"'TONO-BUNGAY\n\nby H.G Wells\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE FIRST\n\nTHE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIRST\n\nOF BLADESOVER HOUSE, AND MY MOTHER; AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY\n\n\nI\n\nMost people in this world seem to live \"in character\"; they have a\nbeginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with\nanother and true to the rules of their type. You can speak of them as\nbeing of this sort of people or that. They are, as theatrical people\nsay, no more (and no less) than \"character actors.\" They have a class,\nthey have a place, they know what is becoming in them and what is due to\nthem, and their proper size of tombstone tells at last how properly they\nhave played the part. But there is also another kind of life that is not\nso much living as a miscellaneous tasting of life. One gets hit by some\nunusual transverse force, one is jerked out of one\'s stratum and lives\ncrosswise for the rest of the time, and, as it were, in a succession\nof samples. That has been my lot, and that is what has set me at last\nwriting something in the nature of a novel. I have got an unusual series\nof impressions that I want very urgently to tell. I have seen life at\nvery different levels, and at all these levels I have seen it with a\nsort of intimacy and in good faith. I have been a native in many social\ncountries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, my\ncousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten\nillegal snacks--the unjustifiable gifts of footmen--in pantries,\nand been despised for my want of style (and subsequently married and\ndivorced) by the daughter of a gasworks clerk; and--to go to my other\nextreme--I was once--oh, glittering days!--an item in the house-party\nof a countess. She was, I admit, a countess with a financial aspect, but\nstill, you know, a countess. I\'ve seen these people at various angles.\nAt the dinner-table I\'ve met not simply the titled but the great. On\none occasion--it is my brightest memory--I upset my champagne over the\ntrousers of the greatest statesman in the empire--Heaven forbid I should\nbe so invidious as to name him!--in the warmth of our mutual admiration.\n\nAnd once (though it is the most incidental thing in my life) I murdered\na man....\n\nYes, I\'ve seen a curious variety of people and ways of living\naltogether. Odd people they all are great and small, very much alike at\nbottom and curiously different on their surfaces. I wish I had ranged\njust a little further both up and down, seeing I have ranged so far.\nRoyalty must be worth knowing and very great fun. But my contacts with\nprinces have been limited to quite public occasions, nor at the other\nend of the scale have I had what I should call an inside acquaintance\nwith that dusty but attractive class of people who go about on the\nhigh-roads drunk but enfamille (so redeeming the minor lapse), in the\nsummertime, with a perambulator, lavender to sell, sun-brown children,\na smell, and ambiguous bundles that fire the imagination. Navvies,\nfarm-labourers, sailormen and stokers, all such as sit in 1834\nbeer-houses, are beyond me also, and I suppose must remain so now for\never. My intercourse with the ducal rank too has been negligible; I\nonce went shooting with a duke, and in an outburst of what was no doubt\nsnobbishness, did my best to get him in the legs. But that failed.\n\nI\'m sorry I haven\'t done the whole lot though....\n\nYou will ask by what merit I achieved this remarkable social range,\nthis extensive cross-section of the British social organism. It was the\nAccident of Birth. It always is in England.\n\nIndeed, if I may make the remark so cosmic, everything is. But that is\nby the way. I was my uncle\'s nephew, and my uncle was no less a person\nthan Edward Ponderevo, whose comet-like transit of the financial\nheavens happened--it is now ten years ago! Do you remember the days\nof Ponderevo, the great days, I mean, of Ponderevo? Perhaps you had\na trifle in some world-shaking enterprise! Then you know him only\ntoo well. Astraddle on Tono-Bungay, he flashed athwart the empty\nheavens--like a comet--rather, like a stupendous rocket!--and overawed\ninvestors spoke of his star. At his zenith he burst into a cloud of\nthe most magnificent promotions. What a time that was! The Napoleon of\ndomestic conveniences!\n\nI was his nephew, his peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on\nto his coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the\nchemist\'s shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I was, you might say, the\nstick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played\nwith millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird\'s-eye view of the\nmodern world, I fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two\nand twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon,\nbut greatly edified, into this Thames-side yard, into these white heats\nand hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel--to think it all over\nin my leisure and jot down the notes and inconsecutive observations\nthat make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The\nzenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel in the\nLord Roberts B....\n\nI warn you this book is going to be something of an agglomeration. I\nwant to trace my social trajectory (and my uncle\'s) as the main line of\nmy story, but as this is my first novel and almost certainly my last,\nI want to get in, too, all sorts of things that struck me, things that\namused me and impressions I got--even although they don\'t minister\ndirectly to my narrative at all. I want to set out my own queer love\nexperiences too, such as they are, for they troubled and distressed\nand swayed me hugely, and they still seem to me to contain all sorts of\nirrational and debatable elements that I shall be the clearer-headed\nfor getting on paper. And possibly I may even flow into descriptions of\npeople who are really no more than people seen in transit, just\nbecause it amuses me to recall what they said and did to us, and\nmore particularly how they behaved in the brief but splendid glare of\nTono-Bungay and its still more glaring offspring. It lit some of them\nup, I can assure you! Indeed, I want to get in all sorts of things. My\nideas of a novel all through are comprehensive rather than austere....\n\nTono-Bungay still figures on the hoardings, it stands in rows in every\nchemist\'s storeroom, it still assuages the coughs of age and brightens\nthe elderly eye and loosens the elderly tongue; but its social glory,\nits financial illumination, have faded from the world for ever. And I,\nsole scorched survivor from the blaze, sit writing of it here in an air\nthat is never still for the clang and thunder of machines, on a table\nlittered with working drawings, and amid fragments of models and notes\nabout velocities and air and water pressures and trajectories--of an\naltogether different sort from that of Tono-Bungay.\n\nII\n\nI write that much and look at it, and wonder whether, after all, this is\nany fair statement of what I am attempting in this book. I\'ve given, I\nsee, an impression that I want to make simply a hotch-potch of anecdotes\nand experiences with my uncle swimming in the middle as the largest lump\nof victual. I\'ll own that here, with the pen already started, I realise\nwhat a fermenting mass of things learnt and emotions experienced and\ntheories formed I\'ve got to deal with, and how, in a sense, hopeless my\nbook must be from the very outset. I suppose what I\'m really trying to\nrender is nothing more nor less than Life--as one man has found it. I\nwant to tell--MYSELF, and my impressions of the thing as a whole, to say\nthings I have come to feel intensely of the laws, traditions, usages,\nand ideas we call society, and how we poor individuals get driven and\nlured and stranded among these windy, perplexing shoals and channels.\nI\'ve got, I suppose, to a time of life when things begin to take on\nshapes that have an air of reality, and become no longer material for\ndreaming, but interesting in themselves. I\'ve reached the criticising,\nnovel-writing age, and here I am writing mine--my one novel--without\nhaving any of the discipline to refrain and omit that I suppose the\nregular novel-writer acquires.\n\nI\'ve read an average share of novels and made some starts before this\nbeginning, and I\'ve found the restraints and rules of the art (as I made\nthem out) impossible for me. I like to write, I am keenly interested in\nwriting, but it is not my technique. I\'m an engineer with a patent or\ntwo and a set of ideas; most of whatever artist there is in me has been\ngiven to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying,\nand do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax,\nundisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and\ntheorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn\'t\na constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My\nlove-story--and if only I can keep up the spirit of truth-telling all\nthrough as strongly as I have now, you shall have it all--falls into\nno sort of neat scheme of telling. It involves three separate feminine\npersons. It\'s all mixed up with the other things....\n\nBut I\'ve said enough, I hope, to excuse myself for the method or want\nof method in what follows, and I think I had better tell without further\ndelay of my boyhood and my early impressions in the shadow of Bladesover\nHouse.\n\nIII\n\nThere came a time when I realised that Bladesover House was not all it\nseemed, but when I was a little boy I took the place with the entirest\nfaith as a complete authentic microcosm. I believed that the Bladesover\nsystem was a little working-model--and not so very little either--of the\nwhole world.\n\nLet me try and give you the effect of it.