ELIZABETH
I
The Pen Club stands far away from Clubland up a narrow court that leads
from Fleet Street, into the maze of the little streets and courts that
finally emerge on Holborn.
It is the hidden core of newspaper land. It lurks behind the newspaper
offices with discreet ground-glass windows, unpretentious, and
obscurely peaceful. No porter in brass-buttoned uniform guards its
doors--indeed, it has but one, and that a door with a lustrous,
black-glass panel, with a golden message of "Members Only" lettered
upon it. Strangers and messengers are requested to tap gently on the
window of a little pigeon-hole at the side.
Oliver Goldsmith once lived in the house that is now the Pen Club; Dr
Johnson lived a few courts away, and strode down Fleet Street to the
"Cheshire Cheese," little dreaming that Americans would follow in his
footsteps as pilgrims to a shrine. Its courts have had their place
in the history of our letters, but all that is past, for journalism
affects a contempt for literature, and literature walks by with a high
head. If you want literature, and art, and high-thinking, you must go
further west, along the Strand, where you may find a club that still
clings to the traditions of Bohemia: but if you want to meet good
fellows, jolly, generous, foolish men, wise as patriarchs in some
things, and like children in others, then you must join the Pen Club.
All around it are the flourishing signs of the journalists' trade.
Here a process-block maker; there a lesser News Agency; round the
corner a large printing works, and almost opposite it the vibrating
basements of _The Day_. You can see the props of the scenery--take a
stroll through the courts, and you see the back-doors of all those
proud newspaper offices, great rolls of paper being hoisted up for
to-morrow's issue, dismal wagons piled high with yesterday's papers,
tied up in bundles, "returns"; unsold papers that will be taken back to
the paper-mills and pulped: food for the philosopher here!
Humphrey Quain joined the Pen Club when he had been three years in
Fleet Street. It was Willoughby, the crime enthusiast of _The Day_, who
put his name down; Jamieson, the dramatic critic, seconded him.
Two years had made very little outward difference in Humphrey. He had
perhaps grown an inch, and his shoulders broadened in proportion, but
his face was the same frank, boyish face that had gazed open-mouthed
in Fleet Street on that January day. Yet there was some slight change
in the expression of the eyes; they had become charged with an eager,
expectant look; observation had trained them to an alertness and a
strained directness of gaze. Inwardly, too, the change in him was
imperceptible. He had lost a little of that cocksure way of his, and
acquired, by constant mingling with men older than himself, a point of
view and an understanding above his years. In worldly knowledge he had
advanced with large and sudden strides: some call it vice and some call
it experience. A young man, thrust into the whirlpool of London, finds
it difficult to avoid such experience, and so Humphrey had allowed
himself to be tossed hither and thither with the underswirl of it all,
learning deeper lessons than any man can teach.
He had come out of this period with a sense of something lost,
yet never regretting its loss. Sometimes a bitter spasm of shame
would overtake him when he thought of the sordid memories he was
accumulating. He could have wished it all undone, and he looked
back on the Humphrey Quain of Easterham, and saw himself singularly
unsmirched, and innocent--knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. After
all, he thought, was this knowledge? Does all this go towards the
making of a man, as the steel is tempered by the fire? Humphrey did not
know ... he took all that life offered him: the good and the bad, the
folly with the wisdom.
That affair of his with Lilian Filmer was now nothing more than a
memory. They had never spoken since their wretched meeting in the
Strand restaurant. It was strange, too, how rarely they had met, when
in the old days scarcely a day seemed to pass without the sight of her
in Fleet Street. She still worked in the Special News Agency Office,
and yet, during the two years that had passed since their parting,
he had not seen her more than four or five times, and then only in
the distance. Once he found himself marching straight towards her in
the crowd of the luncheon-hour walkers: panic seized him; he did not
know what to do. She was walking proudly with the erect carriage of
her body that he knew so well--and then, almost mysteriously, she had
disappeared. Perhaps she had seen him, and avoided a direct meeting
by turning down a side street or by passing into a shop. For a year
he always walked on the other side of the street during the luncheon
hour. At the back of his mind she lived as vividly as she had lived in
the days when she had been the most important factor in his existence.
There were times when the thought of her rendered him uneasy; he felt
he had not been true to himself, there was a reproachful blot on his
escutcheon.... Strange! how lasting his love had seemed that night when
he had kissed her in the cab after the theatre. He could look back on
it all now dispassionately. There had been progress in the office. His
salary was now eight pounds a week. He remembered the day when he had
gone to Ferrol, and said, a little miserably, for the strain of the
breaking with Lilian pressed hardly on his heart in those days: "I've
broken off my engagement." In these words he had dedicated himself
to Ferrol and _The Day_. Nothing more was said. Ferrol nodded in a
non-committal sort of way. A few weeks later Humphrey was sent to the
East Coast on special work. He did well, and the increase in salary
came to him at last.
With this he lifted himself out of the old ruck of his life. The money
opened up unbounded vistas of wealth and new possibilities to him. He
decided to leave Beaver and Guilford Street. Beaver, as an influence,
had served his turn in shaping Humphrey's career. It was Beaver who
first showed him the way to London, and now, at odd intervals, Beaver
occurred and recurred across his vision, still biting his nails, and
still with ink-splashed thumbs. No stress of ambition seemed to disturb
Beaver's placidity. He was content to plod on and on, day after day, a
journalistic cart-horse, until he dropped dead in his collar. That was
how it seemed to Humphrey, who never credited Beaver with any great
aspirations, yet that shaggy man had a separate life of his own, with
his own dreams, and his own aims, which one day were destined to touch
the fringe of Humphrey's life.
Humphrey took a small flat in Clifford's Inn, a place of sleep and
peace and quiet then, as it is now, out of the noise of Fleet Street.
It was a "flat" only by courtesy, for in reality it was made up of
two rooms and a box-room. The larger was his sitting-room, and the
smaller--a narrow, oblong room--he used as a sleeping apartment. Very
little light, and scarcely any air, came through the small latticed
windows, but the rooms held a mediæval charm about them, and he was
free for ever from the landladies and grubbiness of lodgings. He paid a
pound a week for his rooms in Clifford's Inn.
Every evening when he was free in London, Humphrey went to the Pen
Club. The place had a fascination for him, which he could not shake
off. One could not define this fascination, this influence which the
Club wielded over him.
It grew on him gradually, until an evening spent without a visit to
the Club seemed empty and insufficient. There was nothing vicious
about the Club--it was just a meeting-place, where one could eat and
drink. Within its four walls there was peace unutterable; and the world
stood still for you when you passed the threshold. Other clubs have
tape machines spitting out lengths of news: telegrams pasted on the
walls; chairs full of old gentlemen reading newspapers with dutiful
eagerness--the Pen Club was a place where you escaped from news,
where nobody was interested in news as news, but merely in news as it
stood in the relation to the doings of their friends. There was no
excitement over a by-election, nobody cared who would get in on polling
day; nobody thrilled over a revolution in a foreign state; mention
of these things only served as a peg on which to hang discussions
of personalities. "I expect Williamson's having a nobby time in St
Petersburg," or "Who's down at Bodmin for _The Herald_--Carter?--I
thought so. Jolly good stuff in to-day."
