THE QUAINT COMPANIONS
BY
LEONARD MERRICK
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
H. G. WELLS
HODDER & STOUGHTON
LONDON--NEW YORK--TORONTO
1919
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor
free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus
Christ."--Galatians iii. 28.
INTRODUCTION
The chief fault of _The Quaint Companions_ is that it ends. Mr. Merrick
is no follower of the "well-made novel" school; he accepts his liberties
as an English novelist, and this book has not only the beginning and
middle and end of one story, but the beginning and some of the middle
of another. The intelligent reader would be the gladder if it went
on to that second end, and even then he might feel there was more to
be said. For this book is about the tragedy of racial miscegenation.
It is, perhaps, the most sympathetic and understanding novel, in its
intimate everyday way, about the clash of colour and race-prejudice
and racial quality that has ever been written in English, and its very
merits make its limitation of length and scope the more regrettable. It
is not a book to read alone. One should go from it to _Le Chat Maigre_
of M. Anatole France; and good collaterals to it would be Mr. Archer's
_Through Afro-America_ and Mr. Hesketh Prichard's _Where Black rules
White_.
On the whole the strength of the book lies rather in the earlier part
of it. Elisha Lee is the realest, most touching individuality in this
little piebald group of second-rate humanity. He has, as the vulgar
way of the studio puts it--_guts_. When he is hurt he swears, and the
heart of the reader responds. David Lee is a weakling, diffusing a
weakness over all the story of his development. The story loses spirit
as he replaces his father. He is sensitive without strength, and
expressive without pride. He _writes_. He wields what is ultimately
the most powerful weapon a man can take into his hand, the pen. He
has, we are told, the moving touch. What more is needed for pride and
happiness? Apparently the normal gratification of a healthy guinea-pig.
All Mr. Merrick's skill will not reconcile us to the pathos of David's
disappointment at the loss of a pretty fool, or make us see in him and
Bee anything more than two unreasonably despondent beings who have
merely to look up to rejoice in the gifts of understanding they possess.
This second story is not a tragedy, but a misunderstanding, and when Mr.
Merrick should begin to elucidate that, when, indeed, he has just got to
the gist of his enthralling subject and brought his Quaint Companions
together, he sounds a short unjustifiable note of sentimentality--and
ends.
Since 1900 when Mr. Merrick closed this story eighteen years have
passed. It is now possible to tell a little more of the fate of Bee
and David. They did come into closer juxtaposition even as Mr. Merrick
fore-shadowed. Indeed, availing themselves of the wilder courage of
these latter days, they married. They had no children. Bee developed a
practical side that was extraordinarily sustaining to David. She learnt
to write and he, adventuring beyond the delicacies of his earlier days,
began to produce short fantastic pieces of fiction that had an immense
vogue in America....
But why confine ourselves to the limit of 1918? Let us glance on a
few years. David's long-deferred success was now at hand. The younger
generation hailed him with the utmost delight, his name became almost
a symbol for the revolt against the lengthy, crowded novels of
Bennett, Merrick, Wells, Cannan, Compton Mackenzie and their elderly
contemporaries. David was inordinately praised by the aged but still
active Yeats, and elected an original member of the New Academy of
Literature which had just received its charter. Mr. Gosse was extremely
nice to him.... David's slight melancholy, his effect of ill-usage
patiently borne has never quite deserted him, and the subtle charm of
Bee's crumpled sweetness became more and more recognisable with the
passing of the years....
Perhaps, like the sailor who wanted to fight the villain of the play,
I have been a little carried away by the reality of the figures before
me. How real these people are! So real are they that one can take them
out of their author's hands and look at them in another light and not
destroy them. That is a very good test of created reality. Elisha Lee
is a memorable and unique figure. He stands for something that has
never been done in fiction before, and he is done so well that he must
necessarily become a type in our memories. He lives in my mind just
as Micawber or Peter Quint live. And I would never be surprised to
find myself in a railway carriage with Mrs. Lee and his stepson. How
disagreeable they would make the journey! Bee I did actually see the
other day, in the Hampstead tube; she did not look up, but I knew that
it was Bee. And how admirable, too, is Professor Sorrenford and his
comic opera!
But why go on? Yielding to a modern convention among publishers that
good wine needs a bush, and being eager to set my admiration for and
interest in Mr. Merrick on record, I have written this. But having
subscribed my testimony, I very cheerfully gesture the reader on to the
book.
H.G. WELLS.
CHAPTER I
Lee had not returned from the concert alone. Gregarious at all times,
he never found solitude so little to his taste as when he left the
platform--when he was still excited by the fervour of his voice and
the public's applause. Two of the other soloists had driven to the
hotel with him, and he had taken them up to his sitting-room to give
them champagne, and proffer fat cigars. Though his guests resented
his prosperity too bitterly to need reminding of it, he had changed
his dress-coat for a smoking-jacket of plum-coloured velvet and was
complacently conscious, as he crossed his slippered feet on the
window-sill, that neither of his fellow-artists would fail to notice
that he wore silk socks.
