I prythee, sorrow, leave a little room
In my confounded and tormented mind
For understanding to deliberate
The cause or author of this accident.
_The Atheist's Tragedy_.
He thought, as he sat up, that an instant before his true self had
walked in the spiritual kingdom, apprehending beauty. Now, with the
shock of waking, the glory wavered, like a fire of wet wood, fitfully,
among the smoke of the daily life flooding back in his brain's
channels. The memory of the beauty came in gleams, moving him to the
bone, for it seemed to him that the spirit of his love had moved in the
chambers of his brain, bringing a message to him, while the dulnesses
of his body lay arrested. A dream so beautiful must, he thought, be a
token of all beauty, a sign, perhaps, that her nature was linked to
his, for some ecstatic purpose, by the power outside life. Her beauty,
her sweetness, her intense, personal charm, all the sacredness that
clothed her about, had walked with him in one of the gardens of the
soul. That was glory enough; but the dream was intense and full of
mystery; it had brought him very near to something awful and immortal,
so strange and mighty that only a heart's tick, something in the blood,
had kept him from the presence of the symbol-maker, and from the full
knowledge of the beauty of the meaning of life.
The vision seemed meaningless when pieced together. Words in it had
seemed revelations, acts in it adventures, romances; but judged by the
waking mind, it was unintelligible, though holy, like a Mass in an
unknown tongue.
He had found her in the garden at her home, among flowers lovelier than
earthly flowers, among flowers like flames and precious stones. That
was the beginning of it. Then in the sweetness of their talk he had
become conscious of all that her love meant to him, of all that it
meant to the power which directs life, of all that his failure to win
her would mean, here and hereafter. Life had seemed suddenly terrible
and glorious, a wrestle of God and devil for each soul. With this
consciousness had come a change in the dream. She had gone from him.
That was the middle of it. Then that also changed. She had left him
to seek for her through the world. Suddenly she had sent a message to
him. He was walking to meet her. Delight filled him as wine fills a
cup. He would see her, he would touch her hand, her eyes would look
into his. He had never before been so moved by the love of her. His
delight was not the old selfish pleasure, but a rapturous comprehension
of her beauty, and of that of which her beauty was the symbol. He
knew, as he walked, that the beloved life in her was his own finer
self, longing to transmute him to her brightness. A word, a touch, a
look, and they would be together in nobleness; he would breathe the
beauty of her character like pure air, he would be a part of her
forever.
So he had walked the streets to her, noticing nothing except the
brightness of the sun on the houses, till he had stood upon the
stair-top knocking vainly at the door of an empty house. It came upon
him then with an exhaustion of the soul, like death itself, that he had
come too late. She had gone away disappointed, perhaps angry. The
door would never open to him; he would never meet her again; never even
enter the hall, dimly seen through the glass, to gather relics of her.
Within, as he could see, lay a handkerchief and a withered flower once
worn by her, little relics bitterly precious, to be nursed in his heart
in a rapture of agony, could he only have them. But he had come too
late; he had lost her; his heart, wanting her, would be empty always, a
dead thing going through life like a machine. In his vision he could
see across to Ireland, to her home. He could see her there; sad that
she had not seen him. He had tried to wade to her through a channel
full of thorns, which held him fast. From the midst of the thorns he
could see a young man, with a calm, strong face, talking to her.
Shaken as he was by grief, and prepared for any evil, he realised that
this youth was to be her mate, now that he had lost her.
Lastly, at the end of the dream, he had received a letter from her,
with the postmark Athens across the Greek stamp. The letter had been
the most real part of the dream. It was her very hand, a dashing,
virile hand, with weak, unusual f's, t's crossed far to the right of
their uprights, and a negligent beauty in some of the curves of the
capitals. The letters were small, the down-strokes determined but
irregular, never twice the same. It was the hand of a vivid, charming,
but not very strong character. He could not remember what the letter
said. Only one sentence at the end remained. "I have read your last
book," it ran; "it reads like the diary of a lost soul." There was no
signature; nothing but the paper, with the intensely vivid writing, and
that one sentence plainly visible. It was even sound criticism. The
book of sketches had been self-conscious experiments in style,
detached, pictorial presentation of crises, clever things in their way,
but startling, both in colour and in subject, the results of moods, not
of perfected personality. The sketches had been ill-assorted; that was
another fault. But he had not thought them evil. Sitting up in bed,
with the damning sentence still vivid, he felt that they must be evil,
because she disliked them. He had created brutal, erring, passionate,
and wicked types, with frank and natural creative power. At this
moment he felt himself judged. He felt for the first time that the
theories of art common to the little party of his friends, were not so
much theories of art as declarations of youthful independence, soiled
with personal failures of perception and personal antipathies. He was
wrong; his art was all wrong; his art was all self-indulgence, not
self-perfection. An artist had no right to create at pleasure, ignoble
types and situations, fixing fragments of the perishing to the walls of
the world, as a keeper nails vermin. Ottalie's fair nature was not
nourished on such work. Great art called such work "sin," "denial of
the Holy Ghost," "crucifixion of our Lord." He reached for the
offending book; but the words seemed meaningless; some of the intricate
prose-rhythms were clever. But anybody can do mechanics and
transcribe. Style and imagination are the difficult things. He put
the book aside, wondering if he would ever do good work.
