Bethnal Green. He was not poor then, not so very poor, he had the
clothes he stood up in (they were good clothes) and fifty pounds in
the bank besides. But although he had served the wall-paper man for
fifteen years that fifty pounds had not been derived from clerking,
he had earned it by means of his hobby, a little knack of writing
things for provincial newspapers. On his thirty-first birthday Finkle
argued—for he had a habit of conducting long and not unsatisfactory
discussions between himself and a self that apparently wasn’t him—that
what he could do reasonably well in his scanty leisure could be
multiplied exceedingly if he had time and opportunity, lived in the
country, somewhere where he could go into a garden to smell the roses
or whatever was blooming and draw deep draughts of happiness, think
his profound thoughts and realize the goodness of God, and then sit
and read right through some long and difficult book about Napoleon
or Mahomet. Bursting with literary ambition Finkle had hesitated no
longer: he could live on nothing in the country—for a time. He had
the fifty pounds, he had saved it, it had taken him seven years, but
he had made it and saved it. He handed in his notice. That was very
astonishing to his master, who esteemed him, but more astonishing to
Finkle was the parting gift of ten pounds which the master had given
him. The workmen, too, had collected more money for him, and bought
for him a clock, a monster, it weighed twelve pounds and had a brass
figure of Lohengrin on the top, while the serene old messenger man who
cleaned the windows and bought surreptitious beer for the clerks gave
him a prescription for the instantaneous relief of a painful stomach
ailment. “It might come in handy,” he had said. That was two years ago,
and now just think! He had bought himself an inkpot of crystalline
glass—a large one, it held nearly half a pint—and two pens, one for
red ink and one for black, besides a quill for signing his name with.
Here he was at “Pretty Peter” and the devil himself was in it! Nothing
had ever been right, the hamlet itself was poor. Like all places near
the chalk hills its roads were of flint, the church was of flint, the
farms and cots of flint with brick corners. There was an old milestone
outside his cot, he was pleased with that, it gave the miles to London
and the miles to Winchester, it was nice to have a milestone there like
that—your very own.
He finished shaving and threw open the cottage door; the scent of
wallflowers and lilac came to him as sweet almost as a wedge of newly
cut cake. The may bloom on his hedge drooped over the branches like
crudded cream, and the dew in the gritty road smelled of harsh dust in
a way that was pleasant. Well, if the cottage wasn’t much good, the bit
of a garden was all right.
There was a rosebush too, a little vagrant in its growth. He leaned
over his garden gate; there was no one in sight. He took out the fire
shovel and scooped up a clot of manure that lay in the road adjacent to
his cottage and trotted back to place it in a little heap at the root
of those scatter-brained roses, pink and bulging, that never seemed to
do very well and yet were so satisfactory.
“Nicish day,” remarked Finkle, lolling against his doorpost, “but
it’s always nice if you are doing a good day’s work. The garden is all
right, and literature is all right, and life’s all right—only I live
too much on porridge. It isn’t the privation itself, it’s the things
privation makes a man do. It makes a man do things he ought not want to
do, it makes him mean, it makes him feel mean, I tell you, and if he
feels mean and thinks mean he writes meanly, that’s how it is.”
He had written topical notes and articles, stories of gay life (of
which he knew nothing), of sport (of which he knew less), a poem about
“hope,” and some cheerful pieces for a girls’ weekly paper. And yet his
outgoings still exceeded his income, painfully and perversely after two
years. It was terrifying. He wanted success, he had come to conquer—not
to find what he _had_ found. But he would be content with encouragement
now even if he did not win success; it was absolutely necessary, he
had not sold a thing for six months, his public would forget him, his
connection would be gone.
“There’s no use though,” mused Finkle, as he scrutinized his worn
boots, “in looking at things in detail, that’s mean; a large view is
the thing. Whatever is isolated is bound to look alarming.”
But he continued to lean against the doorpost in the full blaze of the
stark, almost gritty sunlight, thinking mournfully until he heard the
porridge in the saucepan begin to bubble. Turning into the room he felt
giddy, and scarlet spots and other phantasmagoria waved in the air
before him.
Without an appetite he swallowed the porridge and ate some bread and
cheese and watercress. Watercress, at least, was plentiful there, for
the little runnels that came down from the big hills expanded in the
Predy Peter fields and in their shallow bottoms the cress flourished.
He finished his breakfast, cleared the things away, and sat down to
see if he could write, but it was in vain—he could not write. He could
think, but his mind would embrace no subject, it just teetered about
with the objects within sight, the empty, disconsolate grate, the
pattern of the rug, and the black butterfly that had hung dead upon
the wall for so many months. Then he thought of the books he intended
to read but could never procure, the books he had procured but did not
like, the books he had liked but was already, so soon, forgetting.
