TALK

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him

declare what he seeth.

IT takes an unconscionable long time to extort money from the Post

Office Savings Bank, and René borrowed from his employer to pay Joe's

passage and the guarantee demanded by the Canadian immigration

authorities. Joe could not thank him, but only, with tears in his

eyes, shake him by the hand.

"You know," he said, "I could never have gone if I'd once been in

prison. That's where they has you. If wishing could do it, you'll have

good luck. And if praying's any good I don't mind trying that, though

I'm not much of a hand at it and out of practice."

He gave René a crumpled dirty letter to Rita, and bade him tell her

that his last thought was for her, and that when she came out he would

be on the quay to meet her.

"I've told 'er in my letter it was you put a heart into me, guvnor.

I'd been feeding on it that long it was nearly all eat away."

At last the train moved--(René had taken him to the station with his

few possessions, smuggled out under the very eyes of the

policeman)--Joe leaped into his carriage and sang out:

"So long!"

"Good luck!" cried René, as he moved away through the crowd of tearful

women and young men on the platform.

As he was leaving the station he met Kurt, just returned from a flying

visit to Thrigsby. He explained that he had been called away on

business or would have been round before to pay his promised visit.

"I told them at home I'd seen you. My mother turned on a face like a

window-shutter--you know, the iron kind they have in Paris, and clank

down in the small hours of the morning just to make sure no one shall

sleep the night through. Funny old thing! I suppose she regards you as

one dead. Silly thing to do, when I'd just told her you were very much

alive. Linda was quite excited and started pumping up all sorts of

emotions until I asked her how long it was since she had even thought

of you. Then she stopped that game. She knows it isn't any use with

me. I once said to her, 'My dear girl, if you really felt all the

emotions you pretend to feel, you'd be dead in a week.' I never could

stand that sort of thing myself. She gets them out of books, you know,

and really sometimes it is quite impressive, or would be, if it

weren't so disgustingly false. It is wonderful to feel things, but you

can't feel things all the time and be sane. No one can. One's too

busy. It's beastly to make that sort of thing cheap as they do on the

stage and in Linda's mucky novels--Oh, she's written another play, all

about my mother this time. Well, after a bit she cooled down and I

told her you were quite pleased with yourself, earning an humble but

honest living. She wanted to know if you were alone. I said I didn't

know, but anyhow it wasn't her affair. She agreed, and said that

anything she might do wasn't your affair either. Then she talked a

great deal of nonsense about your being the New Man, with too much

vitality and intellectual energy for the outworn institutions of a

demoded society, and a lot more rot of that kind. The fact is, of

course, that she prefers living without you and doesn't want any fuss.

The scandal had made her interesting to Thrigsby, and she can find all

sorts of silly people there who want to be instructed in the art of

being advanced, to think shocking things and to live without shocks of

any kind. Linda's shock is keeping quite a lot of people going. I told

her I should see you again and she asked me to give you her love, and

to say that she is quite happy and hopes you will go and see her play

when it is acted in London by the Thrigsby Players. I say, you must

have thought me a swine that day at Hendon. That was a Lord and a

Lady. These people haven't any manners, and one gets like them. I'm

their particular pet just now. You should see me hobnobbing with

Cabinet Ministers and theater managers. It is terrible how alike they

are."

"You'll see a bit of difference if you come to Mitcham Mews," said

René.

"I'll come to-night."

"Good."

Rita had come successfully through her ordeal, and she was in the

dreaming bliss of having her baby by her side, with no other thought

in her mind than the satisfaction of its contact, the blessed charge

of its helpless little life, not yet, nor for a long time to come,

separate from her own. Ann took René up to see her, and he gave her

Joe's letter and told her how pleased he had been to go, and how he

was looking forward to her joining him. To account for his sudden

disappearance they invented a tale of an offer of immediate work,

conditional upon his sailing at once. The whole thing had been so

sudden (they said) that there was no time for her to be told or for

him to wait to see her. Did she believe them? She looked incredulously

from one to the other, but, holding the letter tightly crumpled up in

her hand, she decided at length that it was a good thing to believe,

and sighed out her thankfulness. She had relations who would help her

until Joe sent, and when she was well she would be able to work.

Ann had engaged old Bessie to come in during the day, and asked René

if he would mind her spending all her evenings with Rita, and

sometimes sleeping with her for the first few days. He was only too

glad that she had found a task which could absorb her energies. He

told her Kurt was coming, and asked if he might bring him over to see

her. She had seen Kurt's photograph in the paper and was quite

fluttered.

