It was early in March before Archibald Druce was well enough to come
to town. Morgan's working day ended at seven o'clock, and at that hour
Archibald called at the printing establishment, and the two went off
together.
Morgan was excited, and he could see his father was. Neither had any
"news," since, in their exchange of letters, everything had already
been told. Still, they talked a little about the home, and then there
were further details of Archibald's illness. Both perhaps felt the
meeting was a trifle cold, but they knew the constraint would melt
away presently.
"I haven't yet thought how we're going to spend the evening," said the
old man. "We must dine together somewhere. After that we might perhaps
look in at a theatre; it won't matter if we are late."
Morgan, who had no alternative suggestion to offer, readily fell in
with this one, remarking that the dinner for him would be a rather
magnificent kind of supper.
They eventually settled on a restaurant and ordered their repast.
Then, somehow, as they sat facing each other, their tongue-strings
seemed to get loosened.
It was a long time since they had last met, and Archibald, who had
been full of his book then, now confessed he had put it aside for the
present. For several months past his mind had not been in sufficiently
fresh condition to enable him to work on it. Morgan remembered now
how he had suggested a title for it half in scorn, and even such small
remembrance was painful to him. He felt he had had something very like
contempt for his father's literary scheme, forgetting, in the
self-castigation of the moment, that at the time it had merely struck
him humourously, and that his sin had not been quite so heinous as it
now appeared to him. If the element of humour now coloured his vision
of things but very slightly, that was only natural to his present
stage of development.
They lingered over their coffee, not rising till about half-past
eight.
"Suppose you just come and sit with me in my room, father," said
Morgan. "If we have to decide on a theatre now, I am afraid we shall
be quarrelling the rest of the evening. Besides, I do not want to
acquire the habits of a young man about town. We can have a quiet talk
for the rest of the evening."
"Yes, I should like to see your place," said his father. "It will
enable me to judge of your powers of graphic description."
He was beginning to be more cheerful already and to show it. He took
Morgan's arm affectionately, and they went back to Upper Thames street
and crossed Southwark Bridge.
"I hope the woman hasn't forgotten to lay the fire," said Morgan, as
he turned the key.
A moment later he had lighted the cheap lamp and the room stood
revealed in all its bareness. A small table, three wooden chairs, the
little bed, a trunk in the corner, and a washstand, were insufficient
to make it look furnished, garret as it was.
"I recognise the place," said Archibald, depositing his things on the
trunk. "It's quite large and airy. You are lucky to have only the
front walls sloping. But the window gives you a back view, so perhaps
I ought to have said 'back walls.'"
Morgan lighted the fire, and the two sat down before it.
"What have you in that cupboard just by you?" asked Archibald. "I feel
inquisitive. I must get up and poke about.... Coals and crockery," he
enumerated with slow unction, "a saucepan, a coffee-pot, a tea-pot, a
broom, and some exceedingly dirty dusters. My dear Morgan, what a
wonderfully compact place you have here; it's a miracle of
completeness."
"I've given up coffee at night, but I make excellent cocoa. You shall
have some before you go."
"Capital!" said the old fellow. "I'm enjoying myself immensely. This
is quite a picnic."
"I am quite comfortable here," said Morgan, half to himself.
"There's only one suggestion I have to make," said his progenitor,
"and that is you ought to have just a strip of carpet under your feet,
or a small rug would do just as well. Last year at home, now, I had
the carpet taken out of the drawing-room, in favour of a polished
floor, but, Lord bless you, I found myself doing nothing else but
sneezing, in spite of the odd rugs, for in a drawing-room you don't
just happen to think where you're standing. But here when you just sit
down at your table or by your fire it would be so easy to take care
you've got the thing underfoot. I must send you a rug to-morrow--you
know I owe you a birthday present."
"Birthday present! I had forgotten there were such things in the
world. Thank you for reminding me, father. Such gifts, when they are
sincere, add sweetness to life. And it will be nice to have something
of yours here."
The fire blazed up cheerfully. They sat a little while in silence.
"When do you calculate you will get those debts paid off?" asked
Archibald at length.
"Within three years, if all goes well," said Morgan. "I make a lot
extra sometimes, now. I did a little article for a magazine we print
and a little work for another journal. I am friendly with both
editors. Besides, my salary may improve. In fact, my hopes at starting
have been far exceeded."
"And after that?" asked Archibald, looking at him with unconcealed
anxiety. It was evident it was a question he had been wanting to ask.
Morgan hesitated a moment, though his answer was ready.
"After that I see no reason why I should not follow along the same
lines. I shall be on the high road to build up a career for myself,
and I have a feeling that I shall eventually branch off into
journalism, where all the knowledge and experience I shall have gained
will be of use to me."
"Tell me, Morgan," said Archibald. "Have you abandoned your first
ambition entirely?"
Morgan leaned forward towards the fire and rested his head on his
hands. For a moment he seemed lost in meditation, and then at last
spoke slowly.
"There are times," he said, "when poetry still beats in my blood, when
melody comes to me hauntingly. Often, as I sit here brooding, there
surges up a full flood of I know not what, save that it is exquisitely
beautiful. And, as I walk through these long, grey streets, lined with
flaring market-stalls and massed thick with people, I seem to feel a
great throb, a living heart-beat, that speaks to me of humanity; and
what these bustling streets hold of humanness, of the warmth and
energy of life, comes to me like a flowing tide. The pain, too, I
feel; for there are odd, pathetic episodes. One catches sight of faces
pinched, starved, unrebellious, large-eyed children of six a-marketing
shrewdly with slender purses; and now and then a figure detaches
itself from the crowd and speaks a whole history. If there is much
pain and privation, much foulness and wickedness, there is also much
of the joy of life, of the ecstacy of overflowing animal spirits.
