Much of the diversity and nearly all the bitterness of our lives are due
to the fact that only rarely do we encounter our exact contemporaries.
In any sphere where all start at a prescribed age, as in great
universities and public services, there is a tendency to become
standardized, to be only one example of a prevalent type. Ambition is
coördinated, jealousy is neutralized; and the hot lava-flow of
individualist passion cools and hardens to an admirable solidity and
composure. One's exact contemporaries are around in throngs. One has no
misgivings, no heartburn, no exasperation with fate. The fortunate being
whose destiny lies this way takes on the gravity, the immobility, and
the polish of an antique statue. The common people pass him as they pass
the Elgin marbles--without emotion; but they are aware subconsciously of
the cold pure beauty of outline, the absolute fidelity to type, which is
the melancholy justification of his existence.
But the common people themselves are not like that. They quit their
exact contemporaries at school and thence-forth are out upon the sea of
life with men of all ages and breedings and nationalities around them
and pressing them hard. They act and are reacted upon. Most of them
nurse a secret grievance. Very few of them have any code of honour
beyond law and decency. They are very largely needy adventurers, living
by their wits, and are ready to pay money to those who profess to show
them how they can increase their incomes, or obtain a pension, or
"better their positions," or cure themselves of the innumerable physical
disabilities which their fatuous ignorance and indolence have brought
upon them. They love to decipher word competitions, football
competitions, racing competitions. They have the high-binder's passion
for getting something for nothing, his dislike to real work. And this
lack of contemporary associates, this rough-and-tumble aspect of the
world, induces them to regard their vices as virtues and themselves as
oppressed helots struggling under the iron heels of those whom mere luck
and cunning have placed in authority over them. The London School of
Mnemonics was making a hundred thousand pounds a year net profit out of
these people in England alone. Even the grim witticism of the company
promoter, that there is "a sucker born every minute," seems inadequate
to account for so monstrous a simplicity of soul. The fact is, the very
boldness of the trick rendered it easy. You paid your guinea, and in due
course, in due secrecy, and under duly sworn promises to divulge no hint
of their contents to a living soul, you received a number of
refined-looking pamphlets containing a couple of thousand words each.
You thrilled as you joined in the game. Even Captain Meredith, sitting
in his chart room and looking through Number Four, which Mr. Spokesly
had inadvertently left on the table, was tickled by the subtle
atmosphere of the style. This, he divined, was the newly discovered
rapid-transit route to the Fortunate Isles, and his expression hardened
to rigid attention as his eye fell on the testimony of "a ship's
officer." This gentleman had risen from the humble position of fourth
officer to the command "of one of our largest liners" in the
miraculously brief period of eighteen months, and ascribed this success
entirely to the lessons of the London School of Mnemonics. Captain
Meredith felt he would like to have a talk with this person; but his
mind became preoccupied with another aspect of the case. Here, he felt,
lay the explanation of a good deal of Mr. Spokesly's recent behaviour.
Captain Meredith was fully aware of the perilous nature of an unmarried
man's life between thirty and forty. He himself had married at
thirty-four, having been frankly terrified by the spiritual difficulties
which he beheld surrounding a continued celibacy when combined with a
life of responsible command at sea. And as he sat back on the settee of
his chart-room and looked out over the top of Pamphlet Number Four at
the steel-blue waters of the Mediterranean, he became dimly aware of Mr.
Spokesly's condition. He could not have set down in ordered phrases the
conclusions at which he was arriving; a ship's captain in time of war
has not the leisure to reduce psychological phenomena to their ultimate
first principles; but he was not far wrong in muttering, inaudibly, that
"the man was rattled." It was this tendency to try and understand his
officers which lay at the back of his leniency towards Mr. Spokesly, a
leniency which Mr. Spokesly himself, in later, saner moments, found it
difficult to comprehend.