He was haunted by the dream until he was dressed. Then the memories of
the night before came in upon him, the yells of the mob, hooting his
soul's child, the bloated face of the sot, his friend's farewell that
had had neither warning nor affection, the indignity of the visit to
the Templetons', till the world seemed to be pressing its shapeless
head upon his windows, shrieking insults at him, through yielding
glass. He began to realise that he had had the concentrated torment of
months suddenly stamped upon him in a night. His work, his person, his
affections, his social nature had all been trampled and defiled. He
wondered what more torments were coming to him with the new day. Some
forethought of what was coming crossed his mind when he saw his
breakfast-table. Beside his teacup were three or four daily papers, in
which, in clear type, were set forth the opinions of Britain's moral
guardians concerning their immoral brother.
There were letters first, some of them left from the night before. An
obscure acquaintance, a lady in Somersetshire, sent some verses, asking
for his criticism, and for the address of "a publisher who would pay
for them." One of the poems began
"Hark! hark! hark!
'Tis the song of the Lark,
Dewy with spangles of morn."
A second letter from the same lady enclosed a "Poem on My Cat Peter,"
which had been accidentally omitted from the other envelope. His agent
sent him a very welcome cheque for £108, for his newly completed novel.
Next came a letter from a stranger, asking for permission to set some
verses to music. A charitable countess asked for verses for her new
Bazaar Book. An American News Cutting Bureau sent a little bundle of
reviews of his book of sketches. The wrapper on the bundle bore a
legend in red ink:--
"We mail you 45 clippings of _The Handful_. Has your Agency sent you
that many? If you like our way of business, mail us $1.50, and we will
continue to collect clippings under your name."
He disliked their way of business. He flung the clippings unread into
the fireplace. The next letter asked him to lecture to the
Torchbearers' Guild, who, it seemed, admired "the virile manliness" of
his style. Last of all came a letter from an unknown clergyman
denouncing the pernicious influence of _The Handful_ in words which,
without being rude, were offensive beyond measure. He took up the
papers.
The first paper, _The Daily Dawn_, treated him _d'haut en bas_, as
follows:--
"M. Falempin's latest theatrical adventure, _A Roman Matron_, by Mr.
Roger Naldrett (whom we suspect, from internal evidence, to be a not
very old lady), was produced last night at the King's Theatre. As far
as the audience permitted us to judge, before the piece ended in a
storm of groans, we think that it is entirely unsuited to the modern
stage. The character of Petronius, finely played by Mr. Danvers,
showed some power of psychological analysis; but Mr. (or Miss) Naldrett
would do well to remember that the Aristotelian definition of tragedy
cannot be disregarded lightly."
The criticism in the second paper, _The Dayspring_, was written in more
stately prose than that of _The Dawn_.
"An unreasonable amount of excitement was begotten by the entourage,"
it ran; "but the piece, which was dull, and occasionally disgusting,
convinced us that the New Drama, about which we have heard so much
lately, would do better to adequately study a drama more germane to
modern ideas, such as we fortunately possess, than libel the
institutions from which our glorious Constitution is derived," which
was certainly a home-thrust from _The Dayspring_.
The third paper, _The Morning_, in its news column, referred to a
disgraceful _fracas_ at the King's Theatre. "The police," said _The
Morning_, "were soon on the spot, and removed the more noisy members of
the audience. Neither M. Falempin, the manager of the theatre, nor
Miss Hanlon, who took a leading part in the offending play, would
consent to be interviewed, when waited on, late last night, by a
representative of this paper."
The fourth paper, _The Day_, said savagely that _The Matron_ should
never have passed the Censor, and that its production was an indelible
blot on M. Falempin's (hitherto spotless) artistic record. Roger had
written occasional reviews for _The Day_, about a dozen, all told. On
the same page, and in the column next to that containing the "Dramatic
Notes," was a review signed by him. Roger turned to this review, to
see how it read. It was a review of a worthless book of verse by a
successful versifier. The literary editor of _The Day_ had asked Roger
to write a column on the book. As the book deserved, at most, three
scathing words in a Dunciad, Roger had written a column about poetry, a
very pretty piece of critical writing, worth five thousand such books
fifty times over. Its only fault was that, being about poetry, it had
little reference to the book of verse by the successful poet. So the
literary editor had "cut" and "written in" and altered the article,
till Roger, reading it, on this tragical morning, found himself
self-accused of despicable truckling to Mammon, and the palliation of
iniquity, in sentences the rhythms of which jarred, and in platitudes
which stung him. He flung down the paper. He would never again write
for _The Day_. He would never write another word for any daily or
weekly paper. He remembered what d'Arthez says in _Les Illusions
Perdues_. He blamed himself for not having remembered before.