\n\nBladesover lies up on the Kentish Downs, eight miles perhaps from\nAshborough; and its old pavilion, a little wooden parody of the temple\nof Vesta at Tibur, upon the hill crest behind the house, commands in\ntheory at least a view of either sea, of the Channel southward and the\nThames to the northeast. The park is the second largest in Kent, finely\nwooded with well-placed beeches, many elms and some sweet chestnuts,\nabounding in little valleys and hollows of bracken, with springs and a\nstream and three fine ponds and multitudes of fallow deer. The house was\nbuilt in the eighteenth century, it is of pale red brick in the style of\na French chateau, and save for one pass among the crests which opens to\nblue distances, to minute, remote, oast-set farm-houses and copses\nand wheat fields and the occasional gleam of water, its hundred\nand seventeen windows look on nothing but its own wide and handsome\nterritories. A semi-circular screen of great beeches masks the church\nand village, which cluster picturesquely about the high road along the\nskirts of the great park. Northward, at the remotest corner of that\nenclosure, is a second dependent village, Ropedean, less fortunate in\nits greater distance and also on account of a rector. This divine\nwas indeed rich, but he was vindictively economical because of some\nshrinkage of his tithes; and by reason of his use of the word Eucharist\nfor the Lord\'s Supper he had become altogether estranged from the great\nladies of Bladesover. So that Ropedean was in the shadows through all\nthat youthful time.\n\nNow the unavoidable suggestion of that wide park and that fair large\nhouse, dominating church, village and the country side, was that they\nrepresented the thing that mattered supremely in the world, and that all\nother things had significance only in relation to them. They represented\nthe Gentry, the Quality, by and through and for whom the rest of the\nworld, the farming folk and the labouring folk, the trades-people\nof Ashborough, and the upper servants and the lower servants and the\nservants of the estate, breathed and lived and were permitted. And the\nQuality did it so quietly and thoroughly, the great house mingled so\nsolidly and effectually earth and sky, the contrast of its spacious\nhall and saloon and galleries, its airy housekeeper\'s room and warren\nof offices with the meagre dignities of the vicar, and the pinched and\nstuffy rooms of even the post-office people and the grocer, so enforced\nthese suggestions, that it was only when I was a boy of thirteen or\nfourteen and some queer inherited strain of scepticism had set me\ndoubting whether Mr. Bartlett, the vicar, did really know with certainty\nall about God, that as a further and deeper step in doubting I began to\nquestion the final rightness of the gentlefolks, their primary necessity\nin the scheme of things. But once that scepticism had awakened it took\nme fast and far. By fourteen I had achieved terrible blasphemies and\nsacrilege; I had resolved to marry a viscount\'s daughter, and I had\nblacked the left eye--I think it was the left--of her half-brother, in\nopen and declared rebellion.\n\nBut of that in its place.\n\nThe great house, the church, the village, and the labourers and the\nservants in their stations and degrees, seemed to me, I say, to be a\nclosed and complete social system. About us were other villages and\ngreat estates, and from house to house, interlacing, correlated, the\nGentry, the fine Olympians, came and went. The country towns seemed mere\ncollections of ships, marketing places for the tenantry, centres for\nsuch education as they needed, as entirely dependent on the gentry as\nthe village and scarcely less directly so. I thought this was the order\nof the whole world. I thought London was only a greater country town\nwhere the gentle-folk kept town-houses and did their greater shopping\nunder the magnificent shadow of the greatest of all fine gentlewomen,\nthe Queen. It seemed to be in the divine order. That all this fine\nappearance was already sapped, that there were forces at work that might\npresently carry all this elaborate social system in which my mother\ninstructed me so carefully that I might understand my \"place,\" to Limbo,\nhad scarcely dawned upon me even by the time that Tono-Bungay was fairly\nlaunched upon the world.\n\nThere are many people in England to-day upon whom it has not yet dawned.\nThere are times when I doubt whether any but a very inconsiderable\nminority of English people realise how extensively this ostensible order\nhas even now passed away. The great houses stand in the parks still,\nthe cottages cluster respectfully on their borders, touching their eaves\nwith their creepers, the English countryside--you can range through Kent\nfrom Bladesover northward and see persists obstinately in looking what\nit was. It is like an early day in a fine October. The hand of change\nrests on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for awhile, as it were half\nreluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing for ever. One frost and\nthe whole face of things will be bare, links snap, patience end, our\nfine foliage of pretences lie glowing in the mire.\n\nFor that we have still to wait a little while. The new order may have\ngone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern\nshow that used to be known in the village as the \"Dissolving Views,\" the\nscene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and\nthe newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to\nreplace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new\nEngland of our children\'s children is still a riddle to me. The ideas\nof democracy, of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity have\ncertainly never really entered into the English mind. But what IS coming\ninto it? All this book, I hope, will bear a little on that. Our people\nnever formulates; it keeps words for jests and ironies. In the meanwhile\nthe old shapes, the old attitudes remain, subtly changed and changing\nstill, sheltering strange tenants. Bladesover House is now let furnished\nto Sir Reuben Lichtenstein, and has been since old Lady Drew died; it\nwas my odd experience to visit there, in the house of which my mother\nhad been housekeeper, when my uncle was at the climax of Tono-Bungay.\nIt was curious to notice then the little differences that had come to\nthings with this substitution. To borrow an image from my\nmineralogical days, these Jews were not so much a new British gentry as\n\"pseudomorphous\" after the gentry. They are a very clever people, the\nJews, but not clever enough to suppress their cleverness. I wished I\ncould have gone downstairs to savour the tone of the pantry. It would\nhave been very different I know. Hawksnest, over beyond, I noted, had\nits pseudomorph too; a newspaper proprietor of the type that hustles\nalong with stolen ideas from one loud sink-or-swim enterprise to\nanother, had bought the place outright; Redgrave was in the hands of\nbrewers.\n\nBut the people in the villages, so far as I could detect, saw no\ndifference in their world. Two little girls bobbed and an old labourer\ntouched his hat convulsively as I walked through the village. He still\nthought he knew his place--and mine. I did not know him, but I would\nhave liked dearly to have asked him if he remembered my mother, if\neither my uncle or old Lichtenstein had been man enough to stand being\ngiven away like that.\n\nIn that English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a\n\"place.\" It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of your\neyes, it was inextricably your destiny. Above you were your betters,\nbelow you were your inferiors, and there were even an unstable\nquestionable few, cases so disputable that you might for the rough\npurposes of every day at least, regard them as your equals. Head\nand centre of our system was Lady Drew, her \"leddyship,\" shrivelled,\ngarrulous, with a wonderful memory for genealogies and very, very\nold, and beside her and nearly as old, Miss Somerville, her cousin and\ncompanion. These two old souls lived like dried-up kernels in the great\nshell of Bladesover House, the shell that had once been gaily full of\nfops, of fine ladies in powder and patches and courtly gentlemen with\nswords; and when there was no company they spent whole days in the\ncorner parlour just over the housekeeper\'s room, between reading and\nslumber and caressing their two pet dogs. When I was a boy I used always\nto think of these two poor old creatures as superior beings living, like\nGod, somewhere through the ceiling. Occasionally they bumped about a bit\nand one even heard them overhead, which gave them a greater effect of\nreality without mitigating their vertical predominance. Sometimes too I\nsaw them. Of course if I came upon them in the park or in the shrubbery\n(where I was a trespasser) I hid or fled in pious horror, but I was\nupon due occasion taken into the Presence by request. I remember\nher \"leddyship\" then as a thing of black silks and a golden chain,\na quavering injunction to me to be a good boy, a very shrunken\nloose-skinned face and neck, and a ropy hand that trembled a halfcrown\ninto mine. Miss Somerville hovered behind, a paler thing of broken\nlavender and white and black, with screwed up, sandy-lashed eyes.\nHer hair was yellow and her colour bright, and when we sat in the\nhousekeeper\'s room of a winter\'s night warming our toes and sipping\nelder wine, her maid would tell us the simple secrets of that belated\nflush.... After my fight with young Garvell I was of course banished,\nand I never saw those poor old painted goddesses again.\n\nThen there came and went on these floors over our respectful heads, the\nCompany; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated\nand discussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper\'s room and\nthe steward\'s room--so that I had them through a medium at second hand.\nI gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew\'s equals, they\nwere greater and lesser after the manner of all things in our world.\nOnce I remember there was a Prince, with a real live gentleman in\nattendance, and that was a little above our customary levels and excited\nus all, and perhaps raised our expectations unduly. Afterwards, Rabbits,\nthe butler, came into my mother\'s room downstairs, red with indignation\nand with tears in his eyes. \"Look at that!