that drive human beings towards one another--even the good old law
of the universal attraction of opposite for opposite does not always
hold good, but I may say that both Peter and I had the surprise of
our lives when we discovered that Bomb Jones cared for Helen Cather.
Helen was a friend of Bobby Galleon's, who was a friend of Peter's.
Alice Galleon, Bobby's wife, had been with her on some War Committee,
and the orderliness of her mind, her quiet when the other women
were pushing and quarrelling, her clean serenity upon which nothing,
however violent, seemed to make the slightest stain, appealed to Alice.
She took Helen home to dinner, and discovered that she was a very
well-read, politically-minded, balanced woman. "Too blamed balanced
for me," said Bobby, who believed in spontaneity and rash mistakes and
good red blood. He thought, however, that she would be good for Peter,
so he took her to see him. Helen and Peter made friends, and this in
itself was odd, because Helen at once asserted that all Peter's ideas
about modern literature were wrong. She said that Peter was a Romantic,
and that to be a Romantic in these days was worse than being dead.
She talked in her calm, incisive, clear-cut way about the Novel, and
said that the only thing for any novelist to do to-day was to tell the
truth; and when Peter asked her whether invention and imagination were
to go for nothing, she said that they went for very little, because
we'd got past them and grown too old for them; and Peter said thank
God he hadn't and never would, and he talked about Stevenson and Dumas
until Helen was sick.
She dug up Peter's poor old novels, and disembowelled their corpses
and praised Miss Somebody or other Smith's who wrote only about what
it felt like to be out of a job on a wet day when you had only enough
money in your pocket to eat a boiled egg in an _A.B.C._ shop.
"You're sentimental, Westcott," she said, "and you're sloppy and worst
of all, you're sprightly. You've no artistic conscience at all."
Peter laughed at her and liked her, and she liked him. I don't think
that I was at all taken with my first view of her. She was thin and
pale, with pince-nez and a very faint moustache on her upper lip. Her
best feature was her eyes, which were good, grey, steady, kindly, and
even at times they twinkled. She was neatness and tidiness itself, and
she sat in her chair, quite still, her hands folded on her lap, and her
neat little shoes crossed obstinately in front of her.
I shall never, of course, forget the day when she first met Bomb. It
was one evening in Peter's flat. A number of people sat about talking,
smoking and drinking. The Galleons were there, Maradick, large and
red-faced, an old friend of Peter's, Robin Trojan and his wife, and so
on. Bomb was late. He burst into the room, large, untidy and, as usual,
excited.
"I say," he began at once. "I've just come from Penter's. There's been
a fellow there who's the most remarkable man I've ever seen. He's going
round England with a circus, and three of his elephants escaped this
afternoon and were found examining Cleopatra's Needle half an hour ago
and being fed with buns by a lot of street boys. This chap wasn't a bit
alarmed, and said they'd be sure to turn up at Howarton or somewhere
where he's got his circus, if he gave them time. He says that one of
the elephants is the most intelligent----"
Now this story happened, as we discovered in the morning, to be quite,
or almost, true, but you can fancy how Helen Cather was struck with it.
"Elephants!" she said, turning round upon him.
"Oh, you don't know one another," said Peter, hastily. "Bomb, this is
Miss Cather. Miss Cather--Captain Jones."
Bomb has since declared that he fell in love with his Helen at first
sight. Why? I can't conceive. There was nothing romantic about her. She
certainly looked upon him on that first occasion with eyes of extreme
disapproval. Everything about him must have seemed dreadful to her.
"A red-hot liar," she described him to Alice Galleon afterwards. I
remember on that very evening wishing that he had stopped for a moment
before he came into the room and tidied himself up a little. His hair
wasn't brushed, his face was hot and perspiring, his waistcoat was
minus a button, and his boots were soiled. He didn't care, of course,
but sat down quite close to Miss Cather, smiled upon her, and poured
into her ears all that evening a remarkable series of narratives, each
one more tremendous than the last.
