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Title: A marrying man
Author: G. B. Stern
Release date: October 18, 2024 [eBook #74598]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Nisbet & Co
Credits: MWS, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MARRYING MAN ***
A MARRYING MAN
BY G. B. STERN
London
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET, W.
_First Published in 1918_
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
PANTOMIME
SEE-SAW
TWOS AND THREES
GRAND CHAIN
TO
OLIVE WADSLEY
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
PART II
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
PART III
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
PART IV
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
A MARRYING MAN
PART I
CHAPTER I
Kathleen Morrison, on her return to London, was not prepared for the
empty, echoing house, the loud thud of her footsteps on the uncarpeted
stairs, the ghostly appearance of the linen-shrouded furniture. Her
brother and sister-in-law, with whom she made her home, usually
abandoned the seaside towards the end of August; these were already the
first days of September.
"Not before Tuesday week, Miss Kathleen," the one resentful
housemaid-in-charge answered her enquiries; "the Missus said she'd
written to you."
She had. Many times. But Kathleen, having once sent an assurance of her
safety, together with a brief explanation of the circumstances of her
escapade, very carefully refrained from opening the letters that came
in reply. Not that family disapproval would for an instant have turned
her from a decision to remain at least a month in Alpenruh; but the
month itself was so strangely and perfectly apart from the sounding
discordances of before and after, that she refused to mar its harmony
by the possibility of a single jarring note. So the envelopes addressed
in Edward's handwriting, and in Nelly's handwriting, accumulated in
a neat little pile. Doubtless they contained "home-truths." Kathleen
promised herself a careful perusal of these on the ensuing New Year's
Eve, when from previous experience she anticipated a fit of depression
so intense that nothing could possibly serve to augment it. Meanwhile,
she was glad to find that Edward and Nelly, and Nelly's father, old Mr.
Jeyne, and Nelly's two children, Muriel and Nicolas, and Nelly's nurse,
and Nelly's cook, were still absent from the house in North Kensington.
The house was high and narrow-breasted, situated in a neighbourhood
which, whatever the generation, had been fashionable with the
generation before, so that its inhabitants mainly consisted of ghosts
and grumblers. The grumblers were of the kind who religiously take
their five weeks' holiday in the summer, and are firmly imbued with
the immorality of leaving their homes at any other period of the year.
Therefore North Kensington was now a deserted wilderness of drawn
blinds and white-smocked house-painters, of spectral scaffoldings
and forlornly prowling cats. The milkman's was an eerie cry at dawn;
and at eve the German band blared mournfully to unresponsive areas.
Kathleen trod softly from one empty room to another; was given her
meals at eccentric hours, in unfamiliar parts of the house; shivered
a little as she locked her front door at nights--how stiff they were,
those bolts! and with what startling clangour they shot at last into
their sockets!--and was wonderfully at peace. With a present entirely
negative, with a future carefully unglanced at, she was free amidst
the prevailing spells of silence to yield herself entirely to a memory
still so fresh and near that it asked to be re-lived, caressed and
handled, laid to sleep for the pleasure of bidding it wake again. Idly
she wondered why it was that she did not miss Gareth more poignantly;
why she was content to believe their idyll wholly a gift of thirty-one
days which haphazard had capriciously flung them, that hot oily
afternoon, on the wharf at Folkestone....
In company with Fräulein Gerhardt and Mademoiselle Lefranc, she had
been shepherding a party of seven schoolgirls on an instructive trip
to Switzerland. Gareth Albert Temple was one of the Society of Young
Botanists, touring the Alps in search of specimens. And they had both
missed the boat....
Thereafter, a headlong chase together across Europe in quest of their
separate parties. A growing intimacy--"You must let me be of any
assistance I can on your journey," the boy had remarked in his gentle
courtly manner. He was not more than twenty-four; and good to look
upon, with his wavy black hair and pleading dark eyes; eyes that were
the only contradiction in a face compounded of strong curves, firm
jaw and determined mouth and outjutting squarely-formed eyebrows....
Kathleen smiled tenderly enough at memory of his straight young
comeliness. And was it incapacity or merely laziness on his part which
had caused all the practical management of that fantastic continental
scamper to lapse into her hands? management of times and trains and
meals and foreign money and luggage at the Customs?... But she was
accustomed to leadership, and she found a rare sweetness in Gareth's
admiration of her competence; admiration which he mingled with an
old-world romantic deference to a certain element of innocent and
unprotected maidenhood which his upbringing seemed to take for granted
even in a schoolmistress in her twenty-seventh year.
Twenty-seven!--and this was still the period of the late
eighteen-nineties, when girlhood ended abruptly at thirty; when
middle-age was supposed to begin at forty; and the intervening years
were for the unmarried to learn their lesson of quiet resignation.
Twenty-seven!--Kathleen was clutching hot-fingered at the moments, lest
she should be left with empty hands. And the days ate at the years ...
and she was going abroad in the company of nine females and the spirit
of discontent.
... Gradually, a fretful eagerness to join up with her party, merged
into a mischievous eagerness to avoid doing so; to prolong a little
while, though by cheating and stealth, the charm of travelling a woman
with a man by her side, as nature and tradition demanded. Folly,
perhaps; but the sort of folly of which a girl--a very young and silly
girl--would be capable.... As proof of her own capacity for such youth
and folly, Kathleen welcomed the impulse; encouraged it. And then,
just as it seemed impossible to stave off any longer the encounter
with duty and discipline, fate had aided her with a genuine accident
by which they had been shoved late on a rain-misted evening into the
wrong train at the little Alpine station, and had been carried off to
Alpenruh, instead of to Lauterbrunnen in the opposite direction; and
had been forced to spend the night at the gold-brown châlet hotel.
And the next morning was washed in vivid blue and sunshine; the snowy
mountain peaks called for repetition of the thunderous saga of their
names: Schreckhorn, Faulhorn, Wetterhorn, Finsteraarhorn!... And the
tinkle of ascending cowbells among the mountains, duetted with the
musical plash of cascade and rivulet; the mules champed and flicked
their tails in the winding village street; the guides sat comfortably
astride of the wall, and surveyed the round rickety tables outside the
cafés, the bundles of walking-sticks and chamois-heads so prodigally
displayed for sale; the pines wafted their resinous fragrance through
the green-shuttered windows of the hotel; and down the polished
wooden stairs, Gareth was awaiting her, and clear yellow honey for
breakfast.... It was not a morning even to think of Fräulein Gerhardt
and Mademoiselle Lefranc, and Elsie and Gwendolen and Kitty and
Beatrice and Dora and Flo and Mary, doubtless angrily bewildered at
this desertion of the English history and arithmetic teacher.
But Gareth had pleaded: "Let us stay here--just for to-day...."
Presently he confessed that on the latter part of their journey he had
been taking the utmost care to avoid catching up with the Society of
Young Botanists. Once he had even caught sight of them....
"I couldn't bear to end our good time. Can you forgive me for dragging
you into this?"
Kathleen smiled--but made no counter confession. She let him think
he was responsible for their daring escapade, because she was
twenty-seven, and he twenty-four, and it gave him a fearful pleasure to
think so.
Thus the affair had begun. Was she wrong in letting it take its course?
Plenty of leisure now to regret, if regret were to be her portion.
No.... She was glad they had lingered on at Alpenruh; even when the
brilliant fever of her youth at its zenith, the flame of reds and
browns which she had inherited from an Indian grandmother, from whom
had also been bequeathed her noiseless walk and the streak of buried
fierceness in her nature, even when all this had rushed Gareth past all
dreaming chivalry to a passion of strictly chivalrous adoration--even
then she did not regret, in retrospect, having provided herself with
this fortified memory against all future bitterness of self-reproach
for wasting the years.
She did not for a second doubt that the episode was definitely at an
end, and laid aside. Certainly, at parting, Gareth's hand had sought
to detain hers in a lingering clasp; but beyond the actual "Good-bye,
Kathleen," he had not put into words any desire to prolong the play
after the curtain had fallen. Nor had she known till the present,
how serenely one can dwell in the mellow afterglow of happiness,
though summer be drawing to its end in the railinged squares of North
Kensington.
A letter arrived, in Gareth's boldly uncharacteristic calligraphy.
She withdrew the sheets lovingly enough from their envelope, as the
postman's clattering passage retreated down the street.
"I want to thank you," thus the missive ran. "And I want to do it
largely and wonderfully, with an effect of shouts and clarion-calls
and crashing thunders, in case you should not understand how big a
thing in my life our holiday together has been. And I want to do it
delicately, in miniature, with a fairy paint-box, and a flute of
reeds, and single raindrops pattering, that you may see how each
separate second of your company was in itself perfection. But with
all this, I can only just write 'thank you' with sober pen and ink,
on plain white paper. And because it is you, you will know.
"Our holiday--yes, but I shall speak the word now according to its
derivation: 'holy day.' Holy days, for us, Kathleen!
"I am shutting my eyes--which is why the lines have run
crooked--and I can see the silly little wooden ink-pot châlets, the
sun striping across the pink pine-stems, the foam and tumble of
seven white cascades down the mountainside. I shall always see it;
you have dowered the beggarman richly, queen Kathleen.
"GARETH."
The girl perused the quaint, rather formal sentences, with the feeling
that just this was needed still to round off the incident completely.
He had spoilt nothing, had sweetened still further the aftermath, and
added to its fragrance. Well-pleased, she would have replaced the
sheets in their envelope, when she noticed that she had overlooked on
the last page yet another scribbled line; a postscript:
"When may I see you again?--G.A.D."
And suddenly the human man sprang alive to her. How often she had heard
him putting the very same question; how often smiled at the absurd kink
in his nature it revealed, a queer incapacity to take leave of her, be
it for ever so slight a period of time, without the eager question:
"When shall I see you again? When? Where? How?"... Seeking always to
let one meeting overlap the next; no trust in chance or in management.
"When shall I see you again?" The one phrase touched a spring that
set free a whole warm gush of recollections. Of course he should see
her again! She was impatient for his coming, wrote to him instantly a
summons to visit her the very next evening.
At the far end of the dark narrow hall, was an outjutting ledge, hidden
from view by the staircase. It was seated here that Kathleen awaited
him, the expectant fire in her red-brown eyes quenched by the sombre
lighting, her feet drumming impatiently against the wall, as she
wondered if Gareth in North Kensington would be very different from
Gareth in Alpenruh. She was guiltily conscious of having slipped on an
evening-dress, something soft and clinging in moss-green. Glad, too,
that Nelly was not present to comment on the fact.
It was an exciting vigil, listening for the crunch of footsteps, the
sharp peal of the bell which would scatter stillness. And all her
knowledge of its approach did not prevent a quick jump in her heart
at the actual happening. Then she sat motionless, thinking of him
on the other side of the door. Presently, muttering to herself, the
disagreeable housemaid-in-charge opened to the visitor.
"Is Miss Morrison at home?"
"Yes, sir." Hannah left him standing while she departed in search.
Then, with a leap and a laugh, Kathleen was before him.
"Isn't this fun?" She was radiant against her dull umber background.
"Gareth, why don't you say something? Come in here."
"Here" was Edward's study, with swathed chairs, and chandeliers
draped in a sheet. Kathleen had lit a pair of candles, but in the
semi-obscurity he could form no impression of his surroundings. It
might have been any house, anywhere. But he had a sensation that he
ought to speak in whispers.
"Are you alone here?" and wondered whether, under those circumstances,
he did not do wrong in coming? Which was absurd, considering Alpenruh.
But North Kensington was different.
Before many minutes, she saw that he intended asking her to marry him,
and rather feverishly sought to ward it off. The hushed room was a trap
now, and the moss-green evening-gown an added menace. Gareth, quietly
persistent, dodged all her bright and chatty openings, and succeeded at
last in putting the question she dreaded.
"Will you, Kathleen?"
"Gareth, how do you see marriage?"
Astonished, he replied: "With you? As a fire-lit dream-come-true."
"Not with me. With anyone."
He drew her a series of charming, conventional pictures, steeped in a
ruddy glow from the hearth of illusions; a child's laugh, a sundial
in a garden, the flicker of lamplight on shelves of books, as needful
accessories. He also mentioned, rather shyly, the illuminating spirit
of love to lurk beneath outward trivialities; the joy of sharing evil
and good alike; the flaming interest to be taken in each other's work,
whatever that might chance to be. And he spoke of two as the only
magical number in arithmetic; and threw in a Persian cat, to boot. And
was silent. He had spoken earnestly and well; eloquence was at all
times his strong point.
"Gareth."
"Yes, dear?"
"Do you care to know how I have learnt to see marriage?"
Gareth, in anticipation of her disclosure, shrank from it.
"Oh--please," he said. She mistook the appeal for assent.
"It's a clammy state of familiarity," thus Kathleen defied his fair
visions; "familiarity of petty outward things that don't count.
Breakfast-table intimacy, with the yolk from an eaten egg smeared
yellow on the shell. Intimacy of letters: 'Who's your correspondent?'
'Who are you writing to?' Moving in lumps, undetachable, sticky;
waiting about in the hall, and calling irritably up the stairs to know
if the other will be long, instead of just--going. It's the shedding of
all privacy; bursting into rooms without knocking: Thy room shall be my
room! It's to hear a man's bath-water running in the morning, and to
know exactly, by sounds, when he gets in and out. To be aware how many
shirts he uses per week, because you count his dirty washing. Oh, if
I loved a man, I shouldn't yearn for 'the tender privilege of darning
his dear socks!' Rather keep him for ever remote, with the mystery
still on him. But marriage offers the sight of unmade beds, use of the
same piece of soap, pilgrimages to the same friends, the same question
every evening: 'What have you been doing all day?' answer to be given
in detail. Oh, Gareth, I'm sorry, I'm sorry; your pictures were ever so
much prettier, but mine are true."
She paused for response. But the meaning of her tirade had percolated
Gareth's mist-bound understanding not a whit. The outburst in itself
struck him as harsh and ugly, quite out of keeping with the spirit in
which a maiden should receive a declaration of love. She was spoiling
something; petulantly he refused to recognize the necessity for its
spoiling.
So he made no reply. And less vehemently she went on:
"You mustn't think that all this is because I'm cooped up with an
unfortunate example. My brother and his wife are very fond of each
other; what the neighbours would call an ideal pair. They see nothing
of what I'm telling you; why should they? They're doing it all the
time. But it's a mistake to be a perpetual onlooker at marriage when
the couple are still young and in the throes. One's mother and father
are different; one doesn't regard them as married, merely as parents.
But I've lived most of my life a third in a family of three, and been
robbed of the--glamour, you would call it, without getting anything in
exchange, except a horror of wedded bliss, an utter horror of it. You
mustn't ask me to be your wife, Gareth, because I'd be afraid; afraid
of all that might happen to you and me; afraid, most of all, of seeing
it happen."
* * * * *
The enshrouding linen draperies were removed from the house in North
Kensington, revealing a taste for furnishing of which the governing
principle had obviously been: "Here is a space--fill it!"
For Mrs. Edward Morrison had written, announcing the return of the
family:
"We shall be back on Tuesday in time for supper. It must be awful for
you alone in the empty house--especially now!"
Then a few advance orders respecting milk to be taken in, and a chicken
to be roasted; an ecstatic description of Nicolas in bathing-drawers;
and "Your loving sister, Nelly."
There were only two words in the epistle which contained matter for
reflection: "especially now."...
Kathleen spent profitably her remaining days of golden solitude in
visualizing the long weeks and months to come, when she could no more
enter a room with the comfortable security of finding it untenanted.
For soon the Winter-fear would find her out.
An old enemy; she knew it well. It came, inevitable, monotonous, with
the fall of the first leaf, the flicker of the first fire. "It's not
warm enough for Nicolas without a coat," said Nelly; that was one of
the heralds. There were many others. Always it came. The waiting for it
was almost the worst. Winter-fear ... oh, the furious beating clenched
resentment, resentment of a thousand Indian forefathers, that Kathleen
harboured against the creeping cold. Cold that bit. Cold that gnawed.
Cold that ached.
Winter-fear brought a special horror to the house in North Kensington.
Concentration. Nelly, liberal enough in most matters, had, like all
housewives, a special kink; she economized in coals. Except in cases of
illness, in the dining-room only was a fire kept alight. And slowly,
day by day, as the increasing cold drove them inwards, the entire
family concentrated round this fire. Here they worked and read and
talked and ate, huddled together in the semicircle of warmth. Kathleen,
in an occasional frantic longing for solitude, would break away; retire
to her chilly bedroom or to the raw streets, both harbours of refuge
in the summer months. Always, numbed to the bone, she was compelled to
surrender, return to the dining-room community--till April with soft
warm fingers should come to release her.
A minor horror called cold-in-the-head. Nicolas, by three ominous
sneezes, would give the sign; following which, every member of the
household was stricken in turn, or in chorus; sometimes a solitary
sufferer; sometimes a veritable orchestra of coughs and sniffs
and trumpetings and throat-clearings. The talk would be all of
handkerchiefs and the lack of hot water; and the faces round the
dining-room fire would swell into a circle of grotesque caricatures,
blotched, and red-eyed, and hideous. No respite, none! and seven long
months of it to be faced.
"... We shall be back on Tuesday"--and already the ghost of Nelly was
calling over the banisters for someone to fasten her frock--how the
hooks would persist in catching those irritating stray hairs at the
back of the neck! Already Edward was turning on the bath-taps; Muriel
practising for two hours after tea; Nicolas spurting affection with
a jammy mouth. Thus the members of her family, when they finally did
return, were by anticipation distorted from quite ordinary figures to
horrible marionettes whose slightest action set every nerve itching.
"Well, Katty dear," affectionately Nelly embraced her sister-in-law in
the hall, calling her by the name most disliked; "here we are, you see."
Kathleen did see.
She saw also that Edward avoided her eyes, and that Nelly was nervous;
while Muriel, aged nine, regarded her aunt curiously, as having been
for many meals past the object of horrified conversation on the part of
the elders.
Nicolas alone seemed unaware of any tension in the atmosphere. Up the
stairs he staggered, a miniature Falstaff; laden to the ground by the
burden of his own flesh, and, in addition, an iron spade, a wooden
spade, a fishing-net, and two tin pails; relics of summer joys that
were fled. Kathleen went to his assistance, listening sympathetically
to his breathless explanations of how he _wouldn't_ leave them behind
for the landlady's little girl; Kathleen gathered that the landlady's
little girl had always cast an eye of appropriation on that iron spade.
"An' I said: 'You won't have it, never!' An' I hit her knees wiv it."
Nicolas collapsed triumphantly on the nursery floor; he was evidently a
firm believer in the methods of the cave-man.
Kathleen rather liked Nicolas, despite jamminess. His years were five,
and his voice was fat. When poked, he gurgled. Once indeed she had
been moved to embrace him tenderly, to which moment his mother had
unfortunately been witness. Kathleen's subsequent existence was spent
in striving to correct the misapprehension that she possessed the
maternal instinct. Nicolas had to suffer.
On the other hand, Muriel was no favourite. There was that small matter
of practising to account for it; still more, the fact that she was a
younger pupil at the establishment where her aunt was installed as
teacher of history and arithmetic. From the schoolgirl point of view,
this latter condition of things opened up vast fields of thought.
Muriel, very neat about the legs and mind, was particularly concerned
with the ethics of the situation. To be intimately connected with
Authority was an awkwardness to which none of her mates were exposed,
and involved a special code of law.
Was it a matter to be bragged about, for instance, or relegated to a
shamed obscurity? What was the precise moment every day when careless
familiarity must yield to awed respect, and vice versa? Was she
justified in selling (for J nibs) details of Kathleen's home existence
to Kathleen's infatuated adorers? Or did this come under the category
of "hateful mean?" How could one avoid walking to school in company
with Authority, when she and Authority left the same house at the same
moment, bound in the same direction? In what spirit was punishment to
be received, when she who punished had that morning been reprimanded
before one's very eyes, for Encouraging the Cat? Above all, what was
the good of striving for the first place in an exam. when you know
jolly well it will be denied you--"for fear of being accused of
showing favouritism"?
Muriel pondered a great deal on all this. She was an earnest child.
The prevailing attitude of
condemnation-kindly-suspended-till-after-meals was responsible for
a certain amount of strain at the first reunion of "happy family"
round the supper-table. Nelly talked a great deal of their holiday
in Felixstowe, and not at all of Kathleen's holiday in Alpenruh.
And Edward again proved his claim to the old and ancient order of
Salt-cellar Strategists, by fighting out an entire minor campaign
then raging in the Balkans, with the simple aid of a cruet-stand, two
knives, a spoon, a fork, a spreading stain of mulberry juice ("This is
Albania, d'you see, Nelly?") and the sauce-boat. There was no topic of
the hour that Edward could not illustrate with the assistance of these
homely vessels, be the subject of his demonstration a railway accident,
a mechanical invention, or the defence of Troy.
Having annihilated Montenegro and the chicken at the same time, he
pushed back his chair, and remarked ponderously: "I should like a few
minutes with you in the study, Kath, if you're not too busy."
"... Well?" Nelly queried eagerly, half an hour later, on finding her
husband alone.
"Can't make head or tail of it," said Edward, very angry. "Either Kath
is mad or I am."
Nelly supplied the necessary assurances.
"Well, but she says she won't marry him. Now what do you think of
that?" The question was a mere form; Edward was aware what his wife
thought of "that," and of everything else; to which satisfactory state
of things might be attributed his domestic happiness.
"I've been very tactful," continued the head of the house; "very
tactful and very lenient. I'm broad-minded, as you know."
"Yes. So am I, of course. But, Neddy, you must have bullied her. And
you promised not to. Remember," and Nelly lowered her face, "she hasn't
got a mother."
"Nor have I," crossly. "The same mother. That by no means explains her
extraordinary statement that she doesn't want to marry this fellow who
has"--he hesitated between "compromised" and "seduced," then discarded
both in favour of--"led her astray."
"And a nice sort of a blackguard he must be," added indignant
brotherhood. "Not want to marry him indeed! I should like to know why?"
unconscious of anything contradictory in his explosive phrases.
But enlightenment had visited his wife, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Oh, poor Katty ... poor darling! I must go to her at once. Neddy,
can't you see----" She paused on her hurrying mission of comfort to
fling an aphorism of unwonted daring and brilliance at the head of her
liege lord.
"It takes two to make a pair," said Nelly, and departed.
Slowly Edward Morrison grasped her meaning. Slowly, too, he grasped the
fact that here was a perfectly unsubtle problem, to be attacked with
a delightfully simple weapon--the horsewhip. And the soul of Edward
Morrison was glad within him. That his sister should have sinned was
terrible indeed; but not so terrible as that his sister should have
new-fangled notions.
"'Pon my word, Nelly is a remarkable woman!"
The remarkable woman was at the moment mounting the stairs towards the
bedrooms. Nelly Morrison, when unwed, had been known as the "Belle of
Clapton," which over and beyond its reminiscence of pleasure-steamer,
had also had a deteriorating effect upon her brains. Otherwise, she
was a good-natured little soul, genuinely fond of her sister-in-law,
and very anxious always that Kathleen should "feel that this is
really her home." In furtherance of which desire, it was her habit to
make Kathleen's room bright with flowers; flowers everywhere, on the
dressing-table, amongst the ink and pens, on the window-sills, in the
washstand-basin. She held now in her hand some half-wilted marguerites,
symbols of comfort about as adequate as her husband's contemplated
horsewhip of righteousness.
The room was in darkness when Nelly entered on tiptoe--and without
knocking:
"Katty, are you in bed?"
Kathleen did not reply; drew the sheet close up to her burning cheeks.
What a mess, what an unendurable mess these people were making of her
days of enchantment. Perhaps if she did not move, Nelly would think her
asleep, and go away. But a slight catch in the breath betrayed her
wakefulness.
Nelly groped her way to the bed; felt for the other's hand.
"Katty, are you crying?"
No answer.
"Katty dear, won't he marry you? Is that it? Oh, Katty, I'm so
sorry...."
CHAPTER II
"I looked on you as a youngster up till now," Mr. Temple said. He did
not explain what were the circumstances which had shocked him into a
change of opinion; but went on, in the heavy paternal voice: "You've
got to shove your way, my lad. You've been playing at life; university
education, and books and travel and this and that ... I've spoilt you.
No wonder your father's business wasn't good enough for you. Well--I'm
not a tyrant; I raised no objections to your starting on the architect
line instead. But that wasn't good enough either--though goodness knows
you talked enough about the responsibility of turning cities into
things of beauty and form...." He broke off: "And now here you are!"
"'Not architect, artist, nor man!'" Gareth misquoted from the immortal
Pecksniff.
Mr. Temple could not repress a smile of recognition. Dickens was
cultivated, read aloud, assiduously, in the large handsome parlour
above the chemist's shop at Paddington. Chemist's establishment, or
dispensary, Mr. Temple would have preferred it to be called. For he
was a chemist of a most refined and superior order, and employed two
assistants and a boy; nor was the shop on the street-level, but up a
broad flight of stone steps, indicated by a single ruby lamp at their
base; which caused Mr. Temple the occasional illusion that he was a
surgeon. He might with equal reason have thought himself a signalman.
Nevertheless, if Gareth imagined that by so simple an expedient as
the mention of his father's favourite author, he could divert the
threatened lecture on his own misdoings, he was mistaken. On receipt
of a letter from William Payne, President of the Society of Young
Botanists, officially announcing that Gareth had abandoned his holiday
with the S.Y.B., in order to spend a month in sole company of a young
female, Mr. Temple had at first been inclined to secret pride at his
only son's first sowing of this very gentlemanly wild oat. He had
discussed the matter with his wife--with considerable delicacy, be
sure; for he could never quite forget that she was a gentlewoman, and
above him in station: Miss Lucy Jamieson, before he had married her;
governess to a family of consequence in the sleepy little country town
where he had first "practised" before coming to London. Her opinions,
therefore, influenced him more than he was prepared to acknowledge. And
his present reproaches were the direct outcome of his change of mental
attitude: If my son is old enough to incur responsibilities, he is old
enough to be in a material position to discharge them....
"You'll come into all the money later on. 'Tisn't that I grudge your
allowance, either. But I want to see what stuff you're made of."
"I don't believe I'm made of any stuff," Gareth confessed desperately.
Mr. Temple planted his hands deep in his pockets, and surveyed his
offspring with disapproval.
"There's no room in the world for shirkers. The world wants men. You've
had things made too easy. The world wants you to stand on your own
legs, not on your father's shoulders. It's the law of the world that
the weakest go to the wall and the strongest come out on top."
Gareth began to hate the world, as represented by his father's weighty
platitudes. Not for one instant did he attempt to storm the barricade
of years, and force his own point of view upon the old gentleman's
reluctant sight. The remainder of the lecture rendered the fact patent
that it henceforth devolved upon him to renounce his dreaming peace,
his glamorous aspirations, and to do battle with the universe.... How
he wished he had been a girl, and thus absolved from such duty.
And yet he had met girls by the score who had wanted to be men.
Men!--the thickness of their understanding; the dense fibres they put
out, without one sensitive tingle.... "You've got to shove your way,
my lad!"--there it was again, his father's pet catch-phrase. It was
hideous and hot--to shove. Oh, the hush and coolness and harmony of the
woman's part; she might enjoy colours, and soft materials, and dreams,
tears even, without a reproach. And when love came along, the wonder
of being besieged and of yielding.... Someone afterwards and always,
to clear her way, give her leisure and firelight. And suddenly came a
vision of Kathleen with a blade in her hand that flashed this way and
that, while she cut a path through the world, for him to tread in her
wake....
The vision passed. But so intent had he been on it, that he missed his
father's final hint of what was expected of him with regard to his
recent conduct, on which, since his return from Switzerland, a discreet
silence had been preserved. "We'll talk of that later on, when you've
found your feet a bit!"
Gareth carried his aggrievements and his visions in a confused heap to
the parlour, where he knew his mother would at this time be sitting,
with her knitting in the lap of her smoke-grey silk dress, while she
waited for Jane to draw the blinds and trim the wicks. He had an
affection for the Confidence Hour, when the lamplighter was on his
magical round, and Mr. Temple still busy in the dispensary below; an
affection that dated from the days of his early childhood; when she
would tell long sweet stirring tales from the "Idylls of the King"
to a little round-eyed boy as yet unprotected by the dawn of reason.
His very name he owed to a gentle fervour on her part for all matters
appertaining to the Poet Laureate, and to chivalry, and to the Knights
of Arthur's Round Table. It had been her wont to name him, half
playfully, half wistfully, her "youngest knight."... Glancing across at
his absorbed face, she wondered now how many of her teachings could be
relied on at this crisis to bear fruit.
"Gareth, when are you going to bring my new daughter home to me?"
He smiled, amused at the suddenness of her onslaught upon his reverie.
"Mother dear, what on earth do you mean?"
"Don't you think it time, my boy, that you told me all about it?" She
held out a tentative hand; a very white and delicate hand, half covered
by the falling lace ruffles of her sleeve; on her bright brown hair she
wore a lace cap to match the ruffles; and at her throat a round cameo
brooch secured the fleecy white shawl. Mrs. Temple was very pleasant to
look upon; and her soft voice fell soothingly upon Gareth's hearing,
jarred by his father's ponderous repetitions. He crossed the room, and
seated himself upon the arm of her chair; while he played with her ball
of knitting-silk.
"Do you want me to tell you about ... Kathleen, mother?"
"Is she pretty?" cunningly drawing him out. "I once had a pupil called
Kathleen; she was Irish, and had blue eyes and black hair. Has _your_
Kathleen blue eyes?" Purposely she leant rich stress on the possessive
pronoun; he must be made to feel from the start that she did not
regard the girl from the traditional mother's standpoint of "designing
female," but with the deeper tenderness that is bred of understanding.
She could trust her boy to love wisely even when he had acted foolishly.
Gareth tried to visualize Kathleen on the occasion most vivid to his
memory, when flushed and radiant she had sprung before him from the
gloomy passage of the house in North Kensington.
"Her eyes are dark," he said at length, slowly. "Not hard darkness,
you know, but the brown of water in heavy shadow; and the brows are
very close above them. She walks as if her feet were bare. Her skin is
lovely, rich dusky colours, olive and geranium red." This last, mindful
of his mother's weak point: "A true lady, Gareth, is always particular
about her complexion and hands."
Bit by bit, led by artfully inserted queries, he related the whole
chain of events; throwing in also as much as he knew of Kathleen's
birth, relations, and conditions of life generally. He did not mention
his visit to North Kensington.
"Go on, dear."
"There's no more to say, mother."
"Yes, Gareth, there is something more." Suddenly her tones rang out
clear and accusing: "I'm waiting to hear that you are prepared to make
the poor girl your wife."
Gareth was stricken dumb at thus finding himself thrust into the rôle
of villain and betrayer. Before he could sufficiently collect himself
for speech, Mrs. Temple went on, her voice trembling a little in
genuine emotion:
"Oh, my dear, my dear, I know how it is with you; you are growing into
a man with a man's ideas. Your companions have been telling you that
chivalry is 'played out,' food only for old women and romantic girls
and molly-coddles. Believe me, dear, it isn't so. Chivalry and honour
are not weaknesses to be ashamed of. They are what in the olden days
made a knight strongest: strong in battle, strong in love. Oh, Gareth,
there are so many in the world to help a woman's tears to flow; don't
join their ranks. Don't take up with this modern poisonous notion of
living only for the gratification of the ... senses----" The white
unwrinkled cheeks of the speaker blushed a faint rose at this use of
a word offensive to her. "Have you forgotten the tales I used to tell
you? Of Arthur and his queen; of Pelleas and Ettarre; Galahad, the
maiden knight, the quest of Percivale; Launcelot and Elaine. Little
son, these legends and songs are valuable only for their symbolic
meaning. A damsel on a charger, a knight supporting her with his arm,
the spirit of the picture exists equally without the steed and armour.
And when you are an old white-haired man, my darling, I want you to be
able to say, 'God helping me, I have never wronged a woman that I did
not strive to put it right.' How are you to speak those words when the
poor frightened child who loved you only too well, is left to fight her
battles alone? There is only one way of righting that wrong, Gareth;
and the way lies through a golden wedding-ring."
Gareth could not suppress a faint stirring of amusement at the fancy
portrait of Kathleen's timorous anguish. But at the same time, he was
genuinely touched and stirred by his mother's generous pleadings, by
the tears he saw dimming her usually placid eyes.
Slipping an affectionate arm around her shoulders: "Mother dear," he
said; "look at me--straight up at me. That's right. I've wronged no
one, do you understand? I'm not that sort of fellow, thanks to you. I
_have_ asked Kathleen to be my wife. She refused."
"Refused?" incredulously.
"Yes."
"Impossible."
Mrs. Temple, outwardly so malleable, was a determined little woman, and
once her brain struck out on a certain line it was a matter of some
difficulty to divert it. Gareth made an effort.
"You see, mother, she's not at all the sort of silly helpless girl you
imagine her. She knew what she was doing. She's free, and--and--I told
you she walked as if her feet were bare; that's got to do with it,
somehow. She doesn't want to marry."
But in his mother's scheme of things, girls did not refuse offers of
marriage, especially under existing circumstances. Nor was it at that
period, the close of the eighteen-nineties, as usual an occurrence as
later.
For a moment she was silent, brain and knitting-needles bright and
busy. Illumination came, and with it soft amusement at his denseness:
"O my youngest knight, you are younger even than I thought. Did you
allow nothing for her pride, her delicacy? How clearly did you betray
that it was a matter of duty that prompted your offer? Of course she
drew back! What could you expect? She thinks she has cheapened herself
in your sight; she thinks--you men, you are born blunderers, the best
of you."
In an ecstasy of psychological comprehension she proceeded to reveal
the intimate workings of Kathleen's mind, which led to refusal of
Gareth's offer. Revealed them in fashion so plausible and withal so
subtle that the analysis partook of the nature of a miracle.
It was only a pity that she happened to be even further adrift in her
estimate of Kathleen as a clinging three-volume-novel heroine, than had
been Nelly in her vision of Gareth as a gay deceiver.
But Gareth was impressed. He supposed it took a woman to understand a
woman. Moreover, viewed in the natural light of things, the Kathleen
he was striving to explain to his mother seemed improbable, not to say
absurd. He withdrew to his own room to think things over.
After his departure Mrs. Temple let drop her knitting and sat a little
while inactive and musing. It had cost something to be loyal to the
ideals with which she had striven to inculcate her son, that he should
not ever be responsible for suffering. For despite her brave words, she
did not want Gareth to bring home a wife. What mother does?
* * * * *
Gareth lounged at his open window, and smoked a cigarette, and saw the
moon washing Paddington in silver, and gave himself up to a course of
clear hard logical thinking. His methods of thought left his brain
very much in the state of a girl's bedroom when in a hurry she has
dressed for the dance. That is to say, he pulled out a vast quantity of
reflections from the drawers where they had lain hidden; tumbled them
over the floor, and looked at them in some amaze at their multitude and
variety.
His mother's explanations had smoothed for him the plumage of peace,
sadly ruffled by Kathleen's startling mood of the day before. That
her refusal to espouse him was due to pride--of the wounded-stag
order--over-sensitiveness, shame even, was an attitude he could well
understand, and combat with his shield and buckler. His shield and
buckler, like Nelly's marguerites and Edward's horsewhip, were of
little avail in forcing a way against what the last-named had termed
"new-fangled notions."
But below in the stuffy little sitting-room, with its horsehair
furniture, its framed and faded daguerreotypes of long-dead relatives,
its wool antimacassars, and painted firescreens, and shelves of
Dickens' works complete in seventeen volumes, the vision had come alive
again; familiar truths respecting maiden's tears and knighthood's
redress, slipped back into their old places.
"... She thinks she has cheapened herself in your eyes"--and chivalry
tingled to clasp a lance.
"... Cheapened herself." Gravely, steadfastly, the lad vowed himself to
the removal of that misconception. Marry her? Of course he would marry
her ... and with that a creeping uneasy sensation of helplessness, of
unseen pressure.
The objects scattering his brain in disorderly confusion grew blurred
and indistinguishable.... He was drifting down stream, nearer and
nearer to the grey borders of sleep.
"You've got to shove your own way, my lad----!"
Fear jogged his elbow, and awoke him to the window-sill; to Paddington,
moonlit and unsubstantial; to the "Happy Warrior" framed above his
bed; to the knowledge of his own utter inefficiency ever to pull
desire to its successful fulfilment. A liquidity of purpose, as though
the moral gelatine had been omitted from his composition. Hence his
terror of realities, of "shove," of anything that might chance to
drag to light his hidden weakness. Hence his longing for the vanished
enchantment of Alpenruh, whither he had been borne as in some strange
dream, without his own volition or denial. Hence his illusion that
the perpetual presence of Kathleen would again and for ever restore
to him the lost lotus-spell. Kathleen should marry him. In a spurt
of resolution, he vowed in this one matter, if never again, he would
beat down the questionings and hesitations of his soul, beat down
opposition, beat down difficulty--even as she herself had taught
him. Yes, that was the goad: her possession of just that gift he
lacked, the power to _do_. Did he lack it, or only think he did? This
accomplishment should be the test. Kathleen _should_ marry him! Gareth
was exultant in his new strength, as a man who had drunk red wines. His
determination survived sleep, survived the sobriety of morning, sent
him with martial tread and squared jaw to the house in North Kensington.
Kathleen was out; would be out to lunch. A temporary check. "Tell
Miss Morrison I shall call at six o'clock," in tones of such ringing
valour that the maid regarded him in astonishment. How could she know
he was out on the quest, his eyes on the hill-tops and his head among
the stars, slaying monsters and enchanters as he went? How was she
to recognize herself as a minor monster? Nevertheless, in unconscious
spite of him, she forgot to deliver the message. Gareth, on his arrival
at five minutes to six, impatience having outleapt exactitude, was
shown into the dining-room, ruddily illuminated by its first fire of
the season. Kathleen had improved the occasion by shampooing her hair,
and was now squatting on her heels before the hearth, holding up the
long wet strands to the blaze. Nelly sewing; and Muriel reading "Little
Women"; the aged grandfather prone on the floor protesting feebly while
Nicolas stamped on his chest: "Mustn't say nuffing, Granpa--you're
_dead_!" "But I'm _not_ dead!" "You are, you are, you are!" "I'm _not_
dead," repeated Mr. Jeyne, who really might have been expected to know
best--all this made a picture calculated to reduce the crusty bachelor
of tradition to tears of loneliness and envy. Gareth's abrupt entrance
caused some commotion, and there ensued a great deal of business with
chairs and introductions. Nelly was not sure whether she ought to look
as if she knew all about everything, or nothing about anything. She
telegraphed for her cue to Kathleen, who scornfully withheld it. For
her the situation throbbed with that sensitive and unnecessary agony
peculiar only to a girl on witnessing the advent of her man into the
family circle. She did not know of which to be most ashamed: Nelly in
the eyes of Gareth, or Gareth in the eyes of Nelly. Kathleen hated that
he should see her thus placed, and off her guard; hated the circulating
undercurrents: "Who the dooce is it?" in Mr. Jeyne's astonished
eyebrows, and: "Take off your pinafore, Nicky," signalled from Muriel;
hated herself for minding that the room was untidy, and two of
Nicolas's handkerchiefs upon the carpet; above all, hated Gareth, as
the cause of her discomfort. Why had he come? And what had happened
to him that he should persist in throwing her those glances of glad
triumph? He was talking very fast and easily, and his general bearing
exactly resembled the fascinating blackguard of Nelly's expectations.
Unconsciously, he exuded a buoyant challenge to the world at large; the
atmosphere about him quivered and vibrated with something that was not
of North Kensington nor yet of any other neighbourhood farther from
the clouds than Valhalla itself; for he knew even in his intoxication
that if he once paused, the old paralysing distrust would creep on him
again and render him powerless--if it were once given a chance in this
breathless onrush of speech and movement.
For this was his day of days indeed; something had happened between his
first and second visit here, to convince him that enchantment was on
his side.... He would tell Kathleen presently--when these people should
leave them alone!
Edward's latchkey was heard grating in the lock, and Nelly flew out to
warn him of the visitor. "And Neddy, shall I ask him to supper?"
"Look here," Edward protested in loud and distinct whispers, "we can't
sit down with a fellow who----"
"Oh, hush, Neddy!"
And Gareth's mouth twitched whimsically in the direction of Kathleen.
More Indian than ever did she look, sullen, crouching, her face framed
in the shining hanks of black hair lying straight over her shoulders
and down to her waist. Very unlike his radiant comrade of Alpenruh.
Perhaps she had been right when she spoke of the destroying effects of
intimate surroundings.
"All right, I'll be reasonable," grumbled Edward, on the threshold.
Edward was a man of his word; and though an occasional hint of "my
sister's honour" slipped into his manner, he hovered for the most part
between dignified-host and benevolent-cleric.
Gareth thought the Morrison family rather nice, considering; and
accepted the invitation to supper: "If you don't mind taking us as
we are," said Nelly, and retired to supervise culinary operations.
Presently her voice was heard summoning Muriel and Nicolas.
"Yes, but Mummie, why----?"
"Because I say so, darling."
"Yes, but it isn't nearly----"
"Never mind. Come along. Ask Aunty Katty if she will come to the
nursery presently to tuck you up."
Now or never, thought Nelly, was Kathleen's chance to display the
suspected Maternal Instinct to the best advantage. But Nicolas and
Kathleen, joint rebels against Nelly's schemes, gazed sulkily at one
another, and parted with a cold good night.
"Excuse me, will you?" said Edward, rising; "I'm badly in need of a
wash. City dirt, you know." He also quitted the dining-room. He had
received his instructions. Obviously Nelly cherished hopes that a
disgraceful episode might yet be decently wound up.
One swift glance convinced Gareth that old Mr. Jeyne was fast asleep in
his corner.
"Kathleen--I've had a most wonderful stroke of good luck. I've found
a job. The kind of job that I've dreamt of all my life. The job that
lay east of the sun and west of the moon; at the end of the rainbow;
over the hills and far away. And only yesterday I was disinherited.
Yes, really, my father cast me off ... said I should never be heir
to those huge glass bottles, red and blue and yellow, that fill up
his shop-window.... I did so want them for my own when I was a kid.
Never mind, fortune helps those who don't help themselves ... and I
put my faith in the fairy-tales. How would Whittington have fared
without faith in his Cat? Tell me that. Or Jack without faith in his
Beanstalk----?"
"Or Aladdin without faith in his uncle?" insinuated Kathleen unkindly.
"It was all through you, Kathleen. Just because you weren't at home
this morning; and I was restless; and went for a drive on top of an
omnibus; and my new job tumbled from the clouds, and I've brought
it home in my pocket." He produced a catalogue of Messrs. Dale and
Dawson's Autumn publications; educational, historical, and general;
fiction, poetry, belles-lettres; Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and
48 Frederick Street, Glasgow. This he handed to Kathleen as if it were
a talisman of rarest powers. She examined it, bewildered; but rather
loving him in his mood of boyish enthusiasm....
"They've offered me the post of reader," condescending to simple
language for pity of her perplexity. Then he was off again, past
recall, drunk with ether, spurring his winged-horse ever faster on its
empyreal flights.
"Books. Just nothing but books. From dawn till dusk, books. Books all
around me, lining my life. Books in the making. Books my trade. The
beginning and end of things, books. Great walls of them, shutting out
real things, concrete things, ugly things, noisy things; advertisements
and fathers and botanists. Delving continually into a thousand
imaginations, treasure-finding; genius-hunting; word-juggling. Can you
draw pictures from words? I can. 'Glamour,' for instance. Glamour ...
and something elfin, with misty wings, scattering gold-dust; and part
of it clings to your eyelashes. That's glamour. And 'fantastic' has a
leap about it, and the flutter of rags, and pipes--yes, a figure with
a pointed cap, playing on a pipe. You've never seen me gloating over
my collection of books ... and every time I add one to the number,
counting over all the old ones again ... handling them--the dears!
And now to be permitted to make a living out of books--yes, actually;
to scoop silver from a moonbeam, spin an income from a cobweb, seek
sovereigns in a sea-shell. And there's my own book, too--the one I mean
to write; did I ever tell you about it? How I shall be able to write
now! My book! Other people's books----!" He stopped for sheer want of
breath.
"And--you picked up all this on an omnibus?" eagerly. It was impossible
to persist in any sort of gloom in opposition to his charming nonsense.
"Bound for Banbury Cross," Gareth explained, very seriously. "And there
came a big spider and sat down beside me ... no, that doesn't rhyme.
And anyway it wasn't a spider, though he looked remarkably like one."
"Who did?"
"Old Mr. Dale; Mark Dale, my Uncle Wilfred's crony. The late uncle
from whom I'm supposed to inherit my scholarly tastes. I told him my
troubles, for all the world as if he were a golden carp or a blue
frog or a singing-tree, or some such traditional confidant. We got to
talking about books; he put a lot of questions; I acquitted myself
fairly well;--and then he suddenly informed me that one of the regular
readers for his firm had given notice that morning, and would I care
to take his place? _Would_ I care.... And that things should happen
like that for me! You should have heard my father yesterday.... And,
Kathleen ... dear----" Both her hands in his now. No avail to struggle
or sulk. Gareth was being masterful. Gareth was being manly. Gareth was
carrying a woman by storm. And Gareth was enjoying it, intoxicated by
this novel sense of power and success. He had borrowed her weapons of
strength, and believed them to be his own.
"Kathleen, it has got to be. All you said the other night may be true
enough for other people--it will be different for us. We're not going
to lose now what we found in Alpenruh. And no one can give it to me but
you; no one can give it to you but me. It was the ether of Paradise, of
El Dorado we breathed--and by God! we'll breathe it now for the rest
of our lives." He swept the hair from her face, that she might have no
excuse for avoiding his triumphant gaze. "Our lives, Kathleen!"
She said: "I can't--no, I won't marry you, Gareth."
But he only laughed; for she had made no attempt to stir from his arms.
PART II
CHAPTER I
"Good-bye, Kathleen; no, I won't forget about the fish." Gareth
Temple ran down the steps of Pacific Villa, and swung the gate behind
him. He carried under his arm a bundle of manuscript, which he had
been examining the evening before. When he reached the office, more
manuscript would be awaiting him. For he was still a reader of books.
Three years ago he had transferred his services from Messrs. Dale and
Dawson to the newer firm of Leslie Campbell. That was all the change of
fortune which sixteen years had brought about.
Campbell had himself been a reader at Dale and Dawson, publishers.
