A MARRYING MAN
BY G. B. STERN
London
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET, W.
_First Published in 1918_
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
PANTOMIME
SEE-SAW
TWOS AND THREES
GRAND CHAIN
TO
OLIVE WADSLEY
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
PART II
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
PART III
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
PART IV
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
A MARRYING MAN
PART I
CHAPTER I
Kathleen Morrison, on her return to London, was not prepared for the
empty, echoing house, the loud thud of her footsteps on the uncarpeted
stairs, the ghostly appearance of the linen-shrouded furniture. Her
brother and sister-in-law, with whom she made her home, usually
abandoned the seaside towards the end of August; these were already the
first days of September.
"Not before Tuesday week, Miss Kathleen," the one resentful
housemaid-in-charge answered her enquiries; "the Missus said she'd
written to you."
She had. Many times. But Kathleen, having once sent an assurance of her
safety, together with a brief explanation of the circumstances of her
escapade, very carefully refrained from opening the letters that came
in reply. Not that family disapproval would for an instant have turned
her from a decision to remain at least a month in Alpenruh; but the
month itself was so strangely and perfectly apart from the sounding
discordances of before and after, that she refused to mar its harmony
by the possibility of a single jarring note. So the envelopes addressed
in Edward's handwriting, and in Nelly's handwriting, accumulated in
a neat little pile. Doubtless they contained "home-truths." Kathleen
promised herself a careful perusal of these on the ensuing New Year's
Eve, when from previous experience she anticipated a fit of depression
so intense that nothing could possibly serve to augment it. Meanwhile,
she was glad to find that Edward and Nelly, and Nelly's father, old Mr.
Jeyne, and Nelly's two children, Muriel and Nicolas, and Nelly's nurse,
and Nelly's cook, were still absent from the house in North Kensington.
The house was high and narrow-breasted, situated in a neighbourhood
which, whatever the generation, had been fashionable with the
generation before, so that its inhabitants mainly consisted of ghosts
and grumblers. The grumblers were of the kind who religiously take
their five weeks' holiday in the summer, and are firmly imbued with
the immorality of leaving their homes at any other period of the year.
Therefore North Kensington was now a deserted wilderness of drawn
blinds and white-smocked house-painters, of spectral scaffoldings
and forlornly prowling cats. The milkman's was an eerie cry at dawn;
and at eve the German band blared mournfully to unresponsive areas.
Kathleen trod softly from one empty room to another; was given her
meals at eccentric hours, in unfamiliar parts of the house; shivered
a little as she locked her front door at nights--how stiff they were,
those bolts! and with what startling clangour they shot at last into
their sockets!--and was wonderfully at peace. With a present entirely
negative, with a future carefully unglanced at, she was free amidst
the prevailing spells of silence to yield herself entirely to a memory
still so fresh and near that it asked to be re-lived, caressed and
handled, laid to sleep for the pleasure of bidding it wake again. Idly
she wondered why it was that she did not miss Gareth more poignantly;
why she was content to believe their idyll wholly a gift of thirty-one
days which haphazard had capriciously flung them, that hot oily
afternoon, on the wharf at Folkestone....
In company with Fräulein Gerhardt and Mademoiselle Lefranc, she had
been shepherding a party of seven schoolgirls on an instructive trip
to Switzerland. Gareth Albert Temple was one of the Society of Young
Botanists, touring the Alps in search of specimens. And they had both
missed the boat....
Thereafter, a headlong chase together across Europe in quest of their
separate parties. A growing intimacy--"You must let me be of any
assistance I can on your journey," the boy had remarked in his gentle
courtly manner. He was not more than twenty-four; and good to look
upon, with his wavy black hair and pleading dark eyes; eyes that were
the only contradiction in a face compounded of strong curves, firm
jaw and determined mouth and outjutting squarely-formed eyebrows....
Kathleen smiled tenderly enough at memory of his straight young
comeliness. And was it incapacity or merely laziness on his part which
had caused all the practical management of that fantastic continental
scamper to lapse into her hands? management of times and trains and
meals and foreign money and luggage at the Customs?... But she was
accustomed to leadership, and she found a rare sweetness in Gareth's
admiration of her competence; admiration which he mingled with an
old-world romantic deference to a certain element of innocent and
unprotected maidenhood which his upbringing seemed to take for granted
even in a schoolmistress in her twenty-seventh year.
Twenty-seven!--and this was still the period of the late
eighteen-nineties, when girlhood ended abruptly at thirty; when
middle-age was supposed to begin at forty; and the intervening years
were for the unmarried to learn their lesson of quiet resignation.
Twenty-seven!--Kathleen was clutching hot-fingered at the moments, lest
she should be left with empty hands. And the days ate at the years ...
and she was going abroad in the company of nine females and the spirit
of discontent.
... Gradually, a fretful eagerness to join up with her party, merged
into a mischievous eagerness to avoid doing so; to prolong a little
while, though by cheating and stealth, the charm of travelling a woman
with a man by her side, as nature and tradition demanded. Folly,
perhaps; but the sort of folly of which a girl--a very young and silly
girl--would be capable.... As proof of her own capacity for such youth
and folly, Kathleen welcomed the impulse; encouraged it. And then,
just as it seemed impossible to stave off any longer the encounter
with duty and discipline, fate had aided her with a genuine accident
by which they had been shoved late on a rain-misted evening into the
wrong train at the little Alpine station, and had been carried off to
Alpenruh, instead of to Lauterbrunnen in the opposite direction; and
had been forced to spend the night at the gold-brown châlet hotel.
And the next morning was washed in vivid blue and sunshine; the snowy
mountain peaks called for repetition of the thunderous saga of their
names: Schreckhorn, Faulhorn, Wetterhorn, Finsteraarhorn!... And the
tinkle of ascending cowbells among the mountains, duetted with the
musical plash of cascade and rivulet; the mules champed and flicked
their tails in the winding village street; the guides sat comfortably
astride of the wall, and surveyed the round rickety tables outside the
cafés, the bundles of walking-sticks and chamois-heads so prodigally
displayed for sale; the pines wafted their resinous fragrance through
the green-shuttered windows of the hotel; and down the polished
wooden stairs, Gareth was awaiting her, and clear yellow honey for
breakfast.... It was not a morning even to think of Fräulein Gerhardt
and Mademoiselle Lefranc, and Elsie and Gwendolen and Kitty and
Beatrice and Dora and Flo and Mary, doubtless angrily bewildered at
this desertion of the English history and arithmetic teacher.
But Gareth had pleaded: "Let us stay here--just for to-day...."
Presently he confessed that on the latter part of their journey he had
been taking the utmost care to avoid catching up with the Society of
Young Botanists. Once he had even caught sight of them....
"I couldn't bear to end our good time. Can you forgive me for dragging
you into this?"
Kathleen smiled--but made no counter confession. She let him think
he was responsible for their daring escapade, because she was
twenty-seven, and he twenty-four, and it gave him a fearful pleasure to
think so.
Thus the affair had begun. Was she wrong in letting it take its course?
Plenty of leisure now to regret, if regret were to be her portion.
No.... She was glad they had lingered on at Alpenruh; even when the
brilliant fever of her youth at its zenith, the flame of reds and
browns which she had inherited from an Indian grandmother, from whom
had also been bequeathed her noiseless walk and the streak of buried
fierceness in her nature, even when all this had rushed Gareth past all
dreaming chivalry to a passion of strictly chivalrous adoration--even
then she did not regret, in retrospect, having provided herself with
this fortified memory against all future bitterness of self-reproach
for wasting the years.
She did not for a second doubt that the episode was definitely at an
end, and laid aside. Certainly, at parting, Gareth's hand had sought
to detain hers in a lingering clasp; but beyond the actual "Good-bye,
Kathleen," he had not put into words any desire to prolong the play
after the curtain had fallen. Nor had she known till the present,
how serenely one can dwell in the mellow afterglow of happiness,
though summer be drawing to its end in the railinged squares of North
Kensington.
A letter arrived, in Gareth's boldly uncharacteristic calligraphy.
She withdrew the sheets lovingly enough from their envelope, as the
postman's clattering passage retreated down the street.
