though fearing to be attacked behind, said:
“We don’t trouble about such things; we’re here to administer the system
as we find it. We don’t use these, except when it’s necessary.”
“Have you not begged the question?”
He said with dignity: “That is not my business,” laying his hand upon
the triangles. And as he did so there seemed to spring up once more that
solid phalanx, man linked to man, all with the same schoolmaster’s
eyes--a living pyramid, turned to stone by the force of its own shape.
And a sound came forth from them as though they were assenting, but it
was only the scraping of the triangles, as the old warder pushed them a
little farther back.
He went to the door and opened it; and going out in answer to this
invitation, I looked back at the jewels. They hung in perfect
brightness, round about the triangles; and suddenly, with that same
dreadful, silent, swift obsequiousness, the man in yellow clothing
marked with arrows, with the yellow face, and the yellow leather in his
hand, passed us and went in. The iron door closed on him with a clang;
but before it closed, I saw him at work already, polishing those shining
jewels.
In dreams I have seen him since, alone with those emblems of a perfect
order, working without sound! And in dreams too, guiding me away, I see
the old warder with his regular, grave face, and his eyes mourning for
something he has lost.
THE MOTHER
XV
THE MOTHER
She walked as though pressed for time, slipping like a shadow along the
railings of the houses. With her skimpy figure, in its shabby, wispy
black, she hardly looked as if she had borne six sons. She had beneath
her arm a little bundle which she always carried to and fro from the
houses where she worked. Her face, with tired brown eyes, and hair as
black and fine as silk under a black sailor hat, was skimpy too; creased
and angled like her figure, it seemed to deny that life had ever left
her strength for bearing children.
Though not yet nine o’clock, she had already done the work of her two
rooms, lighted the fire, washed the youngest boys, given the four at
home their breakfast, swept, made one bed--in the other her husband was
still lying--and to that husband she had served his tea. She had cut
the mid-day ration of the two eldest boys, and, wrapping it in paper,
had placed it on the window-sill in readiness for them to take to
school; had portioned out the firing for the day, given the eldest boy
the pence to buy the daily screws of tea and sugar, washed some ragged
cloths, mended a little pair of trousers, put on her hat without
consulting the cracked looking-glass, and hurried forth. And, since a
penny was important to her, she had walked.
Having taken off the black straw hat, and changed the black and scanty
dress for a blue linen frock which nearly hid her broken boots, worn to
the thickness of brown paper, she was deemed ready to begin her labours.
And while on her knees she scrubbed and polished, a certain sense of
pleasurable rest would come to her; gazing into the depths of brass that
she had made to shine, she thought of nothing. On some mornings she
worked a little stiffly. This was when her husband, returning from late
discussion at his public-house, had struck her with his belt, to show
he was her master. On such mornings she was longer polishing the brass,
often forced to clean it twice, having put her eyes too close to it. And
she would think, over and over again: “He didn’t ought to hit me, he
didn’t ought to treat me like he does, and me the mother of his
children.” Thus far her thoughts would carry her, but--she was a simple
soul--they carried her no further; nor did it ever penetrate her mind
that her sons, born to and brought up by a drunken father, would some
day carry on the glorious traditions of his life. But soon, because
these things had happened to her many times, she would stop brooding,
and over the mirroring brass, that gave a queer breadth and roundness to
her face, would once more think of nothing.
Down in the kitchen, where she had her dinner, she never mentioned such
unpleasant incidents, fearing they might harm her reputation. She
talked, in fact, but little, not having much to talk of that would do
her good in a social way of speaking. But every now and then something
would break within her, and she would pour out a monotonous epic on her
sons; as though, in spite of everything, she felt that to have borne
them was a credit. In consequence of these outpourings, which came not
less than once a week, it was usual to regard her as an incorrigible
talker.