An excitable and energetic little Scotsman with no prudent instincts
whatsoever, he set up business in a third-floor room above the bustling
offices of a popular magazine. Assets: Four hundred pounds capital, and
the assistance of one impertinent small boy. Invisible asset, a soul
that was an infallible touchstone for genius. Gradually he made himself
a name for the publication of works by that brilliant intolerant set
of young writers who flourished under the banners of Impressionism,
Futurism, Iconoclasm, Realism and Super-Realism, New Thought and
Modern Decadence, with equal pleasure and superiority. Presently,
and without need to reproach himself with any pandering to popular
taste, he was able to boast an inner room to his offices; and added
to his staff Gareth Temple and Guy Burnett, in capacities of reader
and confidential clerk. Nevertheless, the firm's treasury continued
to be fed for the most part on Campbell's enthusiasm; till, by way of
steadying himself, he took into partnership Vincent Alexander, lately
an undergraduate of Balliol; who, frigid and level-headed, succeeded by
sheer weight of his twenty-five imperturbable years, in setting a limit
to the indecent exuberances of Campbell's middle-age.
Then Graham Carr wrote "Piccadilly." And the firm began to prosper.
* * * * *
Gareth turned off the Strand, up a by-street, till he came to a
shop-window flaunting innumerable replicas of the July number of "The
Blue Sky"; design consisting of a smiling maiden running precariously
along a rainbow, and leading a peacock on a red ribbon. He passed
through a side-entrance and up a wooden stairway, till confronted
by the familiar black lettering: "Leslie Campbell, Publisher," on
an opaque glass door. Then he heard the quick pattering trip of Mr.
Campbell on the stairs behind him; and waited, holding the door open.
"Thank ye, Temple. Ah, while I think of it, mek out a report on this,
will ye?" A bulky parcel was thrust into the reader's arms. "And ye
needn't let Mr. Alexander see it ... just yet. Understand?"
Gareth understood that the senior partner had happened upon a new
genius who might, with luck, sell about ninety-seven copies of an
edition.
"Very well, Mr. Campbell."
Together they entered the outer office, as Guy Burnett banged the
telephone receiver back on its hook.
"Hale's, sir. Two-fifty more copies of 'Piccadilly' wanted immediately
for the branch libraries."
"Of 'Piccadilly'?"
Campbell groaned aloud. "Piccadilly" was the so-called Book of the
Year. The volume in its dull red binding had since four months become
an obsession in the office. They breathed, talked, dreamt "Piccadilly."
It littered the floor, the desks, the tables, the shelves. Every
'phone call concerned "Piccadilly"; every letter. They took up a paper
and read reviews of "Piccadilly." They went for a walk and the cover
stared at them from library windows. The entire firm had floated to
affluence on "Piccadilly." And one and all, Campbell and his partner;
Guy Burnett, the clerk; Gareth Temple, the reader; and Jimmy, the
Heart-breaker; one and all were deadly sick of "Piccadilly." Graham
Carr was the only person who was not sick of it. Graham Carr had
written it.
"Aweel, send Jimmy over to interview the binder." Campbell disappeared
into his inner sanctum. Alexander, by way of reproof to enthusiasm,
never arrived on the spot till noon.
The Heart-breaker was despatched on his congenial errand. Then, cheered
and refreshed, returned to his task of making into parcels the rejected
manuscripts. Merrily he whistled, as he jerked the string into knots;
merrily he whistled as he banged the door behind him, and set off to
catch the post. Jimmy, aged thirteen, had been the very first within
these walls to break an unknown heart by dispatching a package with
slip of paper enclosed: "Mr. Campbell has considered your MS. with much
care, but regrets----" Consequently his title and his importance.
Burnett was called into the inner room to be dictated a letter which
the senior partner was anxious to dispatch on the sly, before his
relentless junior should appear. An exceedingly popular lady novelist,
commanding the best existing sale of sentimental fiction, had offered
her wares to Leslie Campbell, for the prestige of seeing his name
stamped at the foot of her cover. Alexander was considering the
advisability of lowering their standards to accept these overtures:
"Psychology will never make us a fortune, Campbell; and we can't live
for ever on the proceeds of 'Piccadilly.'" Now, sneakingly, and with
immense delight, Campbell dictated his uncompromising refusal of Miss
Ethel Erskine's offer. He would have nothing but the Intellectuals.
The little Scotsman's admiration of his "Young Men" and their style of
authorship was almost fanatical.
Gareth found them tiring. He felt always acutely conscious of being an
outsider. Not that it mattered--he was only the reader; and though
his judgment could be relied on as sound and scholarly, Campbell never
made an intimate of him; never called him "my boy," as he did young
Burnett, for instance. As for Alexander, he disapproved altogether of
the reader, whom he classified as an idealist lacking in guts.
Temple was older than any of the others; older than the head of the
firm, even. And sitting there at his desk, he seemed to have grown just
a little dusty; to lag a few paces behind the times--while "Campbell's
Young Men" rushed fully twenty years ahead of them.
The clock ticked fussily through the stillness. Gareth,
proof-correcting, bent wearily over the long strips of evil-smelling
print. Quick steps on the stone stairs outside; and the door burst open
to admit a man in a worn Norfolk jacket, and square heavy boots; giving
him, with his tanned skin and boyish blue eyes, somewhat the appearance
of a country squire.
"Hullo. Where's everybody?"
"That you, Mr. Carr? The chief is busy, I think; shall I call him?"
"No, it's all right; I only strolled in to sit on the table and swing
my legs." He glanced humorously at Gareth; and, having nothing better
to do for the moment, dropped into casual conversation: "Has it ever
struck you, Temple, what a wonderful thing it is to have the right to
break in without apologies on a real live publisher, and swing one's
legs from his real live dirty untidy desk? I used to pace up and down
outside here, before you had decided on my fate--God! what a time it
lasted!--and picture myself doing just that."
"Were we a long time? Yes, I remember now, the Chief was away. But you
never enquired?"
"No. And d'you know, if the ordeal of waiting had lasted a decade
longer, I should never have screwed myself to the point of asking for a
decision."
"Why?"
"One is possessed by a curious spirit of fatalism where the first book
is concerned. Things must take their course. What a period that was of
ghastly thrills, imagining all the accidents of fire and water which
were destroying my precious manuscript. And now----"
"Now you've got there, yes. There's been an order from Hale's for
two-fifty more copies of 'Piccadilly.'"
"Good!" Carr made as if to pass on; then paused to say. "Had anything
worth while up lately?"
Gareth's face was expressive.
"As bad as that?" laughed Carr. "You are fond of reading, of course?"
He flung himself into a battered leather arm-chair, hands thrust deep
into his pockets, legs stretched out towards the empty grate. He had
never bothered much with the reader before now, and it struck him that
this reserved man with the stern mouth and grey-flecked hair, might
reward closer study. "You are fond of reading?"
"I--loathe--it."
The words were pushed out with such intense vehemence, that Carr was
startled. "I didn't think it possible for an intelligent man to dislike
books."
"Perhaps not. As a young man I loved them so much that the day I got
my first job as a reader I walked through London with my head among
the stars. But books were then magical mysterious things, that grew
on trees, and dropped into my hands. I never gave a thought to the
mechanism of producing them: authors, manuscripts, typists, publishers,
readers, printers, binders, contracts, proofs--they were hard facts,
and had nothing to do with just books. For the first time that evening
I read with my brain instead of my heart ... and I've been reading
with my brain ever since, till it's dog-tired. Good Lord, man! _I_
can't enjoy a book; I have to be on the look-out for tautology and
anachronisms and split infinitives. Books are my bread-and-butter; they
nauseate me; it's all I can do not to send up one damning report after
another. I read books all day, and carry home a pile with me to read at
night. My imaginative chords have been thumped till they hang loose as
a broken bell-rope. Books--I can't get outside them, their mechanism
and jargon. The world is one vast book, clipped together in chapters.
I'm surrounded by men like you, who never drop a pencil without turning
it into an incident for their books." From a fierce abstraction,
Gareth wheeled suddenly on his hearer. "Now, this very minute, you are
thinking I would be an excellent tragic character for your next book:
the reader who detests reading. Are you?"
Carr flushed a guilty crimson; he had just succeeded in placing Gareth
in the third chapter of "The Gnome."
"Well--er--I think I'll go inside. I've got a new contributor to
propose for the White 'un."
"What's that?"
Not to have heard of the "White Review" monthly journal whose issue
the firm had been contemplating and discussing for weeks--well, for a
week, ever since Ran Wyman, author of "Tom Tiddler's Ground" and spoilt
_enfant terrible_ at the office, had first mooted the notion? Carr
explained, amazed at the other's ignorance.
"No, I've been told nothing about it. Oh, yes, I saw that some special
scheme was in the air, but I'm used to that here. It sounds good
enough; more destructive than beautiful, though."
"Oh--beautiful!" Carr shrugged his shoulders; no doubt of it, the
reader was inclined to be old-fashioned. "All the same, Temple, I don't
think you hate books; only other people's books. Why don't you write
one yourself?"
"To add to the output of rubbish?"
"Thank you," laughed the author of "Piccadilly," then turned to
Alexander, who, very sleek and immaculate, was in the act of hanging up
his hat.
"Morning, Alex. Feel like contemplating a new series of explosions for
the White 'un?"
"Yours?"
"No. Discovery of mine. Polish woman. I want to show some of her stuff
to Campbell; it's soul-shattering."
"Then don't show it to him," languidly protested the junior
partner; "already the journal is likely to be poison to the average
intelligence. I intend asking Ethel Erskine to contribute an antidote."
This, unaware of the letter reposing at the foot of the nearest
pillar-box. Beneath his attitude of careful restraint, Vincent
Alexander concealed an appreciation of talent as quick and keen as
Campbell's own; but he considered the chief ought not to be indulged.
With a careless "good morning" to Temple, he drew Carr through the
swing-door marked "private."
Gareth sighed. Though he would not have owned it for worlds, had never
owned it even to himself, he did sometimes long to be admitted into the
charmed circle; the splendid bumptious fellowship of creators. To be
acknowledged One of Them; himself to swagger into publishers' offices,
pass the reader with a casual nod, sit on the tables and swing his legs
and patronize young aspirants to fame. To have Leslie Campbell call him
"my boy," and be in the confidence of Vincent Alexander; initiated into
whatever literary scheme was afoot--nay, himself boldly to propound
these schemes, and have them heard with respect. One of "Campbell's
Young Men." One of Them....
He did not often sit dreaming thus. His sixteen years as reader had
drained him not only of ambition, but of a great deal of his happy
illusions. At whiles, he used to ask himself why he continued this
especial work which had turned to drab substance what was once his
fabric of enchantment. It was so difficult to break away from things.
Gareth remained a reader. And the past few years had hardened him to
mechanical acquiescence.
But his recent outbreak to Graham Carr seemed again to loosen
discontent. Without thought of rebellion, merely with the mournful
recognition upon him of how far he stood from the inner shrine of
fellowship, he sat idly at his desk, hearing the occasional laughter
which drifted from the room beyond. Even young Burnett was allowed at
these confabulations; a mere boy of nineteen, he was engrossed in the
writing of an "Episode in the Life of a Navvy," backed by the hearty
encouragement of his two chiefs. Yes, Burnett had started already--and
he, Gareth, was now in his fortieth year. Why had he never written his
great book? Perhaps Carr had been right in saying that other people's
books had swamped him entirely.
Leslie Campbell's office was not a good place for introspection. The
telephone bell rang repeatedly. A miscellaneous procession of callers
kept the swing-door in an endless gale and motion. The designer of the
cover to the shilling edition of "Piccadilly" came to submit his rough
idea of the sketch, comprising a hectic young man staring wildly into
a candle-flame, above which floated a grinning skull: a bright and
attractive notion which mightily pleased Campbell, but was rejected
by Carr and Alexander both, since there was nothing in the text of
either skulls or candles. Youthful authors of both sexes, timorous
or determined, knocked continually at the outer gates, requesting
interviews with Mr. Campbell. Jimmy's job to attend to these, whenever
he was present; but Gareth had been steeled to execute hope with as
little compunction as the Heart-breaker himself. The designer emerged
from his colloquy within: "You had better ask the pretty-cover artist
on the 'Blue Sky' to do your next job," sarcastically--and in his
blind rage collided with Mona Gurney on the top stair. "Come in, my
lass; you're the verra person we need," cried Campbell, catching
sight of her; and she joined the conclave of Olympians. A thin slip
of a girl, demure and refined as one of Jane Austen's heroines, she
was the only woman writer whose books had attained the honour of
being published by Leslie Campbell; great strapping books, reeking of
the soil. "Campbell's Young Men" held her in profound respect; nay,
Alexander almost committed the indiscretion of loving her, because her
tailor-mades were of such irreproachable fit; the two would discuss
fashion by the hour, interrupted ever by Campbell's disgusted comments,
which but effected that they would mince their tones the more. You
could do no wrong if you were One of Them.
The July sun filtered through the dirt-specked windows, on to the
litter of books and papers, on to the dusty floor and splashed walls.
Gareth had not moved for several minutes, engrossed in the study
of a typed manuscript sent up for approval. "Spring-fret," by Moll
Aynsleigh. And underneath the title-page, the quotation:
"Grant the path be clear before you
When the old spring-fret comes o'er you...."
Crude as the veriest green apple, and sentimental as a love-song heard
by moonlight, Moll Aynsleigh was in all probability a young girl
embarked tremulously on the wonderful adventure of a first novel. Not
thus could one enter the favoured ranks of Leslie Campbell. Yet there
was that in the hackneyed theme, the quest for Prince Charming, which
sprayed on Gareth's parched imagination like water from a fountain.
Love and an April dawn--children playing in a garden--the hopeless,
laughably hopeless, despair of youth at grown-up frustration of their
plans,--a certain tumultuous "I-want-I-know-not-what" which beat
through every page like the beating of a little schoolgirl's heart....
Gareth, in midsummer, fell victim to a bad attack of spring-fret,
vague and troubled and wishful. Knew that he should not be seeing the
sunshine's gold splashing through grimy London panes; knew now that he
had missed things; knew that he was over forty, and a failure.
He glanced at the end of the book; and set it aside for Jimmy to pack
and return. Silly little Moll Aynsleigh ought to have known better than
to send her romance to this address. Nevertheless, Gareth was sorry.
"Grant the path be clear before you ..." how hot and stuffy was the
inside of the bus which carried him that evening to Hammersmith. No
room on the roof; or else Gareth was not quick enough to shove a
passage through the struggling mass on the step. The air was fetid
with breath and the smell of clothing and an indefinable odour of
food; the narrow seats crowded with a selection of the fat of the
land, so that elbows were tightly wedged, and bodies sweltered in
torturing proximity. "Grant the path be clear before you" ... he knew
that path; had seen it often: it wound over a hill, a low hill, easy
and pleasant to the climber; hill which humped a sun-slippery shoulder
from among the silvery morning mists. And thence, on the further side,
the path would dip to a young wood; the youngest wood in all the
world; younger even than when broidered with the tender green tips and
tassels of spring; younger far than when garbed in the self-satisfied
foliage of summer or the crudely flaming tints of autumn. A wood
with promises unfulfilled, soul unawakened. A wood of February. And
here the hill-path would be laid with a carpet of sodden purple; the
hollows spun by webs of glittering frost. Over all the bare branches
of the tree-tops stole a haze of white and a cloud of dim mauve; but
save for these it stood a bridal wood, pale and intangible; its mesh
of lower boughs devoid of all colour; its spaces silent of all sound
but the cold clean trill of single bird, awake too soon. Somewhere,
the thin trickle of unseen water; somewhere, a dark pool with darker
shadows. The sun slid faltering down the sentinel tree-trunks of that
wood, dared not enter in. A wood haunted, yet passionless. A waiting
wood; not for mischievous pixie or leaf-crowned Dryad; but for some wan
girl, whose garments hung tattered as the tattered shreds of autumn yet
lingering on the hedges; whose ankles were bare and slim; and whose
eyes, blue hyacinths washed with rain, seemed mutely to wait their
tryst with a lover so young as to know naught of evil. Gareth knew
where she could be found: at the far end of the empurpled path; seated
upon a broken gate. He would come upon her when he was hot and tired
from climbing the hill....
He was made aware of the bus-conductor, who wanted his twopence.
Of a bony female, stamping furiously upon his feet, because he had
not risen to give her room, and of a basket dug into his side by a
man in villainous corduroys, basket that evidently contained cheese
of a vicious and unforgettable character. Gareth was glad when the
Hammersmith vehicle finally jolted him forth at the nearest corner to
his street. He knew he was late for dinner; he was usually late; but
it was too hot to hurry. The evening had brought with it no relief
of wind; merely a greater heaviness to the stale air. The shouts of
swarming children free from the Board Schools, sounded intolerably
shrill and close to his ear. The sun gave no sign of ever setting.
Corners of houses and their roofs, chimneys and telegraph wires sawed
and carved the sky into the various bright blue segments of a jig-saw
puzzle. A passing water-cart raised longings in the heart and dust in
the road, with equal incapacity to deal with either. And here at last
was Pacific Villa; hideously uniform with its neighbours on the right
and left; square of front garden, devoid of shade, devoid of grass,
of everything save a few sticks at various angles of hopelessness;
lace curtains at the dining-room window; blobs of lighter brown on
the brown front door where the blistered paint had peeled away. Gareth
fumbled for his latchkey; before he could find it, the door was burst
open to him.
CHAPTER II
"_Can't_ you be in time?" demanded Kathleen, not in the harsh tones of
the scold, but with tragedy quivering behind her tense demand; "you
knew the Collins were invited to dinner."
"I'm sorry," said Gareth gently. How hot it was. How hot--she was.
"And now Lulu has come without Jim--when one only puts up with her for
the sake of Jim! And you'll have to see her home."
To Kathleen there were no molehills in a world of mountains.
"It doesn't matter. I hope you started without me?"
"No; we didn't; we're waiting. Come along--come along. Must you go up
to wash?"
His hands felt sticky with the heat and the day's work. "Afraid so. I
shan't be a minute." He felt her reluctant glance follow him up the
stairs, measure the seconds while he plunged his throbbing head into
cold water, tug him down again to the dining-room where she and Lulu
Collins were already in their places at table.
Mr. and Mrs. Collins had at one time been their neighbours. And though
they had moved since then several times--they were of the cheerful
but shoddy type who instantly rent a house on the strength of a fiver
unexpectedly turning up, and then quite gaily effect what is known as
a "moonlight flit" when their fluctuating fortunes wavered downwards
again--yet a spasmodic intimacy was still kept up.
"Jim would have come," explained Lulu in voluble apology, as Gareth
took up the carving-knife and attacked the mutton; "but he's most
frightfully busy. I oughtn't to tell you--but ... well, you've heard
of this huge scheme they've got on hand for that new sort of wonderful
photography?--well, Jim's in that, and of course it means a fortune to
us. We're jogging along anyhow just now ... but in six weeks or so....
And then there's that other thing too--you know!--that's just going to
come off with a tremendous bang. But you won't breathe a word of it,
will you?"
Automatically the Temples made their vows of silence. Lulu's plucky
optimism, her continual brag of her husband as the Power Behind in
some gigantic experiment, social, financial, or theatrical, was too
often unfounded to inspire the congratulatory awe it demanded. Jim
Collins was a nice little chap; but Lulu was fourth-rate. Her illusions
were fourth-rate. Her clothes were fourth-rate. She prided herself
on a knack of turning "bits of things" into a thoroughly up-to-date
rig-out: "Kath, did you notice my hat? I s'pose you thought it was
new. Not it! My dear, I made it out of that piece of lace on my blue
silk, and the remains of that velveteen dressing-gown Mabel gave me.
And I'm sure no one would guess, would they?"... Everyone would guess;
she always looked tawdry, fly-away; not dirty--but never definitely
clean. Kathleen recognized now all the portions of her garments, and
remembered the various conjunctions of bad taste in which they had
already figured ... bits of trimming; bits of bead and feather and
lace.... Lulu could have stood as a symbolic figure personifying "the
Last Day of the Sale."...
"Gareth," said Kathleen, watching critically his incompetence with the
joint, "when do you get your holidays?"
"I don't know exactly. At least, I haven't asked. Why?"
"We must decide at once if we're going away, that's all. Lulu says that
every corner is booked already, everywhere."
"Yes, really, Mr. Temple. I would hardly believe it when Kath told me
you hadn't fixed anything yet. We're going abroad as soon as Jim's
thing is settled; I daresay it's not so full there. And meanwhile we're
going to Ilfracombe, to my brother and his wife, for a fortnight. Jim
must have a rest, poor boy."
"I expect we shall go somewhere ..." said Gareth slowly.
"Somewhere! Where?" from Kathleen.
"Well--where would you like to go?"
She laughed impatiently. "As if that had anything to do with it? Why do
you pretend? I should _like_ a holiday in Japan, or on a coral island."
"Japan ..." he mused indolently, unable to resist word-magic. "Ivory
blossoms on a light-green sky.... Shall we go to Japan, Kathleen?"
Lulu stared. "Does he mean it?"
"We can afford it so well, can't we?" When Kathleen really craved for
something--and her nature allowed nothing less than craving--it seemed
to her violation to toss the sacred fancy idly as a toy-balloon. Her
pride suffered that Gareth, so sensitive, could yet betray desire for
what he made no effort to obtain.
"It would be a lark if you joined us in Ilfracombe. We should be such
a large party, wouldn't we? Fred and Trixie, of course. And Fred's
pal, Napier Kirby and his wife--the new one--and her son by her old
husband--and his mother ... Kirby's, I mean; she's a Maori!--well, no,
not exactly; but whatever it is you call them when their mother or
father was. And me and Jim; and Trixie's Aunt Emmeline: and you and
Kathleen----"
"It's very good of you to want us," said Gareth, striving weakly to
extricate himself from Lulu's gaily growing snowball.
"And perhaps some of your great author chums would come too; tell them
we're going to have a glorious time." Lulu's glorious times always
took on their hues from the brilliant anticipation and the glamorous
retrospect between which they were squeezed to invisibility.
Kathleen remarked that probably they were now too late to book rooms in
any Ilfracombe boarding-house.
"Oh, my dear, we're not going into a boarding-house. Not much! Fred has
taken a house for three months, if you please. Swank, I told him!"
"That finishes it, then. Gareth and I can't plant ourselves on your
brother and sister-in-law. We don't know them."
"Oh, but it's quite all right--you can pay your share; needn't stand on
ceremony with Trix. You see, the house is ever so much too large for
them; they took it together with the Kirbys; and even then Emmeline
Frazer is paying towards it----Not Jim and me, of course; but then Fred
is very grateful to Jim because he let him in as a favour into that
big thing of his I told you about last month, and it's going to do
frightfully well. I'm sure Trixie would love to have you--she's awfully
keen on literary people. Shall I give you the address for you to write
to her?"
Kathleen was rather attracted by the notion. She had that restlessness
upon her to get something settled, which came from seeing everyone
round about her flitting and migrating, astir as swallows with the
fever of the South upon them.
"Shall we try it, Gareth?"
"If you like...."
"Or would you rather I looked round at once for something else?"
"We can think it over; there's plenty of time."
"There isn't. There isn't plenty of time. You hear what Lulu says;
every place will be crowded."
"Must we go where there's a crowd?"
She might have said: "Are we the right people to make holiday
alone?" ... but pretence had never yet been completely shattered
between them. "If we go _when_ there's a crowd, yes. It can't be
avoided in August."
He was silent. And helped his guest to prune jelly and custard.
"Shall I write to Ilfracombe? Do say one way or another"; her voice
took on that driving note he so dreaded, and which, against his will,
always plunged him into a counter-mood of stagnant negation.
"As you please."
"Is there any place you would prefer?"
Goaded less by her irritation than by its tightly drawn restraint, he
let fall: "Alpenruh...."
"Where's that?" asked Lulu; "is it abroad? We're going abroad directly
Jim's thing is settled--I told you, didn't I? I wonder if we should
meet each other."
... Kathleen sat furiously biting her lip. How dared he understand so
well what she had been all the while thinking? How dared he share this
memory, and give utterance where she was silent?
The remainder of the evening was hardly a success. Her brooding indrawn
pain seemed to transform the parlour into a tight hot circle of air, in
which Gareth felt himself struggling like a fly in a web. Even Lulu was
aware of strain, and rose early to take her departure.
"And here's Trixie's address, Kath, just in case you should decide to
go after all."
"I have decided. I shall write to-night. Now. Fetch me the ink, Gareth."
Her glance challenged him to raise objections. But quietly and
courteously Gareth did as she bade him. He would have made further
amends for his mistake had he known how to do it without hurting her
more.
"When did you say you'll be free?"
"I don't know. End of the month, I daresay."
"Can you find out for certain?"
"Perhaps, to-morrow. No, certainly it's no trouble to see you home,
Mrs. Collins." Anything to escape the fretting discomfort of Kathleen's
voice....
They alighted from the train at Notting Hill Station, and walked the
few paces to the shop over which the Collins had rooms.
"Good night!"
"Oh, but you'll come up and have a drink with Jim. He might be able to
put you on to something good; influence counts for an awful lot."
"I don't think I'll come up," indeterminedly.... The need of solitude
became suddenly overwhelming: "No; if you'll excuse me; I'm tired; long
day at the office."
"Good night, then; and I hope you'll arrange something nice for your
holidays...."
Gareth sauntered moodily along the dull pavements, and past the blind
shop-shutters of Ladbroke Grove. Holidays--and his mind sped back to a
phrase in a letter, written some sixteen years ago: "Our holiday--Yes,
but I shall always speak the word now according to its derivation: holy
day. Holy days--for us, Kathleen."
Well, but what had gone wrong in the years, to have transformed the
splendid impulsive creature of his mountain idyll, to the raw hectic
woman of nerves who was now his housemate? Nerves--she was one nerve;
worn to as thin an edge as the bending blade of an old and useless
table-knife. Gareth could not tell how the gradual transformation had
occurred. One morning he and Kathleen had had a sharp altercation
about--what was it?--Yes, he had wanted to lie abed five minutes
longer, and Kathleen had lost her temper; then as suddenly recovered
it; and glancing round the untidy bedroom, her strewn brushes vying
for place with his razor-strop on the mantelpiece where neither
belonged, hearing the drizzle of rain on the window, and the cracked
bell from the hall summoning them to a cold breakfast, she cried in a
choking voice: "We're not a bit different from other people. I knew
it. I warned you," and fled from the room. Then softly Gareth arose,
and went to the bathroom, where already the paper was beginning to
peel and flap from the damp walls. And there, sitting toothbrush in
hand, on the edge of the tin enamelled bath, he strove to recollect
the details of Kathleen's outbreak on her horror of certain trivial
intimacies of wedlock, that by avoiding them he might yet retain a grip
on the slippery substance of their dreams. Bathroom taps; his mind
persistently dwelt on that one allusion: "To hear a man's bath-water
running in the morning...." But that couldn't be all. The bathroom taps
became to him an obsession, wholly responsible for the present state
of disillusion between him and Kathleen. She had said it. And unable
to cope with the actual trouble, he found relief in clinging to the
one tangible grievance she might be nourishing ... he trickled the
water very gently into the bath that morning, so that it was barely
lukewarm when he stepped in. Gareth disliked lukewarm baths, and he was
depressed at breakfast....
Well, after sixteen years, he knew that the bathroom taps had been as
much--or as little--responsible as every other link in the dragging
chain of habit.
He had learnt to fear Kathleen's intensity of feeling; her exaggeration
of every trifle to a matter of life or death; to fear still more the
overwhelming responsive leap of her, when he attempted any sudden
tenderness. He feared her suffering of remembrance, knowing as he did
that a moment lay in store for both when their inability to keep love
between them was bound to be drawn from its sheath of pretence. Her
one-time dread of seeing step by step that festering intimacy grow
upon mystery, had now merged into a still greater dread of hearing
the actuality spoken of in so many words. And he was sorry for her
disappointment, with a sorrow that was bitterly helpless.
As for himself--Gareth was looking to-night with clear eyes at his
cherished dream; and saw that he had dragged it too close, so that it
was stained with thumbmarks. If only he could still have kept painless
the memory of Alpenruh's glamour; if Kathleen had died directly
after--he or Kathleen. She was less at fault than he; she had striven
on their return from the land of enchantment to draw a charmed circle
thrice around it, wherein to keep it detached and wonderful. It was he
who had hung on; he who was responsible for the drab aftermath. Once in
conquering vein he had swung past this very church on the hill, down
the long slope to the house in North Kensington, to force Kathleen's
consent to their marriage....
Gareth was now wandering round and round the wide sweep of road which
encircled the church, standing aloof on the topmost crest of the
hill. The dark narrow lanes scurrying downwards on all sides to more
level streets, were solitary of loiterers. The scent of daisy-studded
grass within the railinged spaces of the church lifted from the man
his weariness of the long hot London day. Almost he could imagine the
cold rush of seven cascades down the steep asphalt lanes; imagine that
in the valley of Lansdowne Road stood a wooden châlet with shutters
painted green and pink ... somewhere a wan girl waiting in a wood--and
oh, to be free to seek her out, and all she stood for of youth and
impulse!... "Grant the path be clear before you...."
* * * * *
But twenty-four had stumbled into a bondage that forty could not
decently quit. If twenty-four had had the strength to have made a clean
end to romance when vision had warned him to do so, had not shirked the
unknown quantity of pain and longing and empty days awaiting him in
the further blankness--what a passage he might then have made through
life, endowed with the power to recognize that adventure need not
of necessity be joyous adventure; and that he was no true adventurer
who dared not let go of a once-found happiness; who thought a dream
could be taken by storm, grabbed, and held forever as a right.... Pale
fool and egoist, blindly groping, blindly resenting--while ahead of
him strode in conquering mood the man he had thought himself: brave
to exchange love's gain for love's loss; willing, for the sake of
illusion, to plough through its inevitable aftermath of disappointment;
older than needs be, for the contrast of youth forfeited; hands
emptier, because they had been but recently so brimful. Yet
unhesitating in trust that all could be met again: love and illusion
and youth and fortune.... The round adventure, this; no mere arc of the
circle, but completing each time the full sweep of the compass....
* * * * *
Gareth was walking faster now, ideas surging on a wine-coloured flood
down the reopened channels of his mind.... The man he had thought
himself; Kathleen, tumultuous red-and-brown as he had once known her;
half-forgotten figures of mediæval song, so alive to his boyhood. All
trooping past him like some glowing pageant; set to a cadence of words
that sank from triumph to a wistful lilt of regret; swelling again
to the clarion-song of achievement. Dimly remembered dreams floating
towards him as clouds drift from all corners of the sky into a rich
sunset. Fragments of love-scenes, spoken he knew not when. Slim form
of the cool girl flitting now beside the conqueror ... now beside the
shadowy failure who stumbled in his wake....
But what did it all mean? Was it a book he had somewhere read? He
read so many books. Yes, but this idea seemed new to him--"The round
adventure; no mere arc of the circle...." The _round_ adventure?--a new
idea, and good.
It was his own.
* * * * *
Gareth stood stock-still, dizzy with the flash of realization. It was
as though a lamp had been lit in the heart of the world. His idea. His
book at last. He was glad now that his imagination had lain barren for
so long; all that he had should go to the book. His inspiration--his by
right of sixteen years' blood-payment.
Gareth strode with pounding heart down Ladbroke Hill. He was in a
fever to start, start at once on his book; start that very night,
the instant he reached home. Suppose the idea should somehow slide
away and leave him with empty hands and blank sight, as the years had
done hitherto. Recklessly he hailed a passing taxi, and bade the man
drive furiously. Shepherds Bush Road whizzed by, a blurred arcade of
colour. A great ship of light swung past with a clanging rhythm. He
had thought it a vehicle of misery that afternoon, when it had stood
for only just a motor-bus. Gareth let down the windows of his flying
chariot, and breathed deeply and happily. Why, every footfall whispered
of meaning now. Walls and chimney-pots, the postered railway-bridge
beneath which they thundered hollowly, crowds pouring thickly from a
gaudy music-hall, the flare of yellow light beneath the striped awning
of a kerbstone barrow, hoarse eternal mutter of blended humanity and
traffic--these were no more the mere material for other people's books,
realities which endlessly echoed the endless echoes of reality that all
day he had to read. His now, the fabric from which pavements and green
grass alike were woven; his, to create into a book, his book, the book
he would start upon that very night.
CHAPTER III
Gareth did not start his book that night. Kathleen was still up on his
return to Pacific Villa; and, lamely, he had to explain the taxi. In
their financial condition--his yearly salary amounted to two hundred
and seventy pounds--taxicabs were extravagances to be contemplated
only when matters of extreme importance were at stake. Gareth did not
happen to be a liar by nature, to assert that he had felt ill; nor was
he a diplomat, to have resorted to the expedient of stopping the car at
the corner of the road. He said simply "I just thought I would like a
drive, Kath," and waited for the storm.
She made cold reply: "It's your money, of course. I've written to
Ilfracombe. Shall we go to bed now? It's late."
His money, of course. But their room--their bed--their house. It would
have been good, that night of nights, to come home to some place of
emptiness where unquestioned he could have written far into the night.
Kathleen, as she fumbled for matches to light the gas, reflected how
good it would have been also to have motored that hot night; driven
away from these poky quarters for a space of time, and hear Gareth say
recklessly, "Hang the money! I just thought you'd like a drive, Kath."
"Gareth, the mantle is smashed again."
"Is it?"
"See if you can find another, will you?"
He did not start his book that night.
The inspiration came and went fitfully during the ensuing fortnight.
But there was no place where it might take concrete form. Not at the
office, certainly. And at home in the evenings, when the dining-room
table was cleared away, and Watts' "Love and Life" presided over the
stained walls and worn red furniture--how could he recapture his
exaltation there, anticipating Kathleen's natural questions directly he
brought forth pencil and paper-pad. If he returned an evasive reply,
she would not ask again, that he knew. But he would all the while be
conscious of her shut-out condition, of her mind torturing itself
with reasons and wherefores, of her laborious care in seeming to take
no notice. Once, after some condemnatory self-searchings, she had
started to take an interest in his office-work, convinced that here
lay a remedy for their failure to find oneness. She read quicker than
he, was quicker also to condemn, and after her tongue had scorched a
romance, his greater tolerance and insight found the task of gathering
the ashes too difficult. He had to ask her to desist from reading. This
she brooded over long: was it petty jealousy on his part? Had she made
a fool of herself in asking to help? No outlet for her energies then,
save the domestic hearth. So the legendary cricket was ousted by a
veritable hurricane, resulting from the uncompromising fierceness she
threw into her mild offices. She changed her tradesmen continually; and
no servant stopped long at Pacific Villa.
Gareth recognized that he must make a start on the book, before his
natural sloth wrapped itself in blanket-warm layers around inspiration.
He tried, the following Sunday; but the machinery of midday dinner
creaked loudly in the kitchen next door. Also, there were many
barrel-organs in Hammersmith, and many children, and many church-bells;
combination of blisses which rendered consistent thought impossible.
The afternoon smelt heavy and headachy. Gareth decided not to start
his book till he was in Ilfracombe. They were to go next Friday. Mrs.
Worley, Lulu's sister-in-law, had written most cordially in reply to
Kathleen's letter, hailing the Temples as: "a welcome addition to our
little house-party" hinting at "acres of room" in Rapparee House if
Mr. Temple cared to bring along Mr. Graham Carr, the famous author of
"Piccadilly"--"Lulu tells me he and Mr. Temple are quite inseparable!"
Finally, in a casual postscript: "By the way----" and mention of
the inconspicuous weekly payment which would more than cover all
expenses--"since you insist----"
"Too much," said Kathleen very decisively. And tore the letter in two.
"That ends it."
Gareth assented. "It's more than we can afford, but----"
"If it's more than we can afford, it's too much."
"I suppose so...." London was like a grill ... and Ilfracombe, he
knew, lay among hills aslant from the Atlantic.... He discovered he
wanted to go to Rapparee House very much indeed. And wished Kathleen
would not at once, and in manner suggestive of the snap of a handbag,
close up all pleasant discussion of improbabilities.
"Shall I write to Mrs. Curtis, and ask if we can have our usual rooms
at St. Leonards?"
"I hate St. Leonards; it was drawn with a ruler. There would be rocks
and pools and valleys ... at Ilfracombe."
"I've heard it's frightfully hot."
"You only run it down now, because we can't go."
"You only crack it up for the same reason."
The dispute took place in the parlour of Pacific Villa. Gareth jerked
his head away from the window--beyond which he had vistaed green water
shot through and through with light ... cool damp places to sit
in ... jerked his head away--to contemplation of his own photograph
upon the mantelpiece--another one pinned to the wall--and yet
another ... they were all over the house. Gareth had an inexplicable
fondness for being photographed; threw away money upon it; hailed any
opportunity of being snapshotted by amateurs. Inexplicable--but not
to Kathleen. Kathleen understood this trait in his character: it gave
him a feeling of support to be everywhere confronted by the square
indomitable lines of his own physiognomy; it was an objective proof
of his being and existence which queerly reassured him in those moods
when he could not find himself; when grip of his will and expression
of his purpose seemed alike slippery and unsubstantial. Gareth, limned
on his photographs, was very like the man he thought himself....
Kathleen knew! Sometimes, when he was poring over a newly acquired
likeness, he would be aware of her gaze upon him, faintly mocking, all
too comprehensive ... despairingly, he wished she had not such a keen
perception; wished he could think she attributed his weakness to mere
vanity ... but she knew--and knew that he knew it. They moved and lived
among these unspoken knowledges.
This particular morning, however, something in the firm lines of his
jaw (as portrayed by Messrs. Hankin of Kilburn) moved him to a spurt of
self-emulation.
"We go to Ilfracombe," he said; and his jaw set into firm lines. "It
shall be managed--somehow."
He expected a sarcastic comment--but Kathleen yielded for once without
arguing. She entertained no illusions that Gareth's present stern
resolve to "manage it somehow" concealed any power of coping strongly
with future difficulties. But sufficient unto the struggle ... she was
depleted ... sick of being opposition party. She too wanted the rocks
and the pools and the valleys....
She wrote to Mrs. Worley to expect them.
* * * * *
After a steeply downhill drive from the station to the town, and then
again steeply uphill to a sturdy red-brick mansion blocking out sight
of the sea, they were told that Mrs. Worley and the others were dining
at the far end of the garden. There was resentment in the servant's
tone which, it was discovered later, arose from an eccentric preference
of the Worleys for carting about their meals in all weathers to any
sort of inconvenient spot, provided it be not their own dining-room.
... A confused impression of a group squatting on the grass under
the wall: Jim Collins, gnome-like, head sunk between his high humped
shoulders, grinning them a welcome; echoed shrilly by Lulu, in a sort
of draggled fancy-costume representing "Summer." An ugly nimble little
man with bronze skin and slanting yellow eyes: beside him, a placid
graceful woman, tall and beautifully dressed; prone on the turf, a
good-looking schoolboy in flannels, munching in a bored condescending
fashion; two oldish ladies disputing over the salad: finally, Trixie
Worley, stout and mysterious, tiny features dotted in vast tracts
of bursting mauve complexion; and her husband Fred, who was in the
eleventh instalment of one of his serial anecdotes, which lasted, with
full data, and allowing for interruptions, all day, and sometimes
reached the point by evening.
Mrs. Worley came forward at sight of the new-comers, and beckoned them
aside:
"_May_ I speak to you----?" her accents were sepulchral to an extreme,
contrasting comically with her wee round mouth, and nose that was a
mere pimple of disproportion. Gareth and Kathleen moved aside with her,
wondering what portentous announcement was in store....
"_Mrs._ Temple"--pause--"_have_ you brought"--another pause--"your
_own_ soap?"
In view of the my-God-we-are-observed manner of enquiry, her hearers
were conscious of an anti-climax.
"No," said Kathleen. She thought soap might reasonably be included in
the price they were paying.
Mrs. Worley breathed hard ... one could almost listen to the weight
being rolled off her mind. "_Good_.... I've _put_ some ... in your
_room_!"
Kathleen asked if they might be shown to their room to unpack.
They were told, to their immense amazement, that Mrs. Worley had lured
them to Rapparee House on false pretences; that not one double bedroom
remained vacant; and that she had arranged for Kathleen to occupy a
single room in the left wing; and Gareth, an attic.
"My dear," in an enigmatic aside to Kathleen--"it _does_ a man
_good_ ... for a few weeks ... I _know_ ..." as they stood for a
moment in the doorway of the little white-and-pansy room, down its
separate flight of four steep stairs. The space was small but cosy;
oak-pannelled; and containing a narrow bed, a grandfather clock, a
chintz window-seat, and a quantity of framed texts. The combined
dressing-wash-table was behind a pansy chintz curtain, permitting the
single occupant of the room to be as reserved as she pleased even with
herself for spectator of her toilet. The leaded-window looked down on
to a small paved courtyard surrounded by murmurous trees. It was a
room for a very young girl ... on the little bookshelf which hung on
the wall, the former owner had left "Little Women and Good Wives,"
"The Lamplighter," "Carrots," and--souvenirs of a more adolescent
stage--"Jane Eyre," "Poems of Passion," and the inevitable "Omar
Khayyam," and "Pleasant Thoughts Birthday Book."
They left Kathleen there; and went on to inspect Gareth's quarters.
"_Mr._ Temple.... You're a _poet_ ... poets _revel_ in studios ...
my brother was an actor, and--I _know_...." It was Gareth's turn to
receive the enigmatic aside.
The attic was also isolated from the rest of the house; and reached
only by a twisting rickety ladder from the second floor landing. It was
a fantastic sensation to enter one's future sleeping apartment head
first, via a hole in the floor. Gareth's imagination leapt ... looking
around him, he forgot Mrs. Worley, confidential from the foot of the
ladder.
Beams, everywhere beams, blackened by age, sloping from roof to floor,
from wall to cranny, so that to walk around the room partook of the
nature of an obstacle race. Windows set carelessly in various angles
overhead, patching the dark raftered ceiling with blue sky and drifting
cloud. Outjutting corners and burrowing nooks. A stove rooted firmly
in the boarded floor. An insecure table that stood solitary by the one
window facing seawards. On the whole, more like a rugged bit of coast
scenery than a decent sleeping apartment. But Gareth knew that here
his book could be written. Here--where he was to be alone. "Grant the
path be clear before you...." Fate had cleared it!
He was terrified that Mrs. Worley should of a sudden recollect that
after all she had a double bedroom lying about empty.
When she left him, he picked his way carefully over and among and
beneath the beams, to the only window which was not a skylight. The sun
had set: and beneath him, in the warm purplish dusk, the tiny harbour
lay pricked out in an irregular parallelogram of lights. The tide was
low; black clumsy boat-shapes sprawled forlornly on the dead sand.
Beyond the entrance channel, one sail, a dark triangle pressed against
the citron fading from the west, waited patiently for the lifting
wave.... Gareth stood motionless.... Presently little separate sounds
uncurled themselves from the indistinguishable murmur, and crept up
to him ... slap of water round the props of the wooden pier ... two
children whispering in a strange rough dialect ... clank of an uneasy
chain ... rattle of the red window-curtains drawn across, in the snug
eating-house opposite. By-and-by these sounds and sights would become
familiar ... already he longed for familiarity ... longed to move
confidently in this dream-world which overhung a harbour under the
hill....
"Gareth!"
Enchantment was smashed. It was Kathleen urgently calling him from
below. He slid aside the trap-door ... hating her. She was standing at
the foot of the ladder, a pile of his belongings in her arms.
"As you didn't think of coming for your things, I've brought them to
you."
He made no move to relieve her of the load.
"My--things?" in a dazed fashion.
... Then he grasped it: they shared a trunk. And Kathleen had been
unpacking while he dreamt. How just like Kathleen....
"Well----" impatiently; "do you expect me to trudge up the ladder with
them?"
(And she wondered if he guessed how she had revelled in the sorting-out
of their more or less joint property into two separate heaps--his and
hers, his and hers now--for a little while.)
He came down a few steps, indecisively--then stopped. It was as though
he were afraid to leave his stronghold, afraid to touch his possessions
lest by their associations they should re-forge that snapped link with
everyday.
"This business is an awful nuisance," he remarked; "she ought to have
let us know."
"Of course she ought. That woman's a humbug. It would serve her right
if we refused to stop----"
"You've unpacked already," hastily. Then, to cover the betrayal:
"You're always in such a hurry----"
"I had to get the trunk out of that poky hole: one can't budge in it,
as it is."
"Better than being stowed away in a draughty garret...."
"I'd change with you; it's airier----"
"_Is_ it?--under the roof!"
Both continued to pretend and to grumble, refusing, in their present
fierce grab at the isolation vouchsafed them, to mingle even their
thanks.
"You _would_ come!"--a thrust at his one masterful fit, when he had
overruled her.
"Well, once you had written ..." and his pause tacitly reminded her of
his lukewarmness when Lulu had first propounded the idea.
But their reproachful resentment over the outward inconveniences was
genuine. And as for the secret fount of joy----"Anyhow, it's not due
to him!" "It's not due to her!" The exact knowledge of it shrined and
guarded in Gareth's mind and Kathleen's, was a wound to the vanity of
Kathleen and Gareth.
He bent, and took his pile of clothing, brushes, etc.--dropped one or
two ... Kathleen restored them to him. Their eyes did not meet--from
a sort of shame at the grudging spirit manifested in their short
parley----"It's only with _him_ that I'm like that," Kathleen informed
herself. And Gareth reflected defensively: "It's only with _her_...."
He wasn't such a--a beast, really. Not up there in the attic--alone.
He turned and stumbled up. She followed him. He stopped dead, and faced
round, blocking the entrance....
"I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable."
"I'm not;" he clung to his grievance. "But you can't do anything."
"I might speak to Mrs. Worley; get her to fix up something
different...." She was so positive by now that his satisfaction was too
great to let him acquiesce in any such suggestion, that she could risk
tormenting him ... _make_ him confess his paradise ... it was futile of
him to try and deceive her, of all people!
He stood at bay. If once she came in ... it would destroy everything;
destroy the peace which had lulled the tired man as though cool fingers
were being laid upon the heat and jar of his life hitherto. He realized
that she was only prodding him out of harsh amusement; nothing to fear
in her threat: she was too glad to be rid of his presence to chance a
restoration of it.
"You can't do anything," he repeated.
She shrugged her shoulders ... and without further speech, re-descended
the ladder, and went swiftly back to her room.
_Her room!_
On an impulse of dread she slammed the door, shot the bolt, and then,
breathlessly, back against the panels, looked round at what was to her
almost tangible solitude. Queer, how all these years she and Gareth
had dragged on in that hateful--that indecent intimacy of every inch
of space shared, because neither had dared shatter aloud the forced
assumption that these conditions were as both wished them. And now,
by the merest accident--Trixie Worley as a bungling ludicrous fairy
god-mother--they were given their holiday. Their first holiday since
Alpenruh. Then, chance had divinely thrown them together; now, chance
as divinely held them apart. Her maidenhood was restored to her....
