It was a Sunday in June, a year after Sylvester had come to London,
and the great stretch of the Park, past Stanhope Gate, north of
Achilles' statue, was thronged. The warm breath of the afternoon air
scarcely stirred the leaves that chequered with shade and sunshine the
mass of cool colour below. Above shone the vivid green of the foliage
and the sea-blue of the sky; but beneath the branches the air was
tempered by the reflection of the whites, the pale greys, the delicate
blues and lavenders, and the soft pinks of dresses and parasols. It was
the ordinary crowd that sat there, very fashionable, somewhat vulgar
below the surface, but delicately picturesque, like human flower-beds
in a sweet but formal garden. And on the walks beside and around and
between passed the endless procession of loungers. The hum of talk, the
subdued patter of footsteps, and the frou-frou of soft drapery hung upon
the air.
Sylvester sat in the sun at the edge of one of the parterres, flanked,
on the one side, by an elderly matron chaperoning a line of laughing
girls, and on the other by a white-moustached, red-faced Anglo-Indian
laying down the law to a neighbour on the preparation of curry.
Sylvester stared moodily at the parterre in front, separated from him by
the pathway, and felt very lonely. Despite his loss of faith in man
and woman, he hungered dumbly for the human companionship from which
he shrank. The first sense of novelty over, his practice in London had
failed to stimulate him. The interest was absorbing, but unthrilling.
He began to realise that he was degenerating into a consulting and
recording machine,--very sensitive, it is true, but a machine all
the same. He lived alone in a formal house in Weymouth Street. In the
morning he rose early, worked in his laboratory, saw patients, ate, saw
more patients, worked again in his laboratory, ate, and till bedtime
read or worked again among the endless test-tubes and retorts. And so,
without change, day after day. His common-sense told him that it was not
a healthy life for a human being. But how to alter it effectively save
by mixing with his kind? And his kind was hateful to him. He had grown
to be a recluse, misanthropically brooding over its worthlessness. Yet
now and then, as today, instinct drove him into the crowd.
He caught himself half envying the crowd's irresponsible gaiety. It was
quite within his power, as far as external conditions were concerned,
to become as one of those he saw and to surround himself with
laughter-loving friends. He wondered vaguely what it would be like.
“It's the proportion of turmeric that does it,” exclaimed his neighbour,
in a more emphatic tone than he had hitherto used. “The only man I
knew that had the secret was poor old Jack Hilton--you remember Jack
Hilton--of the Guides? He ran off with Mrs. Algy Broadbent.”
Sylvester shivered slightly. A cloud came before his eyes. Were all men
dishonourable and all women faithless? Was all this refined and nicely
civilised crowd rotten to its soul? He looked furtively around. Who
could tell what Messalina lurked beneath yonder girl's pink and white
skin and innocent fresh eyes, what villainy and meanness lay concealed
beneath yonder young soldier's specious bearing of manliness? Disgust
banished the haunting envy.
A man who had been chattering to the girls on his left took leave of
them with a great sweep of his hat. In the act of passing Sylvester, he
stopped short and regarded him as though in astonishment.
“_Trône de l'air!_ and by all the oaths of the vehement South, what are
you doing here?”
“How do you do, Roderick?” said Sylvester, rising and formally shaking
hands.
“Oh, I'm bursting with fatness, which is more than I can say for you.
But what are you doing in this galley?”
“Why shouldn't I be here?”
“The eternal fitness of things. One doesn't as a general rule, for
instance, meet the Archbishop of Canterbury at a Covent Garden ball.”
He spoke in a hearty voice, with somewhat exotic gestures. Roderick
Usher had spent part of his schooldays in France, and was fond of
insisting on his cosmopolitan training. He was dressed in the most
perfectly fitting of frock-coats and patent leather boots, and wore
faultless grey suede gloves. His only departure from the commonplace
severity of fashionable attire was a yellow Indian silk bow whose
ends spread over the front of his coat. He had light fuzzy hair that
protruded bushily behind his glossy silk hat, and his yellow beard was
pointed in the Vandyke pattern. He was of medium height, rather stout;
his face was broad and ruddy, at first sight giving the impression of
frank good humour; but his eyes, small and somewhat shifty, although
hidden behind gold pince-nez, detracted from the general air of
handsomeness that he was pleased to cultivate. Besides, the deep lines
of nearing middle age were growing troublesomely obvious.
Sylvester replied in a matter-of-fact way to his last remark,----
“I was working in my laboratory all the morning, and I felt the need of
air. Weymouth Street is not far. I don't come here as a rule.”
“Bless you, my friend, there's no need to apologise. The place belongs
to you just as much as it does to me. How's the old man?”
“Which old man?” asked Sylvester.
“Your old man, my old man, both our old men. Our antique but venerated
old men.”
“My father is very well,” replied Sylvester, stiffly, “and so, I
believe, is yours.”
“_A la bonne heure!_ So you've come to London to make your fortune? You
steady scientific files always do. We poor artistic devils generally
manage to make other people's.”
“I don't quite understand,” said Sylvester.