And when news did touch them, it touched them personally, and altered
the tenor of their lives perhaps for many days. At any minute something
would happen, and a half-dozen of them would be wanted at their
different offices. They would just disappear from the Club for a few
days, and return to find that a fresh set of events had dwarfed their
own experiences completely. They were never missed. A man might be
absent in Morocco for half-a-year, living through wild happenings, with
his life hanging on a slender thread--a hero in the eyes of newspaper
readers--but nobody in particular in the eyes of the Pen Club, where
every one found his level in the fellowship of the Pen. They came and
went like shadows.
Humphrey found all types of journalists in the Pen Club--odd types off
the beaten track of journalism, guarding their own cabbage-patch of
news, and taking their wares to market daily. There was Larkin, for
instance, who took the railway platforms as his special province. He
was a tall, thin man, with friendly eyes smiling behind gold-rimmed
pince-nez. No Duke or Duchess could leave London by way of the railway
termini without Larkin knowing it. Those paragraphs that appeared
scattered about all the newspapers of London, telling of the departure
of Somebody and his wife to Cairo or Nice marked the trail of Larkin's
day across the London railway stations. Then there was Foyle, a chubby,
red-faced man, with a jolly smile, who, by the unwritten law of Fleet
Street, chronicled the fires that happened in the Metropolis. A fire
without Foyle was an impossible thing to imagine. There was Touche,
who dealt only in marriages and engagements; and Ford, who had made
a corner for himself in the Divorce Courts; Chate, who sat in the
Bankruptcy Court; Modgers, who specialized in recording the wills and
last testaments of those who died; and Vernham, lean, long-haired, and
cadaverous, who was the Fleet Street authority on the weather. These
men and others were the servants of all newspapers, and attached to
none. In some cases their work had been handed down from father to son;
they made snug incomes, and though they were servants of all, they were
masters of themselves.
And all these men were just like children out of school, when they met
in the Pen Club: there was no grim seriousness about them--they kept
all that for their work. They had insatiable appetites for stories, for
reminiscences of their craft. They knew how to laugh. It was well that
they did, for, if they had taken themselves seriously, they would never
have been able to face the caricatures of themselves which hung on the
walls. These caricatures, drawn by a cartoonist on one of the dailies,
were things of shuddering satire: they were cruelly true, grotesque
parodies of faces and mouths, legs and arms. If you wanted to know the
truth of a member, all you had to do was to consult the wall, and there
you saw the man's character grimacing at you in colours.
* * * * *
Humphrey had been away from London for a week, and he came back to find
the Club seething with excitement. The moment he crossed the threshold
he was aware of something abnormal in the life of the Club.
It was the last night of the Club elections for the Committee--a
riotous affair as a rule. All round the room there was the chatter and
buzz of members discussing the new spirit in the Club.
As member after member dropped in, the excitement grew. It was a
historic election. For the first time the youngest members of the Club
had been nominated to stand on the Committee. The older members, the
men who had watched the Pen Club grow from one room in the second floor
of a house to two whole houses knocked into one, looked on a little
sorrowfully. They had not become accustomed to the new spirit in the
Club. Among themselves, they said the Club was going to the dogs. These
young men were making a travesty of the whole business. They had no
reverence for traditions. After all, the election of a Chairman and a
Committee was a grave affair. It was amazing how seriously they took
themselves.
Presently Chander appeared selling copies of _The Club Mosquito_, a
journal produced specially for the occasion, which stung members in
the weakest spots of their personalities. There were caricatures and
portraits of all the "Young Members" who were going to save the Club,
as they put it, from the moss and cobwebs of old age. Really, these
young men were very ruthless. They invented Election songs, and they
sang boisterously:--
"We're going to vote all night,
We're going to vote all day."
Privileged sub-editors, dropping in for a half-hour from their offices,
found themselves caught up on the tempest of exhilaration. "Hallo,
here's Leman--have you voted yet, Leman?" and a paper would be fetched
and Leman would be made to put a cross against thirteen names, with
thirteen people urging him to have a drink. Bribery and corruption!
Humphrey abandoned himself to the merriment of the evening. He
constituted himself Willoughby's election-agent, and canvassed for
votes with shameless disregard for the Corrupt Practices Act. Sharp,
the sporting journalist, was busy making a book on the result. That
eminent war-correspondent, Bertram Wace, issued a manifesto, demanding
to know why he should not be Chairman. The price of _The Club Mosquito_
rose to a shilling a copy when it was known that all the proceeds were
to go to the Newspaper Press Fund.
Humphrey found himself left alone with the excitement eddying all round
him. He was able to survey the scene with an air of detached interest.
It reminded him of his school-days: all these men were young of heart,
with the generous impulses of boys; they had the spirit of eternal
youth--the one reward which men of their temperament are able to wrest
from life.
He saw Willoughby, with his black hair in a disordered tangle over his
eyes, joining in the war-song of the Young Members.
As he looked at all these men, chattering, laughing, grouped together
here and there where some one was telling an entertaining story, he saw
the smiling aspect of Fleet Street, the siren, luring the adventurous
stranger to her, with laughter and opulent promise. To-morrow they
would all begin their nervous work again, struggling to secure a firm
foothold in the niches of the Street, when a false move, a mistake,
would bring disaster with it; but they thought nothing of to-morrow;
they lived in a life of to-days....
He saw Tommy Pride come into the Club. Two years had left their mark
on Tommy's face. New reporters had appeared in the Street, and somehow
Tommy found himself marking time, while the army of younger men pressed
forward and passed him. He could not complain; he felt that if he
asserted himself, Rivers or Neckinger would tell him bluntly that they
were cutting down the staff--the dreadful, unanswerable excuse for
dismissal. He knew that his mind was less supple than it was years
ago; the stress and the bitterness of competition was sterner now than
in those days when they posted assignments overnight. So, too, his
pen went more slowly, finding each day increasing the difficulty of
grappling with new methods. Tommy Pride had lived in To-day, and now
To-morrow was upon him.
"Stopping for the declaration of the poll, Pride?" asked Humphrey.
"Not me," said Tommy, picking a bundle of letters from his pigeon-hole.
"I've had a late turn to-night and the missis will be sitting up."
"Well, what about a drink?"
Tommy shrugged his shoulders wearily. "Oh--a whisky and soda," he said.
"What a row these fellows are making." Willoughby attacked him with a
voting paper, and Humphrey noticed how Pride's hand--the hand that
had written millions of words--trembled as he made crosses against
the names. It was as if each finger were attached to thin wires; it
reminded Humphrey of those toy tortoises from Japan, that danced and
shook in a little glass case. And he thought: "Will my hand be like
that one day?"
The torrent of talk flowed all round him; gusts of boisterous laughter
marked the close of a funny story. In all the stories there was a note
of egotism. He saw, suddenly, why these men were not as other men.
They were profound egotists, they lived each day by the assertion of
their own individuality. The stronger the individuality of the man, the
greater his chance of success. And these men, he saw, though they all
worked in a common school, were absolutely different from one another.
