His short contemptuous way with his new clients in the villas of
Cliffstone failed to produce the respect he designed it to do; he
would speak of their flower-beds as 'two penn'orths of all-sorts' and
compare their gardens to a table-cloth or a window box; and instead
of welcoming these home-truths, they resented them. But they had not
the manliness to clear up this matter by a good straightforward
argument in which they would have had their social position very
exactly defined; they preferred to keep their illusions and just
ceased to employ him. Moreover, his disappointment with my aunt
produced a certain misogyny, which took the form of a refusal to take
orders from the wives of his patrons when they were left in sole
charge of the house. As many of these wives had a considerable
influence over their husbands, this too injured my uncle's prospects.
Consequently there were many days when he had nothing to do but stand
about our shop to discuss with my father as hearer the defects of
Cliffstone villa-residents, the baseness of Mr. Petterton and that
cat ('cat' he called her) and the probable unworthiness of any casual
customer who strayed into range of comment.
"Nevertheless my uncle was resolved not to be defeated without a
struggle. There was a process which he called 'keeping his pecker
up,' which necessitated, I could not but perceive, periodic visits to
the Wellington public-house at the station corner. From these visits
he returned markedly more garrulous, more like Sir John
ffrench-Cuthbertson, and exhaling a distinctively courageous smell
when he coughed or breathed heavily. After a time, as his business
difficulties became more oppressive, my father participated in these
heartening excursions. They broadened his philosophical outlook but
made it, I fancied, rather less distinct.
"My uncle had some indefinite sum of money in the Post Office Savings
Bank, and in his determination not to be beaten without a struggle he
did some courageous betting on what he called 'certs' at the
race-meetings on Byford Downs."
"'Cert' beats me altogether," said Radiant.
"A 'cert' was a horse that was certain to win and never did. A 'dead
cert' was an extreme form of the 'cert.' You cannot imagine how the
prospects and quality of the chief race-horses were discussed
throughout the land. The English were not a nomadic people, only a
minority could ride horses, but everybody could bet on them. The
King was, so to speak, head of the racing just as he was head of the
army. He went in person to the great race-meetings as if to bless
and encourage the betting of his subjects. So that my Uncle John
Julip was upheld by the most loyal and patriotic sentiments when he
wasted his days and his savings on Byford Downs. On several of these
occasions my father went with him and wrestled with fortune also.
They lost generally, finally they lost most of what they had, but on
one or two occasions, as my uncle put it, they 'struck it rich.' One
day they pitched upon a horse called Rococo, although it was regarded
as the very reverse of a 'cert' and the odds were heavy against it,
but an inner light seems to have guided my uncle; it came in first
and they won as much as thirty-five pounds, a very large sum for
them. They returned home in a state of solemn exaltation, which was
only marred by some mechanical difficulty in pronouncing the name of
the winning horse. They began well but after the first syllable they
went on more like a hen that had laid an egg than like rational souls
who had spotted a winner. 'Rocococo' they would say or 'Rococococo.'
Or they would end in a hiccup. And though each tried to help the
other out, they were not really helpful to each other. They diffused
an unusually powerful odour of cigars and courage. Never had they
smelt so courageous. My mother made them tea.
"'_Tea!_' said my uncle meaningly. He did not actually refuse the
cup she put before him, but he pushed it a little aside.
"For some moments it seemed doubtful whether he was going to say
something very profound or whether he was going to be seriously ill.
Mind triumphed over matter. 'Knew it would come, Marth,' he said.
'Knew allong it would come. Directly I heard name. Roc----' He
paused.
"'Cococo,' clucked my father.
"'Cocococo--hiccup,' said my uncle. 'I knew ourour 'ad come. Some
men, Smith, some men 'ave that instink. I would 'ave put my shirt on
that 'orse, Marth--only.... They wouldn't 'ave took my shirt.'
"He looked suddenly very hard at me. 'They wouldn't 'ave took it,
'Arry,' he said. 'They done _take_ shirts!' "'No,' he said and
became profoundly thoughtful.
"Then he looked up. 'Thirty-six to one against,' he said. 'We'd
'ave 'ad shirts for a lifetime.'
"My father saw it from a wider, more philosophical point of view.
