Hampshire somewhat disenchanted me. A baronet with a place in
Hampshire left too little to the imagination. The description seemed
to curtail his potentialities, to prescribe his orbit, to connote
turnip-fields, house-parties, and a whole system of British
commonplace. Yet, when, the next day at luncheon, I again had him
before me in the flesh, my interest revived. Its lapse had been due to
an association of ideas which I now recognised as unscientific. A
baronet with twenty places in Hampshire would remain at the end of
them all a human being; and no human being could be finished off in a
formula of half a dozen words. Sir Richard Maistre, anyhow, couldn't
be. He was enigmatic, and his effect upon me was enigmatic too. Why
did I feel that tantalising inclination to stare at him, coupled with
that reluctance frankly to engage in talk with him? Why did he attack
his luncheon with that appearance of grim resolution? For a minute,
after he had taken his seat, he eyed his knife, fork, and napkin, as a
labourer might a load that he had to lift, measuring the difficulties
he must cope with; then he gave his head a resolute nod, and set to
work. To-day, as yesterday, he said very little, murmured an
occasional remark into the ear of Flaherty, accompanying it usually
with a sudden short smile: but he listened to everything, and did so
with apparent appreciation.
Our proceedings were opened by Miss Hicks, who asked Colonel Escott,
"Well, Colonel, have you had your bath this morning?"
The Colonel chuckled, and answered, "Oh, yes--yes, yes--couldn't
forego my bath, you know--couldn't possibly forego my bath."
"And what was the temperature of the water?" she continued.
"Fifty-two--fifty-two--three degrees warmer than the air--three
degrees," responded the Colonel, still chuckling, as if the whole
affair had been extremely funny.
"And you, Mr. Flaherty, I suppose you've been to Bayonne?"
"No, I've broken me habit, and not left the hotel."
Subsequent experience taught me that these were conventional modes by
which the conversation was launched every day, like the preliminary
moves in chess. We had another ritual for dinner: Miss Hicks then
inquired if the Colonel had taken his ride, and Flaherty played his
game of golf. The next inevitable step was common to both meals.
Colonel Escott would pour himself a glass of the _vin ordinaire_, a
jug of which was set by every plate, and holding it up to the light,
exclaim with simulated gusto, "Ah! Fine old wine! Remarkably full rich
flavour!" At this pleasantry we would all gently laugh; and the word
was free.
Sir Richard, as I have said, appeared to be an attentive and
appreciative listener, not above smiling at our mildest sallies; but
watching him out of the corner of an eye, I noticed that my own
observations seemed to strike him with peculiar force--which led me to
talk _at_ him. Why not to him, with him? The interest was reciprocal;
he would have liked a dialogue; he would have welcomed a chance to
commence one; and I could at any instant have given him such a chance.
I talked _at_ him, it is true; but I talked _with_ Flaherty or Miss
Hicks, or _to_ the company at large. Of his separate identity he had
no reason to believe me conscious. From a mixture of motives, in which
I'm not sure that a certain heathenish enjoyment of his embarrassment
didn't count for something, I was determined that if he wanted to know
me he must come the whole distance; I wouldn't meet him halfway. Of
course I had no idea that it could be a matter of the faintest real
importance to the man. I judged _his_ feelings by my own; and though I
was interested in him, I shall have conveyed an altogether exaggerated
notion of my interest if you fancy it kept me awake at night. How was
I to guess that his case was more serious--that he was not simply
desirous of a little amusing talk, but starving, starving for a little
human sympathy, a little brotherly love and comradeship?--that he was
in an abnormally sensitive condition of mind, where mere negative
unresponsiveness could hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?
In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with the
Winchfields, who had a villa there. When I came back I brought with me
all that they (who knew everybody) could tell about Sir Richard
Maistre. He was intelligent and amiable, but the shyest of shy men. He
avoided general society, frightened away perhaps by the British Mamma,
and spent a good part of each year abroad, wandering rather listlessly
from town to town. Though young and rich, he was neither fast nor
ambitious: the Members' entrance to the House of Commons, the
stage-doors of the music halls, were equally without glamour for him;
and if he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had
become so through the tacit operation of his stake in the country. He
had chambers in St. James's Street, was a member of the Travellers
Club, and played the violin--for an amateur rather well. His brother,
Mortimer Maistre, was in diplomacy--at Rio Janeiro or somewhere. His
sister had married an Australian, and lived in Melbourne.
