a footman on holiday. That for a silly child, for any creature that is
kept or led or driven. That perhaps for a tired invalid, for a
toiler worked to a rag. But able-bodied amusement! The arms of Mrs.
Skelmersdale were no worse than the solemn aimlessness of hunting, and
an evening of dalliance not an atom more reprehensible than an evening
of chatter. It was the waste of him that made the sin. His life in
London had been of a piece together. It was well that his intrigue had
set a light on it, put a point to it, given him this saving crisis of
the nerves. That, indeed, is the chief superiority of idle love-making
over other more prevalent forms of idleness and self-indulgence; it
does at least bear its proper label. It is reprehensible. It brings your
careless honour to the challenge of concealment and shabby evasions and
lies....
But in this pellucid air things took their proper proportions again.
And now what was he to do?
“Politics,” he said aloud to the turf and the sky.
Is there any other work for an aristocratic man?... Science? One
could admit science in that larger sense that sweeps in History, or
Philosophy. Beyond that whatever work there is is work for which men
are paid. Art? Art is nothing aristocratic except when it is a means
of scientific or philosophical expression. Art that does not argue nor
demonstrate nor discover is merely the craftsman's impudence.
He pulled up at this and reflected for a time with some distinguished
instances in his mind. They were so distinguished, so dignified, they
took their various arts with so admirable a gravity that the soul of
this young man recoiled from the verdicts to which his reasoning drove
him. “It's not for me to judge them,” he decided, “except in relation
to myself. For them there may be tremendous significances in Art. But
if these do not appear to me, then so far as I am concerned they do not
exist for me. They are not in my world. So far as they attempt to invade
me and control my attitudes or my outlook, or to judge me in any way,
there is no question of their impudence. Impudence is the word for it.
My world is real. I want to be really aristocratic, really brave, really
paying for the privilege of not being a driven worker. The things
the artist makes are like the things my private dream-artist makes,
relaxing, distracting. What can Art at its greatest be, pure Art that
is, but a more splendid, more permanent, transmissible reverie! The very
essence of what I am after is NOT to be an artist....”
After a large and serious movement through his mind he came back to
Science, Philosophy or Politics as the sole three justifications for the
usurpation of leisure.
So far as devotion to science went, he knew he had no specific aptitude
for any departmentalized subject, and equally he felt no natural call to
philosophy. He was left with politics....
“Or else, why shouldn't I go down there and pick up a shovel and set to
work? To make leisure for my betters....”
And now it was that he could take up the real trouble that more than
anything else had been keeping him ineffective and the prey of every
chance demand and temptation during the last ten months. He had not been
able to get himself into politics, and the reason why he had not been
able to do so was that he could not induce himself to fit in. Statecraft
was a remote and faded thing in the political life of the time; politics
was a choice of two sides in a game, and either side he found equally
unattractive. Since he had come down from Cambridge the Tariff Reform
people had gone far to capture the Conservative party. There was little
chance of a candidature for him without an adhesion to that. And
he could find nothing he could imagine himself working for in the
declarations of the Tariff Reform people. He distrusted them, he
disliked them. They took all the light and pride out of imperialism,
they reduced it to a shabby conspiracy of the British and their colonies
against foreign industrialism. They were violent for armaments and
hostile to education. They could give him no assurance of any scheme of
growth and unification, and no guarantees against the manifest dangers
of economic disturbance and political corruption a tariff involves.
Imperialism without noble imaginations, it seemed to him, was simply
nationalism with megalomania. It was swaggering, it was greed, it was
German; its enthusiasm was forced, its nobility a vulgar lie. No. And
when he turned to the opposite party he found little that was more
attractive. They were prepared, it seemed, if they came into office, to
pull the legislature of the British Isles to pieces in obedience to the
Irish demand for Home Rule, and they were totally unprepared with any
scheme for doing this that had even a chance of success. In the twenty
years that had elapsed since Gladstone's hasty and disastrous essay in
political surgery they had studied nothing, learnt nothing, produced no
ideas whatever in the matter. They had not had the time. They had just
negotiated, like the mere politicians they were, for the Nationalist
vote. They seemed to hope that by a marvel God would pacify Ulster. Lord
Dunraven, Plunkett, were voices crying in the wilderness. The sides in
the party game would as soon have heeded a poet.... But unless Benham
was prepared to subscribe either to Home Rule or Tariff Reform there was
no way whatever open to him into public life. He had had some decisive
conversations. He had no illusions left upon that score....