Mr. Spokesly had "pulled himself together," as he expressed it, when
they went to sea. Archy Bates tacitly retired into the background. Archy
himself was fully aware that the bosom friendliness of the days and
nights in harbour could not continue at sea, and Mr. Spokesly ceased to
share the never-ending refreshment without which Archy could no longer
support existence. Mr. Spokesly felt better at once, for alcohol had no
real hold upon his system. He toiled laboriously through the astonishing
physical exercises which the London School of Mnemonics artfully
suggested were an aid to mental improvement. He practised Concentration,
Observation, and something the pamphlets called Intensive Excogitation,
which nearly made him cross-eyed. Incidentally, he gathered incongruous
scraps of information about Alcibiades, Erasmus, Savonarola,
Nostradamus, Arminius Vámbéry, and Doctor Johnson. It was while he was
busy carrying out their instructions for accurate observation, that
Captain Meredith asked him, calmly enough, if he had noticed that the
binnacle of Number Two lifeboat was smashed and useless. Mr. Spokesly
assumed a mulish expression and said, No, he hadn't. Well, in future, he
was to have the boats not only made ready, but _kept_ ready, quite
ready, all the time. Mr. Spokesly, looking still more mulish, said he'd
attend to it.
With the gimcrack little sheet copper binnacle in his hand, Mr. Spokesly
made his way to the chief engineer's room. He felt rather bitter. Here
he'd been going along nicely for two whole days and now this happens!
Spoken to like a dog over a little petty thing like this. As if it was
_his_ fault the blamed thing had got smashed. Did he notice it! As if
the chief officer of a ship had no more to do than moon round the deck,
looking at things....
If Captain Meredith had told Mr. Spokesly that he himself had achieved a
rung in the ladder by the simple process of paying very strict attention
to his boats, it would have been the bare truth, but Mr. Spokesly would
not have seen the point. He found the chief engineer standing before his
desk in some deshabille, filling a black briar. His broad, hairy torso
was almost naked, for the scanty singlet was torn under the arms and
ripped across the bosom. His high-coloured features and reddish
moustache were smeared with black oil, and he was breathing in heaves as
though he had been running. When Mr. Spokesly presented his broken
binnacle the chief glanced at it with a scarcely perceptible flicker of
his bushy eyebrows and continued to fill his pipe from a canister on the
desk.
"Well, Mr. Spokesly," he remarked in a voice suitable for addressing an
immense open-air meeting. "Well, what is it now?" And he struck a match
and lit his pipe.
Mr. Spokesly explained that he wanted it mended.
"Oh, you want it mended. Well, why don't you ship a tinker, my fine
fellow? Eh? Why not indent for a tinker? You've got a carpenter and a
lamp trimmer and a bo'sun and a squad of quartermasters. What's a tinker
more or less?" And sitting back in his swivel chair and blowing great
clouds, he looked maliciously at Mr. Spokesly. The chief was a man with
an atmosphere. He had an immense experience, which he kept to himself
save at the hour of need. He had an admirable staff who did just what he
wanted without any rhetoric. Save at times like the present moment, when
Mr. Spokesly, though he was quite unaware of it, was very much _de trop_
owing to a breakdown in the engine room, the chief was a tolerant and
breezy example of the old school. Just now, with the sweat cooling on
his back and a battered binnacle offered to him for repair, he took
refuge in dry malice. He studied Mr. Spokesly mercilessly. He was, or at
any rate he looked, perfectly aware of the extreme unfitness of Mr.
Spokesly's bodily frame, for Mr. Spokesly had done no real work since he
had passed for second mate eleven years before. The chief himself was
inclined to obesity, for he verged on fifty and his frame was of the
herculean type, needing much nourishment and upholstery. But there was a
difference between the huge, red-freckled and hirsute masses upon his
bones and the soft puffiness of Mr. Spokesly's fatty degeneration. The
latter's double chin was in singular contrast with the massive and
muscular salience that gave the chief's face an expression of
indomitable vigour. He sat there, tipping himself slightly back in his
swivel chair, looking quizzically at Mr. Spokesly through the tobacco
smoke. Mr. Spokesly was annoyed. The chief had always been a decent
sort, he had imagined, and here he was jibbing at a little thing like
this. After all, it was the engineer's business to do these things. He,
an officer, couldn't be expected to attend to petty details.... A short
figure with a towel over his naked shoulders appeared abruptly out of
the engine room and passed along the alleyway. The chief called in his
stentorian tones, which issued from between twisted and broken teeth,
"Hi, Mr. Tolleshunt, here's a job for ye. Mate wants a binnacle fixed."
And Mr. Spokesly's mind became easy. A voice from behind a slammed door
said that the mate could take his binnacle and chase himself round the
deck with it, and the chief cackled. Mr. Tolleshunt came out of his room
again on his way to the bathroom. He was a young man with a thick white
neck, and black eyes set in a dirty, dead-white face which bore an
expression of smouldering rage. This, however, was merely an index of
character which, like many such indexes, was misleading. Mr. Tolleshunt
was not ill-tempered, but he had a morbid passion for efficiency. He was
an idealist, with a practical working ideal. He was not prepared to
accept anything in the world as an adequate substitute for achievement.