At the Hôtel d'Angleterre I found his shyness was mistaken for
indifference. He was civil to everybody, but intimate with none. He
attached himself to no party, paired off with no individuals. He
sought nobody. On the other hand, the persons who went out of their
way to seek him, came back, as they felt, repulsed. He had been polite
but languid. These, however, were not the sort of persons he would be
likely to care for. There prevailed a general conception of him as
cold, unsociable. He certainly walked about a good deal alone--you met
him on the sands, on the cliffs, in the stiff little streets, rambling
aimlessly, seldom with a companion. But to me it was patent that he
played the solitary from necessity, not from choice--from the
necessity of his temperament. A companion was precisely that which
above all things his heart coveted; only he didn't know how to set
about annexing one. If he sought nobody, it was because he didn't know
how. This was a part of what his eyes said; they bespoke his desire,
his perplexity, his lack of nerve. Of the people who put themselves
out to seek him, there was Miss Hicks; there were a family from Leeds,
named Bunn, a father, mother, son, and two redoubtable daughters, who
drank champagne with every meal, dressed in the height of fashion,
said their say at the tops of their voices, and were understood to be
auctioneers; a family from Bayswater named Krausskopf. I was among
those whom he had marked as men he would like to fraternise with. As
often as our paths crossed, his eyes told me that he longed to stop
and speak, and continue the promenade abreast. I was under the control
of a demon of mischief; I took a malicious pleasure in eluding and
baffling him--in passing on with a nod. It had become a kind of game;
I was curious to see whether he would ever develop sufficient
hardihood to take the bull by the horns. After all, from a
conventional point of view, my conduct was quite justifiable. I always
meant to do better by him next time, and then I always deferred it to
the next. But from a conventional point of view my conduct was quite
unassailable. I said this to myself when I had momentary qualms of
conscience. Now, rather late in the day, it strikes me that the
conventional point of view should have been re-adjusted to the special
case. I should have allowed for his personal equation.
My cousin Wilford came to Biarritz about this time, stopping for a
week, on his way home from a tour in Spain. I couldn't find a room for
him at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, so he put up at a rival hostelry over
the way; but he dined with me on the evening of his arrival, a place
being made for him between mine and Monsieur's. He hadn't been at the
table five minutes before the rumour went abroad who he was--somebody
had recognised him. Then those who were within reach of his voice
listened with all their ears--Colonel Escott, Flaherty, Maistre, and
Miss Hicks, of course, who even called him by name: "Oh, Mr. Wilford."
"Now, Mr. Wilford," &c. After dinner, in the smoking-room, a cluster
of people hung round us; men with whom I had no acquaintance came
merrily up and asked to be introduced. Colonel Escott and Flaherty
joined us. At the outskirts of the group I beheld Sir Richard Maistre.
His eyes (without his realising it perhaps) begged me to invite him,
to present him, and I affected not to understand! This is one of the
little things I find hardest to forgive myself. My whole behaviour
towards the young man is now a subject of self-reproach: if it had
been different, who knows that the tragedy of yesterday would ever
have happened? If I had answered his timid overtures, walked with him,
talked with him, cultivated his friendship, given him mine,
established a kindly human relation with him, I can't help feeling
that he might not have got to such a desperate pass, that I might have
cheered him, helped him, saved him. I feel it especially when I think
of Wilford. His eyes attested so much; he would have enjoyed meeting
him so keenly. No doubt he was already fond of the man, had loved him
through his books, like so many others. If I had introduced him? If we
had taken him with us the next morning, on our excursion to Cambo?
Included him occasionally in our smokes and parleys?
Wilford left for England without dining again at the Hôtel
d'Angleterre. We were busy "doing" the country, and never chanced to
be at Biarritz at the dinner-hour. During that week I scarcely saw Sir
Richard Maistre.
Another little circumstance that rankles especially now would have
been ridiculous, except for the way things have ended. It isn't easy
to tell--it was so petty, and I am so ashamed. Colonel Escott had been
abusing London, describing it as the least beautiful of the capitals
of Europe, comparing it unfavourably to Paris, Vienna, and St.