The other laughed and drawing a cigarette from a silver case lit it
daintily.
“I don't suppose you do. You approach a paradox as solemnly as if it
were a disease. We play bat and ball with it. That makes the difference
between us. Have a turn?”
Sylvester assented somewhat reluctantly. He disliked the son as much as
he disliked the father. But the spirit of lonesomeness had been weighing
on him to-day, and human instinct craved relief. They moved away and
took their places in the sauntering procession on the broad walk.
“Why don't you do more of this sort of thing?” asked Roderick. “You
treat life by rule of thumb, as if it were a science. It isn't; it's an
art,--the finest of the Fine Arts. Colour, form, relief, action, sound,
articulation, all combined, capable of a myriad permutations, any one of
which can be fixed by the inspiration of the moment.”
“My way of life suits me best,” replied Sylvester. “I teach people how
to kill bacilli; you teach them how to kill time.”
“Time's a deadlier enemy than all your bacilli, my friend, and takes a
devilish sight more killing. But we won't argue. Argument is a discord
in the symphony of existence. Besides, it's too confoundedly hot.”
Here he bowed in his grand style to a passing lady acquaintance.
“Ideals can exist outside of little glass bottles, my dear Sylvester,”
he resumed. “Perhaps you may be surprised at hearing I am approaching
the attainment of one of the ideals of my maturing years. It's a great
scheme for the purification of art and the ennoblement of life. It is my
own conception. Have you been to the Royal Academy yet?”
“No,” said Sylvester. “I haven't had the time.”
“Happy man! You have been spared a soul-rending spectacle of England's
utter degradation. In all our art--drama, music, painting, poetry,
architecture--it is the same. The vulgarity of commercialism, the
banality of meretricious prettiness, the hand and brain working
mechanically while the soul is far away wallowing in pounds, shillings
and pence, or following a golf ball, or philandering in my Lady's
boudoir. The true artist is suffocated. But we 're going to change all
that.”
“How are you going to manage it?” asked Sylvester, with polite
indifference.
“Ah, that's my secret. A great and glorious scheme just on the point of
ripening. We are going to catch our artists young, painters,
musicians, poets, the whole celestial brood, and keep them out of
contamination,--give them free elemental surroundings for their art to
develop. They will become the teachers and the guides of the race. To
carry this dream through to a reality is something to live for,--to make
one feel twenty again, with all one's glittering illusions.”
“You are going to carry it through?” said Sylvester.
“My boy, I should just think I am,” replied Roderick, taking his arm
confidentially. “Funds have been slow in coming in, but people are
promising support, now that they see the magnificence of the concern.
I'll send you our prospectus and other publications. You can judge for
yourself. Perhaps your father would like to further the work.”
“You'd better ask him,”, said Sylvester, drily. “But where does the
money go to?”
“To the Colony. Didn't I tell you it was to be a colony? The Walden Art
Colony. After a time it will be self-supporting; the produce will sell
in the European and American markets, and the Colony will wax rich. It
will become the world's great Palace of Art.”
“How will this fit in with Thoreau and uncontaminated nature?”
Sylvester put the question idly. He took faint interest in Roderick's
iridescent scheme, which seemed to have no bearing upon the realities of
life, as he understood them. But he could not help wondering as to the
mental attitude of the fools who were providing the money to launch it.
“It's too complicated to explain now,” replied Roderick. “You read the
literature I shall send you.” He pulled out his watch. “Dear me! it is
ten minutes to six, and I promised to meet Lady Milmo and Miss Defries
at the quarter by the statue. They are my two most enthusiastic
disciples. Shall we turn and seek them?”
“I think not,” said Sylvester. “I'm too dull a dog for fashionable
dames. I should be a discord in the polka, or whatever you call it, of
existence.”
Roderick laughed with good-humoured indulgence, showing a set of white,
even teeth.
“The same old _intransigeant_,” said he. “Well, go your ways.
I'll convert you to the Colony yet, and make you a director! _Auf
wiedersehen!_”
Sylvester shook hands with him in his glum style and strolled on towards
the Marble Arch, glad to be winning homewards again away from the froth
of fashion and the jargon of art. He smiled once on his way. It was at
the idea of his father, shrewd-headed abhorrer of cranks, putting his
hands in his pockets for the Walden Art Colony. Not while there was
a lazy miscreant with wife and children in Ayresford, he thought. How
could a man of the world like Roderick imagine him to be such a fool?
But Roderick, with his cheery air of confidence, followed the southward
stream of people.
“How do, Usher?” said a young man, passing by.
Roderick stopped him. “My dearest boy, I haven't been able to see you to
shake you by the hand. The play's immense, colossal. You've marked a new
era,--the Marlowe of our time.”
“Very good of you to say so,” murmured the dramatic author.
“It is my most esteemed privilege,” said Roderick, and waving an adieu
with his well-gloved hand, he went on his way to Lady Milmo.
At the corner he looked about for a moment, and not seeing her sat down
and waited. He gazed on the soft blue sky and stroked his pointed beard,
letting his thoughts wander whither they would.