They were different, even, in breeding: there were men whose voice and
pose could only have been acquired at one of the 'Varsities; there
were men who lacked the refinements of speech; keen, eager men, and
men whose eyes had lost their lustre, who seemed weary with work; mere
boys, self-assertive and confident with the wisdom of men of the world,
and older men with grey heads and bald heads.
They surged about him, and came and went, in twos and threes, some of
them departing to their homes in the suburbs, north and south, whither
trains ran into the early hours of the morning.
Humphrey had been long enough in Fleet Street to know them all: if
you could have taken the personalities of these men and blended them
together, the composite result would have closely resembled the
personality of Tommy Pride--who was now drinking his second glass of
whisky. They were men of tremendously active brains--not one of them
but had an idea for a new paper that was worth a fortune if only the
capital could be procured--and all of them longed intensely for that
cottage in the country after the storm and stress of Fleet Street; they
could not talk seriously without being cynical, for though they saw
the real side of life, the pompous make-believe of the rest left them
without any illusions.
"Better wait for the result now," Humphrey said to Tommy. "It'll be out
in a few minutes."
"All right," said Tommy, glancing at the clock. "Green's offered me
a lift in his cab. Have a drink, Quain. I had the hump when I came
in--feel better now."
They all trooped upstairs, where the Young Members were making
discordant noises. They sang new and improvised quatrains. You would
have thought that not a care in the world could exist within those
cheerful walls.
There was a shout of "Here they are." The vote-counters came into the
room. One of them they hailed affectionately as "Grandpa." Humphrey had
seen him before, walking about Fleet Street, with his silver beard and
black slouch hat set on his white hair, but to-night he felt strangely
moved, as the old man came into the room, smiling to the cheers. What
was it? Some association of ideas passed through his mind, some linking
up of Ferrol, young, powerful, master of so many destinies, with the
picture before his eyes....
These thoughts were overwhelmed with a tumult of shouting. The old man
was reading out the names of the members of the new Committee.
The Young Members had won.
"Come on," said Tommy Pride, "let's get off before the rush."
As they passed out of the Club into the cool air of the night, Tommy
suddenly recollected Green and his offer of a cab. "Oh, never mind,"
he said; "can you lend me four bob for the cab; I'm rather short."
Humphrey passed the money to him, and, drawn by the jingle of the
coin, as a moth is to candle, a man lurched out of the shadows of the
court.
The gas-light fell on the unshaven face of the man, and made his eyes
blink feebly: it showed the pitiful, shabby clothes that garbed the
swaying figure.
"Hullo, Tommy," said the man. He smiled weakly not sure of his ground.
"Good God!" said Tommy.
Eagerness now came into the man's face; a terrible eagerness, as if
everything depended on his being able to compress his story into as few
words as possible, before Tommy went. There was no beating about the
bush.
"I say, old man, lend me a bob, will you?... Didn't you know?...
Oh, I left two years ago.... Nothing doing.... Yes, I know I'm a
fool.... Honest, this is for food.... Remember that time we had up in
Chatsworth, when the Duke...? Seen anything more of that fellow we
met in Portsmouth on the Royal visit?... What was his name?... Can't
remember it ... never mind, I say, old man, _can_ you spare a bob?"
Tommy passed him one of the shillings he had just borrowed from
Humphrey. "Why don't you pull up," he said; "you can do good stuff if
you want to."
"Pull up!" said the man. "Course I can do good stuff. I can do the best
stuff in Fleet Street.... Remember that story I wrote about...."
There was something intensely tragic in this sudden kindling of the
old, egotistical flame in the burnt-out ruin of a man. The cringing
attitude left him when he spoke of his work.
"Well, you'd better get home..." Tommy said. "What's the missis doing?"
"She's trying to make a little by typewriting now.... Thanks for the
bob...." He shambled down the court towards Gough Square. "So long."
His footsteps grew fainter, until the last echoes of them died away.
Tommy Pride came out with Humphrey into Fleet Street.
There came to them, as it comes only to those who work in the Street,
the fascination of its night. The coloured omnibuses, and the cabs,
and the busy crowds of people had left it long ago, and the lamps were
like a yellow necklace strung into the darkness. Eastwards, doubly
steep in its vacancy, Ludgate Hill rose under the silent railway
bridge to St Paul's; westwards, the Griffin, the dark towers of the
Law Courts, and the island churches loomed uncertainly against the
starless sky. The lights shone in the high windows of offices about
them, and they caught glimpses of men smoking pipes, working in their
shirt-sleeves--Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, were waiting
for their news. The carts darted up and down the street with loads of
newspapers for the trains. There was a noise of moving machinery. A
ragged, homeless man slouched wretchedly along the street, his eyes
downcast, mumbling his misery to himself. Two men in grimy clothes
were delving down into the bowels of the roadway, and dragging up
gross loads of black slime. They worked silently, seeing nothing of
the loathsomeness of their work. Over all, above even the noise of the
machinery, there came the cleansing sound of swiftly running water, as
the street-cleaners, with streaming hoses, swept the dust and the muck
and the rubble of the day into the torrents of the gutter.
II
Humphrey took rooms in Clifford's Inn, because that was where Kenneth
Carr lived. The two came together, though their natures were opposite,
and their friendship had ripened.
Carr was an ascetic, denying himself most of the ordinary pleasures
of life, sacrificing himself to the work of his heart; his mind was
calm, with a spiritual beauty; he was a man of singularly high ideals.
This contrast with Humphrey's frank materialism, his love of pleasure
and lack of any deep, spiritual feeling, seemed only to draw their
friendship closer. Then there was the memory of Wratten. They often
talked together of him, and, as for Humphrey, he never found himself
face to face with a difficult piece of reporting without imagining what
Wratten would have done. Most people in Fleet Street had forgotten him
long ago, but on Humphrey's mind he had left an indelible impression.
"I wonder what it was about Wratten that makes us remember him still,"
Humphrey said one day. "I had only known him a few months."
"I don't know," Kenneth said. "It's like that, I've noticed. Sometimes
a man, out of all the others you meet, comes forward, and you feel
instantly, 'This man is worth having as a friend.' The charm of Wratten
was that there were two Wrattens: one, the glum, churlish man, with
whom nobody could get on, and the other, the self-revealing Wratten we
knew."
They smoked in silence. Presently Kenneth threw his cigarette into the
fireplace.
"I suppose I'll have to get on with my book."
"Why don't you come out ... come to the Club?"
"Not me, my son. I'm happier here. I want to get a chapter done."
"What's the good of writing novels ... they don't pay, do they?"
"Pay! They pay you for every hour you spend over them," said Kenneth.
"I should go brooding mad if I couldn't sit down for an hour or so
every night and do what I like with my people. The unhappiest moments
of my life were when, to oblige Elizabeth, I gave up novel-writing for
a time, and took to poverty statistics."
