_A PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT._
There was once a wood-louse, who, being dissatisfied with his position,
called himself a Pterygobranchiate. This arrogation of dignity was much
resented by his friends. "You belong to the Bourgeoisie," they said to
him, "and we cannot call to mind that you have done anything to warrant
an assumption of this aristocratic title." "My good fools," said the
wood-louse, "you mistake the term 'Bourgeoisie.' The Bourgeoisie are not
a class. A Bourgeois is merely a man who has time to sit down, a chair
is not a caste." So saying he took another glass of log-juice, and
looked his friends steadily in the face. He was an epigrammatic
wood-louse.
They returned somewhat abashed, and for a time, though he was not
liked, he was asked about a good deal; for as people said, "To have a
Pterygobranchiate in one's rooms lends a party such an air of
distinction."
Our friend made some mistakes at first, for he could not resist the
dishes of dried wood _à la Française_ and the '74 log-juice that were of
frequent occurrence at the tables of the great. The result of this was
that Nemesis, in the shape of gastric pains, overtook him, and he had to
moderate his appetites.
"Indigestion," he said, "is charged by God with the enforcement of
morality on the stomach, I will reform my habits." Another reason also
contributed to this wise decision, for one day, when going to the
kitchen for his boots, he heard the cook (an elderly wood-louse of
uncertain temper) say to the boy wood-louse who cleaned the knives and
helped in the garden: "Master's that independent and 'e smell so of
drink since 'e 's been a Pterygobranchiate, there's no bearin' with
'im." He realized how foolish he must look in the eyes of many good
people, so he pitched his new visiting cards into a rabbit-hole, and
once more returned to middle-class respectability and happiness.
This story has seven morals, only one of which is wanted here, and that
is: "Any divergence from habit is generally attended with disastrous
results." This was the case with Gobion, who, in an unguarded moment,
told Mr. Lovering something approaching the truth, and so gave himself
away.
The three or four days at the close of the Loverings' visit were very
enjoyable to him, especially after the hard work of the last week; but
unfortunately Mr. Lovering could not quite understand what he was doing
in London, and after a time bluntly asked him the reason for this change
of plans. Thereupon Gobion admitted that he had had a disagreement with
his father, and the parson putting two and two together arrived at a
guess that was not far short of the truth.
Both of them were humbugs, but with this difference, that while Gobion
knew it and made it pay, Mr. Lovering prayed night and morning that he
might not find it out. The result was that the clergyman, who, as the
father of a most attractive damsel, naturally desired to sell her to an
eligible bidder, took Marjorie home at once, telling her that he had
been "greatly deceived" in Gobion, and dictating a polite little note
which she sent him.
He got the letter while he was at breakfast, and read it slowly, trying
in vain to feel it as a blow. It was of no use, however, for it did not
even lessen his hunger for the meal before him.
Then in a flash he realized what this callousness meant. It meant simply
this, that the actual moment had arrived when all higher aspirations had
deserted him, that he was inevitably and firmly bound to sin, while his
mind was allowed to realize the horror of it.
His soul had passed into the twilight.
He knew all this in the space of time that it took to pour out a cup of
coffee, but not a muscle of his face moved.
He knew the reaction would be torture when it came--the torture of a man
damned before death--but until then there was the hideous joy of
absolute unrestraint. There would be no more even shadowy scruples, he
would frolic in evil over the corpse of a dead conscience.
He rang the bell for some more bacon and a morning paper. While he was
reading a "Drama of the Day" article by Clement Scott, the landlady
knocked at the door, and said, "Please, sir, a boy messenger has brought
this, and is there any answer?" He took the note.
"DEAR MR. YARDLY GOBION,--I and Veda are going to _The Liars_
to-night, and we want you to escort us. Come to dinner first if
you can.
"Yours, E."
He scribbled an acceptance and sent it back by the boy. The invitation
came from a Mrs. Ella Picton, the wife of Lionel Picton, the editor of
the well-known paper _The Spy_. Gobion had been to her house several
times, and she had petted and made much of him.
Her husband was a clever, sardonic man, who let his pretty wife do
exactly as she liked. He said that marriage resembled vaccination, it
might take well or ill, and as for him he put up with the result for
quietness. To his great amusement, his wife had almost persuaded
herself that she was in love with Gobion. He looked so young and fresh,
with such a pretty mouth, and such expressive eyes. She felt a desire to
taste all this dawn.