Petersburg. I took up the cudgels in its defence, mentioned its
atmosphere, its tone; Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg were lyric, London
was epic; and so forth and so forth. Then, shifting from the æsthetic
to the utilitarian, I argued that of all great towns it was the
healthiest, its death-rate was lowest. Sir Richard Maistre had
followed my dissertation attentively, and with a countenance that
signified approval; and when, with my reference to the death-rate, I
paused, he suddenly burned his ships. He looked me full in the eye,
and said, "Thirty-seven, I believe?" His heightened colour, a nervous
movement of the lip, betrayed the effort it had cost him; but at last
he had _done_ it--screwed his courage to the sticking-place, and
spoken. And I--I can never forget it--I grow hot when I think of
it--but I was possessed by a devil. His eyes hung on my face, awaiting
my response, pleading for a cue. "Go on," they urged. "I have taken
the first, the difficult step--make the next smoother for me." And
I--I answered lackadaisically, with just a casual glance at him, "I
don't know the figures," and absorbed myself in my viands.
Two or three days later his place was filled by a stranger, and
Flaherty told me that he had left for the Riviera.
All this happened last March at Biarritz. I never saw him again till
three weeks ago. It was one of those frightfully hot afternoons in
July; I had come out of my club, and was walking up St. James's
Street, towards Piccadilly; he was moving in an opposite sense; and
thus we approached each other. He didn't see me, however, till we had
drawn rather near to a conjunction: then he gave a little start of
recognition, his eyes brightened, his pace slackened, his right hand
prepared to advance itself--and I bowed slightly, and pursued my way!
Don't ask why I did it. It is enough to confess it, without having to
explain it. I glanced backwards, by and by, over my shoulder. He was
standing where I had met him, half turned round, and looking after me.
But when he saw that I was observing him, he hastily shifted about,
and continued his descent of the street.
That was only three weeks ago. Only three weeks ago I still had it in
my power to act. I am sure--I don't know why I am sure, but I _am_
sure--that I could have deterred him. For all that one can gather from
the brief note he left behind, it seems he had no special, definite
motive; he had met with no losses, got into no scrape; he was simply
tired and sick of life and of himself. "I have no friends," he wrote.
"Nobody will care. People don't like me; people avoid me. I have
wondered why; I have tried to watch myself, and discover; I have tried
to be decent. I suppose it must be that I emit a repellent fluid; I
suppose I am a 'bad sort.'" He had a morbid notion that people didn't
like him, that people avoided him! Oh, to be sure, there were the
Bunns and the Krausskopfs and their ilk, plentiful enough: but he
understood what it was that attracted _them_. Other people, the people
_he_ could have liked, kept their distance--were civil, indeed, but
reserved. He wanted bread, and they gave him a stone. It never struck
him, I suppose, that they attributed the reserve to him. But I--I knew
that his reserve was only an effect of his shyness; I knew that he
wanted bread: and that knowledge constituted my moral responsibility.
I didn't know that his need was extreme; but I have tried in vain to
absolve myself with the reflection. I ought to have made inquiries.
When I think of that afternoon in St. James's Street--only three weeks
ago--I feel like an assassin. The vision of him, as he stopped and
looked after me--I can't banish it. Why didn't some good spirit move
me to turn back and overtake him?
It is so hard for the mind to reconcile itself to the irretrievable. I
can't shake off a sense that there is something to be done. I can't
realise that it is too late.
Song
By Dollie Radford
I could not through the burning day
In hope prevail,
Beside my task I could not stay
If love should fail.
Nor underneath the evening sky,
When labours cease,
Fold both my tired hands and lie
At last in peace.
Ah! what to me in death or life
Could then avail?
I dare not ask for rest or strife
If love should fail.
A Landscape
By Alfred Thornton
[Illustration: A Landscape]
Passed
By Charlotte M. Mew
"Like souls that meeting pass,
And passing never meet again."
Let those who have missed a romantic view of London in its poorest
quarters--and there will romance be found--wait for a sunset in early
winter. They may turn North or South, towards Islington or
Westminster, and encounter some fine pictures and more than one aspect
of unique beauty. This hour of pink twilight has its monopoly of
effects. Some of them may never be reached again.
