loose and rather unclean mauve cotton wrapper and her head wrapped up
in a sort of turban of figured silk. This costume she wore most of
the day except that she did her hair and put on a cotton lace cap in
the afternoon. (The black dress and the real lace cap and the
brooch, I was to learn, were for Sundays and for week-day evenings of
distinction.) My mother and Prue were arrayed in rough aprons which
Matilda had very thoughtfully bought for them. There was a great
bustle in the basement of the house, and Prue a little before eight
went up with Matilda to learn how to set out breakfast for Mr.
Plaice. I made his acquaintance later in the day when I took up the
late edition of the _Evening Standard_ to him. I found him a
stooping, tall gentleman with a cadaverous face that was mostly
profile, and he made great play with my Christian name.
"'Mortimer,' he said and neighed his neigh. 'Well--it might have
been Norfolk-Howard.'
"There was an obscure allusion in that: for once upon a time, ran the
popular legend, a certain Mr. Bugg seeking a less entomological name
had changed his to Norfolk-Howard, which was in those days a very
aristocratic one.... Whereupon vulgar people had equalised matters
by calling the offensive bed-bugs that abounded in London,
'Norfolk-Howards.'
"Before many weeks were past it became evident that Matilda Good had
made an excellent bargain in her annexation of our family. She had
secured my mother's services for nothing, and it was manifest that my
mother was a born lodging-house woman. She behaved like a partner in
the concern, and the only money Matilda ever gave her was to pay her
expenses upon some specific errand or to buy some specific thing.
Prue, however, with unexpected firmness, insisted upon wages, and
enforced her claim by going out and nearly getting employment at a
dressmaker's. In a little while Matilda became to the lodgers an
unseen power for righteousness in the basement and all the staircase
work was left to my mother and Prue. Often Matilda did not go up
above the ground level once all day until, as she said, she 'toddled
up to bed.'
"Matilda made some ingenuous attempts to utilise me also in the
service of the household: I was exhorted to carry up scuttles of
coal, clean boots and knives and make myself useful generally. She
even put it to me one day whether I wouldn't like a nice suit with
buttons--in those days they still used to put small serving boys in
tight suits of green or brown cloth, with rows of gilt buttons as
close together as possible over their little chests and stomachs.
But the very thought of it sent my mind to Chessing Hanger, where I
had conceived an intense hatred and dread of 'service' and 'livery,'
and determined me to find some other employment before Matilda Good's
large and insidious will enveloped and overcame me. And, oddly
enough, a talk I had with Miss Beatrice Bumpus helped me greatly in
my determination.
"Miss Bumpus was a slender young woman of about five and twenty, I
suppose. She had short brown hair, brushed back rather prettily from
a broad forehead, and she had freckles on her nose and quick
red-brown eyes. She generally wore a plaid tweed costume rather
short in the skirt and with a coat cut like a man's; she wore green
stockings and brown shoes--I had never seen green stockings
before--and she would stand on her hearthrug in exactly the attitude
Mr. Plaice adopted on his hearthrug downstairs. Or she would be
sitting at a writing-desk against the window, smoking cigarettes.
She asked me what sort of man I intended to be, and I said with the
sort of modesty I had been taught to assume as becoming my station,
that I hadn't thought yet.
"To which Miss Bumpus answered, 'Liar.'
"That was the sort of remark that either kills or cures. I said,
'Well, Miss, I want to get educated and I don't know how to do it.
And I don't know what I ought to do.'
"Miss Bumpus held me with a gesture while she showed how nicely she
could send out smoke through her nose. Then she said, 'Avoid Blind
Alley Occupations.'
"'Yes, Miss.'
"'But you don't know what Blind Alley Occupations are?'
"'No, Miss.'
"'Occupations that earn a boy wages and lead nowhere. One of the
endless pitfalls of this silly man-made pseudo-civilisation. Never
do anything that doesn't lead somewhere. Aim high. I must think
your case out, Mr. Harry Mortimer. I might be able to help you....'
"This was the opening of quite a number of conversations between
myself and Miss Bumpus. She was a very stimulating influence in my
adolescence. She pointed out that although it was now late in the
year, there were many evening classes of various sorts that I might
attend with profit. She told me of all sorts of prominent and
successful people who had begun their careers from beginnings as
humble and hopeless as mine. She said I was 'unhampered' by my sex.