"I want to thank you," thus the missive ran. "And I want to do it
largely and wonderfully, with an effect of shouts and clarion-calls
and crashing thunders, in case you should not understand how big a
thing in my life our holiday together has been. And I want to do it
delicately, in miniature, with a fairy paint-box, and a flute of
reeds, and single raindrops pattering, that you may see how each
separate second of your company was in itself perfection. But with
all this, I can only just write 'thank you' with sober pen and ink,
on plain white paper. And because it is you, you will know.
"Our holiday--yes, but I shall speak the word now according to its
derivation: 'holy day.' Holy days, for us, Kathleen!
"I am shutting my eyes--which is why the lines have run
crooked--and I can see the silly little wooden ink-pot châlets, the
sun striping across the pink pine-stems, the foam and tumble of
seven white cascades down the mountainside. I shall always see it;
you have dowered the beggarman richly, queen Kathleen.
"GARETH."
The girl perused the quaint, rather formal sentences, with the feeling
that just this was needed still to round off the incident completely.
He had spoilt nothing, had sweetened still further the aftermath, and
added to its fragrance. Well-pleased, she would have replaced the
sheets in their envelope, when she noticed that she had overlooked on
the last page yet another scribbled line; a postscript:
"When may I see you again?--G.A.D."
And suddenly the human man sprang alive to her. How often she had heard
him putting the very same question; how often smiled at the absurd kink
in his nature it revealed, a queer incapacity to take leave of her, be
it for ever so slight a period of time, without the eager question:
"When shall I see you again? When? Where? How?"... Seeking always to
let one meeting overlap the next; no trust in chance or in management.
"When shall I see you again?" The one phrase touched a spring that
set free a whole warm gush of recollections. Of course he should see
her again! She was impatient for his coming, wrote to him instantly a
summons to visit her the very next evening.
At the far end of the dark narrow hall, was an outjutting ledge, hidden
from view by the staircase. It was seated here that Kathleen awaited
him, the expectant fire in her red-brown eyes quenched by the sombre
lighting, her feet drumming impatiently against the wall, as she
wondered if Gareth in North Kensington would be very different from
Gareth in Alpenruh. She was guiltily conscious of having slipped on an
evening-dress, something soft and clinging in moss-green. Glad, too,
that Nelly was not present to comment on the fact.
It was an exciting vigil, listening for the crunch of footsteps, the
sharp peal of the bell which would scatter stillness. And all her
knowledge of its approach did not prevent a quick jump in her heart
at the actual happening. Then she sat motionless, thinking of him
on the other side of the door. Presently, muttering to herself, the
disagreeable housemaid-in-charge opened to the visitor.
"Is Miss Morrison at home?"
"Yes, sir." Hannah left him standing while she departed in search.
Then, with a leap and a laugh, Kathleen was before him.
"Isn't this fun?" She was radiant against her dull umber background.
"Gareth, why don't you say something? Come in here."
"Here" was Edward's study, with swathed chairs, and chandeliers
draped in a sheet. Kathleen had lit a pair of candles, but in the
semi-obscurity he could form no impression of his surroundings. It
might have been any house, anywhere. But he had a sensation that he
ought to speak in whispers.
"Are you alone here?" and wondered whether, under those circumstances,
he did not do wrong in coming? Which was absurd, considering Alpenruh.
But North Kensington was different.
Before many minutes, she saw that he intended asking her to marry him,
and rather feverishly sought to ward it off. The hushed room was a trap
now, and the moss-green evening-gown an added menace. Gareth, quietly
persistent, dodged all her bright and chatty openings, and succeeded at
last in putting the question she dreaded.
"Will you, Kathleen?"
"Gareth, how do you see marriage?"
Astonished, he replied: "With you? As a fire-lit dream-come-true."
"Not with me. With anyone."
He drew her a series of charming, conventional pictures, steeped in a
ruddy glow from the hearth of illusions; a child's laugh, a sundial
in a garden, the flicker of lamplight on shelves of books, as needful
accessories. He also mentioned, rather shyly, the illuminating spirit
of love to lurk beneath outward trivialities; the joy of sharing evil
and good alike; the flaming interest to be taken in each other's work,
whatever that might chance to be. And he spoke of two as the only
magical number in arithmetic; and threw in a Persian cat, to boot. And
was silent. He had spoken earnestly and well; eloquence was at all
times his strong point.
"Gareth."
"Yes, dear?"
"Do you care to know how I have learnt to see marriage?"
Gareth, in anticipation of her disclosure, shrank from it.
"Oh--please," he said. She mistook the appeal for assent.
"It's a clammy state of familiarity," thus Kathleen defied his fair
visions; "familiarity of petty outward things that don't count.
Breakfast-table intimacy, with the yolk from an eaten egg smeared
yellow on the shell. Intimacy of letters: 'Who's your correspondent?'
'Who are you writing to?' Moving in lumps, undetachable, sticky;
waiting about in the hall, and calling irritably up the stairs to know
if the other will be long, instead of just--going. It's the shedding of
all privacy; bursting into rooms without knocking: Thy room shall be my
room! It's to hear a man's bath-water running in the morning, and to
know exactly, by sounds, when he gets in and out. To be aware how many
shirts he uses per week, because you count his dirty washing. Oh, if
I loved a man, I shouldn't yearn for 'the tender privilege of darning
his dear socks!' Rather keep him for ever remote, with the mystery
still on him. But marriage offers the sight of unmade beds, use of the
same piece of soap, pilgrimages to the same friends, the same question
every evening: 'What have you been doing all day?' answer to be given
in detail. Oh, Gareth, I'm sorry, I'm sorry; your pictures were ever so
much prettier, but mine are true."
She paused for response. But the meaning of her tirade had percolated
Gareth's mist-bound understanding not a whit. The outburst in itself
struck him as harsh and ugly, quite out of keeping with the spirit in
which a maiden should receive a declaration of love. She was spoiling
something; petulantly he refused to recognize the necessity for its
spoiling.
So he made no reply. And less vehemently she went on:
"You mustn't think that all this is because I'm cooped up with an
unfortunate example. My brother and his wife are very fond of each
other; what the neighbours would call an ideal pair. They see nothing
of what I'm telling you; why should they? They're doing it all the
time. But it's a mistake to be a perpetual onlooker at marriage when
the couple are still young and in the throes. One's mother and father
are different; one doesn't regard them as married, merely as parents.
But I've lived most of my life a third in a family of three, and been
robbed of the--glamour, you would call it, without getting anything in
exchange, except a horror of wedded bliss, an utter horror of it. You
mustn't ask me to be your wife, Gareth, because I'd be afraid; afraid
of all that might happen to you and me; afraid, most of all, of seeing
it happen."
* * * * *
The enshrouding linen draperies were removed from the house in North
Kensington, revealing a taste for furnishing of which the governing
principle had obviously been: "Here is a space--fill it!"
For Mrs. Edward Morrison had written, announcing the return of the
family:
"We shall be back on Tuesday in time for supper. It must be awful for
you alone in the empty house--especially now!"
Then a few advance orders respecting milk to be taken in, and a chicken
to be roasted; an ecstatic description of Nicolas in bathing-drawers;
and "Your loving sister, Nelly."
There were only two words in the epistle which contained matter for
reflection: "especially now."...
Kathleen spent profitably her remaining days of golden solitude in
visualizing the long weeks and months to come, when she could no more
enter a room with the comfortable security of finding it untenanted.
For soon the Winter-fear would find her out.
An old enemy; she knew it well. It came, inevitable, monotonous, with
the fall of the first leaf, the flicker of the first fire. "It's not
warm enough for Nicolas without a coat," said Nelly; that was one of
the heralds. There were many others. Always it came. The waiting for it
was almost the worst. Winter-fear ... oh, the furious beating clenched
resentment, resentment of a thousand Indian forefathers, that Kathleen
harboured against the creeping cold. Cold that bit. Cold that gnawed.
Cold that ached.
Winter-fear brought a special horror to the house in North Kensington.
