THE BREAKING-POINT
The boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long illness ended in
natural death. There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no
self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs
were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'--people who couldn't
pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies. As
two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the
profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house
world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable.
All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the
Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza
and went out to look for jobs, couldn't find one. Again and again he was
curtly refused employment, by editors and others. Every night he came
home a little more bitter than the day before. Peter too, while he lay
mending of his breakages, received a letter from the place of business he
adorned informing him that it would not trouble him further. He had never
been much use to it; he had been taken on at Leslie's request and given a
trial; but it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly admitted.
"Well," he commented, "I suppose one must do something else, eventually.
But I shall put off reflecting on that till I can move about more
easily."
Hilary said, "We are being hounded out of London as we were hounded out
of Venice. It is unbearable. What remains?"
"Nothing, that I can see at the moment," said Peter, laughing weakly.
"Ireland," said Peggy suddenly. "Let's go there. Dublin's worth a dozen
of this hideous old black dirty place. You could get work on 'The
Nationalist,' Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship's just been
given to my cousin Larry Callaghan. Come along to the poor old country,
and we'll try our luck again."
"Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live in," said Hilary,
but mainly from habit. "Still, I presume one must live somewhere, so ..."
He turned to Peter. "Where shall you and Thomas live?"
Peter flushed slightly. He had supposed that he and Thomas were also to
live in the unspeakable Dublin.
"Oh, we haven't quite made up our minds. I must consult Thomas about it."
"But," broke in Peggy, "of course you're coming with us, my dear. What do
you mean? You're not surely going to desert us now, Peter?"
Peter glanced at Hilary. Hilary said, pushing his hair, with his restless
gesture, from his forehead, "Really, Peggy, we can't drag Peter about
after us all our lives; it's hardly fair on him to involve him in all
our disasters, when he has more than enough of his own."
"Indeed and he has. Peter's mischancier than you are, Hilary, on the
whole, and I will not leave him and Tommy to get lost or broken by
themselves. Don't be so silly, Peter; of course you're coming with us."
"I think," said Peter, "that Thomas and I will perhaps stay in London.
You see, _I_ can't, probably, get work on 'The Nationalist' and it's
doubtful what I could do in Dublin. I suppose I can get work of a sort
in London; enough to provide Thomas with milk, though possibly not all
from one cow."
"I daresay. And who'd look after the mite, I'd like to know, while you're
earning his milk?"
"Oh, the landlady, I should think. Everyone likes Thomas; he's remarkably
popular."
Afterwards Hilary said to Peggy, "Really, Peggy, I see no reason why
Peter should be dragged about with us in the future. The joint _ménage_
has not, in the past, been such a success that we need want to perpetuate
it. In fact, though, of course, it is pleasant to have Peter in the
house...."
"Indeed it is, the darling," put in Peggy.
"One can't deny that disasters have come upon us extraordinarily fast
since he came to live with us in Venice two years ago. First he
discovered things that annoyed him in my private affairs, which was
extremely disagreeable for all of us, and really he was rather
unnecessarily officious about that; in fact, I consider that it was owing
largely to the line he took that things reached their final very trying
_dénouement_. Since then disaster upon disaster has come upon us; Peter's
unfortunate marriage, and consequent serious expenses, including the
child now left upon his hands (really, you know, that was an exceedingly
stupid step that Peter took; I tried to dissuade him at the time, but of
course it was no use). And he is so very frequently ill; so am I, you
will say"--(Peggy didn't, because Hilary wasn't, as a matter of fact, ill
quite so often as he believed)--"but two crocks in a household are twice
as inconvenient as one. And now there has been this unpleasant jar with
the Urquharts. Peter, by his rudeness to them, has finally severed the
connection, and we can hope for nothing from that quarter in future. And
I am not sure that I choose to have living with me a much younger brother
who has influential friends of his own in whom he insists that we shall
have neither part nor lot. I strongly object to the way Peter spoke to us
on that occasion; it was extremely offensive."