\" gasped Rabbits. My mother\nwas speechless with horror. That was a sovereign, a mere sovereign, such\nas you might get from any commoner!\n\nAfter Company, I remember, came anxious days, for the poor old women\nupstairs were left tired and cross and vindictive, and in a state of\nphysical and emotional indigestion after their social efforts....\n\nOn the lowest fringe of these real Olympians hung the vicarage people,\nand next to them came those ambiguous beings who are neither quality nor\nsubjects. The vicarage people certainly hold a place by themselves in\nthe typical English scheme; nothing is more remarkable than the progress\nthe Church has made--socially--in the last two hundred years. In the\nearly eighteenth century the vicar was rather under than over the\nhouse-steward, and was deemed a fitting match for the housekeeper or any\nnot too morally discredited discard. The eighteenth century literature\nis full of his complaints that he might not remain at table to share the\npie. He rose above these indignities because of the abundance of younger\nsons. When I meet the large assumptions of the contemporary cleric, I\nam apt to think of these things. It is curious to note that to-day that\ndown-trodden, organ-playing creature, the Church of England village\nSchoolmaster, holds much the same position as the seventeenth century\nparson. The doctor in Bladesover ranked below the vicar but above the\n\"vet,\" artists and summer visitors squeezed in above or below this point\naccording to their appearance and expenditure, and then in a carefully\narranged scale came the tenantry, the butler and housekeeper, the\nvillage shopkeeper, the head keeper, the cook, the publican, the second\nkeeper, the blacksmith (whose status was complicated by his daughter\nkeeping the post-office--and a fine hash she used to make of telegrams\ntoo!) the village shopkeeper\'s eldest son, the first footman, younger\nsons of the village shopkeeper, his first assistant, and so forth.\n\nAll these conceptions and applications of a universal precedence and\nmuch else I drank in at Bladesover, as I listened to the talk of valets,\nladies\'-maids, Rabbits the butler and my mother in the much-cupboarded,\nwhite-painted, chintz-brightened housekeeper\'s room where the upper\nservants assembled, or of footmen and Rabbits and estate men of all\nsorts among the green baize and Windsor chairs of the pantry--where\nRabbits, being above the law, sold beer without a license or any\ncompunction--or of housemaids and still-room maids in the bleak,\nmatting-carpeted still-room or of the cook and her kitchen maids and\ncasual friends among the bright copper and hot glow of the kitchens.\n\nOf course their own ranks and places came by implication to these\npeople, and it was with the ranks and places of the Olympians that the\ntalk mainly concerned itself. There was an old peerage and a Crockford\ntogether with the books of recipes, the Whitaker\'s Almanack, the Old\nMoore\'s Almanack, and the eighteenth century dictionary, on the little\ndresser that broke the cupboards on one side of my mother\'s room; there\nwas another peerage, with the covers off, in the pantry; there was a\nnew peerage in the billiard-room, and I seem to remember another in the\nanomalous apartment that held the upper servants\' bagatelle board and in\nwhich, after the Hall dinner, they partook of the luxury of sweets. And\nif you had asked any of those upper servants how such and such a Prince\nof Battenberg was related to, let us say, Mr. Cunninghame Graham or\nthe Duke of Argyle, you would have been told upon the nail. As a boy, I\nheard a great deal of that sort of thing, and if to this day I am\nstill a little vague about courtesy titles and the exact application of\nhonorifics, it is, I can assure you, because I hardened my heart, and\nnot from any lack of adequate opportunity of mastering these succulent\nparticulars.\n\nDominating all these memories is the figure of my mother--my mother who\ndid not love me because I grew liker my father every day--and who knew\nwith inflexible decision her place and the place of every one in the\nworld--except the place that concealed my father--and in some details\nmine. Subtle points were put to her. I can see and hear her saying\nnow, \"No, Miss Fison, peers of England go in before peers of the United\nKingdom, and he is merely a peer of the United Kingdom.\" She had much\nexercise in placing people\'s servants about her tea-table, where the\netiquette was very strict. I wonder sometimes if the etiquette of\nhousekeepers\' rooms is as strict to-day, and what my mother would have\nmade of a chauffeur....\n\nOn the whole I am glad that I saw so much as I did of Bladesover--if\nfor no other reason than because seeing it when I did, quite naively,\nbelieving in it thoroughly, and then coming to analyse it, has enabled\nme to understand much that would be absolutely incomprehensible in the\nstructure of English society. Bladesover is, I am convinced, the clue to\nalmost all that is distinctively British and perplexing to the foreign\ninquirer in England and the English-speaking peoples. Grasp firmly that\nEngland was all Bladesover two hundred years ago; that it has had\nReform Acts indeed, and such--like changes of formula, but no essential\nrevolution since then; that all that is modern and different has come in\nas a thing intruded or as a gloss upon this predominant formula, either\nimpertinently or apologetically; and you will perceive at once the\nreasonableness, the necessity, of that snobbishness which is the\ndistinctive quality of English thought. Everybody who is not actually in\nthe shadow of a Bladesover is as it were perpetually seeking after\nlost orientations. We have never broken with our tradition, never even\nsymbolically hewed it to pieces, as the French did in quivering fact\nin the Terror. But all the organizing ideas have slackened, the old\nhabitual bonds have relaxed or altogether come undone. And America\ntoo, is, as it were, a detached, outlying part of that estate which\nhas expanded in queer ways. George Washington, Esquire, was of the\ngentlefolk, and he came near being a King. It was Plutarch, you know,\nand nothing intrinsically American that prevented George Washington\nbeing a King....\n\nIV\n\nI hated teatime in the housekeeper\'s room more than anything else at\nBladesover. And more particularly I hated it when Mrs. Mackridge and\nMrs. Booch and Mrs. Latude-Fernay were staying in the house. They were,\nall three of them, pensioned-off servants.\n\nOld friends of Lady Drew\'s had rewarded them posthumously for a\nprolonged devotion to their minor comforts, and Mrs. Booch was also\ntrustee for a favourite Skye terrier. Every year Lady Drew gave them an\ninvitation--a reward and encouragement of virtue with especial reference\nto my mother and Miss Fison, the maid. They sat about in black and\nshiny and flouncey clothing adorned with gimp and beads, eating\ngreat quantities of cake, drinking much tea in a stately manner and\nreverberating remarks.\n\nI remember these women as immense. No doubt they were of negotiable\nsize, but I was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare\nproportions in my mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended.\nMrs. Mackridge was large and dark; there was a marvel about her head,\ninasmuch as she was bald. She wore a dignified cap, and in front of that\nupon her brow, hair was PAINTED. I have never seen the like since. She\nhad been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick Blenderhasset Impey, some\nsort of governor or such-like portent in the East Indies, and from her\nremains--in Mrs. Mackridge--I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and\ncrushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty,\nunapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no\nwit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the\nold satins and trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a\nfine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a\nlow fool to boot; when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging\nyour poor tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful \"Haw!\" that\nmade you want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying \"Indade!\"\nwith a droop of the eyelids.\n\nMrs. Booch was a smaller woman, brown haired, with queer little curls on\neither side of her face, large blue eyes and a small set of stereotyped\nremarks that constituted her entire mental range. Mrs. Latude-Fernay has\nleft, oddly enough, no memory at all except her name and the effect of\na green-grey silk dress, all set with gold and blue buttons. I fancy she\nwas a large blonde. Then there was Miss Fison, the maid who served both\nLady Drew and Miss Somerville, and at the end of the table opposite my\nmother, sat Rabbits the butler. Rabbits, for a butler, was an unassuming\nman, and at tea he was not as you know butlers, but in a morning\ncoat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with side\nwhiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat\namong these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to\nexist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat\nwith an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation\nof vitality. It was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon\nthese rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful\nrestlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among\ntheir dignities.\n\nTea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out\nperforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same.\n\n\"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?\" my mother used to ask.\n\n\"Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?\"\n\nThe word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. \"They say,\" she\nwould begin, issuing her proclamation--at least half her sentences began\n\"they say\"--\"sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do\nnot take it at all.\"\n\n\"Not with their tea, ma\'am,\" said Rabbits intelligently.