The sensation that at any moment another had the right to walk in,
touch her possessions, watch her actions--how had she borne the sixteen
years' torment? There burnt within her nature a fierce white-hot
virginity, an utter incapacity to share, which all her married life
had been powerless to wear away. From the hour when convention and
the cramped limits of Pacific Villa had obliged her to watch Gareth
struggle with his shirt, love had slipped from her; gave place to an
irritation from which there was to be no respite. She had heard him
breathing at night----
Oh, the wonder of the holiday nights to come, when she would lie
alone....
Luxuriously savouring each unwitnessed movement, she began to undress.
She was feeling rather vividly well. Summer heat had always a
stimulating effect upon her; the ghost of her Red Indian grandmother
saw to that. A warm colour flushed her haggard face. She crossed to the
window, treading lightly as her moccasined ancestors might have done.
The air smelt hot and ripe; a faint odour of musk was astir. This was
August--she need not begin to think of winter yet. The underlying dread
crouched, biding its time. She was forty-three--she need not begin to
think of middle-age yet ... not for a moment yet. She was now very much
in the same mood as had sent the girl of twenty-seven with Gareth to
Alpenruh. That had been the first panic. This--the last?
Squatting on the window-seat, lank strands of hair clinging to
shoulders and waist, eyes straining towards the dark land-whipped pines
surrounding the courtyard, she sent forth an imperious summons to youth
and romance. Kathleen called it romance. She told herself that because
she shrank from contact with Gareth, so all her longings must naturally
be spiritual. She told herself that her imagination was starved....
Kathleen was forty-three; and the summer heat fevered her blood and
flushed her thin face, as with naked breasts she leant from the window
of her virginal bedroom.
* * * * *
In the shadowy attic, candle-lit, Gareth wrote the first chapter of
"The Round Adventure."
CHAPTER IV
With the tremulous daring of a man who has caught a glimpse of a
woman's face once, swiftly, by night, and has feared to see it the
morning after, in case it should prove less lovely--yet longed to gaze
upon it and gaze upon it, that each subtle curve, each fleck of colour,
might at last grow familiar to him as the sunshine, so Gareth set out,
the morning after arrival at Rapparee House, to explore minutely that
harbour which Heaven had dumped for his delight beneath his attic
window. The streets were washed in gold, under a sky of stark cobalt;
and the space between sky and street was wind-tumbled and uproarious. A
fine jolly day for a landsman to prowl about among quays and ships and
mariners ... and dream that he too had raced through scudding seas and
anchored in strange ports....
Gareth Temple, who would have made a poorer seaman than any who had
ever doubled the Cape of Storms, found himself slouching along the
cobbled streets, and looking ahead with that peculiar scrutiny, keen
yet distant, which--the sea novelist assures us--is the inevitable
result of perpetual communion with the far horizon; and that peculiar
chin, dogged yet steadfast, which--he omits to tell us--is the
inevitable result of the perpetual crunching of ship's biscuit.
Ever and again he muttered words like "cargo" or "chanty" or
"lagoon" ... and imagination never failed to return its quick
picture....
Great muscular men stripped to the waist, toiling up a gangway, with
loads of silk stuffs and elephant tusks and spices....
The same tanned fellows singing, now lustily, now mournfully, in the
lamplit glow of a little waterside inn-parlour, with sanded floor, and
smoked ceiling, and a ship-model on the chimney-piece....
Strip of warm firm sand, white-shining in the moon, sloping down to the
black polished mirror of deep water....
Spinner of words. Idle spinner of word-magic.
But he was going to write a book about a man who brought word-magic
to its rounded completion by fulfilment! A man who would indeed carry
the cargo, roar in the chanty, swim the lagoon. A man who was like
himself turned conqueror. And the creation of such a man, in such a
book, should be his conquest; conquest of adverse fate, of acquiescent
inertia--conquest of other people's books....
The harbour, like all enchanted spots, though so distinctly seen from
a window on the hillside, was difficult to find when plunged into the
maze of streets that formed the old part of the town. At last, at the
end of a narrow alley, one of the leaning houses flung out a room to
meet the house opposite; he stepped under this square archway and on
to the harbour. From the blistered pink wall above his head, an ancient
iron lamp jutted at right angles as though from an arm outthrust.
His first impression was of the dark clumsy hulks of trawlers embedded
crookedly in the mud; while the lighter floating craft, miscellany of
broad gaily-painted rowing-boats, and fishing-boats with ragged brown
sails, were already beginning to lurch lazily from side to side, as
the incoming waves lifted their keels, lifted and dropped the slimy
ropes which, hung with green weed, sagged from deck to staple. Then he
noticed the soft rise of green and fawn hills beyond the harbour mouth;
and at the end of the quay, the queer little isolated mount crested by
a ruined chapel, some forlorn relic of pagan faith, enshrining perhaps
a grim old sea-god to whom the sailors prayed ... once--long ago.
Gareth's eye dropped slantwise to a tin building on the quay, with the
word BETHEL large over its porch. And he smiled....
Men used to worship their gods more beautifully than now.
He caught sight of some heaps of pine-logs on his right, in front
of the shambling line of fisher-huts that hoisted themselves so
painfully half-way out of a sunken ditch; and went cautiously along
the wall dropping sheer down to the slime, till he reached the broad
path littered untidily by a huge crane, an old ship's-boiler, a pile
of crab-pots, a rain-cask, rusty iron salvage sheds, a patch of
nasturtiums flaming defiantly, blue shirts hung out to dry--jumble of
domesticity and wreck-lumber. The pine-logs were oozing stickily, and
gave out a pungent resinous smell in the hot sun; their sawn ends were
disks of shiny pale gold against the brown encircling bark.
Gareth sat down. Behind him, the group of huts were blotched in sepia
and dim greys and pools of black; shadowed always by the jutting cliff
at their backs. But the gay irregular row of quayside houses and shops
on the opposite side of the water were in full sunlight. With walls and
roofs of vermilion beside faded orange; wine-colour, and saffron, and
red picked out with green, they presented a curious illusion of some
little foreign town ... striped awnings, and bright-hued syrups on the
tables outside the café ... a man, skin like mahogany, gold earrings
that gleamed as he pounced to snatch a kiss from a girl with vivacious
eyes, and netted hair gliding down the nape of her neck; coloured
cotton jacket boldly open....
Gareth rubbed his misty eyes ... murmured "Marseilles." ... With an
effort abandoned word-spinning, and slipped out of his dream back to
the dream-like present.
The harbour basin was now half-full, and even the trawlers had joined
in the wonderful drunken dance of the incoming tide. Their masts hit
and raked tipsily at the sky; little excited waves slapped at the wall
of the square Georgian hotel at the corner; hotel whose chipped crown
on the frontage signified haughtily that a king of England had once
stayed there a night.
Cordage and canvas joined volubly with creak and strain and hum in
the opera of that jolly wind-tossed morning. Presently some half-dozen
small boys ran naked into the water, and swam among the boats, and
leapt and splashed, and called shrilly to their comrades on the
quay.... Harbour urchins, who lived always under those funny pink
roofs, and saw the fisher-fleet sail out and sail home again, and saw
the cargo steamers loaded and put out for a longer voyage; who paddled
in the mud and sought there for treasure when the water was low, and
dived shouting from the wall when the water was high; who paid no heed
to the yearly influx of strangers; and never looked at the shrine on
the hill--so well they knew it was there....
Harbour urchins.
Gareth watched them, idly. It struck him that one of the band was
perceptibly less daring than his companions, and had continually to be
urged and mocked out of the shallows.
Odd, for a child to be afraid of water, brought up with the sound of
water all day long in his ears, sight of water all day long before his
eyes.... Something far deeper and more elemental must account for the
shrinking, in this instance, than the mere dread of unfamiliarity which
so often besets the land-child.... Something which, for want of better
knowledge, is called instinctive....
The boy stumbled up the dripping steps and ran into the little
eating-house with the red stuff curtains, and the plates of fish in the
window. Probably the proprietor's son.
Gareth's imagination reeled suddenly, appalled, from conception of
that young life, spent in daily endless warfare with the enemy that
lay just outside his very door; daily endless propitiation, pretence
of defiance, tentative play ... fascination and panic clutching him
alternately. Fascination usually existed together with that inborn
morbid recoil.
And no escape. No needle-eye of escape. Home fixed irrevocably where
the water could stealthily lick the wall beneath his window ... so that
he might hear it sleeping, and waking, and before sleep. The talk all
around him would be of the sea. His very food would taste of brine.
The tang of ozone would lurk in every breath he drew into his lungs.
As a matter of course he would be sent out with other little harbour
brats to amuse himself on the rocks and among the pools; no relief from
strain in confiding his obsession to any of his fellows.... "Afraid of
the _sea_? _Afraid_ of the sea?" ... they would not understand--but
they would grin, and pass the joke about: "Afraid of the sea!"
Later on he would be expected to make his living dependent upon the sea.
No escape then? dodge desperately as he might, no escape from the
enemy. He might defy it with every outward strut and swagger he had at
his command.
It would have him in the end.
For this was the lad's adventure: to be afraid of water ... his round
adventure; his, mysteriously, before birth and through life and after
death, full sweep of the circle. Adventure need not of necessity be
joyous adventure....
Gareth sat motionless on the pile of logs; absorbed, dreaming, happy,
in his trance of inspiration....
For the harbour-urchin who was afraid of water had identified himself
completely with the hero of "The Round Adventure." But he was aware of
the enemy, and would not give in; set out to conquer it--always with
the fear in his heart. And with the fear in his heart, he became the
boldest swimmer and the keenest to sail of all the lads who lived in
the fishermen's huts and over the little quayside shops. And he left
his square of window unshaded at night so that from his bed he could
see the water--deliberately, because of the fear in his heart.... Till
by and by he came to hug the fear as his very own, his secret, unshared
and unsuspected. There was a queer quality of jubilation in exposing
himself to this heavy menacing horror which had singled him out....
Only there were moments when the cold sickening ripple up his thighs,
as fiercely he waded in, almost drew from him that terrified scream he
had vowed no one should hear....
He grew up to be a ship-builder; in time, prosperous. That was one
of his ways of defiance. Only each time a ship of his went to the
bottom, he knew the enemy had gained on him slightly. And he built more
ships--with the fear in his heart; subconscious fear, aftermath of what
has not yet happened....
The end of the book had still to shape itself from bewilderment. The
girl had not yet moved into her place in the scheme--the girl of the
February wood. Time still for these miracles to happen, when time
itself had been transformed to a miracle by the mere fact of writing
a book. Gareth rose, and sauntered away from the harbour, up the
hill, and back to Rapparee House. It was after midday, and the wind
had dropped to a blue shimmer of relentless heat. He remembered there
was to be a picnic that afternoon for the purpose of "shaking us all
together," as Mrs. Worley had announced at breakfast. Gareth did not
feel violently inclined for the shaking process--but he was resigned.
After all, the gods had given him an attic--and a harbour.
* * * * *
"I _dote_ on the _All_ Fresco!" explained Mrs. Worley, as heavily laden
with picnic paraphernalia, the Rapparee House party plodded solemnly up
the baked sea-road, to some wood about two miles distant. Two and two
they went--Kathleen and Jim Collins leading; then Lulu and young Teddy;
Fred Worley and old Mrs. Kirby; Napier Kirby and Miss Frazer; Gareth
and Mrs. Worley. Grace Kirby had placed her beautiful auburn head
among the green silk hammock-cushions in the garden, and with her most
charming smile had announced her intention of remaining where she was.
"We've had so many picnics lately, Trixie dear."
"_Grace_," ejaculated her hostess with portentous meaning: "I _quite_
understand.... I suppose you will join us _later_?"
"I don't suppose so," assented Grace sweetly, closing her eyes.
The sorrowful procession filed past her. It was so easy in heat like
this, to stop--to flop--exactly where one happened to be standing;
so very difficult to move on to another spot two miles distant. But
Trixie, blown out tightly with exuberance and mystery, was a tremendous
driving-force; and the nine were too limp for resistance.
"_Mr._ Temple----"
Gareth started from reverie and looked worried. Mrs. Worley loomed
insistently between him and his frailer dreams; sprawled with grotesque
Rabelaisian effect across the blank pages, dimly glamorous, of the
sacred book itself--he had an awful fear that she would eventually
dig herself in; her ponderous accentuation of the utterly trivial,
her fits of hale vulgarity, her unusual appearance--little round
eyes starting with surprise, little round hats with gaily plumaged
birds a-waggle--the whole personality as it bulged from its unmelting
encumbrances of flesh, gripped him with the nightmare obsession that
here was material clamouring for immortalization.... And he did not at
all want to immortalize Trixie....
"_Mr._ Temple, tell me _all_ about publishers."
He encouraged her to relate her conceptions of such a firm: four neat
rooms, in one of which the publisher and the author and the agent and
the artist sat in beautiful fraternity; in another the paper was made;
in a third the book was printed and bound; and in the last, sold over a
counter to the amiable purchaser.
"While you wait?" Gareth smiled whimsically. "I'm afraid it's not quite
so compact...."
He endeavoured to explain the process; but natural denseness and a
stitch in her side made of Trixie an inattentive listener. And Gareth
was oppressed by the consciousness that he was carrying more than his
fair share of the picnic burden; two heavy rugs and the big earthenware
teapot....
Miss Emmeline Frazer walked in frigid silence beside her companion. He
had shocked her--had just shocked her very considerably by using a word
that in decent society.... Her whole neat little person vibrated with
annoyance. Really--with these half-and-half people ... one only had to
look at his mother! All very well to find natives in the colonies--but
in England, where one was not prepared for it--
She decided not to speak to Mr. Kirby any more that day, by way of
corrective; it was a pity--they had been enjoying such a pleasant
chat about the poet Keats. Miss Frazer trotted on, aggressively cool
in sand-coloured linen; she was too thin to foment, like Mrs. Worley,
panting enviously several yards in the rear. And her invariable
sunshade had excused her from carrier-work.
Of this last, Napier Kirby felt sure he had been given more than his
fair share. He carried the kettle, and an enormous sagging box of
cakes; also his mother's waterproof. Usually light-heeled as Mercury,
he was now depressed....
"It was the year measles were all over the place--not that this
story has anything to do with it--but my brother's children all had
it, and then the governess went and caught it too. About March of
1911, I think. Well, as I was saying, I was having tea at Victoria
Station--funny how the tea tastes at these buffets, isn't it?" ... Fred
Worley was paving the way to an anecdote, by a leisurely survey of the
period, with its principal personages, topical events, and so on.
(But though he was good-natured enough, mind you, it really was coming
it a bit thick on a fellow to give him all the crockery and most of
the sandwiches to carry--and in this heat! What were the other fellows
doing? Not that he minded work--but a picnic was no fun unless everyone
did their fair share....
And the bottle of milk, too!)
Old Mrs. Kirby grinned and nodded, picking her wide black skirts out of
the dust....
"I've got a fly id by eye!" she announced suddenly. "Please, Bister
Worley, take it out."
She was afflicted with adenoids; and with finger-nails that were like
black opals.
"Hi! Nap! Your mater's got a fly in her eye!" shouted Worley to the
pair behind him.
"Call Teddy to take it out!" was the unfilial advice.
Worley shouted to the pair ahead of him: "Hi! Ted! Your grand-mother's
got a fly in her eye, and your pater says you're to take it out!"
"He's not my pater," muttered Teddy, furious that his experimental
flirtation with Lulu Collins should have been interrupted. But he was
afraid of his stepfather; so he deposited the butter in the dust, for
anyone to pick up who liked--it was melting rapidly--and slouched to
the rescue of his afflicted relative.
The fly had got well in by this time.
Fred Worley joined Miss Frazer; Napier having meanwhile attached
himself to Lulu. They toiled on, and out of sight. Teddy went for his
grand-mother's eye with unnecessary vigour.... Trixie Worley, passing
with Gareth, called out that he was a good boy. They too were presently
lost to sight, in the straggling little wood.
"Id's id the _other_ eye, Teddy...."
* * * * *
"Look here, how much longer do we drag on?" Collins demanded furiously
of Kathleen.
"Till we get stopped, I suppose. Is Mrs. Worley making for any special
spot?"
"Dunno. But I'm sick of lugging these messy things; the juice is
all running out. I should like to know what the other fellows are
carrying!" He let fall his two bags of raspberries and gooseberries
with a squish on to the grass.
"This place will do as well as any," Kathleen said; and dumped down the
enormous jam-jar of which she had previously relieved her perspiring
comrade. "There's a farm over there where we can get the hot water."
They sat down to wait till the others should arrive. After about ten
minutes, Lulu strayed that way.
"Naughty!" shaking her forefinger at them; "we don't mind losing _you_,
but we do mind going without the fruit."
"We thought this would be a good place for the picnic."
"Oh, but the others have found a much better place, with a sort of
raised hump for a table. Do come along; it's no fun unless we all stick
together. Only we can't find Fred and the kettle----"
The sort of raised hump turned out to be an ant-hill.... And then a
deputation wandered towards the shady bit of camping-ground described
by Kathleen and Jim. Meanwhile, Fred Worley came up with enthusiastic
descriptions of a paradise for picnickers! he had left the sandwiches
to mark it theirs. So they all picked up their loads, and collected
each other, and followed him ... and he couldn't find either the
paradise or the sandwiches.
Old Mrs. Kirby complained that she was thirsty.
"_Mrs._ Kirby," advised Trixie, with more than her usual empressement,
"_suck_ a pebble!"
Mrs. Kirby wept, thinking she had been insulted.
Somebody asked if they were going to boil the water themselves, or
get it from the farm. And Lulu cried that it was ever so much more
fun doing everything themselves. Unmoved by the prospect of fun, Jim
Collins said: "I plump for the farm; less bother. I hate bother."
"But nobody is to unpack the parcels except Auntie Em and me," Trixie
shouted hilariously, her hat wildly askew. "_Tea_ is to be a great
_surprise_."
"It will be," Kathleen assented; "unless someone takes the kettle down
to the farm, to find out if they'll boil it for us. Go on, Gareth----"
Her unspoken comment was: "You haven't done much yet...."
Reluctantly he took up the kettle, and strolled slowly towards the
farm. He had no desire to be more closely associated with the picnic
"fun." He was not enjoying the picnic ... had wanted to be left alone
that afternoon, to lounge and muse in peace in a corner of the
harbour ... heavy blue-black shadow cast by a jut of stone wall ...
uneven flight of steps, and water lap-lapping coldly at their base,
leaving ever another step bare and glistening as the tide receded....
Why wasn't he there, instead of inextricably attached to this
meandering bleating flock of people, with their red moist faces, and
hats of crude disharmony with the woodland.... Impossible to detach
himself from them. ("It's no fun unless we all stick together!")...
Pestering flies and ants and midges.... Mrs. Kirby and Mrs. Worley and
Miss Frazer sitting in ungraceful attitudes on the grass, and screaming
to the males of the party to witness their sense of the pastoral....
Gareth could hear them as he returned from the farm.... With acute
distaste he noticed how unmercifully the sun-shafts struck crude high
lights upon the human nose.
"They won't."
"Won't what?"
"Boil the water for us." Gareth sat down, with the air of one who has
accomplished his best.
"Nonsense. Why?"
"They said they'd be doing it all day long for picnickers in these
woods, if they did it once; and no profit to them."
"Well, I suppose you offered to pay them a trifle if they obliged us?"
Gareth was silent.
"Did you?"
"No...."
"But couldn't you see that was what they wanted?"
He winced under the impatient rasp in Kathleen's voice....
"What a waste of time. Here--take the kettle, and offer them a shilling
for the favour."
He did not budge. Her attempts to goad him had always the effect of
driving him to a defensive attitude of leaden inertia.
"I'll go," said Collins, rising.
Kathleen shrugged her shoulders--and turned her attention to Teddy, who
was whispering urgently in her ear:
"Come for a stroll. We're not wanted for a bit. Cut all this rot."
Immensely flattered by his selection of her, Kathleen assented
immediately. Every eye observed their departure. Lulu giggled. They
walked up the path in silence for a few moments; his straw hat thrust
to the back of his head, his cane swishing at the ferns; while she
debated whether cricket or football were the likeliest topic to
interest him. Or perhaps he was a Boy Scout?
"D'you mind if I smoke?" and he added gallantly: "It'll keep the flies
off you."
She was prepared for a woodbine--but the cigar was a bit of a shock.
And then Teddy said:
"It was a toss-up whether I was going to talk sense to you, or just
flirt. And then I decided you were too good to waste on a flirtation."
"Don't mistake me when I say 'good,'" Teddy went on. "I don't mean it
in the priggish sense. I'm paying you a compliment in not flirting with
you. I prefer flirting with married women as a rule; it's safer than
with girls; married women can look after themselves. But you've got
brain as well. And I expect you've got a devil of a temperament. That
other creature--what's her name? Lulu!--one kisses her and forgets all
about it...."
"She's just a Type," Teddy continued.
"I'm writing a book on various Types of women.... Oh, no, not a novel.
'Observations of Eve' I call it ... essays. All women can be tabulated,
you know--the frilly, the passionate, the clinging, and so on. Types. I
say, am I boring you?"
With perfect truth Kathleen was able to assure him that he was not. But
at risk of forfeiting his esteem she was compelled to add:
"Do you mind--as man to man--telling me how old you are?"
He smiled, loftily. "How old do you think?"
She hazarded: "Sixteen?"
"Most people think that. No, I'm not a bit offended. It's quite an
advantage to look a great deal younger than one's age; a sort of
disguise to work under. No--I'm seventeen...."
"... Next month," he added.
"I'm interested in various forms and degrees of vice--are you?"
Kathleen felt obliged to make one effort to live up to him.
"From the pathological or the merely spectacular point of view?"
He flung her a look of approval. "Oh, pathological, naturally. I'm past
the spectacular stage."
(And oh, he would have made such a dear Boy Scout, with his round
cherub face, his blue eyes and smooth fair hair....)
"My father is an interesting example----"
"Your father? Not----"
"Not Nap--Lord, no! He's only a nigger. I tell him so when he swanks
too much, and riles me."
Kathleen reflected how Mr. Napier Kirby must love his golden-haired
young stepson.
"Then your father isn't dead?"
"Not a bit of it; he comes to tea sometimes, when we're at home." Teddy
forgot the various forms and degrees of vice, and became quite chummily
confidential: "Mother divorced my father; she jolly well had to. But
they're still pals. And I believe she's still quite keen. He's got ...
fascination--I've felt it myself. I don't know why she married this
bounder, three years ago. He's tremendously clever in his line, of
course, and rich. And she likes to be made comfortable. I don't blame
her. But it's a bit rough on me. He was crazy to get her ... her fair
colouring and all that.... Rum thing, the subtle attraction of black to
white, isn't it?"
"_Nasty_ little boy!" whispered Kathleen, unheard.
"But I don't believe he's keen any more; she's snubbed him too often;
and Nap's not the sort to forgive a snub. He's not happy unless
he's being admired for something. Such an awful kid! And as for his
mother--oh _crumbs_! She lives with us too, worse luck. You should just
see her when my pater comes to tea!"
Kathleen wished she could. It struck her that the tea-party, complete
with watercress, would afford amusing study to the impartial onlooker.
She drew Teddy on to discourse on the members of his eccentric family.
By easy stages they returned to the picnic party, and found Fred Worley
at the sixth instalment of his anecdote, and the rest of the company
gorged and quarrelsome. Napier Kirby flung them a quick inscrutable
look as they passed him....
And then Teddy demolished the remainder of the cakes, and Kathleen
gulped down several cups of lukewarm insects swimming in pale tea; and
everybody despondently helped to pack up; and each man took more than
his fair share of the general burden; and solemnly, two and two, they
plodded away from that place where they had eaten, back to their home,
two miles distant....
Napier Kirby had appropriated Kathleen--she never quite knew how; but
something impudently efficient in his monopolization rather pleased
her. It was evident that she was popular to-day. She wondered for an
instant if the man's sense of rivalry had been flicked by the sight of
her marching off with Master Ted; then dismissed the notion of such
childishness....
But she was right in her intuition. When it came to mutual
exasperation, Napier and his stepson treated one another as equals.
They were both as young as the man--as old as the boy. During one
of their frequent rows, Grace had been heard to say, in her sweetly
detached fashion, that what each of them needed was a thorough spanking.
Infernally bad for Teddy to suppose he could stake an undisputed claim
on the most attractive woman of the party! Kirby had been quite put out
by sight of the pair strolling away between the trees. Quickly he had
made up his mind that Kathleen should walk home with him....
"Let the others get ahead," in a masterful undertone.
Lulu Collins also lingered regretfully on the scene of recent orgy.
"What ... _fun_ it was!" she breathed--and sped off to join her husband.
"'The last sigh of the Moor'!" laughed Nap Kirby. "You know that when
Boabdil had to abandon Granada to Ferdinand, he paused on the hill for
a final glimpse backwards at his Alhambra. And I daresay he said:
'What ... fun it was!'"
"At any rate, it's history what his mother said: 'Aye, weep like a
woman for what thou couldst not defend as a man!'--which was rather
unnecessarily rubbing it in, I always thought."
"But typical of a mother. Mine would have said it like a shot!"
"Poor Boabdil," murmured Kathleen ... who had said it on numerous
occasions to her private and particular Boabdil.
Kirby plunged off into a series of legends on the Moors in Spain. His
manner of telling was vivid and enthralling--he spoke as though he
loved the forlorn race of Barbary pirates, with its sonorous names and
darkly jewelled history. Suddenly he broke off, and said:
"I'd like to take you there. I'd like to stand with you at sunset on
that hill--the Last Sigh of the Moor--and look down at the Alhambra----"
Kathleen was smitten with a new racing excitement ... hot and fierce
and sweet....
It passed again. And she became aware of him talking absurdly and
maliciously about their fellow-inmates of Rapparee House.
"It was good of you to have rescued me from Miss Frazer--I made a bad
break coming up. She told me she was the _direct_ descendant of John
Keats--who wasn't married, you must know. I asked: 'Got any interesting
relics?' 'Oh, yes, indeed; my sister-in-law was photographed sitting
on his tomb!' I didn't quite gather whether the tomb, the photograph,
or the sister-in-law was the relic; but to carry on conversation, I
remarked lightly: 'So you call him your bastard great-grandfather, I
suppose?' She pretends I'm not there, now, when she looks at me.... She
_can't_ have known he wasn't married! Or else she wasn't as direct as
she thought...."
He gave Kathleen no time for amused comment, but drawled on in his low
flexible voice:
"Funny thing, isn't it, that Mrs. Collins really thinks it was fun
to-day. She'll go on thinking so. So few people realize the difference
between enjoying themselves, and looking like other people look when
they are doing something which is popularly supposed to be enjoyable.
I had a strained afternoon, waiting for Trixie Worley to burst--she'll
burst in purple and red when she does--like that fellow's heart in
'Maud': ... 'Will rise and tremble under your feet, and blossom in
purple and red----' You've played the old game: 'I planted a careful
young man and it came up Thrift,' etc.... _I_ planted Mrs. Worley, and
she came up fuchsias!"
... Again he darted off at a tangent: "How splendidly you walk. You're
not entirely Saxon blood, are you?"
"I'm a direct descendant of a Red Indian princess--who _was_ married,
by the by."
"Oh, _I_ don't mind--I'm not a conventionalist. I'd overlook even Miss
Frazer's shameful secret, if she gave me a chance."
Then: "How do you like Teddy?"
Kathleen found his inconsequence rather bewildering.
"How could I venture to criticize that marvellous youth, after he has
singled me out for his approval?"
"Oh--his approval!... Teddy's susceptible. He may pretend to be smitten
now, but he won't stick to you; prepare yourself for that."
She turned to meet the anticipated twinkle in his gaze. To her
astonishment it was not there. Napier Kirby was warning her quite
seriously not to rely on his stepson's fidelity.... Yet undoubtedly the
man had a sense of humour. She grasped that Teddy was on his nerves.
And she sympathized. It was a bad thing to have one person continually
on your nerves ... especially if that person lived with you.
They overtook the others, and arrived at Rapparee House as the
sun-scorched afternoon was slipping with a murmur of relief over the
western horizon.
"I was thinking of a stroll down to the beach," remarked Grace Kirby
from her hammock, as ten exhausted people flopped down without speech
in the surrounding shade; "the heat has really only just become
bearable...."
CHAPTER V
For two days Teddy made Kathleen conspicuous by his gallant attentions;
so that on the evening of the third day she was somewhat taken aback
when, instead of inviting her to sally forth for their usual stroll
round the Capstone, he merely lingered in the hall after dinner
to gladden her by a little airy chat, and then rather abruptly
disappeared. A rumour passed about, later on, that he had been seen
acting escort to a young girl, a very young girl--only his senior by
four years or so.
Kathleen understood that she had been wrung dry of all material
necessary for yet another addition to his "Observations of Eve"; and
that now he was allowing himself a little pleasant relaxation from
conscientious psychology.... He was young enough, and she old enough,
that without embarrassment she could sham extreme indignation and a
broken heart to those who chaffed her on his desertion. But she was
sensible of a slight feeling of mortification, nevertheless; it was
not in the nature of Kathleen to take even a schoolboy's defalcation
lightly. She determined, however, to let no trace of this appear in her
manner towards the culprit, when he should choose to approach her with
a contrite desire to renew their charming intimacy. She was reading in
the sitting-room the following morning, when Teddy marched in--and, on
seeing her, looked very much inclined to back out again, speedily.
"Good morning, Teddy," said Kathleen.
"Oh ... 'morning!" with a marvellous recovery of sang-froid; "how are
you? I was looking for my tennis-racket...."
"Rather warm for tennis this morning, isn't it? I thought we might walk
over to Hele Bay and bathe there, if you've nothing better to do?"
"Er--I'm afraid I'm engaged," Teddy replied distantly. And, slightly
raising his cap to her, strolled from the room.
Kathleen turned to meet the mischievous twinkle in the eye of Teddy's
stepfather, leaning against the open garden door. She strove to laugh
away her furious discomfiture.
"It looks as though I'd been jilted!"--(_Nasty_ little boy ... to let
it happen in front of Napier Kirby!)
"Teddy always does that. Don't let it worry you. I'll walk with you to
Hele Bay."
"Thanks!" between the condescension of the man and of the boy there was
not much to choose. "Thanks; I'd rather go alone."
Giving Hele a wide berth, she went past the Haunted Farm, through the
wood of the picnic, and across a stile into the lush pastured valley
beyond. And she thought fiercely and incessantly of Napier Kirby....
Fred Worley, who admired his friend to the verge of boring to
extinction anyone who cared to listen on the subject, had supplied
her with quite an amount of interesting information. She had learnt
that Kirby was born in New Zealand, but that he had at a very early
age emigrated to Europe. After a great deal of adventuring, he had
finally settled down to make money in the manufacture of a new line of
cheap but effective motor-cars: the "Dagmar," of which he had by swift
appreciative instinct acquired the patent.
Four years ago he had fallen headlong in love with Grace Frensham, and
by his foolhardy uncalculating behaviour had nearly wrecked her chances
of establishing a divorce case against the libertine who was Teddy's
father.... ("And who sometimes comes to tea," Kathleen murmured under
her breath.)
Worley seemed to regard the Kirbys' presence at Rapparee House as an
enormous favour bestowed on himself and Trixie; a favour for which he
was quite unable to account, unless it were that Nap was touched by his
devotion.
"He's grateful for your admiration," remarked Kathleen; she had already
noticed that the little man could absorb any quantity of this; and
possibly was not at all averse to spending a couple of months in the
continual company of his combined Boswell and Sancho Panza....
Yet Kirby was by no means a personage to be laughed at, despite his
enormous vanity, his childishness, his affection for gaudy achievement.
He had power; and he had brain; and swift subtle penetrations;
probably unexpected tracts of chivalry, forbearance, in his strange
composition. And he had come out on top in the great wrestle for
place; a strong item in his favour, this--from the point of view of
Kathleen, who scorned failure.
* * * * *
She became aware that the object of her meditations was taking a walk
some sixty yards in her rear ... with evidently no manifest desire to
catch up with her. She had no notion how long this state of affairs
had existed ... but swung on, the blood raging at her lips ... because
at swift sight of him had come the thought: "_How_ he could make love,
this--dark man!"
Presently, unable to bear any longer the mental obsession of him at
her back, she halted; turned to face the reality. He smiled as he drew
level--gleam of dazzling white in a mobile well-cut mouth.
"I told you I was going to Hele. How did you know I had come this way?"
"The patteran taught me," replied Napier nonchalantly.
"The patteran?"
Following his glance, she saw that she held some fragments of leaf in
her hand. It was her wanton habit, while she walked and brooded, to
pull leaves from hedge or bush and tear them abstractedly to bits along
their network of veins. It was an easy matter to follow the trail of
destruction.
"I said I wanted to go alone."
"Sure. And you can go alone. I'm quite happy as we were before you
stopped. It's a treat to watch the way you walk."
Disdaining to walk any further as an exhibition for his applause, she
lay down to rest in a field ablaze with some pungent yellow weed.
Instantly he had flung himself down at her side, and kissed her--and
kissed her--as she flamed to sudden haggard beauty. Kissed her....
Grace, once fascinated by his very difference to the Anglo-Saxon,
had for several months gently trickled cold water upon his outbursts
of love; his pride smouldered ... till now it avenged itself upon
the woman with brilliant eyes, and black heavy hair, and supple body
pressing down the gay hot-scented weeds----This woman could never taunt
him with the dark thick blood that flowed in his veins, because of the
streak in her own that matched it....
"You--squaw ... didn't you feel that this had to happen, the second
ever you set eyes on me...?"
Over-ripe, she needed only the touch.
... Sun steaming at high noon upon its yellow valley--his voice like
molten gold--his kisses fire on her throat----Was there at last
sufficient heat in the whole chilled world? She absorbed it; sucked
it into her craving system; gave it out again in great torrid gushes.
Napier was startled into fervour keener than he had meant to display
in what was three parts a mere vicious back-fling at Gracie's charming
lazy indifference. Somewhere deep down in the recesses of his nature,
he registered a prudent hope that Temple knew how to look after his
wife, and would not allow the thing to go too far....
Teddy brought Miss Cissy Norris in to lunch at Rapparee House, by
Trixie's special permission. As Napier and Kathleen strolled out to the
table laid by way of a change in the centre of the vegetable garden,
the former heard old Mrs. Kirby state with remarkable affability:
"Biss Dorris--you are positively the _odly_ persod who cad brig a sbile
to our Teddy's lips!"...
* * * * *
She would not have been forty-three had she not attached a quivering
importance to the trappings of her romance; the delicious sense of
secrecy and guilt; Napier's perfect play of indifference in the
presence of others; amused appreciation of their susceptibility to his
skilful management, so that again and again they snatched an apparently
accidental meeting undisturbed. Most of all, she enjoyed making the
elaborate excuses necessary to retire early to her room. Then came the
lonely hour or two of anticipation--wild restlessness exulting in the
foreknowledge that it would be soothed--that it could be soothed ...
presently.
Oh, destiny and Trix Worley, you were astoundingly gracious to give me
this little room in which I can be alone to think of my lover....
Her ears at strain to catch sounds of the party retiring to bed.... The
last door closed.... Then vigil at the window which dropped barely six
feet down to the paved courtyard.... Till his figure showed a dim blur
in the sultry moonless night----Till she could throw on a cloak, and
join him.
"Like the first bite off a great warmly flushed apricot," he murmured,
kissing her throat.... Yes, she had been right in her surmise that the
dark man could make love most wonderfully....
It was good, too, when, tumbled and dew-soaked, she slipped back to
her white-and-pansy shelter, to repeat over and over again each new
love-line he had given her--add it on to the old--the building of a
song.
And that she took such intense pleasure in these trivial outward
symbols of her rejuvenation, was it not convincing proof that youth
must still be hers? Was it not the essence of youth--of extreme youth
even?... Or else, Kathleen, was it age pursuing youth around a circular
course, to a point where they almost touched?
But she was glad that her heart could still beat, and her cheeks flush,
and her lips lie, for folly's sake. Too glad. The fever and glory of
her nights must surely have been absorbed into the very walls of the
room, so that the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, returning later on,
would marvel at the queer hot thoughts that vaguely disturbed her
peace, as a-sprawl upon the chintz counterpane, she read her favourite
"Little Woman." ...
* * * * *
Whereas Kathleen came to know Napier better with the flight of days, he
never expressed any curiosities with regard to her. Either he made love
to her, brilliantly--or else talked, brilliantly, about himself, his
past achievements, his schemes for the future, the reputation he had
among his fellow-men for an uncanny flair in the choice and management
of the wily automobile. "They all say: 'Go to Kirby! Kirby knows! He
understands the _nature_ of cars!'----Well, it comes to just that;
there's not an engine, good or bad, that I can't coax into putting
out its best. Heard of Thesiger?"--mentioning a famous millionaire
banker--"He said to a pal of mine: 'I'd no more think of buying a new
make of car without first taking Kirby's advice----'"
The man boasted; but one believed in him. He radiated an atmosphere of
success--and she had had enough of the temperament that hangs back from
venture, irresolute, deprecating.
He presented the same blank surface of unconcern to the mention of any
book or work of art which his own enthusiasm had not primarily chanced
upon: "I like to discover the world for myself, and not have a showman
at my elbow saying: 'Look!' all day long," said Nap Kirby--who himself
was saying: "Look!" all day long ... or, by way of variation: "Look at
me!"
But Kathleen rejoiced in his aloofness from her concerns. Oh, the rest,
the utter rest mingled with the sensation of a new skin grown over
the fretted others, which lay in the thought that her hidden sores
and bitternesses, so apparent to Gareth, were entirely unsuspected by
the sunny egoist who professed to love her. That where Gareth's own
shrinking delicacy guessed instinctively how she could be hurt, and
spared her whenever possible, insulting her doubly by his forbearance,
Napier remained sublimely unaware of such matters as the approach of
winter, and bathroom taps, and the strain of glamouring where glamour
was no more, and the terror of forty-three next birthday, and a temper
that had been chafed by daily intimacy with incompetence till it was
harsh as the taste of blood in the mouth. She could go to Napier
without the buzz of these torments about her brain and ears. She could
go to him lightly ... hear him say, with that careless caress in his
voice that was so wonderful to her--"You're like me, Kathleen, you
think that----" or "You feel that----" confidently wrong in every
one of his assumptions; never bothering to verify them. She wore the
ready-made temperament ... and fervently, in her secret heart, did she
thank him for it. More than for the starved passion he had satisfied,
more than for the buoyant atmosphere of power he exhaled, Kathleen
loved him because he did not understand her....
Meanwhile, Gareth wrote his book.
Its existence diffused a miraculous sheeny quality over everyday life.
He had only to feel for the remembrance of it, a talisman between his
palms--and things and people ceased to annoy, were merely a moving
pantomime for his amusement. His sense of the whimsical, grown rusty
with the years, was now suddenly restored to him. Even Kathleen no
longer possessed the faculty of rasping him with her exasperated
knowledge of his exact failings and what they had led to--or not led
to--in the past. He did not notice that she bothered him at all any
more ... so preoccupied was he with figures less real--infinitely more
real. Just occasionally the talisman failed him; those were the hours
following a mood when he had lacked the necessary spasm of energy to
take up his pen and commence work, usually fluent enough after the
start had been made. Those hours he would go sick with the fear that
the old enemy within him--that which Kathleen had once named Atrophy of
the Initiative, would eventually prevent even this cherished endeavour
from fulfilment ... and those were the hours when again he was aware of
Kathleen's voice.
Interludes, also, of the purely grotesque, when Trix Worley tumbled
flat across his borderlands like an enormous figure in harlequinade,
and lay a-sprawl and immovable ... his mentality was quite helpless
against these irrelevant incursions.
But for the most part the merry haphazard days were dream-misted with
secret consciousness of his table by the attic window. He enjoyed, as
early as possible in the evening, bidding the noisy party 'Good night';
and leaving them to their games, their flirtations, their cards, their
walks; stole up the creaking wooden stairway--surely the path to some
hidden treasure of doubloons and moidores, pouring in dusty, twinkling
showers all about a mouldering skeleton-form. The door closed behind
him; the two candles lit, erect spear-heads of gold, envied by the
far-off stars which thickly sprinkled the skylight patches. Then Gareth
would sit down to the table; handle caressingly his pile of papers;
fall into a reverie ... whence he was roused by the cool brush of
fingers against his throat, across his eyelids.
She never failed to come, the cool girl of his dreams. He knew now
that she must always have belonged to him; had even hovered mistily
in the background of his thoughts, when his mother had called on her
"youngest knight" one day to keep troth valiantly with love. It was
the deep-hidden longing for her tenderness and shade which had made
the years of glare and strain so wearying, so unbearable. And then,
with the vision of the February wood, she had shown herself to him;
in the attic with its murky fading corners, she had become real. He
had gradually learnt a great deal about her: she did not sleep in the
wood, as he had always supposed; but on the top of the hill, where
stood a tumble-down bare-walled hut with a crooked door, and around it
a patch of ground barren save for one fir-tree standing close against
the window, catching the sunset flame in autumn, tip-tapping endlessly
throughout the snowtime, A Grimm's-fairy-tale cottage; he believed
there must be a grandmother in the kitchen that was eternally darkened
by shadow of the fir-tree; but he had not yet raised the latch to see.
The girl whose touch was cool--Gareth did not doubt that somewhere
she existed for him; but he had blundered, and so never found her.
The hero of his book would not blunder thus. There lurked a queer and
almost vicious pleasure in the endowment of this man with the essential
quality himself had lacked, that he might win through to the essential
end himself had missed. Gareth adored his conqueror, whose story he had
fitted together bit by bit, pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, till now it
stood complete, all but the final inspiration.
He lingered lovingly over the opening chapters, which described in
tender detail Kay Rollinson's childhood as a harbour-urchin. Came an
episode, at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, when the ever-dormant
fear in his heart awoke to a vivid frenzy of terror ... he was driven
by it inland--inland--away from all possible sight of that pallid
grey-green ripple of ocean ... till at last, heedless in which
direction he went, he reached the February wood; a wood haunted yet
passionless ... where the vision came to him of a girl, slim and ragged
and bare-ankled ... her thoughts were cool silent places where no water
sounded; her voice touched the fear in his heart, and laid it to rest.
Drowsing with his cheek pressed down to the carpet of sodden purple
leaves, the boy knew that one day, inevitably, he would find such a
girl, in such a wood.... And he vowed to wait for her, and be steadfast
to his vision, till the full sweep of adventure brought it round.
Four years. And then--as had been the case with Gareth--Kay's
adolescence was kindled by encounter with a girl flushed and vital and
eager ... _not_ the girl of the February wood. They swept each other on
to experiment ... a wild forbidden journey together in a tramp-steamer
that had called at the harbour to take in coal ... a week, stealthy and
rapturous, spent on an island off the coast of Ireland....
Then, at the height of rapture, inexplicable flight of the girl.
At first Kay was possessed by the one idea of seeking her out again,
to renew the glory of which he had so staggeringly been deprived. But
at the moment when his quest was successful, when, unseen himself, he
saw her again, came realization that she was not the love he had waited
for; and that the quest itself--ceaseless grapple with the void and
desolate hours lacking her; memories that were as wounds that could not
bear the lightest touch--all this tumult and turmoil of pain hitherto
unknown--all was but that other curve of adventure which he must
perforce accept without shirking, as he had accepted the wonder of her
red hair, and her black eyes, and her passionate imperious ways.
Perhaps she never knew that he had seen her. He turned his back on
the possibility of romance prolonged ... in silence returned to the
harbour; to the workshop where he had been learning the business of
ship-building, before sex had called him out and away.... And now, when
time had out-worn the pain and the unsatisfied craving, the path was
clear for that other girl--his girl--predestined his, now he had beaten
down the temptation to forsake a mere promise ... a dream....
"Grant the path be clear before you----"
* * * * *
... And suddenly Gareth broke down; sat with face buried in his arms,
shaking in every limb; the blood sweeping to his head and as quickly
ebbing again ... strange clanging discords in his soul.... He hated Kay
Rollinson for being able to do this, this which he had failed to do ...
years ago, at Alpenruh. Was sick with momentary envy of the man he had
summoned into being--his brain-creature--his slave.
There had been subtle fascination in thus deliberately setting him in
the same circumstances as his own; in forcing him to the same
crisis ... and wrenching him out triumphant.
But it wasn't fair--not fair--God had made Gareth Temple futile and
rotten of will. Kay Rollinson's god had been kinder.
Well ... he had started to write; had pledged his self-respect to this
one achievement at least. So he would have to go on mocking the man he
was, with a splendid paper-and-ink conception of the man he thought
himself. No ... he was not ungrateful; he loved his book, and the hero
of it.... It was only just for a little while he hated him for not
having blundered as he himself had blundered.... For Gareth the path
was blocked now, if she should come ... if she should still come....
* * * * *
August throbbed and flared to a tropical consummation.
Gareth's holiday would finish to-morrow. And Kathleen's. How much of
what each had separately found would be capable of transplantation to
Pacific Villa, Hammersmith?
"_Mr._ Temple. Did you know that we live _quite_ close to you, in
London?"
Gareth had not known. It was something of a shock to realize that
henceforth and at any moment a stout spectre might glide up behind him,
touch him on the shoulder, beckon mysteriously--"A _word_ with you. In
_private_." And then: "_Mr._ Temple. Is the day _wet_ or fine?"...
Gareth was not quite sure if the tidings of her future proximity were
blessed.
And Kathleen?
"Nap--I shall see you in London?" tensely.
"Well, what do you think? Perhaps not," he drawled, teasing her.
"When? Where? It won't be easy. It won't be the same as here."
"I'll fix something; don't you worry. We'll all be back in a fortnight.
And I like loving old people in new places."
Laughing, she thanked him for the compliment. She was never harsh or
bitter with Kirby.
"And in different climates?"
"There is no climate in this infernal country. It's all just weather.
One day, you Indian woman, we'll run away together, South, and remember
what it is to get comfortably tropical."
He spoke carelessly ... but out of the words "we" and "our" she wove
herself a garment of warmth.... It was all right--romance was not at
an end for her; romance was hers, here, and in London, and beyond
London--he had said: "One day...."
* * * * *
Directly after sunset, on the last evening of his holiday, Gareth went
down to the harbour.
Full tide. The waves had ceased to dash in; and jet-carved against the
dull gold sky, cargo-steamer and sailing-boat floated high upon the
brimming water, that was tranquil as a mother with babe at her breast.
Ever and anon, a larger undulation from beyond the harbour mouth
swang and stirred luminous green depths, and shivered the dreaming
reflections of white wall and mauve roof and pink roof, till they
spread in dark stains of wet over the edge of the quay.... A great lazy
sea-monster, slobbering its triumph over a victim foredoomed.... Yes,
the tide exhaled an evil impression to-night ... more than mere peace
in this boundless endless ripple ... slumberous, replete....
