INTERMEZZO.
It was several months later--May 1914, to be precise--when Austin
Selwyn made the determination, common to most men, to remain in for an
evening and catch up in his correspondence.
After the manner of his species, he produced a small army of letters
from various pockets, and spreading them in a heap on his desk,
proceeded to answer the more urgent, and postpone the less important to
a further occasion when conscience would again overcome indolence. For
an hour he wrote trivial politenesses to hostesses who had extended
hospitality or were going to do so; there was a reply to a literary
agent, one to a moving-picture concern, an answer to a critic, and a
note of thanks to an admirer.
Having disposed of these sundry matters, he sat back in his chair and
read a long letter that had been enclosed in an envelope bearing the
postage-stamp of the United States of America. At its finish he
settled himself comfortably, lit a cigar, and, squaring his shoulders,
wrote a reply to the Reverend Edgerton Forbes, Rector of St. Giles'
Episcopal Church, Fifth Avenue, New York:
'LONDON, _May 12, 1914_.
'MY DEAR EDGE,--I've been supplying your friend the Devil with all
sorts of cobblestones recently, but, my dear old boy, if I had written
you every time I intended to, you would have had no time to prepare
those knock-out sermons of yours.
'In your letter you hint at possible heart entanglements for me. Has
it not been said that to a writer all women are "copy"? Even when he
falls in love, your author is so busy studying the symptoms that he
usually fails to inform the lady until she has eloped with some other
clown.
'In fairness, however, I must admit that you were partly correct in
your surmise. I almost fell in love last November with a girl who
invariably angered me when I was with her, but clung to my mind next
day like an unfinished plot. I saw her quite frequently up to
February, when I went to the Continent, but have not called on her
since my return.
'I met her first at her mother's town house, where there were several
people who admitted their greatness with an aplomb one was forced to
admire. This girl sort of sat there and said nothing, but her silence
had a good deal more in it than some of the talk. We had our first
chat that night by the fire, next morning went riding in Rotten Row,
and had dinner together the same night. Fast travelling, you say? On
paper, yes; but actually I don't know the girl any better now than the
night I met her. She's a strange creature--self-willed, fiery, sweet,
and sometimes as clever as your Ancient Adversary. But friendship with
her makes me think of the days when I was a kid. My great hobby was
building sky-scrapers with blocks, and very laboriously I would erect
the structure up to the point when "feeding-time" or "washing-time" or
"being shown to the minister" used always to intervene. When I
returned, the blocks had always fallen down. Well, friendship with
Elise (pretty name, isn't it?) is not unlike my experience with the
blocks. You can leave her, firmly convinced that at last you are on a
basis of real understanding; and two or three days later, when you meet
her again, you find all the blocks lying around in disorder. Instead
of a friend, one is an esteemed acquaintance. The only way to win her,
I suppose, would be to call at dawn and stay until midnight. It would
be a bit trying, but I get awfully "fed up" (as they say over here)
with being constantly recalled to the barrier.
'Of course, you old humbug, I can see you pursing your lips and saying,
"Does Austin really love her? If he did, he would be unable to see her
faults." It's an exploded theory that love is blind. Good heavens! if
a man in love can see in a girl beauty which doesn't exist, is there
any reason to suppose he will be unable to see the faults that _do_?
'But, candidly, I don't think I am in love with this young lady. I
might be if I were given half a chance; but, then, emotional icebergs
were always my specialty. I meet a dozen girls who treat me with a
tender cordiality that is touching; then there comes into my course one
who expresses a sort of friendly indifference, and there I stay
scorching my wings or freezing my toes--whichever figure of speech you
prefer.
'She makes me think of a painting sometimes, one that changes in
appearance with the varying lights and shadows of the sky. But, Edge,
given the exact light that her beauty needs, she is a masterpiece. In
some strange way her personality has given me a new pleasure in Corot
and Diaz. It is difficult to explain, but it is so. I feel my powers
of description are inadequate really to picture Elise to you. She is
truly feminine, and yet when she is with other women her unique gift of
personality makes them _merely_ feminine. "Lordy, Lordy," as a nigger
of mine used to say, "dis am becomin' abtuse."
'As a matter of fact, the girl is a result of conflicting elements of
heredity. I haven't met her father, but I gather that he is a good old
Tory of blameless respectability, and has a deep-seated disbelief in
evolution. On the other hand, the girl's mother is rather a buxom and
florid descendant of a vigorous North of England family, the former
members of which, with the exception of her father, were highly
esteemed smugglers. The lady's grandfather, Elise tells me, was known
as "Gentleman Joe," and was as adventurous a cut-throat as a small
boy's imagination could desire.