"Oh, don't be such a goose, Hilary. The boy only lost his temper for a
moment, and I'm sure that happens seldom enough. And as to the rest of
it, I don't like the way you speak of him, as if he was the cause of our
mischances, and as if his being so mischancey himself wasn't a reason why
we should all stick together, and him with that scrap of a child, too;
though I will say Peter's a handier creature with a child than anyone
would think. I suppose it's the practice he's had handling other costly
things that break easy.... Well, have it your own way, Hilary. Only mind,
if Peter _wants_ to come with us, he surely shall. I'm not going to leave
him behind like a left kitten. And I'd love to have him, for he makes
sunshine in the house when things are blackest."
"Lately Peter has appeared to me to be rather depressed," said Hilary,
and Peggy too had perceived that this was so. It was something so new in
Peter that it called for notice.
There was needed no further dispute between Peggy and Hilary, for Peter
said that he and Thomas preferred to stay in London.
"I can probably find a job of some sort to keep us. I might with luck
get a place as shop-walker. That always looks a glorious life. You merely
walk about and say, 'Yes, madam? This way for hose, madam.' Something
to live on and nothing to do, as the poet says. But I expect they are
difficult places to get, without previous experience. Short of that,
I could be one of the men round stations that open people's cab doors
and take the luggage out; or even a bus-conductor, who knows? Oh,
there are lots of openings. But in Dublin I feel my talents might be
lost.... Thomas and I will move into more modest apartments, and go in
for plain living and high thinking."
"You poor little dears," said Peggy, and kissed both of them. "Well,
it'll be plain living for the lot of us, that's obvious, and lucky too
to get that.... I'd love to have you two children with us, but ..."
But Peter, to whom other people's minds were as books that who runs may
read, had no intention of coming with them. That faculty of intuition of
Peter's had drawbacks as well as advantages. He knew, as well as if
Hilary had said so, that Hilary considered their life together a
disastrous series of mishaps, largely owing to Peter, and that he did not
desire to continue it. He knew precisely what was Denis Urquhart's point
of view and state of feelings towards himself and his family, and how
unbridgeable that gulf was. He knew why Lucy was stopping away, and
would stop away (for if other people's thoughts were to him as pebbles in
running water, hers were pebbles seen white and lucid in a still, clear
pool). And he knew very well that he relieved Peggy's kind heart when he
said he and Thomas would stop in London; for to Peggy anything was better
than to worry her poor old Hilary more than need be.
So, before March was out, about St. Cuthbert's day, in fact, Hilary
Margerison and his family left England for a more distressful country,
to seek their fortunes fresh, and Peter and his family sought modest
apartments in a little street behind St. Austin's Church, where the
apartments are very modest indeed.
"Are they too modest for you, Thomas?" Peter asked dubiously. "And do you
too much hate the Girl?"
The Girl was the landlady's daughter, and undertook for a small
consideration to look after Thomas while Peter was out, and feed him at
suitable intervals. Thomas and Peter did rather hate her, for she was a
slatternly girl, matching her mother and her mother's apartments, and
didn't always take her curlers off till the evening, and said "Boo" to
Thomas, merely because he was young--a detestable habit, Peter and
Thomas considered. Peter had to make a great deal of sensible
conversation to Thomas, to make up.
"I'm sorry," Peter apologised, "but, you see, Thomas, it's all we can
afford. You don't earn anything at all, and I only earn a pound a week,
which is barely enough to keep you in drink. I don't deserve even that,
for I don't address envelopes well; but I suppose they know it's such a
detestable job that they haven't the face to give me less."
Peter was addressing envelopes because a Robinson relative had given him
the job, and he hadn't the nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse
it, because of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would probably have
chosen instead to sweep a crossing or play a barrel-organ, or stand at
a street corner with outstretched hat (though this last would only have
done for a summer engagement, as Peter didn't like the winds that play
round street corners in winter). But Thomas was very much there, and had
to be provided for; so Peter copied letters and addressed envelopes and
earned twenty shillings weekly, and out of it paid for Thomas's drink and
Thomas's Girl and his own food, and beds and a sitting-room and fires
and laundry for both, and occasional luxuries in the way of wooden
animals for Thomas to play with. So they were not extremely poor; they
were respectably well-to-do. For Thomas's sake, Peter supposed it was
worth while not to be extremely poor, even though it meant addressing
envelopes and living in a great grey prison-house of a city, where one
only surmised the first early pushings of the spring beyond the
encompassing gloom.