Thus water would look when at last it could claim Kay Rollinson.
... For years he would have forgotten his round adventure. He had met
the girl of his vision, the girl of the February wood; he was free when
he met her; she had laid cool fingers on the fear in his heart, till it
was at rest; till he ceased to defy it and grapple with it--but went to
live with her inland, far inland, where there was no sea to remind him.
He had retired from ship-building. An age of steel and steam had
arisen, which left him and his methods sadly in the rear. The sea
was still being conquered--but not by him. He found other, lesser
interests; farmed his own lands for his own pleasure; travelled; read
books, and collected art treasures. He had many friends. And there was
also his little daughter.
For years he had forgotten.
Came a day when he discovered that his young wife was loved by a youth
younger than himself, weaker, with tender charming ways ... elfish
ways.
Rollinson asked her if she would wed this newcomer, if he were dead and
out of the way. She looked straight at him with her eyes that were blue
hyacinths drenched in rain ... and replied:
"Yes."
"Would you go to him as things are--away from me?"
"No. Because of Iris."
That morning had come a letter informing him of a grave money loss. For
his fortune had still remained in the ship-building business, when he
retired from it.
The boy was rich--that boy to whom she would gladly have gone, if her
husband were dead.
Clearly, Kay Rollinson reflected, his life stood in the way of her
round adventure.
"That can be arranged." He loaded his revolver in all its chambers;
wrote a letter to his closest friend--who happened to be that same
youth with the charming elfish ways--explaining that unable to face
financial ruin, he intended to shoot himself that night. And with his
revolver in his pocket, he went out.
... They found him the next day, drowned in the canal of a town some
miles distant. The revolver was in his hand--loaded in all its chambers.
The canal flowed wearily into a river, and the river to the sea. And no
one could tell how water had eventually claimed the man who carried in
his soul the fear of water....
* * * * *
So Gareth came by the end of his book: "The Round Adventure."
CHAPTER VI
Holidays were brief at the firm of Leslie Campbell; September meant
strenuous preparation for the rush of autumn publications. "Piccadilly"
had just gone into its shilling edition; and Ran Wyman had written a
novel which was hastily, and quite rightly, banned by the libraries;
this involved a tremendous amount of heated correspondence with the
papers; the first number of the "White Review" would be issued the
following month. And though the fortunate of the earth were still
dallying by sea or mountain, the staff of Leslie Campbell could afford
to do without ordinary people's relaxations--so argued Guy Burnett in
his enthusiasm, and sadly the Heart-breaker assented.
But the turmoil and clatter at the office, the brilliant never-ending
jargon of intellect, the exaggerated importance these Pioneers of the
Future attached to their own and one another's brain-products, all this
no longer affected Gareth in the same melancholy sense of being forever
a mere looker-on. His book, till the present loved for itself and the
treasures he put into it, now that he was back in London, twinkled into
being as the key which was by and by to admit him to the fellowship of
"Campbell's Young Men."
One of Them!--did ever a youthful squire yearning to sit at Arthur's
Round Table of Knights, regard his hard-won spurs with half the
reverent incredulity, as Gareth the book which was to procure him
a place at the literary round table. There lurked no pain now in
watching their impatience of outsiders, their splendid overwhelming
swank. They did not lord it on false pretences; not one but had
by some intellectual achievement earned a seat at the board; by
some achievement.... Gareth fumbled for the consciousness of his
half-finished book. He felt swelling up within him vast possibilities
of swank, delicious new sensation which had hitherto been entirely
foreign to his nature. How patronizingly he would encourage Guy
Burnett: "Finished your 'Episode of a Navvy' yet, my lad? O you young
pessimists...." With what a careless air would he accept Campbell's
invitations to dine, and (seated at his host's right hand) how
eloquently hold forth on his lately discovered philosophy of Attainment
in Denial. Then the ease with which he would slip into his niche at
gatherings in Mona Gurney's delightful Sussex cottage, Ran Wyman's
eccentric suite of apartments in the Adelphi; Gareth had heard these
spoken of; knew too that Graham Carr had a cherished abode in Devon,
where the elect could at any time walk in with their portmanteaux:
"I've run down to hammer out my new theme with you, Carr." "You're
welcome, Temple, old man"--and the long intimate talks lasting far
into the night. The insolence of the Heart-breaker would naturally
have dissolved by then into the profoundest respect. And a suppressed
dislike for the junior partner could at last find vent in speech: "I
don't agree with you at all on that point, Alexander," swinging his
legs from the desk in the inner room.
Mere childishness, perhaps, all this. Toys of fancy not fit for a grown
man, for a man of forty years. The main miracle of the future was to be
possessor of the creative gift; to walk on the shoulders of the rest
of the world, pealing your message from the silver trumpet at your
lips. Ah! but Gareth wanted the little human things as well--he had
done without for so long; so long been overlooked and shoved aside;
despised or pitied; a cipher, a negative quantity wherever he chanced
to be; a failure--he desired the trivial tangible circumstances of
success, or he could never believe it had really and actually come to
him, to him, Gareth Temple, reader of other people's books. Whenever,
late evenings and Sundays, he slackened at his labour of writing, and
glancing round the ugly little dining-room, would think despondently
of the sea and the attic window, then he had only to murmur the magic
catch-phrase "One of Them" to be spurred to fresh bouts of toil. Of
the success of the book finished, he had not the slightest doubt; this
was not conceit, but rather judgment made fine and discriminating
through long years of practice; not blind conceit, but a marvelling
humility at the strange good fortune which had at length befallen him,
permitting him to stumble on an idea above all things new, new and
arresting. His style had always been faultless; slightly over-ornate,
perhaps; something quaint and scholarly in the formal phrases that
grouped themselves around an incident, like the rich blue and red and
gold decorations on medieval parchment margins. But that would contrast
well with the vigorous stripped sentences of the realistic school. No
doubts then, as to ultimate triumph. Where Gareth did experience a few
uncertain twinges was as to his moral capacities for the leg-swinging
act, even when the right to swing was his own. Suppose--suppose
after all he decided not to place his work with Leslie Campbell for
publication, but send it rather to the Booke-Shoppe, an old-fashioned
firm existing since the declining years of the nineteenth century;
which continued to publish for the most part essays and belles-lettres,
slender volumes of poetry and costly illustrated folios; a firm of
book epicures, somewhat _précieux_ in their handlings as delicately
contemptuous of Campbell's strong red meat, as were "Campbell's Young
Men" superior on the score of caviare and _hors d'œuvres_ contributed
by the Booke-Shoppe to the general feast of literature.
Gareth went once to have a look at the Booke-Shoppe, stealing a
twilight half-hour from the day's drudgery with Leslie Campbell. Thus
the quest held a guilty pang of disloyalty not altogether unpleasant.
He also knew that he would again be late for dinner; likewise that the
gazing upon the outer walls of a publisher's sanctum was the sheerest
folly, with the book lying scarcely more than half completed in his
desk at home. Guilt and folly and a secret quest were good companions
for a mellow September evening; the sunset powdering all the roofs
of London with gold; Bloomsbury Church lifting a dazzling spire into
the tender fading blue of the sky-strip that tented Holborn; and a
blind man's fiddle scattering its melody, now plaintive, now a mere
scraping jig, among the rapid swell of footsteps on the pavement. The
Booke-Shoppe revealed itself in a tiny by-street, where the houses
leant a little towards one another, as though in gossiping indignation
at the incongruous glaring picture-palace, newly erected at the
corner. And here was the Booke-Shoppe's dangling sign, that jutted
over the wrought-iron lantern in the porch; latticed windows bulging
oddly into the street; behind them a sense of dimness ... this was
indeed the Perfect Publisher, from whose shrine one could imagine,
without any shrinkings of distaste, the issue of all one's cherished
favourites. Gareth fancied himself summoned to the octagonal chamber
he was sure lingered behind those squares of thick glass; a chamber
at once fragrant and frowsy with cobwebs and the aroma of lingering
hopes; everywhere books; books piled and tumbled and tottering on
floor and shelf; folios and quartos and duodecimos; classics and lyric
poets and Elizabethan drama; rare gems of modern verse and prose. At a
table likewise heaped, a wizened figure sitting in a round circle of
lamplight; a little smoky old man, with spectacles pushed high up among
a bush of untidy white hair, and kindly short-sighted brown eyes that
mused absently on who might be the stranger at the door. Then Gareth
would declare his name, and be greeted by a flood of gentle enthusiasm,
and an exquisite comprehension of all he had put into "The Round
Adventure."
"A somewhat fantastic title, Mr. Temple, but we'll keep it, oh, we'll
keep it. My dear lad--you must permit me to call you so--I can't be too
proud that you brought your delightful wares to the Booke-Shoppe!"...
Discussion of contract, terms, advertisement?--perhaps! It was
manifestly absurd for Gareth, sixteen years a reader, to hover and hope
and dream impossible dreams of publishers; dream as he did in front of
that iron swinging sign, on a mellow September evening; dream as might
have done the veriest novice in the realm of letters. Gareth should
have known better. Besides which, it made him late for dinner.
As it happened, Kathleen was later even than he. But in the parlour of
Pacific Villa he found Trixie Worley awaiting him. The apparition was
less of a shock than it might have been, had not her spiritual presence
already formed a habit of straying into his realm of imagination; he
knew just exactly what she was going to say, and how she would say
it....
"_Mr._ Temple. A _word_ with you. _Privately._"
"Certainly, Mrs. Worley. Won't you sit down?" She was mauver even than
he remembered her. Much mauver....
She shut her eyes, gasped two or three times--then suddenly raised her
eyebrows till they shot out of sight; and proceeded to issue a series
of disjointed galvanic shocks.
"_Mr._ Temple. I'm a _moral_ woman."
She stopped dead. And he hastened to assure her that he believed this
to be the case ... and wondered what he could have said to lead to
the question being raised. "Won't you sit down?"... Surely this had
not been interpreted in any wrong sense? Her next contribution to the
interview seemed to hint the contrary:
"And I believe in the _sanctity_ of the marriage law."
"Oh, quite; yes, indeed...." A horrible suspicion flashed through
him, that her visit might be the result of a guilty attachment formed
for himself; and that these references to holy wedlock were merely
preliminary.
"And however much _Fred_ admires him, he _has_ got a _wife_."
Gareth gave it up. "Who has?"
"_Mr._ Kirby."
Then the object of her affection was that little Maori with the
slanting yellow eyes. Gareth felt relieved. But why had he been chosen
for father confessor?
"He has--yes--certainly ... a very beautiful woman!"
("Oh, Lord--perhaps I ought to have left that unsaid!")
"And _you_ have a _wife_."
"And you have a husband," ... he was convinced now that it was a comic
game they were playing, in which he had to fulfil his due share....
"Then why doesn't she look _after_ him?"
This apparently referred to Kathleen and Fred Worley--an improbable
conjunction. Cautiously Gareth waited for more.
"Since _you_ seem quite unable to look after _her_."
"Kathleen?"
"It's _against_ Fred's express wish that I am here. Even though I've
left _two_ of his cards outside. With mine."
But these did not seem to her bewildered host very adequate aids to
respectability, since the enigma was now meandering backwards to what
was from his point of view its most undesirable solution--namely, that
Kathleen should console Fred for Trixie's desertion to himself. He did
not at all like to be closeted with Trixie against Fred's express wish.
And he cursed his own innate courtesy which would not permit him to do
other than make a visitor appear welcome in his house.
"Do let me get you a glass of lemonade--or some cake?"
She wagged her head in solemn refusal. "The affair is _bound_ to
lead----" interminable pause in which the plot thickened like gravy
exposed to the chill air ... "to the _Cream_-Pashionel. They always
_do_."
"Look here, Mrs. Worley," Temple crossed to the fireplace, and standing
with his back to the grate, faced her with good-humoured determination
to break through that awful barrier of mystery, "I honestly haven't the
faintest idea what you are so kindly trying to tell me. I'm not clever
at guessing things, you know. Won't you explain?"
"I'm _breaking_ it to you. _Gently_," said Trixie, still stolidly
obscure. And indeed, by the time Gareth had groped through the
enmeshing glooms to the heart of the riddle, that Kathleen and Napier
Kirby were engaged in a surreptitious love-affair, it scarcely came any
more as a reeling shock to his senses....
"_Fred_ knows. And _I_ know. I should suppose _poor_ Grace knows. And
everybody except _you_. They have been seen motoring. Embracing. In
the neighbourhood. _Mr._ Temple. You have been blind, _indeed_. You
must _do_ something. Words cannot express my sorrow. And disgust. That
such a thing should start under my very roof. Fred _still_ admires him,
though I say all day: '_Fred._ _Don't_ admire him!'"
She rose to go.
"You must take action at once. _Stern_ action. Appeal to her sense of
shame. Tell her she's too _old_." Pregnant interval of silence during
the glove-buttoning process.... "Can you?--thanks ... or are you _too_
upset?... Thanks. And tell her--she's above all--a _wife_."
And Mrs. Worley departed, immensely inflated with the consciousness of
having impressively performed an unpleasant duty to her neighbour.
Gareth, left alone with the revelation that Kathleen was all this while
deceiving him, that "people were beginning to talk," and "God knows how
far the business has gone," Gareth ought no doubt to have aged visibly
beneath the deadly blow, and sat quite, quite still for many hours,
with hair turning slowly white.
Gareth experienced a momentary shock, certainly; the Songs his Mother
Taught Him were responsible for that: honour and plighted troth,
and--perhaps this was his fault; he should have shielded the woman--he
had been neglecting her shamefully for the book ... the book! he had
his secret love, why should she not have had hers the while? They
needed something--at their age they needed something, when there were
no children. He speculated on the personality of Napier Kirby. He had
barely come in contact with him, at Rapparee House. Had they been very
happy, the guilty pair? Rather, were they at present very happy? since
no explanation now was required for Kathleen's unpunctuality. He wished
she would come in and tell him all about it; where Kirby had taken her,
and what he had said--but Gareth knew that would not do. He must either
continue in ignorance, or display the qualities moral decency decreed
should in these cases be displayed: indignation, jealousy, insulted
honour, "you-shall-not-quit-my-roof,"--Gareth hunted about for these
tendencies, desperately alarmed to find as substitute a gentle rosy
glow of benevolence towards the erring couple, mild curiosity, and a
purely whimsical desire to inform Mrs. Worley of the line he intended
to take up in the matter.
It would have to be blindness, foolish complacent blindness to what
was happening beneath his very eyes. An attitude rather damaging to
his vanity, certainly, but he had failed to make Kathleen happy, and
had no right, no right whatever, to rob her of the happiness she had
gathered elsewhere. They had dragged on each other long enough; each
should now enjoy the last topsy-turvy parcels they each had drawn from
the bran-pie of youthful adventure. Gareth knew that before this year's
summer he could not have been guilty of such incredible coolness in the
face of disaster; but the madness of their holiday time, and then his
book ... he had neglected Kathleen and must pay the price in silence.
Oh, let him at least be frank! Gareth replaced on the mantelpiece
a black china cat with glassy yellow stare, which he had been
hypnotically regarding, and threw himself in the arm-chair, shading his
eyes with his hand. Let him be frank with himself! It was no question
of payment--it was deliverance. It was a well-nigh sobbing relief.
She was going. After all these hot aching years of strain, fortune in
a wild fervour of generosity was tossing him one gift after another,
culminating with this: that without any effort of action on his part,
he was to be left alone; alone to live his life, and write his books,
and ... dream his dreams of another girl; one who came in a breath
of wind as fragrant and as cool, as Kathleen's presence had been a
nightmare of harassed tightly puckered misery. The ethereal mist-maid
of his visions had been so much with him of late, slipping in and out
of the pages of the book, that he would not have been at all surprised
to see her materialize like any Galatea. She had flitted through so
many fanciful love-scenes, that Kathleen by his side at nights gave
him an uneasy sense of treachery. If Kathleen were gone, then no one
need ever step between him and the love he might have found, once, in
youth. Perhaps even now, if he were alone--he half stretched forth his
arms, "Oh, my dear, my dear" ... in a great rush of gratitude for his
impending release. He had been so tired, with that patient tiredness
which is worst of all; and himself would never have jerked off the
yoke; he was the man, the bread-winner--Songs his Mother Taught Him ...
no, Gareth would have kept faith with Kathleen, though it wore away his
very life in fretted atoms. But now--he had only not to see.
When Kathleen entered, flushed, and with a certain vibrant quality
to tone and gesture, he asked no questions, pretended to be deeply
immersed in work; "Extra rush; autumn season." He had never told
her about the book; this dream should not be damaged by too close
handling. Perhaps, if she went before it appeared in print--it was
still more than a third removed from completion--perhaps then he need
never tell her. Gareth had dreaded that telling; dreaded her quick
practical comments; dreaded the interest she would surely display. He
wondered when she and Kirby were planning to make definite escape,
and wished--again with a flicker of amusement at the thought of Mrs.
Worley--that it would not be such manifest bad form to ask.
The book was not running as swiftly as it had done in Ilfracombe. He
believed he might complete it by the end of the year--if he were alone.
September tiptoed so mildly into October, that in London, where berries
do not redden in the hedges, the end of summer came as scarcely a
shock. The skies were still blue, and the leaves still green; and if
the sun rose an hour or two later, who can tell across London roofs and
through London windows? If the sun dipped an hour or two earlier, so
much the better for London lovers, who await longingly the shadows in a
city where there is no solitude.
Napier and Kathleen were content to dawdle through the days, curiously
heedless whether their intimacy were apparent to all eyes. Napier,
indeed, was willing enough that Grace should hear rumours of his
errantry ... he never lost sight of his resentful love for Grace
and her provocative indifference, except in very rare moments when
Kathleen's veritable monsoons of passion--hot wind from out of the
desert--swept away all angry fidelity. Misunderstanding the woman
as he did, misunderstanding the esoteric causes for the brilliance
and beauty of this her last leap towards the sun, he approved of her
extreme recklessness as to discovery, setting it down to a capacity
lightly to enjoy a light flirtation, to revel bountifully in the fun
which the passing moment yields to its devotees; her stormier moods he
attributed to the devastating power of his own fascination. Naïve glee
at his ability to inspire such genuine emotion, mingled with a somewhat
unpleasant, perhaps even racial desire that he could all the while
shout to Grace: "There you are! _There_ you are!" ... making her a
present of Kathleen's body and soul, in order that Grace might better
appreciate him, the recipient of these.
He owned, quite apart from the large house in Hamilton Terrace where
his official family life was spent, a set of bachelor chambers off
Jermyn Street, and here Kathleen and he often passed their evenings.
The furniture of these rooms was amusing to her critical faculty:
perfect unobtrusive taste of an English gentleman; every article
expensive with the careless air of costing next to nothing; yet here
and there, where Napier's secret preferences had willy-nilly broken
through his layer of acquired good form, were spurts of gaudy colour: a
bead-embroidered cushion ... scarlet and gold piano-cover he had draped
with much pride and festooned with a large tinsel rose ... a couple of
gold-framed pictures of very pink-and-white nudes with plenty of
hair ... things that cost next to nothing with a shrieking air of being
expensive.
But Kathleen loved just those awful pictures and the tinsel rose,
with the same tenderness she had once poured on to Gareth's smaller
failings--before these failings had become her daily companions.
And it was good to lie on the couch with her head on the satin
cushion--his cushion--while he sang to her ... jumble of opera, and
crooning lullaby, and those husky bitter-sweet melodies that never
sound quite human, but rather as the plaint of love itself, or wail of
exile....
Then he would stop singing, and laugh, and soothe her with his
kisses ... cuddle her as if she were a silly child, and pet her ...
who had ever before shown the temerity to pet Kathleen? And how she
worshipped him for it ... worshipped his feline caresses.
On a certain Sunday of mid-October, Napier took her for a day's
motoring in the country lanes of Surrey. He was in excellent humour,
in anticipation of a trip to Spain, where he was entered for the great
International Automobile Race to be held within a fortnight. Napier
had little doubt but that he would come out victor in the contest; and
Kathleen, noting his marvellous handling of the car, adjustment so
swift and delicate as to be well-nigh instinctive to every emergency of
road and traffic, Kathleen shared his confidence, and exulted in the
man who was master of his job. For the time being, in the exhilaration
of their rush out of London into a world that was bright and ruddy and
clear-edged, nature's last abundant fling of colour and warmth before
the closing-in, she succeeded in forgetting his impending departure.
They lunched sumptuously at Dorking, and then leapt on again, eating
up the curl of the road with incredible speed.... Napier's golden eyes
were fixed straight ahead of him--his mouth smiled--and he hummed a
tune that throbbed with a queer barbaric dissonance....
"What is it?" asked Kathleen, fascinated.
"Moorish. I picked it up when I was touring in Spain. Did I ever tell
you, Kathleen, that I'd been a chauffeur for five months?"
And he related, with infinite zest at recollection, how some people had
wished to hire from him a car and chauffeur for an exhaustive trip
through Spain, during his first struggling years in the motor business;
all the men in his service already booked, he yet had not dared to
refuse so advantageous an offer, and had boldly undertaken the job
himself, with all its attendant duties of guide and bottle-washer--"And
Lordy! how that country twisted itself round the very core of my heart!"
So thus was explained his sudden thrilling inflection when, during
their first conversation at Ilfracombe, he had spoken of Granada, and
the hill called The Last Sigh of the Moor.... "I'd like to stand with
you just there, and look down on the Alhambra...."
Why not, then? Why not? Throughout the rest of the afternoon she was
strung to vibrant expectation of his: "Come with me, Kathleen!"...
Perhaps now he would say it; now, in the mellow inn-garden where they
had tea, and watched the sun drop, a spinning red globe, through the
opalescent October mists.
But though Napier talked excitedly, incessantly, of his vagabondage
in Spain; fluent description of just what had attracted him: the lazy
Southern people with their courtly ways--the clear rich colours--the
voluptuous sunshine--over all, a sense of dignified repose, quiescent
to the memory of past greatness in history; though he talked so much
and so long that by the time they started for home, the chill of
evening had crept up dankly over the landscape; yet he did not say:
"Come with me, Kathleen...."
A moaning breeze rustled the foliage that clung faithfully to the
boughs, reminding them that the day's generous flare of crimson and
wine-colour and topaz had been the merest bravado ... and that winter
was coming soon, very soon--Kathleen shivered a little, and drew her
cloak tightly round her; the cushioned seats of the car felt soggy,
and some withered leaves had blown in.... And still Napier talked of
Spain, and the Moors in Spain, and castles in Spain, and himself in
Spain--with never a word of her in Spain; never a word....
"I've got to go home to dinner to-night, darling; shall I put you down
near Hammersmith or----"
She did not want to go home. The panic she was just succeeding in
holding at arm's length, would surely find her at Pacific Villa.
She could easily fashion some careless lie to explain her absence to
Gareth; the same lie she always used to cover those long evenings
at the flat: she was going to the Worleys; they were teaching her
bridge; would Gareth care to come too?--she risked the danger of an
affirmative, knowing how busy he was of late, how he disliked bridge,
how he disliked Trixie. Anyway, he appeared curiously apathetic towards
her doings since their summer holiday.
"I don't want any dinner, Nap. Drop me at the flat, and join me later
on, can you?"
He assented; but half-heartedly. It was wonderful to be going to
Spain; wonderful to win the Cup Race--for he fully intended to win
it by dexterous combinations of skill, recklessness, and foul play;
wonderful that the feat was one which could be performed showily in
sight of the multitude. Nothing was wanting to his anticipations
of glory, save a special audience of his wife. Yes, Grace must be
persuaded to come with him next week. He planned for a reconciliation
to take place between them this very evening.... And afterwards he
would sit blissfully with her beautiful auburn head against his knee,
and make plans for their second honeymoon, along the Guadal-quiver....
And he would describe to her just how splendid she would feel, seeing
him outrival all competitors in the great race.
Yes, Grace must come with him to Spain. He wanted it. Usually he got
what he wanted. He drove to Hamilton Terrace and dressed for dinner, in
a riot of triumphant anticipation....
A couple of hours later saw him, ominously silent, and with a curious
glint under his heavy eyelids, letting himself into the flat where
Kathleen awaited him. Grace had refused his request, quite calmly and
good-temperedly; had said it would bore her....
And here was a dark woman with arms strangling his neck ...
overwhelming him in a tide of words ... pleading, pleading that when he
went to Spain, she might not be left behind. Pleading, as one pleads
who for two solitary hours has been in desperate battle with the
spectre of an old dread.
"I won't stay here--I won't. Napier, you promised, if ever you went
South.... You said: 'One day we'll go together.' And this is 'one
day,' isn't it? isn't it? Let me see you race and win. Take me along.
Napier, you promised ... and I love you.... I won't face the grey days,
and the white days, and the thick yellow days. You were so long coming
this evening ... and it was cold and dark--my hands are numb with
cold.... A hateful ballad-singer started croaking outside: 'Failin'
leaf and fadin' tree----'.... She did, Napier, she did! and I couldn't
bear it.... I wanted to kill her. Take me with you to Spain ... to see
you win!"
For through all her stammering anguish was sufficient acumen left to
strike again and again that final note, as the surest means of reaching
his ear.
He bent back her head, so that her mouth lay beneath his. And she felt
rather than saw his smile ... evil flash of smile, white in a dusky
face....
("Dear old Nap, it would bore me stiff; I hate travelling.")
"Yes. You shall come with me," he assured Kathleen softly.
* * * * *
Kathleen was afire with excitement when that evening she alighted
from the Hammersmith omnibus. Over and done with now, the strain
and pretence and irritation of life with Gareth. Humdrum day
succeeding day; monotony that his futile comings and goings were
powerless to dispel. Panic-peopled realms of thought: winter-fear,
birthday-dread--realm that she could not even claim as solely hers,
since instinctively he was familiar with every shape therein--all over
and done with. Warm land, warm love; her old tormented nature cast like
the garment of a snake. In ten days' time. Morality, humour, common
sense, stubbornly thrust under, lest they should reveal flaws and
dangers in this glory of the future towards which doggedly she thrust
her indomitable will. Nine more evenings to walk up that hideous front
garden, to unlock that blistered door, look in the dining-room to see
if Gareth were still up--her lip curved scornfully at the reflection
that never once had he betrayed sufficient intelligence to note her
altered demeanour.
She opened the dining-room door. The lamp was smoking badly. She
attempted with smarting eyes to pierce the fog.
Gareth was sitting at the table, his head propped on his hands;
staring, staring straight in front of him, with the look of a man to
whom has just happened the worst thing of all. Before him in a pile
stood the usual array of brown-paper-bound manuscripts which he brought
back from the office; one lay strewn on the floor, white patches on the
dingy carpet. Somebody must have thrown it there.
"Has anything happened, Gareth? Aren't you feeling well?"
He gazed at and through her, as if she were not there.
"Gareth, did you hear me? Has anything happened?"
After a long pause, her presence seemed to penetrate to him, as a
buzzing element of which he must at all costs be quit.
"Go to bed, Kathleen. I'm quite all right." His voice was dull and
toneless.
She could not be bothered with him that night of nights; he, of the old
order of things.... Kathleen closed the door; went happily upstairs.
And Gareth was left with his pile of other people's books, and the one
among them that contained his idea.
"The Reverse of the Medal," by Pat O'Neill.
Who was Pat O'Neill? He neither knew nor cared. Obviously a new writer,
since the name was unfamiliar. For that reason, Gareth had selected
it for reading first of the number, in the hope of striking something
original.... Well, he had succeeded; Gareth had long since been
convinced of the originality of his own inspiration.
The perusal of the opening chapters evoked a keen scholarly pleasure in
the masterly handling of phrases, for the unmistakable genius displayed
in character and thought.... And all the while, a curious unreal
sensation, as if he were being dragged along unfamiliar paths towards a
spot of which he was perfectly cognizant, would recognize the instant
he set eyes on it; only the way thither was not known to him.... The
nightmare feeling grew and grew--he was stifling truth in a blurred
rapid horror of leading--on and on--unmistakably aware now to what
summit of inspiration each phrase, each situation, was leading....
A last effort of frantic unconvinced self-persuasion that he was
mistaken, the next page would show him so--well then, the next chapter;
he had his own book so much on his mind, that it infected absurdly
everything he read; this other, this Pat O'Neill, was labouring towards
an entirely different issue; funny that in places it should appear so
like.
Half-way through the manuscript, no more possibility of doubt. It was
then that the white staring pages found their scattered resting-place
on the carpet.
His idea.
In his official capacity, he would have to compose a report to send
up to Leslie Campbell, who would probably publish the book. An
astoundingly good piece of work, he would have to report well on it.
His idea.
Not for an instant could he accuse the unknown author of deliberate
plagiarism. No; these brainwaves occurred at times. He had heard
several cases of two books or two plays each founded on the same theme,
evolved at the same period by their totally unconscious creators. In
this case, the other man would get in first, that was all. And it
mattered so intensely to Gareth.
Drearily he stared at the black china cat with yellow eyes, who
occupied the centre of the mantelpiece, just where the faded red velvet
with its brownish fringe was looped up with a nail.
"What am I to do?"
The cat leered evilly: "You might give the book a bad report; then the
Heart-breaker would tie it up in a parcel, and, whistling, carry it to
the post."
"Another firm will publish it if Campbell doesn't. There's a good two
months' work in mine still. 'The Reverse of the Medal' is bound to get
in first."
"Then keep back the manuscript," counselled the black china cat, who
had presided so long on that shelf in that room, that it must in
witnessing, have sucked into its unaired soul all of the bickerings and
heart-burnings of the two dwelling in Pacific Villa, and all of the
things unsaid that hung thickly in the air long after the dining-room
was empty of occupants. A nasty little cheap black cat, meagre and
dusty.
"Then keep back the manuscript."
"Keep it back?"
"Well, why not?"
It did occasionally last a couple of months before the reader sent up
his report of a book. Not often; Gareth was regular in the discharge of
his duties. Moreover, every manuscript received at the office was of
course duly notified with date and title. But it might easily happen
that in this case the copy should be accidentally mislaid, mislaid for
quite a length of time.
And in the meanwhile he would work; work feverishly at his own book.
Finish it in six weeks. Finish it, and submit it to a publisher, any
publisher, so only that it got in first.
Why not?
"It's--mean," said Gareth to the black china cat.
"I don't care one way or another," the latter retorted indifferently.
"Go back to the old routine, day after day, and nothing ahead to look
forward to. Dreams smashed. Career in atoms. Shoved on one side by
'Campbell's Young Men.' Just tolerated by Campbell himself----"
"Ah, no--I can't!" The man buried his head on his arms, while a great
bitterness drained his soul. Forty years, and nothing to show for
them--and now to have success snatched away when it dangled within
grasping reach. "I can't!"
... Gareth looked too long into the shallow eyes of the black china
cat....
"Pat O'Neill must pay for pitching on the same idea as mine," he said
at last, slowly. And slowly gathered up the scattered manuscript, sheet
by sheet. Slowly crossed to the desk, and opened the lowest drawer, and
thrust in the untidy parcel; crushed it down, and shut the drawer, and
locked it.
When he mounted the creaking stairway to the room he shared with
Kathleen, there were ugly lines around his mouth, a hard glitter in his
eyes. And he was vexed to see her smiling in her sleep.
CHAPTER VII
The lantern was out, that had burnt in the heart of the world.
Gareth was quite defenceless in face of this smashing thing which had
occurred to him. He had no philosophy or religion to which to cling;
no inner store of strength and pride. Nor was there any person to whom
blindly he could turn, and say: "Help me!" He had not even the vicious
satisfaction of feeling that his present misery was due payment for
something tangible which had been his to enjoy; nothing had been his
but moonshine, and moonshine is but poor stuff to feed on in retrospect.
Gareth, who had been hurt, looked about for somebody to hurt.
Kathleen's unnatural and feverish excitement, the prevailing atmosphere
about her of impending happenings, stabbed him with a sense of
unbearable injury. For sixteen years they had been unhappy together,
he and she; since two and a half months, found each their separate
happiness. And now his had evaporated--and hers remained. More, was
obviously reaching its consummation.
Gareth had always been possessed of an instinctive understanding where
Kathleen was concerned. Now he marked her sudden tremulous smiles;
her abstracted moods, in which trivial mishaps mattered not at all;
the state of mind in which she woke of a morning to a day which meant
something, brought something nearer. All these tokens of an earth
beatified, maddened him with the memory of his loss. Once, like a very
human child, he cried out to whosoever was responsible: "If you could
only have left me mine, I would have _wanted_ everyone to have theirs
as well!" and then Kathleen hummed a little tune as she came in from
an evening stroll; and Gareth said without looking up, "Where have you
been?"
She lied carelessly. Went on lying, as he continued to question.
The fact that she did not even labour to evolve a credible tissue
of falsehood, that the web was full of holes and gaps whence any
intelligent man might with ease tear the fabric to shreds, infuriated
him more than anything else could have done; convinced him more than
anything else how little he counted in her, in other people's eyes.
"We needn't bother about Gareth. Gareth was always a weak fool!" ...
he could hear Kathleen's scornful intonation, see Napier's flashing
smile in response. And "Campbell's Young Men" caught up the tone and
the laugh; till the world was one cruel casual voice that repeated "We
needn't bother about Gareth."...
And the achievement which would have justified him--the book? Gareth
was writing feverishly, neglecting his office-work, writing at every
spare moment, early morning and late night. The hollows in his cheeks
became more apparent; his eyes deeper sunken in their sockets. He
was writing against time; writing against that thing which lay in
the bottom drawer of his desk. The girl whose touch was cool came to
him no more; the dusty black china cat watched him glassily from the
mantelshelf. And Kathleen came in and out, and lied to him as if it
were not worth while.
He guessed that her crisis was near at hand. From a certain crafty
observance, newly and strangely acquired, he was able to deduce the
date of the actual flight. Kathleen made no elaborate provisions that
he should that evening be out of the way. She evidently intended to
pack her trunk during the day, when he was at the office; send it
in advance of her to Charing Cross; and trust to his amiability,
stupidity--to let her depart without enquiries: "I'm going for a walk,
Gareth." In anticipation he saw her eyes sparkling to an image beyond
his bowed shoulders at the dining-room table; not caring if he heard
her farewell or not. And he had drudged for her sixteen years.
After all, a certain amount was due to him on such an occasion. He was
willing to let them go, yes; but could they not betray fear of being
found out? take some pains to elude his vigilance? pay him tribute of
stammering subterfuge and sidelong anxious looks? This drama of three
had been performed so often--but this time two showed a disposition to
cut out the part of the third altogether.
For the past fortnight, Kathleen had creamed her neck and arms every
night before going to bed; and before the glass she brushed and brushed
at her long black hair till the grey threads glittered; she also
attempted to soften by massage the network of tiny winkles beneath her
eyes, and the two drawn lines at each corner of the mouth. She was
still a handsome woman, with the old suggestion of a wilder redder
strain than the Saxon in her delicate aquiline nose, high cheekbones,
and lithe body. But forty-three carries its mark. Gareth lay in bed
and watched her efforts to remove them. She could not help that, since
it was also his room. But he felt it a supreme insolence, this attempt
before his very eyes at rejuvenescence for her lover. He wanted to tell
her so ... knew there was some reason why he must pretend to be unaware
of anything impending. What reason?... Why, yes, of course, he wanted
her to go--but it required an effort to remember this, with nerves
rasped to their present condition.
On the eve of the decisive Friday, Gareth returned early from the
office, shivering from head to foot, racking pains just above his eyes,
hands burning, and with an insistent dry cough from his chest. His
chest, never strong, had not been sufficiently wrapped up in view of
the recent October mists.
"I'm not well," he muttered, as he walked swayingly up the stairs to
the bedroom. "Not well," and sat on the edge of the bed, and pressed
his hot fingers to his hot eyelids, and repeated a great many times
"Her touch is as cold as the sand in a cave ... her touch is as cold
as the sand in a cave."... Oh, why did she never come to him now, his
dream-girl? Never since that pile of manuscript lay buried in the
bottom drawer of his desk. He could not afford to be ill--suddenly
starting to his feet; he had to finish his book; at any moment Pat
O'Neill might walk in and demand to know what had become of "The
Reverse of the Medal"? Gareth's days at the office were haunted by the
swinging of the glass door, perpetual fear of who might be the entering
figure. So many strangers came to the firm of Leslie Campbell. And now,
when his pen might be licking up the yards and miles of words he saw
stretching ahead of him till the last chapter be reached--now he was
ill, and had to waste the precious moments sitting on the edge of the
bed, and coughing--coughing.
Kathleen entered, her arms laden with parcels. She started and dropped
the largest of them, seeing Gareth.
"You! home so early!"
"I'm not well," he explained piteously. He noticed the parcels; guessed
at their contents. She must have passed a delicious afternoon, spending
all her little store of money. He guessed, too, that she was eager to
unpack them, toy with the contents, try on the dainty feminine apparel
by which she sought to hide her years from that other. Well, she could
just attend to his wants instead; it would not be for many hours longer.
"You'd better go to bed," said Kathleen.
"Yes." He did not move.
"Come along then. This is only one of your usual chills. You'll be
better to-morrow."
"I don't suppose I shall be well enough to go to the office."
He marked her quick start of dismay, and a tiny streak of comfort crept
into his desolation. So at last he was proving slightly inconvenient,
was he?
"Do you think I shall be well enough, Kathleen?"
"Not unless you get at once between the blankets." She wondered how
much longer he would sit motionless on the edge of the bed, looking
at her. Not that Gareth's doings really counted for much, entirely
swamped as she was in her obsession of late love--but how like Gareth
just at this time to catch a chill; she did not know whether to be
amused or impatient at the intrusion of poultice and syrup on the
gold-shot sublimity of her thoughts. She attended to the patient; he
recognizing in her every movement an insistent determination to cure
him sufficiently that he should leave the coast clear on the morrow.
He was glad to be causing her trouble at last. Of course she must be
allowed to go--through all his fever and irritation and muddle of
desire, he strove to cling to that. He wanted her to go. It was as well
that the drama was to be soon played to the finish; he was not at all
certain how long he could retain his attitude of utter passivity.
Kathleen lay wide awake all through the night. At intervals she heard
Gareth cough; could not tell if he slept or not; hoped for the best;
it had not before occurred to her to take Gareth into consideration.
But it was essential that no hitch should occur in her plan of escape.
An hysterical fatalism brooded over her passion for Napier Kirby. She
knew that if she hesitated once, paused to debate or analyse, looked
beyond the actual moment of flight, or looked back to responsibility,
habit, sentiment, then the sequence of events which had rushed to
ten-thirty, Charing Cross, Friday evening, would pass by that single
pin-point moment of action, never to touch it again. And she would
be left. Forty-three cannot shatter and re-form her life, lose
opportunities and find others, toss love aside and gather up love, as
eighteen might do, as twenty-seven had done.
Gareth was not asleep; he tossed and coughed throughout that endless
night, and wished he were alone, and that his head had not made every
corner of the pillow such a burning discomfort.... "Her touch is as
cold as the sand in a cave"--perhaps, when Kathleen had gone, leaving
the room and the house empty, perhaps then his cool girl would return
to him, bringing with her the old dreams of peace. Kathleen was going
to-morrow.
He appeared rather better in the morning, but still feverish. Quite
out of the question to breathe the raw gusty air outside, awhirl with
crackling dancing leaves from the half-stripped branches.
"I'll have a fire put in the dining-room, Gareth. You'll be more
comfortable there than here."
He shook with a queer desire to startle her by saying "Don't let my
presence hinder your packing, my dear." Her crude attempts to remove
him from the bedroom were an insult to his intelligence. She would
lose that proneness to look through and beyond him, if he said "Don't
let my presence ..." for fear of saying it, he shuffled into his worn
dressing-gown, and went hastily downstairs; sat in the arm-chair, and
looked at the black china cat, and listened to Kathleen's footsteps
to and fro in the room above; opening drawers and cupboards; a pause
while she folded a garment; movement of carrying it to the trunk. He
made an effort to write at the book, but his head swam and he gave up
trying. The day dragged on. Once he called for the servant to bring
some more coal. Kathleen answered the summons, and attended to the fire
abstractedly. Her cheeks were stained a rich carmine.
"Where's Maggie?"
"Maggie? Oh, I gave her permission to go out."
"Why? It isn't her day."
"She looked pale. I thought it would do her good."
"You mean," said Gareth--nearly--"that you sent her out to be rid of
her while you pack."
He just withheld the speech; but with a sense that he was all the
while being robbed of a privilege. Kathleen's manner was goading him
to frenzy. He wanted her to know--know--_know_ that he knew; that
he could, if he wished, reveal her every falsehood, make her look
the fool instead of himself. As it was, she would leave the house
thinking him the dupe; continue always to think so.... Gareth writhed
impotently. Somewhere in this old tired conjunction of one and two, was
a magnificent effect for the third: at the eleventh hour to fling off
pretence of ignorance, denounce the culprits, and claim his--property.
"You mustn't! You mustn't!" twanged the last coherent fibre of his
brain. But surely any after-forfeits would be worth the paying, just
to stamp that superior exalted smile from Kathleen's lips; make her
realize the fact of him, his existence and his claims.
She talked rapidly and jerkily at supper, but ate nothing. She might
have been talking to anyone. Gareth said, "Can you give me a glass of
something hot, Kath, when I'm in bed to-night? I want to be well by
to-morrow."
"Yes, of course. I wouldn't go to bed too early if I were you"--no, not
while her trunk stood packed in the room!--"or you'll find it hard to
sleep."
"... What does that matter to you, since you won't be here?" Some demon
surely was prompting him with all these sentences that he might not
utter; he threw a swift furtive look towards the black cat with yellow
eyes.
Kathleen rose and went to her room. Towards half-past nine, listening
intently, he heard wheels that stopped a little way down the road.
The cab!--he sat with fingers tightly gripping the chair. Heavy steps
crunching to the front door. Kathleen, running softly downstairs to
meet the cabman, shut, in passing, the dining-room door.
"Kathleen!"
She looked in. "Yes?"
"Why did you do that?" querulously.
"I don't want you to feel a draught."
"Who's there?"
She made vague response, "Man about the bathroom tap"; and closed the
door again.
"Bathroom tap" ... Gareth laughed ironically. Then stopped laughing,
confronted of a sudden by the utter ignominy of a man who sat and
drowsed in a dressing-gown over the fire, while his mate was in the
very act of leaving him. Straining forward in his chair, he heard the
cabby lurch downstairs with the trunk on his shoulder. A pause. Then
Kathleen again entered, in hat and coat.
"I'm going out, Gareth."
He did not turn. "At this time? Why?"
... Just a minute longer. If he can hang on to silence a minute
longer.... The half-dead fire shifted. He felt her stop on the
threshold to answer his question.
"It's such a fine night. I wanted a stroll."
A screaming gust of wind and rain shook and rattled at the panes--and
a fibre of Gareth's brain seemed to twitch and snap. A fine night ...
what sort of an idiot did she take him for? He would show her.
"You lie. You were going to join your lover."
... Not even now was he sure if he had said it, or if that absurd
little black china cat were still playing its tricks. His back was to
the door. He waited to hear it close behind her. That would indicate
that all was well, and that she had gone. No sound. He turned ... saw
from her face that it had not been the black china cat who had spoken
the words:
"You lie. You were going to join your lover."
Her smile had slipped away--and quite right that it should!--smile that
belonged to eighteen, not to forty-three. And she was aware of him now,
Gareth noted exultantly; was waiting in stunned amaze for his next
utterance. Well, since he had once broken bounds, it might come in full
force, dramatic recrimination he had all this while suppressed. He had
lost all sense of consequences, of the ultimate issue at stake; seized,
for the second time in his life, by an irresistible storm of action.
Just on and on, not seeing whether he was going--and who could now
assert that Gareth Temple wasn't a strong man!
"You thought I saw nothing, did you? thought I swallowed all your
stupid little lies; held me for stupider than the lies, did you? Well,
I know. You were going to-night--not coming back--packing your
clothes ... all those weeks you've been plotting it, you--with that
smile forever on your face, and making yourself beautiful, for him; and
buying clothes, for him. And I knew! I knew! For every falsehood you
gave me, I gave you back another with my silence. Not--not quite such a
fool as you took me to be, Kathleen...."
He was forced to stop, overtaken by a spasm of coughing; clutched for
support at the corner of the table.
Kathleen had time to recover from her first numbness of surprise. The
expected hitch to her plans had occurred. No matter! she could cope
with more than this for the attainment of El Dorado. Gareth could not
prevent her departure; let him but have his say, so it be a quick one;
and then----
A noisy rapping at the front door indicated that the cabby had
deposited his load on the vehicle, and was waiting to take his fare.
Still coughing, Gareth brushed past Kathleen, and into the hall.
"You can bring the box back here," she heard him say. "You won't be
wanted to-night after all."
She made no movement to contradict. Short of undignified strugglings
and vituperations on her part, she saw that for the moment he
controlled the situation. She did not for an instant waver in her
stubborn confidence still to reach Charing Cross that night in time for
the ten-thirty. But that Gareth should dare thwart her; Gareth of all
people; Gareth, the urging of whom to initiative had well-nigh sapped
her of her own, now by initiative to shatter and frustrate her hopes;
Gareth's interference was unbearable.
He re-entered the room, well-pleased with the decisive action he
had just taken. Her eyes snapped fire at him from the shadow of her
youthful, too youthful, brown picture-hat.
"Have I been so happy with you?"
"That's beside the point," sternly.
"Is it? Is it?"
"You happen to be mine."
"You can't stop me, if I wish to go."
She heard the cab rattling down the street, dying to silence. She would
have to walk till she found another--scarce in that neighbourhood.
Supposing that by the time she reached Charing Cross, the ten-thirty
would have throbbed out of the station, and Napier with it; Napier,
thinking her trust had at the last moment failed. A bitter foreboding
of loss clouded her eyes ... the chance would not come to her again.
Gareth, watching, thought it was thus he must have looked when the
other book had crashed across his dream. And now they were both unhappy
again, he and she, as they had always been; he would not have to hear
her hum that maddening little tune to-night, while she creamed her arms
and shoulders. To-night ... then she would still be here! ... a chill
misgiving struck at his satisfaction. He lashed himself up again.
"You seem to have no sense of shame," he flung at her.
"He wanted me." And for a fleeting instant she was again happy,
thinking so. Gareth marked the beginning of--that smile.
"Are you sure?" he remarked slowly. "Of course I know little of
the man--and wish to know less. But he struck me as being rather
dangerously in love with his own wife. You and I ... we are neither of
us very young any more, Kathleen. He may have flattered you, played
with you, but----"
"She didn't care for him--didn't care...."