'Well, Mr. Parson, you can imagine what happened when these conflicting
elements of heredity were brought together. In the language of
science, there was one negative result and two positive. The first
mentioned is a son Malcolm, whom I have not met. He has a commission
in the cavalry, is a devil at billiards, can't read a map, and rides
like a Centaur.
'Of the positive results it seems to me I may have already mentioned
one--Elise. The other is Richard, the tragedy of the family. Poor
Dick was practically kicked out of Eton for drunkenness when he was
about sixteen. For the past year or so he has been at Cambridge, but
he got in with a bad set there, and after several warnings has been
"sent down"--or, in ordinary language, expelled. It appears that the
old combination of "booze" and women got the better of him, though
there's something oddly fine about the fellow too. He was hitting an
awful pace at Cambridge, and when he tried to pass off a fourth-rate
chorus-girl as the Duchess of Turveydrop, the axe descended. As the
masquerading duchess was rather noisy and very "elevated," you can see
that there must have been complications.
'Of course, his governor was furious, and, settling a very small
allowance on the poor beggar, turned him out of the family home, and
forbade him to ever darken, &c., &c. (see, split infinitive and all,
any "best seller" of a few years back).
'Does this seem at all incongruous to you? These so-called aristocrats
bring a son into existence, and, providing he's a decent-living,
rule-abiding chap, he is sheltered from the world and kept for the
enriching of their own hot-house of respectability. But--if one of
them upsets the ash-can and otherwise messes up the family escutcheon,
the father says, "You have disgraced our traditions. Get thee hence
into the cold, outside world. After this you belong to it."
'Damned generous of paterfamilias, isn't it? Only, as one of the cold,
outside world, I can't help wondering why, if Milord is going to keep
his good apples for himself, we should have to accept the rotten ones.
'Concerning Cambridge--I spent a weekend there recently with Doug
Watson of Boston, who is taking Engineering. Cambridge is quite a
little community, as separate from the rest of England as the Channel
Islands. On the Saturday evening I was there Watson took a punt, and
with considerable dexterity piloted me along the Cam, with its green
velvet banks and overhanging trees. The river is an exquisite thing,
and there was a sensuous drowsiness in the beauty of the hour before
dark.
'The lawns from the backs of the colleges slope down to the river, and
as we passed along we noticed group after group of students drinking
coffee made in percolators in their possession. There was something
almost pastoral in the sight of those young Britishers in such complete
repose. Perhaps I should have enjoyed it all without question if it
had not been that, a week before, I had visited a poor little
Nonconformist preacher who labours on an empty stomach to a little
congregation in a chain-making district. Edge, the sights I saw there
were not good for any man to see and remain quiet. Women work at the
fires when pregnant, and fuddle themselves with beer at night; the men
are a shiftless lot, who spend their lives hand-in-hand with poverty
and think only of beer, "baccy," and loafing. You know I'm no
prohibitionist, but I hate to see beer the goal of men's ambitions. In
one school there was a class with forty "backward" children. That's
the kinder word, Edge, but the real one is "imbecile." Think of
it--forty human destinies that must be lived out to a finish! They
tell me that conditions are improving there. I hope so, in Heaven's
name.
'It was that visit I had in mind when punting along the Cam. A man is
a fool to pit his little mind against so vast and wonderful an edifice
as a great university like Cambridge, but one thought which occurred
more than once to me was whether or not a man can be considered
educated if he be ignorant of human misery existing beyond the college
gates. In the Scottish universities the Professor of Latin is called
Professor of Humanity. I wonder, Edge, if the time is not ripe for a
chair of Humanity in a wider sense in all universities.
'On Sunday we went to one of the churches, and, with eleven others,
managed to present a formidable congregation of thirteen. The
preacher's prayer, which he read, was a superb piece of work. He
started off with the King and the Royal Family, passed on to titled and
landed gentry, after them the higher orders of the clergy, leaders of
the navy, the army, and all those in more or less authority, then the
lower orders of the clergy, and after several categories I have
forgotten, he reached the commoners, and (in an appropriate tone of
voice) hoped we should live in peace, one with another.
'Think of it, Edge, in this enlightened age! I wanted to go up to him
after the service and ask him why he had left out the minor poets, but
Doug stopped me--which is perhaps just as well. He might have added a
prayer for Americans after the commoners.