\n\n\"Not with anything,\" said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing\nrepartee, and drank.\n\n\"What won\'t they say next?\" said Miss Fison.\n\n\"They do say such things!\" said Mrs. Booch.\n\n\"They say,\" said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, \"the doctors are not\nrecomm-an-ding it now.\"\n\nMy Mother: \"No, ma\'am?\"\n\nMrs. Mackridge: \"No, ma\'am.\"\n\nThen, to the table at large: \"Poor Sir Roderick, before he died,\nconsumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may\nhave hastened his end.\"\n\nThis ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was\nconsidered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick.\n\n\"George,\" said my mother, \"don\'t kick the chair!\"\n\nThen, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favourite piece from her\nrepertoire. \"The evenings are drawing out nicely,\" she would say, or\nif the season was decadent, \"How the evenings draw in!\" It was an\ninvaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along\nwithout it.\n\nMy mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always consider\nit due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of\nelongation or contraction, whichever phase it might be.\n\nA brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day\nwould ensue, and die away at last exhausted.\n\nMrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits;\namong others she read the paper--The Morning Post. The other ladies\nwould at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births,\nmarriages, and deaths on the front page. It was, of course, the old\nMorning Post that cost threepence, not the brisk coruscating young thing\nof to-day. \"They say,\" she would open, \"that Lord Tweedums is to go to\nCanada.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Mr. Rabbits; \"dew they?\"\n\n\"Isn\'t he,\" said my mother, \"the Earl of Slumgold\'s cousin?\" She knew\nhe was; it was an entirely irrelevant and unnecessary remark, but still,\nsomething to say.\n\n\"The same, ma\'am,\" said Mrs. Mackridge. \"They say he was extremelay\npopular in New South Wales. They looked up to him greatlay. I knew him,\nma\'am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant young fella.\"\n\nInterlude of respect.\n\n\"\'Is predecessor,\" said Rabbits, who had acquired from some clerical\nmodel a precise emphatic articulation without acquiring at the same time\nthe aspirates that would have graced it, \"got into trouble at Sydney.\"\n\n\"Haw!\" said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, \"so am tawled.\"\n\n\"\'E came to Templemorton after \'e came back, and I remember them talking\n\'im over after \'e\'d gone again.\"\n\n\"Haw?\" said Mrs. Mackridge, interrogatively.\n\n\"\'Is fuss was quotin\' poetry, ma\'am. \'E said--what was it \'e said--\'They\nlef\' their country for their country\'s good,\'--which in some way was\ntook to remind them of their being originally convic\'s, though now\nreformed. Every one I \'eard speak, agreed it was takless of \'im.\"\n\n\"Sir Roderick used to say,\" said Mrs. Mackridge, \"that the First\nThing,\"--here Mrs. Mackridge paused and looked dreadfully at me--\"and\nthe Second Thing\"--here she fixed me again--\"and the Third Thing\"--now I\nwas released--\"needed in a colonial governor is Tact.\" She became aware\nof my doubts again, and added predominantly, \"It has always struck me\nthat that was a Singularly True Remark.\"\n\nI resolved that if ever I found this polypus of Tact growing up in my\nsoul, I would tear it out by the roots, throw it forth and stamp on it.\n\n\"They\'re queer people--colonials,\" said Rabbits, \"very queer. When I was\nat Templemorton I see something of \'em. Queer fellows, some of \'em. Very\nrespectful of course, free with their money in a spasammy sort of way,\nbut--Some of \'em, I must confess, make me nervous. They have an eye\non you. They watch you--as you wait. They let themselves appear to be\nlookin\' at you...\"\n\nMy mother said nothing in that discussion. The word colonies always\nupset her. She was afraid, I think, that if she turned her mind in that\ndirection my errant father might suddenly and shockingly be\ndiscovered, no doubt conspicuously bigamic and altogether offensive and\nrevolutionary. She did not want to rediscover my father at all.\n\nIt is curious that when I was a little listening boy I had such an idea\nof our colonies that I jeered in my heart at Mrs. Mackridge\'s colonial\nascendancy. These brave emancipated sunburnt English of the open, I\nthought, suffer these aristocratic invaders as a quaint anachronism, but\nas for being gratified--!\n\nI don\'t jeer now. I\'m not so sure.\n\nV\n\nIt is a little difficult to explain why I did not come to do what was\nthe natural thing for any one in my circumstances to do, and take my\nworld for granted. A certain innate scepticism, I think, explains it and\na certain inaptitude for sympathetic assimilation. My father, I believe,\nwas a sceptic; my mother was certainly a hard woman.\n\nI was an only child, and to this day I do not know whether my father\nis living or dead. He fled my mother\'s virtues before my distincter\nmemories began. He left no traces in his flight, and she, in her\nindignation, destroyed every vestige that she could of him. Never a\nphotograph nor a scrap of his handwriting have I seen; and it was, I\nknow, only the accepted code of virtue and discretion that prevented her\ndestroying her marriage certificate and me, and so making a clean sweep\nof her matrimonial humiliation. I suppose I must inherit something of\nthe moral stupidity that would enable her to make a holocaust of every\nlittle personal thing she had of him. There must have been presents made\nby him as a lover, for example--books with kindly inscriptions, letters\nperhaps, a flattened flower, a ring, or such-like gage. She kept her\nwedding-ring, of course, but all the others she destroyed. She never\ntold me his christian name or indeed spoke a word to me of him; though\nat times I came near daring to ask her: add what I have of him--it isn\'t\nmuch--I got from his brother, my hero, my uncle Ponderevo. She wore her\nring; her marriage certificate she kept in a sealed envelope in the very\nbottom of her largest trunk, and me she sustained at a private\nschool among the Kentish hills. You must not think I was always at\nBladesover--even in my holidays. If at the time these came round, Lady\nDrew was vexed by recent Company, or for any other reason wished to take\nit out of my mother, then she used to ignore the customary reminder my\nmother gave her, and I \"stayed on\" at the school.\n\nBut such occasions were rare, and I suppose that between ten and\nfourteen I averaged fifty days a year at Bladesover.\n\nDon\'t imagine I deny that was a fine thing for me. Bladesover, in\nabsorbing the whole countryside, had not altogether missed greatness.\nThe Bladesover system has at least done one good thing for England, it\nhas abolished the peasant habit of mind. If many of us still live and\nbreathe pantry and housekeeper\'s room, we are quit of the dream of\nliving by economising parasitically on hens and pigs.... About that park\nthere were some elements of a liberal education; there was a great space\nof greensward not given over to manure and food grubbing; there was\nmystery, there was matter for the imagination. It was still a park of\ndeer. I saw something of the life of these dappled creatures, heard the\nbelling of stags, came upon young fawns among the bracken, found bones,\nskulls, and antlers in lonely places. There were corners that gave\na gleam of meaning to the word forest, glimpses of unstudied natural\nsplendour. There was a slope of bluebells in the broken sunlight under\nthe newly green beeches in the west wood that is now precious sapphire\nin my memory; it was the first time that I knowingly met Beauty.\n\nAnd in the house there were books. The rubbish old Lady Drew read I\nnever saw; stuff of the Maria Monk type, I have since gathered, had\na fascination for her; but back in the past there had been a Drew of\nintellectual enterprise, Sir Cuthbert, the son of Sir Matthew who built\nthe house; and thrust away, neglected and despised, in an old room\nupstairs, were books and treasures of his that my mother let me rout\namong during a spell of wintry wet. Sitting under a dormer window on a\nshelf above great stores of tea and spices, I became familiar with much\nof Hogarth in a big portfolio, with Raphael, there was a great book of\nengravings from the stanzas of Raphael in the Vatican--and with most\nof the capitals of Europe as they had looked about 1780, by means\nof several pig iron-moulded books of views. There was also a broad\neighteenth century atlas with huge wandering maps that instructed me\nmightily. It had splendid adornments about each map title; Holland\nshowed a fisherman and his boat; Russia a Cossack; Japan, remarkable\npeople attired in pagodas--I say it deliberately, \"pagodas.\" There were\nTerrae Incognitae in every continent then, Poland, Sarmatia, lands since\nlost; and many a voyage I made with a blunted pin about that large,\nincorrect and dignified world. The books in that little old closet had\nbeen banished, I suppose, from the saloon during the Victorian revival\nof good taste and emasculated orthodoxy, but my mother had no suspicion\nof their character. So I read and understood the good sound rhetoric of\nTom Paine\'s \"Rights of Man,\" and his \"Common Sense,\" excellent books,\nonce praised by bishops and since sedulously lied about. Gulliver was\nthere unexpurgated, strong meat for a boy perhaps but not too strong I\nhold--I have never regretted that I escaped niceness in these affairs.\nThe satire of Traldragdubh made my blood boil as it was meant to do,\nbut I hated Swift for the Houyhnhnms and never quite liked a horse\nafterwards. Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire\'s \"Candide,\"\nand \"Rasselas;\" and, vast book though it was, I really believe I read,\nin a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to end, and even with some\nreference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon--in twelve volumes.