In the afternoon, though she no longer polished brass, she polished
other things. She left at six o’clock. Then, in the dusk, once more
dressed in black, she slipped along the railings of the houses, still
hurrying, of course, and more like a shadow even than before. In one of
her reddened hands--hands of which, holding them out before some
fellow-woman whose soft, ringed fingers she admired, she would say,
apologetically: “I’ve such dreadful ’ands, m’m”--in one of those red,
roughened hands she grasped some little extra wrapped in newspaper, in
the other the money she had earned.
She would cross the High Street, and, diving down a dim and narrow
alley, make a purchase at a shop, and hurry on. Entering her door, she
would pause, trying to tell by listening whether her husband had
returned; this she always did, although in fact it made no difference to
her going up, since in any case her sons were there, waiting to be fed.
Silently passing up the narrow stairs, whose noticeable odour she never
noticed, she would enter the front room. Here her four sons, their eyes
fixed on the door, would be sitting or sprawling on the bed, teasing
each other angrily, like young birds waiting for a meal. Taking off her
hat, she would sit down to rest. But seeing her thus sitting, doing
nothing, her sons would try to rouse her to activity, pulling her by the
sleeve, jogging her chair, and the youngest, perhaps, kissing her with
his little dirty mouth. Rising, she would begin to peel potatoes. She
peeled them fast, working the upturned knife-blade close to her thin
bosom, and round her the boys, affecting not to care now that they saw
her working, resumed their restless teasing of each other, casting
impatient glances at the busy knife-blade, the falling yellow slips of
peel. At short intervals, when she was not too deadly tired, she would
snap at them a little, but her power of speech was limited; the things
she said had all been said before--her sons did not attend to them too
much. Yet, they were good to her according to their lights, preferring
her company to their father’s.
Presently her knife would stay suspended, the voices of her sons would
cease; the footsteps of their father had been heard.
He would come in, in an old green overcoat, a muffler, and heavy boots;
on his heavy face the look that says: My ways are what my life has made
them--the proper ways for me to go! And according to his mood, sometimes
jocular and sometimes sullen, there would be talk or silence, and
through those silences the clipping of the knife at the potatoes would
be heard, the sounds of cooking, and of washing, and of the making up
of beds, and latest of all, the tiny sound of stitching.
But on Saturdays it would be different, for on Saturdays her man would
not return until he was compelled by the closing of his public-house. On
these evenings her heart would begin to beat at eight o’clock, and it
would go on beating louder and louder as the hours went by, till, as she
would have expressed it, she felt “fit to drop.” And yet, all those
hours, while her sons were sleeping, there was at work a strange poison
in her soul, a dull fever of revolt, in preparation for the blows that
would be given her if he came in drunk--a sort of perverse spirit,
vouchsafed by Providence, bringing those blows nearer, almost inviting
them, yet keeping her alive beneath them. At the midnight striking of
the nearest clock her heart would give a sickening leap under the
malodorous and blackened quilt, and she would lie, trying to pretend to
sleep. So old was that device, so useless--yet she never gave it up, for
her brain was not a fertile one. Soon after would begin his footsteps,
slow, wavering, coming up and up, with pauses, with mutterings, with now
and then a heavy stumble. Her breath would come in gasps, and her eyes,
just opening, would glue themselves to where the door showed dimly by
the sputtering candlelight. Slowly that door would open, and he would
enter. Through her slits of eyes she would look at him as he stood
swaying there. And suddenly the angry thought that there he was--the sot
that had drunken up her earnings and his own--would give her a dull
buzzing in her head; and all fear left her. Not though he might tear
away the blackened quilt, pull her out of bed, and shower blows, was
there anything within her but a dull, shrill, waspish anger, shooting
from her tongue and eyes. Only when he had finished, and rolled on to
the bed to sleep like a dead man, did she feel the pains that he had
given her. Then, dragging her feet slowly, she would creep back beneath
the quilt, and cover up her face.
But some Saturdays he would come back before the clock had struck
twelve; and, standing by the door, with the light falling on his face,
would look at her, swaying but slightly with his lower lip hanging very
loose. Over his face, as he stood there, would spread a leering smile,
and he would call her by her name.