He ate very hurriedly, so that he might lose no time in getting to the
flat in Shaftesbury Avenue, to find out if Ottalie were really there.
Ottalie; the sight of Ottalie; the sound of her voice even, would end
his troubles for him. The thought of her calmed him. The thought of
her brought back the dream, with a glow of pleasure. The dream came
and went in his mind, seeming now strange, now beautiful. His
impression of it was that given by all moving dreams. He thought of it
as a kind of divine adventure in which he had taken part. He felt that
he had apprehended spiritually the mysterious life beyond ours, and had
learned, finally, forever, that Ottalie's soul was linked to his soul
by bonds forged by powers greater than man. A cab came clattering up.
There came a vehement knocking at the outer door. "Ottalie," he
thought. Selina, the house-maid, entered.
"A lady to see you, sir," she said.
He stood up, gulping, expecting Ottalie. The lady entered. She was
not Ottalie. She was a total stranger in a state of great excitement.
"Are you Mr. Naldrett, sir?" she said.
"Yes. Yes. What is it?"
"Mrs. Pollock's compliments, sir, and will you please come round at
once?"
"What's the matter?"
"It's Mr. Pollock, sir. He's had a fit or somethink. He's lying in
the grate with all the blood gone to his apalex."
"Right," said Roger, stuffing his letters into his pockets. "I'll
come. When did it happen?"
"Just now, sir. He'd just gone into the studio, to begin his painting.
Then there came a crash. And the missus and I rush in, and there he
was in the grate, sir."
"Yes. Yes. Have you sent for a doctor?"
"No, sir. The missus said to go for you."
They galloped off in the cab together. Pollock with the bloody apalex
was a young artist whose studio was in Vincent Square. Roger was fond
of him. He had shared rooms with him until his marriage. Roger
wondered as he drove what was going to happen to the wife if Pollock
died. She was expecting a child. Pollock hadn't made much, poor
fellow.
"Very beautiful paintings, Mr. Pollock does, sir," said the lady with
enthusiasm. "Oh, he does them beautiful. But they're not like
ordinary pictures. I mean, they're not pretty, like ordinary pictures.
They're like old-fashioned pictures."
"Yes," said Roger. "Tell me. Is his big picture finished? The one
with the lady under a stained-glass window."
"No, sir. It's got a lot to do yet, sir. O I 'ope nothink's going to
'appen to 'im, sir."
"Now here we are," said Roger, as the cab slackened. "Now you drive to
the corner there. You'll see a brass plate with DR. COLLINSON on it at
the corner house. Tell him to get into the cab with you and come round
at once. Go on, now. See that he comes at once."
The door of the flat stood open. Roger entered hurriedly. Just inside
he ran against Pollock, who was hastening with a jug of water from the
bathroom.
"What is it, Pollock? Are you better?"
"I'm all right," said Pollock, feeling a bandaged head. "It's Kitty.
Not me. Come on in, quick."
"But I thought you were having apoplexy."
"That heavy frame full of Dürers came down. The corner caught me over
the eye while I was standing by the mantelpiece. It knocked me out.
Come on in. I believe Kitty's in a bad way."
Kitty lay on a couch. Her face was not like a human being's face.
Pollock, very white, sponged her brow with cold water.
"There, dear," he kept saying, "O God, O God, O God," those words, over
and over again.
Roger ran to the bedroom for pillows. There was a fire in the kitchen.
He poked it up, and put water to boil.
"Where's her hot-water bottle?" he called. Not getting any answer he
looked for it in one of the beds, which had not yet been made up. He
filled the bottle and made up the bed. "Now, Charles," he said, "we
must get her into bed. I wish your girl would bring the doctor."
Charles looked at him stupidly. "I believe she's dying, Roger," he
answered. "O God, I believe she's dying. I've never seen any one like
this. She used to be so pretty, Roger, before all this happened."
"Dying? Nonsense!" said Roger. He turned to the patient. "Kitty," he
said, "we're going to put you to bed. Lean on my arm."
The laughter stopped; but the limbs crazily made protest. He had never
seen anything like it. It was as though the charming graceful woman
had suddenly been filled by the spirit of a wild animal, which was
knocking itself to pieces against the corners in the strange house.
"We shall have to carry her, Charles," he said.
"No, no," said Charles. "She's dying."
The doctor, coming in abruptly, took the battle out of his hands.