Humphrey glanced up at the mantelpiece. A portrait of Elizabeth
Carr was there, in a silver frame, set haphazard among the litter
of masculine knick-knacks--ash-trays, a cigarette-box and a few old
pipes. It was a portrait that had always attracted Humphrey; the sun
had caught the depth of her eyes and the shadows about her throat. He
was never in the room without being conscious of that portrait, and
often, when he was not thinking of her at all, he would find himself
looking upwards at the silver frame to see, confronting him, the
eyes of Elizabeth Carr. She, herself, never seemed to be quite like
the photograph. She came, sometimes, to see Kenneth, and, at rare
intervals, Humphrey's visits coincided with hers.
She did not live with her brother. She was more fortunate than he,
because she had been left an income which was large enough for all her
wants. She had always wished to help Kenneth with a small allowance,
but he declared he would not touch a penny of her money. "I'll fight my
own battles," he said.
There was something in her attitude towards Humphrey--a vague,
impalpable something--that left him always uneasy; perhaps it was a
subtle display of deference--he could not define it, but he felt that
she was comparing him, in her mind, with Kenneth, and that he was
worsted in the comparison. She would move about in the little room,
preparing tea for them, her presence bringing an oddly domestic air
into the rooms, and Humphrey would help her, and she would be jolly
and laugh when he was clumsy, but all the time it was as if she were
holding him away from her with invisible hands.
And, when he looked at her photograph, he saw behind the clear beauty
of the face, with its smile of tenderness and large eyes that never
left him, an Elizabeth Carr divinely meek ... utterly unlike the
Elizabeth Carr he knew, who carried herself with such graceful pride
and seemed so far above him.
He took up the portrait for a moment. "She hasn't been here lately?" he
said.
"Who?" asked Kenneth, at his writing-table.
"Your sister ... you were speaking about the statistics you did for
her."
"Oh? Elizabeth. No. She's been pretty busy with her work."
"Slumming, eh?"
"That's about it. I don't know half her schemes. Wonderful girl,
Elizabeth. Now I come to think of it, I've got to go down to Epping
Forest to-morrow. Some bean-feast she's giving to a thousand slum kids.
There's sure to be a ticket in your office, why don't you ask to do it?"
"I will," said Humphrey. "A day's fresh air in the forest would do me
good."
And he did. Things happened to be slack that day in Fleet Street, and
Rivers thought there would be plenty of human interest in the story,
"though, of course, it's a chestnut," so that was how Humphrey found
himself on the platform at Loughton Station an hour later.
The morning was rich with the warmth and colour of June. The clear
fresh smell of the country was all about him. The scent of the
flowers, the sight of the green fields dappled with the yellow and
white of kingcup and daisy, the pale sky above him with the sun beating
down from the cloudless blue, called him back to Easterham, and the
life that now seemed centuries away. Throughout all the comings and
goings of years, throughout the change, and the unrest of men and
women, the old Cathedral close would be unaltered. The rooks would
still clamour and circle about the beeches, and the ivy would grow more
thickly. Looking back on Easterham, now on the odd market-place, and on
the streets that wandered out to the hedgerows and meadow-lands towards
the New Forest, he looked back on a picture of infinite peace.
A bird's song and the croon of bees as they swung in their
flower-cradles; a horse galloping freely in a field, and cattle
browsing in the sunshine--were not all these of more worth than
anything else in life?
Unnoticed, he had relinquished everything to Fleet Street. The poison
of its promise had drugged him. He could appreciate nothing outside its
narrow area ... news! news! and the talking of news; fifty steps round
to the Pen Club, and fifty steps back to the office; all the day spent
in that world of bricks and mortar, which had once seemed so vast, and
was now to him nothing more than a very much magnified Easterham.
He had not even sought out London. He remembered regretfully the
evening of his first ride with Beaver, through the crowded streets
to Shepherd's Bush, when he had promised himself nights and days of
enchantment in the new wonder of London. And the wonder was still
unexplored. As it was with London, so it was with everything. His
acquaintance and knowledge was superficial. There was no time for deep
study, and the Past could not live with the Present hammering at its
doors urgently day after day. Just so, too, with the cities in every
part of England. He had travelled much, but he came away from every
place taking with him only the knowledge of the whereabouts of the
hotel, the post-office and the railway station.
A sense of waste filled him; he saw behind him the years, crowded with
events, so crowded with movement that he could retain nothing of their
activity. And he saw before him a repetition of this, year after year,
and again year after year, a long avenue of waiting years, through
which he passed, looking ever forward, seeing nothing, remembering
nothing, and coming through them all empty-handed, unless....
Unless what? He saw the impasse waiting for him. What was there
to be done to avoid it? He might rise to the highest point in
reporting--climb up laboriously, only to find at the top of the ladder
that others were climbing up after him to force him down the steps on
the other side.
Kenneth Carr was rescuing the flotsam of the years. These books of his,
though they brought little money, were something permanent; they were
the witnesses of endeavour; they remained as things achieved out of the
reckless squandering of the hours.
And Humphrey knew that for him there would be nothing left except the
dead files of _The Day_, nothing more profitable than that, a brain
worked out, weak eyes and a trembling hand. Yes, and as he looked
about him on the glory of the country, and heard the breeze making a
sea-noise among the trees, he felt that there was something everlasting
here, if he could only grasp it. He could not explain it. He only knew
that looking upwards into the lucent depths of the green leaves of a
tree, and catching now and again the glimpse of the blue sky beyond,
seemed to remove the oppression that weighed his soul, and release his
mind from perplexity.
He smiled. The old phrase came echoing back to him. "Two pounds a
week and a cottage in the country," he thought. Eternal, pitiful,
unfulfilled desire.
The whistle of the approaching train woke him from his thoughts. "I'm
an ass," he said to himself. "I couldn't live a day without being in
the thick of it."
He walked back to the station, just in time to see the train coming
round the bend of the platform, giving a glimpse of fluttering
handkerchiefs and eager faces at the windows. The stillness of the
station was suddenly shattered into a thousand noisy pieces. The
children tumbled over one another in their haste to be the first to see
all that there was to see.
There was a mighty sound of shrill voices, chattering, laughing, and
calling to one another: a confused picture of pallid-faced children,
darting from group to group, seeking their child-friends, and arranging
themselves in marching order. The teachers herded them together like
hens marshalling their elusive brood. Humphrey surveyed the scene with
an eye trained to the observation of detail.
He saw the painful cleanliness of the children, as though they had been
scrubbed and washed for days before their outing. He saw behind the
neatness of the pink ribbon and the mended boots, a vision of faded
mothers, fumbling with hands shrivelled by laundry work, or fingers
ragged with sewing, at these parting touches of pathetic finery. And,
behind the vision of the mothers, he saw that whole sordid underworld
hung round the neck of civilization.... These children, pinched and
haggard, were left to live in the breathless slums, with only charity
to help them. The State made laws for them: but there was no law to
make them grow up otherwise than the generation of neglect which
produced them.
They were too young to know the difference between happiness and
misery. They could only sing and march away, an army of rags and
patched neatness, because for one whole day their young limbs were to
have the freedom of the country. They thought of that one day, and not
of the other three hundred and sixty-four days of squalor and want.
"Hullo--here you are, then," Kenneth Carr appeared out of the crowd of
children. "Seen Elizabeth--I've lost her."
