_INITIATION._
Gobion went to the Grosvenor Hotel and dressed for dinner. Never before
had he been so free, so unrestrained. A most pleasurable feeling of
excitement possessed him.
He knew he could venture where another man would fail; he had
fascination, resource--he was utterly unscrupulous; it was almost
pleasingly dramatic.
He stood in the hall after dinner and lit a cigarette, watching the
crowd of well-dressed people on the lounges round the wall, enjoying
their after-dinner coffee.
The excellent dinner he had eaten still wanted the final climax of
coffee, and sitting down in an armchair he ordered some.
The dreamy content of a well-fed, but not over-fed, man beamed from
him. What should he do?--a music-hall perhaps--he could almost have
laughed aloud in pure amusement and delight at his freedom.
A man sitting near asked him for a match, and they began to talk in the
idle desultory way of two chance acquaintances, making remarks about the
people sitting round.
A big, yellow-haired girl was talking and laughing in loud tones on the
other side of the room, clattering her fan with, it seemed to Gobion,
quite unnecessary noise.
"Who is that person?" he said.
"Which?"
"The girl with the bun, by the potted palm."
"Oh," said the stranger, "that is Lady Mary Aiden Hibbert; she is of a
rather buoyant disposition."
"Not to say _Tom_ buoyant," said Gobion, punning lazily; "she seems of
an amiable complexion."
"My dear sir, complexion of both kinds is influenced by cosmetics, not
by character."
"I perceive you are a cynic."
"Possibly," said the other in a meditative tone; "yet not so much of a
cynic as a man in quest of sensations."
"A society journalist?"
"No, merely a man who has become tired of the higher immorality, and
wants something else to do."
Gobion laughed and got up. "I'm going to the Palace for an hour or two."
"May I come?" said the stranger; "my name is Jones."
"Please do. I am called Yardly Gobion. I shouldn't like to be called
Jones, it's not a pretty name."
The other smiled, he was not vexed; Gobion knew his man. They drove
swiftly to the Palace through the lighted streets, talking a little on
the way. When they went into the stalls the hysterio-comic of the hour
was leaping round the stage in frenzied pirouettes between the verses of
her song.
The suggestive music of the dance pulsed through the audience, and when
the time sank into the rhythm of the verse, they sat back in their
seats with expectant eyes, and a little sigh of delight and
anticipation.
Miss Mace, in her song "It's a Family Characteristic," was the talk of
London. The _risqué_ nature of the words, her wonderful art in singing
them, her naughty eyes, the twitching of her somewhat large mouth--all
the lewd papers of the baser sort yelled over her in ecstasy every
Wednesday morning.
"I wonder what they pay her a week," said Mr. Jones.
Gobion hadn't an idea, but he said "sixty pounds" confidently.
"Really! She certainly is very clever."
"The best thing I find about her is that she is in wonderful sympathy
with her audience, especially too when she is drunk--much funnier then."
"Imagine how often the average faddist would invoke the Deity during her
turn," said the stranger something sententiously.
"His deity, you mean," answered Gobion. "The average man of the
_Echo_-reading type thinks God is a policeman in the service of the
Purity party."
"You coruscate; let us go to the American bar."
"That's a good idea; the presiding gentleman who makes the drinks is an
artist. The mingled science and art with which he compounds whimsical
beverages is wonderful. Half of him seems impulse and nervous force as
he rattles the pounded ice and flourishes the glasses, while the other
half looks in and puts the finishing touches."
"You talk nonsense very pleasantly," said Mr. Jones. "What will you
have?"
"Oh! a sherry cobbler, please, _with_ straws."
"Are you a connoisseur in drinks?"
"Not yet; I hope to be."
"I will take you to a place where you may learn."
"Please do; drinks are more than a cult, they are a science. To a man I
knew at Oxford they were a religion." He was thinking of Condamine.
"There are so many religions nowadays."
"Yes; the sham of yesterday takes an alias and calls itself the religion
of the future."
"I hate the faddist."
"What _do_ you like?"