Concentration. Nelly, liberal enough in most matters, had, like all
housewives, a special kink; she economized in coals. Except in cases of
illness, in the dining-room only was a fire kept alight. And slowly,
day by day, as the increasing cold drove them inwards, the entire
family concentrated round this fire. Here they worked and read and
talked and ate, huddled together in the semicircle of warmth. Kathleen,
in an occasional frantic longing for solitude, would break away; retire
to her chilly bedroom or to the raw streets, both harbours of refuge
in the summer months. Always, numbed to the bone, she was compelled to
surrender, return to the dining-room community--till April with soft
warm fingers should come to release her.
A minor horror called cold-in-the-head. Nicolas, by three ominous
sneezes, would give the sign; following which, every member of the
household was stricken in turn, or in chorus; sometimes a solitary
sufferer; sometimes a veritable orchestra of coughs and sniffs
and trumpetings and throat-clearings. The talk would be all of
handkerchiefs and the lack of hot water; and the faces round the
dining-room fire would swell into a circle of grotesque caricatures,
blotched, and red-eyed, and hideous. No respite, none! and seven long
months of it to be faced.
"... We shall be back on Tuesday"--and already the ghost of Nelly was
calling over the banisters for someone to fasten her frock--how the
hooks would persist in catching those irritating stray hairs at the
back of the neck! Already Edward was turning on the bath-taps; Muriel
practising for two hours after tea; Nicolas spurting affection with
a jammy mouth. Thus the members of her family, when they finally did
return, were by anticipation distorted from quite ordinary figures to
horrible marionettes whose slightest action set every nerve itching.
"Well, Katty dear," affectionately Nelly embraced her sister-in-law in
the hall, calling her by the name most disliked; "here we are, you see."
Kathleen did see.
She saw also that Edward avoided her eyes, and that Nelly was nervous;
while Muriel, aged nine, regarded her aunt curiously, as having been
for many meals past the object of horrified conversation on the part of
the elders.
Nicolas alone seemed unaware of any tension in the atmosphere. Up the
stairs he staggered, a miniature Falstaff; laden to the ground by the
burden of his own flesh, and, in addition, an iron spade, a wooden
spade, a fishing-net, and two tin pails; relics of summer joys that
were fled. Kathleen went to his assistance, listening sympathetically
to his breathless explanations of how he _wouldn't_ leave them behind
for the landlady's little girl; Kathleen gathered that the landlady's
little girl had always cast an eye of appropriation on that iron spade.
"An' I said: 'You won't have it, never!' An' I hit her knees wiv it."
Nicolas collapsed triumphantly on the nursery floor; he was evidently a
firm believer in the methods of the cave-man.
Kathleen rather liked Nicolas, despite jamminess. His years were five,
and his voice was fat. When poked, he gurgled. Once indeed she had
been moved to embrace him tenderly, to which moment his mother had
unfortunately been witness. Kathleen's subsequent existence was spent
in striving to correct the misapprehension that she possessed the
maternal instinct. Nicolas had to suffer.
On the other hand, Muriel was no favourite. There was that small matter
of practising to account for it; still more, the fact that she was a
younger pupil at the establishment where her aunt was installed as
teacher of history and arithmetic. From the schoolgirl point of view,
this latter condition of things opened up vast fields of thought.
Muriel, very neat about the legs and mind, was particularly concerned
with the ethics of the situation. To be intimately connected with
Authority was an awkwardness to which none of her mates were exposed,
and involved a special code of law.
Was it a matter to be bragged about, for instance, or relegated to a
shamed obscurity? What was the precise moment every day when careless
familiarity must yield to awed respect, and vice versa? Was she
justified in selling (for J nibs) details of Kathleen's home existence
to Kathleen's infatuated adorers? Or did this come under the category
of "hateful mean?" How could one avoid walking to school in company
with Authority, when she and Authority left the same house at the same
moment, bound in the same direction? In what spirit was punishment to
be received, when she who punished had that morning been reprimanded
before one's very eyes, for Encouraging the Cat? Above all, what was
the good of striving for the first place in an exam. when you know
jolly well it will be denied you--"for fear of being accused of
showing favouritism"?
Muriel pondered a great deal on all this. She was an earnest child.
The prevailing attitude of
condemnation-kindly-suspended-till-after-meals was responsible for
a certain amount of strain at the first reunion of "happy family"
round the supper-table. Nelly talked a great deal of their holiday
in Felixstowe, and not at all of Kathleen's holiday in Alpenruh.
And Edward again proved his claim to the old and ancient order of
Salt-cellar Strategists, by fighting out an entire minor campaign
then raging in the Balkans, with the simple aid of a cruet-stand, two
knives, a spoon, a fork, a spreading stain of mulberry juice ("This is
Albania, d'you see, Nelly?") and the sauce-boat. There was no topic of
the hour that Edward could not illustrate with the assistance of these
homely vessels, be the subject of his demonstration a railway accident,
a mechanical invention, or the defence of Troy.
Having annihilated Montenegro and the chicken at the same time, he
pushed back his chair, and remarked ponderously: "I should like a few
minutes with you in the study, Kath, if you're not too busy."
"... Well?" Nelly queried eagerly, half an hour later, on finding her
husband alone.
"Can't make head or tail of it," said Edward, very angry. "Either Kath
is mad or I am."
Nelly supplied the necessary assurances.
"Well, but she says she won't marry him. Now what do you think of
that?" The question was a mere form; Edward was aware what his wife
thought of "that," and of everything else; to which satisfactory state
of things might be attributed his domestic happiness.
"I've been very tactful," continued the head of the house; "very
tactful and very lenient. I'm broad-minded, as you know."
"Yes. So am I, of course. But, Neddy, you must have bullied her. And
you promised not to. Remember," and Nelly lowered her face, "she hasn't
got a mother."
"Nor have I," crossly. "The same mother. That by no means explains her
extraordinary statement that she doesn't want to marry this fellow who
has"--he hesitated between "compromised" and "seduced," then discarded
both in favour of--"led her astray."
"And a nice sort of a blackguard he must be," added indignant
brotherhood. "Not want to marry him indeed! I should like to know why?"
unconscious of anything contradictory in his explosive phrases.
But enlightenment had visited his wife, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Oh, poor Katty ... poor darling! I must go to her at once. Neddy,
can't you see----" She paused on her hurrying mission of comfort to
fling an aphorism of unwonted daring and brilliance at the head of her
liege lord.
"It takes two to make a pair," said Nelly, and departed.
Slowly Edward Morrison grasped her meaning. Slowly, too, he grasped the
fact that here was a perfectly unsubtle problem, to be attacked with
a delightfully simple weapon--the horsewhip. And the soul of Edward
Morrison was glad within him. That his sister should have sinned was
terrible indeed; but not so terrible as that his sister should have
new-fangled notions.
"'Pon my word, Nelly is a remarkable woman!"
The remarkable woman was at the moment mounting the stairs towards the
bedrooms. Nelly Morrison, when unwed, had been known as the "Belle of
Clapton," which over and beyond its reminiscence of pleasure-steamer,
had also had a deteriorating effect upon her brains. Otherwise, she
was a good-natured little soul, genuinely fond of her sister-in-law,
and very anxious always that Kathleen should "feel that this is
really her home." In furtherance of which desire, it was her habit to
make Kathleen's room bright with flowers; flowers everywhere, on the
dressing-table, amongst the ink and pens, on the window-sills, in the
washstand-basin. She held now in her hand some half-wilted marguerites,
symbols of comfort about as adequate as her husband's contemplated
horsewhip of righteousness.
The room was in darkness when Nelly entered on tiptoe--and without
knocking:
"Katty, are you in bed?"
Kathleen did not reply; drew the sheet close up to her burning cheeks.
What a mess, what an unendurable mess these people were making of her
days of enchantment. Perhaps if she did not move, Nelly would think her
asleep, and go away. But a slight catch in the breath betrayed her
wakefulness.
Nelly groped her way to the bed; felt for the other's hand.
"Katty, are you crying?"
No answer.
"Katty dear, won't he marry you? Is that it? Oh, Katty, I'm so
sorry...."
CHAPTER II
"I looked on you as a youngster up till now," Mr. Temple said. He did
not explain what were the circumstances which had shocked him into a
change of opinion; but went on, in the heavy paternal voice: "You've
got to shove your way, my lad. You've been playing at life; university
education, and books and travel and this and that ... I've spoilt you.