He had seen through Mr. Spokesly at once, for your idealist is often a
_clairvoyant_ of character. And as he passed along to his bath, his
black eyes smouldered upon the chief officer, who remembered the many
insults he had swallowed from this dirty engineer, and hated him.
Suddenly Mr. Tolleshunt paused, with his hand on the bathroom door, and
looked back. His dead-white face, the firm modelling of cheek and chin
curiously exaggerated by the black smears of grease, broke into a grim
smile as he spoke.
"Say, d'you know who I am, Mister?" he asked, and added, "I'll tell ye.
I'm the Thorn in the Flesh," and he disappeared into the bathroom,
whence came the rumble of water being boiled up by steam. Mr. Spokesly's
eyes returned to the burly gentleman who was regarding him with
amusement. Mr. Spokesly threw up his hands.
"Well," he said, looking stonily at nothing, "there it is. I was told to
get it fixed, an'----"
"Fix it then," said the chief quietly. Mr. Spokesly almost bridled.
"Not my work," he muttered.
"Oh, I see; it's mine, you mean!" surmised the other in a tone, of
assumed enlightenment.
"It's engineer's work," said Mr. Spokesly irritably. The chief made no
reply for a moment, merely studying Mr. Spokesly intently.
"See here, Mister," he began, and reached out a huge hand to close the
door. "See here, Mister, you're under a misapprehension. Now I'll tell
you the whole trouble. You heard Mr. Tolleshunt just now. D'ye know what
he meant when he said he was the Thorn in the Flesh? It's a joke of ours
in the mess room. He meant your flesh. And the reason for that is that
you men up on the bridge are in a false position. Ye have executive
power without knowledge. Ye command a ship and what do ye know about a
ship? To whom do ye come for help, whether it is steering or driving or
discharging or salving or anything? You want the same consideration and
power that you have on a sailing-ship, where you know all about the gear
and make out yourselves. Here, you just have to stand by while we do it.
And on top o' that, you come down here with your silly damn breakages
and expect us to be tinkers as well. You think Mr. Tolleshunt is sadly
deficient in respect, I dare say. But what of his side o' the question?
He's been up all night and all morning on a breakdown. So's the second,
who's still at it. So have I, for that matter. We've all three of us got
just as good tickets as you. Ye never heard about it? Of course not.
What could ye do for us? When ye've pulled that handle on the bridge and
heard the gong answer, you're finished! Ye're in charge of a box of
mechanism of which ye know nothing. Ye walk about in uniform and talk
big about yer work, and what does it all amount to? Ye're a young man,
and I'm, well, not so young, and I tell ye friendly, Mister, ye're a
joke. Ye're what the newspapers call an anachronism or an anomaly, I
forget which. Ye'll never get men like young Tolleshunt, men who know
their work from A to Z, to treat ye seriously unless ye take hold and
study a ship for what she is, a mass o' machinery. Ye'll have to get
shut o' the notion that as soon as ye become officers, ye must lose the
use o' your hands. Now there's just as much engineerin' about that
binnacle as there is in a kettle or a rabbit hutch. Put one o' your
young apprentices to it, and if he can't, make him learn. I've been with
old-time skippers who could do anything, from wire-splicing to welding
an anchor shackle. They learned in the yard before they went to sea.
Your young fellers can do nothing except slather a hose round the decks
and ask for higher wages. Now don't be sore because I'm telling ye the
truth. We're busy and we're tired. We've all sorts o' trouble you can't
understand, vital matters that mean speed and safety. Suppose, after a
spell on the bridge in fog, ye were to come down to yer room and find me
there with some ash-bags to sew up, eh? Imagine it! Just imagine it!"
He sat there, looking sideways at Mr. Spokesly, his pipe between his
enormous thumb and knuckle, asking Mr. Spokesly to imagine this fearsome
thing. But Mr. Spokesly's imagination was for the time being out of
commission. He was scarcely conscious of the request, so intensely
preoccupied was he with the ghastly cleavage between his own estimate of
his position and the chief's. Back of all these frank insults to his
dignity, Mr. Spokesly scented the sinister prejudice of his commander.