Peter used to tell Thomas about that, in order that he might know
something of the joyous world beyond the walls. He told Thomas in March,
taking time by the forelock, about the early violets that were going some
time to open blue eyes in the ditches by the roads where the spring winds
walk; about the blackthorn that would suddenly make a white glory of the
woods; about the green, sticky budding of the larches, and the keen sweet
smell of them, and the damp fragrance of the roaming wind that would blow
over river-flooded fields, smelling of bonfires and wet earth. He took
him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden armies of the
daffodils that marched out for Easter, and the fragrant white glory of
the may; and the pale pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy
of buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and munch, in order to
give Thomas sweet white milk.
"Ugh," said Thomas, making a face, and Peter answered, "Yes, I know;
sometimes they come upon an onion-flower and eat that, and that's not
nice, of course. But mostly it's grass and buttercups and clover." Then
he told him of hot July roads, where the soft white dust lies, while the
horses and the cows stand up to their middles in cool streams beneath the
willows and switch their tails, and the earth dreams through the year's
hot noon; and of August, the world's welfare and the earth's warming-pan,
and how, in the fayre rivers, swimming is a sweet exercise. "And my
birthday comes then. Oh, 'tis the merry time, wherein honest neighbours
make good cheer, and God is glorified in his blessings on the earth.
Then cometh September, Thomas"--Peter was half talking, half reading out
of a book he had got to amuse Thomas--"then cometh September, and then he
(that's you, Thomas) doth freshly beginne to garnish his house and make
provision of needfull things for to live in winter, which draweth very
nere.... There are a few nice things in September; ripe plums and pears
and nuts--(no, nuts aren't nice, because our teeth aren't good, are they;
at least mine aren't, and you've only got one and a half); but anyhow,
plums, and a certain amount of yellow sunshine, and Thomas's birthday.
But on the whole it's too near the end of things; and in briefe, I thus
conclude of it, I hold it the Winter's forewarning and the Summer's
farewell. Adieu.... We won't pursue the year further, my dear; the rest
is silence and impenetrable gloom, anyhow in this corner of the world,
and doesn't bear thinking about."
Thus did Peter talk to Thomas of an evening, when they sat together after
tea over the fire.
Sometimes he told him news of the world of men. One evening he said to
him, very gently and pitifully, "Dear old man, your mother's dead. For
her sake, one's glad, I suppose. You and I must try to look at it from
her point of view. She's escaped from a poor business. Some day I'll read
you the letter she wrote to you and me as she lay dying; but not yet, for
I never read you sad things, do I? But some day you may be glad to know
that she had thoughts for you at the last. She was sorry she left us,
Thomas; horribly, dreadfully sorry.... I wish she hadn't been. I wish
she could have gone on being happy till the end. It was my fault that she
did it, and it didn't even make her happy. And I suppose it killed her at
the last; or would she anyhow have escaped that way before long? But I
took more care of her than he did.... And now she'll never come back to
us. I've thought sometimes, Thomas, that perhaps she would; that perhaps
she would get tired of him, so tired that she would leave him and come
back to us, and then you'd have had a mother to do for you instead of
only me and the Girl. Poor little Thomas; you'll never have a mother now.
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry about it. Sorry for you, and sorry for her, and
sorry for all of us. It's a pitiful world, Thomas, it seems. I wonder how
you're going to get through it."
Never before had he talked to Thomas like that. He had been used to speak
to him of new-burnisht joys and a world of treasure. But of late Peter
had been conscious of increasing effort in being cheerful before Thomas.
It was as if the little too much that breaks had been laid upon him and
under it he was breaking. For the first time he was seeing the world not
as a glorious treasure-place full of glad things for touch and sight and
hearing, full of delightful people and absurd jokes, but as a grey and
lonely sea through which one drifted rudderless towards a lee shore. He
supposed that there was, somewhere, a lee shore; a place where the winds,
having blown their uttermost, ceased to blow, and where wrecked things
were cast up at last broken beyond all mending and beyond all struggling,
to find the peace of the utterly lost. He had not got there yet; he and
his broken boat were struggling in the grey cold waters, which had swept
all his cargo from him, bale by bale. From him that hath not shall indeed
be taken away even that which he hath.