Here was the real barrier that had kept him inactive for ten months.
Here was the problem he had to solve. This was how he had been left
out of active things, a prey to distractions, excitements, idle
temptations--and Mrs. Skelmersdale.
Running away to shoot big game or explore wildernesses was no remedy.
That was just running away. Aristocrats do not run away. What of his
debt to those men down there in the quarry? What of his debt to the
unseen men in the mines away in the north? What of his debt to the
stokers on the liners, and to the clerks in the city? He reiterated the
cardinal article of his creed: The aristocrat is a privileged man in
order that he may be a public and political man.
But how is one to be a political man when one is not in politics?
Benham frowned at the Weald. His ideas were running thin.
He might hammer at politics from the outside. And then again how? He
would make a list of all the things that he might do. For example he
might write. He rested one hand on his knee and lifted one finger and
regarded it. COULD he write? There were one or two men who ran papers
and seemed to have a sort of independent influence. Strachey, for
example, with his SPECTATOR; Maxse, with his NATIONAL REVIEW. But they
were grown up, they had formed their ideas. He had to learn first.
He lifted a second finger. How to learn? For it was learning that he had
to do.
When one comes down from Oxford or Cambridge one falls into the mistake
of thinking that learning is over and action must begin. But until one
perceives clearly just where one stands action is impossible.
How is one with no experience of affairs to get an experience of affairs
when the door of affairs is closed to one by one's own convictions?
Outside of affairs how can one escape being flimsy? How can one escape
becoming merely an intellectual like those wordy Fabians, those writers,
poseurs, and sham publicists whose wrangles he had attended? And,
moreover, there is danger in the leisure of your intellectual. One
cannot be always reading and thinking and discussing and inquiring....
WOULD IT NOT BE BETTER AFTER ALL TO MAKE A CONCESSION, SWALLOW HOME RULE
OR TARIFF REFORM, AND SO AT LEAST GET HIS HANDS ON THINGS?
And then in a little while the party conflict would swallow him up?
Still it would engage him, it would hold him. If, perhaps, he did not
let it swallow him up. If he worked with an eye open for opportunities
of self-assertion....
The party game had not altogether swallowed “Mr. Arthur.”...
But every one is not a Balfour....
He reflected profoundly. On his left knee his left hand rested with
two fingers held up. By some rapid mental alchemy these fingers had now
become Home Rule and Tariff Reform. His right hand which had hitherto
taken no part in the controversy, had raised its index finger by
imperceptible degrees. It had been raised almost subconsciously. And by
still obscurer processes this finger had become Mrs. Skelmersdale. He
recognized her sudden reappearance above the threshold of consciousness
with mild surprise. He had almost forgotten her share in these problems.
He had supposed her dismissed to an entirely subordinate position....
Then he perceived that the workmen in the chalk pit far below had
knocked off and were engaged upon their midday meal. He understood why
his mind was no longer moving forward with any alacrity.
Food?
The question where he should eat arose abruptly and dismissed all other
problems from his mind. He unfolded a map. Here must be the chalk pit,
here was Dorking. That village was Brockham Green. Should he go down to
Dorking or this way over Box Hill to the little inn at Burford Bridge.
He would try the latter.
14
The April sunset found our young man talking to himself for greater
emphasis, and wandering along a turfy cart-track through a wilderness
mysteriously planted with great bushes of rhododendra on the Downs above
Shere. He had eaten a belated lunch at Burford Bridge, he had got some
tea at a little inn near a church with a splendid yew tree, and for the
rest of the time he had wandered and thought. He had travelled perhaps a
dozen or fifteen miles, and a good way from his first meditations above
the Dorking chalk pit.