Humphrey looked along the platform, and he saw Elizabeth Carr bending
down and talking to a little girl. She looked tall and beautiful, among
all the harsh ugliness for which these children stood. Her figure, as
she stooped to the little ones, seemed to shine with grace and merciful
pity. She saw Humphrey, and nodded to him, as he raised his hat. Then
she came up leading the child.
"Look," she said, and though her eyes were lit with anger, her voice
was gentle. "Look at this child's dress--and the father's earning
thirty shillings a week."
Humphrey looked. The child was dressed grotesquely, so grotesquely that
it appealed more to the sense of the ludicrous than to the sense of
pity. Her main garment was an absurd black cape sparkling with sequins,
that undoubtedly belonged to her mother's cloak; it reached to below
the child's knees. Beneath this was a tattered muslin blouse of an
uncertain, faded colour, and beneath that--nothing. Elizabeth lifted
the cape a little and showed undergarments made of string sacking. The
child had neither shoes nor stockings.
"Isn't it a shame!" she cried, sending the child to join the rest.
"Doesn't it revolt you?"
"Poverty!" said Humphrey. "What can one do?"
"Do!" retorted Elizabeth. "What's the good of having compulsory
education, if you don't have compulsory clothing. I know the parents of
that child. They could dress that child if they wanted to. Oh," and
she clenched her fists, "it makes me feel so helpless."
They talked about it on the way to the forest, as they followed in the
wake of the children.
"The wicked folly and the shame of it," she said. "Does nobody realize
the ruin and wreckage that belongs to big cities? Thousands on
thousands of lives ended before they began. The parents don't know, and
won't know.
"And what becomes of those who live? These children here will go
through their school-days, and then--what? A small percentage of them
may get on, the rest will become casual labourers, dock-hands, and
loafers."
They passed a long, ill-clad youth lounging along the road. His face
was brutally coarse, and he walked with a slouch.
"There's one of them," Elizabeth went on. "Now, I know that boy: he
used to come to these outings three years ago. He's left school now,
and he has tramped down from London for the sake of a meat-pie or a mug
of tea. Lots of them do that, you know," she said to Humphrey. "He's
never learnt a trade. Of course, he learnt history and geography, and
all that, and he got a place, I think, as an errand-boy. There's no
interest in running errands--so he just loafs now; and he'll loaf on
through life, until he's an old man, sleeping on the Embankment, or on
the benches on the Bayswater side of the Park. Perhaps he'll have a
few spells in prison--anyhow, he's doomed. Lost. And so are nearly all
these children here to-day."
The strength of her convictions amazed Humphrey. He had never heard
Elizabeth talk like this before. He wondered why she, so beautiful and
frail, should mingle with the ugliness of life. When they came to the
forest, and Kenneth wandered off alone, she told him.
"It's because behind all this sordidness there is something that is
more than beauty--there are magnificent tragedies here, that make my
throat dry. There are struggles to live of which nobody ever knows.
And, sometimes, you know, when I come from one of my slums and stand by
the theatres as they are emptying, and see the lighted motor-cars, and
all these other women with jewels round their necks and in their ears,
I want to laugh at the folly of it all.
"They don't know ... they never can know, unless they go down to the
depths, and look."
Humphrey was silent.
"And nobody can do anything, you know, except this sort of thing. It's
a poor enough thing to do, but it's something to know you're helping."
"I think this work is noble," Humphrey said.
"Oh no--not noble. It would be noble if we could do something
lasting--something permanent."
They were sitting now on the soft grass, and he looked sidewise at
Elizabeth Carr, and saw the fine outline of her profile. There was
great beauty in her face, in the delicate oval of her chin, in the
shadows that played about her throat, showing soft and white above the
low collar of lace. That low lace collar and unornamented dress gave to
her a touch of demure simplicity. She had the fragrance of lavender:
he could imagine her--(seeing her now, with her eyes and lips tender,
and her hands meekly clasped in her lap)--standing in a room of chintz
and Chippendale, tending her bowl of pink roses by the latticed window
opened to the sunshine.
He sat by her absorbing her serenity; there was repose and rest in the
unconscious pose of her body. He had suddenly found the Elizabeth Carr
of the photograph on Kenneth's mantelpiece: her presence seemed to
bring him peace.
The noise of the children rioting in their happiness made her smile.
"Come," she said, "let us go and join them."
They walked across the open space in the forest, the soft grass
yielding to their feet, and came upon the whole exulting landscape.
On all sides of them the ragged little ones, released for a day from
the barren prison-house of alley and by-way, ran and romped in the
freedom of unfettered limbs, uttering shouts of triumph and gladness.
This picture of merriment unchecked, cheered the heart with its bright
movement. Here was life, overflowing, bubbling, swirling in little
eddies among the trees and undergrowth, running free over the green
meadow-lands with all the chattering animation of childhood.
Out of the main stream they found strange types of children, odd-minded
little things, full of cunning and mother-wit that they had learnt
already, knowing the world's hand was against them. Some of them
clutched pennies in grimy fists: money saved in farthings for weeks in
anticipation of this treat. Others secreted about their person portions
of the meat-pie which was given them for lunch. They would take this
home as an earnest of altruism.
Impossible to forget the shadow of misery that overhung all their
lives; impossible to see these ragged children, who had hopeless
years before them, without realizing the mad folly and the waste of
citizenship.
Splendid Empire on which the sun never sets! Will the historian of
the future, discovering in the ruins of the British Museum Humphrey's
account of that day in Epping Forest, place his finger on the yellow
paper with its faded ink, and cry: "This is where the story of the
Decline and Fall of Britain begins."
They went to see the children take their tea. They sat at long plank
tables under the corrugated iron roof of the shed-like pavilion. The
girls were in one vast room, the boys in another. Their school-teachers
rapped on the table, and the jabber and chatter faded away into a
silence. Then the voice of one of the school-masters started singing--
"Praise God, from whom----"
and the hymn was taken up by the voices, singing vociferously--
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
There was nothing half-hearted about it; they made a great clamour of
their thanks, and their shrill treble made echoes within echoes against
the iron roof and wooden walls of the room in which they sat. And
Humphrey, always the looker-on, saw the imperishable pathos of this and
all that lay behind it, and for a moment he felt pity tug at his heart.
Then, as if ashamed of his weakness, he turned to Elizabeth and saw
that she was watching him. She laid a gloved hand on his sleeve for the
fraction of a second; it was an impulsive, unconscious movement, the
merest shadow of a caress.
"I did not know you could feel like that," she said softly.
III
In those days Humphrey, trained in the school of experience, took his
place in the ranks of Fleet Street, that very narrow community, where
each man knows the value of his brother's work.
He was being shaped in the mould. The characteristics of the journalist
were more strongly marked in him than they had ever been. He was
self-reliant and resourceful, he had acquired the magic faculty of
making instant friendships; he had developed his personality, and there
was about him a certain charm, a youthful ingenuousness of expression
that stood him in good stead when he was at work. People liked
Humphrey; among his colleagues in the Street, he was not great enough
for jealousy, nor small enough to be ignored. He steered the middle
course of popularity.