As he strode, in severe mental disarray, back to his room, he discovered
a conviction that the chief "had been pumpin' the Old Man." Not that he
needed any pumping, of course. It would be only too like him to blab to
an engineer about his own officers. Well, there it was! Mr. Spokesly
pitched the hapless binnacle on the settee and turned to the wash-stand.
Perhaps it was due to the course of the London School of Mnemonics, the
course in tracing the association of ideas, that when his eye fell on
the tumblers in the rack he should think of that abominable trick of the
Old Man sneaking in and smelling the glass to see if he, Mr. Spokesly,
had been drinking. Couldn't trust him that far! Do what he would he
could give no satisfaction. He would ask to be paid off to-morrow as
soon as they dropped anchor in Saloniki harbour. That would be the best
way. Just pull out of it. They would realize, when he was gone, the sort
of man they had lost. The flame of indignation died out again and he sat
moodily pondering the difficulty of commanding an adequate appreciation.
Command! The word stung him to bodily movement. If only he could once
grasp the sceptre, he could defy them all. He would have the whip-hand
then. And there were ways, there were ways of making money. Some he had
heard of on this run were quadrupling their incomes. Archy had whispered
incredible stories of skippers and stewards working together ... working
together. Perhaps it would be worth while to stick to the ship for a
voyage or so, even if he did have to put up with this sort of thing.
They would reach Saloniki in a few hours, and then they would see.
It frequently happens that moods which would logically drive men mad,
moods which seem to have no natural antidote, are broken up and
neutralized by some entirely fortuitous event. It is not too much to say
that Mr. Spokesly's grievances were inducing one of these moods, when
the wholesome activity of affairs on the forecastle-head, the keen
autumn wind blowing across the bony ridges of Chalcidice, and the
professional criticism evoked by the ships outward-bound, blew the foul
vapours away. Captain Meredith, whose reflective and unchallenging blue
eyes were visible between the weather-cloth and the laced peak of his
cap, made a mental note that "the man was doing himself justice." Of
course Captain Meredith did not perceive how very wide of the mark his
sensible phrase led him. Mr. Spokesly always did himself justice. What
he was eternally hunting for, in and out of the maze in which he spent
his life, was justice from others. Captain Meredith did not realize that
a middle-aged man with a grievance is like a man who has been
skinned--to touch him causes the most exquisite agony. Nay, merely to
exist, to permit the orderly march of every-day routine, chafes him to
the verge of hysteria. It was nothing to Mr. Spokesly that he was
serving his country; nothing to him that he was in imminent peril by
mine and torpedo. During the voyage he had scarcely noticed the
occasional formal slips that came from the wireless house informing them
that an enemy submarine was operating in such and such a position, so
many miles ahead or astern as the case might be. Mr. Spokesly had never
seen a submarine and he didn't want to. The whole business of war in his
eyes became a ghastly farce so long as he was not appreciated at his
true worth. It might almost be said that at times he was indifferent to
the outcome of the gigantic struggle. A horrible unrest assailed him.
The world was heaving in a death grapple with the powers of darkness and
he was as nothing in the balance.
But as he walked the forecastle-head and the _Tanganyika_ passed through
the bottle neck of Kara Burun into the wide waters of the gulf-head, he
was restored to a normal attention to the cut-and-dried duties of his
calling. There was exhilaration in the thought of foregathering once
more with Archy, of going ashore in a new port. And there would be
letters. He drew a deep breath. Ada would write. Unconsciously he
straightened up. A warm glow suffused him as he recalled her dark-gray,
adoring eyes and the deep tremble of her voice as she called him her
sailor sweetheart. After all, he was that. He was understood there, he
thought, and was comforted. Rung by rung he climbed up out of the dark
dank well in which he had been dwelling until, when the compressors had
been screwed up tight and the _Tanganyika_ was swinging gently on her
eighty fathom of cable, he was recapitulating the heartening words he
had last read in his "course" in the London School of Mnemonics.
