The two o’clock snorted out of Charing Cross, but no healths were drunk,
this time, to Viscount Lascelles. A desiccating sobriety made arid the
corner of the third-class carriage in which Gumbril was sitting. His
thoughts were an interminable desert of sand, with not a palm in sight,
not so much as a comforting mirage. Once again he fumbled in his
breast-pocket, brought out and unfolded the flimsy paper. Once more he
read. How many times had he read before?
“Your telegram made me very unhappy. Not merely because of the
accident—though it made me shudder to think that something terrible
might have happened, poor darling—but also, selfishly, my own
disappointment. I had looked forward so much. I had made a picture
of it all so clearly. I should have met you at the station with the
horse and trap from the Chequers, and we’d have driven back to the
cottage—and you’d have loved the cottage. We’d have had tea and I’d
have made you eat an egg with it after your journey. Then we’d have
gone for a walk; through the most heavenly wood I found yesterday to
a place where there’s a wonderful view—miles and miles of it. And
we’d have wandered on and on, and sat down under the trees, and the
sun would have set, and the twilight would slowly have come to an
end, and we’d have gone home again and found the lamps lighted and
supper ready—not very grand, I’m afraid, for Mrs. Vole isn’t the
best of cooks. And then the piano; for there is a piano, and I had
the tuner come specially from Hastings yesterday, so that it isn’t
_so_ bad now. And you’d have played; and perhaps I would have made
my noises on it. And at last it would have been time for candles and
bed. When I heard you were coming, Theodore, I told Mrs. Vole a lie
about you. I said you were my husband, because she’s fearfully
respectable, of course; and it would dreadfully disturb her if you
weren’t. But I told myself that, too. I meant that you should be.
You see, I tell you everything. I’m not ashamed. I wanted to give
you everything I could, and then we should always be together,
loving one another. And I should have been your slave, I should have
been your property and lived inside your life. But you would always
have had to love me.
“And then, just as I was getting ready to go and call at the
Chequers for the horse and trap, your telegram came. I saw the word
‘accident,’ and I imagined you all bleeding and smashed—oh,
dreadful, dreadful. But then, when you seemed to make rather a joke
of it—why did you say ‘a little indisposed?’ that seemed, somehow,
so stupid, I thought—and said you were coming to-morrow, it wasn’t
that which upset me; it was the dreadful, dreadful disappointment.
It was like a stab, that disappointment; it hurt so terribly, so
unreasonably much. It made me cry and cry, so that I thought I
should never be able to stop. And then, gradually, I began to see
that the pain of the disappointment wasn’t unreasonably great. It
wasn’t merely a question of your coming being put off for a day; it
was a question of its being put off for ever, of my never seeing you
again. I saw that that accident had been something really arranged
by Providence. It was meant to warn me and show me what I ought to
do. I saw how hopelessly impracticable the happiness I had been
imagining really was. I saw that you didn’t, you couldn’t love me in
anything like the same way as I loved you. I was only a curious
adventure, a new experience, a means to some other end. Mind, I’m
not blaming you in the least. I’m only telling you what is true,
what I gradually came to realize as true. If you’d come—what then?
I’d have given you everything, my body, my mind, my soul, my whole
life. I’d have twisted myself into the threads of your life. And
then, when in due course you wanted to make an end to this curious
little adventure, you would have had to cut the tangle and it would
have killed me; it would also have hurt you. At least I think it
would. In the end, I thanked God for the accident which had
prevented you coming. In this way, Providence lets us off very
lightly—you with a bruise or two (for I do hope it really is
nothing, my precious darling), and me with a bruise inside, round
the heart. But both will get well quite soon. And all our lives, we
shall have an afternoon under the trees, an evening of music and in
the darkness, a night, an eternity of happiness, to look back on. I
shall go away from Robertsbridge at once. Good-bye, Theodore. What a
long letter! The last you’ll ever get from me. The last—what a
dreadful hurting word that is. I shall take it to post at once, for
fear, if I leave it, I may be weak enough to change my mind and let
you come to-morrow. I shall take it at once, then I shall come home
again and pack up and tell some new fib to Mrs. Vole. And after
that, perhaps I shall allow myself to cry again. Good-bye.”
Aridly, the desert of sand stretched out with not a tree and not even a
mirage, except perhaps the vague and desperate hope that he might get
there before she started, that she might conceivably have changed her
mind. Ah, if only he’d read the letter a little earlier! But he hadn’t
woken up before eleven, he hadn’t been down before half-past. Sitting at
the breakfast-table, he had read the letter through.
The eggs and bacon had grown still colder, if that was possible, than
they were. He had read it through, he had rushed to the A.B.C. There was
no practicable train before the two o’clock.