She asked me if I was interested in the suffrage movement, and gave
me tickets for two meetings at which I heard her speak, and she
spoke, I thought, very well. She answered some interrupters with
extreme effectiveness, and I cheered myself hoarse for her.
Something about her light and gallant attitude to life reminded me of
Fanny. I said so one day, and found myself, before I knew it,
telling her reluctantly and shamefully the story of our family
disgrace. Miss Bumpus was much interested.
"'She wasn't like your sister Prue?'
"'No, Miss.'
"'Prettier?'
"'A lot prettier. Of course--you could hardly call Prue _pretty_,
Miss.'
"'I hope she's got on all right,' said Miss Bumpus. 'I don't blame
her a bit. But I hope she got the best of it.'
"'I'd give anything, Miss, to hear Fanny was all right.... I did
care for Fanny, Miss.... I'd give anything almost to see Fanny
again.... You won't tell my mother, Miss, I told you anything about
Fanny? It kind of slipped out like.'
"'Mortimer,' said Miss Bumpus, 'you're a sticker. I wish I had a
little brother like you. There! I won't breathe a word.'
"I felt we had sealed a glorious friendship. I adopted Votes for
Women as the first plank of my political platform. (No, Firefly, I
won't explain. I won't explain anything. You must guess what a
political platform was and what its planks were.) I followed up her
indications and found out about classes in the district where I could
learn geology and chemistry and how to speak French and German. Very
timidly I mooted the subject of my further education in the basement
living-room."
§ 7
Sarnac looked round at the fire-lit faces of his listeners.
"I know how topsy-turvy this story must seem to you, but it is a fact
that before I was fourteen I had to plead for education against the
ideas and wishes of my own family. And the whole household from top
to bottom was brought into the discussion by Matilda or my mother.
Except for Miss Bumpus and Frau Buchholz, everyone was against the
idea.
"'Education,' said Matilda, shaking her head slowly from side to side
and smiling deprecatingly. 'Education! That's all very well for
those who have nothing better to do, but you want to get on in the
world. You've got to be earning, young man.'
"'But if I have education I'll be able to earn more.'
"Matilda screwed up her mouth in a portentous manner and pointed to
the ceiling to indicate Mr. Plaice. 'That's what comes of education,
young man. A room frowsty with books and just enough salary not to
be able to do a blessed thing you want to do. And giving yourself
Airs. Business is what you want, young man, not education.'
"'And who's to pay for all these classes?' said my mother. 'That's
what _I_ want to know.'
"'That's what we all want to know,' said Matilda Good.
"'If I can't get education----' I said, and left the desperate
sentence unfinished. I am afraid I was near weeping. To learn
nothing beyond my present ignorance seemed to me then like a sentence
of imprisonment for life. It wasn't I who suffered that alone.
Thousands of poor youngsters of fourteen or fifteen in those days
knew enough to see clearly that the doors of practical illiteracy
were closing in upon them, and yet did not know enough to find a way
of escape from this mental extinction.
"'Look here!' I said, 'if I can get some sort of job during the day,
may I pay for classes in the evening?'
"'If you can earn enough,' said Matilda. 'It's no worse I suppose
than going to these new cinema shows or buying sweets for girls.'
"'You've got to pay in for your room here and your keep, Morty,
first,' said my mother. 'It isn't fair on Miss Good if you don't.'
"'I know,' I said, with my heart sinking. 'I'll pay in for my board
and lodging. Some'ow. I don't want to be dependent.'
"'What good you think it will do you,' said Matilda Good, 'I _don't_
know. You'll pick up a certain amount of learning perhaps, get a
certificate or something and ideas above your station. You'll give
all the energy you might use in shoving your way up in some useful
employment. You'll get round-shouldered and near-sighted. And just
to grow up a discontented misfit. Well--have it your own way if you
must. If you earn the money yourself it's yours to spend.'
"Mr. Plaice was no more encouraging. 'Well, my noble Mortimer,' he
said, 'they tell me _Arr_ that you aspire to university honours.'
"'I want to learn a little more than I know, Sir.'
"'And join the ranks of the half-educated proletariat?'
"It sounded bad. 'I hope not, Sir,' I said.
"'And what classes do you propose to attend, Mortimer?'
"'Whatever there are.'
"'No plan? No aim?'
"'I thought they'd know.'