_Think well of yourself and your ability_, it ran. _Get the habit of
believing in your own ambition. This is only another way of saying that
faith can move mountains. But remember that to be satisfied with what
you are is to lose grip. If you are standing still you are slipping
back. This paradox will be shown...._
* * * * *
It was some hours later, after dinner, that Captain Meredith sat at the
desk in his room looking out of the big side-scuttle at the blood-red
and purple of the western sky beyond the Vardar delta. It was such a
sunset as one may see across Lake Pontchartrain in the fall, or looking
up some aisle of the dark silent forests that fringe the swamps of the
Georgia coast. It has the opaque glamour that comes from the dense
vapours rising from a marsh, the tangible beauty of a giant curtain
rather than the far glories of miles of ambient mountain air. But
Captain Meredith was not occupied with esthetic musings. In his hand he
held a letter from the superintendent in London, and he sought
seclusion, as was his wont, in looking out towards the immense
polychrome of the sky. For the letter contained orders which might
involve him in some difficulties. He was instructed to file, in an
enclosed form, precise particulars of all his officers' records, and
return them accompanied by his own opinion as to their fitness for
promotion. It would be necessary, he was informed, to engage a large
number of additional officers for a fleet which the company had
purchased all standing, and the directors were anxious that those
already in their employ should have the pick of the billets. It was
important, he was warned, that he use care in recommending any man, as
the directors proposed to act upon these suggestions, and the failure of
a nominee would react unfavourably upon the prestige of the commander
responsible for the report.
Like all men who have grown up inside the protecting walls of tradition
and routine, Captain Meredith was unable to view a situation without
prejudice. Some small portion of free and independent judgment he had,
or he would never have become master; but the bulk of the decisions
which he had to make were obtained by unconscious reference to rules,
written or unwritten. This order, however, involved just that small part
of his mental equipment which made his work of interest to him, his
imagination if you like. It forced him to take a far wider view than was
ordinarily advisable. He was aware of the popular legends which have
grown around great commanders--legends of their genius for selecting
subordinates, their uncanny aptitude for appraising a man's powers at a
glance. Not so easy, Captain Meredith had found it. Like most of us, he
had in time cultivated a habit of suspending judgment, a habit of
discounting the dreadful efficiency of the new broom, the total
abstainer, the college-graduate, and the newly married. What he waited
for time to reveal was the man's principle. Without the main girder and
tie-ribs of principle, all was as nothing. And yet what comprised this
principle Captain Meredith would have been sore put to it to explain. It
was not enthusiasm, nor was it will power. It was not even intellect or
civil responsibility. It was deeper than any of these, a subtle
manifestation of character as elusive and imponderable as a beam of
light or the expression on a man's face. Somewhat to his surprise
Captain Meredith's reflections showed him that not even compatibility of
temperament had much to do with it. He and old McGinnis had never been
warm friends, had even had frequent differences on minor details of
executive routine. Neither of them would have invited the other to his
home, had the opportunity served. That did not matter. He had had some
experience of officers quite different from Mr. McGinnis, clever, gay
young men, "good mixers," passengers' favourites, and he had discovered
that a man may be a brilliant social success and a useless incumbrance
at the same time. To state the problem to himself was difficult, but it
was forced upon him irresistibly when he endeavoured to formulate his
mature conclusions upon the subject of Mr. Spokesly. His chief officer
was his chief concern. Of the others he was able to set down a fairly
just and intelligible estimate. Young Chippenham was a bundle of amiable
possibilities. He would have to get his certificates before the company
would make him or break him. The chief engineer was at the other end of
the scale. His name was made. Behind him was a career of solid
responsibility, of grave crises met and mastered with cool generalship
and unbeatable energy. He was one of those men who carry in their own
personality the prestige of a race, a nation, and a learned profession.
Of the others it would be safe to take his verdict. Mr. Spokesly,
therefore, remained the chief source of anxiety. For it was not a simple
question of bearing witness to Mr. Spokesly's ability as a seaman, as a
navigator, or as a desirable junior officer. The tremendous
responsibility from which Captain Meredith shrank was twofold. On the
one hand, he had to accept the onus of recommending his chief officer
for a command. On the other lay the grave danger of injustice to a
brother professional. Mr. Spokesly was a man no longer in his first
youth, no doubt engaged to be married, with ambitions and aspirations
with which Captain Meredith had the deepest sympathy. It was no small
matter to stop a man's promotion. He remembered how he himself, piqued
at some ungenerous act of the company, had talked of resignation, and
his commander had taken him by the arm and muttered contemptuously, "And
spoil yourself for life, eh?" And when asked "How?" that same shipmaster
had drawn a brutal picture of a man throwing up a billet just as he was
getting a name, entering another employ as a junior, spending years
working up to chief mate again, only to find about a score of active,
intelligent, and experienced officers on the list ahead of him, and
gradually resigning himself to the colourless existence of an elderly
failure. Captain Meredith was not the man to condemn a brother officer
to such a fate without an overwhelming conviction. Rather would he....
