surprised at the change in their faces. The surprise was a shock. They
were no longer regarding him with a gaze of tender, almost proprietary,
interest. The eyes that stared at his were almost hostile, at any rate
suspicious, alarmed. Alarmed about what? Possibly his sanity--possibly
the misgiving that in a moment he was going to do or say something that
would shock them all.
He realised as he looked at them that he had come, quite unexpectedly,
upon the crisis of his life. They could understand it were he
philanthropic, religious, sentimental. They were prepared for those
things; they had read novels, they knew that such moods did occur. What
they were not prepared for, what they most certainly would not stand,
was exactly the explanation that he was about to give them. That would
insult them, assault the very temple of their most sacred assurances.
As he looked he knew that if he now spoke the truth he would for ever
cut himself off from them. They would regard his case as hopeless. It
would be in the future "Poor Tom."
He hated that--and for what was he giving them up? For the world that
distrusted him, disbelieved in him, and would kill him if it could....
The Rubicon was before him. He looked at its swirling waters, then,
without any further hesitation, he crossed it. He was never to return
again....
"I'm sorry to disappoint you all," he said. "There's no sentimental
motive behind my action--no desire to make any people better, nothing
fine at all. It simply is, as I've said already, that those two people
brought me back to life again. I don't know what, except that I was
suddenly interested in them. I didn't like them, and they _hated_ me.
Now I've become interested in their friends and relations. I don't
want to _improve_ them. They wouldn't let me if I did. I came back
from France nobody at all. What happened there had simply killed all
my interest in life. And--I'm awfully sorry to say it--but none of you
brought my interest back. I think the centre of interests changed.
It's as though there were some animal under the floor, and the part of
the room that he's under is the part that you look at, because he's
restless and it quivers. Well, he's shifted his position, that's all.
You aren't on the interesting part of the floor any longer. I do hate
to be rude and personal--but you have driven me to it. All of you are
getting back to exactly what you were before the war: there's almost no
change at all! And you're none of you interesting. I'm just as bad--but
I want to go where the interesting human beings are, and there are more
in the dirty streets than the clean ones. In books like _Marcella_,
years ago people went out of their own class because they wanted to do
'good.' I don't want to do good to anyone, but I do want to keep alive
now that I've come back to life again. And--that's all there is to it,"
he ended lamely.
He had done as he had expected. He had offended them all mortally. He
was arrogant, proud, supercilious, and a little mad. And they saw,
finally, that they had lost him. No more money for any of them.
"Well," said Henry Matcham at last, "if you want to know, Tom, I think
that's about the rottenest explanation I've ever heard. Of course,
you're covering something up. But I'm sure we don't want to penetrate
your secret if you don't like us to."
"There _isn't_ any secret." Tom was beginning to be angry. "I tell you
for the hundredth time I'm not going to start soup kitchens, or found
mission rooms, or anything like that, but I don't want any more of
these silly tea-parties or perpetual revues, or--or----"
"Or any of us," Dollie, her cheeks flushed with angry colour, broke in.
"All Tom's been trying to explain to us is that he thinks we're a dull
lot, and the Bolsheviks in the slums are more lively----"
"No," Tom broke in; "Dollie, that isn't fair. I don't want to pick and
choose according to class any more. I don't want to be anything ever
again with a name to it--like a Patriot, or a Democrat, or a Bolshevik,
or an Anti-Bolshevik, or a Capitalist. I'm going by Individuals
wherever they are. I--Oh, forgive me," he broke off, "I'm preaching; I
didn't mean to. It's a thing I hate. But it's so strange--you none of
you know how strange it is--being dead, so that you felt nothing, and
minded nothing, and thought nothing, and then suddenly waking----"
But they had had enough. Tommy was trying to teach them. Teach _them_!
And _Tommy_!...
They "must be going"--sadly, angrily, indignantly they melted away. Tom
was very sorry: there was nothing to be done.
Only Claribel, taking his hand for a moment, whispered:
"It's all right. They'll all come back later. They'll be wanting
things."