It was Thomas who caused Peter to think of these things newly; Thomas,
who was starting life with so poor a heritage. For Thomas, so like
himself, Peter foresaw the same progressive wreckage. Thomas too, having
already lost a mother, would lose later all he loved; he would give to
some friend all he was and had, and the friend would drop him in the mud
and leave him there, and the cold bitterness as of death would go over
Thomas's head. He would, perhaps, love a woman too, and the woman would
leave him quite alone, not coming near him in his desolation, because he
loved her. He would also lose his honour, his profession, and the
beautiful things he loved to handle and play with. "And then, when you've
lost everything, and perhaps been involved in some of my disgraces,
you'll think that at least you and I can stick together and go under
together and help each other a little. And I daresay you'll find that
I shall say, 'No, I'm going off to Ireland, or Italy, or somewhere; I've
had enough of you, and you can jolly well sink or swim by yourself'--so
you see you won't have even me to live for in the end, just when you want
me most. That's the sort of thing that happens.... Oh, what chance have
you?" said Peter very bitterly, huddled, elbows on knees, over the chilly
fire, while Thomas slumbered in a shawl on the rug.
Bitterness was so strange in Peter, so odd and new, that Thomas was
disturbed by it, and woke and wailed, as if his world was tumbling about
his ears.
Peter too felt it strange and new, and laughed a little at it and himself
as he comforted Thomas. But his very laughter was new and very dreary. He
picked Thomas up in his arms and held him close, a warm little whimpering
bundle. Then it was as if the touch of the small live thing that was his
own and had no one in the world but him to fend for it woke in him a new
instinct. There sprang up in him swiftly, new-born out of the travail of
great bitterness, a sharp anger against life, against fate, against the
whole universe of nature and man. To lose and lose and lose--how that
goes on and on through a lifetime! But at last it seems that the limit is
reached, something snaps and breaks, and the loser rises up, philosopher
no more, to take and grasp and seize. The lust to possess, to wring
something for Thomas and himself out of life that had torn from them so
much--it sprang upon him like a wild beast, and fastened deep fangs into
his soul and will.
Outside, a small April wind stirred the air of the encompassing city, a
faint breath from a better world, seeming to speak of life and hope and
new beginnings.
Peter, laying Thomas gently on a chair, went to the open window and leant
out, looking into the veil of the unhappy streets that hid an exquisite
world. Exquisiteness was surely there, as always. Mightn't he too, he and
Thomas, snatch some of it for themselves? The old inborn lust for things
concrete, lovely things to handle and hold, caught Peter by the throat.
In that hour he could have walked without a scruple into an empty house
or shop and carried away what he could of its beauties, and brought them
home to Thomas, saying, "Anyhow, here's something for us to go on with."
He was in the mood in which some people take to drink, only Peter didn't
like any drinks except non-alcoholic ones; or to reckless gambling, only
he didn't find gambling amusing; or to some adventure of love, only to
Peter love meant one thing only, and that was beyond his reach.
But when he had put Thomas to bed, in his little common cheap night-shirt,
he went out into the streets with his weekly earnings in his pockets and
spent them. He spent every penny he had. First he went to a florist's and
bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves. Then he went to a toyshop and
got a splendid family of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah's
Ark, and a flute. He had spent all his money by then, so he pawned his
watch and signet ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and
a rocking cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he badly wanted
some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures that at
present adorned the sitting-room. Thomas and he must have something nice
and gay to look at, instead of the Royal Family and the Monarch of the
Glen and "Grace Sufficient" worked in crewels. So he went into a shop in
Holborn and chose some paintings, and ordered them to be sent up, and
said, "Please enter them to me," so firmly that they did. Having done
that once, he repeated it at several other shops, and sometimes they
obeyed him and sometimes said that goods could not be sent up without
pre-payment. Pre-payment (or, indeed, as far as Peter could look forward,
post-payment) being out of the question, those goods had to be left where
they were. But Peter, though handicapped by shabby attire, had an
engaging way with him, and most shopmen are trustful and obliging. If
they lost by the transaction, thought Peter recklessly, it was their turn
to lose, not his. It was his turn to acquire, and he had every intention
of doing so. He had a glorious evening, till the shops shut. Then he went
home, and found that the daffodils had come, and he filled the room with
them, converting its dingy ugliness into a shining glory. Then he took
down all the horrible pictures and texts and stacked them behind the
sofa, awaiting the arrival of the Japanese paintings. He thought Thomas
would like the paintings as much as he did himself. Their room in future
should be a bright and pleasant place, fit for human beings to live in.