"'Whatever they give you--eh? A promiscuous appetite. And while
you--while you _Arr_ indulge in this mixed feast of learning, this
futile rivalry with the children of the leisured classes, somebody I
suppose will have to keep _you_. Don't you think it's a bit hard on
that kind mother of yours who toils day and night for you, that you
shouldn't work and do your bit, eh? One of the things, Mortimer, we
used to learn in our much-maligned public schools, was something we
called _playing cricket_. Well, I ask you, is this--this
disinclination to do a bit of the earning, _Arr_, is it playing
cricket? I could expect such behaviour from an 'Arry, you know, but
not from a Mortimer. _Noblesse oblige_. You think it over, my boy.
There's such a thing as learning, but there's such a thing as Duty.
Many of us have to be content with lives of unassuming labour. Many
of us. Men who under happier circumstances might have done great
things....'
"The Moggeridges were gently persuasive in the same strain. My
mother had put her case to them also. Usually I was indisposed to
linger in the Moggeridge atmosphere; they had old-fashioned ideas
about draughts, and there was a peculiar aged flavour about them;
they were, to be plain, a very dirty old couple indeed. With
declining strength they had relaxed by imperceptible degrees from the
not very exacting standards of their youth. I used to cut into their
room and out of it again as quickly as I could.
"But half a century of the clerical life among yielding country folk
had given these bent, decaying, pitiful creatures a wonderful way
with their social inferiors. 'Morning, Sir and Mam,' I said, and put
down the coals I had brought and took up the empty scuttle-lining I
had replaced.
"Mrs. Moggeridge advanced shakily so as to intercept my retreat. She
had silvery hair, a wrinkled face and screwed-up red-rimmed eyes; she
was short-sighted and came peering up very close to me whenever she
spoke to me, breathing in my face. She held out a quivering hand to
arrest me; she spoke with a quavering voice. 'And how's Master Morty
this morning?' she said, with kindly condescending intonations.
"'Very well thank you, Mam,' I said.
"'I've been hearing rather a sad account of you, Morty, rather a sad
account.'
"'Sorry, Mum,' I said, and wished I had the courage to tell her that
my life was no business of hers.
"They say you're discontented, Morty. They say you complain of God's
Mercies.'
"Mr. Moggeridge had been sitting in the armchair by the fire-place.
He was in his slippers and shirt-sleeves and he had been reading a
newspaper. Now he looked at me over his silver-rimmed spectacles and
spoke in a rich succulent voice.
"'I'm sorry you should be giving trouble to that dear mother of
yours,' he said. 'Very sorry. She's a devoted saintly woman.'
"'Yessir,' I said.
"'Very few boys nowadays have the privilege of such an upbringing as
yours. Some day you may understand what you owe her.'
("'I begin to,'" interjected Sarnac.)
"'It seems you want to launch out upon some extravagant plan of
classes instead of settling down quietly in your proper sphere. Is
that so?'
"'I don't feel I know enough yet, Sir,' I said. 'I feel I'd like to
learn more.'
"'Knowledge isn't always happiness, Morty,' said Mrs. Moggeridge
close to me--much too close to me.
"'And what may these classes be that are tempting you to forget the
honour you owe your dear good mother?' said Mr. Moggeridge.
"'I don't know yet, Sir. They say there's classes in geology and
French and things like that.'
"Old Mr. Moggeridge waved his hand in front of himself with an
expression of face as though it was I who emitted an evil odour.
'Geology!' he said. 'French--the language of Voltaire. Let me tell
you one thing plainly, my boy, your mother is quite right in
objecting to these classes. Geology--geology is--All Wrong. It has
done more harm in the last fifty years than any other single
influence whatever. It undermines faith. It sows doubt. I do not
speak ignorantly, Mortimer. I have seen lives wrecked and destroyed
and souls lost by this same geology. I am an old learned man, and I
have examined the work of many of these so-called geologists--Huxley,
Darwin and the like; I have examined it very, very carefully and
very, very tolerantly, and I tell you they are all, all of them,
_hopelessly mistaken men_.... And what good will such knowledge do
you? Will it make you happier? Will it make you better? No, my
lad. But I know of something that will. Something older than
geology. Older and better. Sarah dear, give me that book there,
please. Yes'--reverentially--'_the_ Book.'