"Come, come," he said. "Come, Mrs. Pollock. I was afraid that you
were ill. You'll feel a lot better when you get to bed. I want you to
rest."
He turned to Pollock. "Get her into bed," he said. "Have you got a
nurse?"
"No," said Pollock. "She can't come till July."
"Bessie here will do for the moment," said Roger.
Bessie and Pollock helped her to bed. The doctor and Roger talked
desultorily.
"No. It's nothing serious. So the frame came down and stunned him? I
see. And she came in and found him in the grate? Yes. A nasty shock.
Yes. Yes. Of course, it may be serious. It will be impossible to say
till I see her. If she had had other children I should say not. But--
Would you say that she is an excitable woman, given to these attacks?"
"No. She used to write a little. She is nervous; but not excitable.
Do you find that occupation has much influence on the capacity to
resist shock?"
"N-no," said the doctor. "Resistance depends on character. Occupation
only modifies character slightly. Life being what it is, one has to be
adaptable to survive."
Pollock entered, looking beaten.
"Will you come, doctor?" he said.
They went.
Presently Pollock returned alone. He sat down.
"It's It," he said despondently. "My picture's not done. I shan't
have a penny till July. We were counting on its not happening till
July. I've not got ten pounds."
"You mustn't worry about that," said Roger. "You must borrow from me.
Take this cheque. I'll endorse it. Give me yours for half of it.
Don't say you won't. Look here. You must. Now about a nurse. Look
here. Listen to me, Charles. You can't leave here. I'll see about a
nurse. I know the sort of woman Kitty would like. I'll settle all
that with the doctor. I'll send the best I can. You can't leave
Kitty, that's certain."
Pollock pulled himself together. The doctor returned. Roger took the
addresses of several women, and hurried off to interview them. No cab
was in sight. He wasted ten good minutes of nervous tension in trying
to find one. He found one at last. As he drove, the desire to be at
Ottalie's flat made him forget his friend. He thought only of the
chance of seeing Ottalie. He must waste no time. He wondered if he
would be too late, as in his dream. He would have to get there early,
very early. He prayed that the first nurse on his list might be a
suitable woman. The image of the suitable nurse, a big, calm, placid,
ox-eyed woman, formed in his mind. If he could find her at once he
would be in time. He was longing to be pounding past Whitehall, on the
way to Shaftesbury Avenue. A clock above a hosier's told him that it
was nine. No. That clock had stopped. Another clock, further on,
over a general store, said eight-fifteen. Yet another, eight-thirty.
His watch said eight-thirty-five; but his watch was fast.
Mrs. Perks, of 7 Denning Street, was out. Would he leave a message?
No, he would not leave a message. Was it Mrs. Ford? No, not Mrs.
Ford, another lady. Perhaps he would come back. He bade the cabman to
hurry. Mrs. Stanton, the next on the list, could not come. She was
expecting a call from another lady. Mrs. Sanders was out, and
"wouldn't be back all day, she said." The fourth, a brisk,
level-headed woman, busy at a sewing-machine in a neat room, would
come; but was he the husband, and could she be certain of her fees, and
what servants were kept?
He said that the fees were safe. He gave her two sovereigns on
account. Then she boggled at the single servant. She was not very
strong. She had never before been with any lady with only one servant.
She wasn't sure how she would get on. She had herself to consider.
"I'm sorry," said Roger. "You would have been the very woman. I'll go
on to the hospital."
"Perhaps I could manage," she said.
"Will you come?" he asked.
"Is it in a house or a flat?"
"It's in a top flat."
"I dare say I could manage," she said, still hesitating.
Roger, remembering suddenly that Pollock had a married sister, vowed
that another lady would be there a good deal in the daytime. She
weighed this fact as she stood by the door of the cupboard about to
take her hat.
"I don't think I should care to do it," she said suddenly. "I've not
been used to that class of work."
Turning at the door as he went out, he saw that she was watching him
with a faint smile. Only the hospital remained.
It took him a long way out of his way. It was twenty past nine when he
reached the hospital. Very soon it would be too late for Ottalie. His
heart sank. He believed in telepathy. He was thinking so fixedly on
Ottalie that he believed that she must sense his thought. "Ottalie,
Ottalie," he kept saying to himself. "Wait for me. Wait for me. I
shall come. I am coming as fast as I can. Can't you feel me hurrying
to you? Wait for me. Don't let me miss you." He discharged his
horse-cab, and engaged a motor-cab. Two minutes later he had engaged a
nurse. She was in the cab with him. They were whirling south.
"No," she was telling him. "I don't find much difference in my cases.
I don't generally see them after. Some are more interesting than
others. I like being with an interesting case. I don't mean to say a
serious case, and have either of them die, and that. I mean, you know,
out of the usual. That's why I like having to do with a first child."