“I am so sorry, Mr. Usher,” said a voice. He started to, his feet; Lady
Milmo and Ella were before him.
“A thousand pardons. I was gathering the wool of sweet and bitter fancy!
Oh, no, you are not late, indeed not. Won't you sit? It is somewhat
deserted here, but it is more rural than further up; we can talk more
freely.”
“I am sure you can talk interestingly anywhere,” said Lady Milmo.
She was a small elderly lady dressed somewhat youthfully. She wore a
little rouge, a trifle of black along the eyelashes, and a coquettish
straw hat with pink roses and an osprey feather. She seemed thoroughly
contented with herself and her surroundings.
“One gets into the habit of talking in the key of one's environment,”
said Roderick, reflectively. “Don't you think so, Miss Defries?”
“It is the fault of this social life of ours,” replied Ella. “There are
so many affectations and insincerities around us that we are afraid to
be genuine.”
“It is a great charm of Lady Milmo and yourself that with you one is
bound to be genuine.”
“I do like people to appear just as they are,” smiled Lady Milmo.
“That is what we are working for,” said Roderick; “the return to
sincerity and simple truth.”
“Well, what have you to tell us?”
“Good news. Raynham has come round, and will take a seat on the Council.
He may get a couple more Academicians. One further item in my debt of
gratitude to you, Miss Defries.”
“It is very little I have been able to do,” said Ella. “I only asked
Mr. Raynham to receive you. Your own earnestness and conviction won him
over.”
An old gentleman came up and spoke to Lady Milmo. Roderick politely
yielded him his chair and took possession of a vacant one on the other
side of Ella.
“It is your womanly sympathy and courage all through that I have to
thank; your cheering in depression, your encouragement in the face of
defeat. If the star of success has arisen, it is you who have dispersed
the obscuring clouds. A man may set his heart on a thing, but a woman
keeps it there.”
He spoke in a low voice, and Ella leaned towards him to listen. Her
cheeks flushed. The flattery was sweet, and there was a subtle vibration
in his voice that stirred her.
“One would die if there were not something noble to live for,” said she,
suddenly throwing off the stealing languor. “To rise every morning and
look forward to sixteen inevitable waking hours that will not bring
one throb to the pulses, one inspiring hope; to go to sleep each night
feeling dull and useless, and so on for endless months and years,--it is
an unlivable life. It is you I have to thank for putting an interest in
my way.”
“I love to hear you speak like that,” he said admiringly. “Pray God you
keep your enthusiasms; There are thousands who never know the thrill. It
should be part of our mission to awaken their souls. There is one friend
of ours, for instance, who needs it to make him a great man. Oddly
enough, I have just left him--dear old Sylvester Lanyon, you know. I
found him sitting a little higher up, looking like a sick raven among
birds of paradise.”
Her clear girl's eyes effected feminine concealment of the old pain that
every reference to Sylvester had caused her for the past year. Her heart
rebelled against it, resenting the inefficacy of time to cure. Wantonly
she ignored it.
“I have not set eyes on him since he settled in town. He never comes to
see us. He is still mourning and moping, I suppose. The world is for the
living, not the dead; don't you think so?”
“Yes. He should marry again. A woman of exuberant vitality, who would
carry him along with her.”
“We'll have to find him a wife, Mr. Usher,” she replied gaily.
Thus she proved to herself defiantly that all her foolish feeling for
Sylvester was dead; that she had also attained a standpoint of generous
forgetfulness of wrong.
“And send him out with her to doctor the Colony,” laughed Roderick. “It
would be the making of him. As it is, he is a man of fine honour and
strong character. Even if one's own spiritual horizon is wider than
that bounded by his narrow orthodoxy, yet one can but admire the
steadfastness with which he keeps within its limits. I have always had,
as you know, a great affection for him.”
The girl's responsive nature was touched by the generous tribute.
Roderick took a sudden leap in her esteem. She had her own haunting
and miserable ideas as to Sylvester's honour, but the praise pleased
her,--the fact of a man's loyalty to the ideal of a friend. At least, so
she half consciously analysed her feelings.
The talk went on, and time passed. Lady Milmo's friend departed and
mingled in the stream that began to make for Hyde Park Corner and home.
She turned to Ella and Roderick.
“The dear, tiresome general has been entertaining me with his corns
while I have been dying to hear all about the Colony. And now it's too
late. You must come soon and see us, Mr. Usher. It is useless to try to
talk here. Why didn't we say Battersea? I'm afraid we 're sad creatures
of convention.”
“Miss Defries will make an adequate report, I am sure,” said Roderick.
“But Raynham's accession to the cause was my main item of news.”
They all rose and walked to Hyde Park Corner. There he saw the ladies
into a cab and swept one of his elaborate bows as they drove off. But
he remained for some moments on the curb in front of the Park gates
absently watching the hansom until it was lost amid the traffic.
“I wonder,” he said half aloud, “I wonder.” And he walked slowly up
Piccadilly, his eyes bent on the pavement, his hands behind him, with
the air of a man in deep and somewhat harassed thought.