"I haven't many likes left now. I like to be amused as much as
possible."
After a time they left the music-hall, and while they were walking
through clubland the stranger permitted himself more freedom of
expression, talking cynically. He was a middle-aged man, and Gobion
amused him immensely.
"How badly brought up you must have been," he said to him.
"Why, what makes you think so?"
"You vibrate so quickly to my views, and I am not considered orthodox."
"Well, I was not so much badly brought up, as left to myself. My
father's pedigree claimed a larger share of his attention than his
progeny. I was an accident in the domestic arrangements."
"He must be a strange person."
"He is. I always suspect my predisposition to shady pleasures is
hereditary, although he is a parson."
"It's quite often the case that a repentant rake takes Orders from a
mere revulsion to asceticism. And your mother?"
"A nonentity with most seductive hair."
While talking, they had arrived at the Park, and were turning home to
the hotel in the fresh night air. Gobion knew that he had been smart,
perhaps smarter than usual, but he did not know what impression he had
made. The stranger was a man outside his experience. Accustomed as
Gobion was, in the light of Oxford experience, to feel that _he_ was the
cynic and man of the world, he was somewhat doubtful of a man who
appeared to him to be a realization of what he might himself become.
Cynicism, he thought, is now my plaything; it is this man's master, and
he has lost the savours of life. I wonder if Father Gray was right. He
often said that up to thirty a man might be happy with no moral sense;
but after----
He saw dimly a foreshortened view of the future. It was on this night
that the confidence in his own ability to be happy in evil began to be a
little undermined. This chance meeting with a man weary of life, and not
interested in death, a man with an aching, futile soul, whom he never
saw again, was fraught with tremendous importance to his future career.
On this his first night in London the seeds were sown which led to the
final pose in Houndsditch.
A celebrated lady novelist (she is now in Colney Hatch, but very clever)
once said to the writer of these memoirs that literature, or rather
journalism, is little more than a big game of bluff. Her remark was
quite true. The art of the thing consists in getting the keynote of
twenty different publics, and writing on those lines for the twenty
different papers that represent their views.
This is not the way to make a reputation, but it is certainly one of the
ways in which the literary adventurer may make a certain amount of
money. Gobion knew this well. The conquest was mean and the reward not
far from meagre; but at his age and with his past he could not hope for
much more, and there was a bustling excitement in it which seemed to him
most desirable.
He could not specialize; he had no fixed opinions. It was impossible for
him to take up a decided line in his work.
At Oxford the exigencies of his career had forced him to have no
opinions, but simply to adopt the policy of the set he happened to be
with. He belonged to no party, and in moral views, though he was
apparently in agreement with both, he titillated the men of a clean and
decent life, and amused their opposites, while he borrowed money from
both with a cheerful impartiality. As far as he could dispassionately
reckon them up, his mental assets were a felicity and facility of
expression, more or less wide reading, and a power of intuition and
knowledge of the public mind that was almost devilish in its
infallibility.
After breakfast next morning, that meal so dear (in more senses than
one) to the undergraduate, obviously the first thing to be done was to
secure a place to dwell in. It was not wise to stay on at the hotel a
moment longer than was necessary; the expense was too great. He thought
at once of the Temple. It was a good address, and near most things. He
knew enough of London to understand that Bloomsbury was clerk-land, and
though cheap, quite impossible. Westminster was better, but not quite
central enough. Finally, after some trouble, he took two first-floor
rooms in one of the quiet streets running from the Fleet Street end of
the Strand to the Embankment. They were well-furnished bachelor rooms,
with a low window-seat from which a glimpse could be caught of
red-sailed barges with yellow masts of pitch-pine floating slowly down
the tide, while on late wintry afternoons the sunsets stained the brown
water with a grim and sullen glory.
Gobion had a lurking hope that he might meet the comic landlady that Mr.