He had recovered long ago from that remarkable conception of an active
if dishonest political career as a means of escaping Mrs. Skelmersdale
and all that Mrs. Skelmersdale symbolized. That would be just louting
from one bad thing to another. He had to settle Mrs. Skelmersdale clean
and right, and he had to do as exquisitely right in politics as he could
devise. If the public life of the country had got itself into a stupid
antagonism of two undesirable things, the only course for a sane man of
honour was to stand out from the parties and try and get them back to
sound issues again. There must be endless people of a mind with himself
in this matter. And even if there were not, if he was the only man in
the world, he still had to follow his lights and do the right. And his
business was to find out the right....
He came back from these imaginative excursions into contemporary
politics with one idea confirmed in his mind, an idea that had been
indeed already in his mind during his Cambridge days. This was the
idea of working out for himself, thoroughly and completely, a political
scheme, a theory of his work and duty in the world, a plan of the
world's future that should give a rule for his life. The Research
Magnificent was emerging. It was an alarmingly vast proposal, but he
could see no alternative but submission, a plebeian's submission to the
currents of life about him.
Little pictures began to flit before his imagination of the way in which
he might build up this tremendous inquiry. He would begin by hunting up
people, everybody who seemed to have ideas and promise ideas he would
get at. He would travel far--and exhaustively. He would, so soon as
the ideas seemed to indicate it, hunt out facts. He would learn how the
world was governed. He would learn how it did its thinking. He would
live sparingly. (“Not TOO sparingly,” something interpolated.) He would
work ten or twelve hours a day. Such a course of investigation must
pass almost of its own accord into action and realization. He need not
trouble now how it would bring him into politics. Inevitably somewhere
it would bring him into politics. And he would travel. Almost at once
he would travel. It is the manifest duty of every young aristocrat to
travel. Here he was, ruling India. At any rate, passively, through the
mere fact of being English, he was ruling India. And he knew nothing of
India. He knew nothing indeed of Asia. So soon as he returned to London
his preparations for this travel must begin, he must plot out the men to
whom he would go, and so contrive that also he would go round the world.
Perhaps he would get Lionel Maxim to go with him. Or if Maxim could not
come, then possibly Prothero. Some one surely could be found, some one
thinking and talking of statecraft and the larger idea of life. All the
world is not swallowed up in every day....
15
His mind shifted very suddenly from these large proposals to an entirely
different theme. These mental landslips are not unusual when men are
thinking hard and wandering. He found himself holding a trial upon
himself for Presumptuousness, for setting himself up against the wisdom
of the ages, and the decisions of all the established men in the world,
for being in short a Presumptuous Sort of Ass. He was judge and jury
and prosecutor, but rather inexplicably the defence was conducted in an
irregular and undignified way by some inferior stratum of his being.
At first the defence contented itself with arguments that did at least
aim to rebut the indictment. The decisions of all the established men
in the world were notoriously in conflict. However great was the gross
wisdom of the ages the net wisdom was remarkably small. Was it after all
so very immodest to believe that the Liberals were right in what they
said about Tariff Reform, and the Tories right in their criticism of
Home Rule?
And then suddenly the defence threw aside its mask and insisted that
Benham had to take this presumptuous line because there was no other
tolerable line possible for him.
“Better die with the Excelsior chap up the mountains,” the defence
interjected.
Than what?
Consider the quality Benham had already betrayed. He was manifestly
incapable of a decent modest mediocre existence. Already he had ceased
to be--if one may use so fine a word for genteel abstinence--virtuous.
He didn't ride well, he hadn't good hands, and he hadn't good hands for
life. He must go hard and harsh, high or low. He was a man who needed
BITE in his life. He was exceptionally capable of boredom. He had been
bored by London. Social occasions irritated him, several times he had
come near to gross incivilities, art annoyed him, sport was an effort,
wholesome perhaps, but unattractive, music he loved, but it excited him.
The defendant broke the sunset calm by uttering amazing and improper
phrases.
“I can't smug about in a state of falsified righteousness like these
Crampton chaps.
“I shall roll in women. I shall rollick in women. If, that is, I stay in
London with nothing more to do than I have had this year past.