"His wife handed him a black-bound Bible, with its cover protected
against rough usage by a metal edge. 'Now, my boy,' he said, 'let me
give you this--this old familiar book, with an old man's blessing.
In that is all the knowledge worth having, all the knowledge you will
ever need. You will always find something fresh in it and always
something beautiful.' He held it out to me.
"Accepting it seemed the shortest way out of the room, so I took it.
'Thank you, Sir,' I said.
"'Promise me you will read it.'
"'Oh yes, Sir.'
"I turned to go. But giving was in the air.
"'Now, Mortimer,' said Mrs. Moggeridge, 'do please promise me to seek
strength where strength is to be found and try to be a better son to
that dear struggling woman.' And as she spoke she proffered for my
acceptance an extremely hard, small, yellow orange.
"'Thank you, Mam,' I said, made shift to stow her gift in my pocket,
and with the Bible in one hand and the empty coal-scuttle-lining in
the other, escaped.
"I returned wrathfully to the basement and deposited my presents on
the window-sill. Some impulse made me open the Bible, and inside the
cover I found, imperfectly erased, the shadowy outlines of these
words, printed in violet ink: 'Not to be Removed from the
Waiting-Room.' I puzzled over the significance of this for some
time."
"And what did it signify?' asked Firefly.
"I do not know to this day," said Sarnac. "But apparently the
reverend gentleman had acquired that Book at a railway-station during
one of his journeys as a Sunday supply."
"You mean----?" said Firefly.
"No more than I say. He was in many ways a peculiar old gentleman,
and his piety was, I fancy, an essentially superficial exudation. He
was--I will not say 'dishonest,' but 'spasmodically acquisitive.'
And like many old people in those days he preferred his refreshment
to be stimulating rather than nutritious, and so he may have blurred
his ethical perceptions. An odd thing about him--Matilda Good was
the first to point it out--was that he rarely took an umbrella away
with him when he went on supply and almost always he came back with
one--and once he came back with two. But he never kept his
umbrellas; he would take them off for long walks and return without
them, looking all the brighter for it. I remember one day I was in
the room when he returned from such an expedition, there had been a
shower and his coat was wet. Mrs. Moggeridge made him change it and
lamented that he had lost his umbrella _again_.
"'Not lost,' I heard the old man say in a voice of infinite
gentleness. 'Not lost, dear. Not lost; but gone before.... Gone
before the rain came.... The Lord gave.... Lord hath taken 'way.'
"For a time he was silent, coat in hand. He stood with his
shirt-sleeve resting on the mantel-shelf, his foot upon the fender,
and his venerable hairy face gazing down into the fire. He seemed to
be thinking deep, sad things. Then he remarked in a thoughtful, less
obituary tone: 'Ten'n-sixpence. A jolly goo' 'mbrella."
§ 8
"Frau Buchholz was a poor, lean, distressful woman of five and forty
or more, with a table littered with the documents of some obscure
litigation. She did not altogether discourage my ambitions, but she
laid great stress on the hopelessness of attempting Kultur without a
knowledge of German, and I am inclined to think that her attitude was
determined mainly by a vague and desperate hope that I might be
induced to take lessons in German from her.
"Brother Ernest was entirely against my ambition. He was shy and
vocally inexpressive, and he took me to the Victoria Music Hall and
spent a long evening avoiding the subject. It was only as we drew
within five minutes of home that he spoke of it.
"'What's all this about your not being satisfied with your education,
'Arry?' he asked. 'I thought you'd had a pretty decent bit of
schooling.'
"'I don't feel I know anything,' I said. 'I don't know history or
geography or anything. I don't even know my own grammar.'
"'You know enough,' said Ernest. 'You know enough to get a job.
Knowing more would only make you stuck-up. We don't want any more
stuck-ups in the family, God knows.'
"I knew he referred to Fanny, but of course neither of us mentioned
her shameful name.
"'Anyhow, I suppose I'll have to chuck it,' I said bitterly.
"'That's about it, 'Arry. I know you're a sensible chap--at bottom.
You got to be what you got to be.'
"The only encouragement I got to resist mental extinction was from
Miss Beatrice Bumpus, and after a time I found even that source of
consolation was being cut off from me. For my mother began to
develop the most gross and improbable suspicions about Miss Bumpus.