Peter was amused. Next day he said: "Wasn't it fun seeing Helen Cather
and Bomb together? Fire and water. She thought he'd drunk too much, I
presume. She can look chilly when she likes, too."
It was not more than three days after this eventful meeting that the
great surprise was sprung upon me.
I had been given two tickets for the first night of Arnold Bennett's
_Judith_. We arrived late, and it was not until the first interval that
Peter could deliver to me his astounding news.
"What do you think has happened?" he cried. "I give you three guesses,
but you may as well resign at once. If I gave you a hundred, you'd
never guess."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Bomb is in love with Helen Cather."
I was, of course, incredulous.
"But that's absurd," I answered; "that's worse than any of Bomb's best
stories."
"It's true, all the same," he assured me. "He came in this afternoon.
He can think of nothing else. His stories have for the moment all
deserted him. He told me that he's been awake three nights thinking of
her. He says that he loved her the first moment he saw her. He says
that he's never loved a woman before, which is, I expect, true enough,
and that he's going to marry her."
"Well, that last isn't true, anyway," I answered. "Miss Cather hated
him at first sight."
My impression that night was that this was simply one of Bomb's
exuberant, romantic fancies, and that it would pass away from his heart
and brain as quickly as many of his stories had done. I was, of course,
completely wrong.
He said very little about it to me, because he didn't like me, and
was less naturally himself with me, I think, than with anyone. But he
talked to everyone else, and to Peter he never ceased pouring out his
soul.
A week later he proposed to her. She refused him, of course. He was not
in the least disturbed. He would propose to her again very shortly, and
then again and again to the end of time....
I fancied, however, that that first refusal would be the end of it.
He would see in a little how absurd his pursuit was, and would abandon
it. I must confess that I looked forward to that abandonment. This
sudden passion had not from my point of view, improved him. It made him
a little absurd, and it had checked absolutely for the moment the flow
of his stories. I was surprised to find how seriously I missed them.
Then one morning my telephone rang, and, answering it, I recognised
Miss Cather's voice.
"May I come and have tea with you this afternoon?" she asked.
"Why, of course," I answered. "I'll be delighted. Whom shall I invite?"
"Nobody," she answered. "I want to talk to you."
I was flattered and pleased. Any widower of over fifty is pleased when
any woman wants to come and have tea with him alone. Besides, I liked
Miss Cather--liked her surprisingly. In the first place, she liked
me, found my mind "truly realistic" and my brain well balanced. But
in reality I liked her, I think, because I was beginning to discover
in her a certain freshness and childishness and even _naïveté_ of
soul which I had certainly not expected at first. But seriousness
and balance and austerity of manner did not go nearly as deep as it
pretended. She knew not nearly as much about life as she herself
fancied.
When she came she had some difficulty in beginning. At last it was out.
Captain Jones had proposed to her. Of course, it was quite absurd, and
of course, she had refused him. He didn't know her at all, and she
knew quite enough about _him_ to be sure that they would never get
on. Nevertheless--nevertheless--What did I--did I know?--At least,
what she meant was that she liked Captain Jones, had liked him from
the beginning, but there were certain things about him that puzzled
her--Now I knew him well. Would I tell her?
"I don't know him well," I interrupted her. "That's a mistake--we're
not intimate at all, but I do know him well enough to be sure that he's
a good man. He's a splendid man!" I ended with perhaps a little more
enthusiasm than I had myself expected.
She talked a little more, and then I challenged her.
"The fact of the matter is, Miss Cather," I said, "that you're in love
with him and intend to marry him."
At this she shook her head indignantly. No, that was not true at all.
She did not love him--of course she did not. But there was something
about him--difficult for her to describe--his childishness, his
simplicity--he needed looking after--Oh, he _did_ need looking after!
As she said that the whole of the sweetness that was in her nature
shone in her eyes and made her austere, unyielding, almost plain as she
was, for the moment divine.
"Of course you're going to marry him," I repeated. She shook her head,
but this time less surely.