But his thoughts refused to travel that road. He sat looking out at the
sombre beauty of the sky, noting the long rigid black bar that divided
sharply the dark swamps from the shining pallor of the roadstead. He
tapped his teeth with his pencil. No, he was not prepared to jeopardize
his own prospects. He had a family. He hoped to spend more time with
them later ... after the war. He was beginning to think sea life was
narrowing. One got out of touch with so many phases of human interest
and activity.... One toiled and moiled, and suffered agonies of anxiety
and defeated vigilance; sleep and leisure went by the board for days;
one found fault and made mistakes; superior young men in warships asked
sarcastic questions during the small hours; and all to what end? After
all, one only earned for all this the salary which a successful
barrister or surgeon would pay his chauffeur. It was preposterous, when
one came to regard it. So Captain Meredith's thoughts ran on, with a
sort of light bitterness, sharpening their flavour and inclining him to
charity. In more senses than one, he and Mr. Spokesly were in the same
boat. He put his papers away in a drawer, picked up his cigar to take
the air on the bridge. Without registering any final and irrevocable
decision, he had made a mental note that "unless the man made an ass of
himself" he would not stand in his way.
The sun, concealed behind a distant range, threw up a ruddy and vigorous
glow as from an open cupola, but the roadstead lay in a profound shadow
whose edge began to sparkle with coloured lights of a singular
distinctness and individuality. It was like watching from the depths of
space a congregation of blessed yet still intensely personal spirits on
the heavenly shores. They stood in clusters or apart, in long lines or
zigzags far up the mountain side. At times they were obliterated by
trolley cars--gently moving glares which bore on their foreheads
flashing blue-white gems. At other times a fountain of sparks indicated
an otherwise invisible puff of smoke from a locomotive, and whole
galaxies of shining points would vanish while an ammunition train moved
laboriously across the city. But no knowledge of the actual causes could
destroy the illusion that the lights were informed with an intelligent
vitality. They winked and quivered with mysterious emotions. They went
on journeys among other fixed stars of greater magnitude. They came out
in boats over the dark water as though possessed with a passion for
exploring, and then, losing heart, would go back in a hurry, or else
expire. They raced along country roads and vanished in folds of the
hills. They danced and were smitten with idiotic immobility. They were
born, and they died sudden and inexplicable deaths. They were shocked,
or were filled with calm content. Low down on the edge of the shore,
where an open-air cinema was working convulsively, the lights had
collected in some excitement around the screen. Captain Meredith,
raising his night glasses to inspect this novel portent, imagined
himself watching a square hole in a dark spangled curtain, through which
a drama of inconceivable brightness and rapidity could be observed. It
was, the captain imagined whimsically, like watching a huge brain at
work, if such a thing were possible. He occasionally took refuge from
himself in such reflections. Without any pretence to originality, he
occasionally found himself in possession of thoughts for which custom
had provided no suitable phrase. With the humility common to those of
gentle birth who have followed the sea, he kept the results to himself.
Even in letters to his wife, he adhered to the conventional insipidity
that makes an Englishman's letters home one of the wonders of the world.
He had become somewhat fearful of originality, even in others, during
his honeymoon, when he had tried timidly to interest his wife in a novel
he was reading. It was a novel about sailors and the sea, of all things
in the world, and Captain Meredith had been so intrigued with the notion
of a story written about sailors without distorting them out of all
recognition that he couldn't keep it to himself. And he had been
completely nonplussed when his gentle, blonde, and slightly angular
young wife had displayed not merely a tepid lack of interest but
downright dislike. "I don't like it," she had said acidly, and returned
to her own book, an interminable tale of gipsies and highwaymen in
masks, and a "reigning toast" with forty thousand pounds. They had been
married some time before he realized just what it was she didn't like in
the story. And when he realized it, he put the thought from him in
trepidation, for he was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake.
She embodied for him all that he craved of England. She was typical, as
she bent over their one child, a flaxen-haired little girl with
incredibly thin limbs. And he was typical, too--as he thought of them
and their setting at Ealing--the modern Englishman who has given
intellectual hostages to fortune.