"That's why. You cared too much."
She cut in, fearing the next: "If he hadn't wanted me, would he have
asked me to go South with him?"
"_Did_ he ask? Didn't you rather drive it through, doggedly, blindly,
because you yourself so much desired it? Thrash it through and flog it,
and force it? The man ... I've seen you force things through, Kathleen."
He had said it, what she had all the time endeavoured to hide from
herself. And now there was no question of El Dorado. Gareth again!
destroying even the aftermath, so that she could never dwell on
the episode, on memory of Napier's voice and caresses, without hot
stinging shame. To cheapen herself, give herself where she was not
ardently desired.... Kathleen withdrew the pins from her hat, and laid
the broad-brimmed felt upon the table. Then she sat down; and Gareth
sat down opposite; and the black china cat prepared itself for some
innocent enjoyment. There were things to be said which had remained
unspoken for years. It would be good to clear the air. And they were
both out to wound, wound and hack and tear. It is not a pleasant frame
of mind which visits a man and a woman from whom the last dreams have
been wantonly snatched.
"It was perfect at Alpenruh, wasn't it?" said Kathleen, rending the
first veil.
"And never since."
"You loved me then--or didn't you?"
"Perhaps. Calf-love, moon-love, flimsy stuff that couldn't stand the
years. We should not have tried to keep it up."
"I told you so, beforehand."
"I stuck to it, at least. You were running away--to another man."
"No woman could wish to stay with you. You can't _do_ things; something
rotten always gives way in you at the critical moment. One can't even
lean on you, because you sway, sway and totter."... Quick revenge this,
on Gareth, who had pointed out her humiliation. She went on: "Other
men have passed you, again and again; young men, men with energy, men
with genius. You've got left behind--you, weak on the chest, weak in
the knees, weak everywhere. And you're always there, that's the worst
of you--always there. Why shouldn't I have tried to leave you? You have
brought me nothing, not even the right to be proud of you. It must be
wonderful for a woman to be proud of her man's strength."
And quivering from the stripes her tongue inflicted, he stammered in
answer to the final word of abuse.
"But I stopped you to-night--I stopped you----" Then hadn't he even
here shown a man's strength? Had he botched this triumph as well? The
child in him wailed its disappointment.
"You stopped me, yes," she gave a hard little laugh; "but not because
you sent the cab away, my friend, so don't you believe it." And lest
she might ever have to hear a repetition of his insinuation that she
had "forced things through," Kathleen added: "I don't think to-night
need be mentioned again, between us two."
"But----"
Maggie, the general servant, tapped at the door and entered, in Sunday
hat and jacket.
"Please, ma'am," eyes round with astonishment, "there's your trunk
a-standing in the passage. Stumbled over it, I did, when I come in from
outside. An' I wondered----"
"It can go up to the bedroom." Kathleen disdainfully withheld
explanation. "It isn't heavy, Maggie. I'll give you a hand with it."
Maggie backed.
"Oh, and Maggie, put on some hot milk, will you, for the master? and
pour a little brandy into it; a teaspoonful."
Gareth stood listening to the bumping on the stairs, as the box was
carried back to its old quarters. The fever of his mood had ebbed, till
nothing remained of the glow and the exhilaration. He only knew he was
tired and rather chilly; that Kathleen had not gone--would still be
with him to-morrow, and all the days; between them that new barrier
of silence, denser even than the old they had in their recent anger
battered down.... "I don't think to-night need be mentioned again."
If he had waited one half-minute longer. Certainly it had been a good
hour. But had he realized that his burden would in consequence be
fastened on him for the rest of his life, he might perhaps have waited
that half-minute longer....
In the bedroom upstairs, Kathleen stood at the window; behind her,
the locked trunk and the untidy litter of packing. The dark wind
whistled dismally, tore at the branches that swayed and bent and
creaked resistance. The air was a whirl with fluttering patches and
tatters. Kathleen shivered as she felt the malevolent draughts blowing
in between the chinks, and down the chimney and under the door. What a
restless shrieking tormented world, this last night of October!
Kathleen shivered.... "Shadders risin' 'twixt you an' me"--croaked
an echo of the raucous tones of the street-singer outside Napier's
rooms.... Was Napier on his way South?
She heard Gareth coughing below.
Then she moved away from the window, and her eye caught the calendar
hanging on the wall; a cheap calendar, containing a picture of kittens
playing, and under it the date--November 30th.
November 30th?... In the defiant joy of departure, she had that morning
ripped off from the block a whole handful of leaves; since what
mattered the time of year, when she would be in warm lands?
Panic-stricken, she now tore at the little strip of paper, and the
one beneath it, and then several at a time ... December--December
20th--only to get through till the summer months came round
again--December 31st--that was the last one, gummed to the cardboard;
she could not remove it ... December 31st.
And the winter-fear was on her.
PART III
CHAPTER I
"What are you doing, Gareth?"
"Reading. Do you want anything, dear?"
"No. Do you always prefer to read in that special position?"
He made no reply. He was very gentle now with Kathleen; very
considerate. Perhaps his high-coloured boyish notions of ideal
knighthood were never so nearly realized in him as during the present
uncomplaining acceptance of his self-imposed life sentence.
Kneeling before the desk in the dining-room, he bent his head once more
over the pile of type-script so engrossing him. His shoulders were
hunched between Kathleen and the open lower drawer, as if to conceal
from her its contents.
"You'll strain your eyes, so far from the light."
Apparently he did not hear.
Sighing restlessly, she rose and went into the kitchen, on the pretext
of helping Maggie with the potatoes. At least, the kitchen was always
warm--a species of thick concentrated warmth; whereas the arc of
heat spread by the dining-room fire was slashed across and across by
evil currents of cold air, entering by who knows what mysterious
loopholes of Pacific Villa. Huddled in her enormous grey shawl,
Kathleen looked as if removed by years from the radiant creature in
the brown picture-hat, of five weeks before. She had never heard again
from Napier.... But the newspapers had informed her who had won the
International Automobile Cup Race.... She had never had any doubt of
it. Sometimes she wondered if any of his pleasure in the achievement
had been marred by lack of her as audience; and whether he would
attempt to communicate with her on his return....
He did not.
* * * * *
Reluctantly quitting Spain, Napier had fortified regret by buoyant
self-assurance that things would be "all right" with Grace, now he was
coming back to her in a dazzle of glory. The Cup was bound to make
all the difference.... She could not but welcome him in the proper
spirit of femininity towards victory. "That was a narrow shave I had!"
contemplating the momentary folly which had caused him to invite
Kathleen to go with him; and his subsequent relief when at the eleventh
hour she had inexplicably failed to turn up.
"She'd have been an awful nuisance...."
He intended to make Grace a present of the Cup. And pictured her
delight....
* * * * *
"Dap cobes back to-borrow," announced old Mrs. Kirby, quite
superfluously, for the fiftieth time.
"Oh _Lord_!" groaned Teddy, "won't he swank just!" He added
discontentedly: "We were quite all right without him. Yesterday was
huge sport--I like Pater ever so much better than Nap." Grace yawned,
and stretched her arms languidly behind her head.
"Never mind, Teddums--we need only listen once each to the tale of
How I Pulled It Off. But it's a pity ... he'd have been so much more
reticent if he had lost...."
* * * * *
"The Round Adventure" was within a few chapters of completion. But
through all his hours of frenzied toil, its author knew the spell of
creation had snapped on the night "The Reverse of the Medal" was among
the pile of manuscripts submitted to his judgment. What he now composed
was bad stuff compared to the earlier portion of the book. Nevertheless
the idea, the central idea, would be sufficient to pull it through to
success, if--if he got in with it first.... A furtive look towards the
bottom drawer, and Gareth wrote on. Sick sometimes with loathing of his
own meanness, he wrote on.
The manuscript in the bottom drawer obsessed him entirely. His
eyes flew in that direction whenever he entered the room; fastened
themselves mechanically on the cheap metal handle, each time he paused
in his labours to worry out some knotty point. Directly some household
trifle, dishcloth or corkscrew, was mislaid, he waited resignedly for
Kathleen to say: "I'll just see if it can possibly have slipped into
the bottom drawer of the desk;" and then: "Gareth, did you know that
somebody's book has been accidentally shoved away to the back of this
drawer? You had better take it up to the office to-morrow...."
Nor were his daylight hours made pleasanter by the momentary
expectation of Alexander's annoyed tones: "Temple, I've just had an
enquiry respecting a MS. entitled--ah, yes, "The Reverse of the Medal."
I believe that you...."
Thank goodness, Campbell at least was away till the New Year.
The black china cat was exceedingly amused by all these futile terrors.
His opinion of Gareth in the criminal line might be summed up by the
one word "amateurish." Far beyond his loathing of himself, Gareth
loathed that mean dusty little cat with the glassy yellow stare. Pat
O'Neill stood third on the list of hatred. At the beginning of things
he had stood first--but that was before Gareth had read the second half
of "The Reverse of the Medal."
He was reading it when Kathleen wandered into the kitchen to peel
potatoes. He went on reading, held by the same subtle fascination as
had drawn him unwillingly to the pile of type-script. In style, "The
Reverse of the Medal" was a complete contrast to "The Round Adventure."
Pat O'Neill was evidently no word-spinner; lacked that tender magic
of the sound and shape and colour of phrase which was so essentially
Gareth's. O'Neill disdained words and was impatient of phrases; he
was racingly in love with ideas, and lingered to swaddle them by
language as much only as was barely necessary for interpretation to the
reader. The author galloped his idea from the first page to the last,
as a cavalryman might do astride of a horse from whom all burdensome
equipment has been stripped. Then was Pat O'Neill himself Robert
Nugent, the hero of the novel; the man so magnetic, so clear of brain,
so full of ordinary human exasperating faults, of unexpected laughter,
that his swift death in the last chapter caused a shock of rising tears
to Gareth as he read of it. The theme now lay proven: that who lives
his life as a conscious experience, must equally in this spirit accept
death--more than accept it--go voluntarily to meet it ... even if he
has from the very beginning carried deeply the panic of death in his
soul.
Yes.... Robert Nugent realized that there are two sides to a medal,
as Kay Rollinson had seen the downward as well as the upward curve to
completion of a circle. And both had met with death by water--the one
boldly, in fear of death; and the other mysteriously, in fear of water;
after each had worked out his episode of love to discover that loss of
love is as much "part of the fun" as the advent of love.
But how had this boy, this Pat O'Neill, earned the idea he exploited so
brilliantly? Was it from what he had himself done? Or, as in Gareth's
case, had failed to do?
For the first time, since sixteen years ago he had seen the profession
of reader bathed in a glow of romance, Gareth began to muse on the
personality at the other end.... Who was he? What was he? Strange how
these books drifted in from complete darkness.
Pat O'Neill. Young, certainly; for since in no passage did he dwell
on the marvel of youth, he must obviously be in that one state when
the marvel would not strike him. Young--and a genius--how well he
would have taken his place as One of Them, if.... But that could never
be, while Gareth was holding back the book till his own should be
published, and render stale the other.
Sudden memory of Graham Carr, in unwonted confidential mood:
"I used to pace up and down outside here, before you decided on
my fate. What a period that was of ghastly thrills, imagining all
the accidents of fire and water which were destroying my precious
manuscript. Yet, d'you know, if the ordeal of waiting had lasted a
decade longer, I should never have screwed myself to the point of
asking for a decision. One is possessed by the spirit of fatalism where
one's first book is concerned...."
Was that what it meant to Pat O'Neill? Was he even now chafing, in
cramped circumstances, starved and shabby, fierily impatient of
this delay to ambition? And if the delay were removed.... Gareth's
imagination was imprinted with a very clear picture of something dark
and eager and divinely insolent, seated high among "Campbell's Young
Men" as their very latest and most successful acquisition. Nobody
standing between him and his throne but Gareth ... who suddenly felt
very weak and futile, pushing stubbornly against the vigorous onslaught
of the unseen unknown personality at the other end.
"He shan't get in--with my idea; he shan't--!" Just because Pat O'Neill
would have fitted there so marvellously; would, certainly, have looked
down on the mere reader of other people's books.
* * * * *
"Can I see Mr. Campbell?"
"What name, please?" asked Gareth, standing up at his desk, and looking
at the girl in the heavy dark green cloth, tailor-made, who had just
entered through the swing-doors. He was alone in the office. Alexander
was lunching an important client; and Guy Burnett was at Watford,
interviewing the printers. Even Jimmy had just staggered off to the
post, with an accumulation of rejected manuscripts.
"What name, please?"
"O'Neill."
... But Gareth had known it before she spoke. He had known at first
sight of her, that the boy Pat O'Neill was a myth of his imagination.
And that now and inevitably he was face to face with the consequences
of a mean sin.
"Mr. Campbell is away."
She smiled ... and the tilted curve of her lips, slow, mocking,
hauntingly sad, broke with startling contrast across the conception of
jolly roguish smile one might have been led to expect by her spirited
poise, and wide-set happy green eyes, streaked and spotted with gold,
and veiled by the defiant upward-curling lashes of dusky gold. She
was tall, as a goddess is tall; and broad-shouldered; with supple
hips; and thick white skin that was powdered by a shower of tiny
cowslip freckles round the bridge of her short blunt nose. Her hair,
under its green leather slouch hat, was gold also, dull warm gold; and
sprang back squarely from her forehead, to be coiled again in a square
frame round her cheeks and neck. A magnificent creature; radiance and
strength personified, even to the deep cleft in her chin ... until she
challenged her own strength by that smile, and scorned her radiance.
"That dear little lad who tried to stop me at the foot of the stairs
also told me Mr. Campbell was away," she remarked thoughtfully. "You
stick to it?"
"Mr. Campbell _is_ away."
Pat O'Neill regarded him steadily. Then with scornful deliberation
crossed the room to the inner door marked Private, and flung it open.
The room beyond was empty of occupant.... She looked back at Gareth,
recognized something gravely whimsical in his expression--and burst out
laughing.
"I'm disappointed, Mr. Campbell. I frankly own it. I expected to expose
you with fine dramatic effect--and all the while here you are quite
tame, and ready to eat out of my hand."
He assured her patiently: "Mr. Campbell is away. On my word of honour
I'm not he. You'll never find a publisher on view in the front office;
they're always strongly entrenched behind barricades of our unsold
'favourite novels' in the cellar. Would you care to go down and dig
for him?"
He had to talk nonsense to this girl; even aware of her errand; aware
of the unspeakable wrong he had done her; and of the lies he was bound
in due course to utter under scrutiny of those straight gold-fringed
eyes, still he had to talk to her in this wise. She exhilarated him
past all sense....
"Who are you, then? Another partner?"
"Mr. Alexander is the junior partner. He's out at present. That is to
say, he's also down in the cellar. I'm reader to the firm. Is there
anything I can do for you?"
And he asked this ... marvelling at his dispassionate insolence. If she
knew----!
"Yes. I sent up a novel, about six weeks ago. It was called "The
Reverse of the Medal." Nothing to you, of course. Bores you to death.
I'm not expecting any rampant animation on the subject. But, being
mine, I have a fond fancy to know what's happening to it."
"You've heard nothing from us?"
"A printed slip of acknowledgment, that's all."
Calmly Gareth verified her information from the volume in which the
receipt of all manuscripts was noted down and dated.
"Yes, here we are ... by Pat O'Neill ... is that right?"
"Quite. I'm Patricia really; but I thought it sounded haughty."
"I prefer you as Patricia," he reflected.
"That's very dear and sweet of you, but--where's my book?"
"It may have been mislaid; I'll make due enquiries; and we will let you
know our decision as soon as possible."
Patricia O'Neill pondered on this for a moment. Then shook her head.
"Not good enough. If I went to the boarding-school where I had placed
my wee childie--be not amazed; this is pure hypothesis!--and they said:
'She--or he--may have been mislaid,' I wouldn't say: 'Thank you very
much,' and go home to my tea; dear me, no; not a bit of it!"
"Does the book mean as much to you as a child?" He had to torment
himself with these questions.... And quite irrelevantly, he wondered
how old she was; she looked about twenty-three.
"Well, just at present it's rather in the middle of my world,
and----Hang your questions!" she flared at him, in sudden hot
indignation; "are they going to accept it or not? You _must_ know--and
I _will_ know."
He sharpened a pencil to a very minute point, before, carefully
non-committal, he informed her: "I think I can promise you a decision
in a week from to-day."
"Come now, that's very pleasing--almost human,"--with one of her
mournful tantalizing smiles she apologized for her recent outburst.
"I'll reward you by going at once, so that those two poor harassed
fellows skulking below can come up and have their tea in peace."
Gareth badly wanted to ask her to come out and have tea with him; but
some hidden impulse forbade any such proceeding until he should have
remedied the injury of her book held back.
"Good afternoon, Miss O'Neill." And before he had fully grasped to what
fantastic extremes of behaviour the wild stimulation of her visit had
brought him, he heard himself ask, as he held open the door: "How old
are you?"
She halted, unastonished; and leant against the portal, hands clasped
behind her back.
"Is this official enquiry? Shall I have to tell my age to the
seven-and-seventy publishers who refuse the book? Because it might get
about that way."
"Please forgive me. I--I can't think what came over me for the moment,"
painfully abashed.
"My dear man, I love your healthy young interest. I'm
twenty-two-and-a-half. How old are you? Let's be frankly curious, by
all means. What's your name. How many glass marbles have you got to
play with?"
"My name is Gareth Temple. I'm forty-and-a-half. And I have one glass
marble to play with.... At least, I had. But it's smashed."
"Recently?"
"Very recently."
"Something is amusing you; what is it?"
"Nothing...."
"You were right to shut all your dreams into one glass marble, Mr.
Temple."
"It's the way of a fool, Miss O'Neill."
"No, it's the way of a wise man, who realizes that the big marble
smashed is worth more to him than all the little ones still rolling
about the floor."
"If he has deliberately shut all his dreams into the one marble, and is
aware that the loss of it is as much his gain as the gain of it--then
yes. But not if he is simply a blind weakling who can't help loving
the one marble--clutches it so tightly that he smashes it--and resents
furiously the escape of his dreams...."
"The marble would need to be of very brittle glass----" She regarded
him quizzically: "These metaphorical metaphysics are miles beyond me,
you know! Besides which, it happens to be the theme of my book--or
rather, its antithesis, which you have been so merrily expounding. Out
with the truth, Mr. Temple--you've read it after all."
His features stiffened to immobility. "Ah, yes, your book; I will make
enquiries at once. The delay is quite unforgivable. Good afternoon,
Miss O'Neill."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Temple."
Gareth, shutting the door on the lazy mischievous banter of her
voice, felt as though since half an hour he had been walking on thick
resilient turf. He sat dreaming at his desk ... dreaming of the girl
Patricia ... spinning webs of words over her personality, with the ease
and busyness of the diligent spider....
Patricia!... Oh, the flush and stir of romance in her; not romance
faintly suggested, but expression of the thing itself, incarnate and
unconscious, in the splendour of her build, her long loose limbs and
negligent bearing; in the clean backward spring of her hair, and in
that haunting amazing smile, and in her careless quip of speech ...
inexhaustible romance!
* * * * *
... The wraith of a girl who was pale and frail and slender, with eyes
that were blue hyacinths drenched in rain; a girl whose thoughts were
like silent places, and whose touch was as cool as the sand in a cave,
hovered forlornly on the dim borderlands of nowhere-at-all, whither she
had been rudely expelled by the intruder. Her look was a reproachful
reminder to Gareth--"I was your dream."...
* * * * *
Pat O'Neill! How she had made the empty flat spaces throb with her
presence. And she was a genius; had written that book--tumbled it forth
out of sheer vitality of brain.... He was glad he had said: "I prefer
Patricia"--it had given him the chance to speak her name aloud. She
was a genius--at twenty-two.... Oh Heavens, twenty-two! And he almost
double that age with not a single achievement he could produce to show
to her--except, of course (with a pang of relief) his book....
His book. He had forgotten.
For an instant the old hatred was stirred, of the author who had
anticipated him in his idea.... Surely, surely, Pat O'Neill might have
hit on something else; might so easily have hit on something else. And
thus they could each have published a masterpiece, and have met proudly
on equal ground.... What a hypocritical cur he felt himself now, having
lied to the girl Patricia....
His book.... "Ah well, the one is bound to knock out the other; and she
was first in----"
When he got home that evening, the reader sat down and wrote for Leslie
Campbell an enthusiastic report in praise of "The Reverse of the
Medal." Then he took the manuscript from the bottom drawer of the desk,
and tied it up in a parcel, preparatory to taking it the following
morning to the office.
"And with that, my friend," bestowing a little twisted smile on the
black china cat, "with that, goes any hope we may have had of being
ourselves One of Them."
"Couldn't pull it through, eh?" jeered the cat.
CHAPTER II
Patricia O'Neill had grown up a victim to the excitement of big ideas.
Thus she lived her life on something of an heroic scale. She could go
through anything that was disagreeable to her, once she had fitted an
"idea" to it; an idea that allowed of translation into tangible action,
that is; she had no use for the abstract theory which dwelt aloof from
its owner, and which could be kept comfortably enshrined in a crystal
or high on an inaccessible shelf. But there was a tingling curiosity
in seeing how existence worked out, adapted afresh to each big idea
applied. Patricia discovered joyously that there were few thoughts
or desires, brain-conceived, that could not immediately be put into
execution--provided, of course, that one were willing to accept the
consequent damage. And here, she stood by a certain immortal discovery
she had made when, as a child, she had been afflicted with toothache:
"I can always pretend it's out and on the mantelpiece and aching over
there without me; and when Mr. Wright tugs, I never _quite_ guess
beforehand just how much it's going to hurt; so that it's all fun--even
if it's hateful fun...."
So she raced through the years in a fashion calculated to cause much
anxiety to an adoring family not aware of the true inner significance
that would provide a clue to most of her inexplicable doings. "Pat's
terribly inconsistent," said Ann, her one step-sister. "Pat's an
egoist," pronounced Hetty, the other step-sister. And: "I wish Patricia
were more conventional!" sighed Mrs. O'Neill. But if these accusations
were just--if Pat did leap from idea to idea, she was always splendidly
consistent to the one temporarily enthroned; only she was wise enough
to lay herself open to Ann's accusation rather than cling to an idea
that had lost its elasticity, that had gone slack to the pull. And if
she were indeed unconventional, it was from no motive of cussedness or
desire to shock, but merely that in the tearing progress of whatsoever
wagon she drove, star-hitched, athwart space and along the rim of the
skies, she would not stay for the impediments that little people had
lain along their little pavements, to hinder the swift.
As for the charge of egoism--
"I look at it in this way, Shrimpet,"--her nick-name for Hetty; cross
between a shrimp and a limpet!--"Persons like you and Ann, who can
contrive to be more rampantly interested in other people than in
yourselves, are a sorrowful sight. You have only your own mind, such as
it is, Shrimpet, for thinking purposes; the mind of Mrs. Tomkyns round
the corner is of no earthly consequence to you when you are alone to
face the problem of seven times eight. Granted? You have likewise only
your own soul, Shrimpet, for great sensations. Therefore it argues to
me an ungrateful disposition, a lack of proper balance, and a want of
respect to your own mind and soul, to depreciate them out of existence
when it's a question of the mind and soul of Mrs. Tomkyns. Besides all
that, if Mrs. Tomkyns happens to be a reasonable creature who puts
herself first, and you are putting her first--and getting praised
for an unselfish disposition--then there are two people putting Mrs.
Tomkyns first, and nobody at all putting Shrimpet O'Neill first. Which
makes the world lopsided. Oh, altruism is well beyond me, I admit it.
So throw me over the caramels."
After an interval of silence, during which Patricia cheerfully removed
the paper from each one of the sweets, to find the especial kind she
coveted, and Hetty watched her in speculative apprehension, Ann, who
had been thinking over her elder sister's speech, questioned slowly:
"Yes, but might not Mrs. Tomkyns be putting Hetty first? A sort of
cross-over putting first?"
"It's rash to bet on it. But I've not the least objection to Shrimpet
taking existence in the gambling spirit, if she chooses. Only let us
understand that it _is_ the gambling spirit, and not the sheer beauty
of sacrifice, that's all. How much did you pay for these? They're
rotten!"
"It's noble to sacrifice," pronounced Hetty, well on her way to
becoming a prig.
"Dearest Shrimpet, unselfish people can know nothing about that.
They sacrifice as a matter of course; it's a pleasure to them, I
assure you. It's only an egoist like me who can speak feelingly of
the rich agonies of sacrifice.... Do you like the ones with bits of
nut in them, Shrimpet? Hm--that's a pity; so do I!... And that's why
I'm pained and grieved beyond measure when anyone calls me selfish;
because each time I do wrench myself, creaking and protesting, to an
act of sacrifice, I make a mental register of that stupendous fact,
its date and circumstance----Here's a nut one--catch!--no--it's quite
all right--I've provided for myself!... Well, naturally, memory
becomes crowded in time with these bulging obsessions of one's own
acts of unselfishness--twice a year, or thereabouts, mounts up, let
me tell you, in nineteen years. So that, contemplating these, I do
view myself, truly and honestly, as more unselfish than you--you, with
memory blankly unretentive of your effortless days of sunbeam-scatter.
What causes me to mourn bitterly--I repeat it, bitterly--is the
disproportionate appreciation I receive from you all after my
twice-yearly. I mention it as we happen to be on the subject, that's
all. Believe me, Shrimpet, bravery is to be found only in the coward,
not in the brave man. And true unselfishness can come only from the
true egoist. Usually it doesn't."
Hetty looked at Ann, who was quietly smiling; then back again at
Patricia.
"Wouldn't you--I mean, don't you like giving up little things for
people you rather love?" she ventured.
"Heaven forbid! When I am finally guilty, O Shrimpet, of offering
up my all in a very ecstasy of selfishness, it shall be to the one
person--not to people, but to the one person--who is big enough to
warrant the wickedness of self-obliteration. But to please myself in
the untidy fashion peculiar to you and Ann, all day long and day after
day complacently giving up things in driblets to people who don't
count--me, for instance!--that is self-indulgence carried to a degree
which I really cannot condone!"
After which severe and lofty denunciation, Patricia absorbed the last
of the caramels; sprang down from her perch on the schoolroom desk;
and casually asked Hetty to do an errand for her at the far end of the
town, through a mile and a half of driving rain. Not seeing the twinkle
concealed by Patricia's veiling lashes, Hetty indignantly refused;
remarking, as the other had intended she should: "I'd have gone for you
with pleasure if you hadn't said all that just now...."
Hetty was the youngest of the trio; only fourteen; and the sole
offspring of a late marriage between Shane O'Neill and Mary Lynton,
widower and widow, with a daughter apiece to bring along as
contribution to the new household. Patricia was four at the time; and
staid little Ann Lynton two and three quarters. Dr. O'Neill died a few
years later, leaving his wife and the three girls a roomy comfortable
house with a large garden in Sydenham, where his practice had been; and
a very adequate income for their needs.
When Patricia was twenty, she met Dacres Upton.
She met him while on a winter holiday in Switzerland, at Les Avants. He
beat her in the Mixed Singles Toboggan Race. And then refused to give
up the prize to her, when a sociable and tactless sports' secretary
suggested it were not unbecoming on his part to do so.
"What do you suppose she'd do with a prize she hadn't won?" enquired
Upton.
"It was a very close finish. Miss O'Neill put up a magnificent fight."
"She did," the young man assented unemotionally.
"Well then," with a genial beam, "we agree that chivalry dictates----"
"That I shouldn't insult the girl by treating her either as a babe or
an idiot. Certainly we agree. Besides," thoughtfully, "I happen to want
those binoculars...."
A report of this conversation was carried to Patricia by her indignant
admirer, the secretary. At the fancy-dress ball held at the hotel that
evening, she had an opportunity of warmly thanking Upton for retaining
the binoculars.
He said slowly, in the level tones that never altered: "Of course
Mixed Races run on chivalrous lines become an absurdity. But Fennimore
doesn't know that it's as much fun to lose as to win. He'd say it was,
because that's the 'British sporting spirit.'... You hear about it at
election-times. But he would never realize the truth of it."
The girl's interest was spurred by this. Though she only said
mournfully: "They are very nice binoculars. I have never had any
binoculars of my own...."
Upton promised her she should occasionally look through his. And she
asked him if he were not by this concession hopelessly damaging his
reputation for inflexibility. He smiled; and offered to race her again,
for their private satisfaction, down the same course and under the same
conditions.
"And shall I get the binoculars, if I win?"
"No; those are beyond your attainment, now. But you'll get the pleasure
of feeling that you are equally capable of the performance that won
them for me."
"My dear good man, I shan't be able to bear such a stupendous emotion,
all at once, without any training...."
"Quarter to three, at the foot of the Loup." And Dacres Upton
relinquished her to another partner, from whom she gathered information
that Upton was a Captain in the Army, and recently home from India.
Her interest was spurred anew; he did not give an impression of the
accepted military type.
He was victor again, in their private contest the following afternoon.
And Patricia, who had been secretly nourishing a faint hope that he
would after all yield the honour to her, and do this with such skilful
cunning that she might not even suspect it--Patricia was both surprised
and pained ... and extremely respectful.
They paired off together as much as they could, during his remaining
fortnight at Les Avants. But Upton was with a large party of uncles and
cousins; and Patricia could not often desert her mother and Ann and
Hetty, who regarded her as indispensable to their enjoyment. So that
their mutual appetites for the other's sole society was keenly whetted
by frustration. And once, during a lively and convivial excursion,
Dacres remarked to Patricia, in strictly matter-of-fact tones:
"To Hell with all these braying barbarians. Next Christmas we're coming
here alone for a week. Don't forget--December the twenty-third, Charing
Cross, in time for the boat-train."
His voice blended quite naturally with the general conversation in
progress; and nobody overheard.
"Shall we see that Upton man in London, Pat?" enquired Hetty, on the
eve of departure.
"I expect so. He told me his regiment was recalled for a good long bout
of home service."
"I don't like him."
"Alack, Shrimpet! and I love him passionately."
Six weeks later, and Patricia would have suppressed that remark for the
very truth of it....
Almost directly on their return, Patricia was informed that a gentleman
was waiting to see her in her own sitting-room--as the eldest of the
girls, Mrs. O'Neill considered her entitled to this luxury--and found
Dacres leaning up against the fireplace.
"You're a dangerous creature," he informed her gently, without further
greeting.
Patricia modestly cast down her eyes. "You flatter me."
"Dangerous to me. I saw that from the beginning. I ought to have kept
out of your way--but that's a futile fashion of avoiding the whole
affair.... I'd have gone on thinking about you, and tormenting myself;
wondering just how much difference you would have made if only I'd let
you.... In fact, I'd probably have overestimated your effect on my
life."
"I think not ..." murmured Patricia.
"Well--may I smoke? Thanks!--I prefer to go on with anything I'm afraid
of--on with it, and through with it, and done with it. So--here I am."
Patricia lit a cigarette; and reposing face downwards on the peacock
cushions of the divan, propped her chin on her hands, and gazed
thoughtfully into the ascending spirals of smoke....
"What is impressing me so profoundly that I can hardly bear to mention
it without tears, is your tender regard for my attitude in all this.
I'm touched by it, really I am. A poor girl in my station of life isn't
used to such consideration."
He looked down at her, smiling.
"You're rather a darling ... Pat."
And she knew that behind all his flow of equable talk, lurked some
element of the stuff that was going to make this worth while. Very much
worth while....
"Just for ten minutes," Dacres proposed, after a pause, "I want you to
imagine that I'm my own closest pal, who has known me all my life, and
has come to have a little private talk with you to warn you against me.
He's probably in love with you too--this pal of mine."
"Simply pestered with admirers!" Patricia informed the slow-curling
blue vapours that twisted fantastically between her and the man. But
she was tumultuously glad that he had actually and as a matter of
course spoken the phrase....
"Go on."
"Between ourselves, Miss O'Neill, Upton is not to be trusted."
"Fancy! And I thought him such a harmless well-spoken young fellow."
"Not so very young; over thirty. He'll try and make you trust in his
sincerity, and in certain of his moods he's rather plausible. But
don't. Stick like grim death to the notion that he only needs white
spats and a dyed moustache to make him the complete villain of popular
melodrama. Remember that--and you'll be all right. His inner nature is
villainous. Believe me, my dear Miss O'Neill, I'm speaking as much for
Dacres' good as for yours."
"Oh, I believe you, my man. I had a sort of inkling that Dacres' good
came somewhere into this merry little pastime of yours."
Very seriously Upton looked down into the mocking lure of her eyes:
"I'm not sure that it is a pastime. Pat, I warn you--I can't do
more--that I'm not to be trusted."
"I hate to boast," retorted the girl, "but neither am I!"
He laughed. And took her in his arms....
* * * * *
They continued for some time on these terms, Dacres forcing Patricia
into belief that his intentions were strictly dishonourable; and she
countering with the assumption that she was a rank egoist, and was
toying with his affections, preparatory at any moment to jilt him in
the fashion of the cruellest wanton. Dacres, however, declared on one
occasion that it was mere perverted vanity which had caused them to
assume such lurid aspects:
"We're quite respectable domestic characters, really.... Come with me
to the Censor, Pat, and let me ask him for your hand in marriage. If
he sees through your blatant vampire act, and passes you as fit for
publication, you'll never be able to impress me again."
"I've heard of those marriages; they're performed under bribery by
some wretched hireling who isn't really in holy orders. A pal of yours
warned me of just such an attempt to ensnare my girlish confidence."
"Vampires have no girlish confidence. And that pal of mine is a
meddlesome and treacherous old bore...."
But he would never let her continue long in any settled faith of his
purpose. There was menace to their intercourse--menace which she braved
again and again, recklessly, always to find herself saved it would
seem by some slender accident ... or was this queer man deliberately
playing the guardian angel to her, as well as the silent threatener of
evil? Jekyll pitted against Hyde, and Hyde conscious of his Jekyll....
Dacres Upton not yet sure on which side he was ranged himself. And she,
for her part, wanted to prove to him once and for all how she joyed
in this scrambling slippery contest of their wills; how, challenging
all his disguises, she trusted him; would persist in trusting him
to the furthest extremes of peril; expose herself to hurt in all
vulnerable places--thus forfeiting all right to cry out if her daring
were punished. In this spirit would she consent to that breathless week
in Switzerland, which they had so often anticipated. And afterwards
perhaps, if he still desired it.... He was quartered now with his
company at Aldershot; in January his period of home service would be
up, and he might be sent abroad at any moment; to Egypt, perhaps.
Well--if he still fervently desired it, she might go with him ... his
wife. Patricia was twenty, and unwilling to yield up her adventurous
girlhood--but Dacres Upton was the mate for her. She would risk her
all with him first, for the fun of the risk, and for her own youth's
sake.... In spite of her brilliant imagination, she was still funnily
possessed of the utterly childish notion that adventure closes perforce
with the sound of wedding-bells.
Under his almost obtrusive impassivity of outward bearing, she had
discovered a fund of mischief fully rivalling her own; his audacities
gained an added spice from the level well-bred tones which he never
varied. As for his appearance--Patricia once informed him that he was
the Least Common Multiple of every ordinary man that had ever existed:
average height; tanned hatchet face; nondescript grey-blue eyes; fawn
hair, sleekly brushed backwards.... "I've seen thousands of you,
Dacres!"
"It's the Army mould; and originally set up as a protest to the
splendid Guardsman of the Victorian era, with flowing chestnut beard
and eyes as velvety as a woman's glove and steely withal as the iron
hand inside it...."
"Why did you enter the Army?" She had often speculated on this anomaly.
"I was afraid of death."
Patricia questioned no further. Half a year of the man's companionship
had taught her that he was no coward by temperament; quite obviously
a moral and physical stoic where life was concerned; fearless, too,
of all the circumstances of death--suffering, hardship, loss, peril,
sudden attack. It must therefore be the actual wrenching apart of flesh
and spirit which caused him that sick dread apparent in the one brief
phrase just spoken; or perhaps recoil from the after stillness and
decay. It was like him, therefore, voluntarily to adopt the profession
of arms. Silently she applauded the self-intolerant discipline of his
choice.
The months gyrated dizzily, with song-sound as of the humming of many
tops.... Autumn now--Patricia's favourite season. Red October affected
her as April affects most natures; exhilarated her body; crammed her
soul with restless flying hopes.... The hours she snatched alone with
Dacres were too frequent for longing to crust itself with peace;
insufficient for a generous passion waxing to its zenith. More and ever
more their talk recurred to that truant week at the end of December;
week which was to contain two days' wakeful journey at the start and
at the finish of it, like white sentinels guarding the three central
days, shutting them off to the aloofness of enchantment.
On the fifth of December Patricia received from Dacres the following
letter, which she read at the family breakfast-table:
"I've met the woman who means all life to me, and death, and beyond
death. I've no excuses to make for myself, Patricia--except that
I warned you that I was not to be trusted. Did you take in the
warning?--I hope so.
"Thank you for the gift of a good time. I can never ask for a
better comrade than you have been. Nor do I suppose I will ever
admire anyone quite as much as I admire you, now and always.
"Of course our arrangement for December 23rd holds, unless you wish
to cancel it. Personally, I'm looking forward immensely to our week
of winter-sport.
"DACRES."
"... Coffee, please, Ann." Gently Patricia laid the letter back in its
envelope. She would reread it presently, when she was alone; and strive
to fathom his motive for this silly gratuitous lie.
A second perusal, when she was lying on the divan of her own
sitting-room, convinced her reason beyond all doubt that he wrote the
truth. Behind reason, every nerve and sense and feeling quivered their
protest, clamoured in startled incredulity.... "Why--he loved you! he
_loved_ you!..."
Hm ... love! Strange to think that he had been right in his grave
self-indictment; right in his warning to her. He was what the world
would term a "rotter"; what she herself, one day, would dismiss with
scornful appellation of "the wrong sort of man."... Meanwhile, there
was a thick dark fog to be traversed between "one day" and the present
hour ... she could see how black, but she could not tell yet how long.
Beyond the fog, the clear road again, and sunshine, and freedom, and
the day-long tramp, light-hearted and light of heel....
Patricia sprang impatiently from the couch; crossed to the window;
stood looking out across the fantastic patchwork of roofs spread below
her....
She must think this out while yet stunned to all anguish ... presently
would come tears, and groping misery; futile rebellion; futile attempts
at alleviation.... And logic would be drenched and helpless.
Think it out.... "I've met the woman who means all life to me, and all
death, and----" That did not need much thinking out, at least. It was
kind of Dacres to be so lucid.
... Patricia found herself wondering if the blow would have fallen with
yet more fatal effect on her if it had occurred after their wild stolen
week? She had not had the remotest conception of the terms on which the
adventure was undertaken; had left it to Dacres--or to the inspiration
of the moment. There had been a tingle in this haphazard prospect which
had woken her at dawn with flushed cheeks, and fast-beating heart, and
a gladness in her own daring that was part tremulous, part triumphant.
Neither was she in the least aware if the man had made up his mind
to any settled course of virtue or villainy--or whether he too were
letting the moment decide....
Well--now she would never know. Maybe it was as well that chance
had not allowed her the full reaping of happiness for its fuller
aftermath of grief. Or might grief have been more tranquil in grateful
recognition of the harvest gathered in before the rain?
"It doesn't matter...."
Dacres' offer of "our week of winter-sport," as though indeed nothing
had happened to mar its fulfilment, goaded her to a fine flare of
anger; she tore the letter violently across and across.... Then paused,
half amused that she should have been betrayed into any such act of
commonplace melodrama.... But how dared he suggest so coolly the
spoiling of all that the past had given them, by this dead travesty of
their exultant scheme? A smile twisted her sweet mocking mouth, as from
infallible perception of the workings of his brain she followed out his
mental evolutions which had resulted in the proposal....
Thus Dacres: "The man of the first degree would not have invited her,
under the circumstances, from sheer indifference. The man of the second
degree would not have invited her, nor even mentioned the plan fallen
through, from motives of delicacy, from the fear to hurt her. The man
of the third degree would elaborately have invited her to come after
all and in spite of all; throughout the week insulting her by an extra
show of chivalry, gentleness and charming consideration. And the
man of the fourth degree, which is myself, pay her the compliment of
supposing she would prefer to play up, as though indeed nothing had
happened, to the hard good-fellowship and careless exacting brutality
which would have been her lot by divine right, a month ago...."
"And the man of the fifth degree, Dacres," whispered Patricia, to the
torn fragments of his letter littering the floor, "would not have
committed the blunder of asking me to believe in all that careful
balderdash.... The superman of the fifth degree would have behaved
exactly like the man of the first degree--and would have let well
alone. You're not quite up to that, are you, Dacres?"...
Funny--to have been jilted! Like being unseated when in full gallop.
When would she ride again?--They say one ought to mount at once after a
throw, or the nerve is gone....
Some of the numbness was passing away now.... Hurriedly she envisioned
the sort of things that were bound to beset her while she beat her way
through her bad time ... sodden and bewildered with tears; storms of
gusty feeling leading to nowhere; leaden indifference to the stir and
pulse of life around her;--then blindly stupid contemptible moods, when
she would not, _could_ not face her loss ... it was all a mistake--the
explanation might come at any moment--Dacres might come at any
moment ... moods of attempted evasion, cramming out thought by some
frenzied occupation, wilfully wrenching her mind from contemplation
of the truth ... other people--other men--anything ... artificially
stuffing her ears, her sight, her logic; deliberately avoiding certain
places; stumbling painfully over certain dates; alternation of
sentimental memories with bombastic "don't care!"... More tears....
All this, serving only to prolong the agony. All this ... _mess_!...
How she despised the sort of thing that a love-disappointment made out
of its victim!
Was there then no cleaner way out of it all? No short cut through the
fog? Patricia vowed that not Dacres nor any man was to be allowed to
weight her buoyancy, bedraggle her white pride. Not for long, anyway.
Already she was eager to regain her forfeited fleetness. Was there no
short cut?--quick--now--while still she could think?--
And then, in the nick of time, Patricia was whirled up by one of her
big ideas!
Suppose, literally, she were to face the matter out, instead of
literally fleeing from it----(She had heard of girls, in such straits,
who had immediately been dispatched on a lengthy sea-voyage.)...
Suppose she were to consent to the week at Les Avants; consent of her
own free will to be confronted by the daily hourly evidence of her
loss: the perpetual presence of Dacres--loving someone else; renewal of
the most intimate companionship, lacking that glow which lit it from
behind as through a transparency. No possibility then, after that, of
pitiful self-delusion that it was all a mistake, or that he would come
back.
It would convince her. And, convincing her, set her free.
But it would irrevocably kill all the good they had enjoyed together.
This hollow repetition of what had been once a ringing beautiful
thing--it would blur and sully memory; forbid it altogether. Was it not
a shame ... to kill a beautiful thing?
No ... and so much the better! To kill the past in order to clear the
future. All the love he had given her, overlain by torment, stung
and poisoned. With this one week as a thorn-barrier between her and
the year gone by, she would never be able to linger for regretful
sentiment. The horizon ahead was hers, at the expense of the backward
look.
Only--could she go through with it? Go through with it, and not break
down? Seven days of strain, incessant and unflinching.... Well, she
would at least have her nights alone, if she wanted to ... cry.
Slowly the episode began to take on the hues of adventure; harsh sombre
hues--but why need adventure of necessity be joyous? This sharp test to
come was surely as much part of her adventure with Dacres as his arms
gripping her and his mouth hard upon her eyelids....
Yes--yes--with a queer sense of being lifted high, higher, out of
the ruts of thought, Patricia had a glimpse of adventure, true, and
sonorous, and made complete by anguish to the verge of breaking-point.
It was adventure itself, this dash into the fire for her liberty
beyond....
The vision died down ... left her tired, and a little dazed. But she
wrote to Upton at once, saying that she would come to Les Avants, as
they had planned it. She did not comment on the rest of his letter;
and she left her motive for the acceptance unexplained. He might
assume, if he pleased, that she could not suffer total loss of him,
preferred his company even under the stated conditions; or else he
might suppose it was for the sake of the winter-sports----
No--Dacres was not quite fool enough for that.
As a matter of fact, she had not made allowances for his present
thickened perceptions where she was concerned. All his fine keen
understandings were employed upon his new love, her moods and ways and
exactions. He accepted Patricia's decision in an unquestioning spirit;
they had agreed upon this week; it was her due to insist upon it. He
could trust her to play up to their unspoken treaty of "no scenes."
He hated spending his seven days of Christmas leave apart from--her.
But he owed them to Pat. His strict sense of honour insisted that he
owed them to Pat. He could not refrain from wishing, however, that
Pat had been woman enough to answer his proposal with an indignant or
hysterical avowal that she never wanted to see him again.
He was due back at Aldershot on the morning of the thirty-first....
Perhaps he might just manage to wind up his holiday by an hour with
the beloved, on the night of the thirtieth, after he had parted from
Pat. One hour--it would be worth the whole strenuous wearisome week
preceding it. No matter how fagged he was--somehow it should be
managed. So he made his plans. And it was with eyes fixed steadily upon
the climax he had promised himself, that he met Patricia at Folkestone
among the crowd that pressed on to the gangway to the Boulogne boat....
It was with gaze that had never wavered from that climax, that he
bade her good-bye at Charing Cross Station, exactly a week later, at
twenty-five minutes past nine on the evening of the thirtieth. His
casual farewell was just what it would have been had the days behind
them been packed rooms of treasure. Only she would have received a look
that denied the careless utterance ... silent assurance of a letter the
next morning.
Altogether, Upton's magnificent lack of consideration for her
welfare had materially and quite unnecessarily added to the torment
of Patricia's self-chosen week of discipline. It was a manner of
complimenting her which had required considerable living-up-to in the
old days when one was happy and could live up to well-nigh anything:
Never to betray discomfort nor emotion--that was all very well, spurred
by his approbation. But with his dreamy indifference taking for granted
the excellence of her conduct, Patricia could have wished for a little
less fatigue duty. She could account for his absent-mindedness easily
enough ... then the sudden pull back to recollection ... involuntary
atonement rendered by some extra deferential courtesy towards herself,
hastily superseded by the brusquer comradeship of the man of the
fourth degree. Fully a dozen times on the outward journey Patricia
watched him through this little comedy--"Truly man is an amazing work
of God!"--mouth tilted to its own slow mocking smile ... but now her
eyes were dead; dead green, that had once held their hot gold sparkle.
She was tired even before they started; for lying to one's family is
another thing that requires to be buoyed up by the sub-consciousness of
great delights in store to render the lies worth while. Patricia had
not at all enjoyed the invention of a school friend who had invited her
to Scotland for a week; so many tiny props went to make this structure
dependable; she loathed herself for the smaller quibbles far more than
for the one big lie. Hetty, of course, asked dozens of questions; and
Anne asked none at all, but insisted on packing for her--which was
worse.... "Will you really need your skates in Scotland, Pat?" And all
the secret arrangements would have been such fun if.... And the journey
itself would have been such fun if....