She asked if there were any chance of her being too late. Roger, with
his heart full of Ottalie, could not tell her.
"I shouldn't like to be too late," she said. "I've never missed a case
yet. Never. I should be vexed if I were too late with this one. It's
a painter gentleman, I think you said it was?"
"Yes."
"I was with a painter's lady once before," she said. "He gave me a
little picture of myself."
They reached the flat. Pollock's sister had arrived. The doctor had
sent his son for her. Pollock was moodily breaking chalk upon a
drawing. The studio was foul with the smoke of cigarettes. "I can't
work," he said, lighting a cigarette from the fag-end of the last.
"Sit down." He flung away his chalk and sat down. "You've been
awfully good to me, Roger. You've got me out of a tragedy. You don't
know what it feels like."
"How is Kitty?"
"Pretty well, the doctor thinks. God knows what he would call bad.
This is all new to me. I don't want to go through this again. God
knows if she'll ever get through it. I shall shoot myself if anything
happens to Kitty."
Roger glanced at his watch. It was eighteen minutes to ten. He would
have to fly to find Ottalie. If she were in town at all, she would be
out by ten. He was sure of that. His motor-cab was waiting. He had a
quarter of an hour. But how could he leave Pollock in this state?
"Charles," he said, "I want you to come out with me. You've got on
shoes, I see. Take your hat. Kitty is with three capable women and a
doctor. You're only in the way, and making a fuss. Come with me.
I'll leave you at the National Gallery, while I see a friend. Then
we'll go to Bondini's, in Suffolk Street." He called gently to
Pollock's sister. "Mrs. Fane," he said, "I'm taking Charles to
Bondini's, in Suffolk Street."
"A very good thing," said Mrs. Fane. "A man is much better out of the
way in times like these."
They started. Just outside Dean's Yard Gate the cab broke down. Roger
got out. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing much, sir," said the man, already busy under the bonnet. "I
won't keep you a minute. Get in again, sir."
A hand touched Roger's arm. He turned. A total stranger, unmistakably
a journalist, was at his side. Roger shuddered. It was an interviewer
from _The Meridian_.
"Mr. Naldrett?" said the interviewer, taking a long shot. "I
recognised you by your portrait in _The Bibliophile_. A lucky meeting.
Perhaps you didn't get my telegram. I called round at your rooms just
now, but you were out. I want to ask you about your play _The Matron_.
It attracted considerable attention. Will you please tell me if you
have any particular ideas about tragedy?"
"Yes," said Roger; "I have. And I'm going to express them. I'm in a
great hurry; and I must refuse to be interviewed. Please thank your
editor from me for the honour he has done me; but tell him that I
cannot be interviewed."
"Certainly not, since you wish it," said the journalist. "But I would
like to ask you one thing. I am told your play is very morbid. Are
you morbid? You don't look very morbid."
"I am sorry," said Roger. "But I am not morbid."
"Mr. Naldrett," said the journalist, "are you going to write any more
tragedies like _The Roman Matron_?"
"I have one finished and one half finished," said Roger.
"I hope, Mr. Naldrett," said the journalist, "that you have written
them for ordinary people, as well as to please yourself. Writing to
please one's self is very artistic. But won't you consider Clapham,
and Balham, and Tooting? How will you please them with tragedies? A
good comedy is what people like. They want something to laugh at,
after their day's work. They're quite right. A good comedy's the
thing. Anybody can write a tragedy. What's the good of making people
gloomy? One wants the pleasant things of life, Mr. Naldrett, on the
stage. One goes to the theatre to be amused. There's enough tragedy
in real life without one getting more in the theatre. I suppose you've
studied Ibsen, Mr. Naldrett?"
"Have not you?"
"I don't believe in him. He may be a thinker and all that, but his
view of life is very morbid. He is a decadent. Of course, they say
his technique is very fine. But he has a mind like a sewer."
"Quite ready, sir," said the chauffeur, swinging himself into his seat.
"I must wish you good-bye, here," said Roger to the interviewer. "Mind
your coat. It's caught in the door. Mind you thank your editor." The
cab snorted off, honking. The interviewer gazed after it. "H'm," he
said, with that little cynical nod with which the unintelligent express
comprehension. "So that's the new drama, is it?"
The car reached Trafalgar Square without being stopped by the traffic.
St. Martin's clock stood at a few minutes to ten. Roger was in the
dismal mood of one who, having given up hope, is yet not certain. He
dropped Pollock at the Gallery, and then sped on, through Leicester
Square, up a little street full of restaurants and French book shops.
The car was stopped by traffic at the end of this street. Roger leapt
out, paid the man hurriedly, and ran into the Avenue. Within thirty
seconds, he was running up four flights of stairs to the door on which
he had knocked in his vision.