'Sometimes I think that the English Church is losing its grip. I don't
mean that snobbery of the kind I have described is common, but in the
development of Church character it seems to me that the truth of
Christ's birth into a humble walk of life is drifting steadily farther
from the clerical consciousness. The timid snobbery which permeates so
much of English life, and reaches its wretched climax in the terms
"working class" and "lower classes," finds condonement in the ranks of
the clergy. Even in its humorous aspect, when Mrs. Retired Naval
Officer starts to swank it over Mrs. Retired Army Officer (senior
service, deah boy, y'know), and so on down the line, the local rector
too often takes an active part in seeing that the various grades are
punctiliously preserved. Of course, there are glorious exceptions to
all this, and they are the men who count.
'I suppose at home we are just as bad, and that even so democratic a
preacher as yourself doesn't take supper on Sunday night with the
poorest parishioner. Perhaps living in a strange country makes a man
see many things he would not notice in his own.
'To finish with Cambridge--we joined a party of two large punts on
Sunday afternoon, and with about twelve college chaps and local
(approved) girls we went for a picnic up the river. The girls were
fairly pretty and terrifically energetic, insisting upon doing an equal
share in the punting, and managing to look graceful while they
manoeuvred the punts, which were really fair-sized barges. And when we
reached the picnic-place, they made all the preparations, and waited on
us as if we were royal invalids. Bless their hearts! Edge, to restore
a man's natural vanity, commend me to life in England. Coming home we
played the gramophone, and, with appropriate flirtation, floated nearly
the whole way to the holding of hands and the hearing of music.
'And, theologian as you are, if you deny the charm of that combination,
I renounce you utterly.
'Just one more Cambridge thought. (This letter has as many false
endings as one of your sermons.) There were quite a number of native
students from India in attendance, and I noticed that these men, many
of them striking-looking fellows, were left pretty much to themselves.
The English answer when spoken to, and offer that well-bred tolerance
exerted by them so easily, but the Indian student must feel that he is
not admitted on a footing of equality. I'm not certain that the dark
races can be admitted as equals; but what effect on India will it have
if these fellows are educated, then sent back with resentment
fermenting their knowledge into sedition? It may be another case where
the Englishman is instinctively right in his racial psychology; or,
again, it may be a further example of his dislike to look facts
squarely in the face.
'Of course, we have our own racial problem, and have hardly made such a
success of it that we can afford to offer advice.
'Well, Edge, this letter has run on to too great a length to permit of
any European treatment. That will have to wait. Of course, I have
paid several visits to Paris, and understand as never before the
saying: "Every man loves two countries--his own and France."
'Edge, why is it that people who travel always have the worst
characteristics of their nationality? On the Continent one sees
Englishmen wearing clothes that I swear are never to be seen in
England, and their women so often appear angular and semi-masculine,
whereas at home--but, then, you know what an admirer I am of English
women. And our own people are worse. Tell me: at home, when a
gentleman talks to you, does he keep his cigar in his mouth and merely
resonate through his nose? Or is that a mannerism acquired through
travelling?
'But enough, old boy. This has covered too vast an acreage of thought
already. Oh yes--about my writing. I have been doing very little
recently, but can feel the tide rising to that point where it will of
necessity overflow the confines of my lethargy. I have had the honour
of meeting several of the foremost writers here, and there is no
question about it, they are doing excellent work. But I wish that I
could feel a little more idealism in their work. The whole country
here is parched for the lack of Heaven's moisture of idealism. People
must have an objective in their lives, and the Arts should combine with
the Church in creating it.
'Of course, there is an amazing amount of drivel written over here,
most of which, I think, would never get past the office-boy of an
American publication. The English short story and the English
music-hall are things to be avoided.
'Before I end, have you seen Gerard Van Derwater recently? I heard
that he joined the diplomatic service at Washington after leaving
college. I often think of him with his strange pallor, but suggestion
of brooding strength. Did it ever strike you that every one respected
him, and yet he really never had a close friend? It always seemed to
me that he carried about with him a sense of impending tragedy. Find
out what he is doing, and let me know.
'Well, old boy, in another few months I shall pack up and return to
America, and once more woo the elusive editor. I am looking forward to
our sitting by your fireside and, through the cloud of tobacco-smoke,
weaving again our old romances. I am really proud of you, Edgerton,
and know that you must be a tremendous power for good.
'A letter any time addressed c/o The Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall,
will find me.--As ever, your old chum,
'AUSTIN SELWYN.'
* * * * * *
The writer addressed an envelope, inserted the letter, sealed and
stamped it, then yawned lazily. Gathering his outgoing correspondence
and the old letters, he took his hat and sauntered into the street,
conscious of having done his duty--also that he had unearthed some
thoughts the existence of which he had not suspected beneath the
surface shrubbery of everyday existence.