FIRST THE BLADE
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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FIRST THE BLADE
A COMEDY OF GROWTH
BY
CLEMENCE DANE
Author of “Regiment of Women”
First the blade, then the ear, after that
the full corn in the ear.
St. Mark 4.28
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
All rights reserved
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COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY CLEMENCE DANE
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Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1918
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Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past
and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another—not one,
Not one can grow for another—not one.
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail,
─────────────────────
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the
indication of his own.
WALT WHITMAN.
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FIRST THE BLADE
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FIRST THE BLADE
CHAPTER I
‘Once upon a time’—and we pull in our deep chairs, you quietly, I with a
quick impatient jerk that scrabbles up the hearth-rug and worries your
tidy soul. But you yourself have forgotten the blinds! Draw them close,
lest the Zeppelins catch us at our story-telling, whilst I put the
carpet to rights again and pile up logs (we sawed them ourselves, didn’t
we?) upon the fire. One must save the electricity these hard times. And
now—you have your knitting and I the fountain-pen you gave me: it has
not run out, for a wonder! pen and fat, blank scribbling book. Are you
ready? The postman has gone by for the last time tonight—no letters—but
the news was not so bad today—the Russians have taken prisoners—our
front is quiet—we dare forget the war for an hour.
Think—we are beginning a book! Do you remember our breathless hour three
years ago? We were overwhelmed by our own daring—such grubs as we, to
dream of spreading wings, real, published, book-cover wings, black or
red (you were soberly for black, of course, and I for red) with gilt
lettering across them. In anticipation we enjoyed ourselves so hugely
that the book itself had much ado to get written at all. But the war has
ended that keen pleasure of ours, as it has ended better things. We
begin soberly now-a-days—‘Once upon a time——’
Once upon a time, before the war——
You know, Adam and Eve must have reckoned that way! Can’t you hear them
telling stories to Cain and little Abel?
‘Ever so long ago, when the tree of knowledge was still pink——’
‘Once upon a time, before the apples were ripe——’
Even so, Collaborator (clumsy title, but even in the _Imperial
Dictionary_ it has no synonym) even so—once upon a time, before the war,
there lived a hero and a heroine—and their relations.
And, you know, we got as far as that four months ago.
It’s not so easy, writing a book!
Let us run over our facts.
The hero is called Justin, and the girl, Laura—Laura Valentine. I know
you dislike it, but it is my turn to choose, and honestly, if you think
it over, you will find that ‘Laura’ is the only name for her. She is
real enough already to make me sure of that. Laura—grave, graceful,
ageless word, fits like a glove my Laura, our Laura, so unmodern in her
ways and thoughts, for all she was born in ’94. Yet the name stands, to
you, for ringlets and bottleneck shoulders, for simpers and sighs and
_Harry and Lucy_? But those were its evil days, when it was befrilled
and crinolined by the same spirit that figleafs Apollo and measures the
Milo Venus for a pair of stays. The name has older memories, older even
than its Italian gardens and passionate poets, memories old as sunshine
and song and the laurel-tree itself. Indeed, that enchanted bush, that
grave tree with blood-red berries, that panting girl within stiff bark
and quiet leaves, reminds me not a little of Laura, our own bewildered
Laura, when Love, the crazy torch-bearer, came rioting down the
Brackenhurst lanes, to break through the garden fences of her ignorance,
and, entering, set the quiet house of her mind afire.
And so, unless you insist, we will keep the name: it has taught us
already something about her.
What is she like—to look at?
She is shadowy as yet, but I think you said, and I agreed, that she has
soft, shining eyes—shining, not sparkling—and is wonderfully light on
her feet. I think, what with the sway of her pretty figure, and her
quick white hands that are the only restless things about her, she has,
though she is not a little woman, a fugitive, thistledown air, that
makes you want to dance with her. Yet she cannot dance: never troubled
to learn. Dancing bored Justin. Her dancing days were over before she
learned that it is not always wise to humour Justin.
Thus far Laura Valentine. The name grows on you, doesn’t it? That is why
you are such a perfect Collaborator. I can always persuade you into
agreeing with me.
But ‘Justin’—less easy to conceive, eh? Yet, knowing Laura as little
even as we do, he should be obvious—prose to her verse: she, the glove
for his hand: the red and white halves of an apple. Laura implies Justin
as day implies night, winter—summer, sunshine—rain. We should be
justified in leaving them, at the end, wooed and wedded and a’, in a
very rainbow of happiness. And yet—I doubt.
They fit too well, complement each other too perfectly. I foresee
complications. Suppose—only suppose—that, nicely adjusted as their ages
are with seven years between them in the love season, there should yet
be a hitch? She, as girls do, may have grown in a day, an hour, in the
swiftness of a handshake, into a woman: have entered into that heritage
of knowledge, and instinct that is more than knowledge, that Lilith
willed her, and Helen perfected, and Rachel and Monica, Grizel and
Mother Goose, have all passed on: while he? Suppose that he does not
grow up at all? I only say, suppose! I have not as yet an idea of how
the story develops. We are still groping for our hero—don’t even know if
he were short or tall.