They were gone--all of them. He was alone in his room. He drew back the
curtains and looked down over the grey misty stream of Duke Street
scattered with the marigolds of the evening lights.
He threw open a window, and the roar of London came up to him like the
rattle-rattle-rattle of a weaver's shuttle.
He laughed. He was happier than he had ever been before. The whole
world seemed to be at his feet, and he no longer wished to judge it, to
improve it, to dictate to it, to dogmatise it, to expect great things
of it, to be disappointed in it....
He would never do any of those things again.
He addressed it:
"I did passionately wish you to be improved," he said, "but I didn't
love you. Now I know you will never be improved, but I love you
dearly--all of you, not a bit of you. Life simply isn't long enough for
all I'm going to see!"
XII
BOMBASTES FURIOSO
That year, Nineteen-Nineteen, threw up to the surface, because of
the storm and disorder of its successive tidal waves, many strange
fish; and of all that I encountered, the strangest, most attractive,
and, I venture to think, the most typical of our times and their
uncertainties, was my friend Bombastes Furioso--otherwise Benedick
Jones.
I should certainly never have met him had it not been for Peter
Westcott. Westcott, somewhere in the spring of Nineteen-Nineteen, took
for a time the very handsome rooms of Robsart, the novelist, at Hortons
in Duke Street, St. James's. It was strange to see Peter in those
over-grand, over-lavish rooms. I had known him first in the old days
when his _Reuben Hallard_ and _Stone House_ had taken London by storm,
and when everything seemed "set fair" for his future. Then everything
crumbled: his child died, his wife ran away with his best friend, and
his books failed. I didn't hear of him again until Nineteen-Fifteen,
when somebody saw him in France. His name was mentioned on several
occasions through the terrible years, but nobody seemed to know him
well. He kept away, apparently, from everybody. Then on the very day
that the Armistice was signed, I met him in the crowd about Whitehall,
looking just the same as in the old days--a little older, a little
stouter, stocky and resolved and aloof and observant, in a world, as it
had always seemed, to which he only half belonged, a sailor on leave in
a country strange, dangerous, and interesting.
But this story is not about Westcott. To cut this prologue short, then,
he asked me to come and see him, and I went to the magnificent Horton
rooms, not once, not twice, but many times. I had loved Peter in the
old days. I loved him much more now. The story of those years of his
life that immediately followed the war is a wonderful story. I hope
that one day he will give it to the world; whether he does or no, I saw
in those summer months the beginning of the events that were to lead
him back to life again, to give him happiness and self-confidence and
optimism once more, to make him the man he now is.
In the story of that recovery, Benedick Jones has his share; but, I
must repeat, this is Benedick Jones's story and not Westcott's.
The first day that I saw Jones was one lovely evening in April
when Peter's (or rather, Robsart's) sitting-room was lit with a
saffron-purple glow, and the clouds beyond the window were like crimson
waves rolling right down upon us across the pale, glassy sky. In the
middle of this splendour Jones stood, a whisky-and-soda in one hand,
and a large meerschaum pipe in the other. He was, of course, orating
about something. The first thing that struck me was his size. It was
not only that he was well over six feet and broad in proportion, but
there seemed to be in his large mouth, his great head with its untidy
mop of yellow hair, his big, red hands, a spiritual size as well. He
gave one always the impression of having more fire within his soul than
he could possibly manage....
He was fat, but not unpleasantly so. His clothes were comfortably
loose, but not disorderly. His stomach was too prominent, but the
breadth of his chest saved him from unsightliness. His face was a full
moon, red, freckled, light yellow eyebrows, light yellow, rather ragged
moustache. He was always laughing--sometimes when he was astonished or
indignant.
He was forever in the middle of the room orating somebody or something,
and his favourite attitude was to stand with his legs wide apart, a
pipe or a glass or a book in his extended hand, his body swaying a
little with the rhythm of his eager talk.