Picton quite understood, and resolved to use Gobion for his own
purposes, as it seemed necessary to have him in the house. Accordingly
after dinner he asked him a good many questions about _The Pilgrim_ and
its editor. His tongue being loosened by champagne, Gobion made fun of
Heath, an easy subject of ridicule, and blasphemed against _The
Pilgrim_.
"Heath is a sort of literary fat boy, an urchin Rabelais," he said.
"Look here, I'll give you ten guineas for a column in _The Spy_, showing
up Heath and _The Pilgrim_. You needn't give names. Just make it racy,
and cut into the old elephant. You'll excuse my talkin' shop in my own
house, but I should like to have you on _The Spy_ very much."
Gobion was flattered. _The Spy_ was disreputable, but big and important.
He agreed to do an article for the next issue, and as the arrangement
was concluded, the butler came in to say that the ladies were ready to
start. Bidding his host good-night, he went up to the drawing-room,
where Mrs. Picton and her sister Veda Leuilette were waiting.
They drove to the "Criterion," and the air of the carriage was heavy
with the scent of flowers and a subtle odour of white lilac, and the
_frou-frou_ of skirts seemed to accentuate the perfume. They drove up to
the theatre, the footman springing down to open the door, and Gobion
helped the ladies out. As they went into the _foyer_ he noticed Wild and
Blanche Huntley going into the stalls. It was very pleasant to take care
of two strikingly pretty women, and Gobion was conscious of a wish that
some of his Oxford friends, who had imagined that his flight to London
practically meant starvation, could see him now.
The house was full of celebrities. There were warm scents in the air,
and from their box they could see vaguely as through a mist a parterre
of bright colours, the swirl of a fan, the gleaming of white arms, and
the occasional sharp scintillation from a diamond ring or bracelet,
while beyond, the space under the circle was crowded with rows of white
faces framed in black.
Mrs. Picton was dressed in pale blue _crêpe-de-chine_, looking very
lovely, and her violet eyes flashed a dangerous fascination while Gobion
and she consulted the programme. Soon after their entrance the band came
in, and began to play a lazy, swinging waltz, which seemed to Gobion to
harmonize strangely with the apricot light of the theatre. The whole
scene struck an unreal and exotic note; he felt a strange deadening of
thought, a dreamy sensuousness more physical than mental, and every time
Mrs. Picton leant back to make some remark, with a little flash of white
teeth framed in wine-red lips, her looks stung his blood.
One of her hands lay on the cushion of the box, white and soft, with
rosy filbert nails.
"How Botticelli would have loved to paint your hands," he said, speaking
a little thickly.
"A portrait is always so unsatisfactory, don't you think?"
"Perhaps; a looking-glass is a better artist than Herkomer."
"Now you're going to be clever! Look at Mrs. Wrampling in the
stalls--fancy showing so soon after the divorce! Isn't she a perfect
poem, though?"
"One that has been through several editions."
"She's well made up, but she's put on a little too much colour."
"Oh, she's not as ugly as she's painted."
"Now you are much too nice a boy to be cynical."
"The cynic only sees things as they really are."
She laughed a silvery little laugh. "Who is that ugly man with her?"
"That is _the_ man--Wilfrid Fletcher."
"She must be fonder of his purse than of his person."
"The most thorough-going of all the philosophies."
"Who else is here that you know?"
"Well, that very fat man in the third row is Heath, the editor of _The
Pilgrim_. He was at Exeter--my college--years ago."
"I should have imagined that he was a University man."
"Really! Why?"
"He is so evidently an apostle of the Extension movement."
"That's quite good! Heath is a clever man though, despite his size."
"In what way?"
"He manages to grasp the changeful modern spirit of the day exactly."
"I think I was introduced to him once, somewhere or other."
"I believe he does go into society."
"Society condones a good deal."
"It is condonation incarnate."
She looked up at him, and blushed a little. "Perhaps it is as well?"
"For some of us?"
"_Si loda l'uomo modesto._"
"Don't you think modesty is advisable? One never knows how far to go."
"One should experiment, then; modesty is more original than natural
nowadays."
"Originality is only a plagiarism from nature."
She opened her fan, moving it quickly. She was not accustomed to be
fenced with like this.