Smoking would have helped and he wanted to smoke, but he could not
afford it now. If ever he had a real good windfall he intended to buy a
tub, a little tub it would have to be of course, and he would fill it
to the bung with cigarettes, full to the bung, if it cost him pounds.
And he would help himself to one whenever he had a mind to do so.
“Bah, you fool!” he murmured, “you think you have the whole world
against you, that you are fighting it, keeping up your end with
heroism! Idiot! What does it all amount to? You’ve withdrawn yourself
from the world, run away from it, and here you sit making futile dabs
at it, like a child sticking pins into a pudding and wondering why
nothing happens. What _could_ happen? What? The world doesn’t know
about you, or care, you are useless. It isn’t aware of you any more
than a chain of mountains is aware of a gnat. And whose fault is
that—is it the mountains’ fault? Idiot! But I can’t starve and I must
go and get a job as a railway porter, it’s all I’m fit for.”
Two farmers paused outside Finkle’s garden and began a solid
conversation upon a topic that made him feel hungry indeed. He
listened, fascinated, though he was scarcely aware of it.
“Six-stone lambs,” said one, “are fetching three pounds apiece.”
“Ah!”
“I shall fat some.”
“Myself I don’t care for lamb, never did care.”
“It’s good eating.”
“Ah, but I don’t care for it. Now we had a bit of spare rib last night
off an old pig. ’Twas cold, you know, but beautiful. I said to my dame:
‘What can mortal man want better than spare rib off an old pig? Tender
and white, ate like lard.’”
“Yes, it’s good eating.”
“Nor veal, I don’t like—nothing that’s young.”
“Veal’s good eating.”
“Don’t care for it, never did, it eats short to my mind.”
Then the school bell began to ring so loudly that Finkle could hear
no more, but his mind continued to hover over the choice of lamb or
veal or old pork until he was angry. Why had he done this foolish
thing, thrown away his comfortable job, reasonable food, ease of mind,
friendship, pocket money, tobacco? Even his girl had forgotten him.
Why had he done this impudent thing, it was insanity surely? But he
knew that man has instinctive reasons that transcend logic, what a
parson would call the superior reason of the heart.
“I wanted a change, and I got it. Now I want another change, but
what shall I get? Chance and change, they are the sweet features of
existence. Chance and change, and not too much prosperity. If I were an
idealist I could live from my hair upwards.”
The two farmers separated. Finkle staring haplessly from his window saw
them go. Some schoolboys were playing a game of marbles in the road
there. Another boy sat on the green bank quietly singing, while one in
spectacles knelt slyly behind him trying to burn a hole in the singer’s
breeches with a magnifying glass. Finkle’s thoughts still hovered over
the flavours and satisfactions of veal and lamb and pig until, like
mother Hubbard, he turned and opened his larder.
There, to his surprise, he saw four bananas lying on a saucer. Bought
from a travelling hawker a couple of days ago they had cost him
threepence halfpenny. And he had forgotten them! He could not afford
another luxury like that for a week at least, and he stood looking at
them, full of doubt. He debated whether he should take one now, he
would still have one left for Wednesday, one for Thursday, and one
for Friday. But he thought he would not, he had had his breakfast
and he had not remembered them. He grew suddenly and absurdly angry
again. That was the worst of poverty, not what it made you endure, but
what it made you _want_ to endure. Why shouldn’t he eat a banana—why
shouldn’t he eat all of them? And yet bananas always seemed to him
such luxuriant, expensive things, so much peel, and then two, or not
more than three, delicious bites. But if he fancied a banana—there it
was. No, he did not want to destroy the blasted thing! No reason at
all why he should not, but that was what continuous hardship did for
you, nothing could stop this miserable feeling for economy now. If he
had a thousand pounds at this moment he knew he would be careful about
bananas and about butter and about sugar and things like that; but he
would never have a thousand pounds, nobody had ever had it, it was
impossible to believe that anyone had ever had wholly and entirely to
themselves a thousand pounds. It could not be believed. He was like a
man dreaming that he had the hangman’s noose around his neck; yet the
drop did not take place, it did not take place, and it would not take
place. But the noose was still there. He picked up the bananas one
by one, the four bananas, the whole four. No other man in the world,
surely, had ever had four such fine bananas as that and not wanted to
eat them? O, why had such stupid, mean scruples seized him again? It
was disgusting and ungenerous to himself, it made him feel mean, it
_was_ mean! Rushing to his cottage door he cried: “Here y’are!” to the
playing schoolboys and flung two of the bananas into the midst of them.
Then he flung another. He hesitated at the fourth, and tearing the peel
from it he crammed the fruit into his own mouth, wolfing it down and
gasping: “So perish all such traitors.”
When he had completely absorbed its savour, he stared like a fool
at the empty saucer. It was empty, the bananas were gone, all four
irrecoverably gone.
“Damned pig!” cried Finkle.
But then he sat down and wrote all this, just as it appears.
[Illustration: Publisher's device]
LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.