There are plague-spots, there are besotted critical jeerers at the
wayside with an aggressive sense of superiority to all unlike
themselves; there are half-grown lads and girls boisterously
foul-mouthed. But probe beneath the large, vigorous unrestraint, the
rollicking vagabondage of the streets, and you will find the
far-spread, steady--if colourless--respectability of the industrial
family. And at moments something grand, rugged, and passionate, a
roaring harmonic discord, seems to sweep though the reeking grime,
through the swarming boisterousness, through the magnificent
brutality, through the utterance of putrid tongues, through the grey,
lamp-lit atmospheres, as though man and his activities were but the
swirled symbols of a music played in high Heaven. And as I stand
listening, terrified yet thrilled, there seems to come a sudden lull;
and then I perceive a goodness showing through the rough-and-readiness,
sometimes blurred in the individual lives, sometimes inspired to a full
glow. Often its leaps and flickerings are irregular, inconsistent,
unpredictable. In the ruffian the spark is scarcely alive, but in some
rare moment it will quicken and show through tremblingly.
"And all these perceptions to which I was blind before have wrought
their effect on me. They have fused into and strengthened the better
part of me. They make poetry in me, not such as I once wrote, but a
full-blooded, living poetry. You see, father, I have drawn inspiration
from all this reality. I have felt the true spirit of the universe in
this dense-packed encampment on the march of civilisation, this living
pattern in Time's kaleidoscope; the same spirit that lies behind the
green country and the sweet airs, behind a great idea, a noble deed, a
gracious woman.
"And so I feel that I am fortified enough to defy all external
sordidness. The soiled lime-washed walls, the heavy grind of
machinery, and the tinged breath of the printing-house I am insensible
to; and with this result I am satisfied. I will not take up my harp
wherewith to gather harmonies from amid the discords of things, as I
feel it is in me to do. If such dream comes to me at times I know it
must remain a dream, for I must continue with my shoulder to the wheel
and do my full share of human labour!"
He broke off. An almost sacred stillness followed his half-mused
speech, to which Archibald had listened with bent head.
"Will you forgive me, dear Morgan, if I remind you of something?" said
the old man, breaking the long silence. "I feel you are the best judge
of your own life, and I do not mean to say a word that should make you
imagine I am trying to interfere with you. I only want to ask you not
to forget that we at home have claims upon you as well. We want to
have you near us a little, too. Your mother has been fretting about
you of late."
"My mother!" said Morgan. "Is she aware of my existence? She never
cared about me."
"But she cares about you now. Won't you come home to us when you are
through this--in three years' time, say?" pleaded the old man. "Your
end will have been achieved, you will feel sure of yourself by then.
And, to tell the truth, Morgan, I've set my heart on--your being a
great poet."
Archibald looked down almost guiltily as he spoke.
Morgan had a consciousness of the strange, complete reversion of the
position the years had brought about.
"I could never, never consent not to live by my own labour," he said,
giving utterance to what, at the moment, he intensely felt to be the
one essential condition of existence for him.
"Come now, surely we can get over that difficulty," said Archibald
eagerly. "I take it it is immaterial to you what work you do, so long
as it is of a kind in which you can employ your faculties. After all,
the principal point in your present occupation is the discipline it
affords and the habits of mind it is forming in you; all of which
could be employed in some other direction. It would simply be a matter
of your mastering a different set of facts for the different
employment, which you could do very quickly. Why not accept a
position in the bank? That would afford you an honorable livelihood,
and it would help you to be near us. Then perhaps some day, when you
feel you have lived down the old mistakes, you may be inspired to take
up your pen again. Mistakes! Why should they kill for ever the first
fresh ambition of your life? Mistakes! I made them, too, when I was
young. So has every man who is worth his salt. Of course, there's one
mistake you can't undo--you don't mind my alluding to it, Morgan. But
if you continue to face it as you are doing now--my God, Morgan! you
are suffering!"
Archibald groaned heavily, then checked himself and put on as cheerful
a face as he could muster.
"I meant to have proved to you," he continued, "that you scarcely take
a scientific--I had almost said an intelligent--view of your function
in life. The desire to live by your own labour is actuated by the very
proper feeling that you ought to be doing your duty in the social
organism. Your present work is equal to, say, three respectable pairs
of boots a week. That, you will admit, is a fair measure of your
utility. Now, if by becoming a great poet, you could give pleasure and
delight to thousands of your fellow-men, it seems to me your utility
would be fairly represented by quite a considerable number of pairs of
boots, and very respectable ones, too."
"How it would have delighted me to hear you argue like that when I was
a boy," almost whispered Morgan. "Forgive me, father," he added
immediately. "I did not mean any reproach."
"I admit my not arguing in that way at the time was one of my
mistakes. But I am sure you will yet be a great man. For the present,
however, I shall be content with your assurance that you'll come back
to the bank eventually. Gradually, perhaps, you'll fall thence into
the vocation you were born for."
"I think I can promise so far as the bank is concerned," said Morgan,
slowly.
"Thank you," said his father and bent down to warm his hands in the
flames, so that the light shone on his face.
There was a silence. Scarcely a sound came to them here in this
lonely, bare garret. Morgan studied his father's face anxiously. How
silvery was the hair in places; and there were lines that had not been
there a year before. Both these signs seemed to accuse him louder than
any words.
"Father," he cried, "let me come closer to you."