There was a pause in the vociferous conversation. Somewhere in the
distance a clock struck a quarter to one. Like his companions, he had
arrived here only in time for his engagement, but unlike them, he was
remaining a fortnight for his pleasure. His gaze wandered from their
sprawling forms to the view outside. The night was fair, and behind the
silent Parade the decorous sea of Brighton shimmered becomingly under a
full moon. Fifteen years had slipped by since he was in Brighton last,
and in his mind they were momentarily effaced. By a perfectly natural
process there rose in the stillness beyond the uncurtained window the
apparition of his First Love.
Neither of the other men in the room saw it. Indeed she lingered there
only an instant--just for a heart-beat--though some enchantment played
upon the scene after she had gone. Lee turned in his chair, and followed
the girl into the past. In reality he was thirty-one; in fancy he was
sixteen.
She had been beautiful. Even in retracing his youth by the light of
experience, he would not wrong her by a lesser word. She was beautiful,
and there was justification for his homage. But heavens! In retrospect
he was humiliated to perceive his shyness; he beheld his blunders and
his ignorance with dismay. How very young he had been at sixteen--how
very young, to be sure!
The discovery caused him a distinct shock, for at the time he was
convinced that he was exceedingly old for his age, and he had never been
back till now to see if it was true. He recollected the evening when she
first dazzled him; he had gone to the theatre here, and the overture was
not more than half over when his sight was smitten by a girl sitting in
the next row. She had the slightly disdainful air which becomes a girl
to whom the gods have been bountiful, and whose dressmaker has done her
duty. He watched her as man watches woman in the stage when he has yet
to realise that she is mortal. She was with a lady whose features seemed
familiar to him, and presently he remembered the lady's name. She was
Mrs. Tremlett, and the girl could be no other than "Ownie"--"Ownie" who,
when he stayed in their lodging-house a few summers since, had been in
short frocks. Of a truth it was a very pretty incident, and the ordinary
boy would have pronounced it "jolly luck"; but he--O lout! how stupid he
had been, how self-conscious and impossible.
"You and Ownie must want to talk over old times?" A simple, kindly soul,
the mother. He recalled her suggestion, and the divinity's involuntary
glance at her white kid glove as he released her hand. The sentiment of
the evening, his tremors and his painful struggle to think of something
to say recurred to him, though fifteen years had gone by since the
audience dispersed. As they streamed out, Ownie Tremlett had turned with
a smile to look at herself in a mirror in the vestibule. That was vivid,
the girl's movement, and the reflection of her figure with the flimsy
white thing over her hair--quick with the warmth of yesterday.
His absurdity of the following morning recurred to him too: he had
lately acquired a trick with a loop of string, and had tramped the town
tirelessly with a piece of string in his pocket, thrilling with the
thought that it might draw their heads together. He recollected that
at last he had met her, but that he didn't show her the trick after
all--somehow the careless reference to it that he had rehearsed stuck
to his tongue. He had said, "How d'ye do," and agreed that Brighton was
very full. There was a humming in his ears that dulled her voice, and he
had been obliged to keep clearing his throat. He was rather relieved to
bid her good-bye. Reviewing the period, he could not remember that there
had been any more, excepting that he had had the emotion of bowing to
her on several occasions. Yes, that was all that had happened really. In
the lyric that he made up about her, things had gone further--in that
he had saved her life, and married her--but actually he had said very
little, and forgotten her very soon.
Nevertheless she had been his First Love, and his thoughts strayed to
her--or to his own boyhood--tenderly to-night. He wondered if she lived
here still, and if it often surprised her to reflect that the lad whom
she had once known had risen to fame. She must be his own age, or rather
more; the fact struck him queerly. The cruelties of life had bruised her
now--Time had dimmed the radiance of the girl who had patted her golden
hair in the mirror. For years she had not flitted across his memory, but
being where he was, he saw her again. His interest revived, and gained
ephemeral strength. He hoped she was not unhappy.
The pause came to an end. One of the visitors yawned, and said something
about "making a move." Lee went downstairs with them, and they accepted
a cigar each from his jewelled case to smoke on their way.
"Of course he can't help it," said the 'cellist to the baritone
tentatively, as they got into stride, "but he does grate on a
gentleman's nerves a bit, eh?"
The baritone took his arm, and foresaw a cheerful walk.
"What can you expect of a nigger?" he said with a shrug. "I always say
it's a damned insult to us to put us in the same programme as a black
chap. Have you got a match?--this cigar isn't burning straight."
In the card-room the gas was still alight, and Lee went in for a minute
to open a local directory. He had forgotten the number, but her home
had been in Regency Square. The name of "Mrs. Tremlett" appeared
agreeably as the tenant of Sunnyview House. Ownie, no doubt, though, was
married.
His youth sang clear to him when he went to bed, and it was not entirely
mute next day. When he took a stroll after breakfast he smiled at
his idea, but turned attentive eyes and hoped for what he felt to be
unlikely. It was his humour to declare it possible that he might pass
her, and he thought that he would know her if they came face to face. So
Elisha Lee, the negro tenor, sauntered along the Brighton front, looking
for Ownie Tremlett where he had looked for her fifteen years before.