Farjeon writes about so nicely in the flesh. He was doomed to
disappointment. The person, called Mrs. Daily, who owned the house had
no peculiarities, and nothing to suggest the type he was in search of
save rotundity of form. He was loth to think the comic landlady was a
fabulous monster, or an extinct one--the lady who says, "Which Mister
Jones come tight last blessed hevening has hever was, and which I 'ad to
bump 'is 'edd on the stairs to keep 'im quiet while the girl and I
'elped 'im up to the third floor back." Was she really fabulous? It was
a sorrowful reflection.
The same day that he took the rooms he moved from the West and took
possession. He had dined at the hotel before he left, and when he had
unpacked his portmanteaux he sat before the fire feeling horribly dull
and uneasy.
He was not inclined to go out to a theatre or bar, and the men he knew
in town, mostly journalists, were all hard at work now in Fleet Street.
The sensation of _ennui_ was new to him, and at first quite overbearing.
Gobion was in personal matters strong-willed, and after a time this
trained faculty of will helped him, and, with an effort almost heroic in
its strength, he sat down at the table and began to review a book for
_The Pilgrim_. It was a collection of essays by a well-known priest on
some doctrinal aspects of church teaching that he had before him, and it
was sent to him partly because he was known to have had some connection
with the High Church party, and the editor assumed that he would have
enough superficial knowledge of the subject to write a clever and
flippant review.
_The Pilgrim_ had been bought at a low ebb in its fortunes by its
present editor, James Heath, for a thousand pounds, lock, stock, and
barrel. Before it came into his hands it was an unsavoury little print,
which published little else but impressionist criticisms of the
music-halls and fulsome reviews of evil books, under the direction of a
man who was a personified animal passion roughly clothed in flesh.
Now it was all changed. The tone of _The Pilgrim_ was immoral as before,
and the column headed "The Pilgrim's Scrip" as grossly personal as ever,
but the personalities were more artistic, the immorality the immorality
of culture.
The paper was never low. The sale was good, for all the young men and
women who considered themselves clever, and who, under the comprehensive
shield of "soul," sucked poison from strange flowers, bought it and
quoted it.
Heath was smart and cynical in his conduct of the paper, though in
private life he lived at Putney, collected stamps, and read Miss
Braddon's novels to his wife after dinner. He knew quite well that
realism was mechanism, and he never welcomed photography as art, but as
the people who bought his literary wares did not understand these
things he never enlightened them, which was natural.
The book that Gobion was reviewing he had entrusted to him willingly. He
was an Oxford man himself, and still kept up some communication with his
friends there, and he had heard indirectly that Gobion had received
various benefits from the High Church party. His knowledge of Gobion
taught him that he would do a delightfully clever and malicious review.
The clergyman who had written the book was a rather noisy Anglican
divine, who preached the gospel of unity in art and religion at the top
of his voice. He deprecated and eloquently denounced the new literature
of the day. As _The Pilgrim_ was the outward and visible head of what
Canon Emeric denounced as very little short of devilish, Heath was
naturally anxious that the review should, in journalistic phrase, "crab"
the sale of the book among his readers.
Now this Canon Emeric had met Gobion at a garden party, and found him
well informed in the history of his campaign against art for art's sake.
Finding that Gobion agreed with his views, he had asked him as a
special favour to call on his son, who had just come up to Christchurch
from Marlborough. Gobion did call, and asked the youth to meet
Sturtevant, and the poor boy, dazzled by being in the society of men of
whom he heard everyone talking, made a fool of himself and came to utter
grief, much to the pecuniary benefit of Condamine, Sturtevant, and
Gobion. It was a disgraceful affair, and though some rather acrimonious
correspondence had passed between the Canon and Gobion, the matter had
been hushed up.
When Gobion got well into his work the ennui passed away and he worked
hard, turning out a very clever and caustic review. To the pleasure of
creation, always a keen one with him, was added the delight of writing
something which, if he saw it, would pain his adversary grievously. And
Gobion meant to take very good care that he _did_ see it.
He ended the column by saying:--
"Whether these essays were worth writing is of course a question
which lies between Canon Emeric and his publisher. That they are
not worth reading we have no hesitation in saying.