You see I stayed sometimes as long as ten or even twelve minutes in
the drawing-room, and it was difficult for so good a woman as my
mother, trained in the most elaborate precautions of separation
between male and female, to understand that two young people of
opposite sex could have any liking for each other's company unless
some sort of gross familiarity was involved. The good of those days,
living as they did in a state of inflamed restraint, had very
exaggerated ideas of the appetites, capacities and uncontrollable
duplicity of normal human beings. And so my mother began to
manoeuvre in the most elaborate way to replace me by Prue as a
messenger to Miss Bumpus. And when I was actually being talked
to--and even talking--in the drawing-room I had an increasing sense
of that poor misguided woman hovering upon the landing outside,
listening in a mood of anxious curiosity and ripening for a sudden
inrush, a disgraceful exposure, wild denunciation of Miss Bumpus, and
the rescue of the vestiges of my damaged moral nature. I might never
have realised what was going on if it had not been for my mother's
direct questionings and warnings. Her conception of a proper
upbringing for the young on these matters was a carefully preserved
ignorance hedged about by shames and foul terrors. So she was at
once extremely urgent and extraordinarily vague with me. What was I
up to--staying so long with that woman? I wasn't to listen to
anything she told me. I was to be precious careful what I got up to
up there. I might find myself in more trouble than I thought. There
were women in this world of a shamelessness it made one blush to
think of. She'd always done her best to keep me from wickedness and
nastiness."
"But she was mad!" said Willow.
"All the countless lunatic asylums of those days wouldn't have held a
tithe of the English people who were as mad in that way as she was."
"But the whole world was mad?" said Sunray. "_All_ those people,
except perhaps Miss Bumpus, talked about your education like insane
people! Did none of them understand the supreme wickedness of
hindering the growth of a human mind?"
"It was a world of suppression and evasion. You cannot understand
anything about it unless you understand that."
"But the whole world!" said Radiant.
"Most of it. It was still a fear-haunted world. 'Submit,' said the
ancient dread, 'do nothing--lest you offend. And from your
children--_hide_.' What I am telling you about the upbringing of
Harry Mortimer Smith was generally true of the upbringing of the
enormous majority of the inhabitants of the earth. It was not merely
that their minds were starved and poisoned. Their minds were stamped
upon and mutilated. That world was so pitiless and confused, so
dirty and diseased, because it was cowed and dared not learn of
remedies. In Europe in those days we used to be told the most
extraordinary stories of the wickedness and cruelty of the Chinese,
and one favourite tale was that little children were made to grow up
inside great porcelain jars in order to distort their bodies to
grotesque shapes so that they could be shown at fairs or sold to rich
men. The Chinese certainly distorted the feet of young women for
some obscure purpose, and this may have been the origin of this
horrible legend. But our children in England were mentally distorted
in exactly the same fashion except that for porcelain jars we used
mental tin-cans and dustbins.... My dears! when I talk of this I
cease to be Sarnac! All the rage and misery of crippled and thwarted
Harry Mortimer Smith comes back to me."
"Did you get to those classes of yours?" asked Sunray. "I hope you
did."
"Not for a year or two--though Miss Bumpus did what she could for me.
She lent me a lot of books--in spite of much ignorant censorship on
the part of my mother--and I read voraciously. But, I don't know if
you will understand it, my relations with Miss Bumpus were slowly
poisoned by the interpretations my mother was putting upon them. I
think you will see how easy it was for a boy in my position to fall
in love, fall into a deep emotional worship of so bright and friendly
a young woman. Most of us young men nowadays begin by adoring a
woman older than ourselves. Adoring is the word rather than loving.
It's not a mate we need at first but the helpful, kindly goddess who
stoops to us. And of course I loved her. But I thought much more of
serving her or dying for her than of embracing her. When I was away
from her my imagination might go so far as to dream of kissing her
hands.
"And then came my mother with this hideous obsession of hers, jealous
for something she called my purity, treating this white passion of
gratitude and humility as though it was the power that drags a
blow-fly to some heap of offal. A deepening shame and ungraciousness
came into my relations with Miss Bumpus. I became red-eared and
tongue-tied in her presence. Possibilities I might never have
thought of but for my mother's suggestions grew disgustingly vivid in
my mind. I dreamt about her grotesquely. When presently I found
employment for my days my chances of seeing her became infrequent.
She receded as a personality and friend, and quite against my will
became a symbol of femininity.