Then, looking me full in the face, and speaking with great solemnity as
though she were uttering a profound and supremely important truth, she
remarked:
"Any woman who did marry him would have to stop that lying."
"Lying!" I repeated feebly.
"Yes, lying--the stories he tells."
"But they aren't lies," I said. "At least, not exactly."
She emptied then all the vials of her wrath upon my head. Not lies? And
what were they then? _What_ were those romances if they were not lies?
Was I trying to defend lies in general or only Captain Jones's lies in
particular? Did I not realise the harm that he did with his stories?
What had we all been about that we had not pulled him up long ago?
"Can't you conceive it as possible, Miss Cather," I asked her, "that
lies should occasionally do good rather than harm? I don't mean
really _bad_ lies, of course--lies told to hurt people--but gorgeous
lies, magnificent lies; lies that keep your sense of fantasy, your
imagination alive; lies that paint your house a fairy palace and your
wife a goddess?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Lester," she answered me.
"I must confess I'm disappointed in you, but I suppose one never knows
with a novelist--But never mind--thank you for your tea--I can only
assure you that any woman who marries Captain Jones will have to reform
him first. Good-night."
Even after this I did not realise the situation that was upon us. I saw
now what I had not seen before, that she did, in truth, care for Bomb
Jones--that that same affection would affect all our lives I had not
yet perceived. Then, two days later, came the next development.
I was sitting in Peter's flat waiting for his return, when Bomb burst
in. He was a creature transfigured, whether by triumph or rage I could
not immediately tell. He stood there, out of breath, swelling out his
chest, struggling for words, panting. At last they came.
"Where's Peter? Oh, _where's_ Peter? Not back. But he must be back.
It's always his time to be here just now. He must be here! Lester, I'm
dumbfounded. I've no strength left in me. I'm finished. What do you
think? Oh, but you'll never guess--you couldn't----"
"Miss Cather's accepted you," I interrupted.
"How did you know? How the devil----" He stared at me as though his
eyes were struggling with an unaccustomed light--"Well, she has, if you
want to know, and that's remarkable enough, but that's not the only
thing--She--she----"
He paused, then flung it at me with the strangest burst of mingled
rage, incredulity, bewilderment, and wonder--"She says I'm a liar!"
He looked at me, waiting.
"A liar?" I feebly repeated.
"A liar! She says she'll only marry me on one condition--that I stop my
lying. When she first said it I thought she was laughing at me, then I
suddenly saw that she was in the deadliest earnest. I asked her what
she meant. She said that she couldn't conceive that I didn't know,
that I _must_ know, how wicked it was to tell the untruthful stories
that I did, the harm that they worked and so on. I! A liar! I!--Why,
you might say it about some fellows, but about me!... Why, Lester, she
simply didn't believe that I'd had any of the fun, been to any of the
places, seen anything.... Of course, I see what it is. She's never been
anywhere, seen anything herself. Everything's strange to her. But to
say that everyone _knew_ I was a liar.... Lester, tell me. You've been
about. You know I'm not a liar, don't you?"
His astonishment was the most genuine thing I'd ever faced. I admit
that I was staggered by it. I had not, of course, supposed that he had
deliberately said to himself: "Now to-day I'm going to tell a lie so
as to astonish those fellows," but I _had_ imagined that he knew quite
well it had not all been true.
But here, in the face of his most ingenuous astonishment, what was I to
say?
"No, Jones, of course not--lies is the wrong word altogether, but I do
think that sometimes you've exaggerated."
He stared at me.
"Do they all think that?"
"Well, yes, they do----"
He resembled then nothing so much as a balloon from which the air has
suddenly been withdrawn. He sat down.
"My God," he said, suddenly dropping his head between his great red
hands. "It's true then."