Gobion's senses were coming back to him, the voluptuousness had gone,
and after the first intoxication of her presence, he looked again and
found she did not interest him in the way she sought. After the first
act he offered to get them some ices, sending them by a man, while he
went to the buffet.
Heath and Wild were there. "Hullo!" said the former, "who's that pretty
woman in your box?"
"Picton's wife."
"Lionel Picton?"
"Yes."
"I wouldn't advise you to get mixed up with that lot," he said, making
Gobion feel rather guilty as he remembered the article he was going to
do for _The Spy_. After a minute Wild moved away.
"Such a joke," said Heath, with a grin. "Wild's brought little Blanche
Huntley, the typewriter girl, and both Mrs. Wrampling and Will Fletcher
are here, and they're saying that Wrampling himself is in the circle!
It's a dirty world, my boy, a dirty world."
"I wouldn't quarrel with my bread and butter if I were you," said
Gobion; "you and I'd be in rather a hole if it wasn't for these little
episodes. Mrs. Grundy always was an indecent old person. Ta-ta, see you
after at the 'copy shop'?"
"Yes, my wife's away in Birmingham, so I won't go home till morning."
Gobion went back to the box, where he found Moro de Minter, the new
humourist, making himself agreeable. Gobion knew the man slightly, and
hated him. People said his real name was Gluckstein, and he was reported
to have been a ticket collector at Euston before he had come out as the
apostle of the ridiculous. He was holding forth on his latest book, and
he asked Gobion what he thought of the new humourists.
"I have only met two sorts," he answered, "the disgustingly facetious
and the facetiously disgusting. Both are equally nasty."
Miss Leuilette was rather nettled; she liked Minter.
"And what do you think of the new critics of _The Pilgrim_ type, Mr.
Minter?" she asked.
"They squirt venom from the attic into the gutter, and nobody is ever
hurt." After which passage of arms he left the box, and the curtain
went up on the Inn at Shepperford.
After the play Gobion saw the ladies into their carriage, and Mrs.
Picton, as she pressed his hand, whispered him to come to tea the next
day.
"I shall be quite alone," she said, with a side look.
Then came the "copy shop" and a noisy supper, at which the latest sultry
story of a certain judge's wife was repeated and enjoyed.
It struck Gobion more than ever what a drunken, rakish lot these men
were, but still he was very little better, only less coarse in his
methods, and it didn't matter.
Lucy, the barmaid, was in great form. Someone had given her a copy of
_The Yellow Book_, with its strange ornamentation.
"They do get these books up in a rum way now," she said, pointing to the
figures blazoned on the cover.
"You shouldn't find fault with that, my dear," he said. "The fig-leaf
was the grandmother of petticoats"; and everyone roared.
"Can anyone recommend me a new religion?" said a fat man who did
sporting tips for _The Moon_.
There was a yell at once. "Flintoff wants a new religion."
"Theosophist!" "Absintheur!" "Jew!" "Mahomedan!"
"Theosophist?" said the fat man; "no, I think not. Madame Blavatski was
too frankly indecent. Absintheur might perhaps suit if it wasn't for
Miss Marie Corelli. Jew is quite out of the question; there are two
difficulties, pork and another. Mahomedan! well, that isn't bad. As many
wives as you like--the religion of the henroost. Yes, I think I'll be a
Mahomedan."
"How about drinks?" said Gobion.
"Oh, damn! Yes, I forgot that, I must stick to Christianity after all."
He limped to the table to get a match.
"What's the matter with your leg?" said Heath.
"I hurt it last night going home in the fog."
"You should try Elliman's--horse for choice."
"I did, and I stank so of turpentine I was quite ashamed to lie with
myself."
"You're not ashamed to lie here," said some feeble punster.
"No, it's my profession. I'm a sporting prophet."
Gobion suddenly remembered that he had heard nothing about the mass of
copy that had been sent out some days before.
"Has Mr. Sturtevant been in to-night?" he asked the barmaid.
"No, I haven't seen him for two or three days," she said.
Gobion went quickly out into the Strand and walked to Sturtevant's
rooms. The gas flamed on the dingy staircase, making a hissing noise in
the silence, and shining on the white paint of the names above the
door--Mr. Mordaunt Sturtevant, Mr. Thompson Jones, Mr. Gordon.