On this afternoon, I remember, he really seemed to fill the room--words
were pouring from his mouth in a torrent, and I stood, stopped by
this flood, at the door. Westcott, lying back in a leather chair,
smoking, listened, a smile on his generally grave face, something of
the indulgent look in his eyes that one might give to a favoured and
excited child.
"Hullo, Lester!" he cried, jumping up. "Come along--This is Captain
Jones. Bomb, let me introduce you to Mr. Lester. I told you to read _To
Paradise_ years ago in France, but of course you never have."
"No, I never have," cried Jones, turning round upon me very suddenly,
seizing my hand and shaking it up and down like the handle of a pump.
"How do you do! How do you do! I'm just delighted to see you. I don't
read much, you know. Better for me if I read more. But I've got to take
exercise. I'm getting fat." Then he wheeled round again. "But, Peter,"
he went on, suddenly taking a great draught from his glass, "it was the
most extraordinary thing--I swear it was just as I'm telling you--the
girl gave the man a look, spat at him, and ran for her life. There were
three men after her then, one a vicious-looking little devil----"
I sat down in the chair nearest to me and listened. I heard a most
astonishing story. I'm afraid that I cannot remember at this distance
of time all the details of it: it had murder in it, and rape and arson
and every sort of miraculous escape, and apparently, so far as I could
make it out, Jones had been a spectator of all that he described.
There were discrepancies in his narrative, I remember, about which I
should have liked to question him, but the words came out so fast, and
the narrator's own personal conviction in the reality of his story
was so absolute, that questions seemed an impertinence. He stopped at
last, wiped his brow, collapsed upon a chair, finished his whisky with
a great sucking smack of approval, dug his fingers into the bowl of
his pipe, struck matches that were, one by one, ineffective, and lay
scattered about him on the floor, and then smiled at me with a beaming
countenance.
"That's a very good story, Bomb," said Peter.
"Story!" cried Captain Jones, contemptuously. "That ain't no story.
That's God's own truth--every word of it." He looked at me smiling all
over his face.
"I've had some very remarkable experiences," he said.
"You must have had," I answered.
He did not, I think, on this occasion, stay very long.
When he had departed I looked at Westcott interrogatively.
"That's a prince of a man," said Peter enthusiastically. "I don't know
where I'd have been without him in France. Everyone loved him there,
and they were right."
"What an experience he must have had there," I said, a little
breathless.
"Oh, that!" said Peter laughing. "That was all lies from beginning to
end."
"Lies!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," said Westcott. "He's known among his friends as Bombastes
Furioso. That's an unfair name, really, to give him, because he's
gentle as any suckling dove, and all his wonderful stories are about
somebody else's great deeds, never about his own. Young Harper was
saying the other day that if only he would tell of some of his stories
about himself, his lies wouldn't be so tremendous, but his natural
modesty prevents him. He's a dear fellow, and the biggest liar in
Europe."
"Well, of course," I said, rather doubtfully, "if he _always_ tells
lies it isn't so bad. You know that you need never believe him. It's
the half-and-half liars that are so tiresome----"
"No," Peter interrupted. "That isn't quite fair. Lies isn't the true
word. He's all imagination--far more imagination than either you or I
will ever have, Lester. He simply can't write it down. If he could he
would be the greatest novelist of our time. I used to tell him to try,
but I've given that up now. He can't string three sentences together.
He can't write an ordinary letter without misspelling every other word.
He never reads anything--that's why his imagination is so untrammelled.
And it isn't all untrue either. He has been all the world over--South
Seas, Africa, China, South America, Russia, anywhere you like. All
sorts of wonderful things have happened to him, but it isn't the real
things he cares to tell of."
"Does he know he's lying?" I asked.
"Not the least in the world," Peter answered, laughing. "And I fancy
he'd be most indignant if you accused him of it. And the really strange
thing is that no one ever does accuse him. I can't remember that a
single man in France ever challenged his stories, and they'd pull
anyone else up in a moment. You see, he never does any harm. He's the
most generous soul alive, thinks the best of everybody, and all his
stories go to prove that people are better than they ever possibly
could be. I confess, Lester, I have him here deliberately because he
feeds my imagination. I'm beginning to feel that I may get back to
writing again, and if I do it will be Bomb that will be responsible."