"Oh, him!" she said. "Fancy you knowing him!"

He did not tell her how Kurt was related to him.

However, Kurt blurted it out before he had been with Ann five minutes.

René looked sheepish.

"Come, now, Miss Ann," laughed Kurt, "you didn't expect him to have no

one belonging to him or to keep him hidden away from us forever and

ever. Because you are fond of him you don't expect him to be utterly

lost to all his friends, do you?"

"I didn't know he had a friend like you, Mr. Brock, or I shouldn't

have dared to be fond of him--perhaps."

"Is that a tribute to my personality or to my reputation."

"Well," said Ann, "you do brighten things up."

"One for old Solemn!" said Kurt. "I hoped you'd have cured him."

"Oh! I don't want him to be cured. I don't want him to be different."

René's vanity was bristling, but in the face of their good humor he

could not let it appear. He envied Kurt his ease and the skill with

which he gauged Ann's humor to strike laughter out of her, so much so

that he could not mind being the subject of it. Her laughter was

affectionate.

They were in Rita's room, and she lay gazing fascinated at Kurt's

brown face, with its merry eyes flashing blue light as he laughed and

talked. The children had been told that the great flying man was

coming. They had been staring at him with round eyes. At last one of

them said:

"Did you fly here?"

"Not this time, my lad."

"Oncet," said the piping voice, "oncet we 'ad a bird-cage."

"With a bird in it?"

"No. We kep' a ball in it and marbles."

"What happened to it?"

"Farver popped it. I seen an airyoplane oncet."

"Did you? Where?"

"In ve Park. A little boy 'ad it."

"Right ho! We'll send you an airyoplane like that."

The children looked at each other, scared at this promised good

fortune. Then they embraced and rocked each other to and fro.

René and Kurt took their leave and passed out into the mews.

"Well?" said René. "A bit of difference?"

"I don't know about that. But I'm always finding that where other folk

see only riches or poverty or manners or personal tricks and habits, I

see only people, and they are much the same everywhere. I nearly

always like them. I'm not like you. I don't expect anything much."

"Do I?"

"Always. That's what one loves about you. You were the only person who

ever expected anything of me, and you gave me confidence to expect

something of myself."

"Then it's not a bad thing?"

"It's a splendid thing in a way, only you need to be able to love a

lot of people to bear up against your disappointments. I can't do

that. I find them too amusing. I'm too easily pleased with everything

they do, and, of course, I never stop to think."

"But some things make you think."

"What things?"

"Having no money is one of them."

"I don't know that the poor worry much about thinking, and lack of

money is chronic with them."

"Joe tried to think. The trouble was that he didn't know how. It took

him as far as the Trade Union, and left him there expecting it to do

the rest. That's the trouble all round. There has been thinking enough

to make the union, but not enough to use it. The mere fact of union

seems to swamp thought, even in the leaders. When they speak they are

always trying to say not what they themselves think, but what they

fancy the collective body of men wants them to think. The result is

that events always move just a little too fast for them, and they are

tied hand and foot and left to the mercy of the capitalists who can

afford to wait longer to see how the cat is going to jump."

"And the capitalists?"

"My friend Martin is the only one I know. But I imagine they are just

the same. They expect their money to do their thinking for them. Money

and crowds have just the same hypnotic effect. Do you remember on one

of our tours when we were driving at night with the big headlight

showing up the road fifty yards in front of us? It was a summer night,

and as we flashed past trees the birds for a moment took us for the

sun and began to wake up. It was amusing, the swish of the wind we

made in the trees, the sudden singing of the birds, who sank to sleep

again in the darkness we left behind us. And then as we drove along a

woodland road a rabbit darted out into our light, and could not get

out of it. If we drove slowly he ran slowly. If we put on pace to

scare him away he kept ahead of us. If we stopped he couched down with

his ears back and his eyes starting out of his head, absolutely

confined by the walls of darkness round our light, and, I suppose,

hypnotized by his own terror. It seems to me that human thought is a

light like ours, and that individual men rush into it like the rabbit

and cannot get out of it. It needs only a little plunge into the

darkness to be back safe and happy in your own life, but they can't

take the plunge. We were able to turn the light off the rabbit at a

cross-road to let him go, but nothing can take the light of human

thought off men. The analogy is rather interesting, because the light

of human thought is not borne by a horrible engine, but only seems so

to those who are hypnotized by their own terror, and it seems normal

to be scurrying away from it and to die--morally--of exhaustion. A few

men, when they come into the light, are brave enough to step out of it

to discover whence it comes. They find it kindled in themselves and,

tracing it to its source, they find it in the will to live, and they

reach the determination to carry it farther over the world they live

in, in order to break down the walls of darkness."