The "oak" was open, so Gobion went in, pushing aside the swing door at
the end of the little passage.
A strong smell of brandy struck him in the face. He walked in, and
looked round the screen by the fire, starting back for a moment with a
sick horror of what he saw.
The candles were alight before the looking-glass over the mantelpiece.
In front of it stood Sturtevant, with his back to Gobion. His thumbs
were in the corners of his mouth, and with his first fingers he was
pulling down the loose skin under his eyes, making the most ghastly
grimaces at his image in the mirror.
Gobion stood still, petrified, and mechanically pressed the spring of
his opera hat, which flew out with a loud pop. Sturtevant wheeled round
like a shot, shaking with fear. When he saw who was there he gave a
great sob of relief and fell into a chair.
"O God, how you startled me!" he said.
"What on earth's the matter with you?" said Gobion; "you look as if you
were dying."
The man was not good to look at. His skin was a uniform tint of
discoloured ivory, with red wrinkles round the eyes. His lips were dark
purple and swollen, his hands shook.
"I'm so glad you've come; I've had a slight touch of D.T., and if you
hadn't come in I should have broken out again to-night."
Gobion calmed him as well as he could, and in about an hour got him
into something like ordinary condition.
"And now," he said, "how about our copy?"
"By George, I've forgotten all about it; there are probably a lot of
letters in the box."
They got them out. The first one they opened was a collection of
personal paragraphs sent in by Gobion, "Declined with thanks." The next
was a cheque from the _Resounder_ for four guineas, in payment of the
"Gambling at Oxford" article. They went on opening one after the other,
and at the end found that they had netted twenty-six pounds.
Sturtevant got excited about it, and wanted to have some more brandy,
but Gobion managed to get him to bed, and locked the door, putting the
key in his pocket. He built up the fire, took Daudet's _Sappho_ from a
shelf, and passed the night on the sofa alternately reading and dozing.
It took him three or four days to bring Sturtevant round to something
like form, most of which he spent in the Temple, occupying himself by
writing the attack on Heath for _The Spy_.
It was the cleverest piece of work he had done, and when it was
finished it was with all the pride of an artist that he read it to
Sturtevant, and sent it to Blanche Huntley to be typed.
Meanwhile he became at times horribly bored and low-spirited, and each
new attack accentuated the next, for he would rush into the lowest forms
of amusement to find oblivion. In the intervals of coarseness he called
on Mrs. Picton.
Such society as was open to him soon began to pall, and he spent more
and more time at the "copy shop" or with Sturtevant in the Temple.
These two men, who a few years ago were freshmen at Oxford, sat night
after night cursing and blaspheming all that most men hold sacred.
They were colossal in their bitterness.
Sturtevant said once, "Life is a disease; as soon as we are born we
begin to die. I shall die soon from D.T., and you'll write a realistic
study for _The Pilgrim_. Perhaps my life was ordained for that end."
Which, considering the degree the man had taken, and what his mental
abilities were, was about the bitterest thing he could have said.
One night Sturtevant went to bed about two, leaving Gobion in the room
not much inclined for sleep. After an inspection of the bookcase, he
took down a Swinburne, and turned to "Dolores."
"Come down and redeem us from virtue,
Our Lady of Pain,"
he read in the utter stillness of the night.
Then he put the book down and sat staring into the fire, thinking
quietly of the literary merit of the poem, while its passion throbbed
through and through him--a strange dual action of mind and sense.
Suddenly he looked up and saw a silver streak in the dull sky, the
earliest messenger of dawn pressing its sad face against the window.
"I will go abroad," he said, "and see the day come to London." He went
out in the ancient echoing courts through the darkness, till he came to
the Embankment, and looked over the river. Far away in the east the sky
was faintly streaked with grey, the curtain of the dark seemed shaken by
the birth-pangs of the morning. He stood quite still, looking towards a
great bar of crimson which flashed up from over St. Paul's, showing the
purple dome floating in the mist. The western sky over the archbishop's
palace was all aglow with a red reflected light. Dark bars of cloud
stretched out half over heaven, turning to brightness as the sun rushed
on them. The deepening glow spread wider and wider, on and up, till the
silver greys and greens faded into blue, and the glory of the morning in
a great arch suffused the Abbey, the Tower, and all the palaces of
London. The sparrows began to twitter in the little trees on the
Embankment.