“I've been sliding fast to it....
“NO! I'M DAMNED IF I DO!...”
16
For some time he had been bothered by a sense of something, something
else, awaiting his attention. Now it came swimming up into his
consciousness. He had forgotten. He was, of course, going to sleep out
under the stars.
He had settled that overnight, that was why he had this cloak in his
rucksack, but he had settled none of the details. Now he must find some
place where he could lie down. Here, perhaps, in this strange forgotten
wilderness of rhododendra.
He turned off from the track and wandered among the bushes. One might
lie down anywhere here. But not yet; it was as yet barely twilight. He
consulted his watch. HALF-PAST SEVEN.
Nearly dinner-time....
No doubt Christian during the earlier stages of his pilgrimage noticed
the recurrence of the old familiar hours of his life of emptiness
and vanity. Or rather of vanity--simply. Why drag in the thought of
emptiness just at this point?...
It was very early to go to bed.
He might perhaps sit and think for a time. Here for example was a mossy
bank, a seat, and presently a bed. So far there were only three stars
visible but more would come. He dropped into a reclining attitude. DAMP!
When one thinks of sleeping out under the stars one is apt to forget the
dew.
He spread his Swiss cloak out on the soft thick carpeting of herbs
and moss, and arranged his knapsack as a pillow. Here he would lie and
recapitulate the thoughts of the day. (That squealing might be a
young fox.) At the club at present men would be sitting about holding
themselves back from dinner. Excellent the clear soup always was at the
club! Then perhaps a Chateaubriand. That--what was that? Soft and large
and quite near and noiseless. An owl!
The damp feeling was coming through his cloak. And this April night air
had a knife edge. Early ice coming down the Atlantic perhaps. It was
wonderful to be here on the top of the round world and feel the icebergs
away there. Or did this wind come from Russia? He wasn't quite clear
just how he was oriented, he had turned about so much. Which was east?
Anyhow it was an extremely cold wind.
What had he been thinking? Suppose after all that ending with Mrs.
Skelmersdale was simply a beginning. So far he had never looked sex in
the face....
He sat up and sneezed violently.
It would be ridiculous to start out seeking the clue to one's life and
be driven home by rheumatic fever. One should not therefore incur the
risk of rheumatic fever.
Something squealed in the bushes.
It was impossible to collect one's thoughts in this place. He stood up.
The night was going to be bitterly cold, savagely, cruelly cold....
No. There was no thinking to be done here, no thinking at all. He would
go on along the track and presently he would strike a road and so come
to an inn. One can solve no problems when one is engaged in a struggle
with the elements. The thing to do now was to find that track again....
It took Benham two hours of stumbling and walking, with a little fence
climbing and some barbed wire thrown in, before he got down into Shere
to the shelter of a friendly little inn. And then he negotiated a
satisfying meal, with beef-steak as its central fact, and stipulated for
a fire in his bedroom.
The landlord was a pleasant-faced man; he attended to Benham himself and
displayed a fine sense of comfort. He could produce wine, a half-bottle
of Australian hock, Big Tree brand No. 8, a virile wine, he thought of
sardines to precede the meal, he provided a substantial Welsh rarebit
by way of a savoury, he did not mind in the least that it was nearly ten
o'clock. He ended by suggesting coffee. “And a liqueur?”
Benham had some Benedictine!
One could not slight such sympathetic helpfulness. The Benedictine was
genuine. And then came the coffee.
The cup of coffee was generously conceived and honestly made.
A night of clear melancholy ensued....
17
Hitherto Benham had not faced in any detail the problem of how to break
with Mrs. Skelmersdale. Now he faced it pessimistically. She would, he
knew, be difficult to break with. (He ought never to have gone there
to lunch.) There would be something ridiculous in breaking off. In all
sorts of ways she might resist. And face to face with her he might
find himself a man divided against himself. That opened preposterous
possibilities. On the other hand it was out of the question to do the
business by letter. A letter hits too hard; it lies too heavy on the
wound it has made. And in money matters he could be generous. He must be
generous. At least financial worries need not complicate her distresses
of desertion. But to suggest such generosities on paper, in cold ink,
would be outrageous. And, in brief--he ought not to have gone there
to lunch. After that he began composing letters at a great rate.
