A CODE AND A THEORY
To probe Godfrey Ledstone's mind would be to come up against the odd
bundle of ideas which constitutes the average young man's workaday
morality--the code before mentioned. This congeries of rules,
exceptions, compromises, strictnesses, and elasticities may be
condemned; it cannot be sneered at or lightly dismissed. It has, on the
whole, satisfied centuries; only at rare intervals has it been seriously
interfered with by the powers that be, by Church, or State, or
Church-ruled State.
To interfere seriously with it is to rouse a hive of questions, large,
difficult, so profoundly awkward as to appal statesmen, lay or
ecclesiastical--questions not only moral and religious, but social and
economic. Formal condemnation and practical tolerance leave these
questions sleeping. The code goes on, exercising its semi-secret
underground jurisdiction--a law never promulgated, but widely obeyed, a
religion with millions of adherents and not a single preacher. Rather a
queer way for the world to live? Rather a desperate attempt at striking
a balance between nature and civilization? No doubt. But then, of
course, it is only temporary. We are all going to be good some day. To
make us all good, to make it possible for us all to be good,
immediately--well, there is no telling but what that might involve a
radical reconstitution of society. And would even that serve the turn?
The code never had a more unquestioning, a more contented adherent than
Godfrey. Without theorizing--he disliked theories and had a good-natured
distrust of them--he hit just that balance of conduct whereof the code
approves; if he had talked about the matter at all (the code does not
favour too much talking) he might have said that he was "not a saint"
but that he "played the game." His fellow-adherents would understand
perfectly what he meant. And the last thing in the world that he
contemplated or desired was to attack, or openly to flout, accepted
standards. The code never encourages a man to do that. Besides, he had a
father, a mother, and a sister, orthodox-thinking people, very fond and
proud of him; he would not willingly do or say anything to shock them.
Even from a professional point of view--but when the higher motives are
sufficient to decide the issue, why need they invoke the somewhat
compromising alliance of others purely prudential?
By now he was very much in love with Winnie Maxon, but he was also
desperately vexed with her, and with all the amiable theorizers at
Shaylor's Patch. The opportunity had seemed perfect for what he wanted,
and what he wanted seemed exactly one of the allowed compromises--an
ideal elasticity! Whom would it wrong? Not Cyril Maxon, surely? He was
out of court. Whom would it offend? There was nobody to offend, if the
affair were managed quietly--as it could be here in the country. And she
liked him; though he had made no declaration yet, he could not doubt
that she liked him very much.
But the theorizers had been at her. When he delicately felt his way,
discussing her position, or, professedly, the position of women in
general whose marriages had proved a failure, she leant back, looking
adorably pretty, and calmly came out with a remark of a profoundly
disconcerting nature.
"If I ever decided to--to link my life with a man's again, I should do
it quite openly. I should tell my husband and my friends. I should
consider myself as doing just the same thing as if I were marrying
again. I talked it all over with Tora the other night, and she quite
agreed with me."
Agreed with her! Tora had put it into her head, of course, Godfrey
thought angrily. The idea had Tora's hall-mark stamped large in its
serene straightforward irrationality.
"But that'd mean an awful row, and the--a case, and all that!"
"I hope it would. But Cyril doesn't approve of divorce."
"Then you'd never be able to--to get regular, as long as he lived."
"I think I should be regular, without getting regular," she answered,
smiling.
"What's the good of defying the world?"
"Isn't that the only way bad things get altered?"
"It needs a good deal of courage to do things like that--right or
wrong."
"I should rely on the man I loved to give me the courage."
Godfrey did not wish to admit that the man whom (as he hoped) she loved
lacked courage. The answer irritated him; he sat frowning sulkily, his
usual gaiety sadly overcast. Winnie's eyes scanned his face for a
moment; then, with a sigh, she looked over the lawn to the valley below.
She was disappointed with the reception of her great idea. "Of course
the two people would have to be very much in love with one another," she
added, with a little falter in her voice.
He found a way out of his difficulty. "The more a man loved a woman, the
less likely he'd be to consent to put her in such a position," he
argued. His face cleared; he was pleased with his point; it was good,
according to the code.
"It would be the only honourable position for her," Winnie retorted.
He rose to his feet in a temper; it was all so unreasonable. "I must
go."
"Are you coming to anything to-morrow?"
"No, I shall be in town to-morrow. I dare say I shall stay a night or
two." This was by way of revenge--or punishment. Let her see how she
liked Shaylor's Patch without him!
She turned to him, holding out her hand; in her eyes was raillery,
half-reproachful, half-merry. "Come back in a better temper!" she said.
"I'm a fool to come back at all." He kissed her hand and looked steadily
into her eyes before he went away.