"If anyone were so childish as to take the advice given in this
book seriously, he would find that all the time he could spare
from worship he would spend in neglecting the obligations of
religion."
It took him about two hours to produce the criticism in its finished
state, and then he began to have a last smoke before going to bed. As
with so many men, he found that at no time did his ideas come so
rapidly, or shape themselves so well, as during the smoking of that last
cigarette.
The fire was blazing, and he drew his chair up closer, leaning back and
enjoying in every nerve a moment of intense physical ease.
There was no more innocent picture to be found in London than the
well-furnished room lit by the dancing firelight, with the handsome
young man in the chair lazily watching the blue cigarette smoke slowly
twisting itself into strange fantastic shapes. The powers of Asmodeus
were here a failure.
Next day, when he had written to his Oxford friends and to Marjorie
Lovering, his sweetheart in the country, he went to _The Pilgrim_
office with his review and saw Heath. The two editorial rooms were on
the second floor looking out into the Strand. Big bare places littered
with paper, cigarette ends, and type-written copy, with none of the tape
machines, telephones, and fire-calls that are found in the offices of a
daily. Heath was seated at a writing-table "making up" the issue for the
week, while his assistant, a man named Wild, was looking through a batch
of cuttings from Romeike's in the hope of finding what he called "spicy
pars" for the front page. Gobion was well received, and after he had
explained that he was going to stay in town, and was open for any amount
of work, he was offered a permanent salary of two pounds ten shillings a
week, to do half the reviewing for the paper. Naturally he accepted at
once, and was pleased at his good luck, for though the pay was small it
was regular.
Heath was a very large, fat man, with no hair on his face, and a quick,
nervous smile which ended high in the pendant flabbiness of his cheeks.
He was well and fashionably dressed in dark grey, the frock coat,
tight-fitting as it was, making his vast size and huge hips seem the
more noticeable. He was smoking a cigar, and gave Gobion one.
It was lunch time when the bargain was concluded, and Gobion, Wild, and
Heath went out together. Gobion, who, obeying the precept of Iago, had
put money in his purse, asked them to lunch with him at Romano's. Heath
laughed.
"My _dear_ Yardly Gobion, lunch at Romano's! No thanks; it would cost
you five pounds and be far too respectable. No, you shall certainly pay
for the lunch--eh Wild?--but I will show you where to get it."
He turned up a side street and entered a small court, not far from the
stage door of the Lyceum, at the end of which was a door. They went in
and found a suite of three largish rooms opening one out of the other.
The first was fitted up as a restaurant, while the other two were
smoking-lounges with a bar in each. Comfort, brutal unæsthetic comfort,
was the most obvious thing in all three rooms. The chairs were
comfortable, the carpets soft, while big cheery fires burnt in the open
grates. No one was in the dining-room, but through the half-open
curtains, which separated the lounge from the dining-room, came snatches
of conversation, the sound of soda-water corks, and the shrill laughter
of a London barmaid, than which few things are more unpleasant.
The three journalists sat down at a table by the fire, and a waiter
brought the menu.
Mr. Heath's rather impassive face lighted up, and he read the list
eagerly. Eating and drinking were of tremendous importance to him.
The food was ordered, and Gobion asked them what they would drink.
Heath, with a sublime disregard for bulk, ordered lager; the other two,
simple "halves" of bitter. While the meal was in progress a man came in
from a side door. Heath called him, introducing him to Gobion as Mr.
Hamilton, the owner of the place.
Wild explained to Gobion that he was now free of the "copy shop." "You
see," said he, "this is a place almost entirely used by journalists of a
non-political kind. Everyone knows everyone else, and Hamilton knows us
all by name. An outsider who wanders in here is not encouraged to repeat
his visit, unless he is vouched for by someone, for the place is really
more like a club than a public bar."
After lunch they went into the lounge, which was filled with men, mostly
young, who all seemed to know one another by their Christian names.
Heath was hailed cordially.