Mrs. O'Neill had just been peremptorily ordered by her doctor into a
nursing-home for six weeks; her health required perfect rest. It was a
relief to Pat that no news of her escapade could possibly penetrate in
any form of idle gossip, to the person whom it would most grieve.
Patricia was only twenty-two, and notoriously heedless of public
opinion, or it might have struck her forcibly that to risk her good
name for the love of a man was a foolish and headstrong proceeding;
but that to risk her good name for the sake of an idea was more than
folly--and approached divine lunacy....
Seven days that were like patterns clearly pricked out by a red-hot
needle. She did not suppose she would ever forget a single moment
of them. Two days out and two days back. And three days that
were outwardly a dazzle of ice and snow and sunshine, and white
peaks scissor-cut into dark blue skies; and warning shouts of the
bob-sleighers as they shot round the curve of the Loup--Gare! Gare!!
Gare!!! ... clean crunch of the steel runners through the hard
glittering path of snow; skaters swooping in fantastic postures to and
fro on the circular ice-rink; hotels that were mere glorified wooden
châlets; shining yellow parquet of floors and corridors littered by
skis and luges waiting to be scraped; in all the rooms the smell of
soaked woollens drying on the _calorifère_; young voices clattering
ceaselessly their excited sports-jargon.... Three breathless nights
of carnival and dancing, dancing till the stiffened limbs relaxed to
suppleness; dancing till four in the morning; up again at eight; no
respite--Patricia gave thanks to her superb health and fitness that
carried her with credit through at least the physical wear and tear of
her ... holiday. Carried her through, laughing.
But there were moments whose setting and opportunity craved their fill
of passion, that perforce remained empty as beautiful scooped-out
cups--too beautiful to be robbed of their meed of glowing wine....
One evening, after sunset, Dacres and Patricia raced on their
low-built skeletons down the lonely white mountain-path, that was now
rose-flooded to an unearthly radiance. Their old course, on which he
had twice beaten her. This time she beat him ... and sprang erect on
the snow-bank, dragging away her luge just quickly enough to avert
a spill as he came whizzing in her wake. For a second, in exultant
anticipation of his applause, she had forgotten.... His hearty "Well
done, Pat!" sounded almost real.
"I say, what a run!" She was flushed and tingling from her success, and
the speed, and the keen whip of the air.
"I beat you twice, though. I'm not sure that you deserve the binoculars
yet. And you won't get another chance, as we go home to-morrow."
Her mood died at the sudden animation betrayed in his last
phrase.--Curse the man ... couldn't he behave with outward decency,
anyhow? Listlessly she picked up her luge, shook the snow from her
shoulders....
She rather thought she deserved more than the binoculars.
But he seemed as impervious to memories as though his faculties were
encased in something hard and slippery, from which all flung allusions
rebounded ineffectually. And in an hour's time he would be holding
her in his arms for the one-step; and his hands would be entirely
nerveless; and his dancing automatically perfect....
As Upton had stopped alone down in the valley on the night of their
arrival, and had only followed her up to Les Avants the following
morning, the other visitors at the hotel, and the staff, and the native
peasantry, believed the two to have met accidentally, for the second
time; and to be renewing an acquaintance that was rapidly approaching
the interesting stage of a formal engagement. Therefore, and as though
fate were bent on atoning for its last year's unkindness in the matter,
everybody combined to manœuvre that they should invariably be thrown
together, and left to themselves. It did not lighten the burden of
intercourse, but it added to the situation--at least from Pat's point
of view--a certain pungent element of humour. Their combined prowess
at all forms of winter-sport had not been forgotten; and they walked
isolated and conspicuous: the daring pair who skated so beautifully
together, danced so harmoniously together, were so closely matched at
ski-ing and luging: "I really forget how many prizes they carried off
between them last year...."
Last year. Oh, no danger but that she would hate him enough, when the
reaction would set in from this ghastly necessity of playing-up and
playing-up; when she would have time to recall and to hate. Safely and
surely he was murdering the old Dacres whom she had loved; with every
act and look; especially with every act and look left undone.... Thus
and thus he was loosening her bondage, as she had intended he should.
She was glad she had come, and a thousand times been persuaded of the
utter change in him; in a thousand exquisite ways had his indifference
pounded into her receptivity. Glad that she was not sitting at home ...
a hot fire--a little room-a muffled obstinate sorrow.
Only ... they had planned such a wonderful week!
She checked the rush of thought. Not for that had she come adventuring
on the wrong side of the sun; not to give way at the last to a sluggish
sentimentalism her soul spurned. Not for that had she wilfully spoilt
the fairest message time had as yet whispered; not that she should now
hang back to regret its damaged fairness....
For Patricia O'Neill was proud of her twenty-one years, and the
glorious vigour of her limbs, and the resilient stretch of her brain;
and of her power to shape her life obedient to those empyreal flashes
of inspiration that burst upon her out of the angry clouds. Too proud
to yield up one jot of longing to a man who was oblivious of her. She
had heard and read of the divinity of sacrifice, of pride venting
itself in profoundest humility--but at twenty-two this creed was too
meek and too quenched of colour for her acceptance. And not all the
indignity of Dacres' far-away gaze into the black dripping glooms,
as the train pounded its way from Folkestone to Charing Cross, could
render her less proud. She braced her overtaxed nerves to meet the
last demands upon them ... for she knew well enough whither Upton was
bound that night---that night still--after he had got rid of her. His
adventure did not end simultaneously with hers....
The same cynical destiny as had attended them all along, had provided
they should be alone in their first-class carriage. If their truancy
had fulfilled the promise of its first conception, then in what
grateful mood would they now be giving thanks for their isolation ...
isolation that permitted her to lie along one of the seats, her head
drawn down to his shoulder; his hard sinewy hands straying very softly
indeed over her hair and her cheeks and her throat ... lulled tender
mood of retrospect ... naughty children returning home, too tired, too
happy to care if punishment await them....
"Kiss me, Patricia--we're almost there. I can see the lights. It's been
a good time.... Kiss me, Patricia--dear...."
Had he really said it? Or had she been dozing? She started to an
upright position in her corner; her head had lain against the
window-blind. And Dacres had not moved from his seat at the far end of
the carriage. He was still looking steadily out of the window, and he
was faintly smiling ... boat and train had been punctual; and already
he saw the blurred points of light that betokened London....
He had told her he would be with her on the evening of December the
thirtieth, at a quarter to ten. He would be true to his word.
CHAPTER III
"About that book you sent us up a few days ago, Temple--let me
see--'The Reverse of the Medal,' wasn't it?"
"Yes, Mr. Alexander."
"You thought very highly of it?"
"Very highly indeed," replied Gareth.
"It's really not at all a bad piece of work"; the junior partner was
almost enthusiastic.
"Have you come to any decision on it?" Gareth enquired, with feigned
nonchalance. It was a week to-morrow that his promise to Pat O'Neill
fell due.
"Impossible while Mr. Campbell is still away. I've just heard from him
that he intends stopping in Scotland over the New Year. But I fancy he
will agree with me that it's worth while to prevent this author from
entering into a contract with Locker and Swyn; he's very much their
style."
For Alexander did not regard the firm of Leslie Campbell with the eye
of its proud founder, as a definite and individual establishment;
but as a negative result of what had to be positively prevented from
straying to any rival firm of publishers.
"The characterization is fairly strong, and the central idea passably
original," continued the unemotional young Oxonian.
And again the reader assented.
"Well, this O'Neill--whoever he may be--" referring to the manuscript
again, "must wait another fortnight. He'll have to alter the title; I'm
not keen on it, and it's bad for the ads. I daresay we can get it out
by April. And there's a passage near the end will certainly have to be
cut.... I shall have trouble with Mr. Campbell over that," resignedly;
"he'll want it left in for a dead cert. Is Burnett here? You might send
him in to me...."
The reader was summarily dismissed.
He was glad that Alexander had praised the book; but it bothered
him that Patricia should unnecessarily be kept on the rack pending
Campbell's return from his native heath. For if Alexander spoke already
of the "ads," there was not the slightest doubt that the book was
virtually accepted.
He decided he could, in an unofficial capacity, betray as much to the
girl. After all, her patience had already been unfairly stretched over
the six weeks that "The Reverse of the Medal" had lain in the bottom
drawer of the sitting-room at Pacific Villa.... Alexander could not
know this, of course; but Gareth had promised her some certain relief
by the morrow.
He wrote to her, saying he had news that could not possibly be imparted
by letter--though why not, was a matter entirely between him and his
God!--and would she do him the pleasure of meeting him to-morrow
(Saturday) at half-past two, at the bookstall of the Piccadilly Tube,
and have tea with him?
He told Kathleen that evening that he would be detained at the office
the following afternoon for some special work connected with the "White
Review." Unlike what had been her contemptuous method of tossing him
some entirely inadequate excuse at the period when she was deceiving
him with Napier Kirby, he was very punctilious in the details of his
falsehood; and kept on nervously elaborating it, feeling somehow less
guilty as he did so....
After all, it was business detaining him; Alexander had as good as
bidden him inform the author of "The Reverse of the Medal" that the
firm was favourably considering the novel.... Had Alexander issued any
such message? By the time Gareth had separately dealt with Kathleen and
with his own conscience, he could not remember any more what was the
unveiled truth of the matter....
* * * * *
"Shall we go for a saunter in the country?" suggested Patricia O'Neill,
directly on encounter; "we can change from this line for Chorley Wood;
and the weather is just as I like it!"
Through the Tube entrance could be seen a pale leaden sky, and a
hailstorm lashing the pavement. But Gareth was so relieved at her easy
assumption of command, that he assented enthusiastically to all she
said: certainly, it was just the afternoon for a country stroll.... She
directed him to the booking-office; then down to the train--change
safely effected at Baker Street ... and they found themselves perforce
divided until arrival at Chorley Wood.
"Which way? I'm quite helpless, you know!" he smiled at her
confidentially, as they emerged from the small country station into a
slanting fury of hail.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows ... about three miles from
here. We'll go and pick it for tea. Come along--to the right; I'm at
home in these parts. Why, what's all this going on over my head?" as,
looking joyfully skywards, she found her view blocked by an affair of
silk and spikes; "my dear man, I appreciate your delicious old-world
courtesy, truly I do, and none more than I ... I used to paint it on
satin. But for Heaven's sake remove that obstreperous object!"
"I don't want you to get wet," said Gareth gently, still shielding her
with his umbrella. "You had better take my arm."
Patricia's eyes danced ... and suddenly she yielded. She was being
rather good to him, for she detested umbrellas, never caught cold,
liked best to swing along free and aloof, and had bitten back several
flippantly witty comments to his request--simply because she both liked
and respected this man with the rugged handsome face, and the wistful
smile; and instinct told her how immeasurably her refusal to accede to
his manly protection, would hurt him at this juncture. Besides, why
not accept with appreciative good grace the different wares that were
offered her at their different times of offering? Stirring taste of
matched equality with Dacres Upton; and Temple's grave romantic charm
that savoured of a bygone era. With the gesture of slipping her hand
through his arm, Patricia's fancy envisioned him in a tall beaver
hat, mull-coloured breeches, and three-caped overcoat ... herself in
dove-colour, with a large poke bonnet and a trustful expression.
"The vision passeth away, but the shadow of the gamp remaineth ..."
murmured Patricia piously, already beginning to be restive in her role
of a-hundred-years-ago. "You might break the blow to me," she said
aloud; "are they going to refuse my book?"
"Good Heavens, no! what a brute I am to let you be worrying your heart
out all this time."
"Oh, I wasn't," Patricia owned frankly; "I've a sneaking sort of
confidence in the worth of my own work which has upheld me during the
damnably long time you have taken to decide on its merits. Forgive the
language; I daresay it wasn't your fault."
Gareth winced.... And quickly told her what Alexander had said that
morning.
"And you think that means----?"
"Acceptance; I'm quite sure of it. If Vincent Alexander admits anything
to be tolerably average, it's equivalent to a delirious outburst from
Mr. Campbell, our chief. They have about the same standard of judgment,
but different ways of expressing it. You'll be summoned to an interview
shortly, and then you'll see for yourself. Our junior partner doesn't
think authors ought to be encouraged."
"But the best writers publish with you, don't they? an awfully good
array. I selected the firm for a first try because I thought I would
look well in the catalogue all among your Graham Carrs and Ran Wymans
and--let me see--who else is of the illustrious company?"
Gareth named a few more of "Campbell's Young Men"; wondering meanwhile
if anything of his own forfeited glamour of belonging to that arrogant
little band of intellects, was shared by the girl? or whether any other
good firm of publishers would have satisfied her equally.
But just at present he could not feel quite as bitter over his lost
chance as during the brooding dreary evenings at home.... Now, with
her shoulder brushing his at every step, and her wind-bitten cheek
poppy-stained against the blown gold of her hair. Presently he asked
her solicitously if she were not tired?
"We're nearly there," she encouraged him, thinking this to be a
confession on his part. "I'm taking you to a nice ramshackle mill,
where a nice fat Yorkshire woman will give us tea and a fire and her
family history: the miller drinks; and somebody quite important was
once murdered there and they can't get used to the distinction; and she
makes perfectly wonderful cake--Cornish heavy-cake; and cures swine and
makes them into ham; and has almost cured her husband.... Oh, she's
remarkably versatile!"
She was surprised at Gareth's delight in her description. The haphazard
jumble of geography and jam and millers and murders and swine, appealed
to him as a spinner of words.... He was very happy; and happier still
when they finally arrived at their fairy-tale destination, and were
able at last to cower from the malevolent weather in front of a jovial
red fire, in the parlour of the mill-house. He insisted on removing
Patricia's slouch hat, and her tweed jacket with its deep leather
pockets, and her gauntlet gloves; and on strenuously holding up each
dripping article in turn before the blaze ... till her lazy laughing
voice remonstrated that she had no use for toasted gloves, and would he
please make room for her to dry her hair.... Turning, he saw that she
had loosened the wet coils, which now lay in a rumpled glister about
her shoulders.
"I'm enjoying this," she remarked with the innocent candour that, had
he but known it, always presaged her most disconcerting remarks. "The
miller's lady is getting our tea, and my book is as good as accepted,
and you're well on the way to fall in love with me.... I put it to
you--what could be more pleasant?"
"Sit down and let me scrape the mud from your shoes." He was glad of
an excuse to avert his face; glad too to be kneeling in an attitude of
worship in front of her; most of all glad that he was looking after her
so well.... Yes, undoubtedly he was looking after her; he had conducted
this expedition without a hitch so far; and he had been masterful over
the umbrella--the memory enfolded him in a sense of rest to which he
had been a stranger for years.
Patricia lay back in her arm-chair, and watched him from under her
drooping lids. Let matters take their course--why not? It was two
years now since Dacres' curt good-bye on that nightmare thirtieth
of December. Her dormant vitality was unashamedly eager for another
awakening and a different awakening; anything less excellent in the
same line would inevitably have invited comparison. But Gareth Temple
touched a semi-humorous semi-maternal fount of tenderness within her,
which Upton never had approached.... Her hand stole out towards his
massive iron-grey head bent before her--then quickly she drew back, as
their Yorkshire hostess entered with the Cornish heavy-cake and the
teapot.
"Ah, now, I came all the way from London to taste that cake of yours,
Mrs. Thorpe," Patricia announced gallantly.
Mrs. Thorpe looked lugubrious; and gave information that she was not
Mrs. Thorpe, but Mrs. Thorpe's sister; and Mrs. Thorpe was dead;
and she hoped the cake would be to their liking--"And that be her
funeral-card yonder on wall; and ef ee want anything else ee'll be
speakin' fur et..." the door closed.
"Oh, Hell!" ruefully exclaimed Patricia, whose tongue all too easily
became profane. "I hope the talent runs in the family."
Evidently this was not the case. The cake proved to be sopping wet, and
beyond all normal heaviness of heavy-cake.
"We simply dare not leave it untouched, after my injudicious remarks.
I'm sorry for you, Gareth Temple, but you'll have to swallow double
portion, as an act of fealty to me."
But at his apprehensive gaze towards the cake, she relented; and
suggested instead that they should burn it. "Chuck it on the fire! Will
it leave any traces of itself, I wonder?"
It did not. It merely put out the fire.
Patricia shrugged her shoulders: "A clear example of the survival of
the fittest. Not only have we still on our hands a whole round damp
cake in perfectly healthy condition; but we shall also have to account
to the miller's deceased wife's sister for the suspicious demise of the
fire!"
Gareth stood helplessly with the blackened cake in his hands: "Shall
I--shall I shove it under the carpet? Or climb through the window and
bury it in the garden? I'll do anything for you----"
"Commit any crime? This comes of it, when a publisher goes traipsing
round with his mad young clients."
"I'm only reader to the firm," he reminded her.
"I don't know ... somehow or other I shall always think of you as
responsible for the publication of my book."
He was silent for a moment. And then, driven by an unconquerable
impulse, said quietly: "I was very nearly responsible in preventing the
publication of your book."
"What do you mean?"
He set down the cake on the table; walked to the window; stood with his
back to her, seeking courage for confession.
Her voice came to him with a new grave note in it: "Mr. Temple--what do
you mean?"
Desperately he faced round. It had got to be done.
"I kept back your book--kept it back for six weeks--hid it away so that
no one else should see it. I hated it ... your book that contained the
idea of my book--God! shall I ever forget the reading of it! And then I
thought ... if only I could get mine done first; get it in first, and
published first.... It was the same idea, you see--just the same idea.
And it wasn't fair----"
He halted; came slowly back to the fire; stood looking down into it,
head steadily averted from her eyes ... the gold-shot gold-veiled green
of her eyes. Then he went on more coherently:
"It was quite fair; yours was ready first, so it ought to have had
first chance with the public. I took it home to read in my official
capacity; and just because of that, it was unspeakable that I should
have done such a thing--to you, dear, now that I know you ... and to
anyone. Pat O'Neill was just a name to me. I imagined him an ambitious
boy--a boy with genius, who was bound to get there in the long run.
But I was middle-aged, and a failure, and this one idea had come to
me--and I could write only this one book; it was my justification. Oh,
all this is no excuse. I have no excuse. I'm only telling you how it
happened...."
Would she speak now? Say that she was disappointed?--more than that:
utterly contemptuous; not because it was her own career he had tampered
with, but because Patricia O'Neill could not condone--meanness.
Would she never speak? He stood longing for absolution; honestly
ashamed--yet shame not unmixed with a queer strain of gladness that he
should have challenged her attention, stamped his personality upon her
consciousness, with anything so definite as a confession.
"Is your book finished yet?"
"No."
"Then why did you send up mine ... after all?"
He looked at her now. "You know why...."
"Say it!" her mandate was imperial.
"I love you, Patricia." He did not seek to touch her, nor even to draw
nearer. At any moment she might pronounce sentence. He felt her mind
unfathomably concentrated on some purpose behind speech.
After a pause, she said in quite altered tones: "Which is the exact
theme of my book which poached on yours?"
"I never said you poached; of course you didn't--any more than I.
But I'm curious to know how and under what circumstances you were
inspired by the duplicate theme.... It was adventure completed by
pain--especially the adventure of a man and a woman. "The Round
Adventure" was the title of my novel. And both our heroes carried about
a secret fear, and recognized this fear to be part of the fun. And
both died by it--deliberately. You stumble across that sort of truth
by what you didn't do yourself; at least, that was the way with me ...
the shadow-side of the circle, as well as the other ... if you shirk
it, you're never free--never free again."
She repeated musingly: "Never free again. You earn that sort of truth
by what you _did_ screw yourself up to do--at least, that was the way
with me."
"And then you wrote a book about it. Because you had always wanted to
write?"
"Not a bit of it! Just because I had an abstract discovery on my hands
and wanted to get rid of it in some tangible form. It worries me when
things lie about untidily and are wasted. I grant you it was quite
exciting to discover I had a talent in my napkin."
Gareth asked, jealously, who was the prototype of Robert Nugent. And
she favoured him with that smile at once tantalizing and enigmatic
which the best of girls cannot refrain from using on one male when
speaking to him of another.
"He was a dashing cavalry captain, and he treated me badly. Have I
never struck you as a sorrowful victim to a man's perfidy?"
"You didn't care for him," infinitely relieved; "or you wouldn't make a
joke of it."
She laughed. "I've paid my toll, and I'm free as air. It was a full two
years ago--a long and wearisome tale. Do you want to hear it? Dying to,
aren't you? And you're being so delightfully shocked at my bright and
breezy allusions.... Own up! it would have cheered you considerably if
I'd gone off into a highly respectable decline. I'll start my narrative
directly you unhook that attentive funeral expression--it embarrasses
me to such an extent that I shall shortly break into bitter sobs...."
* * * * *
"And now we're going home," when in the same mood of hectic flippancy,
she had retailed her episode with Dacres Upton. Gareth was doubtful
whether or not the flippancy were assumed. Nor did he feel safe in an
assumption that Patricia had altogether forgiven him for the retention
of her book. She was a baffling creature--why had she insisted on
hearing him say that he loved her?...
Had he known more of Patricia, it would have been clear to him that
she was off again on one of her recurring star-scampers; swept up by
an idea to which her entire life of action must swiftly be altered and
reset, no matter at what cost of destruction and upheaval.
She was silent all the way home, and abstracted; only seemed to become
re-aware of him at parting. "It's--all right, you know, Gareth."
"Is it? Is it? When shall I see you again?"
"Oh, leave it to chance, my dear man!"
He returned to Pacific Villa with the reaction of utter flatness upon
him.
He heard no word from Patricia during the next ten days; and tormented
himself by the alternate beliefs that he had disgusted her utterly by
his confession, that he had merely bored her on that afternoon they had
spent together, or that he was expected now to take the initiative--do
something vigorous and unexpected--he had not the remotest idea what!
She had said: "Leave it to chance"--which might have cloaked the
message: "I leave it to you!"
But she must see, surely she must see, that he could not insolently
thrust himself upon her presence, now, after the injury she was aware
he had done her; by all the rules in the game, it was incumbent upon
him to wait her pleasure in the matter. "It's all right, you know,
Gareth!"--was that meant for reassurance?
And after all, what had he to do with all this fretting and
questioning? He, who since sixteen springs had known that when the girl
came along, he was not free. "Grant the path be clear before you...."
Let him stick to his dream-girl, and safety. Dream-girl--he tried to
recall her from the shadow-wood wherein she dwelt ... but she faded to
insipidity beside the vivid reality of Patricia.
His book, then, with last chapters waiting to be completed; the old
anodyne of work....
And what was the good of that, when with Mr. Campbell's return, "The
Reverse of the Medal" would doubtless be put instantly into preparation
for the spring season? There was no room in the world for two books of
one idea.
And suddenly it struck him that he was bound to see Patricia directly
the firm requested their interview with her. Why then, his mind might
cease from nagging; he would see her then, for a certainty. Gareth
mistrusted the offices of chance.
As he had anticipated, Leslie Campbell immediately hailed in "The
Reverse of the Medal" a success which would rival even "Piccadilly,"
now booming in its cheap edition, and on the verge of dramatization
and production. Pat O'Neill was to be sent for instantly, to sign
a contract with an option on his next two books. Pat O'Neill was a
find--the genius of the age--a feather in the cap of the publisher who
discovered him!... The offices hummed with the new name. Alexander was
impotent to stem the cataracts of his partner's enthusiasm. Campbell
prattled about Pat O'Neill to Graham Carr, to the charwoman, to Mona
Gurney, to the Heart-breaker.... It was a queer sensation for Gareth
to hear the name bandied to and fro, and to realize that he alone had
walked and talked with the owner.
And all this fizzing excitement might have been for his book....
He would see Patricia enter through those swing-doors to-morrow at
eleven-thirty; so rumour and young Burnett declared....
All this might have been for his book....
Thus, pendulum-wise, his mind feverishly ticked between the two points.
Leslie Campbell, meeting Gareth the next morning on the stairs,
informed him confidentially and for the hundredth time, that the
unknown celebrity was that day expected at the office. Then he hurried
on to the inner room where Alexander already waited, his early presence
a rare tribute to the impending interview.
Gareth found it well-nigh impossible to concentrate on his work.
It was the more difficult since Ran Wyman and Graham Carr, the one
accidentally and the other by intent, had both established themselves
in the outer office, to catch a glimpse of their future colleague.
"Is he going to write for the 'White 'Un'?"
"Sure. And crowd us all out. Your days are numbered, Carr; you know
what the chief is like over a new swan of intellect. And he's keen on
paying out poor old Alex for taking that ghastly South-African serial."
"What--by those Frinton-on-Sea people?--Kate and Jasper Thurgood?
Nonsense, Wyman, he hasn't! Not for the 'White 'Un'!"
"He has, and I've seen it," chuckled Ran Wyman. "Six hundred pages of
'Queer thraldom of the Veldt.' Treks and kraals and kopjes sprinkled
like pepper; and a heroine with a Biblical name who stands all day long
in a doorway, her blouse minus its top button to show the full generous
curves of her bosom."
"Oh well, if Alex, curse his hardened greed-bitten soul, is out for
that sort of thing, he'd better ask Gilman for a contribution at once.
I came across a pearl of Gilman's the other day, in an old paper-back:
'The Earl of all the Beaumaynes behaved at the dinner-party with the
simplicity and affability that distinguishes true breeding from its
counterfeit brother'--yes, really, I'm not making this up ... listen:
'Several times he even took an entrée-dish from the servant's hand,
and helped Gracie himself, that the blushing girl might feel more at
her ease....' My servant can't understand what's come to me lately at
my little informal dinner-parties, when I keep on snatching the dishes
away from him; he doesn't know that I'm emulating the aristocracy."
"You probably only succeed in behaving like its 'counterfeit brother.'
But what a priceless person Gilman is!" Wyman picked up an eccentric
headgear in yellow felt. "After all, I shan't stay to cheer our infant
prodigy. His conceit will doubtless be enormous without the added
compliment that is bound to be shed by my presence. Conceit is for the
poor in spirit, _n'est ce pas, Jimmy, mon enfant?_" and tweaking, as
he passed, the ear of the Heart-breaker, who interrupted his whistling
by a soul-shattering yell, Wyman slammed the glass door; then returned
to say: "Bring him round to supper some time next week, Carr, if he's
presentable"--and ran downstairs.
"H'any more, Mr. Temple?"
"Yes, these can go." Gareth handed Jimmy a couple of brown-paper-bound
manuscripts. He wished Carr and Burnett would likewise depart, and
leave him in peace to ... wait for Patricia. But they lingered on,
exchanging anecdotes of the profession.
"Can I see Mr. Campbell?"
It was of Burnett, nearest the door, that the entrant made careless
enquiry. He replied, in the melancholy and regretful tones reserved
especially for unsolicited female intruders on the firm's precious
time: "I'm afraid Mr. Campbell is away. Did you wish to make an
appointment?"
"I have one, thanks. Say Miss O'Neill is here."
"'Er!" exclaimed Jimmy audibly, in the silence following this
announcement; "an' I never tumbled to it!"
Carr came quickly forward, releasing the stricken Burnett of
responsibility.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss O'Neill. The chief is most anxious to
see you, of course. We've all heard such a lot of your novel. May I
introduce myself?--Graham Carr."
Patricia had read "Piccadilly," and lingered a moment, talking to Carr.
Then Campbell, mysteriously aware of her presence, burst open the door
of his sanctum, and overwhelmed the author of "The Reverse of the
Medal" in a gale of welcome; shaking her by both hands, congratulating
her, congratulating everyone; introducing Alexander, unnecessarily
introducing Carr, introducing Jimmy and young Burnett, and Gareth....
(Pat's eyes regarded him with perfect calmness from under her level
brows!)... "A masterpiece! proud of ye, my lass, proud of ye!"--trying,
against breathlessness and cough, to quote what the junior partner had
said about the book.... Then a mild interpolation from that gentleman
that they might as well talk some business, if Mr. Campbell had no
objection--and the door of the private office sharply shut; young
Burnett and Graham Carr exchanging admiring commentary down the stairs;
their tread dying away; low continuous murmur of voices from the inner
room; save for that, silence all about the reader, where he sat at his
desk, amid a medley of proofs and manuscript, blotting-paper, ledgers,
and foolscap.
... She would speak to him, coming out. Of course she would. She had
simply relied on their secret understanding to explain her masquerade
of indifference....
The murmur of voices swelled suddenly louder, as Alexander opened
the glass door, and came through to fetch a thick roll of paper; the
contract, no doubt. Contract, yes. Gareth knew exactly all the outward
symbols of having got there, and how they would accumulate in the
future: contract for the next book, and the book after that; pile of
advertisements and posters; of press reviews; of letters from unknown
admirers and fellow celebrities; discussions _re_ American rights, and
the cheap edition, and a possible édition de luxe with illustrations;
editors applying for photographs and favourite 'hobby' of this new
star on the firmament; journalists appealing for an interview; rival
publishers with tempting and persistent bait; diffident request from
Alexander that Miss O'Neill might be prevailed upon to contribute
(expensively) to the "White Review" ... Gareth knew; and all these
prosaic and troublesome matters were poetry in his silent singing of
them. Gareth knew; he had imagined the scene often enough with--_not_
Pat O'Neill as its hero. And a rueful smile twitched his lips,
wondering if the girl were now astride of the table, in the delirium of
insolent enjoyment once described by Graham Carr.
"And she'll swing her legs with the proper amount of--swing! As for
me----"
Well, here he sat in the outer office.
And behind the door marked in black lettering: "Private," a world given
away....
Would she speak to him--coming out?
* * * * *
"And now if you'd just put your name to the contract, Miss O'Neill----"
The preliminaries of the interview had been conducted on a note of
frigid decorum from Alexander--in case anyone should suspect that he
admired the cut of this creature's tan tailor-made--and with much
demure diffidence on the part of Patricia; while Campbell dashed
himself alternately on one and then the other, after the fashion of an
all too youthful Aberdeen terrier; and: "down, sir, down!" expressed in
Alexander's restraining: "Certainly, Mr. Campbell, I was just coming to
that."
"And I should like to tell ye, my dear young leddy, what my friend
Lennox, editor of the 'Critic,' said to me about your closing chapter
when I showed it to him----"
"Wouldn't it be as well, Mr. Campbell, to get this attended to, before
we begin repeating the eulogies which Miss O'Neill's work so richly
deserves?"
"Alexander's impetuous," Campbell confided to Pat, in an aside. "Ah,
he's young! It's verra reesky to tek a young partner."
All of which, Patricia found immensely entertaining.
Then Alexander brought in the contract. "Take it home to digest at your
leisure, if you'd rather!" Pat ran her eye down the clauses.
"'In the event of the author's death' is rather tactlessly
over-emphasized, isn't it?"
Alexander explained that this was a mere matter of form.
"I rather like the chorus that runs through," she continued; "'Thirteen
copies shall be reckoned as twelve.'... It would set rather well to
part-music. Or is it a magic incantation to preserve me from harm?"
The junior partner did not budge a muscle of his face; but he said: "On
the contrary, Miss O'Neill, it's a magic incantation to preserve _US_
from harm."--And she discovered that she liked him.
Laying down the parchment on the table, she looked Campbell steadily
in the eye: "Am I to understand that you're trying to do me out
of elevenpence every time that twelve goes into a thousand, and
one over to make thirteen? Because I'm only an unprotected girl,
without--without"--her voice quivered--"without even a nice kind agent
to look after me!"
"It's like this, ye see----" Campbell, very distressed, began
to calculate the author's percentage of profit in ratio to the
publisher's, with expenses deducted. And Alexander flipped the
window-cord, and crossed his legs, and looked as if senior partners
were really rather a mistake.
"You will find the last two clauses relate to your future books, Miss
O'Neill. And now, if you'll sign----"
Patricia finished her perusal of the contract, and laid it aside.
There was a curious impishness to the upward-tilted corners of her
mouth; but her eyes were misted and far-away.... In a hundred different
directions, little shutters seemed to have flown open, with attractive
vistas beyond ... on and on and out ... vigour of creation, fun of
popularity, rivalry and applause and stimulation; then the next book,
and the next ... paths of literature--jolly little twisted
paths ... rewards of literature; literary jargon and literary
companions, literary grooves and outlook.... Well--it vrould have been
rather fun!
"I'm going to withdraw 'The Reverse of the Medal,'" she said. "I've
decided not to publish, after all."
* * * * *
Gareth, straining his ears for all sounds from the inner room, was
surprised to hear the word "murder" hurled forth in Campbell's
distinctest bellow.... "Yes, I will say it, Alex; I mean it, Miss
O'Neill. It's your ain genius ye're strangling, weelfully...."
His voice died down again, probably beneath the admonishment of
Alexander's lifted eyebrow.
And then Gareth remembered that the junior partner had, on first
reading of the "Reverse of the Medal," remarked to him that a certain
passage would have to be cut, and that there would be trouble with
Mr. Campbell on the subject. The trouble was evidently in full
swing. Perhaps Patricia had yielded too easily to Alexander's suave
suggestions; too easily--for Leslie Campbell's liking.
Presently the door opened, and she came out. Gareth did not notice if
either of the partners were in attendance upon her exit. Breathlessly
he waited; and only when she was level with his desk, did he raise his
eyes to meet hers.... She bestowed on him a careless nod, and without
pausing, walked straight on to the outer door, and down the stone
stairs.
... He sat very still, with the array of uncorrected proofs before him;
disappointment like a damp cloud weighing down his soul.
It was as he had dreaded. She had gone past him, actually and in
spirit. She was a Personage now. And for weeks and months he would be
doomed to move in an atmosphere effervescent with her triumphs; the
while she became ever more absorbed by her intellectual intimacies with
"Campbell's Young Men"; swang her legs from the table of Campbell's
inner sanctum; was impudent as she pleased to Alexander; permitted
the awed worship of Jimmy and young Burnett; sometimes graciously
remembered to nod to the reader in the outer office!
Worse, far worse, than if she had been the boy he had originally
envisioned. Far worse--being Patricia....
For that black hour, it seemed to Gareth that no nightmare could exceed
in horror the nightmare of Patricia as One of Them. For that hour he
found himself wishing that he had never yielded up her book from its
hiding-place in Pacific Villa; never confessed to her his part in its
retention....
Then, with a long breath as of one who has been stifled in a clogged
slime-fettered stream, he made an attempt to rise above this
despondency of sick envy; to regain his old resignation of last
summer,--before little Moll Aynsleigh had stirred him with the pages of
her "Spring-fret"; before the dream-girl had slipped to him between the
pale green beech-stems; before he had been given an attic and a harbour
to play with, and sweet prospects of solitude, and a book of his own;
before ambition was lit, and flamed, and was quenched again in the
heart of the world; and before the coming of Patricia to make him young
as romance, and mad as romance, and in love with romance.
All over now. He took up his pencil, and went on quietly correcting
proofs. Other people's books had the laugh of him after all. Other
people's books would always have the laugh of him.
By and by he became vaguely aware that the partners were thoroughly
upset over something that had occurred, and that all was not harmony in
the firm since the interview with Pat O'Neill. He wondered if she could
have refused to sign any contract till a literary agent should have
inspected it in her interests. Campbell howled like a jackal at the
very mention of an agent; and invariably, and with the utmost lack of
manners, turned the species over to Alexander to deal with.
But even that would hardly account for the "two thundering bad tempers"
of which Burnett complained to Gareth later on: "Wonder what our
new darling of the gods can have done to upset 'em. I asked quite
innocently when 'The Reverse of the Medal' was to be sent to the
printer, and the chief nearly bit my head off."
But lunch with his confidential secretary seemingly loosened Campbell's
tongue; so that Burnett, himself loyally sharing the prevalent mood of
angry consternation, was able afterwards to enlighten Jimmy and the
reader simultaneously.
"She's withdrawn the manuscript!"
"Not never!" Jimmy's eyes nearly goggled out of his head. And Gareth's:
"What for?" sounded sharp and unnatural to his own ears. His blood was
singing so loudly in his head that he could hardly hear Burnett's reply:
"Lord only knows. If our firm's not good enough for my lady, I should
like to know what is. But the chief says she's not taking it to anyone
else--simply has changed her mind about it and doesn't want to have
it published at all. It's _her_ book--what is one to do? Can't bring
it out against the author's consent. Though it's criminal letting
stuff like that be wasted. She can't have thought what good it might
have done to US. We haven't nabbed a real winner since 'Piccadilly.'
Well--there you are...."
He awoke to the fact that the Heart-breaker was his sole audience.
Gareth had disappeared.
Gareth was on his way to Sydenham.
The maid who opened the door informed him that Miss Patricia was out,
but would probably be in presently, and would he care to wait?
He paced for half an hour in her sitting-room. Then the furious barking
of dogs and clang of bicycle bells drew him to the window--whence he
just received a fleeting vision of Patricia, in a warm crimson jersey,
coasting full speed down the hill, and leaping from the saddle,
encumbered by an adoring frenzied surge of dogs and flappers.... Then
she swung, with that loose supple movement of the hips that was so
intensely hers, into the porch and out of sight.
He stood upright in the middle of the room, heart beating violently.
Footsteps down the passage. Her voice, clear and loud and fresh: "Down,
Rix! Down, you brute!... Ah, that's right--good fellow----" And she
entered, still clamorously surrounded; hair in a bright tangle; cheeks
aglow.
"Hullo--it was dear of you to come.... Now then, off with you, the
whole pack; I'm done with you for the moment--private audience awaiting
me. No, Rix can stop. No, Hetty, I'm not bringing the handsome
gentleman into the schoolroom for tea--Great Scott, what next! and
you and your pals the merest puling babes, who haven't even learnt
yet not to whisper in company...." Remonstrating noisily, the three
healthy schoolgirls departed, with the terriers at their heels. "Let me
introduce you--this is Vercingetorix, my special property." Pat talked
very fast, as though not quite ready yet to hear what the man had to
say; "Not quite so affectionate, my angel!" as the four-foot-high St.
Bernard dabbed clumsily with his tongue at Gareth's face; "You needn't
use all the syllables of his name at once; but the man who gave him to
me had called him Tiny ... can you conceive of anything less subtle? I
informed him that his was a primitive type of humour, and he departed
utterly crushed. That's right--not an inch of room for us!" for by
now Vercingetorix had contrived to put most of himself on to the
divan, where he lolled in voluptuous pomp, with a big rough sheet of
red tongue hanging out; "...bless you, we love to deny ourselves for
you!... He's a mere puppy, you know; eight months old; has only just
started to grow, really. And the pathos of it all is that he thinks
he's small; he does, indeed. He tries to behave like an ordinary
puppy--these bundlesome little things that you can pick up with one
finger. And I ask you--look at him!"
But for all her casual and airy chatter, Patricia could not fail to
perceive that Gareth's looks were for her. She tossed off her jersey,
picked up a book and laid it down again ... and faced him, rather a
tremulous smile on her lips, but with head erect, and chin more than
ever dented.
"Well, my man...."
"Why did you do it?"
She did not speak--but then her hands came out in a swift movement
towards him, as though she were giving--giving----
And he seized them and held them.
"Patricia, was it for me?--Was it?... You cared enough for that?"
"Oh, but I'm so glad if it's to be your book!" she cried
impetuously ... and he felt as though he stood in an open place, the
centre of a great gale of love.
"Adorable...." And surely he could allow himself to kiss her, gently,
for gratitude's sake.... But control left him at the quick hot response
of her lips.... And Heaven had showered its madness upon him before
control ever came back again----
He released her. Remained standing just where he was, arms hanging
inert at his sides. His eyes were weary and troubled. Presently,
replying to her silent questioning gaze, he said slowly:
"Yes--but you see ... there's Kathleen...."
CHAPTER IV
"But I didn't know he was married," murmured Patricia to the St.
Bernard, after Gareth had gone.
Still, now that she had placed him in the middle of her world, and
in a royal ecstasy of sacrifice offered up to him her previous
middle-of-the-world, the very book of her heart--it were folly now to
make another sacrifice of the altar itself. Patricia had been sincere
in her half-laughing remark to Hetty several years ago, that she could
not be bothered to give up the little things of life; but that one day
when she found someone worth while, she would revel in the supreme
indulgence of yielding up her all; flinging gift after gift upon the
bonfire, to feed it: her lesser loves, her friends, her memories, the
world's opinion of her, her tangible possessions, her individuality
even....
She wanted fervently to vindicate herself of the self-charge of egoism;
and chafed at the tardy arrival of the person who would be big enough.
Then, as in a transient flash, it seemed to her that Gareth Temple
stood revealed as this person. The revelation happened at the
mill-house during that pause after he had owned to her his tamperings
with the fate of her book. Something in the proud, sad humility of the
confession, confession of weakness and a lost ideal, threw him up to
her, clear-edged against a luminous background.... What a blind idiot
she had been to expect something worth while in its mere superficial
meaning--something magnificent and successful and compelling. This man,
this strayed idealist, excusing nothing, asking nothing, acquiescent
in his own ill-equipment for everyday contest; this sensitive dreamer,
with the fine strong face--enough of quick humanity in him to sin, and
enough of nobility to confess his sin.... Surely he was worth while!
The divine failure ... to him should be her bonfire.
And he loved her. She had to make him say outright he loved her. It
gave her the right to do this which she contemplated.
The fortnight between her resolution and her interview with Leslie
Campbell she spent in sorrowful discovery of the extent to which her
book mattered after all--output of the best of her brain; how she would
have rejoiced in its publication! It was no good telling herself that
the labour was the fun, and ought to be compensation in itself. The
suggestion met with no inner response.... A book written must be a book
shared, or it was purposeless, a mere emotional clearance upon paper. A
book written must be a book published.... Ruthlessly she had murdered
her brain-child--as once she had murdered love-memory....
And again she tingled to a queer excitement in being able to perform
these active interferences with destiny.
Yes--Gareth's book should be published when hers was withdrawn to clear
the way for him. He loved his book. It could not but be a beautiful and
scholarly expression of what was greatest in himself. Posterity would
lose nothing by the exchange.
But that interview with the partners had cost her something--had pulled
out resolution to the snapping-point; they had dangled success so very
alluringly before her eyes....
Gareth's visit, his inarticulate incredulous wonder, had been reward
enough. Tenderly she had loved him, and worshipfully.... But when
suddenly he forgot control, and had held her and kissed her as a man
kisses a woman--sometimes, then she too had forgotten tenderness and
worship, and had given him back the love a woman gives to a man--once.
... And then he had spoken of Kathleen. It was a slight shock, but the
girl recovered quickly. She was clenched in her determination that
her life and Gareth's should be fused. Obstacles only incited her the
more. The question now to be solved was the nature of this particular
obstacle. The situation was an old one: husband and wife and the third;
but Patricia introduced a variation by resolving in her most sunny
headlong fashion to go and see Kathleen, and find out--as she expressed
it--exactly what she was up against. Perhaps this wife would also
prefer to fight an adversary whose strength she had measured. It was
a mere absurd convention that the rival protagonists for the soul and
body of a man should not meet and talk it over. Besides, Patricia was
curious: was Kathleen fond of him? passionately fond of him? Was she
a weak drab little creature for whom one's pity and forbearance would
willy-nilly be demanded?--or else a shrew and a tyrant, who loudly
and stubbornly would stick out for her rights in Gareth? Kathleen ...
intellect, or flesh-and-blood, or a habit? Whichever it was, she would
have to go on the bonfire!
Patricia went the next afternoon to Pacific Villa.
... So this was where Gareth lived.... A queer lump came to her throat
at sight of the commonplace, hideous little red-brick residence in its
row of commonplace red brick. And if this was the house--what might not
the wife be like?... Some pretty waxen thing he had idealized when he
was dreaming through his twenties; some pretty brainless thing who had
grown querulous from social disappointment....
"Oh, my poor man--my poor fine man...."
All this, rushing through her mind, as the tousled maid led her through
the tiny hall, and into the parlour.
"Miss O'Neill, ma'am."
And a sigh of relief from Patricia, at sight of the keen haggard face
turned questioningly towards her. No, she need make no allowances for
this woman; this woman was a fighter.
"Don't say you're pleased to see me; you won't be in a minute, when
I've told you why I came. Look here--do you mind if I go straight to
the point? ... because I'm rather nervous really; and you do look as if
you were of the right stuff!"
Kathleen raised her thin black brows. "You flatter me. I haven't the
faintest notion who you are, but a sensation is always pleasant on a
dull day.... So sit down, and make yourself at home."
"You're sarcastic--good. It's not a weapon I can use myself; not with
much effect, that is--but I can appreciate it in others. Hasn't Gareth
told you about me?"
"No--but you have ... now. Well, under the circumstances, it's original
of you to call upon me, Miss O'Neill."
"Taken it like a brick," murmured Patricia. "But you aren't fond of
him, which accounts for the calmness. That's an enormous weight off my
mind. Now, as you can't be quite sure of the circumstances, even after
that tell-tale quiver in my voice which I suppose gave the whole show
away--or was it my damnable habit of flushing?--do you mind if I just
enlighten you?"
"Go on."
Patricia sprang to her feet, clasped her hands behind her, fingers
tightly interlocked. In spite of her assumption of lightness, she was
finding this interview with Gareth's wife something of a strain.
"I'm in love with your husband, and he's in love with me. We've known
each other about a month. I want him, and you've got him ... and unless
you and I talk it out clearly and coherently, we can go on messing
about for ages. I hate mess--I fancy you do, too. And Gareth is too
chivalrous ever to be quite blunt with you over facts."
"I'm glad to hear that you appreciate Gareth," remarked Kathleen,
darting her youthful rival an upward look of rapier mockery.
"_You_ don't!" Patricia flashed back.
"Indeed I do. With all my heart."
Patricia sat down again, restlessly, on the arm of her chair. "Your
heart is not involved in the matter, is it? Quite frankly, now? You
must have been dying to say so to someone, since ages. And why not to
me?"
"And why shouldn't we all be great friends?--is that the idea?...
Really, my dear child, your views are startlingly up-to-date, and
your insolence truly remarkable. Are you aware that in the sight of
convention and our neighbours, you've done me a bitter wrong?"
"I haven't--yet. And it's not a question of you and me; it's a question
of Gareth's happiness."
"Ah ... Gareth's happiness."
"Sneer!--that proves how much it needs attending to."
"Well ... what do you want me to do?"
"Divorce him."
"Hm! You might have hurled that at me on entrance, instead of
shilly-shallying."
Patricia fell into the trap. "Did I shilly-shally? How utterly
abominable of me. I apologize. But I really and truly brought in the
word as soon as I decently could."
"Don't reproach yourself with an excess of consideration. Does Gareth
know you've come on this mission?"
