Nous ne dépendons point des constitutions ni des chartes, mais
des instincts et des moeurs.
INTELLECTUAL conversation is a very common vice among men who have
been subjected to what is called education. The wages of it is
commonly a brutal onslaught by the body upon the mind. The
intellectual is subject to accesses of bestiality unknown to the
manual laborer, who for that reason regards the cultured man with more
amusement and contempt than respect and envy.
It was impossible for René to surrender to his exasperated senses. He
was too certain of his goal for that, though he could not on any side
perceive a way that should lead him to it.
Ann was devoting herself entirely to Rita and her family. She would
emerge now and then to inspect him, and to make sure that he was not
straying from the path of good sense. She scolded him roundly for his
all-night sitting with Kilner--(she had seen the lighted window at two
o'clock)--much as the other women in the mews rated their men for
drinking or betting. Having delivered herself, she returned to her
usual attitude of indulgence and affection, kissed him, tidied his
hair and went back to her charges. That might have satisfied a navvy,
but it did not satisfy René. He was still mentally inflamed with
Kilner's talk, and he wanted very much to know if Ann thought him a
fool for desiring anything but her. He was fairly sure she did, but he
wanted to be thoroughly, painfully sure. The old reaction, you
perceive, from visionary enthusiasm to disgust.
His mood made him thoroughly, savagely approve of Mitcham Mews. It had
character; not a nice character, still an appreciable individual
quality. Almost all the other habitations he knew of in London were
uniforms, disguises. Even the delicious little houses in Westminster
were consciously Georgian or Queen Anne, part of an attitude. . . . He
was wearying of it all. He had caught something of Kurt's healthiness
and desired to do something that contained adventure and risk, and the
exercise of more than habitual skill. He hated being at the beck and
call of any man or woman who signed to him, and sometimes he gave
himself the pleasure of ignoring them if he did not like their looks.
Once when he had been summoned by whistle to a house in Bayswater, and
its door was opened to emit a large Jew and an expansive Gentile lady
of pleasure bent on an evening's snouting in the trough of the West
End, he put his fingers to his nose, and drove off as hard as he
could. That helped to put him on better terms with his rebellious
physical existence. He had insulted it. That was something.
But he could not subdue his excitement. He found two poor little
lovers in the Park one night, and took them out into the country free
of charge. That squared the outrage on the Jew. It was an active step
toward pure romance. The little lovers had occupied less and less
space in the car as he brought them home under the moon, and his
engine sang a droning bass to the song they were living.
And when he reached home he was brought hard up against the fact that
he was Ann's acknowledged lover, and that she was going to have a
child by him. It had, he knew, nothing in common with the Jew, but
also, he could not help feeling, it had lamentably little in common
with the young lovers. It was a fact like the nose on his face, a part
of himself, no getting away from it; a fact, however, that brought no
illumination. The nose on his face, he thought, must have been once a
brilliant discovery. It must have meant a revelation of noses that,
among other marvels, there were such things.
There was some zest in the fantastic agility of his intelligence, and
this kept him going.
One night as he was passing a glaring public-house in Chelsea, he
thought he saw his father go in by the door of the bar parlor. He drew
up, stopped his engine, and followed. Sure enough it was his father,
aged a little, grayer, but more sprucely clad. Mr. Fourmy was already
the center of a little group standing by the counter--painters,
models, and men who looked like actors. He was talking away, exactly
as he used to do in the Denmark, with the same result in laughter and
free drinks. René ordered a Bass and took it to a table at the side,
removed his peaked cap, and waited for his father to recognize him.
This Mr. Fourmy did in a few minutes, nodded with perfect coolness,
and went on with his talk. He kept it up for a few moments longer,
"touched" one of his hearers for half-a-crown, and, that done, let the
conversation flag, the group dissolve, and came over to his son.
They shook hands. René grinned as he saw his father's amazement at his
clothes.
"Well, I'm jiggered," said Mr. Fourmy, "I was fair flummoxed when I
saw your face. I didn't notice your togs. I never thought you would
come to this."
"I shouldn't have done any good in your profession, father."
"So you've learned some sauce. That's new."