No wonder your father's business wasn't good enough for you. Well--I'm
not a tyrant; I raised no objections to your starting on the architect
line instead. But that wasn't good enough either--though goodness knows
you talked enough about the responsibility of turning cities into
things of beauty and form...." He broke off: "And now here you are!"
"'Not architect, artist, nor man!'" Gareth misquoted from the immortal
Pecksniff.
Mr. Temple could not repress a smile of recognition. Dickens was
cultivated, read aloud, assiduously, in the large handsome parlour
above the chemist's shop at Paddington. Chemist's establishment, or
dispensary, Mr. Temple would have preferred it to be called. For he
was a chemist of a most refined and superior order, and employed two
assistants and a boy; nor was the shop on the street-level, but up a
broad flight of stone steps, indicated by a single ruby lamp at their
base; which caused Mr. Temple the occasional illusion that he was a
surgeon. He might with equal reason have thought himself a signalman.
Nevertheless, if Gareth imagined that by so simple an expedient as
the mention of his father's favourite author, he could divert the
threatened lecture on his own misdoings, he was mistaken. On receipt
of a letter from William Payne, President of the Society of Young
Botanists, officially announcing that Gareth had abandoned his holiday
with the S.Y.B., in order to spend a month in sole company of a young
female, Mr. Temple had at first been inclined to secret pride at his
only son's first sowing of this very gentlemanly wild oat. He had
discussed the matter with his wife--with considerable delicacy, be
sure; for he could never quite forget that she was a gentlewoman, and
above him in station: Miss Lucy Jamieson, before he had married her;
governess to a family of consequence in the sleepy little country town
where he had first "practised" before coming to London. Her opinions,
therefore, influenced him more than he was prepared to acknowledge. And
his present reproaches were the direct outcome of his change of mental
attitude: If my son is old enough to incur responsibilities, he is old
enough to be in a material position to discharge them....
"You'll come into all the money later on. 'Tisn't that I grudge your
allowance, either. But I want to see what stuff you're made of."
"I don't believe I'm made of any stuff," Gareth confessed desperately.
Mr. Temple planted his hands deep in his pockets, and surveyed his
offspring with disapproval.
"There's no room in the world for shirkers. The world wants men. You've
had things made too easy. The world wants you to stand on your own
legs, not on your father's shoulders. It's the law of the world that
the weakest go to the wall and the strongest come out on top."
Gareth began to hate the world, as represented by his father's weighty
platitudes. Not for one instant did he attempt to storm the barricade
of years, and force his own point of view upon the old gentleman's
reluctant sight. The remainder of the lecture rendered the fact patent
that it henceforth devolved upon him to renounce his dreaming peace,
his glamorous aspirations, and to do battle with the universe.... How
he wished he had been a girl, and thus absolved from such duty.
And yet he had met girls by the score who had wanted to be men.
Men!--the thickness of their understanding; the dense fibres they put
out, without one sensitive tingle.... "You've got to shove your way,
my lad!"--there it was again, his father's pet catch-phrase. It was
hideous and hot--to shove. Oh, the hush and coolness and harmony of the
woman's part; she might enjoy colours, and soft materials, and dreams,
tears even, without a reproach. And when love came along, the wonder
of being besieged and of yielding.... Someone afterwards and always,
to clear her way, give her leisure and firelight. And suddenly came a
vision of Kathleen with a blade in her hand that flashed this way and
that, while she cut a path through the world, for him to tread in her
wake....
The vision passed. But so intent had he been on it, that he missed his
father's final hint of what was expected of him with regard to his
recent conduct, on which, since his return from Switzerland, a discreet
silence had been preserved. "We'll talk of that later on, when you've
found your feet a bit!"
Gareth carried his aggrievements and his visions in a confused heap to
the parlour, where he knew his mother would at this time be sitting,
with her knitting in the lap of her smoke-grey silk dress, while she
waited for Jane to draw the blinds and trim the wicks. He had an
affection for the Confidence Hour, when the lamplighter was on his
magical round, and Mr. Temple still busy in the dispensary below; an
affection that dated from the days of his early childhood; when she
would tell long sweet stirring tales from the "Idylls of the King"
to a little round-eyed boy as yet unprotected by the dawn of reason.
His very name he owed to a gentle fervour on her part for all matters
appertaining to the Poet Laureate, and to chivalry, and to the Knights
of Arthur's Round Table. It had been her wont to name him, half
playfully, half wistfully, her "youngest knight."... Glancing across at
his absorbed face, she wondered now how many of her teachings could be
relied on at this crisis to bear fruit.
"Gareth, when are you going to bring my new daughter home to me?"
He smiled, amused at the suddenness of her onslaught upon his reverie.
"Mother dear, what on earth do you mean?"
"Don't you think it time, my boy, that you told me all about it?" She
held out a tentative hand; a very white and delicate hand, half covered
by the falling lace ruffles of her sleeve; on her bright brown hair she
wore a lace cap to match the ruffles; and at her throat a round cameo
brooch secured the fleecy white shawl. Mrs. Temple was very pleasant to
look upon; and her soft voice fell soothingly upon Gareth's hearing,
jarred by his father's ponderous repetitions. He crossed the room, and
seated himself upon the arm of her chair; while he played with her ball
of knitting-silk.
"Do you want me to tell you about ... Kathleen, mother?"
"Is she pretty?" cunningly drawing him out. "I once had a pupil called
Kathleen; she was Irish, and had blue eyes and black hair. Has _your_
Kathleen blue eyes?" Purposely she leant rich stress on the possessive
pronoun; he must be made to feel from the start that she did not
regard the girl from the traditional mother's standpoint of "designing
female," but with the deeper tenderness that is bred of understanding.
She could trust her boy to love wisely even when he had acted foolishly.
Gareth tried to visualize Kathleen on the occasion most vivid to his
memory, when flushed and radiant she had sprung before him from the
gloomy passage of the house in North Kensington.
"Her eyes are dark," he said at length, slowly. "Not hard darkness,
you know, but the brown of water in heavy shadow; and the brows are
very close above them. She walks as if her feet were bare. Her skin is
lovely, rich dusky colours, olive and geranium red." This last, mindful
of his mother's weak point: "A true lady, Gareth, is always particular
about her complexion and hands."
Bit by bit, led by artfully inserted queries, he related the whole
chain of events; throwing in also as much as he knew of Kathleen's
birth, relations, and conditions of life generally. He did not mention
his visit to North Kensington.
"Go on, dear."
"There's no more to say, mother."
"Yes, Gareth, there is something more." Suddenly her tones rang out
clear and accusing: "I'm waiting to hear that you are prepared to make
the poor girl your wife."
Gareth was stricken dumb at thus finding himself thrust into the rôle
of villain and betrayer. Before he could sufficiently collect himself
for speech, Mrs. Temple went on, her voice trembling a little in
genuine emotion:
"Oh, my dear, my dear, I know how it is with you; you are growing into
a man with a man's ideas. Your companions have been telling you that
chivalry is 'played out,' food only for old women and romantic girls
and molly-coddles. Believe me, dear, it isn't so. Chivalry and honour
are not weaknesses to be ashamed of. They are what in the olden days
made a knight strongest: strong in battle, strong in love. Oh, Gareth,
there are so many in the world to help a woman's tears to flow; don't
join their ranks. Don't take up with this modern poisonous notion of
living only for the gratification of the ... senses----" The white
unwrinkled cheeks of the speaker blushed a faint rose at this use of
a word offensive to her. "Have you forgotten the tales I used to tell
you? Of Arthur and his queen; of Pelleas and Ettarre; Galahad, the
maiden knight, the quest of Percivale; Launcelot and Elaine. Little
son, these legends and songs are valuable only for their symbolic
meaning. A damsel on a charger, a knight supporting her with his arm,
the spirit of the picture exists equally without the steed and armour.
And when you are an old white-haired man, my darling, I want you to be
able to say, 'God helping me, I have never wronged a woman that I did
not strive to put it right.' How are you to speak those words when the
poor frightened child who loved you only too well, is left to fight her
battles alone? There is only one way of righting that wrong, Gareth;
and the way lies through a golden wedding-ring."