Then in her dingy bed she would know that she still had work to do. And
with no smile on her tired face, no joy in her thin body, no thought of
anything in her starved brain, not even of the countless children she
had borne in her dim alleys to this half-drunken man, nor of the
countless children she had still to bear--she would lie waiting.
COMFORT
XVI
COMFORT
They lived in a flat on the fifth floor, facing a park on one side, and,
on the other, through the branches of an elm tree, another block of
flats as lofty as their own. It was very pleasant living up so high,
where they were not disturbed by noises, scents, or the sight of other
people--except such people as themselves. For, quite unconsciously, they
had long found out that it was best not to be obliged to see, or hear,
or smell anything that made them feel uncomfortable. In this respect
they were not remarkable; nor was their adoption of such an attitude to
life unnatural. So will little Arctic animals grow fur that is very
thick and white, or pigeons have heads so small and breast feathers so
absurdly thick that sportsmen in despair have been known to shoot them
in the tail. They were indeed, in some respects not unlike pigeons, a
well-covered and personable couple. In one respect they differed from
these birds--not having wings, they never soared. But they were kindly
folk, good to each other, very healthy, doing their duty in the station
to which they had been called, and their three children, a boy and two
little daughters, were everything that could be wished for. And had the
world been made up entirely of themselves, their like, and progeny, it
would--one felt--have been Utopia.
At eight o’clock each morning, lying in their beds with a little pot of
tea between them, they read their letters, selecting first--by that
mysterious instinct which makes men keep what is best until the
end--those which looked as if they indicated the existence of another
side of life. Having glanced at these, they would remark that
Such-and-such seemed a deserving sort of charity; that So-and-so, they
were afraid, was hopeless; and it was only yesterday that this
subscription had been paid. These evidences of an outer world were not
too numerous; for, living in a flat, they had not the worry of rates,
with their perpetual reminder of social duties, even to the education of
other people’s children; the hall porter, too, would not let beggars use
the lift; and they had set their faces against belonging to societies,
of which they felt that there were far too many. They would pass on from
letters such as these to read how their boy at school was “well and
happy”; how Lady Bugloss would be so glad if they would dine on such a
day; and of the truly awful weather Netta had experienced in the south
of France.
Having dispersed, he to the bathroom, she to see if the children had
slept well, they would meet again at breakfast, and divide the
newspaper. They took a journal which, having studied the art of making
people comfortable, when compelled to notice things that had been
happening in a cosmic, not a classic sort of way, did so in a manner to
inspire a certain confidence, as who should say: “We, as an organ of
free thought and speech, invite you, gentle reader, to observe these
little matters with your usual classic eye. That they are always there,
we know; but as with meat, the well-done is well-done, and the
under-done is under-done--for one to lie too closely by the other would
be subversive of the natural order of the joint. This is why, although
we print this matter, we print it in a way that will enable you to read
it in a classic, not a cosmic, spirit.”
Having run their eyes over such pieces of intelligence, they turned to
things of more immediate interest, the speeches of an Opposition
statesman, which showed the man was probably a knave, and certainly a
fool; the advertisements of motorcars, for they were seriously thinking
of buying one; and a column on that international subject, the cricket
match between Australia and the Mother Country. The reviews of books and
plays they also read, noting carefully such as promised well, and those
that were likely to make them feel uncomfortable. “I think we might go
to that, dear; it seems nice,” she would say; and he would answer: “Yes!
And look here, don’t put this novel on the list, I’m not going to read
that.” Then they would sit silent once again, holding the journal’s
pages up before their breasts, as though sheltering their hearts. If, by
any chance the journal recommended books which, when read, gave them
pain--causing them to see that the world held people who were short of
comfort--they were more grieved than angry, for some little time not
speaking much, then suddenly asseverating that they did not see the use
of making yourself miserable over dismal matters; it was sad, but
everybody had their troubles, and if one looked into things, one almost
always found that the sufferings of others were really their own fault.