Delicate--explanatory. Was it on the whole best to be explanatory?...
It was going to be a tremendous job, this breaking with her. And it had
begun so easily....
There was, he remembered with amazing vividness, a little hollow he had
found under her ear, and how when he kissed her there it always made her
forget her worries and ethical problems for a time and turn to him....
“No,” he said grimly, “it must end,” and rolled over and stared at the
black....
Like an insidious pedlar, that old rascal whom young literary gentlemen
call the Great God Pan, began to spread his wares in the young man's
memory....
After long and feverish wanderings of the mind, and some talking to
himself and walking about the room, he did at last get a little away
from Mrs. Skelmersdale.
He perceived that when he came to tell his mother about this journey
around the world there would be great difficulties. She would object
very strongly, and if that did not do then she would become extremely
abusive, compare him to his father, cry bitterly, and banish him
suddenly and heartbrokenly from her presence for ever. She had done that
twice already--once about going to the opera instead of listening to
a lecture on Indian ethnology and once about a week-end in Kent.... He
hated hurting his mother, and he was beginning to know now how easily
she was hurt. It is an abominable thing to hurt one's mother--whether
one has a justification or whether one hasn't.
Recoiling from this, he was at once resumed by Mrs. Skelmersdale. Who
had in fact an effect of really never having been out of the room. But
now he became penitent about her. His penitence expanded until it was on
a nightmare scale. At last it blotted out the heavens. He felt like one
of those unfortunate victims of religious mania who are convinced they
have committed the Sin against the Holy Ghost. (Why had he gone there
to lunch? That was the key to it. WHY had he gone there to lunch?)... He
began to have remorse for everything, for everything he had ever done,
for everything he had ever not done, for everything in the world. In a
moment of lucidity he even had remorse for drinking that stout honest
cup of black coffee....
And so on and so on and so on....
When daylight came it found Benham still wide awake. Things crept
mournfully out of the darkness into a reproachful clearness. The sound
of birds that had been so delightful on the yesterday was now no longer
agreeable. The thrushes, he thought, repeated themselves a great deal.
He fell asleep as it seemed only a few minutes before the landlord,
accompanied by a great smell of frying bacon, came to call him.
18
The second day opened rather dully for Benham. There was not an idea
left in his head about anything in the world. It was--SOLID. He walked
through Bramley and Godalming and Witley and so came out upon the purple
waste of Hindhead. He strayed away from the road and found a sunny place
of turf amidst the heather and lay down and slept for an hour or so. He
arose refreshed. He got some food at the Huts Inn on the Hindhead crest
and went on across sunlit heathery wildernesses variegated by patches of
spruce and fir and silver birch. And then suddenly his mental inanition
was at an end and his thoughts were wide and brave again. He was
astonished that for a moment he could have forgotten that he was vowed
to the splendid life.
“Continence by preoccupation;” he tried the phrase....
“A man must not give in to fear; neither must he give in to sex. It's
the same thing really. The misleading of instinct.”
This set the key of his thought throughout the afternoon--until Amanda
happened to him.
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ AMANDA
1
Amanda happened to Benham very suddenly.
From Haslemere he had gone on to further heaths and gorse beyond
Liphook, and thence he had wandered into a pretty district beset
with Hartings. He had found himself upon a sandy ridge looking very
beautifully into a sudden steep valley that he learnt was Harting
Coombe; he had been through a West Harting and a South Harting and read
finger-posts pointing to others of the clan; and in the evening, at
the foot of a steep hill where two roads met, he sat down to consider
whether he should go back and spend the night in one of the two
kindly-looking inns of the latter place or push on over the South Downs
towards the unknown luck of Singleton or Chichester. As he sat down two
big retrievers, black and brown, came headlong down the road. The black
carried a stick, the brown disputed and pursued. As they came abreast of
him the foremost a little relaxed his hold, the pursuer grabbed at
it, and in an instant the rivalry had flared to rage and a first-class
dogfight was in progress.