Gareth could not suppress a faint stirring of amusement at the fancy
portrait of Kathleen's timorous anguish. But at the same time, he was
genuinely touched and stirred by his mother's generous pleadings, by
the tears he saw dimming her usually placid eyes.
Slipping an affectionate arm around her shoulders: "Mother dear," he
said; "look at me--straight up at me. That's right. I've wronged no
one, do you understand? I'm not that sort of fellow, thanks to you. I
_have_ asked Kathleen to be my wife. She refused."
"Refused?" incredulously.
"Yes."
"Impossible."
Mrs. Temple, outwardly so malleable, was a determined little woman, and
once her brain struck out on a certain line it was a matter of some
difficulty to divert it. Gareth made an effort.
"You see, mother, she's not at all the sort of silly helpless girl you
imagine her. She knew what she was doing. She's free, and--and--I told
you she walked as if her feet were bare; that's got to do with it,
somehow. She doesn't want to marry."
But in his mother's scheme of things, girls did not refuse offers of
marriage, especially under existing circumstances. Nor was it at that
period, the close of the eighteen-nineties, as usual an occurrence as
later.
For a moment she was silent, brain and knitting-needles bright and
busy. Illumination came, and with it soft amusement at his denseness:
"O my youngest knight, you are younger even than I thought. Did you
allow nothing for her pride, her delicacy? How clearly did you betray
that it was a matter of duty that prompted your offer? Of course she
drew back! What could you expect? She thinks she has cheapened herself
in your sight; she thinks--you men, you are born blunderers, the best
of you."
In an ecstasy of psychological comprehension she proceeded to reveal
the intimate workings of Kathleen's mind, which led to refusal of
Gareth's offer. Revealed them in fashion so plausible and withal so
subtle that the analysis partook of the nature of a miracle.
It was only a pity that she happened to be even further adrift in her
estimate of Kathleen as a clinging three-volume-novel heroine, than had
been Nelly in her vision of Gareth as a gay deceiver.
But Gareth was impressed. He supposed it took a woman to understand a
woman. Moreover, viewed in the natural light of things, the Kathleen
he was striving to explain to his mother seemed improbable, not to say
absurd. He withdrew to his own room to think things over.
After his departure Mrs. Temple let drop her knitting and sat a little
while inactive and musing. It had cost something to be loyal to the
ideals with which she had striven to inculcate her son, that he should
not ever be responsible for suffering. For despite her brave words, she
did not want Gareth to bring home a wife. What mother does?
* * * * *
Gareth lounged at his open window, and smoked a cigarette, and saw the
moon washing Paddington in silver, and gave himself up to a course of
clear hard logical thinking. His methods of thought left his brain
very much in the state of a girl's bedroom when in a hurry she has
dressed for the dance. That is to say, he pulled out a vast quantity of
reflections from the drawers where they had lain hidden; tumbled them
over the floor, and looked at them in some amaze at their multitude and
variety.
His mother's explanations had smoothed for him the plumage of peace,
sadly ruffled by Kathleen's startling mood of the day before. That
her refusal to espouse him was due to pride--of the wounded-stag
order--over-sensitiveness, shame even, was an attitude he could well
understand, and combat with his shield and buckler. His shield and
buckler, like Nelly's marguerites and Edward's horsewhip, were of
little avail in forcing a way against what the last-named had termed
"new-fangled notions."
But below in the stuffy little sitting-room, with its horsehair
furniture, its framed and faded daguerreotypes of long-dead relatives,
its wool antimacassars, and painted firescreens, and shelves of
Dickens' works complete in seventeen volumes, the vision had come alive
again; familiar truths respecting maiden's tears and knighthood's
redress, slipped back into their old places.
"... She thinks she has cheapened herself in your eyes"--and chivalry
tingled to clasp a lance.
"... Cheapened herself." Gravely, steadfastly, the lad vowed himself to
the removal of that misconception. Marry her? Of course he would marry
her ... and with that a creeping uneasy sensation of helplessness, of
unseen pressure.
The objects scattering his brain in disorderly confusion grew blurred
and indistinguishable.... He was drifting down stream, nearer and
nearer to the grey borders of sleep.
"You've got to shove your own way, my lad----!"
Fear jogged his elbow, and awoke him to the window-sill; to Paddington,
moonlit and unsubstantial; to the "Happy Warrior" framed above his
bed; to the knowledge of his own utter inefficiency ever to pull
desire to its successful fulfilment. A liquidity of purpose, as though
the moral gelatine had been omitted from his composition. Hence his
terror of realities, of "shove," of anything that might chance to
drag to light his hidden weakness. Hence his longing for the vanished
enchantment of Alpenruh, whither he had been borne as in some strange
dream, without his own volition or denial. Hence his illusion that
the perpetual presence of Kathleen would again and for ever restore
to him the lost lotus-spell. Kathleen should marry him. In a spurt
of resolution, he vowed in this one matter, if never again, he would
beat down the questionings and hesitations of his soul, beat down
opposition, beat down difficulty--even as she herself had taught
him. Yes, that was the goad: her possession of just that gift he
lacked, the power to _do_. Did he lack it, or only think he did? This
accomplishment should be the test. Kathleen _should_ marry him! Gareth
was exultant in his new strength, as a man who had drunk red wines. His
determination survived sleep, survived the sobriety of morning, sent
him with martial tread and squared jaw to the house in North Kensington.
Kathleen was out; would be out to lunch. A temporary check. "Tell
Miss Morrison I shall call at six o'clock," in tones of such ringing
valour that the maid regarded him in astonishment. How could she know
he was out on the quest, his eyes on the hill-tops and his head among
the stars, slaying monsters and enchanters as he went? How was she
to recognize herself as a minor monster? Nevertheless, in unconscious
spite of him, she forgot to deliver the message. Gareth, on his arrival
at five minutes to six, impatience having outleapt exactitude, was
shown into the dining-room, ruddily illuminated by its first fire of
the season. Kathleen had improved the occasion by shampooing her hair,
and was now squatting on her heels before the hearth, holding up the
long wet strands to the blaze. Nelly sewing; and Muriel reading "Little
Women"; the aged grandfather prone on the floor protesting feebly while
Nicolas stamped on his chest: "Mustn't say nuffing, Granpa--you're
_dead_!" "But I'm _not_ dead!" "You are, you are, you are!" "I'm _not_
dead," repeated Mr. Jeyne, who really might have been expected to know
best--all this made a picture calculated to reduce the crusty bachelor
of tradition to tears of loneliness and envy. Gareth's abrupt entrance
caused some commotion, and there ensued a great deal of business with
chairs and introductions. Nelly was not sure whether she ought to look
as if she knew all about everything, or nothing about anything. She
telegraphed for her cue to Kathleen, who scornfully withheld it. For
her the situation throbbed with that sensitive and unnecessary agony
peculiar only to a girl on witnessing the advent of her man into the
family circle. She did not know of which to be most ashamed: Nelly in
the eyes of Gareth, or Gareth in the eyes of Nelly. Kathleen hated that
he should see her thus placed, and off her guard; hated the circulating
undercurrents: "Who the dooce is it?" in Mr. Jeyne's astonished
eyebrows, and: "Take off your pinafore, Nicky," signalled from Muriel;
hated herself for minding that the room was untidy, and two of
Nicolas's handkerchiefs upon the carpet; above all, hated Gareth, as
the cause of her discomfort. Why had he come? And what had happened
to him that he should persist in throwing her those glances of glad
triumph? He was talking very fast and easily, and his general bearing
exactly resembled the fascinating blackguard of Nelly's expectations.
Unconsciously, he exuded a buoyant challenge to the world at large; the
atmosphere about him quivered and vibrated with something that was not
of North Kensington nor yet of any other neighbourhood farther from
the clouds than Valhalla itself; for he knew even in his intoxication
that if he once paused, the old paralysing distrust would creep on him
again and render him powerless--if it were once given a chance in this
breathless onrush of speech and movement.