\n\nThese readings whetted my taste for more, and surreptitiously I raided\nthe bookcases in the big saloon. I got through quite a number of\nbooks before my sacrilegious temerity was discovered by Ann, the old\nhead-housemaid. I remember that among others I tried a translation of\nPlato\'s \"Republic\" then, and found extraordinarily little interest in\nit; I was much too young for that; but \"Vathek\"--\"Vathek\" was glorious\nstuff. That kicking affair! When everybody HAD to kick!\n\nThe thought of \"Vathek\" always brings back with it my boyish memory of\nthe big saloon at Bladesover.\n\nIt was a huge long room with many windows opening upon the park, and\neach window--there were a dozen or more reaching from the floor up--had\nits elaborate silk or satin curtains, heavily fringed, a canopy (is it?)\nabove, its completely white shutters folding into the deep thickness of\nthe wall. At either end of that great still place was an immense marble\nchimney-piece; the end by the bookcase showed the wolf and Romulus and\nRemus, with Homer and Virgil for supporters; the design of the other end\nI have forgotten. Frederick, Prince of Wales, swaggered flatly over the\none, twice life-size, but mellowed by the surface gleam of oil; and\nover the other was an equally colossal group of departed Drews as sylvan\ndeities, scantily clad, against a storm-rent sky. Down the centre of the\nelaborate ceiling were three chandeliers, each bearing some hundreds of\ndangling glass lustres, and over the interminable carpet--it impressed\nme as about as big as Sarmatia in the store-room Atlas--were islands and\narchipelagoes of chintz-covered chairs and couches, tables, great Sevres\nvases on pedestals, a bronze man and horse. Somewhere in this wilderness\none came, I remember, upon--a big harp beside a lyre-shaped music stand,\nand a grand piano....\n\nThe book-borrowing raid was one of extraordinary dash and danger.\n\nOne came down the main service stairs--that was legal, and illegality\nbegan in a little landing when, very cautiously, one went through a red\nbaize door. A little passage led to the hall, and here one reconnoitered\nfor Ann, the old head-housemaid--the younger housemaids were friendly\nand did not count. Ann located, came a dash across the open space at\nthe foot of that great staircase that has never been properly descended\nsince powder went out of fashion, and so to the saloon door. A beast\nof an oscillating Chinaman in china, as large as life, grimaced and\nquivered to one\'s lightest steps. That door was the perilous place; it\nwas double with the thickness of the wall between, so that one could not\nlisten beforehand for the whisk of the feather-brush on the other side.\nOddly rat-like, is it not, this darting into enormous places in pursuit\nof the abandoned crumbs of thought?\n\nAnd I found Langhorne\'s \"Plutarch\" too, I remember, on those shelves. It\nseems queer to me now to think that I acquired pride and self-respect,\nthe idea of a state and the germ of public spirit, in such a furtive\nfashion; queer, too, that it should rest with an old Greek, dead these\neighteen hundred years to teach that.\n\nVI\n\nThe school I went to was the sort of school the Bladesover system\npermitted. The public schools that add comic into existence in the brief\nglow of the Renascence had been taken possession of by the ruling class;\nthe lower classes were not supposed to stand in need of schools, and our\nmiddle stratum got the schools it deserved, private schools, schools any\nunqualified pretender was free to establish. Mine was kept by a man who\nhad had the energy to get himself a College of Preceptors diploma, and\nconsidering how cheap his charges were, I will readily admit the place\nmight have been worse. The building was a dingy yellow-brick residence\noutside the village, with the schoolroom as an outbuilding of lath and\nplaster.\n\nI do not remember that my school-days were unhappy--indeed I recall a\ngood lot of fine mixed fun in them--but I cannot without grave risk\nof misinterpretation declare that we were at all nice and refined. We\nfought much, not sound formal fighting, but \"scrapping\" of a sincere and\nmurderous kind, into which one might bring one\'s boots--it made us tough\nat any rate--and several of us were the sons of London publicans, who\ndistinguished \"scraps\" where one meant to hurt from ordered pugilism,\npractising both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic gifts.\nOur cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without\nstyle and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in\nthe hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and\ntaught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic,\nalgebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself;\nhe had a strong mathematical bias, and I think now that by the standard\nof a British public school he did rather well by us.\n\nWe had one inestimable privilege at that school, and that was spiritual\nneglect. We dealt with one another with the forcible simplicity of\nnatural boys, we \"cheeked,\" and \"punched\" and \"clouted\"; we thought\nourselves Red Indians and cowboys and such-like honourable things,\nand not young English gentlemen; we never felt the strain of \"Onward\nChristian soldiers,\" nor were swayed by any premature piety in the cold\noak pew of our Sunday devotions. All that was good. We spent our rare\npennies in the uncensored reading matter of the village dame\'s shop, on\nthe Boys of England, and honest penny dreadfuls--ripping stuff, stuff\nthat anticipated Haggard and Stevenson, badly printed and queerly\nillustrated, and very very good for us. On our half-holidays we were\nallowed the unusual freedom of rambling in twos and threes wide and far\nabout the land, talking experimentally, dreaming wildly. There was much\nin those walks! To this day the landscape of the Kentish world, with its\nlow broad distances, its hop gardens and golden stretches of wheat, its\noasts and square church towers, its background of downland and hangers,\nhas for me a faint sense of adventure added to the pleasure of its\nbeauty. We smoked on occasion, but nobody put us up to the proper\n\"boyish\" things to do; we never \"robbed an orchard\" for example, though\nthere were orchards all about us, we thought stealing was sinful, we\nstole incidental apples and turnips and strawberries from the fields\nindeed, but in a criminal inglorious fashion, and afterwards we were\nashamed. We had our days of adventure, but they were natural accidents,\nour own adventures. There was one hot day when several of us, walking\nout towards Maidstone, were incited by the devil to despise ginger beer,\nand we fuddled ourselves dreadfully with ale; and a time when our young\nminds were infected to the pitch of buying pistols, by the legend of\nthe Wild West. Young Roots from Highbury came back with a revolver and\ncartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life one\nholiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine at\nChiselstead, and nearly burst our ear drums; then we fired in a primrose\nstudded wood by Pickthorn Green, and I gave a false alarm of \"keeper,\"\nand we fled in disorder for a mile. After which Roots suddenly shot at\na pheasant in the high road by Chiselstead, and then young Barker told\nlies about the severity of the game laws and made Roots sore afraid, and\nwe hid the pistol in a dry ditch outside the school field. A day or so\nafter we got in again, and ignoring a certain fouling and rusting of the\nbarrel, tried for a rabbit at three hundred yards. Young Roots blew\na molehill at twenty paces into a dust cloud, burnt his fingers, and\nscorched his face; and the weapon having once displayed this strange\ndisposition to flame back upon the shooter, was not subsequently fired.\n\nOne main source of excitement for us was \"cheeking\" people in vans and\ncarts upon the Goudhurst road; and getting myself into a monstrous white\nmess in the chalk pits beyond the village, and catching yellow jaundice\nas a sequel to bathing stark naked with three other Adamites, old Ewart\nleading that function, in the rivulet across Hickson\'s meadows, are\namong my memorabilia. Those free imaginative afternoons! how much they\nwere for us! how much they did for us! All streams came from the then\nundiscovered \"sources of the Nile\" in those days, all thickets were\nIndian jungles, and our best game, I say it with pride, I invented. I\ngot it out of the Bladesover saloon. We found a wood where \"Trespassing\"\nwas forbidden, and did the \"Retreat of the Ten Thousand\" through it from\nend to end, cutting our way bravely through a host of nettle beds that\nbarred our path, and not forgetting to weep and kneel when at last we\nemerged within sight of the High Road Sea. So we have burst at times,\nweeping and rejoicing, upon startled wayfarers. Usually I took the part\nof that distinguished general Xenophen--and please note the quantity of\nthe o. I have all my classical names like that,--Socrates rhymes with\nBates for me, and except when the bleak eye of some scholar warns me of\nhis standards of judgment, I use those dear old mispronunciations still.\nThe little splash into Latin made during my days as a chemist washed off\nnothing of the habit. Well,--if I met those great gentlemen of the past\nwith their accents carelessly adjusted I did at least meet them alive,\nas an equal, and in a living tongue. Altogether my school might easily\nhave been worse for me, and among other good things it gave me a friend\nwho has lasted my life out.\n\nThis was Ewart, who is now a monumental artist at Woking, after many\nvicissitudes. Dear chap, how he did stick out of his clothes to be sure!\nHe was a longlimbed lout, ridiculously tall beside my more youth full\ncompactness, and, except that there was no black moustache under his\nnose blob, he had the same round knobby face as he has to-day, the same\nbright and active hazel brown eyes, the stare, the meditative moment,\nthe insinuating reply. Surely no boy ever played the fool as Bob Ewart\nused to play it, no boy had a readier knack of mantling the world with\nwonder. Commonness vanished before Ewart, at his expository touch all\nthings became memorable and rare. From him I first heard tell of love,\nbut only after its barbs were already sticking in my heart. He was, I\nknow now the bastard of that great improvident artist, Rickmann Ewart;\nhe brought the light of a lax world that at least had not turned its\nback upon beauty, into the growing fermentation of my mind.