"Heavens, no! Wouldn't he be wanting to shield you from me, and shield
me from you, and shield everybody all round--except himself ... the
darling!"
Kathleen smiled. "In my very presence?"
"Certainly. I'm not ashamed of loving the man. Mrs. Temple---will you
divorce him--if we give you cause?"
"If you so adore him, why ... bother about a divorce?"
"I know what you mean," said Patricia slowly; "and I wouldn't be
afraid for myself. The marriage service is a mere trifle to me--may
the daughter of a good mother be forgiven for saying so. But Gareth is
not the right type of man for an unorthodox love-affair. He would be
worrying himself that I was worrying over all the slights and snubs
that didn't matter.... And we'd both end by worrying together. I've
thought it all out."
"I'm sure you have," said Kathleen politely.
"Isn't all this scathing irony rather unnecessary? I could be
marvellously witty and flippant if I chose to exert my talents that
way. But I had a sort of feeling that an interview between us two ought
to be conducted in a more reverent spirit."
The other shrugged her shoulders. "Oh--reverent!" She leant back
her head against the worn antimacassar, and half closed her eyes.
Patricia, watching her, thought in a spasm of generous admiration, how
handsome she was, with her aquiline features and sombre colouring and
bent weary mouth--"Like an Indian brave...."
And Kathleen, behind the mask of immobility, was absorbed in a
concentrated vengeful loathing of the man who had dared shatter her
romance, her last hot chance of romance ... and then himself flaunt a
love-affair. Let him go? Divorce him? Make the way easy for him with
this splendid wilful young creature who thought him divine? God in
heaven, no!... She would keep him from happiness, keep him dragging on
beside her, though his proximity were doubly hateful to herself. Never
again would she know the thrill of being desired.... Gareth should
be made to suffer now for having, in an access of petty malevolence,
interfered with her on the night she was to have joined Napier Kirby.
... Slowly she lifted her eyelids, to encounter Patricia's impatient
gaze.
"Well?"
"I don't think I'm going to divorce Gareth for your pleasure. As I
happen to be in possession, I'll stick to my nine points of the law,
thanks."
The girl's lip curled scornfully. "The dog-in-the-manger attitude--I
thought better of your intellect. What good will it do you, to live on
with a man you don't love? Besides, it's indecent!"
"Not indecent to throw yourself at the head of a married man, I
suppose?"
"Yes, very--if I had. Look here, don't let's descend to vituperation.
You won't give him up. And you won't give me a reason."
"Are we on a level with our claims, that I should have to give you a
reason?"
"Yes; tradition kicked in the wind--we are. And you want your
freedom--oh yes, you do!--and won't take it. You even faintly dislike
Gareth--but he's yours.... Frankly, Mrs. Temple, you make me feel as
though I'd put my hand in a glue-pot."
The ring of stripped exasperation in Patricia's voice sounded on
Kathleen's consciousness with an uncanny sense of familiarity ... and
not for the first time that afternoon. It was her own voice speaking
to Gareth--trying to urge him to some clear decision.... This girl
was strangely an echo of her own girlhood; but with all the gathered
advantages of a new generation; so that she marched gaily and by
right-of-way where Kathleen had been forced to struggle through thorny
barriers.
But what a queer fatality of blindness that Gareth should not
perceive the resemblance; that again he should be drawn and held and
enchanted by the same personality that during sixteen years' intimacy
had been goading him to madness.... If he were able to marry this
girl, she would find him out soon enough; soon enough be up against
that indefinable rottenness that Kathleen had named Atrophy of the
Initiative. And this girl would not bear with it, any more than
Kathleen had borne with it; but would contest it with all her vitality
and passionate impatience ... and Gareth would hear again that driving
note he so detested, from the lips he had newly kissed in love; and be
hurt as he had not been hurt for years ... a great many years; because
since he had ceased to love Kathleen, she had had to flog him harder
and ever harder before she could produce any effect on his numbed
spirit....
Where he cared once more, he could once more quiver to pain.
So would it not be a far subtler revenge, and far more poignant, to let
him go to this girl ... and let him meet with his disillusion all over
again?
Kathleen made her decision....
"I've changed my mind," she said abruptly to Patricia; "I do want my
freedom. You can have Gareth--when you like."
Patricia drew her brows together, puzzled at this sudden yielding of
obduracy.
"You mean you'll divorce him?"
"Not necessary, my dear. Gareth and I are not married."
... After a pause. "You seem astounded? And yet you remarked just now
that you were ready enough to dispense with the ceremony yourself."
"Yes--I am ... but----This is 1913, and we're beginning to open our
minds to the proposition of free love--monogamous free love, at least.
But surely it was an unusual step, twenty years ago?"
"Sixteen years," corrected the other sharply; "I'm not quite
prehistoric yet."
"... And Gareth--I can't imagine him----" For the first time the girl
had dropped her easy self-possession; spoke in broken stammering
sentences. She had set forth to deal with the situation of a wife to be
discarded as quickly and kindly as possible.... And here was her man's
mistress veritably unburdening herself of him as though he were an
encumbrance: "You can have him when you like."... It staggered Patricia
to find her wish so attainable; as though she had been gazing longingly
at an object set about with spiked railings--and suddenly the railings
were fallen flat to the ground, and she might advance as she chose....
"Did Gareth tell you I was his wife?"
"N-no. No, I don't think he did." Patricia laughed, and some of her
embarrassment went. "D'you know, I'm afraid I was conventional enough
to take it for granted. The Lord knows why! I've a decently improper
point of view as a rule. But Gareth does give the impression of what is
called 'a marrying man.'"
"You're right--and very keen-sighted. He is a marrying man. It was I
who was fool enough to try and remould what nature had cast him for.
I had lived too long and too intimately with a commonplace couple--my
brother and his wife--and had gradually sickened at the state of
marriage which deadened live things to clay. I thought that omission
of the actual ceremony would remove that possibility.... What do you
think of my brilliant reasoning?" with a harsh laugh.
And Patricia said gently: "It worked out to exactly the same thing, of
course."
"It worked out--a little bit worse."
... A barrel-organ started to play its tunes in the road just outside.
The sudden loud jangle fell startlingly into the silence which had
succeeded Kathleen's remark....
"Will you have some tea, Miss O'Neill?"
"Funny!" thought Patricia; "that's what I'd have said at this
juncture...." And aloud: "Thanks--yes, with the utmost goodwill. It
would be so melodramatic for us to refuse to break bread with each
other."
"I appreciate your magnanimity. Especially as you've obtained what you
wanted from me."
"You have a pretty gift for repartee, haven't you?"
Kathleen went to the door, and gave an order to Maggie. "What a tragedy
for Gareth to have had to live with it for sixteen years ... is that
what you were thinking?"
It was. And Patricia owned it cheerfully; thanking her stars the
while that she had this woman to cope with, and not a tearful bit of
helplessness, who would have pleaded: "Don't take him away--don't--he's
all I've got...."
She was curious to hear more of the long-drawn-out liaison which had
proved such a failure. "How did you first meet, you and Gareth?" as
her hostess poured out the tea which had just been brought in, and
tendered the thick bread-and-butter. These were curious circumstances
for a friendly meal ... and as their eyes met, each gave the other
reassurance as to her own appreciation of the existing blend of humour
and irony.
"Where did we meet? Oh, accidentally, on a summer holiday. I was a
teacher, shepherding a flock of chattering schoolgirls. He was a good
young man, seeing life with a band of touring botanists. We ran away
from our respective responsibilities, and enjoyed a most delightful
month at a mountain village called Alpenruh--do you know it? No?
Perhaps Gareth will take you there for your honeymoon.... It was an
entirely platonic affair, and it should have ended as such. But when we
got back to London, our horrified families seemed to expect Gareth to
repair the wrong he hadn't done me--and he went to pieces before their
attitude. One day he came galloping up to me on a metaphorical charger,
insisting that I should marry him...."
The organ outside effected an uneasy gulping transition from one tune
into another.... And absent-mindedly Kathleen refilled Patricia's cup,
as she brooded over that scene in Nelly Morrison's dining-room....
Nicholas's toys bestrewing the floor--old Mr. Jeyne asleep in the
corner--Nelly ostentatiously removing the children, to give her
sister-in-law a chance.
And Patricia too was seeing a vision--a serious young knight,
incredibly handsome, with his liquid dark eyes and waving black hair,
setting forth on his quest for right.... She wished she had known
Gareth in those days; how tenderly she could have loved his rapt boyish
ideals.
This Kathleen--she was like an eternal east wind; stimulating to those
who liked the chill and the nip of it--Patricia did, for one--but
deadly suffering to a nature unpractical and romantic, like Gareth's.
"You refused to marry him?"
"Yes. I talked him over. I was older than he--four years older; and
had the stronger will. Our respective families promptly cast us off,
as might have been expected. And thus we embarked upon--the idyll of
Pacific Villa. You see what it's made of us."
"And neither of you broke away? You dragged on--feeling like this?"
The melancholy in Kathleen's eyes deepened to bitterness.
"We had nothing tangible to break away from, except the necessity of
keeping up an illusion that it was all divine.... And you try breaking
away from that! It's like a tough sticky web ... an invisible web--I'd
sooner have steel chains to smash. Break away?--when already you are
free, except for voluntary propinquity.... My dear child, you are
very beautiful and immensely wise--but you don't know what you're
talking about. I couldn't budge, because _I_ had talked Gareth into
the situation, and had to keep up a feverish pretence that it was all
right--all right--quite different to the usual dreary matrimonial
failure; bound to be different, because we weren't married. For my
vindication in his eyes, in my own eyes, for my pride's sake, I had to
keep up the strain.... And besides, I dared not own that our life was
exactly, down to its hatefullest detail of a burst boiler on a winter's
day, what I had so dreaded----"
Patricia broke in impetuously. "And Gareth would not break away for
fear you might think it was because he held you in any less esteem than
if he had married you. That was like Gareth----"
"Hm. Always ready with a pretty picture to justify him, aren't you?"
"And you're always ready with a taunt to ridicule him. It would be vain
to pretend I'm violently astonished the household wasn't all harmony,
Mrs. Temple----"
"My name is Morrison. I've anticipated your future title long enough,
Miss O'Neill.... More crimson blushes? That's an incongruous charm of
yours, considering how extremely modern you are in all else."
"Yes, isn't it? Quite old-world, one might say!" Unabashed, Patricia
rose to go. "Good-bye. I won't say that we've had such a delightful
chat and when are we to have another?--for I take it that this
interview is for one performance only. But--wish me luck, won't you?
Just because you're the last person in the world from whom I ought to
be begging good wishes." She held out her hand; Kathleen took it.
"Certainly I wish you luck," stolidly and without hesitation. Then with
an almost witch-like lilt of voice and twist of the lip, she spoke
again. "I leave Gareth to you with the completest confidence."
"That's--fine of you!... Good-bye----"
Patricia ran down the three steps, and clanged the little gate behind
her.
"And she is a jolly fine person," she reflected further, as she walked
rapidly away from Pacific Villa; "but it was her fault, all the same,
that they came to grief, and that his whole career was mucked up. Lord!
sixteen years at that pitch of strain, in that beastly toadstool house,
pretending all the time...." She vowed that she would make up to Gareth
for this woman's hard unmerciful judgments. And again she murmured, as
on entrance: "My poor man...."
* * * * *
"Good-bye. I'm going."
Gareth looked up in bewilderment at the sight of Kathleen, in her
outdoor clothes, standing in the dining-room doorway.
"Going? Where?"
"Just going. You won't try to stop me this time, will you?"
"Yes; certainly I will. You can't walk out of the house in this--this
haphazard fashion."
"You mean, that I should discuss it for weeks beforehand, and write all
the luggage-labels twice over. That's not my way, Gareth. Besides, as
was rightly observed by that big radiant young person with the green
eyes, it's indecent, under the circumstances, for us to go on
sharing ... our meals."
"Patricia!"
"She had tea with me this afternoon," Kathleen explained casually,
drawing on her worn-out gloves; "and both being competent creatures,
we settled up matters without you. By the way, you might let me have
some money; any loose cash you have about you. We'll call it wages in
lieu of notice, to save my dignity. My boxes will be sent after me
directly I let Maggie know my address; I've given orders. Thank you,
that's plenty.... Good-bye."
"But--what are you going to do? Kathleen, I _must_ know ...
considering----"
"Considering the long and happy years we've dwelt together?"
she scoffed. "You've not the slightest claim to know, except
sentimentalism. And I don't want bits of you still hanging about me,
like wool from the box in which I've been smothered. Take the girl--I
genuinely congratulate your choice--and be thankful you're quit of
me--as I'm thankful to be quit of you!"
That stabbed him, even in his dazed condition resultant upon her
announcement. After all, he had endured patiently during sixteen years
of monotonous strife. He had not run away ... not attempted once to run
away. "I'm sorry, Kathleen. I did my best...."
"Especially on a certain occasion last October. If you had let me go
then...."
And again, subdued by the gloom of passionate regret which for an
instant darkened her face, he repeated, humbly and ineffectually: "I'm
sorry...."
"Well--we needn't linger any more over the farewells, need we?"
"Won't you wish me luck?" he entreated. And wondered why her laugh
grated so harshly.... They were really humorous, these two people in
love, each begging her for a final blessing on their union.
"With Patricia? Oh yes, I wish you luck."... An elfin gleam shot on him
from beneath her heavy eyelids.
A few seconds later, and he heard the front door bang.
He stood motionless, one hand clenched on the soiled plush
tablecloth ... gradually it relaxed.
He had once been given a book and his freedom. Both had been snatched
away from him. Now both were restored.
Wonderingly, he looked round at the walls; hideous dingy pattern of
red flowers clumped on a brown background. This room, in which he
and Kathleen had sat for two meals a day--three on Sundays--sixteen
years--one must subtract the recurring summer holidays ... or add them
on--which was it?... And the dusty black cat with its staring eyes had
overheard all that had been said at those meals--all that had not been
said.
He took his writing-case to the table; and began a letter to his
house-agent.
"PACIFIC VILLA,
"HAMMERSMITH.
"_Jan. 6th._
"DEAR SIR,
"I am desirous of sub-letting this house, which is mine on a
seven-years' lease renewed two years ago. Will you therefore...."
PART IV
CHAPTER I
"Very distinguished-looking, with all that wavy grey hair," pronounced
Mrs. O'Neill, after the first visit paid her by the prospective
son-in-law whom Patricia had so bewilderingly tumbled out of the
clouds; "but--Pat darling--he's almost old enough to be my husband."
"I shall take the utmost care that he is not," retorted Pat, sitting on
the sofa-end, and puffing at her cigarette; "forgive me for mentioning
that you've already had two of these necessary aids to comfort."
"And not an especially good match, is he?"
"Rotten bad!" her step-daughter assented sunnily; "reader to a firm of
publishers, at two-fifty per annum or thereabouts. Excellent dad, to
have left each of us girls two hundred a year when we marry."
"But with your fascination, Pat--I hate to make you conceited, but
Dr. Andrews was saying only the other day that you were a ripe young
Amazon."
"Indecent old satyr! Believe me, mother, I've considered my prospects
mathematically. I put it to you: two-thirds of the men I meet are
smaller than myself. No man can do with a girl who overtops him.
Rule them out. Of the remaining one-third, two-thirds again have a
preference for slender little clinging maidens. Which reduces my
chances to one-third of one-third of the entire male population."
"Even that allowance might be enough for you," remarked Mrs. O'Neill,
who was not devoid of gentle humour.
"Oh well," with a gurgle of laughter, "leave it at Gareth."
"I certainly was favourably impressed by the way he holds open the door
for one."
"The lamb!" Patricia whispered to her cigarette.
"Only it's all so----How often had you met him, dear, before he
proposed to you?"
"Thousands of times. Twice, to be exact."
She had already told her mother that she went to the firm of Leslie
Campbell to purchase a special book published by them, which the
libraries had informed her was out of print. For Gareth's sake she
wanted as few persons as possible to know of "The Reverse of the Medal."
"We ought to ask some of his family, his near relations, to dinner.
It's the proper thing to do. Do you know any of them, Pat?"
"Only Kathleen," murmured Patricia.
"His sister? How nice. Would she come?"
"N-no. I'm not sure that it would be frightfully nice.... Perhaps it
had better not be put to the test, anyway. He has no relatives, mother;
at least," darkly, "not presentable ones."
Mrs. O'Neill took the hint. But she was anxious not to offend
etiquette over the details of Pat's engagement. People might hint
that any deviation from the usual course was because it was not Ann
engaged, or Hetty, her own daughters. She was always morbidly afraid
of being saddled with the qualities of the traditional and legendary
step-mother. And she happened to be warmly fond of Pat, and very
dependent upon her.
"Then the firm of publishers, his employers--should they be invited to
dine? What did you say were their names? Pat, I can see no reason to
laugh."
"Sweetheart ... if I were walking out with a salesman at Lipton's, I
shouldn't expect you to entertain Sir Thomas to high tea. The notion of
a godfatherly Mr. Campbell and Mr. Alexander cutting the cake for me
and Gareth, overpowers me. It does, verily."
"I only hope, Patricia," with dignity, "that considering the
disgraceful haste of your engagement, you will not require the offices
of anyone to cut the cake, for a long while to come."
"Heavens, no. Not for ages. Not until the tenth of February." Patricia
sprang from her perch to anticipate with a rush of dishevelling kisses
any objection the good lady might be likely to raise. For this was the
twenty-ninth of January.
Neither she nor Gareth cared to wait. Hers was not a nature to brook
delay; and he was feverish lest again he should be thwarted of this
gift of wedlock which promised to be so fair. He had always desired
to be married; as a young man, dreamt of it; later, mused on the
state with the wistful envy of one who sees no hope of it for himself.
All the failure of his union with Kathleen, he now arbitrarily set
down to the fact that she had never been his wife. Nor did he realize
that owing to his dislike of the relationship between them, it was
never accepted by them openly and proudly; in which acceptance might
have lain their only possibility of finding happiness. It was he who
had first created tension, by his sensitive disposition to avoid the
subject; skirmishing round every allusion; doing his utmost to spare
her, taking for granted a shame in her which had never existed save
by his assumption. Thus Gareth had damaged irrevocably Kathleen's
experiment of a passionate free comradeship, by his always delicate and
chivalrous attempts to reassure her that they were tighter bound than
if they had been indeed man and wife. Little deceptions and pretences
and silences, swelling to giant proportions ... till they were a guilty
furtive nagging couple, nothing more noble than that; pitiful enough
end to his boyish high hopes--to the Songs his Mother Taught Him.
And suppose there had been children--Gareth shuddered at the
illimitable possibilities of misery entailed....
But Patricia had consented to marry him. They might have as many
children as they pleased. And a home without the forbidden subject to
make it ghastly. It would be all right this time--all right--Gareth
Albert Temple to Patricia O'Neill, on the tenth of February, nineteen
hundred and fourteen.
In anticipation of which date of release, release from the intolerable
wearying necessity of the outcast forever compelled to beat out a fresh
track untrodden by custom, Gareth, on the night of February the ninth,
stretched the cramped limbs of his dreams, with a great sigh of thanks
to Patricia, the wonderful girl who had freed him from his bondage of
freedom. On the morrow he might slacken his tautly drawn initiative;
settle down into a condition socially and legally sanctioned. Oh, the
hushed benison of rest which Patricia had achieved for him!
Patricia ... beloved ... he murmured her name as though in prayer
to a goddess. Patricia ... wife ... and his very soul he could have
flooded like moonlight at her feet. He would be such a husband as
had never before existed, so faithful in guardianship and vigilant
in loyalty. Supposing she were ever ill--almost he could have wished
her ill at once, for an opportunity to set in motion his solicitude
and tenderness. Patricia ... home ... with--hazily--a luxurious aroma
about it of comfort and harmony, which Kathleen had never succeeded in
imparting to Pacific Villa; but which his imagination infallibly allied
to Patricia, as mistress of the quaint squat old-maidish house they had
rented furnished in St. John's Wood.
He recollected with drowsy satisfaction ... the dining-room fire was
burning low now, and it was late--his last night at Pacific Villa ...
the sybaritic effect of Patricia's own sitting-room at Sydenham.
Raising his heavy eyes, he became aware of the black china cat; and by
way of a last precaution, knocked it with his foot off the mantelpiece,
and broke it.
* * * * *
On the same memorable eve of the tenth, Mrs. O'Neill was trying to
make up her mind to go to Patricia's room, and talk to her for a
little while ... the child had no mother of her own. The bride-to-be
had behaved all through dinner with what looked like the wildest high
spirits, but which Mrs. O'Neill did not doubt was hysteria; and then
in the traditional manner of brides-to-be, had vanished early to bed.
Mrs. O'Neill's hesitation in going up to her, arose from a misty
apprehension--engendered she knew not where nor how--that she would
find Patricia lying across her bed, shaken by sobs, and moaning: "I
can't! I can't! I can't!"...
And what was the proper conversational reply to be made by one who was
not quite the girl's mother, when confronted by this painful stress of
emotion, the sweet-faced little lady had not the remotest notion. But
she nerved herself finally to go upstairs. As she neared Pat's room,
she heard sounds that were ominous. And yet--surely, surely it could
not be that the girl was _singing_?
"Pat ... how--how are you?"
"Very brisk indeed, darling," Patricia assured her; Patricia, who was
neither prone across the bed, nor in floods of tears, nor protesting
that she would rather die ... nor in any way giving vent to maidenly
sentiments.
Mrs. O'Neill was mightily relieved; and--faintly disappointed.
"Is there nothing--nothing you want to ask me about, my dear? I
thought ... I wondered...."
And suddenly Patricia understood; and understood the disappointment
as well; and choked down the mischievous retort so ready to her lips.
The twentieth-century girl has little need of this stammering hour
of instruction.... But Pat crossed the room to her step-mother, and
dropped on both her knees in front of her, taking her hands.
"I'm so glad you came up.... Yes, please, you can help me.... I want to
know----"
* * * * *
They went for a short wedding-journey to the Fen Country. Patricia had
roamed before on and about these eerie desolate lands; and found a
curious fascination in the monotony of ancient sea-wall and sluggish
river, and sail flat against the unchanging horizon. So did Gareth;
at least, he thought he did, but was not quite sure. He was so happy
that he would have glorified Wormwood Scrubbs or Manchester as ideal
honeymoon resorts. He flung such quantities of word-drapery over the
landscape; over the little inn at which they stayed; over sky and water
and oozing mud-creeks; over Fen-legend and tradition, and the Isle of
Ely and the port of Lynn; over Patricia herself and the future, and
the books that might be written--should be written, and the books
that were already written; and over infinity, and the wonder of their
daily breakfast together ... until Patricia protested at last that in
view of the fact that she had married a strong, silent man, his fluent
babblings were disgracefully out of character.
Then home to number seventeen Blenheim Terrace. Gareth returned to
his work at the firm of Leslie Campbell. And Patricia applied herself
seriously to the suppression of her restive desire for authorship....
It was _fun_ to be aware of this power within her, and voluntarily to
keep it under hatches like a mutineer; fun ... perpetual bonfire to the
altar she had set up in the middle of her world; fun, to refrain from
writing, that Gareth should write and write and write.
She awoke to the fact that Gareth was not writing. And that his book
still awaited completion. Seemingly he had forgotten all about it.
Incredible. She spurred him with eager reminder.
"It's nearly finished," he assured her contentedly.
"Oh, you've been working at it in secret. Good."
"Well, not lately. But it only wants another half-dozen chapters or so."
"Hurry up with them then, you tortoise. I haven't even read the
masterpiece yet--think of it! And here I am, wilting away for want of
proof that I've married a genius."
He twinkled a fond look at her ... his wife. "I'm not used to
brilliantly overwhelming apparitions like yourself flashing into my
sober life. You've rather taken my breath away. Make allowances for
that, Patricia."
"I didn't notice it--at Lynn," she laughed; "_such_ a little
chatterbox!"
Promptly he exacted penance for her raillery.... And the subject of the
book was for the moment shelved.
But a few days later she resumed it. She was truly impatient to witness
"The Round Adventure" published; to hear the acclamation, critical or
enthusiastic, which should be apology for allowing her own talent to
lie fallow. Above all, she longed for the sight of his happiness when
his fellows should at last hail him as true artist, as One of Them ...
he had confided in her all those dreams of his.
Just at present, the machinery which should produce this sequence of
publication and recognition seemed to be unaccountably clogged. A
touch from her finger would suffice to set it in motion again. She
touched--in fact, sublimely unaware that delicacy was needed, she
banged.
"Gareth, call me a shrew and a harridan, but I insist that you should
unhand me this very instant, and retire to the library for an evening
of diligent inspiration. Your slothful aspect is a great grief to me;
it is, truly."
"Adorable, I'm not in the mood to-night."
"Oh dear--enter the artistic temperament! Would it start the mood, do
you suppose, if I were to prepare you a cup of cocoa beaten up with
white of egg and a drop of rum--or some such invigorating cordial?"
"God forbid! You're an invigorating cordial all by yourself. What I
need is a soothing syrup." "Man--man--and I putting all my soul into an
effort to be a Good Wife to you!"
He suggested, with a whimsical glance around the room, that she might
put a little of that same soul into an effort to make a bright and cosy
home for a fellow returning tired and dispirited from his day's toil....
"Yes?" submissively. "I foresee already that I'm to be heavily
lectured. What, may I ask, is wrong with the brightness and cosiness of
seventeen Blenheim Terrace?"
He frowned in an attempt to explain what had been dimly perceptible to
him from the first: that Patricia lacked that indefinable something
which might have given to her surroundings that likewise indefinable
something....
"Quite," said Patricia. "He expresses himself with such remarkable
coherence and style, that I am moved to rescue him from these
flounderings. You had pictured me straying about from room to room,
with a song upon my lips; achieving with a deft hand a sort of--of
draped charm. Isn't that it?... Here and there looping things ... here
and there a flower or two ... me in a white gown. Have I given speech
to your silent longings?"
She had; and so truly that he could not refrain from laughter, though
he was slightly annoyed as well.
"Burlesque it or not," he said; "but there _is_ such a thing as working
one's personality into a room, till it becomes beautiful. And you know
it as well as I, because I felt just this in your own sitting-room at
Sydenham. A sort of rhythm and colour which was--you."
"What you felt there, darling, was the je-ne-say-kwah of my mother's
housemaid.... Personally, I don't care a fig for my inanimate
surroundings. They're so subordinate, aren't they? Do they really
affect you?"
"When they're wrong, yes. But I've never had them right, so it doesn't
much matter."
He smiled at her rather sadly. And with a quick rush of repentance
that was still non-comprehending, she vowed to put a daily vase of
daffodils upon his writing-table, as is done by the very best type of
Novelist's-Wife, if only he would promise to apply himself to the task
of becoming illustrious.
Secretly she was not a little astonished at his reluctance to get on
with the book. She had anticipated that she would have to restrain
him from feverishly over-working. It had meant so much to him. She
remembered his account of that awful moment when Pat O'Neill had cut
across and cut him out; and the note of despair in his voice: "I was
middle-aged, and a failure--and this one idea had come to me--and I
could write only this one book...."
Well, and now that all obstacles were cleared away, why didn't he? Why?
Why? Patricia, never a very patient person, was suddenly exasperated
at the sight of the tall figure placid and inert every evening in an
arm-chair before the dining-room fire. Walking up to him, she seized
the journal he held, and flung it into a far corner.
"Damn you, Gareth!--go and write."
She was laughing ... and was not prepared for the deep intensity of his
upward look--fear and pleading commingled. Without a word he rose and
went into the library.
He could not write. He knew that beforehand. The atmosphere was too
expectant. Patricia was too expectant. Before, when his book had been
a secret thing ... but now he was paralysed by the sense that it _had_
to be finished, because something had been sacrificed for it ...
something big ... that other book, as good as his own, or--better?
"The Round Adventure" was no longer a matter for his own delight, a
spontaneous wonder that had been dropped into his brain to do with
as he pleased.... Was there more implied than mere concern for his
advancement, in Patricia's ceaseless urgings that he should idle no
longer? Was there the unspoken reproach: "I gave up my book for you.
Mine is wasted. Do you suppose I'll allow it to be wasted for nothing.
You owe it to me to make good!"
Yes--of course he must make a start on those last half-dozen chapters.
This dallying was absurd; he had so looked forward to the creation of
just this latter portion of Kay Rollinson's round adventure. If he
could write before, he could write now. Especially for Patricia's sake.
And again the panic seized him. He could not write--not a line. He
dared not write--what phrases would be good enough? By sacrifice she
had solidified his dream-bubble to such a great important heavy ball;
ball of lead ... all the airy rainbow hues turned to a sulky grey.
Such a heavy ball--he could not keep it aloft by his mere breath. Such
a heavy responsibility.... It was not his book any longer; he had
forfeited all right to abandon it if the humour took him thus; Patricia
was waiting for him to finish it, and to finish it worthily. There were
things she might say, otherwise....
It took him nine weeks of joyless plodding, before he could put into
her hands the completed manuscript. It was by no means a new emotion to
be working under dread of the suspended lash. He could have wished with
it all, that he had loved Patricia a little less. But this temporary
clouding of their happiness was not her fault; an accidental blend of
circumstances; he absolved her from all blame.
She started the book on the evening he yielded it to her; and read it
through at top speed during the whole of the next day while he was not
there, that she might not have to sit another evening with his dark
pleading eyes fixed steadily upon her face, as she turned page after
page.... She read with a beating hope that by this would be smothered
an uprising suspicion that she had made a mistake; that her last idea
had carried her above and beyond reality; that this man before whom she
had chosen to sweep all her previous litter of trifles into a supreme
consummation of fire, was not quite big enough--the altar not big
enough for the offering.
Of course, he was a dear....
Gareth came home late ... and at dinner performed pretty and intricate
little step-dances around the subject of which he most desired to
speak. After dinner, in the library, he attempted to resume the
step-dance, but Patricia straightway tripped him up.
"I've read it, Gareth."
"Oh?" casually.
She came and sat on the arm of his chair, slipped her arm about his
shoulders, leant a soft cheek against his.... And he knew she had been
disappointed.
"It's unequal; that's the worst that can be said about it. The first
half is charming; your style hasn't got a blemish to it--and I'm a
judge of style ... when it isn't my own!" She had made a slip here; she
ought not to have referred to her writing; rather more hurriedly she
went on: "And I especially love your detail work; all the quaint and
whimsical passages; they remind me very much of Richard Pryce--do you
know his stuff? The description of the harbour is delicious; and that
wood in early spring; and the girl, Sheila. But----"
She paused. And Gareth, neither moving away from her light caress, nor
responding to it, said dully: "Yes. Go on."
"But the whole treatment is not quite strong or vital enough to carry
the central theme."
Another pause. And then Gareth gave the same stolid assent. "No. I
suppose it isn't."
He was waiting for her to remark that the idea of the central theme
had been hers as well as his; and that in her case she had not spoilt
it utterly....
"And the last third of the book is--futile!" concluded Pat's clear
young voice, without any palliative or mercy.
He sprang upright, pushing her away from him.
"It isn't! It isn't!... Or do you think that I overestimated it on
purpose, so that you should ... I suppose you think I talked big about
it on purpose?"
She too was on her feet by now, surveying him scornfully.
"Oh, if you had wanted to be treated like a baby, and given sugar-plums
only----"
And then suddenly she remembered that just to-night she must be very
good to him--because of that doubt in her heart which had been finally
and unquestioningly acknowledged as a certainty. Just to-night she must
be very pitiful with him ... she could not quite answer for herself in
the future.
"Dear old man, I'm an ignorant brute, and ought to be kicked for my
bumptiousness. But I imagined you would rather have heard straight out
what I really thought. The first twenty chapters are so first-class
that it would have been a miracle if you could have kept it up all
through. Honestly and truly, Gareth, I expect it will do tremendously
well when it appears."
He put both his hands on her shoulders, smiling rather wryly.
"All right, darling; it's I who deserve the kicking; I'm one of those
terrible persons who wince at candid criticism ... the reader read,
you know. But I'm glad you liked the book."
He submitted it to Messrs. Jernyngham, of the Booke-Shoppe, who refused
it with praiseworthy promptitude, and quite sincere regrets that
the latter portion of the book had not fulfilled the promise of its
opening. They hoped, however, to have an opportunity of seeing more of
Mr. Temple's work.
"Send it to Locker and Swyn," advised Patricia, when her husband, with
a poor attempt at a laugh, informed her of the rejection.
"Yes, it's more in their line," he agreed.
He thought. "Supposing no publishing-house will accept it, and I shall
have to tell her each time it comes back.... She will remember how
quickly Campbell snapped up hers. Nonsense, she remembers already. How
long can the MS. travel round? How many publishers of fiction are there
in the United Kingdom? She won't let me give in before it has been
sent back by every one. But it's as good as hers, quite as good; this
is only my old luck dogging me. Say a hundred and fifty publishers and
three and a half weeks at each----"
Locker and Swyn freed him from this sort of arithmetic by accepting
"The Round Adventure." They asked him if he could polish up its most
conspicuous inequalities; and he replied, albeit grateful to them for
the release, that he was incapable of adding or subtracting a single
word from the original. And this was not author's arrogance, but a
genuine statement of fact. So they shrugged their shoulders; made him
a tolerable contract; and promised to bring the book out in the autumn
season. "Say in October, Mr. Temple." He assented. It was now April.
Six months to wait before the solid consummation of all his illusions.
There had been sadly little illusion about the actual acceptance of
the book. Locker and Swyn themselves were dummies; and the business
was run by a very practical manager, John Forrester; who, keen to win
the same prestige for "spotting genius" as Leslie Campbell, lacked the
little Scotsman's real enthusiasm for first-class stuff and supreme
indifference to big sales. It was reported that Forrester's beard had
gone hoary from the day that "Piccadilly" went into its thirty-seventh
edition.... He had been one of the famous Nineteen who had turned down
Graham Carr; and like his eighteen sorrowing confrères, could instantly
be subdued by airy mention of this instance of his blindness. Alexander
was exceedingly assiduous in reminder when chance threw him together
with the manager of the rival firm.
Patricia spent the summer in pursuit of as many sports as were possible
to one whose headquarters were in St. John's Wood. She was essentially
of the type who, given the opportunity, would have made a splendid
shot and an excellent horsewoman. As it was, she played golf; learnt
to drive a friend's motor; dashed down for several week-ends to the
seaside bungalow of another friend, for the sake of the swimming; and
when nothing better was forthcoming, took Vercingetorix for long
country tramps. She seemed eager to avoid more thoughtful indoor
occupations. Her creed was to soar with an idea, and accept with decent
cheerfulness the risk of broken bones. She had, metaphorically, broken
a good many bones on her fall from this last star-scamper, which had
landed her for good or for evil Gareth Temple's wife.... And one might
as well walk and swim and drive and golf.
Poor old Gareth--was he brooding too? But his book was accepted; and he
still loved her. Whereas her book was waste stuff; and----
Kathleen had foreseen all this. Patricia thought she had penetrated
at last with exact apprehension to that lady's point of view. It had
puzzled her before that the other should have yielded her claims so
easily. But now her motive was stripped bare. "Lord! _I_ don't blame
her. Sixteen years of it. And no tangible grievance to lay at his door.
Just that--that dry-rot in his system. No wonder she wanted me to have
a taste of the same Hell!"
Wherein Patricia's judgment fell short of the mark. But then she did
not know of the Napier Kirby episode. None of Kathleen's animosity had
been for the girl who was a second and more vivid edition of herself;
none at all.
"I wonder what has become of her?" mused Patricia, also without any
rancour. "Fallen on her feet somehow, certainly. If only Gareth, bless
him, didn't look so unutterably miserable at every subject I manage to
broach, I'd ask him quite merrily if he corresponds with her."
Gareth did not correspond with Kathleen. He spent his intervals
between busy reading for the firm--it was an eruptive season for new
authors,--in chafing at the shortcomings of housekeeping in his home;
in wondering where Pat could be; in wishing she had not quite such
a large and clamorous circle of friends, and would not rush about
such a lot, and would attend to him more. Put into words, his own
words, there was nothing lacking in the description he inspired, of
grey-haired scholarly husband looking indulgently upon his young wife's
unconquerable questing spirit. He welcomed her always with his old
adoring smile and slow courtliness of manner, when she did eventually
return from whatsoever bout of new energy had engaged her.... And
within five minutes, as she had herself noticed, she would by some
quite inconsequent remark contrive to render him unutterably miserable.
For there was so much he dreaded to hear, and which at any moment he
might be forced to hear, and to which any haphazard topic might be
introduction. For instance: "Gareth, when are you going to set to work
at another book?" But that question he fancied he could shelve adroitly
when it came, by the reply: "Oh, directly 'The Round Adventure' comes
out in the autumn; I want to benefit by what the critics have to say."
Temporary reprieve, at all events. Much, much worse than this, Would
be: "Gareth, I'm going to set to work at another book."... And here
he was helpless; for after all, though she had voluntarily withdrawn
"The Reverse of the Medal" from the press, because it had trespassed
on his chances, that was no guarantee that she never intended to write
again. He might have to sit week after week watching her pen tearing
its way towards success. That it would be very definite success, his
discrimination did not allow him to doubt. She was the very incarnation
of triumphant achievement. Which led to the next unspoken possibility:
"You know, Gareth," and quite simply this could be said, "my book is
better than yours." And: "Queer, isn't it, that our marriage is as much
a failure as though----Well, I mean, it doesn't make much difference in
the long run whether one is married or not, does it?"
This was one of the things that Gareth had realized very slowly, and
with the painful astonishment of a disappointed child. The actual fact
of the ceremony had made no difference whatsoever! It must therefore
be something in himself that prevented harmony with either of those
different two who had at different times so passionately and inevitably
attracted him. Comparing the then and the now, he speculated in a
troubled unhappy sort of fashion whether it were really impossible for
a pair to dwell together without their peace forever threatened by the
one thing unmentionable, the worst of all. One?--a great many
things ... they knocked wearily about in his brain, until, to escape
their persistent clangour and jar, he drifted again into the habit of
dreams ... old dreams--wan shadow-dreams--dreams of a girl ... whose
touch was cool.
CHAPTER II
"Armageddon!" said Gareth several times aloud to himself.
"Armageddon...." And then, with a proud upward jerk of the head:
"Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet!" After a pause: "... 'And the shores of
Ireland will be defended by her armed sons, North and South
together!'" ... He broke off, once more to rumble, with a curious slow
relish: "Armageddon."
For he was not yet muted to the thrill of this thing that the summer
of nineteen-fourteen had brought along with it; and which had made of
him a nervous responsive instrument for all the unwonted word-fragments
swarming about haphazard, as men fumbled to express the new conditions,
to find a language significant of their new emotions:
"The making of history--the war that will end war--violation
of neutral territory--the Allied Armies--crush the menace of
Prussianism--mobilization--transport--commissariat--Press
Bureau--moratorium----"
So quickly they poured in, these coins of the new mintage, that Gareth
had scarcely time to let his fancy handle them lovingly:
"The mad dog of Europe--defence of the Realm--wait till the Cossacks
get to Berlin" savouring the ominous implication: "Kitchener wants
five hundred thousand men----"
"Casualty list...."
There was a different note to the saying of that; a curt rather
harsh inflection, where in other cases one might slide the syllables
lingeringly. But--"Casualty list"--No, one was dry and businesslike
over that.
"Efficiency!" muttered Gareth in the same tone.
A newspaper boy scampered past him in the hot stale sunshine, creaking:
"Off-i-shul! six-thirty off-i-shul! 'Eavy fighting at...." the name was
blurred. "Off-i-shul!"
Official!... Of course one had heard it at the time of the Boer War;
a little while after he and Kathleen----He remembered bringing her
home the evening papers, and her fierce incisive comments upon the
situation. Well--now he brought the late editions home to Patricia.
The strain between them of the things unmentionable had been blown to
bits by the eruption of the war; now there was always news, real news,
off-i-shul news, for their discussion; general discussion, which as yet
had not dwindled to the personal question.
He glanced at the stop-press column. No longer any doubt about it:
Paris was saved. The German hordes had been rolled back at the eleventh
hour. Gareth swung down the Strand, with the Marseillaise crashing
exultantly through his brain, temporarily displacing his other
orchestral selection of phrases. The French, as a nation, appealed
to him tremendously; and he was glad we were concerned, in howsoever
a minor degree, with the salvation of the City of Light. His eye
caught a glimpse of a portrait of the Belgian King in the window of
a picture-shop; the handsome, fair, somewhat stolid face had lately
become familiar as the hitherto unknown strains of Belgium's anthem;
his ear was arrested by a passerby exclaiming excitedly: "Why did the
Russian steam-roller----" the rest was lost in a surge of human traffic
outside the recruiting-office. "Why did the steam-roller?" Gareth asked
himself absurdly; and went on with the question for quite a long time
before he realized that there was no prescribed answer to it.
A detachment of bluejackets marched past, their red faces grinning
cheerfully ... one globular patch of red after another, with a curious
rhythmical effect of repetition.
A patriotic shopkeeper had decorated his frontage with the intertwined
flags of the Allies ... "Intertwined...."
"... And the shores of Ireland will be defended by her armed sons,
North and South together!"
Perhaps more than by anything else, had Gareth's impressions of this
first month of war been dented by the peroration of Redmond's third of
August speech in the House of Commons. And the sequence of great and
small events served but to heighten this prevalent effect of cohesion,
of all stray units gathered up and knit together for a joint purpose:
North and South Ireland; Great Britain and her colonies; the regular
army with the raw recruits; the suffragette with the spoilt débutante;
Liberal and Conservative and Labour; France and Russia and Servia
and Belgium, rhapsody of concentration on one issue, one ideal ...
no single person left out who wanted to be in.... Here was the old
dream which for Gareth had previously been symbolized in the absorbed
fraternity of "Campbell's Young Men," repeated now on an immeasurably
larger scale. One of Them. The glamour of belonging.
Gareth had always been slightly appalled by the burden of each
individual responsible for himself; and his visions had naturally
taken the trend of mankind serving in a common cause; one need for
the scattered energies; one will pushing these along. The world as
a sort of club, excluding a few just to strengthen the privilege of
membership. In this case it was the Germans who had wantonly put
themselves outside the Crusade for Humanity.... _Somebody_ has to be
the enemy ... he recollected childhood's difficulty of finding the
offensive party in the game of French-and-English----
"I suppose that game will have to go now; and the Berlin polka; and
German measles; and Prussian binding; and--and Dresden china--and
music--and eau de Cologne--and the dachshund----" he pondered over
possible additions to this list of articles that were of obstreperously
enemy manufacture.
... The Strand and London and the British Isles--crowded with
little people, who in a crisis had proved big enough to be
lifted above their petty domestic squabbles, and belligerent
beat-your-neighbour-out-of-doors attitude. And he was one of them--One
of Them.... More recruits going by, in attire a grotesque mixture of
civilian and khaki. Here, there, and wherever one looked, evidences of
some personal sacrifice.--That was at once the clarion-call and the
march-rhythm of nineteen-fourteen. To participate, to fall in step, one
must sacrifice as well....
Suddenly he was conscious of a keen desire once more to live in
complete harmony with Patricia. After all, what stood between them but
the fact of her book suppressed that his might appear? Viewed in the
clearer colder searchlight which recent events had streamed into his
flinching soul, it seemed infinitely mean and selfish that he should
smugly have acquiesced in this arrangement.
For Pat's was the worthier book of the two. He admitted it now. He
would admit it presently to her. It was splendidly generous that she
should have aided him in dissembling the fact. But if Gareth Temple
were to be identified with the Crusade--and he did not mean to be left
out this time--he could straightway make a beginning by stripping
himself of the illusion that had hitherto been so pampered--illusion
that his book was in the very slightest degree important to anyone but
himself. Patricia's should be published instead of his; or--since it
was indeed too late except at an enormous expense to withdraw a novel
of which he had already received the page-proofs--Patricia's should be
published as well as his--and kill it.
Locker and Swyn could well afford a failure.
Gareth hurried home, flushed and exalted by this definite solution of
a vague desire; and not at all abashed by the thought that Pat had
already once anticipated him, by use of their accidentally overlapping
themes, to give herself a spiritual adventure. It stimulated
satisfaction in him to remember that it was no valueless contribution
he intended to make to the prevailing Fund for Remorseful Egoists. For
the first fortnight or so following the outbreak of hostilities, it had
seemed doubtful if literature and art were not doomed to be carried
away in a waste-paper basket, emptied irrespective of contents. But
since the news from the Front had been more hopeful, intellect and
civilization had begun to collect themselves; metaphorically, to look
round and discover how much of themselves remained after the shock. And
John Forrester had only yesterday written to announce that, barring
unforeseen complications, they intended to adhere to their original
resolution to publish "The Round Adventure" in October. So that by
this genuine offering of what was immediately precious, Gareth would
not only be subordinating himself fitly to the exactions of a great
impersonal Cause; but would also be witness of Patricia's impulsive
tumult of gratitude and happiness. Henceforth would exist no reason,
no reason at all, why their life together might not be all he had ever
pictured it.... He sprang off the step of the omnibus, and walked
rapidly up the road to number seventeen.
"Pat! Pat! Where are you?"--impatience was eager to act red-hot upon
resolve. "Pat!"
"Here!" her voice came distantly from the very top of the house.
"In the box-room? Why?" He vaulted up the two flights of stairs; and
then up another steep little flight.
Patricia was rummaging among a disorderly chaos of trunks and sacks
and broken packing-cases that had disgorged half their contents over
the bare uneven floor: picture-frames; torn books; a pair of ski; the
spring-mattress of a bed ... general litter of tools ... remnants of
fancy-dress, and old boots, and brown-paper, and a battered
bird-cage ... he wondered how all these inconsequent articles had
managed to accumulate during their seven months of marriage?--he could
not recall that they had ever had a bird.... Then speculation was split
asunder by lightning memory of his errand:
"Pat," breathless from mingled excitement and his quick passage up the
stairs, "Pat--I want your book to be published as well as mine; or
instead of mine. Yours is the better book. I've made up my mind----"
"_Books?_"--she looked up from her squatting position in front of an
old belabelled portmanteau; her arms still plunged elbow-deep in search
of some article. "Heavens above, my good man, who cares about books
now!"
... "They've stopped mattering," she added, an instant later, with
less of vehement scorn in her voice, seeing his expression of slapped
bewilderment.
He sat down on a dusty roll of carpet. It was not much good explaining
to her how his apparently irrelevant decision was indeed closely
linked up with the war ... a sort of readjustment of soul and
spring-cleaning of motive which in its ultimate working-out would at
least infinitesimally contribute towards his dreaming conception of
a nation massed to loftier aim than before August the fourth. He had
trusted to Patricia's understanding of this, since like impulses of her
own had always resolved themselves quickly into deed. But Pat, with
strangely shallow interpretation, said that books did not matter.... He
was six weeks too late to impress her by open admission of his literary
inferiority. Another failure----Why could he never once succeed in
pulling off anything with full staging and effects?