He had been long enough now on _The Day_ for Ferrol to perceive his
limitations. Humphrey did not know--nobody knew--that Ferrol from his
red room was watching his work, noting each failure and each success,
watching and weighing his value. And it was with something of regret
that Ferrol realized that in Humphrey he had found not a genius, but
merely a plodding conscientious worker, perhaps a little above the
average. For, in spite of Rivers, who found that genius and reporting
do not go hand in hand, Ferrol was always searching alertly for the
miraculous writer whose style was individual; whose writing would be
discussed in those broad circles where _The Day_ was read.
One sees Ferrol hoping for that spark of genius to glow in Humphrey,
dreaming, whenever his thoughts took him back, of days now so dim that
they seem never to have existed, and faced only with disappointment.
Up to a certain point he could make Humphrey--but no further. Perhaps,
after all, the boy might show his worth in work of broader scope....
Ferrol plans, and plans, rearranging the men in his employ, moving a
man here, and a man there, a god with life for a chessboard and human
lives as the men.... One sees Humphrey, young and vigorous, doing his
daily work....
It was an extraordinary life, full of uncertainties and sudden
surprises ... a life of never-ending energy, with little rest even in
sleep, for into his dreams there crept all the tangle of the day's
happenings. Disaster swept all round him, but he seemed to be lifted
above all evil by the magic of his calling. The king can do no wrong:
no journalist ever seemed to be hit by the hazards of life. Murders,
the collapse of houses, railway smashes, roofs falling in and burying
people in the rubble, shipwrecks and terrible fires.... Humphrey
was always on the spot, sooner or later, with a dozen others of the
craft....
He was outside the range of the things that really mattered. Politics
and the problems that touched deeply the lives of the people did not
come his way. They fell into the hands of the lobby correspondent, the
man in the Press Gallery of the House, or the sociological writers who
stood somewhat aloof from the routine of the Street.
But, on the whole, the life was glorious, in spite of its bitter
moments.
"I shall have to chuck it, you know," Kenneth Carr said, one day. "This
life is too awful: it's the system that's wrong, there is no system."
That was Kenneth's point of view. Of course there was no system. Is
there any system in life?
"We're all sick men, in Fleet Street," sighed Kenneth. "We're sick and
we're growing old. Our nerves are broken with the continual movement
and unrest. There's no time allowance made for our stomachs: I tell
you, we're all sick men in Fleet Street, brain, nerve and stomach."
At such times, Humphrey would laugh and defend the Street and its work,
just to cheer Kenneth up.
"Don't you go and drop out," he urged. "I shall be left without a
friend."
The next day they met each other on the platform at Paddington. There
was to be a Royal week in Windsor. A foreign monarch had come to
England.
"Well, what do you think of the life to-day?" Humphrey asked.
"Oh, it's all right," Kenneth laughed. "I suppose I wanted a little
fresh air and sunshine.... I shall get it in the forest."
IV
He was reading a letter in the bold, firm handwriting of Elizabeth Carr.
"DEAR MR QUAIN," she wrote, "I don't think I ever thanked you for the
article you wrote of our day in the forest with the children. I asked
Kenneth to tell you how glad I was, but I expect he forgot all about
it. I think your article was most _sympathetic_, though I wish you
hadn't made quite so much of that unfortunate child who was dressed
so grotesquely. I will tell you what I mean when I see you, for I am
writing to know if you can come to dinner here. I'm sorry Kenneth
won't be able to come--he's away in Lancashire on that dreadful
strike. Thank Heaven--he'll be leaving it all soon."
There was a postscript.
"Of course, I know the nature of your work will not let you say 'yes'
definitely, but I've made the day Saturday, on purpose to give you a
chance. And if I don't have a wire from you, I shall expect you."
It was quite a month since he had spent that day in Loughton with
Elizabeth Carr, and though he could not name offhand the things he
had done since then, day by day, that day and its incidents remained
sharply defined in his memory.
Had he really taken more than usual care to write his account of their
doings? Or, was it that the vision of her, and the recollection of her
earnest eyes, inspired him to better work? Or, had there been nothing
very special about the story after all, and was her letter merely a
courtesy?
The fact remained that he was flattered to receive the letter with its
invitation. Kenneth had certainly forgotten to deliver her message. He
looked upon it as something of a triumph for him: very patiently he had
waited for a word from Elizabeth Carr.
There was that extraordinary remark of hers when he had watched the
children sing their grace. He had asked her what she meant by it, and
she had declined to say. He had felt humiliated by her words: did she
imagine that he had no heart at all? She seemed to think that because
he was a reporter on a halfpenny paper, he must be absolutely callous.
He re-read the letter. She was curiously captious. She seemed ready to
take offence now because he had made a "story" out of that wretched
child clad in its mother's cape and bedraggled blouse. Well, of course,
she wasn't a journalist. She couldn't be expected to see human interest
from the same point of view as _The Day_. He wrote, accepting her
invitation provisionally.
In the days that followed, thoughts of Elizabeth Carr recurred with
disturbing persistency. He recalled the odd way in which she had come
into his life: first at that evening at the Wrattens, when Lilian
Filmer had been his foremost thought, then, intermittently, at Kenneth
Carr's, something unusually antagonistic in her attitude to him; and
now she had come into the heart of his work, bringing with her a touch
of intimacy. She, who had always averted herself from him, was now
asking him to be her guest.
She, who had always seemed to ignore him, was, of a sudden, extending
towards him tentacles of influence, vague and shadowy; he was uneasily
aware of their presence.
He read her letter several times before the Saturday came--the gentle
perfume of it reminded him of her own fragrance. He was sensitive
to praise and appreciation, and he dwelt often on those words which
spoke of his work. It was pleasant to know that he had at last shown
Elizabeth Carr what he could do. She was, he knew, judging him always
by Kenneth's standard, in life as well as writing, and of course
every one knew that Kenneth's ideals were high, that his writing was
brilliant.... So Kenneth was going to leave Fleet Street. It was the
first that Humphrey had heard of it. "I shall have to chuck it,"
Kenneth had said, and he was going to keep his word. He contemplated
the prospect with melancholy. Kenneth was a good friend; his departure
would leave an intolerable gap in London life. The chats and the
evening meetings would be gone.... They would pass out of each other's
daily life....
Thus Saturday came, and Humphrey found himself free to carry out his
acceptance of Elizabeth's invitation.
Humphrey had always imagined that Elizabeth lived in a flat with some
woman-friend: he was surprised when he found the address led to a
little white house, one of a row of such houses, in a broad, peaceful
road at the back of Kensington High Street. It was one of those houses
that must have been built when Kensington was a village; it was like a
cottage in the heart of London. The Virginian creeper made its drapery
of green over the trellis-work that framed the window, and the walls
were green with ivy. An elderly woman opened the door to his knock, and
he found himself in a low-ceilinged hall, with a few black-and-white
drawings on the walls, and a reproduction of Whistler's Nocturne.
He was ushered into the sitting-room. Even if he had not known that it
was her house, he could have chosen this room, out of all the rooms in
London, as the room of Elizabeth Carr. Wherever he looked, he found a
reflex of her peace and gentle calm.