He cleared the chimney-piece of its horrid, tinkling ornaments to leave
space for his brown pottery jars full of daffodils. He put the ornaments
with the pictures behind the sofa, and when the Girl came in with his
supper requested her at her leisure to remove them.
"I have been getting some new pictures, you see," he told her, and was
annoyed at the way her round eyes widened. Why shouldn't he get as many
new pictures as he chose, without being gaped at?
There was more gaping next day, when his purchases were sent up. He had
warned his landlady and the Girl beforehand, that they might not tell the
messengers it must be a mistake and send them away, on what would, no
doubt be their stupid and impertinent impulse. So they gaped and took
them in, and Peter hurried back early from his work and fetched Thomas
in to watch him open parcels and admire the contents. He spread bright
rugs over the horse-hair sofa and chairs, and flung big soft cushions
about them, and said "Hurrah! The first time I've been really comfortable
since I left Cambridge." Then he bathed Thomas and put him into a new
little soft cambric night-shirt, and put him to bed in the rocking-cradle.
Thomas was delighted with it all. He had no doubt inherited Peter's
love of all things bright and beautiful, and now for the first time he
had them.
"That's more the style, isn't it, old man?" said Peter, stretching
himself among cushions in the arm-chair. Thomas agreed that it was, and
the two epicureans took their ease among the pleasures of the senses.
"What next?" Peter wondered. "We must have more things still, mustn't we?
Nice things of all sorts; not only the ones we can buy. But we must begin
with the ones we can buy.... Mrs. Baker will have to wait for her rent
for a time; I can't spare any for that.... I've a good mind, Thomas, to
take a whole holiday; a long one. Chuck the envelopes and take to living
like a lord, on tick. It's wonderful how far tick will carry you, if you
try. Muffins for tea, you see, Thomas, only you can't have any. Well,
what's the matter? Why shouldn't I have muffins for tea? You've got
milk, haven't you, and I'm not getting a share in that. Don't be
grudging.... But we want more than muffins and milk, Thomas; and more
than cushions and daffodils and nice pictures. We want a good time. We
want friends; we want someone to love us; we want a holiday. If Leslie
was in England I'd go and say, 'Thomas and I are coming to stay with you
for a time, and you've just got to fork out supplies for us and let us
spend them.' Leslie would do it, too. But people are always away when
one wants them most.... Oh, hang it all, Thomas, I'm not going on with
those horrible envelopes; I'm not. I'm going to do things I like. Why
shouldn't I? Why _shouldn't_ I? Lots of people do; all the best people.
I shall give notice to-morrow. No, I shan't; I shall just not turn up,
then I shan't be bothered with questions.... And we're not going on with
the friends we have here--Mrs. Baker, and the Girl, and the other
envelope-gummers. No; we're going to insist on having nice amusing
friends to play with; friends who are nicer than we are. The Girl isn't
so nice, not by a long way. Rodney is; but he's too busy to be bothered
with us much. We want friends of leisure. We will have them; we _will_.
Why should we be chucked out and left outside people's doors, just
because they're tired of us? The thing that matters is that we're not
tired of them.... To-morrow, Thomas, you and I are going down to a place
called Astleys, in Berkshire, to visit some friends of ours. If they
don't want us, they can just lump us; good for them. Why should they
always have only the things they want? Be ready at nine, old man, and
we'll catch a train as soon after that as may be."
Thomas laughed, thinking it a splendid plan. He had never seen Astleys in
Berkshire, but he knew it to be a good place, from Peter's voice when he
mentioned it.
"But I don't want to excite you so late at night," said Peter, "so don't
think any more about it, but go to sleep, if you've finished that milk.
Does your head ache? Mine does. That's the worst of weak heads; they
always ache just when things are getting interesting. But I don't care;
we're going to have things--things to like; we're going to get hold of
them somehow, if we die in gaol for it; and that's worth a headache or
two. Someone says something about having nothing and yet possessing all
things; it's one of the things with no meaning that people do say, and
that make me so angry. It ought to be having nothing and _then_
possessing all things; because that's the way it's going to be with us.
Good night, Thomas; you may go to sleep now."
Thomas did so; and Peter lay on the sofa and gazed at the daffodils in
the brown jars that filled the room with light.