He peered through the glass in the door. As in his dream, something
lay in the passage beyond, some glove or handkerchief or crumpled
letter, with a shaft of sunlight upon it from an open door. No one
came to open to him; but Roger, knocking there, was conscious of the
presence of Ottalie by him and in him; he felt her brushing past him, a
rustling, breathing beauty, wearing a great hat, and those old pearl
earrings which trembled when she turned her head. But no Ottalie came
to the door, no Agatha, no old Mrs. Hicks the caretaker. The flat was
empty. After a couple of minutes of knocking, an old, untidy,
red-faced woman came out from the flat beneath, gasping for breath,
with her hand against her side.
"No use your knockin'," she said crustily. "They're gawn awy. They
i'n't 'ere. They're gawn awy."
"When did they go?" asked Roger, filled suddenly with leaping fire.
"They're gawn awy," repeated the old woman. "No use your knockin'.
They're gawn awy." She gasped for a moment, eyeing Roger with
suspicion and dislike; then turned to her home with the slow,
uncertain, fumbling movements of one whose heart is affected.
Roger was left alone on the stairs, aware that he had come too late.
The stairs were covered with a layer of sheet-lead. When the old woman
had shut her door, Roger grovelled down upon them, lighting match after
match, in the hope of finding footmarks which might tell him more.
Agatha had rather long feet, Ottalie's were small, but very well
proportioned. Mrs. Hicks's feet were disguised by the boots she wore.
A scrap of brown linoleum on the stair-head bore evident marks of a
man's hobnail boots which had waited there, perhaps for an answer.
There were other, non-committal marks, which might have been made by
anybody. On the whole, Roger fancied that a woman had made them, when
going out, with dry shoes, that morning. The problem now was, had she
left London for Ireland or for the Continent? With some misgivings, he
decided against Ireland. On former occasions she had always made her
stay in London after her visit to the Continent. If she had been
staying in London for more than one night, she would have written to
him; he would have seen her. As she had not written to him, she was
plainly going abroad, probably for a month or six weeks, after resting
for one night on the way. He would not see her till the middle of the
summer. That she had been in town, for at least one night, was plain
from what the woman had said. The thought that only a few hours ago
she had passed where he stood, came home to him like her touch upon
him. He sat down upon the stair-head till his disappointment was
mastered.
He took a last look through the door-glass at the crumpled thing,
glove, letter, or handkerchief, lying in the passage. Then he went out
into the avenue. The disappointment was very bitter to him. It was so
strong an emphasis upon the prophetic quality of his dream. Ottalie
had been there, waiting for him. He had come there too late. He had
missed her. The thought that he had missed her, suggested the cause.
He would have to go back to Pollock. He could not leave his friend
alone in that wild state of mind. A smaller man would perhaps have
felt resentment against the cause. Roger was without that littleness.
He saw only the tragic irony. He saw life being played upon a great
plan. He felt himself to be a fine piece set aside from his own
combination by one greater, stronger, more wonderful. It seemed very
wonderful that he had been kept (so unexpectedly) from Ottalie, by the
one thing in the world strong enough so to keep him. Nothing but a
matter of life and death could have kept him from her.
A lively desire sprang up in him to know whither she had gone. This
(he thought) he could find out, without difficulty, from a Bradshaw.
If she were going to Greece, she would go by one of two ways. For a
few minutes he had the hope that she might not yet have left London,
that he might catch her at the station. A Bradshaw showed him that
this was possible, since, going by one route, she would not have to
start till after seven in the evening. But, if she had chosen that
route, why should she have closed the flat so early? He saw no answer
to the question. Still, the uncertainty preyed upon him and flattered
him at the same time. She might be there at seven. He would go to the
station, in any case. Would it were seven! He had nine hours to live
through.
He walked hurriedly to the National Gallery. He remembered, when he
entered, that he had made no rendezvous with Pollock. He expected to
find him before the _Ariadne_. He was not there. He was not before
his other favourite, _The Return of Ulysses_. He was not in any of the
little rooms opening off the Italian rooms. A hurried walk round all
the foreign schools showed that Pollock was not in that part of the
Gallery at all. Very few people were in the Gallery at that hour.
There could be no mistake. He tried the English rooms, without
success. He described Pollock to the keepers of the lower stairs.
"No, sir. No one's gone down like that." Search in the basement, in
the little rooms where the Turner water-colours and Arundel prints are
kept, showed him that Pollock was not in the Gallery. He wished to be
quite certain. He made a swift beat of the French and Spanish rooms,
and thence, by the Dutch and Flemish schools, to the Italian rooms.
Here he doubled back upon his tracks, to avoid all possibility of
mistake. He was now certain Pollock was not in the Gallery. Very
probably he had never entered it. What had become of him?