For this was his day of days indeed; something had happened between his
first and second visit here, to convince him that enchantment was on
his side.... He would tell Kathleen presently--when these people should
leave them alone!
Edward's latchkey was heard grating in the lock, and Nelly flew out to
warn him of the visitor. "And Neddy, shall I ask him to supper?"
"Look here," Edward protested in loud and distinct whispers, "we can't
sit down with a fellow who----"
"Oh, hush, Neddy!"
And Gareth's mouth twitched whimsically in the direction of Kathleen.
More Indian than ever did she look, sullen, crouching, her face framed
in the shining hanks of black hair lying straight over her shoulders
and down to her waist. Very unlike his radiant comrade of Alpenruh.
Perhaps she had been right when she spoke of the destroying effects of
intimate surroundings.
"All right, I'll be reasonable," grumbled Edward, on the threshold.
Edward was a man of his word; and though an occasional hint of "my
sister's honour" slipped into his manner, he hovered for the most part
between dignified-host and benevolent-cleric.
Gareth thought the Morrison family rather nice, considering; and
accepted the invitation to supper: "If you don't mind taking us as
we are," said Nelly, and retired to supervise culinary operations.
Presently her voice was heard summoning Muriel and Nicolas.
"Yes, but Mummie, why----?"
"Because I say so, darling."
"Yes, but it isn't nearly----"
"Never mind. Come along. Ask Aunty Katty if she will come to the
nursery presently to tuck you up."
Now or never, thought Nelly, was Kathleen's chance to display the
suspected Maternal Instinct to the best advantage. But Nicolas and
Kathleen, joint rebels against Nelly's schemes, gazed sulkily at one
another, and parted with a cold good night.
"Excuse me, will you?" said Edward, rising; "I'm badly in need of a
wash. City dirt, you know." He also quitted the dining-room. He had
received his instructions. Obviously Nelly cherished hopes that a
disgraceful episode might yet be decently wound up.
One swift glance convinced Gareth that old Mr. Jeyne was fast asleep in
his corner.
"Kathleen--I've had a most wonderful stroke of good luck. I've found
a job. The kind of job that I've dreamt of all my life. The job that
lay east of the sun and west of the moon; at the end of the rainbow;
over the hills and far away. And only yesterday I was disinherited.
Yes, really, my father cast me off ... said I should never be heir
to those huge glass bottles, red and blue and yellow, that fill up
his shop-window.... I did so want them for my own when I was a kid.
Never mind, fortune helps those who don't help themselves ... and I
put my faith in the fairy-tales. How would Whittington have fared
without faith in his Cat? Tell me that. Or Jack without faith in his
Beanstalk----?"
"Or Aladdin without faith in his uncle?" insinuated Kathleen unkindly.
"It was all through you, Kathleen. Just because you weren't at home
this morning; and I was restless; and went for a drive on top of an
omnibus; and my new job tumbled from the clouds, and I've brought
it home in my pocket." He produced a catalogue of Messrs. Dale and
Dawson's Autumn publications; educational, historical, and general;
fiction, poetry, belles-lettres; Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and
48 Frederick Street, Glasgow. This he handed to Kathleen as if it were
a talisman of rarest powers. She examined it, bewildered; but rather
loving him in his mood of boyish enthusiasm....
"They've offered me the post of reader," condescending to simple
language for pity of her perplexity. Then he was off again, past
recall, drunk with ether, spurring his winged-horse ever faster on its
empyreal flights.
"Books. Just nothing but books. From dawn till dusk, books. Books all
around me, lining my life. Books in the making. Books my trade. The
beginning and end of things, books. Great walls of them, shutting out
real things, concrete things, ugly things, noisy things; advertisements
and fathers and botanists. Delving continually into a thousand
imaginations, treasure-finding; genius-hunting; word-juggling. Can you
draw pictures from words? I can. 'Glamour,' for instance. Glamour ...
and something elfin, with misty wings, scattering gold-dust; and part
of it clings to your eyelashes. That's glamour. And 'fantastic' has a
leap about it, and the flutter of rags, and pipes--yes, a figure with
a pointed cap, playing on a pipe. You've never seen me gloating over
my collection of books ... and every time I add one to the number,
counting over all the old ones again ... handling them--the dears!
And now to be permitted to make a living out of books--yes, actually;
to scoop silver from a moonbeam, spin an income from a cobweb, seek
sovereigns in a sea-shell. And there's my own book, too--the one I mean
to write; did I ever tell you about it? How I shall be able to write
now! My book! Other people's books----!" He stopped for sheer want of
breath.
"And--you picked up all this on an omnibus?" eagerly. It was impossible
to persist in any sort of gloom in opposition to his charming nonsense.
"Bound for Banbury Cross," Gareth explained, very seriously. "And there
came a big spider and sat down beside me ... no, that doesn't rhyme.
And anyway it wasn't a spider, though he looked remarkably like one."
"Who did?"
"Old Mr. Dale; Mark Dale, my Uncle Wilfred's crony. The late uncle
from whom I'm supposed to inherit my scholarly tastes. I told him my
troubles, for all the world as if he were a golden carp or a blue
frog or a singing-tree, or some such traditional confidant. We got to
talking about books; he put a lot of questions; I acquitted myself
fairly well;--and then he suddenly informed me that one of the regular
readers for his firm had given notice that morning, and would I care
to take his place? _Would_ I care.... And that things should happen
like that for me! You should have heard my father yesterday.... And,
Kathleen ... dear----" Both her hands in his now. No avail to struggle
or sulk. Gareth was being masterful. Gareth was being manly. Gareth was
carrying a woman by storm. And Gareth was enjoying it, intoxicated by
this novel sense of power and success. He had borrowed her weapons of
strength, and believed them to be his own.
"Kathleen, it has got to be. All you said the other night may be true
enough for other people--it will be different for us. We're not going
to lose now what we found in Alpenruh. And no one can give it to me but
you; no one can give it to you but me. It was the ether of Paradise, of
El Dorado we breathed--and by God! we'll breathe it now for the rest
of our lives." He swept the hair from her face, that she might have no
excuse for avoiding his triumphant gaze. "Our lives, Kathleen!"
She said: "I can't--no, I won't marry you, Gareth."
But he only laughed; for she had made no attempt to stir from his arms.
PART II
CHAPTER I
"Good-bye, Kathleen; no, I won't forget about the fish." Gareth
Temple ran down the steps of Pacific Villa, and swung the gate behind
him. He carried under his arm a bundle of manuscript, which he had
been examining the evening before. When he reached the office, more
manuscript would be awaiting him. For he was still a reader of books.
Three years ago he had transferred his services from Messrs. Dale and
Dawson to the newer firm of Leslie Campbell. That was all the change of
fortune which sixteen years had brought about.
Campbell had himself been a reader at Dale and Dawson, publishers.
An excitable and energetic little Scotsman with no prudent instincts
whatsoever, he set up business in a third-floor room above the bustling
offices of a popular magazine. Assets: Four hundred pounds capital, and
the assistance of one impertinent small boy. Invisible asset, a soul
that was an infallible touchstone for genius. Gradually he made himself
a name for the publication of works by that brilliant intolerant set
of young writers who flourished under the banners of Impressionism,
Futurism, Iconoclasm, Realism and Super-Realism, New Thought and
Modern Decadence, with equal pleasure and superiority. Presently,
and without need to reproach himself with any pandering to popular
taste, he was able to boast an inner room to his offices; and added
to his staff Gareth Temple and Guy Burnett, in capacities of reader
and confidential clerk. Nevertheless, the firm's treasury continued
to be fed for the most part on Campbell's enthusiasm; till, by way of
steadying himself, he took into partnership Vincent Alexander, lately
an undergraduate of Balliol; who, frigid and level-headed, succeeded by
sheer weight of his twenty-five imperturbable years, in setting a limit
to the indecent exuberances of Campbell's middle-age.
Then Graham Carr wrote "Piccadilly." And the firm began to prosper.
* * * * *
Gareth turned off the Strand, up a by-street, till he came to a
shop-window flaunting innumerable replicas of the July number of "The
Blue Sky"; design consisting of a smiling maiden running precariously
along a rainbow, and leading a peacock on a red ribbon. He passed
through a side-entrance and up a wooden stairway, till confronted
by the familiar black lettering: "Leslie Campbell, Publisher," on
an opaque glass door. Then he heard the quick pattering trip of Mr.