\n\nI won his heart by a version of Vathek, and after that we were\ninseparable yarning friends. We merged our intellectual stock so\ncompletely that I wonder sometimes how much I did not become Ewart, how\nmuch Ewart is not vicariously and derivatively me.\n\nVII\n\nAnd then when I had newly passed my fourteenth birthday, came my tragic\ndisgrace.\n\nIt was in my midsummer holidays that the thing happened, and it was\nthrough the Honourable Beatrice Normandy. She had \"come into my life,\"\nas they say, before I was twelve.\n\nShe descended unexpectedly into a peaceful interlude that followed the\nannual going of those Three Great Women. She came into the old nursery\nupstairs, and every day she had tea with us in the housekeeper\'s room.\nShe was eight, and she came with a nurse called Nannie; and to begin\nwith, I did not like her at all.\n\nNobody liked this irruption into the downstairs rooms; the two \"gave\ntrouble,\"--a dire offence; Nannie\'s sense of duty to her charge led to\nrequests and demands that took my mother\'s breath away. Eggs at unusual\ntimes, the reboiling of milk, the rejection of an excellent milk\npudding--not negotiated respectfully but dictated as of right. Nannie\nwas a dark, longfeatured, taciturn woman in a grey dress; she had a\nfurtive inflexibility of manner that finally dismayed and crushed and\novercame. She conveyed she was \"under orders\"--like a Greek tragedy. She\nwas that strange product of the old time, a devoted, trusted servant;\nshe had, as it were, banked all her pride and will with the greater,\nmore powerful people who employed her, in return for a life-long\nsecurity of servitude--the bargain was nonetheless binding for being\nimplicit. Finally they were to pension her, and she would die the hated\ntreasure of a boarding-house. She had built up in herself an enormous\nhabit of reference to these upstairs people, she had curbed down all\ndiscordant murmurings of her soul, her very instincts were perverted or\nsurrendered. She was sexless, her personal pride was all transferred,\nshe mothered another woman\'s child with a hard, joyless devotion that\nwas at least entirely compatible with a stoical separation. She treated\nus all as things that counted for nothing save to fetch and carry for\nher charge. But the Honourable Beatrice could condescend.\n\nThe queer chances of later years come between me and a distinctly\nseparated memory of that childish face. When I think of Beatrice, I\nthink of her as I came to know her at a later time, when at last I came\nto know her so well that indeed now I could draw her, and show a hundred\nlittle delicate things you would miss in looking at her. But even then I\nremember how I noted the infinite delicacy of her childish skin and the\nfine eyebrow, finer than the finest feather that ever one felt on the\nbreast of a bird. She was one of those elfin, rather precocious little\ngirls, quick coloured, with dark hair, naturally curling dusky hair\nthat was sometimes astray over her eyes, and eyes that were sometimes\nimpishly dark, and sometimes a clear brown yellow. And from the very\noutset, after a most cursory attention to Rabbits, she decided that the\nonly really interesting thing at the tea-table was myself.\n\nThe elders talked in their formal dull way--telling Nannie the trite\nold things about the park and the village that they told every one, and\nBeatrice watched me across the table with a pitiless little curiosity\nthat made me uncomfortable.\n\n\"Nannie,\" she said, pointing, and Nannie left a question of my mother\'s\ndisregarded to attend to her; \"is he a servant boy?\"\n\n\"S-s-sh,\" said Nannie. \"He\'s Master Ponderevo.\"\n\n\"Is he a servant boy?\" repeated Beatrice.\n\n\"He\'s a schoolboy,\" said my mother.\n\n\"Then may I talk to him, Nannie?\"\n\nNannie surveyed me with brutal inhumanity. \"You mustn\'t talk too much,\"\nshe said to her charge, and cut cake into fingers for her.\n\n\"No,\" she added decisively, as Beatrice made to speak.\n\nBeatrice became malignant. Her eyes explored me with unjustifiable\nhostility. \"He\'s got dirty hands,\" she said, stabbing at the forbidden\nfruit. \"And there\'s a fray to his collar.\"\n\nThen she gave herself up to cake with an appearance of entire\nforgetfulness of me that filled me with hate and a passionate desire to\ncompel her to admire me.... And the next day before tea, I did for the\nfirst time in my life, freely, without command or any compulsion, wash\nmy hands.\n\nSo our acquaintance began, and presently was deepened by a whim of hers.\nShe had a cold and was kept indoors, and confronted Nannie suddenly with\nthe alternative of being hopelessly naughty, which in her case involved\na generous amount of screaming unsuitable for the ears of an elderly,\nshaky, rich aunt, or having me up to the nursery to play with her all\nthe afternoon. Nannie came downstairs and borrowed me in a careworn\nmanner; and I was handed over to the little creature as if I was some\nlarge variety of kitten. I had never had anything to do with a little\ngirl before, I thought she was more beautiful and wonderful and bright\nthan anything else could possibly be in life, and she found me the\ngentlest of slaves--though at the same time, as I made evident, fairly\nstrong. And Nannie was amazed to find the afternoon slip cheerfully and\nrapidly away. She praised my manners to Lady Drew and to my mother,\nwho said she was glad to hear well of me, and after that I played with\nBeatrice several times. The toys she had remain in my memory still as\ngreat splendid things, gigantic to all my previous experience of toys,\nand we even went to the great doll\'s house on the nursery landing to\nplay discreetly with that, the great doll\'s house that the Prince Regent\nhad given Sir Harry Drew\'s first-born (who died at five), that was a not\nineffectual model of Bladesover itself, and contained eighty-five dolls\nand had cost hundreds of pounds. I played under imperious direction with\nthat toy of glory.\n\nI went back to school when that holiday was over, dreaming of beautiful\nthings, and got Ewart to talk to me of love; and I made a great story\nout of the doll\'s house, a story that, taken over into Ewart\'s hands,\nspeedily grew to an island doll\'s city all our own.\n\nOne of the dolls, I privately decided, was like Beatrice.\n\nOne other holiday there was when I saw something of her--oddly enough my\nmemory of that second holiday in which she played a part is vague--and\nthen came a gap of a year, and then my disgrace.\n\nVIII\n\nNow I sit down to write my story and tell over again things in their\norder, I find for the first time how inconsecutive and irrational a\nthing the memory can be. One recalls acts and cannot recall motives;\none recalls quite vividly moments that stand out inexplicably--things\nadrift, joining on to nothing, leading nowhere. I think I must have seen\nBeatrice and her half-brother quite a number of times in my last holiday\nat Bladesover, but I really cannot recall more than a little of the\nquality of the circumstances. That great crisis of my boyhood stands out\nvery vividly as an effect, as a sort of cardinal thing for me, but when\nI look for details, particularly details that led up to the crisis--I\ncannot find them in any developing order at all. This halfbrother,\nArchie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember him clearly\nas a fair-haired, supercilious looking, weedily-lank boy, much taller\nthan I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that we hated\neach other by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and yet I cannot\nremember my first meeting with him at all.\n\nLooking back into these past things--it is like rummaging in a neglected\nattic that has experienced the attentions of some whimsical robber--I\ncannot even account for the presence of these children at Bladesover.\nThey were, I know, among the innumerable cousins of Lady Drew, and\naccording to the theories of downstairs candidates for the ultimate\npossession of Bladesover. If they were, their candidature was\nunsuccessful. But that great place, with all its faded splendour, its\nfine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at the old lady\'s\ndisposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that she used this\nfact to torment and dominate a number of eligible people. Lord Osprey\nwas among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to his\nmotherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, because he was poor,\nbut quite as much, I nowadays imagine, in the dim hope of finding some\naffectionate or imaginative outcome of contact with them. Nannie had\ndropped out of the world this second time, and Beatrice was in the\ncharge of an extremely amiable and ineffectual poor army-class young\nwoman whose name I never knew. They were, I think, two remarkably\nillmanaged and enterprising children. I seem to remember too, that it\nwas understood that I was not a fit companion for them, and that our\nmeetings had to be as unostentatious as possible. It was Beatrice who\ninsisted upon our meeting.\n\nI am certain I knew quite a lot about love at fourteen and that I was\nquite as much in love with Beatrice then as any impassioned adult could\nbe, and that Beatrice was, in her way, in love with me. It is part of\nthe decent and useful pretences of our world that children of the age at\nwhich we were, think nothing, feel nothing, know nothing of love. It\nis wonderful what people the English are for keeping up pretences. But\nindeed I cannot avoid telling that Beatrice and I talked of love and\nkissed and embraced one another.