"How did he do in France?" I asked.
"Very well," Peter said. "But he never got the jobs that he ought to
have had. Fellows distrusted him for responsible duty. They needn't
have: he is as efficient as he can be. His inventive fancy only works
over ground that he's never covered. In his own job he's an absolute
realist."
"Is he married?" I asked.
"No. I don't think that women have much use for him. He doesn't appeal
to them. They like to have the story-telling field to themselves. He's
a man's man absolutely. He had a pal in France to whom he was entirely
devoted, and when the boy was killed I think something cracked in him
that's not been mended since. He's a colossal sentimentalist: cynicism
and irony make him sick. He thinks I'm a desperate cynic--so I am,
perhaps...."
Well, I saw a lot of Bomb Jones. He loved Westcott more than I did,
and admired him frantically. He knew, too, something about Westcott's
many troubles, and the maternal spirit that is in every Englishman and
Scotchman came out beautifully in his attitude to him. His stories soon
became part of the pattern of one's life, and by no means the least
interesting part. I quickly understood why it was that his friends
allowed him to pursue his wild, untrammelled way without rudely pulling
him up. In the first place, truth and fiction were curiously mingled.
He had lived in San Francisco for a number of years, and many of his
tales were drawn from that romantic city. He had obviously known well
such men as Frank Norris and Jack London, and he had been in the place
during the earthquake and fire. His picture of Caruso running out
of his hotel in his night-shirt was a masterly one. He knew Russia
well, had had tea with Witte, in the old days, and had once dined
with Rasputin. He had shared in the Boxer rising, run for his life in
Constantinople, and helped a revolution in Guatemala; and so on, and so
on....
But as I have said, about his actual experiences he had very little to
say. It was his fairy stories, his fantastic, fabricated romances, that
gave him his remarkable quality--and it was about London that these
were mostly invented. I say invented--but were they invented or no?
There will, I think, be more men and women than anyone now supposes who
will look back to that year Nineteen-Nineteen in London as a strangely
fantastic one. You might say with some justice that the years during
the war, with their air-raids and alarms and excursions, newspaper
rumours, and train-loads of wounded and dying at Charing Cross station,
must have been infinitely more moving--I think not. In those years,
at any rate the stage was set for a play in which we must all, as we
knew, act our parts. That year that followed the Armistice was uncanny,
uncertain, unaccountable. Many reports there were about cities during
war time--none at all, so far as we knew, about cities just after war.
London, contrary to all prophesy, was just twice as full after the war
as it had been before it; there was nowhere to live, little place even
for sleeping. Everyone who had had money had lost it--many who had been
notoriously penniless now were rich. London was moving uncertainly into
some new life whose forlorn form no one could foretell, and we were all
conscious of this, and all, perhaps, frightened of it.
It was just this upon which Bomb Jones unwittingly seized. I say
"unwittingly," because he was the least self-conscious of men, and the
things that came to him arrived without any deliberate agency on his
part--his stories and anecdotes rising to his lips as naturally and
inevitably as the sun rises above the hill. He did not, I think, care
for me very greatly: I was dried up, desiccated with a humour that he
could only find morbid and cynical.
He had too fine and open a nature to suffer greatly from jealousy, but
I fancy that he very much preferred to be alone with Peter, and sighed
a little when I made an appearance.
He very soon found himself most happily at home with all the staff
of Hortons. Even Mr. Nix, the sacred and rubicund head of the
establishment, liked him, and listened, wide-eyed, to his stories. Mr.
Nix had met so many strange characters in London and seen so many odd
sights that a story less or more did not affect him very deeply.
Certainly Captain Jones flung his net with greater success than was
the general rule; never a day passed but he returned with some strange
prize.