It was at that moment that I saw the catastrophe that was upon us. I
saw what Bomb would be without his tales: he would be dull, ordinary,
colourless--nothing. The salient thing, the life, the salt, the savour
would be withdrawn from him. And not only Bomb, but all of us--myself,
Peter, young Gale, Alice Galleon, even Maradick. I saw, by my own
experience, how we should suffer. I saw slipping away from under my
very nose the whole of that magical world that Bomb had created; and
above all, that magical London, the fairy palaces, the streets paved
with gold, the walls of amethyst; the dark, shuttered windows opened
for an instant to betray the gleaming, anxious eyes; the bearded
foreigner conveying his sacred charge through the traffic of Trafalgar
Square; the secrets and mysteries of the Bond Street jewellers.... I
saw all that and more. But, after all, that was not the heart of the
matter. We could get on without our entertainment; even Peter had been
brought to life again whether Bomb went on with him or no. The tragedy
was in Bomb's own soul; Helen Cather was slaying him as surely as
though she stuck a dagger into his heart. And she did not know it--She
did not know that she was probably marrying him for that very energy
of imagination that she was bent upon destroying. Only, months after
she had married him, she would discover, with a heavy and lifeless Bomb
upon her hands, what it was that she had done.
"Look here, Jones," I said. "Don't take it too seriously. Miss Cather
didn't know what she was saying. Don't you promise her anything. She'll
forget----"
"Don't promise her!" He looked up at me wildly. "I have promised her!
Of course I have--Don't I love her? Didn't I love her the first moment
that I saw her? I'm never going to tell anyone about anything again."
Well, all my worst anticipations were at once fulfilled. You may think
that this story is about a very small affair, but I ask you to take
some friend of yours and be aware that he is in process, before your
eyes, of dying from some slow poison skilfully administered by someone.
You may not in the beginning have cared very greatly for the man, but
the poignancy of the drama is such that before long you are drawn into
the very heart of it; it is like a familiar nightmare; you are held
there paralysed, longing to rush in and prevent the murder and unable
to move.
In no time at all I had developed quite an affection for Jones, so
pathetic a figure was he.
Beneath the stern gaze of his beloved Helen ("not quite of Troy,"
as someone said of her) he became a commonplace, dull, negligible
creature, duller, save for the pathos of his position, than human.
Very quickly we lost any sense of chagrin or disappointment at our own
penalties in the absorption of "longing to do something for Bomb."
Again and again we discussed the affair. Bomb's soul must be saved; but
how? Before our eyes a tragedy was developing. In another month they
would be married; Helen Cather would marry the greatest bore in Europe,
and about six months after marriage would discover that she had done so.
Bomb was already miserable, sitting there silent and morose, his
tongue-tied, adoring Helen, but saying nothing to her lest he should be
accused of "romancing."
At last Peter insisted that I should speak to her--she liked me better
than she did the others--she would listen to me. Needless to say, she
did not. Not only did she not listen, but turned on me ferociously.
"I'm proud of Benedick!" she cried. "I've cured him of the only fault
he had. If you think I'm going to turn him back into a liar again, Mr.
Lester, just for the entertainment of yourself and your friends, you're
greatly mistaken. You have a strange notion of morality."
She was proud, but she was uneasy. She realised that he was not happy,
that, in one way or another, the spring had gone out of him--yes, thank
God, she was uneasy.
Well, there was the situation. There was apparently nothing to be done,
no way out. This is simply the story, after all, of our blindness. Just
as we had not seen the influence that was to check our Bomb, so we did
not see the influence that would make his fancy flow again. It's a
wonderful world, thank God!
About a week before the wedding Peter Westcott said to me:
"Lester, don't you think that Bomb's reviving a little again?" I
fancied I had seen something. Bomb was a little brighter, a little less
heavy ... yes, I _had_ noticed.
"His fancy is being fed again somewhere," said Peter again. "Where? He
tells _us_ no stories."
No, he certainly did not. His determination to achieve perfect accuracy
was painful. It was a case of----
"Where have you been, Bomb?"