'Might never 'ave been spared to wear 'em out,' he said. 'Better as
it is, John.'
"'And mind you,' said my uncle; 'this is only a beginning. Once I
start spotting 'em I go on spotting 'em--mind that. This Roc----'
"'Cococo.'
"'Cocococo--whatever it is, s'only a beginning. S'only the
firs'-ray-sunlight 'v' a glorious day.'
"'In that case,' said my mother, 't'seems to me some of us might have
a share.'
"'Certainly,' said my uncle, 'certainly, Marth.' And amazingly he
handed me a ten-shilling piece--in those days we had gold coins and
this was a little disk of gold. Then he handed Prue the same. He
gave a whole sovereign, a golden pound, to Fanny and a five-pound
Bank of England note to my mother.
"'Hold on!' said my father warningly.
"'Tha's a' right, Smith,' said my uncle with a gesture of princely
generosity. 'You share, seventeen pounce ten. Six pounce ten leaves
'leven. Lessee. One 'n' five six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven.
_Here!_'
"My father took the balance of the money with a puzzled expression.
Something eluded him. 'Yers,' he said; 'but----'
"His mild eye regarded the ten-shilling piece I still held exposed in
my hand. I put it away immediately but his gaze followed my hand
towards my pocket until it met the table edge and got into
difficulties.
"'Thout the turf, Smith, there wouldn't be such a country as
England,' said my Uncle John, and rounded his remarks off with, 'Mark
my words.'
"My father did his best to do so."
§ 3
"But this hour of success was almost the only bright interlude in a
steady drift to catastrophe. In a little while I gathered from a
conversation between my mother and my father that we were 'behind
with the rent.' That was a quarterly payment we paid to the
enterprising individual who owned our house. I know all that sounds
odd to you, but that is the way things were done. If we got behind
with our rent the owner could turn us out."
"But where?" asked Firefly.
"Out of the house. And we weren't allowed to stay in the street.
But it is impossible for me to explain everything of that sort in
detail. We were behind with the rent and catastrophe impended. And
then my sister Fanny ran away from us.
"In no other respect," said Sarnac, "is it so difficult to get
realities over to you and make you understand how I thought and felt
in that other life than in matters of sex. Nowadays sex is so
simple. Here we are free and frank men and women; we are trained so
subtly that we scarcely know we are trained, not to be stupidly
competitive, to control jealous impulses, to live generously, to
honour the young. Love is the link and flower of our choicest
friendships. We take love by the way as we take our food and our
holidays, the main thing in our lives is our creative work. But in
that dark tormented world in which I passed my dream life, all the
business of love was covered over and netted in by restraints and put
in fetters that fretted and tortured. I will tell you at last how I
was killed. Now I want to convey to you something; of the reality of
this affair of Fanny.
"Even in this world," said Sarnac, "my sister Fanny would have been a
conspicuously lovely girl. Her eyes could be as blue as heaven, or
darken with anger or excitement so that they seemed black. Her hair
had a brave sweep in it always. Her smile made you ready to do
anything for her; her laughter made the world clean and brightly
clear about her even when it was touched with scorn. And she was
ignorant---- I can hardly describe her ignorance.
"It was Fanny first made me feel that ignorance was shameful. I have
told you the sort of school we had and of our religious teachers.
When I was nine or ten and Fanny was fifteen, she was already
scolding me for fumbling with the pronunciation of words and
particularly with the dropping of the aspirate.
"'Harry,' she said, 'if you call me Fenny again it's war and
pinching. My name's Fanny and yours is Harry and don't you forget
it. It's not English we talk in this place; it's mud.'
"Something had stung her. She had been talking with someone with a
better accent and she had been humiliated. I think that someone may
have mocked her. Some chance acquaintance it must have been, some
ill-bred superior boy upon the Cliffstone promenade. But Fanny was
setting out now to talk good English and make me do the same, with a
fury all her own.
"'If only I could talk French,' she said. 'There's France in sight
over there; all its lighthouses winking at us, and all we've got to
say is, "Parley vous Francy," and grin as if it was a joke.' She
brought home a sixpenny book which professed but failed to teach her
French. She was reading voraciously, greedily, to know. She read
endless novels but also she was reading all sorts of books, about the
stars, about physiology (in spite of my mother's wild scoldings at
the impropriety of reading a book 'with pictures of yer insides' in
it), about foreign countries. Her passion that I should learn was
even greater than her own passion for knowledge.