Campbell on the stairs behind him; and waited, holding the door open.
"Thank ye, Temple. Ah, while I think of it, mek out a report on this,
will ye?" A bulky parcel was thrust into the reader's arms. "And ye
needn't let Mr. Alexander see it ... just yet. Understand?"
Gareth understood that the senior partner had happened upon a new
genius who might, with luck, sell about ninety-seven copies of an
edition.
"Very well, Mr. Campbell."
Together they entered the outer office, as Guy Burnett banged the
telephone receiver back on its hook.
"Hale's, sir. Two-fifty more copies of 'Piccadilly' wanted immediately
for the branch libraries."
"Of 'Piccadilly'?"
Campbell groaned aloud. "Piccadilly" was the so-called Book of the
Year. The volume in its dull red binding had since four months become
an obsession in the office. They breathed, talked, dreamt "Piccadilly."
It littered the floor, the desks, the tables, the shelves. Every
'phone call concerned "Piccadilly"; every letter. They took up a paper
and read reviews of "Piccadilly." They went for a walk and the cover
stared at them from library windows. The entire firm had floated to
affluence on "Piccadilly." And one and all, Campbell and his partner;
Guy Burnett, the clerk; Gareth Temple, the reader; and Jimmy, the
Heart-breaker; one and all were deadly sick of "Piccadilly." Graham
Carr was the only person who was not sick of it. Graham Carr had
written it.
"Aweel, send Jimmy over to interview the binder." Campbell disappeared
into his inner sanctum. Alexander, by way of reproof to enthusiasm,
never arrived on the spot till noon.
The Heart-breaker was despatched on his congenial errand. Then, cheered
and refreshed, returned to his task of making into parcels the rejected
manuscripts. Merrily he whistled, as he jerked the string into knots;
merrily he whistled as he banged the door behind him, and set off to
catch the post. Jimmy, aged thirteen, had been the very first within
these walls to break an unknown heart by dispatching a package with
slip of paper enclosed: "Mr. Campbell has considered your MS. with much
care, but regrets----" Consequently his title and his importance.
Burnett was called into the inner room to be dictated a letter which
the senior partner was anxious to dispatch on the sly, before his
relentless junior should appear. An exceedingly popular lady novelist,
commanding the best existing sale of sentimental fiction, had offered
her wares to Leslie Campbell, for the prestige of seeing his name
stamped at the foot of her cover. Alexander was considering the
advisability of lowering their standards to accept these overtures:
"Psychology will never make us a fortune, Campbell; and we can't live
for ever on the proceeds of 'Piccadilly.'" Now, sneakingly, and with
immense delight, Campbell dictated his uncompromising refusal of Miss
Ethel Erskine's offer. He would have nothing but the Intellectuals.
The little Scotsman's admiration of his "Young Men" and their style of
authorship was almost fanatical.
Gareth found them tiring. He felt always acutely conscious of being an
outsider. Not that it mattered--he was only the reader; and though
his judgment could be relied on as sound and scholarly, Campbell never
made an intimate of him; never called him "my boy," as he did young
Burnett, for instance. As for Alexander, he disapproved altogether of
the reader, whom he classified as an idealist lacking in guts.
Temple was older than any of the others; older than the head of the
firm, even. And sitting there at his desk, he seemed to have grown just
a little dusty; to lag a few paces behind the times--while "Campbell's
Young Men" rushed fully twenty years ahead of them.
The clock ticked fussily through the stillness. Gareth,
proof-correcting, bent wearily over the long strips of evil-smelling
print. Quick steps on the stone stairs outside; and the door burst open
to admit a man in a worn Norfolk jacket, and square heavy boots; giving
him, with his tanned skin and boyish blue eyes, somewhat the appearance
of a country squire.
"Hullo. Where's everybody?"
"That you, Mr. Carr? The chief is busy, I think; shall I call him?"
"No, it's all right; I only strolled in to sit on the table and swing
my legs." He glanced humorously at Gareth; and, having nothing better
to do for the moment, dropped into casual conversation: "Has it ever
struck you, Temple, what a wonderful thing it is to have the right to
break in without apologies on a real live publisher, and swing one's
legs from his real live dirty untidy desk? I used to pace up and down
outside here, before you had decided on my fate--God! what a time it
lasted!--and picture myself doing just that."
"Were we a long time? Yes, I remember now, the Chief was away. But you
never enquired?"
"No. And d'you know, if the ordeal of waiting had lasted a decade
longer, I should never have screwed myself to the point of asking for a
decision."
"Why?"
"One is possessed by a curious spirit of fatalism where the first book
is concerned. Things must take their course. What a period that was of
ghastly thrills, imagining all the accidents of fire and water which
were destroying my precious manuscript. And now----"
"Now you've got there, yes. There's been an order from Hale's for
two-fifty more copies of 'Piccadilly.'"
"Good!" Carr made as if to pass on; then paused to say. "Had anything
worth while up lately?"
Gareth's face was expressive.
"As bad as that?" laughed Carr. "You are fond of reading, of course?"
He flung himself into a battered leather arm-chair, hands thrust deep
into his pockets, legs stretched out towards the empty grate. He had
never bothered much with the reader before now, and it struck him that
this reserved man with the stern mouth and grey-flecked hair, might
reward closer study. "You are fond of reading?"
"I--loathe--it."
The words were pushed out with such intense vehemence, that Carr was
startled. "I didn't think it possible for an intelligent man to dislike
books."
"Perhaps not. As a young man I loved them so much that the day I got
my first job as a reader I walked through London with my head among
the stars. But books were then magical mysterious things, that grew
on trees, and dropped into my hands. I never gave a thought to the
mechanism of producing them: authors, manuscripts, typists, publishers,
readers, printers, binders, contracts, proofs--they were hard facts,
and had nothing to do with just books. For the first time that evening
I read with my brain instead of my heart ... and I've been reading
with my brain ever since, till it's dog-tired. Good Lord, man! _I_
can't enjoy a book; I have to be on the look-out for tautology and
anachronisms and split infinitives. Books are my bread-and-butter; they
nauseate me; it's all I can do not to send up one damning report after
another. I read books all day, and carry home a pile with me to read at
night. My imaginative chords have been thumped till they hang loose as
a broken bell-rope. Books--I can't get outside them, their mechanism
and jargon. The world is one vast book, clipped together in chapters.
I'm surrounded by men like you, who never drop a pencil without turning
it into an incident for their books." From a fierce abstraction,
Gareth wheeled suddenly on his hearer. "Now, this very minute, you are
thinking I would be an excellent tragic character for your next book:
the reader who detests reading. Are you?"
Carr flushed a guilty crimson; he had just succeeded in placing Gareth
in the third chapter of "The Gnome."
"Well--er--I think I'll go inside. I've got a new contributor to
propose for the White 'un."
"What's that?"
Not to have heard of the "White Review" monthly journal whose issue
the firm had been contemplating and discussing for weeks--well, for a
week, ever since Ran Wyman, author of "Tom Tiddler's Ground" and spoilt
_enfant terrible_ at the office, had first mooted the notion? Carr
explained, amazed at the other's ignorance.
"No, I've been told nothing about it. Oh, yes, I saw that some special
scheme was in the air, but I'm used to that here. It sounds good
enough; more destructive than beautiful, though."
"Oh--beautiful!" Carr shrugged his shoulders; no doubt of it, the
reader was inclined to be old-fashioned. "All the same, Temple, I don't
think you hate books; only other people's books. Why don't you write
one yourself?"
"To add to the output of rubbish?"
"Thank you," laughed the author of "Piccadilly," then turned to
Alexander, who, very sleek and immaculate, was in the act of hanging up
his hat.
"Morning, Alex. Feel like contemplating a new series of explosions for
the White 'un?"
"Yours?"
"No. Discovery of mine. Polish woman. I want to show some of her stuff
to Campbell; it's soul-shattering."
"Then don't show it to him," languidly protested the junior
partner; "already the journal is likely to be poison to the average
intelligence. I intend asking Ethel Erskine to contribute an antidote."