In the few moments of waiting he took in all the details of the room:
the soft-toned wall-paper, with a woodland frieze of blue and delicate
shades of green, the old Japanese prints on the walls, and the little
leather-bound books on the tables here and there. He had sat so many
times in the rooms of different people whom he went to interview, that
his observation had trained itself mechanically to notice such details.
He heard a rustle on the stairs, the door opened gently, and Elizabeth
Carr came into the room.
She looked as beautiful as a picture in the frame of her own room. So
had he imagined her, her hair looped back from its centre parting piled
in gleaming coils just above the nape of her neck, leaving its delicate
outline unbroken; a long necklet of amethysts made a mauve rivulet
against the whiteness of her bosom till it fell in a festoon over her
bodice, and blended with the colour of her dress, amethystine itself.
And in her hair there gleamed a comb beaten by a Norwegian goldsmith,
and set with moonstone and chrysoprase.
She came forward to greet him, moving with the subtle grace of
womanhood. Her charm, her frank beauty, filled him with a peculiar
sense of unworthiness and embarrassment. Before the wonder of
her, before the purity of her, everything else in life seemed
incomprehensibly sordid.
"I am so glad you were able to come," she said. She looked him in the
eyes as she spoke, and there was this, he noticed, about Elizabeth
Carr: she meant every word she said--even the most trivial of greetings
took on significance when she uttered them. Her words gave him
confidence.
"It was good of you to ask me...." There was a slight pause. "I nearly
missed the house," he said with an inconsequential smile. "I always
thought you lived in a flat."
"Did you?" she replied. "Oh no!--(Do sit down--I'm expecting some more
visitors shortly.) I've had this house for a long time." She sighed.
"It's an inheritance, you know, and I thought I'd live in it myself,
instead of letting it. Kenneth and I have dreadful squabbles--he says
it's too far out for him, and wants me to keep a flat with him in
town--and I loathe flats. I've got a small garden at the back, and it's
blessed in the summer. There's a walnut tree and a pear tree just wide
enough apart to hold a hammock."
"A hammock in London!" cried Humphrey; "I envy you! Think of our
Clifford's Inn."
"I really don't know how you people can live on the doorsteps of your
offices. I'm sure it's not good for you. Anyway, Kenneth's giving it
up."
"I hadn't heard of it before your letter."
"It was only settled a few days ago. Grahams, the publishers, liked his
last book well enough to offer him a good advance; and the book's sold
in America--he's got enough to get a year's start in the country, and
so he's going down there to write only the things he wants to."
Humphrey smiled in his cocksure way. "Aha! he'll soon get sick of it,
Miss Carr."
Elizabeth Carr's fingers strayed into the loops of her amethyst
necklace; the light shone on the violet and blue gems as she gathered
them into a little heap, and let them fall again. Her brows hinted at a
frown for a moment, and then they became level again.
"Nothing would make you give up Fleet Street, I suppose?" she asked.
"No ... the fever's in me," he said. "I couldn't live without it."
"Are you so wrapped up in it?"
"Well," said Humphrey, "I suppose I am. It's rather fine, you know, the
way things are done. You ought to go through a newspaper office and
see it at work ... all sorts of people, each of them working daily with
only one aim--to-morrow's paper...."
"And you never think of the day when Ferrol doesn't want you any more?"
"Well, you know," Humphrey said, with a smile, "it's difficult to
explain. We just trust to luck. After all, lots of men have drifted
into journalism; when they're done, they drift back again."
"I see," Elizabeth Carr said, nodding her head gently. "And there are
always fresh men to drift."
"I suppose so."
"And, you're quite content."
Humphrey shrugged his shoulders. "What else can I do?"
The bell rang. "Ah! what else!" she exclaimed, rising to meet her
visitors.
The new-comers were introduced to Humphrey. One was a tall, thin man,
with remarkable eyes, black and deep-sunken, and the thin mobile lips
of an artist. His name was Dyotkin; he spoke English fluently, with a
faint Russian accent. The other was a woman whose youthful complexion
and features of middle age were in conflict, but whose hair tinged
with grey left no doubt of her years. Although her dress was in
excellent taste, it suggested an unduly overbearing wealth. Humphrey
recognized her name when he heard it: Mrs Hayman. She was one of the
philanthropists who helped Elizabeth in her work.
They went into dinner, to sit at a little oval Chippendale table just
big enough for the four of them; Dyotkin and he faced one another,
sitting between Elizabeth and Mrs Hayman.
"Your work must be very interesting," Mrs Hayman said.
Humphrey smiled. That was the commonest remark he heard. Those who did
not know what the work was, perceived dimly its interest, but not one
of them could ever be made to understand the intense, eager passion of
the life.
"It is interesting," Humphrey said. "Miss Carr knows a good deal of it."
"I suppose you go everywhere--it must be splendid."
"When you talk like that, I, too, think it must be splendid. Sometimes,
it's very funny."
"Still, it's nice to see everything, isn't it? And I suppose you go to
theatres and concerts."
"Oh no! I'm not a critic. That's another man's work. I'm just a
reporter."
"I don't know how you get your news. What do you do? Go out in the
morning and ask people? And isn't it dreadfully difficult to fill the
paper?"
It was always the same; nobody could understand the routine of the
business. Everybody had the same idea that newspaper offices lived in
a day of tremulous anticipation lest there should not be enough news.
Nobody understood that the happenings in the world were so vast and
complex, that their sole anxiety was to compress into four pages the
manifold events that had happened while the earth had turned on its
axis for one day.
"Now, yesterday, for instance?" Mrs Hayman said, with an inviting
smile. "What did you do yesterday?"
"Oh, yesterday was an unpleasant day. I had to go to Camberwell late
at night. A man had given himself up somewhere in Wales. He said he'd
murdered Miss Cott--you remember the train murder, three years ago....
He kept a chemist's shop in Camberwell, we found out. So I had to go
there. I got there dreadfully late. The door was opened by a girl. Her
eyes were swollen and red. She was his daughter, I guessed.... I can
tell you, I felt awkward."
"I should think so," Elizabeth said. He looked at her, and saw that she
was annoyed.
"What did you do--go away?" Mrs Hayman asked.
"Go away? Good gracious, no. I interviewed her."
"Interviewed her!"
"Well, I talked with her, if you like. They were very pleased at the
office."
"I think it's repulsive," Elizabeth remarked.
"Oh, come!" Humphrey remonstrated.
The dinner was finished. It occurred to Humphrey that he had fallen
from grace.
"We will go into the next room," Elizabeth said, "and Mr Dyotkin shall
play to us." As she passed by him, Humphrey went forward and opened the
door for her. Dyotkin and Mrs Hayman lingered behind. He passed into
the adjoining room with Elizabeth. He wanted to defend himself.
"You're a little hard on me, you know," he said.
"I don't understand how you can do it," she said.
"Do what?"
"Forget all your finer feelings, and make a trade of it."
"I don't make a trade of it," he said, hotly. "You cannot separate the
good from the bad. You must take us just as we are--or leave us."
The words came from him quietly, almost unconsciously, as though in an
unguarded moment his tongue had taken advantage of his thoughts. She
turned her face sideways to his, and he was conscious of a queer look
in her eyes--an expression which was absolutely foreign to them. He
saw doubt, uncertainty and surprise in the swift glance of a moment.