"Oh, just down to the bank to cash a cheque. The Joint Stock branch
in Wigmore Street. I took a bus up Regent Street and got off at the
Circus----" and so on, and so on.
Nevertheless, he was reviving. The Old Man was being blown back into
him just as surely as one prick of Helen Cather's determination had let
it out. Where was he feeding his imagination? How had he got round his
Helen's autocracy without her knowing it? Because she did not know. She
was completely satisfied--she was even more than satisfied, she was----
I watched her. Something was happening to her, too. She was dressing
differently. Her austerity was dropping from her. She did her hair
in a new way, no longer pulling it back, harsh and austere, from her
forehead, but letting it have freedom and colour. She had very pretty
hair....
She was wearing bright colours and pretty hats....
What was happening?
The day came when the problem was solved. Bomb's old mother came up to
town, a dear old lady of nearly eighty, who adored Bomb and thought
him perfection. She came up for the wedding. She was to see Helen for
the first time. It was agreed that the meeting should be at Hortons, a
nice, central spot. We were gathered there waiting--old Mrs. Jones with
her lace cap and bright pink cheeks, Peter, Bomb, and myself. Helen was
late.
"You know, Benedick," said the old lady in a voice like a withering
canary, "you've told me very little about Helen. I've no real idea of
her at all."
A moment's pause, and Bomb had sprung to his feet. Peter and I,
spiritually, so to speak, rushed towards one another. This was the old
attitude. We had not seen Bomb stand like this, his legs spread apart,
his chest out, his eyes flashing, for weeks. The old attitude, the old
voice, the old Bomb.
"Helen, mother!" he cried, and he was off.
The picture that he drew! It was about as much like the real Helen
Cather as the Venus de Milo is like Miss Mary Pickford in the pictures;
but it was a glorious picture, the portrait of a goddess, a genius, a
Sappho. The phrases tumbled from his lips in the good old way--it was
all the old times come back again. And how his imagination worked! How
magnificently he flung his colours about, with what abandon he splashed
and sprawled! For a breathless ten minutes we listened.
"Dear me," said old Mrs. Jones, "I do hope she's a good girl as well."
For myself I sat there entranced. The old Bomb was not lost. He had
found, or Fate had found him, a safe outlet after all. He could see
Helen as before he had seen the whole world, and it would do for him as
well. His soul was saved.
The one question that now remained was how would Helen take this
glorification of herself? Would she not resent it as deeply as she had
resented the earlier "lies"?
On the answer to that question hung the whole of the future of their
married life.
I was soon to have my answer. Helen came in. I did not perceive that
old Mrs. Jones felt very deeply the contrast between reality and her
son's picture. Her son was all that she saw.
He took her home. I walked away with Helen. Before we parted she turned
to me. Happiness was burning in her face.
"Mr. Lester," she said, "you've been a good friend to both of us. You
were all wrong about Benedick, but I know that you meant it well." She
hesitated a little. "I'm terribly happy, almost too happy to be safe.
Of course, I know that Benedick is a little absurd about me, has rather
an exaggerated idea of me. But that's good for me, really it is. Nobody
ever has before, you know, and it's only Benedick who's seen what I
really am. I knew that I had all sorts of things in me that ought to
come out, but no one encouraged them. Everyone laughed at them. But
Benedick has seen them, and I'm going to be what he sees me. I feel
free! Free for the first time in my life! You don't know how wonderful
that is!"
She pulled the bright purple scarf more closely over her shoulders.
"We've done something for one another, he and I, really, haven't we?
He's freed me, and I--well, I've stopped those terrible untruths of
his in spite of you all. I don't believe he'll ever tell a lie again!
Good-night. We'll see lots of you after we're married, won't we? Oh,
we're going to be so happy----"
"Yes--_now_ I believe you are," I answered.
"What do you mean, _now_?" she asked. "Didn't you always think so?"
"There was a moment when I wasn't sure," I said. "But I was wrong.
You're going to be splendidly happy."
And so they are....
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
A few obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected.
All other text has been retained.