"At fourteen she left school and began to help earn her living. My
mother had wanted her to go into 'service,' but she had resisted and
resented this passionately. While that proposal was still hanging
over her, she went off by herself to Cliffstone and got a job as
assistant book-keeper in a pork butcher's shop. Before a year was
out she was book-keeper, for her mind was as neat as it was nimble.
She earned enough money to buy books and drawing material for me and
to get herself clothes that scandalised all my mother's ideas of what
was becoming. Don't imagine she 'dressed well,' as we used to say;
she experimented boldly, and some of her experiments were cheap and
tawdry.
"I could lecture to you for an hour," said Sarnac, "of what dress and
the money to buy dresses meant for a woman in the old world.
"A large part of my sister's life was hidden from me; it would have
been hidden altogether but for the shameless tirades of my mother,
who seemed to prefer to have an audience while she scolded Fanny. I
can see now that my mother was bitterly jealous of Fanny because of
her unexhausted youth, but at the time I was distressed and puzzled
at the gross hints and suggestions that flew over my head. Fanny had
a maddening way of not answering back or answering only by some minor
correction. 'It's horrible, mother,' she would say. 'Not 'orrible.'
"Behind her defensive rudenesses, unlit, unguided, poor Fanny was
struggling with the whole riddle of life, presented to her with an
urgency no man can fully understand. Nothing in her upbringing had
ever roused her to the passion for real work in the world; religion
for her had been a grimace and a threat; the one great reality that
had come through to her thoughts was love. The novels she read all
told of love, elusively, partially, and an impatience in her
imagination and in her body leapt to these hints. Love whispered to
her in the light and beauty of things about her; in the moonlight, in
the spring breezes. Fanny could not but know that she was beautiful.
But such morality as our world had then was a morality of abject
suppression. Love was a disgrace, a leering fraud, a smutty joke.
She was not to speak about it, not to look towards it until some good
man--the pork butcher was a widower and seemed likely to be the good
man in her case--came and spoke not of love indeed but marriage. He
would marry her and hurry home with his prize and tear the wrappings
from her loveliness, clumsily, stupidly, in a mood of morbidly
inflamed desire."
"Sarnac," said Firefly, "you are horrible."
"No," said Sarnac. "But that world of the past was horrible. Most
of the women, your ancestors, suffered such things. And that was
only the beginning of the horror. Then came the birth and
desecration of the children. Think what a delicate, precious and
holy thing a child is! They were begotten abundantly and abnormally,
born reluctantly, and dropped into the squalour and infection of an
overcrowded disordered world. Bearing a child was not the jolly
wholesome process we know to-day; in that diseased society it was an
illness, it counted as an illness, for nearly every woman. Which the
man her husband resented--grossly. Five or six children in five or
six years and a pretty girl was a cross, worried wreck of a woman,
bereft of any shred of spirit or beauty. My poor scolding, worried
mother was not fifty when she died. And one saw one's exquisite
infants grow up into ill-dressed, under-nourished, ill-educated
children. Think of the agony of shamed love that lay beneath my poor
mother's slaps and scoldings! The world has forgotten now the hate
and bitterness of disappointed parentage. That was the prospect of
the moral life that opened before my sister Fanny; that was the
antistrophe to the siren song of her imagination.
"She could not believe this of life and love. She experimented with
love and herself. She was, my mother said, 'a bold, bad girl.' She
began I know with furtive kissings and huggings in the twilight, with
boy schoolfellows, with clerks and errand-boys. Some gleam of
nastiness came into these adventures of the dusk and made her recoil.
At any rate she became prim and aloof to Cherry Gardens, but only
because she was drawn to the bands and lights and prosperity of
Cliffstone. That was when she began to read and correct her accent.
You have heard of our old social stratifications. She wanted to be
like a lady; she wanted to meet a gentleman. She imagined there were
gentlemen who were really gentle, generous, wise and delightful, and
she imagined that some of the men she saw on the cliff promenade at
Cliffstone were gentlemen. She began to dress herself as I have told.