\n\nI recall something of one talk under the overhanging bushes of the\nshrubbery--I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my\nworship a little inelegantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say? you\nshould have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the\nwall comes suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various\nbranches of the bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane,\nand far away and high behind her, dim and stately, the cornice of the\ngreat facade of Bladesover rose against the dappled sky. Our talk must\nhave been serious and business-like, for we were discussing my social\nposition.\n\n\"I don\'t love Archie,\" she had said, apropos of nothing; and then in a\nwhisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, \"I love YOU!\"\n\nBut she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and\ncould not be a servant.\n\n\"You\'ll never be a servant--ever!\"\n\nI swore that very readily, and it is a vow I have kept by nature.\n\n\"What will you be?\" said she.\n\nI ran my mind hastily over the professions.\n\n\"Will you be a soldier?\" she asked.\n\n\"And be bawled at by duffers? No fear!\" said I. \"Leave that to the\nplough-boys.\"\n\n\"But an officer?\"\n\n\"I don\'t know,\" I said, evading a shameful difficulty.\n\n\"I\'d rather go into the navy.\"\n\n\"Wouldn\'t you like to fight?\"\n\n\"I\'d like to fight,\" I said. \"But a common soldier it\'s no honour to\nhave to be told to fight and to be looked down upon while you do it, and\nhow could I be an officer?\"\n\n\"Couldn\'t you be?\" she said, and looked at me doubtfully; and the spaces\nof the social system opened between us.\n\nThen, as became a male of spirit, I took upon myself to brag and lie\nmy way through this trouble. I said I was a poor man, and poor men went\ninto the navy; that I \"knew\" mathematics, which no army officer did; and\nI claimed Nelson for an exemplar, and spoke very highly of my outlook\nupon blue water. \"He loved Lady Hamilton,\" I said, \"although she was a\nlady--and I will love you.\"\n\nWe were somewhere near that when the egregious governess became audible,\ncalling \"Beeee-atrice! Beeee-e-atrice!\"\n\n\"Snifty beast!\" said my lady, and tried to get on with the conversation;\nbut that governess made things impossible.\n\n\"Come here!\" said my lady suddenly, holding out a grubby hand; and I\nwent very close to her, and she put her little head down upon the wall\nuntil her black fog of hair tickled my cheek.\n\n\"You are my humble, faithful lover,\" she demanded in a whisper, her warm\nflushed face near touching mine, and her eyes very dark and lustrous.\n\n\"I am your humble, faithful lover,\" I whispered back.\n\nAnd she put her arm about my head and put out her lips and we kissed,\nand boy though I was, I was all atremble. So we two kissed for the first\ntime.\n\n\"Beeee-e-e-a-trice!\" fearfully close.\n\nMy lady had vanished, with one wild kick of her black-stocking leg. A\nmoment after, I heard her sustaining the reproaches of her governess,\nand explaining her failure to answer with an admirable lucidity and\ndisingenuousness.\n\nI felt it was unnecessary for me to be seen just then, and I vanished\nguiltily round the corner into the West Wood, and so to love-dreams\nand single-handed play, wandering along one of those meandering bracken\nvalleys that varied Bladesover park. And that day and for many days that\nkiss upon my lips was a seal, and by night the seed of dreams.\n\nThen I remember an expedition we made--she, I, and her\nhalf-brother--into those West Woods--they two were supposed to be\nplaying in the shrubbery--and how we were Indians there, and made a\nwigwam out of a pile of beech logs, and how we stalked deer, crept near\nand watched rabbits feeding in a glade, and almost got a squirrel. It\nwas play seasoned with plentiful disputing between me and young Garvell,\nfor each firmly insisted upon the leading roles, and only my wider\nreading--I had read ten stories to his one--gave me the ascendency\nover him. Also I scored over him by knowing how to find the eagle in a\nbracken stem. And somehow--I don\'t remember what led to it at all--I and\nBeatrice, two hot and ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken\nand hid from him. The great fronds rose above us, five feet or more, and\nas I had learnt how to wriggle through that undergrowth with the minimum\nof betrayal by tossing greenery above, I led the way. The ground under\nbracken is beautifully clear and faintly scented in warm weather; the\nstems come up black and then green; if you crawl flat, it is a tropical\nforest in miniature. I led the way and Beatrice crawled behind, and then\nas the green of the further glade opened before us, stopped. She crawled\nup to me, her hot little face came close to mine; once more she looked\nand breathed close to me, and suddenly she flung her arm about my neck\nand dragged me to earth beside her, and kissed me and kissed me\nagain. We kissed, we embraced and kissed again, all without a word; we\ndesisted, we stared and hesitated--then in a suddenly damped mood and a\nlittle perplexed at ourselves, crawled out, to be presently run down and\ncaught in the tamest way by Archie.\n\nThat comes back very clearly to me, and other vague memories--I know\nold Hall and his gun, out shooting at jackdaws, came into our common\nexperiences, but I don\'t remember how; and then at last, abruptly, our\nfight in the Warren stands out. The Warren, like most places in England\nthat have that name, was not particularly a warren, it was a long slope\nof thorns and beeches through which a path ran, and made an alternative\nroute to the downhill carriage road between Bladesover and Ropedean. I\ndon\'t know how we three got there, but I have an uncertain fancy it was\nconnected with a visit paid by the governess to the Ropedean vicarage\npeople. But suddenly Archie and I, in discussing a game, fell into a\ndispute for Beatrice. I had made him the fairest offer: I was to be a\nSpanish nobleman, she was to be my wife, and he was to be a tribe of\nIndians trying to carry her off. It seems to me a fairly attractive\noffer to a boy to be a whole tribe of Indians with a chance of such a\nbooty. But Archie suddenly took offence.\n\n\"No,\" he said; \"we can\'t have that!\"\n\n\"Can\'t have what?\"\n\n\"You can\'t be a gentleman, because you aren\'t. And you can\'t play\nBeatrice is your wife. It\'s--it\'s impertinent.\"\n\n\"But\" I said, and looked at her.\n\nSome earlier grudge in the day\'s affairs must have been in Archie\'s\nmind. \"We let you play with us,\" said Archie; \"but we can\'t have things\nlike that.\"\n\n\"What rot!\" said Beatrice. \"He can if he likes.\"\n\nBut he carried his point. I let him carry it, and only began to grow\nangry three or four minutes later. Then we were still discussing play\nand disputing about another game. Nothing seemed right for all of us.\n\n\"We don\'t want you to play with us at all,\" said Archie.\n\n\"Yes, we do,\" said Beatrice.\n\n\"He drops his aitches like anything.\"\n\n\"No, \'e doesn\'t,\" said I, in the heat of the moment.\n\n\"There you go!\" he cried. \"E, he says. E! E! E!\"\n\nHe pointed a finger at me. He had struck to the heart of my shame. I\nmade the only possible reply by a rush at him. \"Hello!\" he cried, at my\nblackavised attack. He dropped back into an attitude that had some style\nin it, parried my blow, got back at my cheek, and laughed with surprise\nand relief at his own success. Whereupon I became a thing of murderous\nrage. He could box as well or better than I--he had yet to realise I\nknew anything of that at all--but I had fought once or twice to a finish\nwith bare fists. I was used to inflicting and enduring savage hurting,\nand I doubt if he had ever fought. I hadn\'t fought ten seconds before\nI felt this softness in him, realised all that quality of modern\nupper-class England that never goes to the quick, that hedges about\nrules and those petty points of honour that are the ultimate comminution\nof honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half done. He\nseemed to think that first hit of his and one or two others were going\nto matter, that I ought to give in when presently my lip bled and\ndripped blood upon my clothes. So before we had been at it a minute\nhe had ceased to be aggressive except in momentary spurts, and I was\nknocking him about almost as I wanted to do; and demanding breathlessly\nand fiercely, after our school manner, whether he had had enough, not\nknowing that by his high code and his soft training it was equally\nimpossible for him to either buck-up and beat me, or give in.\n\nI have a very distinct impression of Beatrice dancing about us during\nthe affair in a state of unladylike appreciation, but I was too\npreoccupied to hear much of what she was saying. But she certainly\nbacked us both, and I am inclined to think now--it may be the\ndisillusionment of my ripened years--whichever she thought was winning.\n\nThen young Garvell, giving way before my slogging, stumbled and fell\nover a big flint, and I, still following the tradition of my class and\nschool, promptly flung myself on him to finish him. We were busy\nwith each other on the ground when we became aware of a dreadful\ninterruption.\n\n\"Shut up, you FOOL!\" said Archie.\n\n\"Oh, Lady Drew!\" I heard Beatrice cry. \"They\'re fighting! They\'re\nfighting something awful!\"\n\nI looked over my shoulder. Archie\'s wish to get up became irresistible,\nand my resolve to go on with him vanished altogether.\n\nI became aware of the two old ladies, presences of black and purple silk\nand fur and shining dark things; they had walked up through the Warren,\nwhile the horses took the hill easily, and so had come upon us. Beatrice\nhad gone to them at once with an air of taking refuge, and stood beside\nand a little behind them. We both rose dejectedly. The two old ladies\nwere evidently quite dreadfully shocked, and peering at us with their\npoor old eyes; and never had I seen such a tremblement in Lady Drew\'s\nlorgnettes.\n\n\"You\'ve never been fighting?\" said Lady Drew.\n\n\"You have been fighting.\"\n\n\"It wasn\'t proper fighting,\" snapped Archie, with accusing eyes on me.\n\n\"It\'s Mrs. Ponderevo\'s George!\" said Miss Somerville, so adding a\nconviction for ingratitude to my evident sacrilege.