He could hardly have gone to the Portrait Gallery, he thought. Yet it
was possible. Pollock was in an excited state of mind. He was hardly
in a fit state to be out alone. Roger felt anxious. He hurried to the
Portrait Gallery. After a long search, upstairs and downstairs, in
those avenues of painted eyes, he decided that Pollock was not there,
either. He must have gone to Bondini's. Suffolk Street was only a
quarter of a mile away. Roger hurried on to look for him at Bondini's.
But no. He was not at Bondini's. Where, then, could he be?
By this time, Roger was alarmed for his friend. He thought that
something must have happened to Kitty. He took a cab to Vincent Square
to make sure. Pollock let him in. He was smoking a cigarette. His
bandage gave him a one-eyed look, infinitely depressing.
"I'm sorry, Roger," he said; "I couldn't keep away from Kitty. She's
quieter, but no better. O God, Roger, I don't know how men can be
unkind to women. I don't know what I shall do without her, if anything
happens to her."
"You must not lose heart, like this," Roger said. "I understand, very
well, what you are feeling. But you ought not to expect evil in this
way. Very, very few cases go wrong, now. I was afraid that something
had happened to you. Will you come to my rooms for a game of chess?
Then we could lunch together, and go on, perhaps, to Henderson's. He
has finished the picture he was working on."
Pollock was not to be tempted. He would not leave Kitty. After
talking with him for nearly an hour, Roger left him, promising to come
back before long, to enquire.
When he got outside, into the street, with no definite, immediate
object to occupy his mind, he was assailed by the memories of his
succession of mishaps. He could not say that one of them hurt more
than another. The loss of Ottalie, following so swiftly on the dream,
made him miserable. The destruction of his play by the critics made
him feel not exactly guilty, but unclean, as though the rabble had spat
upon him. He felt "unclean," in the Levitical sense. He had some
hesitation in going to mix with his fellows.
He kept saying to himself that if he were not very careful, the world
would be flooding into his mind, trampling its garden to mud. It was
his duty to beat back the world before it fouled his inner vision. If
he were not very careful he would find that his next work would be
tainted with some feverish animosity, some personal bitterness, or
weakness of contempt. It was his duty as a man and as an artist to
prevent that, so that his mind might be as a hedged garden full of
flowers, or as a clear, unflawed mirror, reflecting only perfect
images. The events of the night before had broken in his barriers. He
felt that his old theory, laid aside long before, when he first felt
the fascination of modern artistic methods, was true, after all; that
the right pursuit of the artist was the practice of Christianity. He
found in the National Gallery, in the battle picture of Uccello, in the
nobleness of that young knight, riding calmly among the spears, a
healing image of the artist. He lingered before that divine young man
with the fair hair until one o'clock. He passed the afternoon at a
table in the British Museum, reading all that he could find about
Ottalie. There was her name in full in the Irish Landed Gentry. There
were the names of all her relatives, and the names of their houses. It
was an absurd thing to read these entries, but the names were all
stimulants to memory. He knew these people and places. They took
vivid shape in his mind as he read them. He had read them before, more
than once, when the craving for her had been bitter in the past. He
knew the names of her forebears unto the third and fourth generation.
A volume of _Who's Who_ gave him details of her living relatives. A
married uncle's recreations were "shooting and hunting." A maiden aunt
had published _Songs of Quiet Life_, in 1902. Her older brother,
Leslie Fawcett, had published a novel, _One Summer_, in 1891. Both
these volumes lay beside him. He read them again, for the tenth time.
Both were very short works; and both, he felt, helped him to understand
Ottalie. Neither work was profound; but both came from a sweet and
noble nature, at once charming and firm. There were passages in the
songs which were like Ottalie's inner nature speaking. In the novel,
in the chapter on a girl, he thought that he recognised Ottalie as she
must have been long ago.
The volume of the Landed Gentry gave him pity for the historian who
would come a century hence, to grub up facts for his history. Ottalie,
dear, breathing, beautiful woman, witty, and lovely-haired, and noble
like a lady in a poem, would be to such a one "3rd dau.," or, perhaps,
mere "issue."
At five o'clock, he put away his books. He went to drink tea at a
dairy, in High Holborn. He entered the place with some misgivings, for
his two emotions made the world distasteful to him. The memory of the
night before made him feel that he had been whipped in public. The
thought of Ottalie made him feel that the real world was in his brain.
He shrank from meeting anybody known to him. That old feeling of
"uncleanness" came strongly over him. The stuffy unquiet of the Museum
had at least been filled by preoccupied, selfish people. Here in the
tea-shop, everybody stared. All the little uncomfortable tables were
peopled by pairs of eyes. He felt that a woman giggled, that a young
man nudged his fellow. Stepping back to let a waitress pass, he
knocked over a chair. The place was cramped; he felt stupidly awkward
and uncomfortable. He blushed as he picked up the chair. Everybody
stared. It seemed to him that they were saying, "That is Mr. Naldrett,
the author of the piece which was booed off last night. They say it's
very immoral. Millie was there. She said it was a silly lot of
old-fashioned stuff. What funny eyes he's got. And look at the way he
puts his feet."