"There were scores of such girls in every town in Europe," said
Sarnac, "turning their backs on their dreadful homes. In a sort of
desperate hope.
"When you hear about the moral code of the old world," Sarnac went
on, "you are apt to think of it as a rule that everyone respected in
exactly the same way that you think everyone believed the professed
religions. We have not so much a moral code now as a moral training,
and our religion involves no strain on reason or instincts, and so it
is difficult for us to understand the tortuosity and evasions and
defiances and general furtiveness and meanness of a world in which
nobody really understood and believed the religious creeds, not even
the priests, and nobody was really convinced to the bone of the
sweetness and justice of the moral code. In that distant age almost
everybody was sexually angry or uncomfortable or dishonest; the
restraints we had did not so much restrain as provoke people. It is
difficult to imagine it now."
"Not if you read the old literature," said Sunray. "The novels and
plays are pathological."
"So you have my pretty sister Fanny, drawn by impulses she did not
understand, flitting like a moth out of our dingy home in Cherry
Gardens to the lights, bright lights of hope they seemed to her,
about the bandstand and promenade of Cliffstone. And there staying
in the lodging-houses and boarding-houses and hotels were limited and
thwarted people, keeping holiday, craving for bright excitements,
seeking casual pleasures. There were wives who had tired of their
husbands and husbands long weary of their wives, there were separated
people who could not divorce and young men who could not marry
because they could not afford to maintain a family. With their poor
hearts full of naughtiness, rebellious suppressions, jealousies,
resentments. And through this crowd, eager, provocative, and
defenceless, flitted my pretty sister Fanny."
§ 4
"On the evening before Fanny ran away my father and my uncle sat in
the kitchen by the fire discoursing of politics and the evils of
life. They had both been keeping up their peckers very resolutely
during the day and this gave a certain rambling and recurrent quality
to their review. Their voices were hoarse, and they drawled and were
loud and emphatic and impressive. It was as if they spoke for the
benefit of unseen listeners. Often they would both be talking
together. My mother was in the scullery washing up the tea-things
and I was sitting at the table near the lamp trying to do some
homework my teacher had given me, so far as the distraction of this
conversation so close to me and occasional appeals to me to 'mark'
this or that, would permit. Prue was reading a book called
_Ministering Children_ to which she was much addicted. Fanny had
been helping my mother until she was told she was more a hindrance
than a help. Then she came and stood at my side looking over my
shoulder at what I was doing.
"'What's spoiling trade and ruining the country,' said my uncle, 'is
these 'ere strikes. These 'ere strikes reg'ler
destrushion--destruction for the country.'
"'Stop everything,' said my father. 'It stands to reason.'
"'They didn't ought to be allowed. These 'ere miners'r paid and paid
'andsomely. Paid 'andsomely they are. 'Andsomely. Why! I'd be
glad of the pay they get, glad of it. They 'as bulldogs, they 'as
pianos. Champagne. Me and you, Smith, me and you and the middle
classes generally; we don't get pianos. We don't get champagne.
Not-tit....'
"'Ought to be a Middle Classes Union,' said my father, 'keep these
'ere workers in their places. They 'old up the country and stop
trade. Trade! Trade's orful. Why! people come in now and look at
what you got and arst the price of this and that. Think twice they
do before they spend a sixpence.... And the coal you're expected to
sell nowadays! I tell 'em, if this 'ere strike comes off this 's
'bout the last coal you're likely to see, good or bad. Straight out,
I tell 'em....'
"'You're not working, Harry,' said Fanny without troubling to lower
her voice. 'Don't see how you can work, with all this jawing going
on. Come out for a walk.'
"I glanced up at her and rose at once. It wasn't often Fanny asked
me to go for a walk with her. I put my books away.
"'Going out for a bit of fresh air, mother,' said Fanny, taking her
hat down from its peg.
"'No, you don't--not at this time,' cried my mother from the
scullery. 'Ain't I said, once and for all----?'
"'It's all right, mother, Harry's going with me. He'll see no one
runs away with me and ruins me.... You've said it once and for
all--times enough.'
"My mother made no further objection, but she flashed a look of
infinite hate at my sister.