On such an evening in mid-December, I put down my sewing and left tame
glories of fire-light (discoverers of false charm) to welcome, as
youth may, the contrast of keen air outdoors to the glow within.
My aim was the perfection of a latent appetite, for I had no mind to
content myself with an apology for hunger, consequent on a warmly
passive afternoon.
The splendid cold of fierce frost set my spirit dancing. The road rung
hard underfoot, and through the lonely squares woke sharp echoes from
behind. This stinging air assailed my cheeks with vigorous severity.
It stirred my blood grandly, and brought thought back to me from the
warm embers just forsaken, with an immeasurable sense of gain.
But after the first delirium of enchanting motion, destination became
a question. The dim trees behind the dingy enclosures were beginning
to be succeeded by rows of flaring gas jets, displaying shops of new
aspect and evil smell. Then the heavy walls of a partially demolished
prison reared themselves darkly against the pale sky.
By this landmark I recalled--alas that it should be possible--a church
in the district, newly built by an infallible architect, which I had
been directed to seek at leisure. I did so now. A row of cramped
houses, with the unpardonable bow window, projecting squalor into
prominence, came into view. Robbing these even of light, the
portentous walls stood a silent curse before them. I think they were
blasting the hopes of the sad dwellers beneath them--if hope they
had--to despair. Through spattered panes faces of diseased and dirty
children leered into the street. One room, as I passed, seemed full of
them. The window was open; their wails and maddening requirements sent
out the mother's cry. It was thrown back to her, mingled with her
children's screams, from the pitiless prison walls.
These shelters struck my thought as travesties--perhaps they were
not--of the grand place called home.
Leaving them I sought the essential of which they were bereft. What
withheld from them, as poverty and sin could not, a title to the
sacred name?
An answer came, but interpretation was delayed. Theirs was not the
desolation of something lost, but of something that had never been. I
thrust off speculation gladly here, and fronted Nature free.
Suddenly I emerged from the intolerable shadow of the brickwork,
breathing easily once more. Before me lay a roomy space, nearly
square, bounded by three-storey dwellings, and transformed, as if by
quick mechanism, with colours of sunset. Red and golden spots wavered
in the panes of the low scattered houses round the bewildering
expanse. Overhead a faint crimson sky was hung with violet clouds,
obscured by the smoke and nearing dusk.
In the centre, but towards the left, stood an old stone pump, and some
few feet above it irregular lamps looked down. They were planted on a
square of paving railed in by broken iron fences, whose paint, now
discoloured, had once been white. Narrow streets cut in five
directions from the open roadway. Their lines of light sank dimly into
distance, mocking the stars' entrance into the fading sky. Everything
was transfigured in the illuminated twilight. As I stood, the dying
sun caught the rough edges of a girl's uncovered hair, and hung a
faint nimbus round her poor desecrated face. The soft circle, as she
glanced toward me, lent it the semblance of one of those mystically
pictured faces of some mediæval saint.
A stillness stole on, and about the square dim figures hurried along,
leaving me stationary in existence (I was thinking fancifully), when
my mediæval saint demanded "who I was a-shoving of?" and dismissed me,
not unkindly, on my way. Hawkers in a neighbouring alley were calling,
and the monotonous ting-ting of the muffin-bell made an audible
background to the picture. I left it, and then the glamour was already
passing. In a little while darkness possessing it, the place would
reassume its aspect of sordid gloom.
There is a street not far from there, bearing a name that quickens
life within one, by the vision it summons of a most peaceful country,
where the broad roads are but pathways through green meadows, and your
footstep keeps the time to a gentle music of pure streams. There the
scent of roses, and the first pushing buds of spring, mark the
seasons, and the birds call out faithfully the time and manner of the
day. Here Easter is heralded by the advent in some squalid mart of
air-balls on Good Friday; early summer and late may be known by
observation of that unromantic yet authentic calendar in which
alley-tors, tip-cat, whip- and peg-tops, hoops and suckers, in their
courses mark the flight of time.
Perhaps attracted by the incongruity, I took this way. In such a
thoroughfare it is remarkable that satisfied as are its public with
transient substitutes for literature, they require permanent types
(the term is so far misused it may hardly be further outraged) of Art.