This, unaware of the letter reposing at the foot of the nearest
pillar-box. Beneath his attitude of careful restraint, Vincent
Alexander concealed an appreciation of talent as quick and keen as
Campbell's own; but he considered the chief ought not to be indulged.
With a careless "good morning" to Temple, he drew Carr through the
swing-door marked "private."
Gareth sighed. Though he would not have owned it for worlds, had never
owned it even to himself, he did sometimes long to be admitted into the
charmed circle; the splendid bumptious fellowship of creators. To be
acknowledged One of Them; himself to swagger into publishers' offices,
pass the reader with a casual nod, sit on the tables and swing his legs
and patronize young aspirants to fame. To have Leslie Campbell call him
"my boy," and be in the confidence of Vincent Alexander; initiated into
whatever literary scheme was afoot--nay, himself boldly to propound
these schemes, and have them heard with respect. One of "Campbell's
Young Men." One of Them....
He did not often sit dreaming thus. His sixteen years as reader had
drained him not only of ambition, but of a great deal of his happy
illusions. At whiles, he used to ask himself why he continued this
especial work which had turned to drab substance what was once his
fabric of enchantment. It was so difficult to break away from things.
Gareth remained a reader. And the past few years had hardened him to
mechanical acquiescence.
But his recent outbreak to Graham Carr seemed again to loosen
discontent. Without thought of rebellion, merely with the mournful
recognition upon him of how far he stood from the inner shrine of
fellowship, he sat idly at his desk, hearing the occasional laughter
which drifted from the room beyond. Even young Burnett was allowed at
these confabulations; a mere boy of nineteen, he was engrossed in the
writing of an "Episode in the Life of a Navvy," backed by the hearty
encouragement of his two chiefs. Yes, Burnett had started already--and
he, Gareth, was now in his fortieth year. Why had he never written his
great book? Perhaps Carr had been right in saying that other people's
books had swamped him entirely.
Leslie Campbell's office was not a good place for introspection. The
telephone bell rang repeatedly. A miscellaneous procession of callers
kept the swing-door in an endless gale and motion. The designer of the
cover to the shilling edition of "Piccadilly" came to submit his rough
idea of the sketch, comprising a hectic young man staring wildly into
a candle-flame, above which floated a grinning skull: a bright and
attractive notion which mightily pleased Campbell, but was rejected
by Carr and Alexander both, since there was nothing in the text of
either skulls or candles. Youthful authors of both sexes, timorous
or determined, knocked continually at the outer gates, requesting
interviews with Mr. Campbell. Jimmy's job to attend to these, whenever
he was present; but Gareth had been steeled to execute hope with as
little compunction as the Heart-breaker himself. The designer emerged
from his colloquy within: "You had better ask the pretty-cover artist
on the 'Blue Sky' to do your next job," sarcastically--and in his
blind rage collided with Mona Gurney on the top stair. "Come in, my
lass; you're the verra person we need," cried Campbell, catching
sight of her; and she joined the conclave of Olympians. A thin slip
of a girl, demure and refined as one of Jane Austen's heroines, she
was the only woman writer whose books had attained the honour of
being published by Leslie Campbell; great strapping books, reeking of
the soil. "Campbell's Young Men" held her in profound respect; nay,
Alexander almost committed the indiscretion of loving her, because her
tailor-mades were of such irreproachable fit; the two would discuss
fashion by the hour, interrupted ever by Campbell's disgusted comments,
which but effected that they would mince their tones the more. You
could do no wrong if you were One of Them.
The July sun filtered through the dirt-specked windows, on to the
litter of books and papers, on to the dusty floor and splashed walls.
Gareth had not moved for several minutes, engrossed in the study
of a typed manuscript sent up for approval. "Spring-fret," by Moll
Aynsleigh. And underneath the title-page, the quotation:
"Grant the path be clear before you
When the old spring-fret comes o'er you...."
Crude as the veriest green apple, and sentimental as a love-song heard
by moonlight, Moll Aynsleigh was in all probability a young girl
embarked tremulously on the wonderful adventure of a first novel. Not
thus could one enter the favoured ranks of Leslie Campbell. Yet there
was that in the hackneyed theme, the quest for Prince Charming, which
sprayed on Gareth's parched imagination like water from a fountain.
Love and an April dawn--children playing in a garden--the hopeless,
laughably hopeless, despair of youth at grown-up frustration of their
plans,--a certain tumultuous "I-want-I-know-not-what" which beat
through every page like the beating of a little schoolgirl's heart....
Gareth, in midsummer, fell victim to a bad attack of spring-fret,
vague and troubled and wishful. Knew that he should not be seeing the
sunshine's gold splashing through grimy London panes; knew now that he
had missed things; knew that he was over forty, and a failure.
He glanced at the end of the book; and set it aside for Jimmy to pack
and return. Silly little Moll Aynsleigh ought to have known better than
to send her romance to this address. Nevertheless, Gareth was sorry.
"Grant the path be clear before you ..." how hot and stuffy was the
inside of the bus which carried him that evening to Hammersmith. No
room on the roof; or else Gareth was not quick enough to shove a
passage through the struggling mass on the step. The air was fetid
with breath and the smell of clothing and an indefinable odour of
food; the narrow seats crowded with a selection of the fat of the
land, so that elbows were tightly wedged, and bodies sweltered in
torturing proximity. "Grant the path be clear before you" ... he knew
that path; had seen it often: it wound over a hill, a low hill, easy
and pleasant to the climber; hill which humped a sun-slippery shoulder
from among the silvery morning mists. And thence, on the further side,
the path would dip to a young wood; the youngest wood in all the
world; younger even than when broidered with the tender green tips and
tassels of spring; younger far than when garbed in the self-satisfied
foliage of summer or the crudely flaming tints of autumn. A wood
with promises unfulfilled, soul unawakened. A wood of February. And
here the hill-path would be laid with a carpet of sodden purple; the
hollows spun by webs of glittering frost. Over all the bare branches
of the tree-tops stole a haze of white and a cloud of dim mauve; but
save for these it stood a bridal wood, pale and intangible; its mesh
of lower boughs devoid of all colour; its spaces silent of all sound
but the cold clean trill of single bird, awake too soon. Somewhere,
the thin trickle of unseen water; somewhere, a dark pool with darker
shadows. The sun slid faltering down the sentinel tree-trunks of that
wood, dared not enter in. A wood haunted, yet passionless. A waiting
wood; not for mischievous pixie or leaf-crowned Dryad; but for some wan
girl, whose garments hung tattered as the tattered shreds of autumn yet
lingering on the hedges; whose ankles were bare and slim; and whose
eyes, blue hyacinths washed with rain, seemed mutely to wait their
tryst with a lover so young as to know naught of evil. Gareth knew
where she could be found: at the far end of the empurpled path; seated
upon a broken gate. He would come upon her when he was hot and tired
from climbing the hill....
He was made aware of the bus-conductor, who wanted his twopence.
Of a bony female, stamping furiously upon his feet, because he had
not risen to give her room, and of a basket dug into his side by a
man in villainous corduroys, basket that evidently contained cheese
of a vicious and unforgettable character. Gareth was glad when the
Hammersmith vehicle finally jolted him forth at the nearest corner to
his street. He knew he was late for dinner; he was usually late; but
it was too hot to hurry. The evening had brought with it no relief
of wind; merely a greater heaviness to the stale air. The shouts of
swarming children free from the Board Schools, sounded intolerably
shrill and close to his ear. The sun gave no sign of ever setting.
Corners of houses and their roofs, chimneys and telegraph wires sawed
and carved the sky into the various bright blue segments of a jig-saw
puzzle. A passing water-cart raised longings in the heart and dust in
the road, with equal incapacity to deal with either. And here at last
was Pacific Villa; hideously uniform with its neighbours on the right
and left; square of front garden, devoid of shade, devoid of grass,
of everything save a few sticks at various angles of hopelessness;
lace curtains at the dining-room window; blobs of lighter brown on
the brown front door where the blistered paint had peeled away. Gareth
fumbled for his latchkey; before he could find it, the door was burst
open to him.