"That is rather beyond me," said Kurt. "I'm no good at ideas. If you

let me keep to people I'm all right. Some people do me good; other

people make me feel cramped and choked. I'm not clever enough to know

why. And there are lots of nice people with whom it is quite enough if

one can make them laugh. They don't seem to matter either way."

"You see," said René, "human thought doesn't shine until it is

energized with feeling and brought into contact with the divine power

that keeps things going. That is what the scared people take for a

remorseless, swift, destroying engine."

"I remember now," said Kurt, "that Linda said you were a mystic. That

was when you were an economist, and I told her it was nonsense,

because no mystic could read a page of Marshall--wasn't that your fat

book?"

"I don't know whether it's mysticism or not, but I can't accept

experience without sifting it. I suppose if I could do that I should

still be in Thrigsby keeping up appearances."

"And Linda would never have written her plays. That would have been a

pity."

"How absurd you are, Kurt. But you seem able to sift experience before

it comes to you. You seem to be able to do the right thing at the

right time."

"I never worry about it. Life seems so simple to me. Directly it looks

like being complicated, I switch off and try again. The only thing

that worries me is that it looks horribly as though I should never

marry. I fall in love all right and somehow that always complicates

things, so then I fall out of love. I can't love a complicated woman,

and I haven't met an uncomplicated one. They all want to feel more

than they do. Play-acting, I call it."

Kilner came in then. He greeted Kurt morosely, for his clothes showed

that he came from the brilliant world, the object of the painter's

particular detestation, and Kurt's manner might easily be taken for

that affability which puts you at your ease and so disconcertingly

leaves you there.

René produced beer and tobacco, made room for Kilner by the fireplace,

and carried on the discussion:

"Kurt says women want to feel more than they do."

"I don't know about that," replied Kilner, "but my experience is that

they generally feel more than the occasion demands. They won't leave

anything to the future. I don't think it means anything except that

they are not particular. They get so precious little out of men that

they grab what they can and let consequences take their chance. I

don't blame them either. They begin by taking love seriously, so

seriously that they frighten men and make them run away. I keep clear

of that, not because I'm frightened, but because I can't find a woman

who hasn't been unbalanced by having had some idiot run away from

her."

"That's like Kurt," René threw in. "I expect it is because you both

have a passion for what you are doing. It gives you a standard. Now I

don't pretend to have a passion for taxi-driving, and I suppose that

is why I take seriously things that you two are able to ignore."

"H'm," growled Kilner, stretching his long legs. "Not much in that.

We're both keen on something which demands health and nerve and

self-confidence, a steady hand and a clear head. We can't afford to

throw our minds and passions into the common stock. I starve. Your

friend has the world at his feet. But we're both outside the world,

and have as little truck with it as possible."

"Both," said René, "outside the hypnotic circle." He had to explain

that to Kilner, who was excited by the idea.

"I never thought of that," he said. "Yes, by Jove, it's true. They are

hypnotized, every man Jack of them, rich and poor alike. Nothing can

shake it off except the individual will. Every artist has to go

through that. And your light, my friend, is nothing but the vision of

the artist. Only hypnotism, the absolute surrender of the will, could

account for the horrible distortions that appear in what they call

art, what they call morality, the organization of what they call

society. I know what Fourmy means. The infernal thing is always

cropping up in my work. When an artist has seen what he wants to

paint, there is always the danger of his being hypnotized by it, and

if he doesn't shake free of that, he is almost bound to paint it

badly, however skillful he may be. He may paint a picture that people

will like, but he won't create a work of art."

"Isn't it possible for a man to be hypnotized by art?" asked René.

"If he is, he won't be an artist. I've seen students surrender their

will one after the other to Raphael, Rembrandt, Manet, Cezanne, not to

their love of truth and beauty, but to the masterful skill which their

love gave them. If they had surrendered to their love their own wills

would have been strengthened, not destroyed. That is always happening:

a manner is imitated, mimicked over and over again until at last it is

so vilely done, so remote from the original as to have no charm to

lead even the stupidest little draughtsman to make a copy. Is it so in

life? I don't know. Much the same, perhaps. Weren't there imitations

of Byron for generations after him? Something vile the brutes could

imitate. No one imitated Shelley."