Pictures, so-called, are the sole departure from necessity and popular
finery which the prominent wares display. The window exhibiting these
aspirations was scarcely more inviting than the fishmonger's next
door, but less odoriferous, and I stopped to see what the
ill-reflecting lights would show. There was a typical selection.
Prominently, a large chromo of a girl at prayer. Her eyes turned
upwards, presumably to heaven, left the gazer in no state to dwell on
the elaborately bared breasts below. These might rival, does wax-work
attempt such beauties, any similar attraction of Marylebone's
extensive show. This personification of pseudo-purity was sensually
diverting, and consequently marketable.
My mind seized the ideal of such a picture, and turned from this
prostitution of it sickly away. Hurriedly I proceeded, and did not
stop again until I had passed the low gateway of the place I sought.
Its forbidding exterior was hidden in the deep twilight and invited no
consideration. I entered and swung back the inner door. It was papered
with memorial cards, recommending to mercy the unprotesting spirits
of the dead. My prayers were requested for the "repose of the soul
of the Architect of that church, who passed away in the True
Faith--December,--1887." Accepting the assertion, I counted him beyond
them, and mentally entrusted mine to the priest for those who were
still groping for it in the gloom.
Within the building, darkness again forbade examination. A few lamps
hanging before the altar struggled with obscurity.
I tried to identify some ugly details with the great man's complacent
eccentricity, and failing, turned toward the street again. Nearly an
hour's walk lay between me and my home. This fact and the atmosphere
of stuffy sanctity about the place, set me longing for space again,
and woke a fine scorn for aught but air and sky. My appetite, too, was
now an hour ahead of opportunity. I sent back a final glance into the
darkness as my hand prepared to strike the door. There was no motion
at the moment, and it was silent; but the magnetism of human presence
reached me where I stood. I hesitated, and in a few moments found what
sought me on a chair in the far corner, flung face downwards across
the seat. The attitude arrested me. I went forward. The lines of the
figure spoke unquestionable despair.
Does speech convey intensity of anguish? Its supreme expression is in
form. Here was human agony set forth in meagre lines, voiceless, but
articulate to the soul. At first the forcible portrayal of it assailed
me with the importunate strength of beauty. Then the Thing stretched
there in the obdurate darkness grew personal and banished delight.
Neither sympathy nor its vulgar substitute, curiosity, induced my
action as I drew near. I was eager indeed to be gone. I wanted to
ignore the almost indistinguishable being. My will cried: Forsake
it!--but I found myself powerless to obey. Perhaps it would have
conquered had not the girl swiftly raised herself in quest of me. I
stood still. Her eyes met mine. A wildly tossed spirit looked from
those ill-lighted windows, beckoning me on. Mine pressed towards it,
but whether my limbs actually moved I do not know, for the imperious
summons robbed me of any consciousness save that of necessity to
comply.
Did she reach me, or was our advance mutual? It cannot be told. I
suppose we neither know. But we met, and her hand, grasping mine,
imperatively dragged me into the cold and noisy street.
We went rapidly in and out of the flaring booths, hustling little
staggering children in our unpitying speed, I listening dreamily to
the concert of hoarse yells and haggling whines which struck against
the silence of our flight. On and on she took me, breathless and
without explanation. We said nothing. I had no care or impulse to ask
our goal. The fierce pressure of my hand was not relaxed a breathing
space; it would have borne me against resistance could I have offered
any, but I was capable of none. The streets seemed to rush past us,
peopled with despair.
Weirdly lighted faces sent blank negations to a spirit of question
which finally began to stir in me. Here, I thought once vaguely, was
the everlasting No!
We must have journeyed thus for more than half an hour and walked far.
I did not detect it. In the eternity of supreme moments time is not.
Thought, too, fears to be obtrusive and stands aside.
We gained a door at last, down some blind alley out of the deafening
thoroughfare. She threw herself against it and pulled me up the
unlighted stairs. They shook now and then with the violence of our
ascent; with my free hand I tried to help myself up by the broad and
greasy balustrade. There was little sound in the house. A light shone
under the first door we passed, but all was quietness within.