Himself at once a poor and a pleasure-loving man, Godfrey had the good
luck to own a well-to-do and devoted friend, always delighted to "put
him up" and to give him the best of hospitality. Bob Purnett and he were
old schoolfellows and had never lost sight of one another. Bob had four
thousand a year of his own (though not of his own making), and in the
summer he had no work to do; in the winter he hunted. He was a jovial
being and very popular, except with the House Committee and the cook of
his club; to these unfortunate officials he was in the nature of a
perpetual Assize Court presided over by a "Hanging Judge."
He gave Godfrey a beautiful dinner and a magnum of fine claret; let it
be set down to his credit that he drank--and gave--fine claret at small
dinners. He knew better than to be intemperate. Did he not want to go
on hunting as long as possible? Nor was Godfrey given to excess in
wine-drinking. Still the dinner, the claret, the old friendship, the
liqueur, the good cigar, did their work. Godfrey found himself putting
the case. It appeared to Bob Purnett a curious one.
"But it's rot," he observed. "You're married or you're not--eh?" He
himself was not--quite distinctly. "Must be very pretty, or she wouldn't
expect you to stand it?"
Godfrey laughed. There was a primitive truthfulness about Purnett's
conversation. He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in
theory--quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch.
"She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady--and straight, and all that."
"Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett.
"I can't help it, old chap." Again the primitive note--the cry that
there are limits to human endurance! Godfrey had not meant to utter it.
The saying of it was an illumination to himself. Up to now he had
thought that he could help it--and would, if he were faced with theories
and irrationality.
"Let's go to a Hall?" Bob suggested.
"I'd like a quiet evening and just a jaw."
Bob looked gravely sympathetic. "Oh, you've got it in the neck!" he
said, with a touch of reverent wonder in his voice--something like the
awe that madmen inspired in our forbears. Godfrey was possessed!
"Yes, I have--and I don't know what the deuce to do."
"Well, what the deuce are you to do?" asked Purnett. His healthy, ruddy,
unwrinkled face expressed an honest perplexity. "Must be a rum little
card--isn't she?"
"I can't help it, Bob."
"Dashed awkward!"
In fact these two adherents of the code--may it be written honest
adherents, for they neither invented nor defended, but merely inherited
it?--were frankly puzzled. There is a term in logic--dichotomy--a sharp
division, a cutting in two, an opposing of contradictories. You are
honest or not honest, sober or not sober. Rough reasoning, but the
police courts have to work on it. So you are regular or irregular. But
people who want to make the irregular regular--that is as great a shock
to the adherents of the code as their tenets are to the upholders of a
different law. The denial of one's presuppositions is always a
shock--because one must start from somewhere. It is a "shock to
credit"--credit of some kind--and how are any of us to get on without
credit?
"Bring two more old brandies, Walter," Mr. Purnett commanded. It was the
only immediate and practical step.
"Not for me, old chap."
Bob nodded accordingly to Walter. His face was inconceivably solemn.
"I sometimes feel like cutting the whole thing," said Godfrey fretfully.
"Well, there are other women in the world, aren't there?"
"No, no. I mean the whole thing. What's the good of it?" The young man's
fresh face looked for the moment weary and old; he flung his good cigar,
scarcely half-smoked, into the fireplace.
Bob Purnett knew better than to argue against a mood like that; one
might just as well argue against a toothache.
"Let's go home and have an early bed," he suggested. He yawned, and
tried to hide the action. He was devoted to his friend, but his friend
had raised a puzzle, and puzzles soon fatigued him--except little ones
made of wood, for which he had a partiality.
For three whole days Godfrey Ledstone fought; really trying to "cut the
whole thing," to master again the feelings which had mastered him, not
to go back to Shaylor's Patch. On one day he went to see his people, the
father, mother, and sister, who were orthodox-thinking, and so fond and
proud of him. They lived in Woburn Square. The old gentleman had been an
accountant in a moderately good way of business, and had retired on a
moderately good competence; at least, he was not old really, but, like
some men, he took readily, even prematurely, to old age. Everything in
the house seemed to Godfrey preternaturally settled; it even seemed
settled somehow that Amy would not marry. And it was odd to think that
Mr. and Mrs. Ledstone had once married, had (as it must be presumed)
suffered from these terrible feelings, had perhaps doubted, feared,
struggled, enjoyed. To-day all was so placid in Woburn Square; the only
really acute question was the Income Tax--that certainly was a grievance
to Mr. Ledstone. Godfrey appreciated the few hours of repose, the
fondness, and the pride. It seemed then quite possible to "cut the whole
thing"--yes, the whole of it.