A man sitting on the table stood up, and said theatrically, "Enter the
Pilgrim, arch-druid of the loving Mountain--slow music. Well, my fat
friend, what wicked scandal do you come fresh from concocting? What lewd
pars are even now in the copy box at 162, Strand?"
The Pilgrim grinned. "Gentlemen, let me introduce my latest permanent
recruit, Mr. Yardly Gobion. He has just been sent down from Exeter."
Gobion was welcomed as a brother, and in half an hour had taken up his
favourite position on the hearthrug.
Exerting himself to the utmost, he found he could produce much the same
impression as he did in Oxford, and he was a pronounced success in
perhaps one of the most critical coteries in London.
They were critics of everything, criticism was in their veins, they
lived on it; they were "the men who had failed in literature and art."
Every now and then a man or two on an evening paper would come in
hastily for a drink, and there was a quick interchange of
technicalities, a chorus of experts, sharp, clipped, allusive; the
latest wire from the Central News, the newest story from the clubs, the
smartest headline of the afternoon.
Gobion soon caught the note and was voted an acquisition. Although he
was of a somewhat finer grain than most of these men, he recognized the
type instantly. Cheap cynicism was the keynote of most of the
conversation, and his lighter side revelled in it. Most complex of all
men, he could suck pleasure from every shade of feeling. Lord Tennyson's
beautiful line: "A glorious devil large in heart and brain," fitted him
exactly. With his intellect he might have been a saint, instead of which
he was sublime in nothing whatever. With the face of an angel, he loved
goodness for its beauty, and sin for its excitement.
Before he left the "copy shop" he had picked up several good stories,
and saw his way to at least half a dozen scandalous paragraphs, which
he would send to a provincial paper with which he had some connection.
He went away, being pressed to come regularly, and Mr. Hamilton met him
going out, expressing his pleasure at seeing any "friend of Mister
Heath's and member of the fourth hestate, 'oping as the pleasure will be
repeated." Not being a journalist, the worthy landlord had a high
opinion of the press.
Gobion left with Wild, and they strolled down towards Fleet Street.
"Drop in at my place some evening, will you?" he said to his companion.
"Thanks very much. I will, certainly. You must come and look me up when
you've time. I am at present sharing a flat with Blanche Huntley, whom
you may have heard of. I suppose you don't mind?"
"I, my dear fellow? Rather not; delighted to come. Do you turn off
here?"
"Yes, I'm going to the Temple station; good-bye."
Gobion had heard of Miss Huntley. "How very nasty some men are in their
tastes," he thought; "it's all rather horrid. I'll go to evensong
somewhere." Not the better, but the finer side of him woke up, and he
felt the necessity of a quieting and poetic influence to counteract the
clever sordidness of the afternoon. He took a cab to Pimlico, where he
knew churches were plentiful, and after a little search found what he
wanted not far from Victoria Station.
The church was only lit by the candles on the high altar and a solitary
corona over the stall of the clergyman. Gobion was quite alone. The
shadows and gloom of the building were thrown into a deeper gloom, an
added mystery, by the radiance above. A young priest, of the earnest
Cuddesdon type, walked in all alone, his steps echoing mournfully on the
flagged chancel floor. He gave a slight start of pleasure when he saw
that there was a congregation, a young man, too!--the poor curate had
never before seen such a phenomenon at a weekday evensong.
They said the psalms together, Gobion's sweet voice echoing down the
long, dark aisles.
The clergyman felt an instinctive sympathy. He saw that Gobion was
feeling to the full the influence of the hour and place, the musical
cadence of the verse, and he responded in his turn with a newer sense of
the poetry of worship, throwing deep feeling into his voice. It was a
keen, æsthetic pleasure to both of them, though the priest felt
something more, but it put Gobion on good terms with himself at once. He
had roused emotion of a sort, and the rousing seemed to sweep away the
contamination of the day.
He bowed low to the distant crucifix on the altar on leaving the
building, as a man who had tasted a sweet morsel, with shadowy and
pleasant thoughts--the sense of a finer glory.