If he had taken the seven-twenty-seven he would certainly have got there
before she started. Ah, if only he had woken up a little earlier! But
then he would have had to go to bed a little earlier. And in order to go
to bed earlier, he would have had to abandon Mrs. Viveash before she had
bored herself to that ultimate point of fatigue at which she did at last
feel ready for repose. And to abandon Mrs. Viveash—ah, that was really
impossible, she wouldn’t allow herself to be left alone. If only he
hadn’t gone to the London Library yesterday! A wanton, unnecessary visit
it had been. For after all, the journey was short; he didn’t need a book
for the train. And the _Life of Beckford_, for which he had asked,
proved, of course, to be out—and he had been utterly incapable of
thinking of any other book, among the two or three hundred thousand on
the shelves, that he wanted to read. And, in any case, what the devil
did he want with a _Life of Beckford_? Hadn’t he his own life, the life
of Gumbril, to attend to? Wasn’t one life enough, without making
superfluous visits to the London Library in search of other lives? And
then what a stroke of bad luck to have run into Mrs. Viveash at that
very moment! What an abject weakness to have let himself be bullied into
sending that telegram. “A little indisposed....” Oh, my God! Gumbril
shut his eyes and ground his teeth together; he felt himself blushing
with a retrospective shame.
And of course it was quite useless taking the train, like this, to
Robertsbridge. She’d be gone, of course. Still, there was always the
desperate hope. There was the mirage across the desiccated plains, the
mirage one knew to be deceptive and which, on a second glance, proved
not even to be a mirage, but merely a few livery spots behind the eyes.
Still, it was amply worth doing—as a penance, and to satisfy the
conscience and to deceive oneself with an illusion of action. And then
the fact that he was to have spent the afternoon with Rosie and had put
her off—that too was highly satisfying. And not merely put her off,
but—ultimate clownery in the worst of deliriously bad taste—played a
joke on her. “Impossible come to you, meet me 213 Sloane Street, second
floor, a little indisposed.” He wondered how she’d get on with Mr.
Mercaptan; for it was to his rococo boudoir and Crébillon-souled sofa
that he had on the spur of the clownish moment, as he dashed into the
post office on the way to the station, sent her.
Aridly, the desiccated waste extended. Had she been right in her letter?
Would it really have lasted no more than a little while, and ended as
she prophesied, with an agonizing cutting of the tangle? Or could it be
that she had held out the one hope of happiness? Wasn’t she perhaps the
one unique being with whom he might have learned to await in quietness
the final coming of that lovely terrible thing, from before the sound of
whose secret footsteps more than once and oh! ignobly he had fled? He
could not decide, it was impossible to decide until he had seen her
again, till he had possessed her, mingled his life with hers. And now
she had eluded him; for he knew very well that he would not find her. He
sighed and looked out of the window.
The train pulled up at a small suburban station. Suburban, for though
London was already some way behind, the little sham half-timbered houses
near the station, the newer tile and rough-cast dwellings farther out on
the slope of the hill proclaimed with emphasis the presence of the
business man, the holder of the season ticket. Gumbril looked at them
with a pensive disgust which must have expressed itself on his features;
for the gentleman sitting in the corner of the carriage facing his,
suddenly leaned forward, tapped him on the knee, and said, “I see you
agree with me, sir, that there are too many people in the world.”
Gumbril, who up till now had merely been aware that somebody was sitting
opposite him, now looked with more attention at the stranger. He was a
large, square old gentleman of robust and flourishing appearance, with a
face of wrinkled brown parchment and a white moustache that merged, in a
handsome curve, with a pair of side whiskers, in a manner which reminded
one of the photographs of the Emperor Francis Joseph.
“I perfectly agree with you, sir,” Gumbril answered. If he had been
wearing his beard, he would have gone on to suggest that loquacious old
gentlemen in trains are among the supernumeraries of the planet. As it
was, however he spoke with courtesy, and smiled in his most engaging
fashion.
“When I look at all these revolting houses,” the old gentleman
continued, shaking his fist at the snuggeries of the season-ticket
holders, “I am filled with indignation. I feel my spleen ready to burst,
sir, ready to burst.”
“I can sympathize with you,” said Gumbril. “The architecture is
certainly not very soothing.”
“It’s not the architecture I mind so much,” retorted the old gentleman,
“that’s merely a question of art, and all nonsense so far as I’m
concerned. What disgusts me is the people inside the architecture, the
number of them, sir. And the way they breed. Like maggots, sir, like
maggots. Millions of them, creeping about the face of the country,
spreading blight and dirt wherever they go; ruining everything. It’s the
people I object to.”
“Ah well,” said Gumbril, “if you will have sanitary conditions that
don’t allow plagues to flourish properly; if you will tell mothers how
to bring up their children, instead of allowing nature to kill them off
in her natural way; if you will import unlimited supplies of corn and
meat: what can you expect? Of course the numbers go up.”
The old gentleman waved all this away. “I don’t care what the causes
are,” he said. “That’s all one to me. What I do object to, sir, is the
effects. Why sir, I am old enough to remember walking through the
delicious meadows beyond Swiss Cottage, I remember seeing the cows
milked in West Hampstead, sir. And now, what do I see now, when I go
there? Hideous red cities pullulating with Jews, sir. Pullulating with
prosperous Jews. Am I right in being indignant, sir? Do I do well, like
the prophet Jonah, to be angry?”