"I ought not to have said that," he thought to himself. And, then,
hard upon that, defiantly, "I don't care what she thinks; it's what I
thought."
The expression in her eyes softened. Though he had said nothing more,
it was as if he had subtly communicated to her that which was passing
in his mind.
"Yes," she said, with softness in her voice, "we must take the good
with the bad, but we must separate the sincere from the insincere. I
saw you that day in the forest when your eyes showed how you felt the
pity of it all--and yet, you see, you did not put that in _The Day_.
You did not write as you felt."
So that was her explanation. How could he make her comprehend the
conflict that was for ever in his mind, and even his explanation could
not redeem him in her eyes.
John Davidson's verse ran through his mind like a dirge:--
"Ambition and passion and power,
Came out of the North and the West,
Every year, every day, every hour,
Into Fleet Street to fashion their best.
They would write what is noble and wise,
They must live by a traffic in lies!"
Ah, but it was wrong of her to take that view. As if one could ever
tell the truth in a world where the very fabric of society is woven
from lies and false conceptions. How could he tell her and make her
believe that he was thrilled, and that his throat tightened at things
that he saw--and yet he never dared give way to his emotions, and write
them. Why, the most vital things in his life were not the things he
wrote, but the things he did not write.
Though his mind was rioting with indignation, he laughed. "We mustn't
take our work too seriously," he said. "It's too ephemeral for that.
Things only last a day."
She did not answer. She turned from him without a word. He had meant to
anger her, and he had succeeded. There was a chatter of voices in the
passage and Mrs Hayman came into the room with Dyotkin. Elizabeth went
towards him.
"Won't you play something?" she begged.
Dyotkin sat down by the piano. The seat was too low; he wanted a
cushion, or some books, and Elizabeth went to fetch them.
The sight of her waiting on Dyotkin filled Humphrey with an increasing
annoyance. It jarred on him somehow. He attempted to help in an
ungainly way, but Elizabeth, without conveying it directly, held aloof
from his assistance. He settled himself in the arm-chair by Mrs Hayman
... and Dyotkin played.
Humphrey had no knowledge of music. He did not even know the name of
the piece that was being played, but as the fingers of Dyotkin struck
three grand chords, something stirred within his soul, and, gradually,
a vague understanding came to him, and he followed and traced the theme
through its embroidery. And the following of the theme was just like
the following of an ideal. At times he was lost in waves of seductive
sounds, that charmed him and led his thoughts away, and then, suddenly,
the chords would emerge again, out of the bewildering maze of melody
clear and triumphant, again, and yet again; he could follow them,
though they were cunningly concealed beneath intricate patterns.
And then, for a moment, he would lose them, but he knew that they were
still there, if he sought for them, and so he stumbled on; and, behold,
once more as the dawn bursts out of the darkness, the familiar sounds
struck on his ears. And now they were with him always: he hearkened to
them, and they were fraught with a strange, delicious meaning. "I have
thought this," he said, in his mind.
Here was something far, far removed from anything of daily life. He
was uplifted, exalted from earthly things. The wonder of the music
enchanted him. Ah! what achievements were not possible in such
moments! He felt grandiose, noble and apart from life altogether....
The music ceased. He sighed as one awaking from the glory of a dream.
He looked up, and his eyes, once again, met the eyes of Elizabeth, deep
and tender and unspeakably divine.
V
It is impossible to point a finger at any date in this period of the
career of Humphrey Quain and say, "This is the day on which he fell in
love with Elizabeth Carr." For the days merged gradually into weeks and
months, and they met at irregular intervals, and out of their meetings
something new and definite came to Humphrey.
There was no sudden transition from acquaintance to friendship, from
friendship to love. He could not mark the stages of the development of
their knowledge of one another. But before he was aware of its true
meaning, once again the spirit of yearning and unrest took hold of him.
This time, his love was different from that abrupt love-affair with
Lilian Filmer. Then untutored youth had broken its bounds, and love had
swept him from his foothold. He had been ardent, passionate in those
days, the fervour of love had intoxicated him; but now, with this slow
attachment, his love was a different quality. Lilian, coming fresh upon
the horizon of his hopes, bringing with her the promise of all that
he needed in those days, had made a physical appeal to him. Always
there was working, subconsciously, in his mind, the thought of her
desirability. She offered him material rewards; they were attracted to
each other by the mutual disadvantages of their surroundings.
Their meeting, their abortive love-affair was the expression of the
everlasting desire of the companionship of sex: they were, both of
them, groping after things half-understood, towards a goal that looked
glamorous in the incomplete vision they had of it.
But Elizabeth Carr appealed to the intellectual in him. No doubt the
old primeval forces compelled him towards her, but they were far below
the surface of his thoughts whenever the vision of Elizabeth rose
before him. He could not describe the hold she had on his imagination.
Her influence had been so subtly and gently exercised, that he had not
noticed the power of it, until now he was dominated by the thought of
her. The finer spirit that lies dormant in every man, except in the
very basest, put forth its wings and awoke. In little questions of
everyday honour he began to see things from Elizabeth's point of view:
little, trivial questions of his dealings with mankind which jarred on
Elizabeth's own code of morality. Unquestionably, he was better for her
influence, better from the spiritual standpoint, but weaker altogether
when judged by the standard of everyday life. Elizabeth preached the
gospel of altruism not directly, but insidiously, and he found himself
adopting her views.
Hitherto his had been the grim doctrine of worldly success: those who
would be strong must be ruthless and remorseless; there must be no
halting consideration of the feelings of others. Though he did not
realize it, his absorption of Elizabeth's ideals was weakening him,
inevitably.
The charity of her work, with its gentle benevolence, was reflected
in all her life. She gained happiness by self-sacrifice, and peace
by warring against social evils. Their characters and temperaments
conflicted whenever they met, and yet, after each meeting, it seemed
to Humphrey that their friendship was arising on a firmer basis.
Sometimes the shock of their opposing personalities would leave
behind it quarrelsome echoes--not the echoes of an open quarrel, but
the unmistakable suggestion of disagreement and dissatisfaction. He
blundered about, trying to fathom her wishes, but her individuality
remained always to him a problem, inscrutably complex.
There were times, it seemed, when their spirits were in perfect
agreement, when he was raised high in the wonder of the esteem in which
she, obviously, held him. Those were the times when he came first to
realize that he loved her: and the audacity of his discovery filled
him with dismay. He knew that she was altogether superior; she lived
exalted in thought and deed in a plane far above him. They met, it is
true, over tea, or at a theatre, just as if they both inhabited the
same sphere, but, in spite of that, they were as separate planets,
whirling in their own orbits, rushing together for an instant, meeting
for a fraction of time, and soaring away once more until again they
drew together.
And, even when understanding of her seemed nearest to him, she suddenly
receded from his grasp. A change of voice, a change of expression,
a movement of her body--what was it? He did not know. He only knew
that something he had said had separated them: she could become, in
a moment, distant and unattainable, another woman altogether, coldly
antagonistic.