"I've learned a good many things, father, and unlearned more."
"Have you learned what a rotten hole the world is?"
"No. I like it too much to think ill of it."
"Then you haven't had a really bad time. I hoped you'd have a filthy
time. You needed it badly, to let some of the gas out of you."
"It's been bad enough," said René. "And there's worse ahead. Are you
living in London?"
"I've been here some time. It's a dung-heap. I shall go over to Paris.
I'd rather die there than anywhere. There is French blood in us, I
believe, and I never could stomach the English and their hypocritical
ways. What did they say of Gladstone? 'Plays with the ace up his
sleeve, and pretends God put it there.' That's the English way. I like
blackguards. I'm a blackguard myself, but I think God ought to be kept
out of it. . . . You're looking fit."
"I'm fit enough. George told me you'd left. I'd like to know why. I
don't want to open old scores or inquire into your private affairs,
but it seemed to me that my mother was very good to you when you came
back."
"Well---- It was the same old trouble. Religion. Marriage is none too
easy, as you seem to have found. You can worry through if you play
fair and fight through the emotional storms that threaten to drown
you. Now it isn't fair for a man to draw off his emotional
disturbances in drink or money-making or gambling or flirtation; and
it isn't fair for a woman to draw off hers in religion. Women are
devils at that. They go off to church and come back as cold as ice,
with their hands full of little parcels of principles and precepts,
all forgiveness and humility and submission and iron virtue. Some men
can live with it. I can't. That's the whole story."
"Thank you," said René.
"Now, don't think hardly of your mother. She was brought up to think
all men horrible, and she never got over it. I was wild and
idiotically affectionate, and couldn't understand why she held back
so. When I did understand, the mischief was done; she was hurt and
scared, and kept you boys from me. Didn't want you ever to be men--as
if she could prevent it! She did try with me when I came back. Perhaps
she'd seen and felt more than I thought. It wasn't all church nonsense
about accepting your husband, however loathsome he may be to you. Your
going off like that set her back again, and back she went to her
church. She thought it was all my doing, and perhaps it was."
"No, no," said René.
"I think it was. I ought to have seen that I wasn't fit company for
anyone I loved. Too far gone, I suppose, too far gone."
"I'd like you to know that I'm glad it happened. It has saved me from
going through life with my eyes shut. I've met good people and
understood their goodness. And I've met miserable failures and seen
how even they have some sweetness in their lives. And I owe it to you,
father, that I have seen the wildness of life beneath the trumpery
policing we call civilization, and now I feel that I shall never be
blind to it."
"That's all right," said his father, "if you don't let the wildness
break up your own self-control. That's what happened to me. Queer how
clever two men can be when they understand each other. Can you lend me
half-a-sovereign, and then I'll have enough to take me over to Paris?"
René gave his father ten shillings in silver, they shook hands, the
old man patting the younger's shoulder, and they quitted the bar
parlor together.
As René was starting his engine, a lady came up and asked him to take
her to an address in Holland Park. He did so. The lady looked at him
curiously as she paid the fare, walked to the gate of the house,
turned, hesitated, then came back.
"Excuse me," she said, "you are so like someone I used to know. Aren't
you Mr. Fourmy?"
He looked at her, seemed to remember her, but could not place her,
though he thought dimly of Scotland.
"Yes," he said, "that's my name."
"Mine," she said, "was Rachel Bentley. I'm married now. I recognized
you at once. I was so interested coming along. I hope nothing has----"
"Oh, no," said he, smiling, "I never had any money, you know. I
drifted into this. I like it."
"I only thought," she said vaguely. "I mean-- Oh, it doesn't matter.
I'm glad it isn't that. Good-by."
She seemed embarrassed by her own generous impulse, and it was a
relief to him when she turned away. He waited for a moment to see if
it was her own house. She opened the door with a key. He took note of
the number, and, as he passed, of the cab-rank at the end of the road.
It was some time before he knew why he had done this, many hours
before he was confronted with the image of Cathleen Bentley, in the
woods of Scotland; Cathleen shaking the bracken from her hair, smiling
up at him in the musing, perplexed happiness of her youth.