But their journal seldom failed them, and they seldom failed their
journal; and whether they had made it what it was, or it had made them
what they were, was one of those things no man knows.
They sat at right angles at the breakfast table, and when they glanced
up at each other’s cheeks their looks were kindly and affectionate. “You
are a comfort to me, my dear, and I am a comfort to you,” those glances
said.
Her cheek, in fact, was firm, and round, and fresh, and its strong
cheekbone mounted almost to the little dark niche of her grey eye. Her
hair, which had a sheen as though the sun were always falling on it,
seemed to caress the top curve of her clean pink ear. There was just the
suspicion of a chin beneath her rounded jaw. His cheek was not so strong
and moulded; it was flat, and coloured reddish brown, with a small patch
of special shaving just below the side growth of his hair, clipped close
in to the top lobe of the ear. The bristly wing of his moustache showed
sandy-brown above the corner of his lips, whose fullness was compressed.
About that sideview of his face there was the faint suggestion that his
appetites might some day get the better of his comfort.
Having finished breakfast they would separate; he to his vocation, she
to her shopping and her calls. Their pursuit of these was marked by a
direct and grave simplicity, a sort of genius for deciding what they
should avoid, a real knowledge of what they wanted, and a certain power
of getting it. They met again at dinner, and would recount all they had
done throughout that busy day: What risks he had taken at Lloyd’s, where
he was an underwriter; how she had ordered a skirt, been to a
picture-gallery, and seen a royal personage; how he had looked in at
Tattersall’s about the boy’s pony for the holidays; how she had
interviewed three cooks without result. It was a pleasant thing to hear
that talk, with its comfortable, home-like flavour, and its reliance on
a real sympathy and understanding of each other.
Every now and then they would come home indignant or distressed, having
seen a lost dog, or a horse dead from heat or overwork. They were
peculiarly affected by the sufferings of animals; and covering her pink
ears, she would cry: “Oh, Dick! how horrible!” or he would say: “Damn!
don’t rub it in, old girl!” If they had seen any human being in
distress, they rarely mentioned, or indeed remembered it, partly because
it was such a common sight, partly because their instincts reasoned
thus: “If I once begin to see what is happening before my eyes all day
and every day, I shall either feel uncomfortable and be compelled to
give time and sympathy and money, and do harm into the bargain,
destroying people’s independence; or I shall become cynical, which is
repulsive. But, if I stay in my own garden--as it were--and never look
outside, I shall not see what is happening, and if I do not see, it will
be as if there were nothing there to see!” Deeper than this, no doubt,
they had an instinctive knowledge that they were the fittest persons in
the State. They did not follow out this feeling in terms of reasoning,
but they dimly understood that it was because their fathers,
themselves, and children, had all lived in comfort, and that if they
once began diminishing that comfort they would become nervous, and
deteriorate. This deep instinct, for which Nature was responsible, made
them feel that it was no real use to concern themselves with anything
that did not help to preserve their comfort, and the comfort of all such
as they were likely to be breeding from, to a degree that would ensure
their nerves and their perceptions being coated, so that they literally
_could_ not see. It made them feel--with a splendid subtlety which kept
them quite unconscious--that this was their duty to Nature, to
themselves, and to the State.
Seated at dinner, they were more than ever like two pigeons, when those
comfortable home-like birds are seen close together on a lawn, looking
at each other between the movements of their necks towards the food
before them. And suddenly, pausing with sweetbread on his fork, he would
fix his round light eyes on the bowl of flowers in front of him, and
say: “I saw Helen to-day, looking as thin as a lath; she simply works
herself to death down there!”