Bob Purnett went off on a short visit, leaving his comfortable flat at
his friend's disposal. Why not stay in London, do a good turn at work,
and see some more of his people in Woburn Square? A good and wise
programme. But on the fourth day came a gust that blew the good and wise
programme clean out of the window--a gust of feeling like a draught of
strong wine, heady and overpowering. He flung down his pencil, crying
aloud, "It's no use!"
He was tried beyond that he was able. He laid an indictment, vague and
formless, yet charged with poignant indignation, against the general
order of things, against what forced a man into folly, and then branded
him "Fool" with irons hissing-hot. The old protest, the creature's cry
against the injustice of creation! An hour later he was on his way to
the country--back to Shaylor's Patch. So far as he was concerned, the
thing was settled. He might not realize it; he went, not led by purpose,
but driven by craving. But "On my terms if I can, on hers if I must,"
interprets the confused and restless humming of his brain.
To a man in such case the people he meets as he fares along seem
strangely restful, impossibly at peace. The old man with his pipe, the
young clerk with his sporting paper, the labourer in the field, the
toddler with its toy, all present an illusion of untroubled existence,
at which the man with the gadfly looks in envy and in scorn. They
possess their souls--he is possessed. Well might Bob Purnett wear that
expression of awe! For some day the normal man must resume possession,
and he may find that the strangest pranks have been played by the
temporary tenant--furniture smashed, debts incurred, and what not, for
all of which dilapidations and liabilities he, unfortunate soul, is held
responsible! Happily it chances, after all not so seldom, that the
temporary tenant has made beauty, not havoc, and left behind him
generous gifts, to the enrichment of life till life itself shall pass
away.
Stephen Aikenhead sat on the lawn with his little girl Alice, newly come
home for the holidays. She was reading aloud to him; he smoked his pipe,
and now and again his big hand would pass caressingly over the little
bowed head with its soft brown hair. The story was about a certain
Princess, to whom a Fairy had given the Gift of Eternal Youth on the
condition that she never fainted either from fear or from joy. All went
well for a very great many years. Generations were born and died, and
the Princess was still sweet seventeen. She outlived seventy-seven Prime
Ministers. But at last a very handsome groom, who had appeared at the
Castle gates rather mysteriously and been taken into the Princess'
service without (as it seemed) any "character," was thrown from his
horse while he was in attendance on his Royal Mistress, and, lo and
behold, the Princess fainted for fear that he might be dead, and fainted
again for joy when she found he wasn't! So he revealed himself as the
King of the neighbouring kingdom, and they married one another, and
lived happily ever afterwards. Only, of course, the Princess lost the
Gift of Eternal Youth.
"I love these stories about Princesses, Alice," said Stephen. "Read me
another. I wish there were lots more Princesses. There aren't half
enough of them nowadays. They're so picturesque, and such jolly things
happen to them. Hallo, Godfrey, you back?"
Godfrey had sent the cab on with his luggage, and let himself in by the
garden gate. He arrived just in time to hear the end of the story.
Reader and listener were close to the parlour door. As his name was
spoken, Godfrey heard a little movement from within--the sound of the
movement of a woman's skirts. His impressionable nature responded to a
new appeal, his readily receptive eyes beheld a new vision. As he looked
at the big man and his little girl, so happy in one another, so at peace
yet never in tedium, he wished that it--his affair--could be neither on
his terms nor on hers--could be neither a deceit nor a defiance, but
could be the straight regular thing, the good old-fashioned thing that,
after all, served most people's turn well enough. There were failures,
but it was in the broad way of nature and broadly successful. Who
really objected to it, or questioned it? To whom was the Institution
obnoxious? Rips and cranks, he answered in his concise vernacular;
really it did well enough for everybody else--with, no doubt, allowances
made here and there.
The soft rustle sounded again from within the parlour. Then Winnie Maxon
stood in the doorway with shining, welcoming eyes.
"Well, would you like the story of the Princess with the Broken Heart?"
asked Alice.
"Anything about a Princess!" said Stephen, with handsome liberality.
"It sounds sad, Alice. If it's sad, don't let's have it," Winnie
pleaded.
"Oh, after all the old doctors had tried to mend it, one came, looking
much older and much more wrinkled than all the rest----"
"I shall keep my eye on that practitioner, all the same," Stephen
interposed. "I'm beginning to know the ropes!"
"And he mended it with an enormous gold ring that he'd cut off the
little finger of a giant he had once killed on a walk he took."
"What a fellow!" said Stephen. "Prince in disguise, Alice?"
"Why, father, of course he was!"
Stephen shook his big head and turned his big spectacles up to heaven.
"And that fellow Dennehy dares to call himself a republican! Now
who--who, I ask you--would give a fig for a President in disguise? Read
me some more Princesses, Alice."
They all enjoyed the Princesses. So sometimes, for an hour, a little
child shall lead us into peace.