"Who was he?" asked Kurt.

Kilner stared at him aghast.

"A poet. _The_ poet."

"I suppose I ought to have known," replied Kurt, chuckling at Kilner's

annoyance, "but you see I was brought up in a German household. There

was a fellow called Schiller they used to talk about, and they named a

club after him where they used to eat and drink."

"And what," asked Kilner, "made you take to flying?"

"Oh, I don't know. I always loved engines and speed. And after all,

you know, it is the only thing to do."

"Kilner thinks painting is the only thing to do," interjected René.

"I meant for me," answered Kurt. "That may be all right for him. I

hate using my brains. Things get muddled at once if I do. I love using

my body so that every muscle is called into play, and I loathe

illness. It's torture to me to be just a little unwell. I get moments

out of my work that make everything else seem nothing at all, just

something to laugh at and be merry over."

"Something like that is my life," said Kilner. "A few moments, only

they are not enough in themselves. I have to follow them up in spirit

and express them."

"And I," said René, "am always hunting about for those moments in life

and not finding them."

"Ever known one?"

"No, but I'm absolutely certain they are there. I never knew what I

was after until I met Kilner. I'm not certain that I know now. But

I've escaped social hypnotism so far, and from what you tell me I seem

to be less in danger of hypnotism by my own will than either of you."

"I deny that," cried Kilner angrily. "You are denying the supremacy of

the artist. Just because you have dodged a few of the conventional

social obligations, you think----"

"I'm not denying anything of the kind. I grant you the artist is

supreme and his vision the most potent force in human thought, but the

artist also must be a man and must live, or there's an end of his

vision. He must be prepared if necessary to live in the hypnotic

circle, and he must be strong enough to assert his will in it."

"That's stupid," said Kilner. "As if any of us could escape, as if

that weren't precisely what the artist does. Your friend here is the

lucky one. He is doing a new thing, exercising a new faculty which is

imperfectly developed, so that it is not yet prostituted and abused,

as art, science, and love have been. He is still a wonder, even to

fools. I who aspire to art, you who aspire to love, are to the world

nothing but idiots who have not the _nous_ to help themselves to the

plunder and comfort ready to their hands. But you and I are braver

than he, for we seek greater things. He is content with physical

health and adventure. That is something. It is a higher aim than money

and money's worth. But you and I are definitely pledged to accept only

the happiness we know to be true, and the sorrow to which our wills

can consent."

"I dunno," said Kurt, rising, "but I daresay there's a good deal to be

said on the other side. I'm not so sure, though. I know lots of the

other people, and they've never given me such an amusing evening. I

haven't had such a good time since I came to London, where everybody

thinks of nothing but having a good time. I'll come again. Anyhow,

you're not worrying about what other folk are thinking of you, and

that's the only thing I can't stand. Good night."

Kilner was too excited to go to bed, and he kept René up till three

o'clock in the morning talking about a picture he was painting of God

creating Eve out of Adam, who was to be shown in an attitude of

surrender, though his body gave signs of a fearful agony. Yet was it

Adam's will to submit to any torture to attain the knowledge of the

almighty joy of creation.

René was curious about the woman's share in the operation, and was

vaguely distressed to find that in Kilner's intention Eve was to be no

more than beautiful.

"But is she to have no share in creation and the joy of it?"

Kilner was pacing round the room. He waved his fists in the air.

"Don't you see? Don't you see?" he shouted. "Don't you see that we

have created her? Even if you drop the myth and take to evolution,

don't you see that woman has been nothing but the creature, the

instrument of reproduction? Don't you see that man fell in love with

her, and with his love slowly humanized her, gave her intelligence,

humor, charm?"

"Might it not be," said René, "that woman was first, and evolved man

to do the work so that she might reserve more energy for conception?

And again, there seems no reason for imagining that either came first.

The difference in sex is a great deal more superficial than is

generally supposed. It must be. It is aggravated by environment and

habit, training and physical processes, but it is not a fundamental

difference."

Kilner said:

"You may be right. You sometimes are. But for the purpose of my

picture Eve must be stupidly beautiful, just beauty and nothing else.

If you like I'll paint another Adam and Eve when he has begun to love

her, and through love has come to the desire of knowledge. But I'm

afraid her eyes will still be stupid, and she will still think him

rather a fool for desiring anything but her."

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