her time in those fascinating streets. Piccadilly
frightened her a little. The motor-omnibuses and cars rushed so
fiercely along, like pirates on a buccaneering expedition, and everyone
was so haughty, and the shops so grand.