He sat down in a corner, from which he could survey the room. A paper
lay upon the table; he picked it up abstractedly. It was a copy of
_The Post Meridian_. Somebody had rested butter upon the upper part of
it. He glanced at it for an instant, just long enough to see a leading
article below the grease mark. "Drama and Decency," ran the scarehead.
It went on to say that the London public had once again shown its
unerring sense of the fitness of things over Mr. Naldrett's play. He
dropped the paper to one side, and wiped the hand which had touched it.
He felt beaten to bay. He stared forward at the house so fiercely that
a timid lady, of middle age and ill-health, possibly as beaten as
himself, turned from the chair opposite before she sat down. There
were no friends of his there, except a red-haired, fierce little poet,
who sat close by, reading and eating cake. The yellow back of _Les
Fleurs du Mal_ was propped against his teapot. He bit so fiercely that
his beard wagged at each bite. Something of the fierceness and passion
of the _Femmes Damnées_, or of _le vin de l'Assassin_, was wreaked upon
the cake. There came a muttering among the bites. The man was almost
reading aloud. A memory of Baudelaire came to Roger, a few grand
melancholy lines:--
"La servante au grand coeur dont vous étiez jalouse,
Et qui dort sans sommeil sous une humble pelouse,
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs.
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres,
Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats."
He wondered if it would be like that. A waitress brought him tea and
toast. He poured a little tea into his cup, thinking of a man now
dead, who had drunk tea there with him a year ago. One was very
callous about the dead. He wondered if the dead were callous about the
living, or whether they had of _grandes douleurs_, as the poet thought.
He felt that he would not mind being dead, but for Ottalie. He
wondered whether Ottalie had read the papers. He buttered some toast
and laid it to one side of his plate, a sort of burnt offering to the
dead. A line on the bill of fare caught his eye. "Pan-Bos. Our new
Health Bread. Per Portion, 2d." His tired mind turned it backwards,
".d2 ,noitroP reP daerB." "I am going mad," he said to himself.
"Shall I go to Ireland to-night?"
Something warned him that if he went to Ireland, Ottalie would not be
there. With Ottalie away, it would be intolerable. There would be her
house, up on the hills, and all those sycamores, like ghosts in the
twilight, ghosts of old men brooding on her beauty, like the old men in
Troy when Helen passed. No. He could not bear Ireland with her away.
He thought of the boat train with regret for the old jolly jaunts. The
guard with a Scotch accent, the carriage in front which went on to
Dundee, the sound of the beautiful Irish voice ("voce assai più che la
nostra viva"), and then the hiring of rug and pillow, knowing that one
would wake in Scotland, among hills, running water, a "stately speech,"
and pure air. It would not be wise to go to Ireland. If he went now,
with Ottalie away, he might not be able to go later, when she would be
there. It would be nothing without her. Nothing but lonely reading,
writing, walking, and swimming. It would be better not to go. Here
the poet gulped his cake, rose, and advanced on Roger.
"How d'you do?" he said, speaking rapidly, as though his words were
playing tag. "I've just been talking to Collins about you. He's been
telling me about your play. I hear you had a row, or something."
"Yes. There was a row."
"Collins has been going for you in _The Daystar_. He says you haven't
read Aristotle, or something. Have you seen his article?"
"No. I haven't seen it."
"Oh, you ought to read it. Parts of it are very witty. It would cheer
you up."
"What does he say?"
"He says that-- Oh, you know what Collins says. He says that you-- I
believe I've got it on me. I cut it out. Where did I put it?"
"Never mind. I'm not interested in Collins."
"Aren't you? He's very good. I suppose your play'll be produced again
later?"
"I think not."
He got rid of the poet, paid his bill, and walked out. Outside he ran
into Hollins, the critic of _The Week_. He would have avoided Hollins,
but Hollins stopped him.
"Ah, Naldrett," he said. "I've just been going for you in _The Week_.
What do you mean by that third act? Really. It really was--"
It gave Roger a kind of awe to think that this man had been damning
other people's acts before he was born.
"What was wrong with the third act? You didn't hear it."
"You must read M. Capus," said Hollins, passing on. "I shall go for
you until you do."
A newsboy, with a voice like a bird of doom, flying in the night, held
a coloured bill. "Drama and Decency," ran the big letters. Another,
offering a copy, shewed, as allurement, "_'ceful Fracas_." The whole
town seemed angry with him. He crossed into Seven Dials, and along to
St. Martin's Lane, where he knew of a quiet reading-room. Here he hid.