When they had finished eating they would go down-stairs, and, summoning
a cab, be driven to the play. On the way, they looked straight before
them, digesting their food. In the streets the lamplight whitened the
wet pavements, and the wind blew impartially on starved faces, and faces
like their own. Without turning to him, she would murmur: “I can’t make
up my mind, dear, whether to get the children’s summer suits at once, or
wait till after Easter.” When he had answered, there would again be
silence. And as the cab turned into a by-street, some woman, with a
shawl over her head and a baby in her arms, would pass before the
horse’s nose, and, turning her deathly face, mutter an imprecation.
Throwing out the end of his cigar, he would say quietly: “Look here, if
we’re not going abroad this year, it’s time I looked out for a fishing
up in Skye.” Then, recovering the main thoroughfare, they would reach
their destination.
The theatre had for them a strange attraction. They experienced beneath
its roof a peculiar sense of rest, like some man-at-arms would feel in
the old days when, putting off his armour, he stretched his feet out in
the evening to the fire. It was a double process that produced in them
this feeling of repose. They must have had a dim suspicion that they had
been going about all day in armour; here, and here alone, they would be
safe against gaunt realities, and naked truths; nothing here could
assail their comfort, since the commercial value of the piece depended
on its pleasing them. Everything would therefore be presented in a
classic--not a cosmic--spirit, suitable to people of their status. But
this was only half the process which wrought in them the sense of ease.
For, seated side by side, their attentive eyes fixed on the stage, the
thrill of “seeing life” would come; and this “life”--that was so far
removed from life--seemed to bring to them a blessed absolution from
all need to look on it in other forms.
They would come out, subtly inspired, secretly strengthened. And whether
the play had made them what they were, or they had made the play, was
another of those things that no man knows. Their spiritual exaltation
would take them to their mansions, and elevate them till they reached
their floor.
But when--seldom, luckily--their journal was at fault, and they found
themselves confronted with a play subversive of their comfort, their
faces, at first attentive, would grow a little puzzled, then hurt, and
lastly angry; and they would turn to each other, as though by exchanging
anger they could minimize the harm that they were suffering. She would
say in a loud whisper: “I think it’s a perfectly disgusting play!” and
he would answer: “So dull--that’s what I complain of!”
After a play like this they talked a good deal in the cab on the way
home, of anything except the play, as though sending it to Coventry;
but every now and then a queer silence would fall between them. He would
break it by clucking his tongue against his palate, remarking: “Confound
that beastly play!” And she, with her arms folded on her breast, would
give herself a little hug of comfort. They felt how unfairly this play
had taken them to see it.
On evenings such as this, before going to their room, they would steal
into the nursery--she in advance, he following, as if it were queer of
him--and, standing side by side, watch their little daughters sleeping.
The pallid radiance of the nightlight fell on the little beds, and on
those small forms so confidently quiet; it fell too, on their own
watching faces, and showed the faintly smiling look about her lips, over
the feathered collar of her cloak; showed his face, above the whiteness
of his shirt-front, ruddy, almost shining, craning forward with a little
puzzled grin, which seemed to say: “They’re rather sweet; how the devil
did I come to have them?”
So, often, must two pigeons have stood, looking at their round, soft,
grey-white young! They would touch each other’s arms, and point out a
tiny hand crumpled together on the pillow, or a little mouth pouting at
sleep, and steal away on tiptoe.
In their own room, standing a minute at the window, they inhaled the
fresh night air, with a reviving sense of comfort. Out there, the
moonlight silvered the ragged branches of the elm tree, the dark block
of mansions opposite--what else it silvered in the town, they
fortunately could not see!
A CHILD
XVII
A CHILD
In Kensington Gardens, that February day, it was very still. Trees,
stripped of every leaf, raised their bare clean twigs towards a sky so
grey and so unstirring that there might never have been wind or sun. And
on those branches pigeons sat, silent, as though they understood that
there was no new life as yet; they seemed waiting, loth to spread their
wings lest they should miss the coming of the Spring.
Down in the grass the tiniest green flames were burning, a sign of the
fire of flowers that would leap up if the sun would feed them.
And on a seat there sat a child.