I
He was an accomplished, versatile man whom some called brilliant.
Behind his talents lay a wealth of material that right selection could
have lifted into genuine distinction. He did too many things, however,
to excel in one, for a restless curiosity kept him ever on the move.
George Isley was an able man. His short career in diplomacy proved it;
yet, when he abandoned this for travel and exploration, no one thought
it a pity. He would do big things in any line. He was merely finding
himself.
Among the rolling stones of humanity a few acquire moss of considerable
value. They are not necessarily shiftless; they travel light; the
comfortable pockets in the game of life that attract the majority are
too small to retain them; they are in and out again in a moment. The
world says, ‘What a pity! They stick to nothing!’ but the fact is
that, like questing wild birds, they seek the nest they need. It is a
question of values. They judge swiftly, change their line of flight,
are gone, not even hearing the comment that they might have ‘retired
with a pension.’
And to this homeless, questing type George Isley certainly belonged. He
was by no means shiftless. He merely sought with insatiable yearning
that soft particular nest where he could settle down in permanently.
And to an accompaniment of sighs and regrets from his friends he found
it; he found it, however, not in the present, but by retiring from the
world ‘without a pension,’ unclothed with honours and distinctions.
He withdrew from the present and slipped softly back into a mighty
Past where he belonged. Why; how; obeying what strange instincts--this
remains unknown, deep secret of an inner life that found no
resting-place in modern things. Such instincts are not disclosable
in twentieth-century language, nor are the details of such a journey
properly describable at all. Except by the few--poets, prophets,
psychiatrists and the like--such experiences are dismissed with the
neat museum label--‘queer.’
So, equally, must the recorder of this experience share the honour of
that little label--he who by chance witnessed certain external and
visible signs of this inner and spiritual journey. There remains,
nevertheless, the amazing reality of the experience; and to the
recorder alone was some clue of interpretation possible, perhaps,
because in himself also lay the lure, though less imperative, of a
similar journey. At any rate the interpretation may be offered to the
handful who realise that trains and motors are not the only means of
travel left to our progressive race.
In his younger days I knew George Isley intimately. I know him now.
But the George Isley I knew of old, the arresting personality with
whom I travelled, climbed, explored, is no longer with us. He is not
here. He disappeared--gradually--into the past. There is no George
Isley. And that such an individuality could vanish, while still his
outer semblance walks the familiar streets, normal apparently, and not
yet fifty in the number of his years, seems a tale, though difficult,
well worth the telling. For I witnessed the slow submergence. It was
very gradual. I cannot pretend to understand the entire significance
of it. There was something questionable and sinister in the business
that offered hints of astonishing possibilities. Were there a corps
of spiritual police, the matter might be partially cleared up, but
since none of the churches have yet organised anything effective
of this sort, one can only fall back upon variants of the blessed
‘Mesopotamia,’ and whisper of derangement, and the like. Such labels,
of course, explain as little as most other _clichés_ in life. That
well-groomed, soldierly figure strolling down Piccadilly, watching
the Races, dining out--there is no derangement there. The face is not
melancholy, the eye not wild; the gestures are quiet and the speech
controlled. Yet the eye is empty, the face expressionless. Vacancy
reigns there, provocative and significant. If not unduly noticeable, it
is because the majority in life neither expect, nor offer, more.
At closer quarters you may think questioning things, or you may
think--nothing; probably the latter. You may wonder why something
continually expected does not make its appearance; and you may watch
for the evidence of ‘personality’ the general presentment of the man
has led you to expect. Disappointed, therefore, you may certainly be;
but I defy you to discover the smallest hint of mental disorder, and
of derangement or nervous affliction, absolutely nothing. Before long,
perhaps, you may feel you are talking with a dummy, some well-trained
automaton, a nonentity devoid of spontaneous life; and afterwards
you may find that memory fades rapidly away, as though no impression
of any kind has really been made at all. All this, yes; but nothing
pathological. A few may be stimulated by this startling discrepancy
between promise and performance, but most, accustomed to accept face
values, would say, ‘a pleasant fellow, but nothing in him much ...’ and
an hour later forget him altogether.
For the truth is as you, perhaps, divined. You have been sitting beside
no one, you have been talking to, looking at, listening to--no one.
The intercourse has conveyed nothing that can waken human response
in you, good, bad or indifferent. There is no George Isley. And the
discovery, if you make it, will not even cause you to creep with the
uncanniness of the experience, because the exterior is so wholly
pleasing. George Isley to-day is a picture with no meaning in it that
charms merely by the harmonious colouring of an inoffensive subject. He
moves undiscovered in the little world of society to which he was born,
secure in the groove first habit has made comfortably automatic for
him. No one guesses; none, that is, but the few who knew him intimately
in early life. And his wandering existence has scattered these; they
have forgotten what he was. So perfect, indeed, is he in the manners
of the commonplace fashionable man, that no woman in his ‘set’ is
aware that he differs from the type she is accustomed to. He turns a
compliment with the accepted language of her text-book, motors, golfs
and gambles in the regulation manner of his particular world. He is an
admirable, perfect automaton. He is nothing. He is a human shell.