What have you fancied, of all possible types? You must distinguish, you
know, between the Justin of Laura’s fantasy, Jupiter Tonans when he is
not Tom-Fool, and the Justin of sheer fact, who, worthy man, has not the
imagination to be either. You must not protest. He is, as Laura and his
mother are fond of agreeing, a dear, an utter dear, if you like (I never
know which face is the prettier to watch as they say it) but
imaginative, never! Not, at least, as far as the story has run. We are
discussing the middle of the book by now, have hurried on so, shall have
to go back to our beginnings soon. Let us hope people will not find it
confusing. Not, I repeat, dear solemn man, with one lonely spark of
imagination—and little enough humour. Collaborator, he positively must
not have a sense of humour or he would never collect birds’ eggs. And it
is essential, as you will see later, that he should collect birds’
eggs—with passion. We were saying that he possibly does not grow-up at
all. ‘Grow’ would perhaps be the better word, for, in a sense he has
been, at every age, definitely grown-up; has indeed, except for the
birds’ eggs, never been youthful. There are some early photographs....
(No, there are none of Laura—she was a high-tempered child. She sat
still once for love of a non-existent canary, but you did not deceive
her twice.) But Justin ‘took’ beautifully. In all the innumerable
pictures his bright squirrel of a mother never tired of showing Laura,
he is exactly the same. Justin with rattle: Justin enjoying his toe:
Justin with spade and pail and a seascape: Justin with blazer and bat:
Justin and a smudge of moustache: Justin aggressively clean-shaven:
Justin at any age from three to thirty; but never the incipient Justin,
the developing Justin, never grub and chrysalis and moth, but Justin
Homunculus, Justin in enlargement, never Justin in growth.
Pleasant, yellowed pictures, for all that, of a squarish face with an
obstinate mouth and intent, solemn eyes. Solemnity is perhaps the first
quality that would be impressed upon you if you should interview Justin.
Here, you would perceive, was one who took life, revolving as it did
upon the axis of Henry Justin Cloud, with becoming gravity. He was not
pompous, but his slow-moving mind would be alarming because its very
intentness upon such facts as it grasped rendered it unobservant, to the
point of inhumanity, of anything to which its attention had not been
attracted. And you would not find its attention easy to attract. Upon
your honour, unless you were careful, you might find yourself at times,
his creator though you were, a trifle in awe of Justin. Laura certainly
was. This, you know, is curious, for, as a rule, nothing but a keen
sense of humour can wake in a man’s eye that comprehending twinkle that
alone intimidates a woman of poise. And Justin, we know, had no sense of
humour at all.
What? You protest once more that without a sense of humour he cannot be
a hero? I am shocked. Who are we, to fall foul of _Henry V_, and _Mr.
Rochester_, and _Garth Dalmain_? Nevertheless, if you insist——
To tell you the truth, I am rather glad that you do insist. Unless our
hero and our heroine have a sense of humour there is no chance at all of
a happy ending: and in these days a happy ending, for a conscientious
scribbler holding the mirror to nature, would be so manifestly untrue to
life, would be so consequently inartistic, would be, in short, such a
blessed relief, that one is tempted to leave a small chance, a stray peg
on which to hang a wedding garment, should sir and lady, at the last,
combine to send out invitations and include their chroniclers.
So Justin is to have an embryonic sense of humour; that is to say, he
shall have, at least, eyes in his head, and will one day, you are sure
and I hope, learn to see with them; but at the crisis of his life I fear
he will be still purblind, wearing the pedantry his own spiritual myopia
has induced, like smoke-coloured spectacles upon his Roman nose.
Thus far, in his turn, Henry Justin Cloud. He has stirred at last, and
the girl with him, in the shadows of this half-planned tale in which we,
too, wander uncertainly, ignorant of their story, guessing at their
fate, knowing only, with a touch of awe, that out of nothingness they
have been born and must continue, linked and struggling, to an
appointed, undiscovered end.
And here, suddenly, in the vague muddle of my mind or yours, but as
certainly as if he were sitting beside us, Justin lights his pipe. And
the spark, flaring up like a thought, shows Laura at his elbow, shows
how soft and pale and eager her face is as she looks at him—and that she
has beech-red hair. And the light fades again more quickly even than it
came, and leaves us still sitting over the fire, but with two new, solid
facts to guide us: Laura, we have seen it with our eyes, loves Justin,
and Justin loves, at least, his pipe. Which, for one evening’s work,
Collaborator, is not so bad!
Time for bed, I think. But tomorrow, if the news is good, and war-work
done, and it is too rainy to garden, we will pull up our chairs again,
and perhaps, with luck, get on with Chapter Two.
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