It was amusing to see them together in the green hall downstairs, with
the grandfather clock ticking away at them sarcastically. The little
man, round as a ball, neat and dapper, efficient, his bowler hat a
little on one side of his head; Jones, his great legs apart, his red
face ablaze with excitement, his large hands gesticulating. They were
great friends.
In spite of his withdrawal from me, he continued to tell me his
stories. I began to find it an amusing game to divide the true from
the false. This was a difficult task, because he had a great love of
circumstantial detail. He would begin--"Lester, what do you think of
this? An hour ago I was going down John Street, Adelphi. You know the
place behind the Strand there where the Little Theatre used to be.
You know there's an alley there cutting up into the Strand. They sell
fruit there. Well, I was just climbing the steps when I heard a woman's
voice cry out for help. I looked back; there was not a soul there--the
street was as empty as your hand. I heard the cry again, and there was
a woman's face at the open window. As I looked she vanished. I ran back
to the door of the house----"
Now this may appear somewhat commonplace. How many stories in how many
magazines have begun with just such an incident? This, you would say,
is the cheapest invention. Not quite. Jones had always some unexpected
circumstantial detail that clamped his tale down as his own. I think
that he was, in reality, on certain occasions involved in fights and
quarrels that were actual enough. I have seen him with a black eye, and
again with a long scratch down his cheek, and once with a torn hand.
But what he did was to create behind him a completely new vision of
the London scene. One could not listen to his stories for long without
seeing London coloured, blazing with light, sinister with calculated
darkness, ringed about with gigantic buildings that capped the clouds,
inhabited by beings half human, half magical, half angel, half beast.
I remember when I was young and credulous, getting something of this
impression from _The New Arabian Nights_, but for me, at any rate,
Stevenson never quite joined the flats. I was never finally taken in
by his invention, but felt to the last that he was having a game
with me. Bomb Jones's eloquence had the advantage over the written
word of being direct and personal. Although you might be sure that
what he was telling you was not true, nevertheless you felt that
behind his stories some facts must be lying. I know that soon I began
to discover that London was changing under my eyes. My own drab and
dull flat in Kensington took a romantic glow. I would look from my
window down the long street to the far distance filled by the solemn
blocks of the museum, and would imagine that the figures that crossed
the grey spaces were busied on errands about which fates of empires
might hang--ludicrous for a man of my age who might be said to have
experienced all the disillusionment of life. Well, ludicrous or no, I
walked the streets with a new observation, a new expectation, a new
pleasure, and to Bomb Jones I owed it.
However, it is not of his effect on myself that I want to speak. I was
too far gone for any very permanent revival. It was Jones's effect
on Peter that was the important thing. I saw that a new life, a new
interest, a new eagerness was coming into Peter's life. He laughed at
Jones, but he liked him and listened to him. Gradually, slowly, as
stealthily as, after the rains, the water creeps back over the dry bed
of the sun-baked river, so did Peter's desire for life come back to him.
"I know that Bomb's stories are all nonsense," he said to me. "A
hundred times a day I'm tempted to break out and ask him how he dares
to put such stuff over on us, but, after all, there may be something
in it. Do you know, Lester, I can't go through Leicester Square
without wondering whether a murderer isn't coming out of the Turkish
Baths, an Eastern Prince out of 'Thurston's,' or the Queen of the Genii
peeping at me from a window of the Alhambra! I've tried several times
to get back into things here. I tried the Vers Librists, and I tried
the drunkards down in Adelphi, and I've tried the Solemn Ones up in
Hampstead, and the good commonplace ones in Kensington, and it was
all no use until Bomb came along. I hope to Heaven he won't stop his
stories for another month or two. There's a book beginning to move in
my head--again, after ten years! Just think of it, Lester! Dead for
ten years--I never thought it would come back, and now Bomb and his
stories----"
"It's all right," I said. "He'll never stop till he dies."
But I'd reckoned without one thing--something that had never entered my
poor brain, and, as always happens in life, it was the one thing that
occurred--Bomb fell in love.