“You do, sir,” said Gumbril, with growing enthusiasm, “and the more so
since this frightful increase in population is the world’s most
formidable danger at the present time. With populations that in Europe
alone expand by millions every year, no political foresight is possible.
A few years of this mere bestial propagation will suffice to make
nonsense of the wisest schemes of to-day—or would suffice,” he hastened
to correct himself, “if any wise schemes were being matured at the
present.”
“Very possibly, sir,” said the old gentleman, “but what I object to is
seeing good cornland being turned into streets, and meadows, where cows
used to graze, covered with houses full of useless and disgusting human
beings. I resent seeing the country parcelled out into back gardens.”
“And is there any prospect,” Gumbril earnestly asked, “of our ever being
able in the future to support the whole of our population? Will
unemployment ever decrease?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the old gentleman replied. “But the families of the
unemployed will certainly increase.”
“You are right, sir,” said Gumbril, “they will. And the families of the
employed and the prosperous will as steadily grow smaller. It is
regrettable that birth control should have begun at the wrong end of the
scale. There seems to be a level of poverty below which it doesn’t seem
worth while practising birth control, and a level of education below
which birth control is regarded as morally wrong. Strange, how long it
has taken for the ideas of love and procreation to dissociate themselves
in the human mind. In the majority of minds they are still, even in this
so-called twentieth century, indivisibly wedded. Still,” he continued
hopefully, “progress is being made, progress is certainly, though
slowly, being made. It is gratifying to find, for example, in the latest
statistics, that the clergy, as a class, are now remarkable for the
smallness of their families. The old jest is out of date. Is it too much
to hope that these gentlemen may bring themselves in time to preach what
they already practise?”
“It _is_ too much to hope, sir,” the old gentleman answered with
decision.
“You are probably right,” said Gumbril.
“If we were all to preach all the things we all practise,” continued the
old gentleman, “the world would soon be a pretty sort of bear-garden, I
can tell you. Yes, and a monkey-house. And a wart-hoggery. As it is,
sir, it is merely a place where there are too many human beings. Vice
must pay its tribute to virtue, or else we are all undone.”
“I admire your wisdom, sir,” said Gumbril.
The old gentleman was delighted. “And I have been much impressed by your
philosophical reflections,” he said. “Tell me, are you at all interested
in old brandy?”
“Well, not philosophically,” said Gumbril. “As a mere empiric only.”
“As a mere empiric!” The old gentleman laughed. “Then let me beg you to
accept a case. I have a cellar which I shall never drink dry, alas!
before I die. My only wish is that what remains of it shall be
distributed among those who can really appreciate it. In you, sir, I see
a fitting recipient of a case of brandy.”
“You overwhelm me,” said Gumbril. “You are too kind, and, I may add, too
flattering.” The train, which was a mortally slow one, came grinding for
what seemed the hundredth time to a halt.
“Not at all,” said the old gentleman. “If you have a card, sir.”
Gumbril searched his pockets. “I have come without one.”
“Never mind,” said the old gentleman. “I think I have a pencil. If you
will give me your name and address, I will have the case sent to you at
once.”
Leisurely, he hunted for the pencil, he took out a notebook. The train
gave a jerk forward.
“Now, sir,” he said.
Gumbril began dictating. “Theodore,” he said slowly.
“The—o—dore,” the old gentleman repeated, syllable by syllable.
The train crept on, with slowly gathering momentum, through the station.
Happening to look out of the window at this moment, Gumbril saw the name
of the place painted across a lamp. It was Robertsbridge. He made a
loud, inarticulate noise, flung open the door of the compartment,
stepped out on to the footboard and jumped. He landed safely on the
platform, staggered forward a few paces with his acquired momentum and
came at last to a halt. A hand reached out and closed the swinging door
of his compartment and, an instant afterwards, through the window, a
face that, at a distance, looked more than ever like the face of the
Emperor Francis Joseph, looked back towards the receding platform. The
mouth opened and shut; no words were audible. Standing on the platform,
Gumbril made a complicated pantomime, signifying his regret by shrugging
his shoulders and placing his hand on his heart; urging in excuse for
his abrupt departure the necessity under which he laboured of alighting
at this particular station—which he did by pointing at the name on the
boards and lamps, then at himself, then at the village across the
fields. The old gentleman waved his hand, which still held, Gumbril
noticed, the notebook in which he had been writing. Then the train
carried him out of sight. There went the only case of old brandy he was
ever likely to possess, thought Gumbril sadly, as he turned away.
Suddenly, he remembered Emily again; for a long time he had quite
forgotten her.
The cottage, when at last he found it, proved to be fully as picturesque
as he had imagined. And Emily, of course, had gone, leaving, as might
have been expected, no address. He took the evening train back to
London. The aridity was now complete, and even the hope of a mirage had
vanished. There was no old gentleman to make a diversion. The size of
clergymen’s families, even the fate of Europe, seemed unimportant now,
were indeed perfectly indifferent to him.