Dejectedly he asked: "What are you looking for?"
"My big waterproof boots. They ought to be here somewhere. I've found
everything else----" She came to an abrupt halt, tugging a sturdy strap
from the depths of the portmanteau. "Good; that'll come in useful. I'm
off to Belgium on Thursday."
"What?" He was on his feet in a moment.
"With Hume Ferguson's Ambulance Corps."
"But--but you're not a nurse."
"No.... My official capacities wall be treasurer, secretary, courier,
and emergency chauffeur. But between ourselves, the idea is that I
should write up incidents of our daily round; and knock them into a
book of which the enormous profits shall be devoted to the purchase of
more ambulances. We've an awfully scratch lot at present."
"Just now you said books didn't matter."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I should have said fiction didn't matter.
Campbell thinks that a volume of impressions jotted down on the spot
ought to go well, before the market is choked up with them."
"Campbell----?"
"Yes. He was up at Ferguson's the other day; and he made a fairly
generous advance offer."
Gareth sat down again, his hands propping his head, while his mind
swam with dim pellucid shapes ... hardly as yet apprehended. Sick
disappointment at his sacrifice so lightly spurned.... Sick fear that
Patricia was going into danger, and that he would not be there to
protect her.... Sick envy of the ease with which she had found a way
into the very centre of action--ungetatable centre where he so longed
to be.... But it was all wrong: she was a woman and he a man. In the
Quest for the Grail, in the Crusades for Jerusalem, it was the knight
who strode forth with mighty effect and clangour, the maiden who sat at
home musing over his shield....
So her intention was indeed to write again!... Already to have arranged
matters with Campbell--_his_ chief; _his_ firm--and he only to hear
now, and how casually, of the step taken!... Things would never be
right again between them--never! never! Although they were married;
although he was the husband;--still that inversion of leadership. And
after the war she would be able to say she had been in the thick of it;
she would be One of Them.... The old horror re-threatening him.
Supposing she did not come back. The Prussians did queer things in
Belgium; queer and ugly things to women--to Pat, who was beautiful and
fearless ... _his wife_. Oh, he was proud of her; but he wished she
had been confronted with sufficient difficulties that her desire, her
excellent and gallant desire to achieve her share in the war, might
have remained stuck fast in a bag of non-accomplishment. He would not
have had it otherwise than that she should wish to participate.
Above all and again ... it was not quite fair. He had been touched to
such an exalted mood during his walk down the Strand; exalted, yet
humble; eager to renounce; sensitive to appreciate each subtle evidence
of a nation quickened at last to nobility. The sort of mood one must
really cherish. And then Pat had thoroughly upset him.
He endeavoured to recapture something of that transparent sunlit
feeling, before it all filtered away....
"Listen, darling----"
"Yes?" She twisted round; and resting both her elbows upon his knees,
gave him a sudden and disconcerting measure of her attention. Almost
he was aware of his soul blinking nervously in a full flood of golden
light.
"I'm glad you feel that you want to give yourself up to the war,
Pat. Every man and every woman and every child in the kingdom ought
to be feeling the same. No matter if war is right or wrong; no matter
if this is the war that ends war, or else another of those beastly
life-spilling limb-lopping campaigns that signify nothing in the
end--still, any great upheaval is welcome when it means all eyes to
the right-about, all eyes fixed steadily upon the same vision--instead
of glancing askew; the shutting-down of obstinate lids; short sight
pitted unfairly against long sight; sight that even in peace-time was
bloodshot and distorted.--Oh, those little squinters at some little
personal advantage to be gained----"
"Gareth, if everyone stopped to say all that before they got to work,
it would waste a lot of the national energy, wouldn't it?"
He was silent, bitterly offended.
"I wasn't proposing to pour out my sentiments about the war at the
street-corners," he remarked at last. "But in a man's own home----"
She kissed him. "I was rude. I'm sorry. But frankly--there isn't much
time nowadays for 'sentiments about the war.'"
Gareth said simply: "I want to help as well. Both of us, Pat. That's
what I was trying to say."
"Good! Loud and enthusiastic applause. There's a mighty lot to be done.
Not for the old honour-and-glory business. This is just an overwhelming
shake-up and shake-together; and ... I'd hate to feel we didn't stand
shoulder-to-shoulder over the war, Gareth."
"We do, dear. Only you put it in five words where I use five hundred.
An overwhelming shake-up and shake-together!"
They were both erect; each looking at the other with a tremulous
half-fearful stir of hope that there was yet salvage to be effected
among the shipwreck of their joint adventure. Patricia, nimbler to
reverse emotions than the man, was silently administering harsh rebuke
to her own arbitrary judgment, that had allowed faith in his innate
fineness to lapse into intolerance. Perhaps after all there was that in
him--her divine failure--which would justify all her one-time beliefs.
She had let instinct be misled by his little irritating surface
faults....
Well--neither time nor place for private adjustments and
reconciliations, while the Germans were barely turned back from the
walls of Paris. She had little patience with those people who used the
war, instead of being used by it. When the crisis was over ... then
maybe she and Gareth, comparing their tiny shares in what was past,
might thus discover a generous new comradeship in mutual respect. Or
even the old glamour might break again, like luminous sunset between
black stripes of cloud. Meanwhile, she would leave it to Gareth's
awakened understanding, that for now silence between them was enough....
"There's a mighty lot to be done," she repeated in her most
matter-of-fact tones; "you might make a creditable start by finding my
waterproof boots."
"Pat--don't go to the Front on Thursday. Please don't. Let's do
something together for the war."
"What?"
"Something...."
"Rather silly for me to give up a definite job, for the sake of
something----"
"For the sake of doing it together."
"Je n'en vois pas la nécessité." She turned away from him, and with
quick restless movements began to throw back the scattered articles
into the portmanteau.
He affected not to notice the growing coldness in her replies. "Take me
with you in the Ambulance Corps."
"You're neither soldier, doctor, nor mechanic."
"Neither are you."
"I happen to be fitted to a job. There are plenty that will fit you,
without butting into the wrong place."
"I wanted us to work together," he reiterated stubbornly.
"Why encumber our separate usefulness by insisting on our private
preference to be useful hand-in-hand?"
"If it _were_ your private preference--it isn't! You're glad to be
dashing off without me."
"I'm glad of this chance to go with the Corps!" Patricia sprang
upright, and flung up her arms behind her head.... He could not refrain
from the thought of how triumphantly nature had equipped her for any
strenuous job she might care to undertake; how little likely that she
would bungle it; how untiring her limbs; how swift to any adjustment
the poised equilibrium of her mind. Nor would any hitch occur in the
plans of Ferguson's Ambulance Corps, robbing her of the forthcoming
rampant opportunities to--to show off. No hitch--where Pat was
concerned. It was fate. She would go. And she would excel.
"You might have waited for me before you settled anything;" he spoke
plaintively as a child who sees another child off to a party. "I
suppose you think I'm not in earnest when I tell you I want to help.
I've thought of nothing else."
"Your meditations do you credit, my lad."
"Is that meant for a taunt?" He flushed hotly. "I'd have enlisted, but
I'm over age."
"I know."
"Well----"
She was making havoc in a trunk at the far end of the room now, half
hidden by an enormous old arm-chair on three legs.... "Most people seem
to have tumbled into some sort of war-job by now, that's all."
Patricia was deliberately behaving like a brute. His futile efforts
to engage her promise that they should "do something together," had
deadened her to a cold fury, all the chillier for her previous glow
of reaction. For she perceived clearly, could not help perceiving,
that his actual motive in thus pleading for combined effort was less
affection for her than sudden panic of his inability to find himself a
place anywhere on the crowded slow-turning machine. He hoped that her
initiative might serve for two. And to this end, for the shielding of
his own self-respect, he would have prevented accomplishment of her
apportioned labours. Pat was not setting forth in any subjective mood
of vainglory. Things had to be done, and the ego who did them mattered
not at all save in efficiency. But Gareth Temple was totally incapable
of submerging his morbid sense of Gareth Temple.... She determined that
this time at least he should expose himself--if only to prevent all
future errors of illusion on her part.
And nothing that she could have said would have increased to such an
extent the terror to which he was naturally prone, as her last remark.
Other people--other people's books--other people's wars----
Was he again to be the one left out?
A rapid mental survey among his friends; thence to casual
acquaintances.... He could not find a single companion for his
isolation. Guy Burnett had obtained his commission in the London
Scottish; Alexander, surprisingly, had enlisted in the ranks; Ran
Wyman was war correspondent in Russia; Graham Carr had departed on a
secret service commission; Leslie Campbell neglected publishing, for
an important post connected with the Commissariat, for which he had
revealed an unexpected fund of expert knowledge. Jim Collins was head
of a branch of motor transport; and Lulu did canteen work with the
Y.M.C.A.; and Mr. Golding, from next door, was a Special Constable,
and dug trenches in Hyde Park on Sundays. Fred Worley went every night
to Victoria or Charing Cross to fetch the wounded; while Trixie sat
all day long romantically in the Tower, mending soldiers' socks. And
Mrs. O'Neill and Anne organized sewing and knitting classes in great
multitude. Everybody busy; everybody rushing about with portentous
faces, and bits of uniform--letters or buttons or badges--stuck
about them to signify they were a certified part of the new-erected
slow-grinding hardly tested machinery of war. Yes ... and via Collins
he had learnt of Napier Kirby among the first to pass brilliantly
the examination for the Royal Flying Corps; of Grace, training to
be a nurse; of Bobby, a strenuous member of the Motor-Cycle Cadets.
From Jim, too, had come news of Kathleen as superintendent in a large
munition factory....
While he had been obsessed with misty and beautiful visions of a people
linked by a common stress and a common sorrow to finding place in a
common cause.... _How_ did one find place? How had all these cogs
slipped into movement? Gareth wished passionately that he had been
of military age, that he might have enlisted, and been quit of the
necessity for initiative. And even then enlistment was voluntary. What
his temperament demanded was to be hauled into action, with no other
option but to submit. He was lost and confused amid this pell-mell
scurry, this upset of tradition and habit and circumstance.... If he
could have begun when the others began, to perceive exactly by what
process of single steps they separately attained to their goal; as far
as possible to imitate them, to get carried on with the impetus of the
rush.... He was resentful now at being confronted by the necessity of
making his own rush.
Above all, resentful of Patricia. She stood as epitome of the entire
faction of persons who had so annoyed him by obtaining before himself
an assured position in the scheme of war. She, at least, might not
have confronted him with the climax of insult. She was his wife ... a
traitor in the very camp. "I'm off to Belgium on Thursday." The easy
announcement had mocked his impotence. She had meant it in mockery....
"I don't know that I'm so keen on doing war-work, if we're not to do
it together," he said; and he said it hating this evil humour she
had thrust upon him; recurrent humour that when it came clung with
leech-like obduracy on to his ashamed consciousness; spirit of idiotic
perversity which caused him to represent himself in such a false light,
to say such foolish untrue things. This mood that stuck and stuck----
"The German menace seems to present itself to you as a merry little
dinner-party, to which we get our invitations in pairs!" Pat flicked at
him.
"It's you, not I, who are scrambling for a seat. I shall look round
quietly to see where I can be useful...."
"And in what direction did you think of exercising your talents?"--Yes,
he should be made to own his loose helpless incompetence, even if it
were ... a disgusting exhibition. For wavering before her mental vision
was a bald newspaper announcement of five weeks ago:--Captain Dacres
Upton--Died of Wounds. And now the pity of it smote her, as it had
not done at the time.... Died of wounds--God! why did that sound in
print as though it had been so terribly slow.... Within a week of the
outbreak of war he had already been on the soil of Flanders; below it,
within little more than a week. And Gareth had at last to meet with the
inevitable comparison. He threw up a shield of desperate bravado:
"I don't see that I need confide my intentions to you. You told me
nothing beforehand of this ambulance business of yours."
"But what do you mean to do, Gareth? Tell me. Say you start 'looking
round quietly' to-morrow ... where will you go? To whom will you apply?
I'm interested in the process."
She had thrown away all pretence, and was openly goading him.... He
recognized the tone and the attitude--as he recognized the answering
sullen lethargy they awakened in himself. In these dual positions he
and Kathleen had hated one another during sixteen years. And from
Kathleen he had rebounded to this younger and yet more vital Kathleen.
He recognized her at last; and at the same hour as her final wrenching
asunder of the man he was from the man he thought himself.
And Patricia realized suddenly that it was just as well she should be
going away from him, and going at once. For she had found that in him
which she could not forbear from tormenting ... again and again she
would be forcing him to lay bare that stupid helpless twitching little
nerve ... she knew now exactly where it cowered, beneath the deceptive
layers of quiet strength and picturesque sadness ... and it tempted
a certain cruelty foreign to her nature.... It was just as well she
should be going away.
He sat hunched on the packing-case, head moodily supported between
his hands. Over in the far corner, in noisy challenging fashion, she
emptied the tin trunk of its contents....
CHAPTER III
"The Round Adventure" was published in mid-October.
It sold seven hundred and thirty-two copies, counting the colonial
sales. A few reviews, closely packed between brimming columns of
war-tidings, mentioned the book in terms of "promising" "whimsical
charm" "pleasant fantasy"; others dismissed it as "inadequate"; one
critic remarked caustically that "Kay Rollinson" might with profit have
been sent for awhile to the front-line trenches.... "In these times,
when men are not afraid to face death every minute from every quarter
of earth and air and water, we have small patience with these morbid
self-analytic heroes beloved of the lady novelist. Gareth Temple--of
whom, despite the masculine pseudonym, one strongly suspects the
sex--must learn that there are many different names for 'funk'; but
nowadays, only one cure for it."
Mr. Campbell congratulated Gareth, absently, on the appearance of the
novel; said he would read it--and forgot. One elderly lady in Somerset
wrote to the author, saying what a beautiful and helpful message the
story had held for her. Locker and Swyn were not encouraged to do more
than advertise "The Round Adventure" inconspicuously for a month; and
then resigned themselves to the comparatively slight financial loss.
Unlike Campbell, however, who in all cases would rather exploit himself
as a good publisher than prove his client a bad author, Forrester was
careful to inform Mr. Temple that they were depressed over the sales.
And there was no perceptible increase of respect in Jimmy's manners.
As Patricia had remarked, these were times of war, and books had
temporarily ceased to matter.
So many dreams ... so much of exultation, of strife and heart-sickness
and envy, of sacrifice, and of rebounding hope ... all of life's issues
since a year and a half hooked on to the single obsession of a book
written and a book published.
And--"Is this _all_?" Gareth could not bring himself to believe that
this was indeed all.
"I shall never dream again...."
He was resentful of this over-toppling unheeding weight that had fallen
athwart his frail creation, and crushed it, and crushed it out of sight
and out of existence. The more resentful, since all about him were
real sufferings, real flesh-and-blood losses; pain and suspense; and
in comparison, the failure of his book counted for much neither in his
own sight nor in anyone else's. One could not even feel noble about it;
merely ... tepid.
He was not employed upon war-work. There was still sufficient to
occupy him as reader to Leslie Campbell. Books about Germany were
being published by the score; exposing German militarism and German
ethics; reminiscences of English governesses who had resided in
Germany; translations from the German writers.... People were curious
to understand this apparently civilized scientific philosophic folk who
had so startlingly revealed themselves savage and of insensitive honour.
Plenty for Gareth to do. Sometimes he almost succeeded in deluding
himself that this was indeed war-work, or meritoriously akin to it. The
first rush to active service was over; had crashed over his protesting
tenacity like a wave, leaving him still as a limpet adherent to the
rock. He also discovered, to his relief, that there were other limpets
on the rock. He did not much like the look of them ... but who was he
to complain? Now that the roar and foam and sputter of the wave had
died down, the limpet no longer felt seriously uncomfortable....
It would have required a very strong reminder of external circumstances
to reanimate Gareth's once flaming visions of all mankind bonded to
unity. One could not run about clamorously in an atmosphere already
adapted, still, settled, to the new conditions. If he had begun
earlier----
Gareth remained where he was.
In the spring of nineteen-fifteen he had the pleasure of assisting
in the publication of Pat O'Neill's volume of vivid impressionistic
jottings--"The Log-Book"--actual experience, veined by brilliant humour
or fiery pity. Published at half a crown, it sold over twenty thousand
copies, of which Ferguson's Ambulance Corps reaped the entire benefit.
Patricia did not even return to England to savour her success. "...
I'm only the gramophone needle," she scribbled to Gareth; "without me
these incidents would not be recorded on the wax; but I've created
nothing!"--This in answer to the letter of congratulation which he had
written at the prompting of one of his best and sweetest impulses; a
letter which was generous and sincere, and altogether charming.
It was another whole year before she eventually permitted herself a
short holiday in England. She was doing strenuous and useful work with
the Corps, and could very hardly be spared from any of her capacities,
to which time and emergency had added nursing and first-aid surgery. A
second volume of "The Log-Book" had recently been published, and was
already humming through its ninth edition ... Leslie Campbell forgave
that little matter of "The Reverse of the Medal" withdrawn; he was very
pleased with Pat O'Neill. So were Campbell's Young Men--such of the
band whose various leaves happened now, for the first time since the
outbreak of the war, to coincide. Vincent Alexander had been killed at
the Dardanelles; and young Burnett had lost a leg in the same sorrowful
expedition; Graham Carr was in London, convalescent from a light attack
of typhoid; Ran Wyman, on the other hand, was suffering from nothing
worse than a startled discovery of that especial form of Deity that is
born and bred solely in Russia, and whose divine simplicity is badly
damaged by import into England.
In and out of the office, as in pre-war days; the same arrogance of
freemasonry; the same disregard of persons outside the temporarily
predominating subject; the same eager brilliant discussions, confident
laying down of the law, flippant esoteric allusions; rather more of
manliness and common sense, perhaps, and less of windy theory.
And the reader sat at his desk and listened, with the same wistful
sense of being entirely superfluous. It did not add any strangeness
to the scene that Pat should now be One of Them. She merely occupied
the vacant space into which he had always dreamt his own person; and
seemed quite at home in it. He had seen practically nothing of his wife
during her week's nominal stay at Blenheim Terrace. She was claimed
incessantly, and seemed to enjoy the whirlwind holiday; though the
old contradiction was visible again between sad dead eyes and mocking
up-curve of the lips.... Patricia had received the stamp of war.
"Until your advent, I was the only feminine element in these sacred
offices," said Mona Gurney, whom Graham Carr had just introduced.
The latter put in: "And even now we only accept her ladylike little
person for the sake of her books' sturdy uncompromising masculinity.
Candidly, Pat, did you expect anything like this to be the author of
'Rust on the Plough'?"
Mona Gurney's fists flew up to her huddled shoulders, with a funny
little gesture of anger all her own: "Graham, you ask everybody
that.--It's _silly_ to expect me to wear straws in my hair and yellow
clay on my boots, just because I get good reviews in the 'Agricultural
Monthly.'" She turned a small pleading face towards Patricia: "Mr.
Campbell is quite as bad. For weeks he couldn't make head or tail
of me; then he had an inspiration: invited me to spend a day in the
country, led me into a field ... and waited for me to get excited.
When I didn't cast myself headlong on the earth and bite it, he was
disappointed, and took me back to town."
"If I were to make head or tail of you," Pat exclaimed laughing, "it
should be a fuzzy furry grey tail that was cocked upright ... and
between your wee paws I should just love to pop a nut! I'm delighted
to meet you, Miss Gurney; and since Graham has started us on odious
personalities, let me confess that never in my life have I encountered
anyone quite so fascinatingly like a squirrel!"
Mona's hands flew up again, accompanying a laugh that was midway
between a squeak and a gurgle: "Oh dear!--and Alex always used to call
me a Puritan."
"A Puritan squirrel expresses it exactly." But a lull fell upon
conversation at the mention of Vincent Alexander. He had been popular
among these of his friends who had pierced beneath his extreme outward
decorum.
The lull was broken by whir of the telephone bell.
"Let me answer it!" Guy Burnett exclaimed, who had that instant hobbled
in with Ran Wyman. "It will be like a taste of old times." For he
was still in his blue hospital suit; and far too weak and white to
think just yet of returning to the firm; though rumour whispered that
presently his father intended to buy him a partnership with Leslie
Campbell.... "Hello! Hello!... Come back, you blighter--what d'you
want to run away for?... Hello-o-o-o!... Carr, there was a time when I
could have betted on this being an order for 'Piccadilly.'"
"Yer can bet yer shirt it's fur the 'Log-Book' now," put in the
Heart-breaker, raising a damp crimson face from his parcel-packing, and
speaking in tones that were husky with pride and passion. "It's that
bloomin' 'Log-Book' 'ere all day long, till we're fair fed up with it.
Really we are, Miss O'Neill."
"... Hello!... Yes--yes.... All right. By to-morrow?--certainly,
nothing easier.... Hi! no! wait a minute...." Burnett turned to
Campbell who had thrust a head round the door of his sanctum.
"'Evening, sir--I say, I'm not up-to-date any more in these matters.
Hale's are asking if the hundred copies of 'The Log-Book' are ready for
'em yet, according to promise?"
"Nay, we can't get the edeetions through at that pace. Enquire if they
happen to ken there's a European War in prawgress!" with terrific scorn.
Burnett did so; and then with a cordial "good-bye," replaced the
receiver.
"It's really rather a miracle to find any sort of book-interest
surviving after two years of topsy-turvydom," Ran Wyman commented,
from the table on to which he had swung himself beside Pat. "We're a
marvellous nation; I expected a landslide in literature; and here we
are, flourishing!"
"Publishing is awnly being carried on under enormous deefficulties,"
Campbell announced cheerfully; "dearth of paper--dearth of
labour--dearth of railway faceelities--dearth of reviews--dearth of the
public's money----"
"Dearth of everything except authors. Behold us in rich quantities,
gladdening to the eye. And surely no dearth of material, either;
consider with what an infinitely fresh store of possibilities the war
has equipped our jaded brains."
"Yus--Ran thinks I left a leg at Suvla Bay, so that he should write
eight hundred pages on the theme of 'God's in his Russia, all's right
with the----'"
"Shut up!" Wyman's narrow black eyes were wet, and he blinked them
rapidly. Confronted with the boy's crippled condition, he was absurdly
ashamed of the luck which had carried him unscathed through eighteen
months of impudent exposure to all hazards.
Graham Carr put the general question as to whether they considered it
legitimate to use the war for purposes of fiction?
"What's your objection, Carr?"
"Life-and-death is a bigger thing than pen-and-ink."
"Dinna say that, laddie. In some cases, pen and ink has sur-r-rvived
life and death."
"One in every thousand. The nine hundred and ninety nine are merely ...
impertinent."
Patricia murmured reminiscently: "'... And when he came back to her, he
wore on his breast a little piece of metal inscribed: For Valour.... He
had made good, after all!'"
"That's the stuff. The editor of the 'Blue Sky' told me that in the
first month of the war he received uncountable short stories in the
line of 'Was He A Coward?' 'Coward V.C.' 'The Girl who Chucked up the
Man who Funked for his Brother who Didn't' ... and so on. It's all
very well in peace-time to pander to a certain maudlin moral hysteria
in the reading public. But the war's real enough and raw enough--and
ought to be immune from cheap serial exploitation." Carr spoke with the
authority of one who since the fourth of August, 1914, had not once
been betrayed into print.
"But the kind of penny serial stuff you mention is not real," Patricia
argued; "it's about a quite pretty little war--a war in muslin with a
light blue sash--the sort of war one could invite to tea with one's
children and know it would not set a bad example. Far enough removed
from the actual thing, to make it harmless. It's the sort of war in
which the heroine is always a Red Cross Nurse without any previous
training; with an adjustable face that can remind each and every
wounded officer in the ward of his girl at home.... Did any of you
ever stumble across that priceless gem: 'In spite of his lameness, he
embraced her passionately!'?"
"That's the rank and file of war fiction," Carr said; "the next
grade annoys me more, because it ought to know better: The pre-war
psychological problem presented, with the war conveniently lugged in
towards the end, as _deus ex_, to solve all difficulties, cut all
strains, adjust all quarrels. Then, for want of definite conclusion,
the Woman watches the Man (not the hero and heroine in this grade)
depart for the Front, with a queer uplifted premonition in her
heart that he will come safely through the Supreme Test--just he,
_ausgesucht_--as we say in the dead languages."
Campbell cried indignantly: "Ye're unjust, Carr. This is truth ye
were quoting. For in every single case all over the world, wasn't the
war just bound to tumble unexpectedly into some seetuation or other,
and deeslocate it?" Pat and Gareth exchanged a quick look; while
Campbell went on: "It's far more unnatural to work oot the problem to
its logical conclusion of what would have happened if the war hadn't
happened."
"It just depends if you look upon the war as the sum total of what each
individual's acts and feelings went to make it, and are still making
it; or as a complete descent from the Absolute, regardless of atomic
contribution?"
"Monism or pluralism--what does it matter?" cried Pat, impatient as
usual with unprofitable theorizing. "The answer makes no practical
difference either in the conduct or the result of the war."
Carr immediately accused her of pragmatism.
"The war has killed 'isms,'" declared Ran Wyman. To which Carr replied
curtly: "Till the day when the 'isms' shall kill war."
"All the same, the sort of modern novel that tries to ignore the war,
smells fusty--like a station cab. I've read a few: the author makes
no allusion at all to the fact of the war; but at the same time his
characters are rather inexplicably inclined to cold-shoulder Germany;
almost to cut it dead ... instinctive second-sight, I suppose. General
impression of: 'I know something about you, Mr. Germany, but I won't
tell, 'cos this isn't a war-novel!'--intensely irritating. Also an
occasional careless remark on the lines of: 'Yes, I want my son to
learn how to box a compass--it may be of use to him in the far-off
eventuality of European war, which I somehow think is not so far off as
it seems now!'--Clever fellow!"
"And even granted," said Pat, "that the best authors--top-grade--wait
for a focussed perspective of all this scurrying muddle----"
Unceremoniously Guy Burnett interrupted her:
"Why should they? It's just this scurrying muddle, as you call it, that
ought to be chronicled by any writer whose brain is sufficiently nimble
to catch it. We can trust to historians for the eventual consistent
balancing and summing-up; but just the slippery, shifting, sliding
kaleidoscope of the war, as filtered through this personality and
that----"
"Let me point out, Guy, that you can't filter a kaleidoscope ... at any
rate, not in the presence of Leslie Campbell. We owe something still to
the prestige of the firm."
"Nobody wants an impersonal and godlike summary of the Great War as
yet. _That_ would be impertinent, if you like!"
Patricia said lightly: "I beg of you not to apologize; I began a
sentence about ten minutes ago; it's not of the faintest interest to
anyone save myself--but allowing that, I'd like to finish it."
Burnett apologized profusely; and the company hushed their tongues, and
gazed with admiring expectancy upon Pat O'Neill.
"Take it for granted that a professional writer feels like Mr. Graham
Carr on the impertinence of nibbling at such a giant subject; take it
also that the said writer is anxious to satisfy the public's yearnful
plea for distraction from the one topic;--does Mr. Graham Carr realize
the petty difficulties that beset such a writer from the outset? A
novel that does not deal with the war, must presumably not be laid in
times of war; because the war, if once mentioned, inevitably occupies
the foreground--as it has in all our lives. Therefore the writer,
even if he or she wishes to be up-to-date, must break the tale off
sharply at the end of June, nineteen-fourteen. And if the characters
are to spread themselves and grow old, he must either let them disport
themselves in a wholly problematic after-the-war period--in which
God help the prophetic instinct!--or else reckon all his dates and
everybody's ages backwards from the last chapter, so as to be correct
in a false assumption that modern times ended two years ago ...
which mathematical callisthenics will probably land him in a bag of
anachronisms----"
"Heavens, child! it's not at all necessary to do all that; there are
surely millions of old books to satisfy that section of the reading
public who require distraction from the war."
"Then if WE--the literary fraternity--are neither to express ourselves
on the subject of the war, nor on the subject of otherwise, with what
do you suggest our busy pens shall be occupied?"
"With nothing, for the duration of the war. Let 'em rust. Nobody will
miss 'em; and there's plenty of emergency work to be done. I can safely
make this statement, as none of us present are squandering our energies
on irrelevant fiction."
Mona Gurney broke down, and shed tears.
"My darling! my precious!" Wyman leapt to her side, and attempted
ineffectually to console her. "What is it? What has the nasty man said
to upset you? Don't you believe a word of it----"
"It's such a beautiful book!" she sobbed. "And I thought I was keeping
the lamp of civilization trimmed and burning--I did, truly.... I said
so every time I sat down at my desk. It's two hundred and twenty
thousand words, and only five more chapters to write----"
"Two hundred and twenty thousand wur-r-rds, and not finished yet!"
Campbell was aghast. "But what may be the theme of this--this
paper-eating monstrosity, my dear?"
Mona broke away from Ran's cherishing arms, and sat up on her haunches
with spasmodic fidelity to Patricia's simile of a wee furry creature
about to beg: "Oh, it is, it _is_ a lovely book!" screwing up her eyes
and mouth in an ecstasy of remembrance. "It's all about the Wars of the
Roses!"
A shout of laughter greeted the announcement.
"But what's wrong with _this_ war, Mona?--what's wrong with it? Why be
prehistoric?--drag up these far-fetched relics from the ruins of time,
when the genuine article is in the next room, so to speak?"
"Because it's in _this_ room--and a little too genuine," Mona
explained. "I do agree with Graham in wanting to let the pudding get
cold before I dig in my spoon--but I can't write quite inconsequent
novels on heredity or _la femme incomprise_, either---just at present.
And I can't put out the lamp altogether, Graham; I can't! I can't!"
"Puddings and lamps ... surely one of the minor evils of the war is the
abundance of bad metaphor to which it can give rise even in this picked
assembly!"
Burnett enquired seriously: "Nothing amiss with the soil of Sussex, is
there, Miss Gurney, that you should abandon it? We like you when you're
agricultural ... you influenced me to start growing mignonette in a
window-box, once."
"You don't understand--I had to express myself about war--war in the
generic sense. The inner psychology of war always remains the same,
whether it's York and Lancaster--North and South America--the Assyrians
and the Babylonians--or the Allies and the Huns. There's not a problem
connected with the war which can be raised now, which could not have
been equally contended in any one of those campaigns."
"Thousands, Mona."
"Not one, Ran--in its underlying human substance. I'm not referring to
alterations in the method of warfare; naturally these are subject to
periodic changes----"
"And the human problems are dependent on these changes." He looked
round for his hat: "'Books and the War'! It's been a most illuminating
discussion. Patricia, you're dining with me in half an hour, and don't
forget it."
"Oh, Miss O'Neill, you must spare me an evening soon, away from all
these talkative men; won't you?" Mona Gurney was not alone in always
calling Pat by the name under which she wrote. They were all liable to
forget, at Leslie Campbell's, that she was the wife of Gareth Temple.
"Not this side of Christmas, Miss Gurney, unless you cross the Channel.
I'm off again to-night. But do send me a copy of the new book, if it
comes out in the autumn. Just to remind me of this past hour----"
"Of which the summing-up----"
"No, Ran--No!" they all cried in chorus. But unperturbedly sententious,
Wyman went on: "... is this: that the underlying motive power for
the continual and increasing eruption of war literature, in spite of
discouragement and difficulties, is neither impertinence, gold-greed,
nor public demand; but rather the fact that each person feels urgently
the necessity somehow to identify himself with the war, for fear of
being stranded for ever upon its outer rim. Expression is one way of
connection----"
"_No._"
It was Gareth who in a low voice had contradicted; though till the
rest of the company turned and stared at him in some surprise at his
unwonted contribution to the argument, he was not sure if he had spoken
aloud the negative shouted by his soul.
Carr said, after a pause, remembering vaguely that he had been
confidant to rather a queer outburst from the reader, some years ago:
"Why 'no,' Temple? You're qualified to put us all right on the subject;
you're in the thick of it here, while we've been scampering about the
globe."
"'The thick of it' is hardly in a publisher's office," Gareth
retorted bitterly, though the other man's remark had been made
without any sub-intention to hurt. "It's the 'thin of it'--the
war in words--you never grope through them to the realities going
on beyond. Words that muffle suffering till it reaches here
beautiful--poignant--noble--crude--restrained--oh, as anything but
itself! First the war books, and then criticism of the books, and
criticism of the criticism ... how are we--how am I to get past that
to the very beat of the war?... The very beat of the war--that's only
a phrase too--I don't know what it signifies, when I come to think
about it. But expression is _not_ connection. Those like you--and
you--and you----" His look roamed from Carr to Wyman, rested an instant
on young Burnett's drawn thin face--avoided Patricia altogether--"who
have fought in the war, can you be identified with it any closer by ...
writing about it?" He came to a halt; experienced a queer satisfaction
in the knowledge that for once they were all listening to him
intently ... then, in desperate realization that even now he was
only talking about talk, rushed on to achievement of his purpose: "I
intend to leave here--resign my job as reader. I can't stand it any
longer, Mr. Campbell; I want things straight from the source ... it's
indecent to feel as heroic as I do after reading a good war-novel ...
to respond as I do to a mere clump of words. Do you remember, at the
very beginning of hostilities, when the message came through: 'The
Black Watch is cut to pieces!'--I've never forgotten that--the stern
sombre ring of it.... I'd repeat it, and feel my face growing stern and
sombre. It was all in the sound; just as bad if it had been the Second
Middlesex ... but not to me. I can't get beneath the covers. Suvla
Bay--that's exciting too ... though hardly to you and me in quite the
same way, Burnett. I don't suppose the name matters much to you. Suvla
Bay....
"And when the war is over, I shall be left with a fistful of
second-hand quotations. Stranded on the outer rim. If I stop here,
reading about it, hearing about it. Here--where the best emotion the
Great War has to give me is a thrill out of someone else's book--and
the worst thing it can do to me is to spoil the chances of my own...."
He walked blindly from the room. On the threshold the conviction was
still upon him that he had been eloquent. Half-way down the flight of
stairs, he wondered if he had made a complete fool of himself. Already
it occurred to him that after all Campbell might not take seriously his
notice to resign his job. Although certainly it was meant seriously.
But the embers of feeling of the past two years had blazed up and burnt
themselves out in speech. ... And now his only desire was to ascertain
how his outburst had impressed Patricia. He stood stock-still, one
hand gripping the iron balustrade rail ... listened intently. He had
left the door ajar ... and was aware that Campbell had just said
something--he could not catch what. Then clear and careless, came Pat's
reply:
"Ah, but he'll be back in a day or two, Mr. Campbell. Dear old
Gareth--his intentions are sincere, but rather collapsible!"
... Gareth went on, down the stairs, and into the street.
Pat knew.
CHAPTER IV
He did not go back to Leslie Campbell's after two or three days. He
went back after a fortnight....
For one tensely expectant week, he waited for England to become
aware of the fact that he was now definitely free to take up any
war work it might have been holding in reserve for him. A phrase in
poster use became part of his mental equipment--he was ready to do
his bit--eager to do his bit--surely to the nation might be left the
minor responsibility of finding him the bit to do. Most people, he
conjectured hazily, "dropped into something" by invitation; a friend
"in the swim"; a chance encounter with another friend who "tipped
them the wink." And thus, by slang and by haphazard, the great ship
Organization was manned, and launched, to be tested in strange and
stormy seas.
Pending his new official appointment, Gareth made of his nights
a feverish inferno by conjuring up a series of horror-stricken
predicaments in which he might find himself involved in every fresh
employment that his fancy selected as probable to materialize on the
following day. Suppose he were given a job for which he was totally
incapable, and they did not believe his protestations, and he
bungled it--with disastrous public consequences. Or suppose, misled
by the quiet strength of his personality, they put him in a position
of authority--he who could never master the secret of dealing with
subordinates ... and suppose these noticed his lack of confidence,
mocked his waverings, flouted his commands; suppose he were told
to perform some important mission, and it were taken for granted
that he knew more than he did, and he did not fully understand his
instructions, and dared not ask further questions; suppose....
He had been too long in the sheltered routine of Leslie Campbell's, not
to torment himself with the dread of exposure to the awful unknown.
But still, there was a thrill and a sweetness in the daylight thought
that he was doing war-work at last!
And at last the long droning summer days of idleness and boredom
convinced him that he was doing nothing of the sort. There was really
and actually not much open to a man of forty-three, well over age
for the Conscription Act, both shy and contemptuous of home service
or the special constable badge, and not sufficiently One of Them, in
the generic sense of the phrase, to be swung aloft by the crane of
influence and lowered into exactly the right place.
He discovered there were Labour Bureaux, where one might put down one's
marketable assets. What were his marketable assets? Gareth spent a
whole night chasing these elusive qualities and trying to reduce them
to a clear statement.
"I should like a job in the Censorship," he decided finally. And left
it at that.
He had put down his name on the Civil Service list, and was told
that he would hear from them in due course. But though the rumour
was current that men were badly wanted to replace those who had been
called up, yet beyond sending him a paper to fill up with details of
age, citizenship, etc., the administration seemed to have successfully
pigeon-holed his application. He was glad of their forgetfulness;
having stood for a moment outside one of the big offices, quailing from
the prospect of being absorbed and lost among these hundreds of drab
little men scurrying out of the building for their hour of lunch and
relaxation. Too humble to deem himself fit for anything more splendid
than this, he was still too much the dreamer to accept the belief that
symbolically to bear a banner in the great Crusade could be reduced
actually to such humdrum insignificance.
And he missed the world of books. Ever more and more he missed it.
That, after all, was the atmosphere he best understood, where words
stood for deeds, and the importance of words for the importance of
deeds; where all life was imprisoned by language, translated into
style, shut between covers.... For nineteen years he had been a
reader ... two weeks astray on the hustling pavements were enough to
make him regard the dim little offices off Covent Garden as precious
sanctuary.
So he went back.
Leslie Campbell readily accepted his stumbling explanations of his
odd behaviour a fortnight ago. He had not been well--the strain of
the war--nerves out of order; and then the culminating anxiety of his
wife's departure that night for Flanders.... "It seems worse when they
return, and then go out again, doesn't it, sir?"
Campbell quite understood. He was only too glad of this reinstallation
of a person on whom he could rely; eager as he was to devote most of
his own time to his labours on the Commissariat. Alexander was dead;
and Guy Burnett not yet well enough to take up the partnership....
Gareth's departure from the firm had been a definite nuisance. "He's
no' indeespensable," reflected Campbell, "but time meks of a man a vary
useful habit!"
Gareth walked slowly down the Strand, haunted by a queer echo of his
own voice as it had recently spoken, only transposed to a higher
shriller key. "The strain of the war ... my nerves are out of
order ... and then my husband off to-night for the Front." So might a
woman have offered excuse for an outburst of hysteria. So might a woman
be placed, with the man she loved on the eve of departure. So might a
woman feel about the war, as he had been feeling all the while ... his
vague half-splendid, half-pitiful dreams; his stifled longing to have
the right, right of sex, maybe--to play the passive sacrificial part
unquestioned and unashamed....
He butted full into a figure standing stock-still, engrossed in the
open flapping sheets of an evening paper. At the force of the impact
she turned--and he broke off his apologies.
"Kathleen!"
She showed no surprise at the encounter. And indeed, it was curious
that this should be their first accidental meeting since she had bidden
him a curt good-bye in the dining-room of Pacific Villa.
"Have you seen this?" she asked directly, pointing to a column in the
paper, that dealt with a brilliant and successful feat on the part
of two British airmen in France, in combat with a number of enemy
aeroplanes sent up to prevent them from obtaining photographs of a very
important section of trench. Both pilot and observer were recommended
for the D.S.O.: Lieutenant Frank Morton and Captain Napier Kirby....
Gareth looked at Kathleen; her eyes were soft and shining; her mouth
tremulous.
"Only very slightly wounded, they say. But he was always a reckless
idiot!" with a half-laugh of tenderness that held a sheer girlish
quality. Then suddenly she seemed to realize Gareth, and her face
altered to its remembered harshness.
"Why didn't you let me go with him, that time? If you had ... he would
be mine now--now that...."
Gareth replied: "Yes, but I was too unhappy; somebody had got in first
with the theme of my book."
"Somebody? Who?"
"Patricia."
"Before you met her?"
"Yes."
She brooded a moment on this. The passers-by jostled their standing
figures impatiently.
"I read a novel of yours; in 1914, wasn't it? But hers----"
"She gave it up for mine."
"Oh.... Yes, she would. I daresay hers was a good deal better."
He repeated: "A good deal better."
"Where is your wife now?"
"In Flanders. With the Ambulance Corps. She has been out since the
beginning."
Kathleen's ironic smile comprehended and epitomized his entire married
life, its failure and the causes for its failure; nay, went still
further back, and assumed a triumphant intention on her own part that
he should have undergone this second and more poignant disillusion.
"We're in the way here. Good-bye."
He overtook her, and walked by her side towards Trafalgar Square.
"One minute. You've told me nothing about yourself."
"Touching display of interest!"
"Pat might have said that," he mused dispassionately.
She slightly lifted her brows. "Surely there can be no resemblance
between Patricia and myself?"
"You are being a little bit ungenerous," said the man, gently
enough. "Lulu Collins told me you held a very responsible post in a
high-explosive factory; do you like the work?"
"Yes. It's all-absorbing, which is the main thing. I was meant for
tough employment, I think; it strengthens my sinews. I'm only in London
for the day, sent down to interview the Minister of Munitions. What are
you doing? Still stuck with Leslie Campbell?"
"I gave him notice a fortnight ago," carefully adhering to the truth.
Then: "I'm going out to Flanders in a few days, as a free-lance
journalist."
"Is that allowed?"
"There are ways and means of squaring people--influence ..." said
Gareth Temple.
"You'll meet with difficulties."
"I shall be killed."
The quiet certainty of his tones attracted her notice. "Do you want to
die?"
He answered with seeming inconsequence: "This war wasn't made for the
little people. It's absurd to suppose that a big thing can inflate our
natures to correspond. We remain little people hopelessly out of scale
with the big thing, instead of little people comfortably tucked up
with little things. It's rather unfair--if the war hadn't happened, we
need never have been found out. Millions of little people have lived
honoured, respected, admired even, because their luck has never sent a
European conflict to test them."
It was queer to be confiding thus in Kathleen. But she stimulated
him ... as she had always done; she and her like. The sudden startling
resolve of the past few moments, startling even to himself, startlingly
clear and formulated, was entirely resultant upon her presence; the
keen ring of her voice, her aloof walk, sombre hawk's face, and thin
eyebrows like curved black scimitars. Spiritually and actually she
was worn by her own tempestuous impatience to the finest possible
edge. Patricia would one day be like this. He continued to walk beside
Kathleen, because of the acute thrill of those moments when she
reminded him of Patricia.... And he continued word-spinning in a dizzy
triumphant exultation at the ease with which the whole theme of his
life was unrolling itself into a final pageantry of speech. He supposed
there must be an uncanny finality about this indulgence accorded him in
his favourite pastime, since never before had he been able to express
himself unhindered by the drag of self-deception. No doubt but that
Kathleen was amazed to silence at his power to exhibit himself so
stripped of all illusion; he who had always been supremely a figure
of illusions. He would amaze her yet more. Tingling with a strange
excitement, he went on:
"You were my first love, Kathleen; and Patricia my last. And you
were the overture to Patricia, as she was the echo to you. No one in
between. Except a dream of the girl I would love to have loved ...
weaker than myself, frail and peaceful, a cool shadow-world ... and she
would have relied on my strength ... the typical maiden to a knight....
I dreamt of her when I was a boy, reading the 'Idylls of the King,' on
the hearthrug in the parlour above the shop.... Well--I dream of her
still. And I daresay if we met she could not awaken a single throb in
me. Just because I'm a woman-soul myself, Kathleen, I was fated to be
magnetically attracted again and again by the bolder and more vital
nature in your sex; the strong nature that could not fail to make me
miserable directly on finding me out. That other girl--my ideal--she
would have admired me. You never admired me, did you, Kathleen?"
a fleeting whimsicality in the smile he bestowed on her. "Nor did
Patricia ... Patricia....
"I've never been able to impress Patricia. That's why I'm setting
off for Flanders now. It was just an impulse that you inspired....
I believe the right one at last. Usually I play about too long with
the pretty word-rhythms and word-patterns, and the act comes too late
for effect. But not this time. This time I'm leaving out the talk. I
shall meet her somewhere in the chaos over there--one does meet people
strangely; why, you were only in London for one day! And I shall meet
my death, too, somehow, in the chaos over there ... because it's the
inevitable end of my round adventure."
There was a slight tinge of weariness in his companion's tone, as she
asked: "_Do_ people meet with their inevitable ends? Surely life is
haphazard and death inconsequent?"
He shook his head. "You say you have read my book? I believe every
life is formed as a complete wheel, of which the end closes up with
the start, and the axis is some special adventure. Only so few are
conscious of the shape ... they assume that adventure must of
necessity be joyous adventure--loud clarion-calls--the D.S.O.... My
round adventure was to be superfluous--the onlooker at other people's
adventures--never One of Them.... I've felt it, always. Now I can see
it--and give in. The Great War ... there's no room for superfluous
people in the Great War. The best way they can fulfil themselves is
by self-effacement ... self-removal. I haven't the pluck for suicide,
Kathleen; but I have faith in my round adventure--and I'm going to
Flanders, to Patricia, where my faith will prove itself ... some
significant completion of the whole. Perhaps even I may be allowed in
death what wasn't part of the scheme of life: to make an impression
on the woman I love. Childish, I know--but ... yes, I think the
Draughtsman will allow that. He has an excellent gift for irony."
"I must leave you here," said Kathleen abruptly.
They stood at the corner of Whitehall. She held out her hand.
"Good-bye."
Her inner thought was: "And I stood this sort of thing for sixteen
years...."
"Good-bye," he said absently; "when shall I see you again?"... and let
fall her hand and strolled away, his eyes still misty with visions.
* * * * *
About fifty seconds after he had left her side, a shattering explosion
was heard in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. An apparently
friendly aeroplane had dropped a couple of random bombs; and then,
soaring from the swoop, disappeared among the clouds. One of the
bombs rolled harmlessly off the slate roof of an outhouse and did no
mischief. The other wounded a cat, damaged an outjutting iron balcony,
and killed Gareth Temple. A newspaper paragraph, reporting the incident
the following day, remarked that the machine must have been one of our
own which had fallen into German hands. "After releasing the bombs, the
enemy was able to effect an escape. Fortunately the casualties were
insignificant."
THE END
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