"We went upstairs and out into the street.
"For a time we said nothing, but I had a sense that I was going to be
'told things.'
"'I've had about enough of all this,' Fanny began presently. 'What's
going to become of us? Father and uncle 've been drinking all day;
you can see they're both more than half-screwed. Both of 'em. It's
every day now. It's worse and worse and worse. Uncle hasn't had a
job these ten days. Father's always with him. The shop's getting
filthy. He doesn't sweep it out now for days together.'
"'Uncle seems to have lost 'eart,' I said, 'since he heard that Aunt
Adelaide would have to have that second operation.'
"'Lost heart! He never had any heart to lose.' My sister Fanny said
no more of my uncle--by an effort. 'What a home!' she cried.
"She paused for a moment. 'Harry,' she said, 'I'm going to get out
of this. Soon.'
"I asked what she meant by that.
"'Never mind what I mean. I've got a situation. A different sort of
situation.... Harry, you--you care for me, Harry?'
"Professions of affection are difficult for boys of thirteen. 'I'd
do anything for you, Fanny,' I said after a pause. 'You know I
would.'
"'And you wouldn't tell on me?'
"'Whad you take me for?'
"'Nohow?'
"'No'ow.'
"'I knew you wouldn't,' said Fanny. 'You're the only one of the
whole crew I'll be sorry to leave. I do care for you, Harry.
Straight, I do. I used to care for mother. Once. But that's
different. She's scolded me and screamed at me till it's gone.
Every bit of it. I can't help it,--it's gone. I'll think of you,
Harry--often.'
"I realised that Fanny was crying. Then when I glanced at her again
her tears were over.
"'Look here, Harry,' she said, 'would you do--something--for me?
Something--not so very much--and not tell? Not tell afterwards, I
mean.'
"'I'd do anything, Fanny.'
"'It's not so very much really. There's that little old portmanteau
upstairs. I've put some things in it. And there's a little bundle.
I've put 'em both under the bed at the back where even Prying Prue
won't think of looking. And to-morrow--when father's out with uncle
like he is now every day, and mother's getting dinner downstairs and
Prue's pretending to help her and sneaking bits of bread--if you'd
bring those down to Cliffstone to Crosby's side-door.... They aren't
so very heavy.'
"'I ain't afraid of your portmanteau, Fanny. I'd carry it more miles
than that for you. But where's this new situation of yours, Fanny?
and why ain't you saying a word about it at home?'
"'Suppose I asked you something harder than carrying a portmanteau,
Harry?'
"'I'd do it, Fanny, if I could do it. You know that, Fanny.'
"'But if it was just to ask no questions of where I am going and what
I am going to do? It's--it's a good situation, Harry. It isn't hard
work.'
"She stopped short. I saw her face by the yellow light of a street
lamp and I was astonished to see it radiant with happiness. And yet
her eyes were shining with tears. What a Fanny it was, who could
pass in a dozen steps from weeping to ecstasy!
"'Oh! I wish I could tell you all about it, Harry,' she said. 'I
wish I could tell you all about it. Don't you worry about me, Harry,
or what's going to happen to me. You help me, and after a bit I'll
write to you. I will indeed, Harry.'
"'You aren't going to run away and marry?' I asked abruptly. 'It'd
be like you, Fanny, to do that.'
"'I won't say I am; I won't say I'm not; I won't say anything, Harry.
But I'm as happy as the sunrise, Harry! I could dance and sing. If
only I can do it, Harry.'
"'There's one thing, Fanny.'
"She stopped dead. 'You're not going back on me, Harry?'
"'No. I'll do what I've promised, Fanny. But----' I had a moral
mind. I hesitated. 'You're not doing anything wrong, Fanny?'
"She shook her head and did not answer for some moments. The look of
ecstasy returned.
"'I'm doing the rightest thing that ever I did, Harry, the rightest
thing. If only I can do it. And you are a dear to help me, a
perfect dear.'
"And suddenly she put her arms about me and drew my face to hers and
kissed me and then she pushed me away and danced a step. 'I love all
the world to-night,' said Fanny. 'I love all the world. Silly old
Cherry Gardens! You thought you'd got me! You thought I'd never get
away!'