\n\n\"How could he DARE?\" cried Lady Drew, becoming very awful.\n\n\"He broke the rules\" said Archie, sobbing for breath. \"I slipped,\nand--he hit me while I was down. He knelt on me.\"\n\n\"How could you DARE?\" said Lady Drew.\n\nI produced an experienced handkerchief rolled up into a tight ball, and\nwiped the blood from my chin, but I offered no explanation of my daring.\nAmong other things that prevented that, I was too short of breath.\n\n\"He didn\'t fight fair,\" sobbed Archie.\n\nBeatrice, from behind the old ladies, regarded me intently and without\nhostility. I am inclined to think the modification of my face through\nthe damage to my lip interested her. It became dimly apparent to my\nconfused intelligence that I must not say these two had been playing\nwith me. That would not be after the rules of their game. I resolved\nin this difficult situation upon a sulky silence, and to take whatever\nconsequences might follow.\n\nIX\n\nThe powers of justice in Bladesover made an extraordinary mess of my\ncase.\n\nI have regretfully to admit that the Honourable Beatrice Normandy did,\nat the age of ten, betray me, abandon me, and lie most abominably about\nme. She was, as a matter of fact, panic-stricken about me, conscience\nstricken too; she bolted from the very thought of my being her affianced\nlover and so forth, from the faintest memory of kissing; she was\nindeed altogether disgraceful and human in her betrayal. She and her\nhalf-brother lied in perfect concord, and I was presented as a wanton\nassailant of my social betters. They were waiting about in the Warren,\nwhen I came up and spoke to them, etc.\n\nOn the whole, I now perceive Lady Drew\'s decisions were, in the light of\nthe evidence, reasonable and merciful.\n\nThey were conveyed to me by my mother, who was, I really believe, even\nmore shocked by the grossness of my social insubordination than Lady\nDrew. She dilated on her ladyship\'s kindnesses to me, on the effrontery\nand wickedness of my procedure, and so came at last to the terms of my\npenance. \"You must go up to young Mr. Garvell, and beg his pardon.\"\n\n\"I won\'t beg his pardon,\" I said, speaking for the first time.\n\nMy mother paused, incredulous.\n\nI folded my arms on her table-cloth, and delivered my wicked little\nultimatum. \"I won\'t beg his pardon nohow,\" I said. \"See?\"\n\n\"Then you will have to go off to your uncle Frapp at Chatham.\"\n\n\"I don\'t care where I have to go or what I have to do, I won\'t beg his\npardon,\" I said.\n\nAnd I didn\'t.\n\nAfter that I was one against the world. Perhaps in my mother\'s heart\nthere lurked some pity for me, but she did not show it. She took the\nside of the young gentleman; she tried hard, she tried very hard, to\nmake me say I was sorry I had struck him. Sorry!\n\nI couldn\'t explain.\n\nSo I went into exile in the dog-cart to Redwood station, with Jukes the\ncoachman, coldly silent, driving me, and all my personal belongings in a\nsmall American cloth portmanteau behind.\n\nI felt I had much to embitter me; the game had and the beginnings of\nfairness by any standards I knew.... But the thing that embittered me\nmost was that the Honourable Beatrice Normandy should have repudiated\nand fled from me as though I was some sort of leper, and not even have\ntaken a chance or so, to give me a good-bye. She might have done that\nanyhow! Supposing I had told on her! But the son of a servant counts as\na servant. She had forgotten and now remembered.\n\nI solaced myself with some extraordinary dream of coming back to\nBladesover, stern, powerful, after the fashion of Coriolanus. I do not\nrecall the details, but I have no doubt I displayed great magnanimity...\n\nWell, anyhow I never said I was sorry for pounding young Garvell, and I\nam not sorry to this day.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SECOND\n\nOF MY LAUNCH INTO THE WORLD AND THE LAST I SAW OF BLADESOVER\n\nI\n\nWhen I was thus banished from Bladesover House, as it was then thought\nfor good and all, I was sent by my mother in a vindictive spirit,\nfirst to her cousin Nicodemus Frapp, and then, as a fully indentured\napprentice, to my uncle Ponderevo.\n\nI ran away from the care of my cousin Nicodemus back to Bladesover\nHouse.\n\nMy cousin Nicodemus Frapp was a baker in a back street--a slum\nrather--just off that miserable narrow mean high road that threads those\nexquisite beads, Rochester and Chatham. He was, I must admit, a shock\nto me, much dominated by a young, plump, prolific, malingering wife;\na bent, slow-moving, unwilling dark man with flour in his hair and\neyelashes, in the lines of his face and the seams of his coat. I\'ve\nnever had a chance to correct my early impression of him, and he still\nremains an almost dreadful memory, a sort of caricature of incompetent\nsimplicity. As I remember him, indeed, he presented the servile\ntradition perfected. He had no pride in his person; fine clothes and\ndressing up wasn\'t \"for the likes of\" him, so that he got his wife, who\nwas no artist at it, to cut his black hair at irregular intervals, and\nlet his nails become disagreeable to the fastidious eye; he had no pride\nin his business nor any initiative; his only virtues were not doing\ncertain things and hard work. \"Your uncle,\" said my mother--all grown-up\ncousins were uncles by courtesy among the Victorian middle-class--\"isn\'t\nmuch to look at or talk to, but he\'s a Good Hard-Working Man.\" There\nwas a sort of base honourableness about toil, however needless, in that\nsystem of inversion. Another point of honour was to rise at or before\ndawn, and then laboriously muddle about.\n\nIt was very distinctly impressed on my mind that the Good Hard-Working\nMan would have thought it \"fal-lallish\" to own a pocket handkerchief.\nPoor old Frapp--dirty and crushed by, product of, Bladesover\'s\nmagnificence! He made no fight against the world at all, he was\nfloundering in small debts that were not so small but that finally they\noverwhelmed him, whenever there was occasion for any exertion his\nwife fell back upon pains and her \"condition,\" and God sent them many\nchildren, most of whom died, and so, by their coming and going, gave a\ndouble exercise in the virtues of submission.\n\nResignation to God\'s will was the common device of these people in\nthe face of every duty and every emergency. There were no books in the\nhouse; I doubt if either of them had retained the capacity for reading\nconsecutively for more than a minute or so, and it was with amazement\nthat day after day, over and above stale bread, one beheld food and\nagain more food amidst the litter that held permanent session on the\nliving-room table.\n\nOne might have doubted if either of them felt discomfort in this\ndusty darkness of existence, if it was not that they did visibly seek\nconsolation. They sought this and found it of a Sunday, not in strong\ndrink and raving, but in imaginary draughts of blood. They met with\ntwenty or thirty other darkened and unclean people, all dressed in dingy\ncolours that would not show the dirt, in a little brick-built chapel\nequipped with a spavined roarer of a harmonium, and there solaced their\nminds on the thought that all that was fair and free in life, all that\nstruggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour,\nall fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting\ntorments. They were the self-appointed confidants of God\'s mockery of\nhis own creation. So at any rate they stick in my mind. Vaguer, and yet\nhardly less agreeable than this cosmic jest, this coming \"Yah, clever!\"\nand general serving out and \"showing up\" of the lucky, the bold, and the\ncheerful, was their own predestination to Glory.\n\n \"There is a Fountain, filled with Blood\n Drawn from Emmanuel\'s Veins,\"\n\nso they sang. I hear the drone and wheeze of that hymn now. I hated them\nwith the bitter uncharitable condemnation of boyhood, and a twinge of\nthat hate comes back to me. As I write the words, the sounds and then\nthe scene return, these obscure, undignified people, a fat woman with\nasthma, an old Welsh milk-seller with a tumour on his bald head, who was\nthe intellectual leader of the sect, a huge-voiced haberdasher with\na big black beard, a white-faced, extraordinarily pregnant woman, his\nwife, a spectacled rate collector with a bent back.... I hear the talk\nabout souls, the strange battered old phrases that were coined ages ago\nin the seaports of the sun-dry Levant, of balm of Gilead and manna in\nthe desert, of gourds that give shade and water in a thirsty land; I\nrecall again the way in which at the conclusion of the service the talk\nremained pious in form but became medical in substance, and how the\nwomen got together for obstetric whisperings. I, as a boy, did not\nmatter, and might overhear.\n\nIf Bladesover is my key for the explanation of England, I think my\ninvincible persuasion that I understand Russia was engendered by the\ncircle of Uncle Frapp.\n\nI slept in a dingy sheeted bed with the two elder survivors of Frapp\nfecundity, and spent my week days in helping in the laborious disorder\nof the shop and bakehouse, in incidental deliveries of bread and so\nforth, and in parrying the probings of my uncle into my relations\nwith the Blood, and his confidential explanations that ten shillings\na week--which was what my mother paid him--was not enough to cover my\naccommodation. He was very anxious to keep that, but also he wanted\nmore. There were neither books nor any seat nor corner in that house\nwhere reading was possible, no newspaper ever brought the clash of\nworldly things into its heavenward seclusion; horror of it all grew in\nme daily, and whenever I could I escaped into the streets and tramped\nabout Chatham. The news shops appealed to me particularly. One saw\nthere smudgy illustrated sheets, the Police News in particular, in\nwhich vilely drawn pictures brought home to the dullest intelligence an\ninterminable succession of squalid crimes, women murdered and put into\nboxes, buried under floors, old men bludgeoned at midnight by robbers,\npeople thrust suddenly out of trains, happy lovers shot, vitrioled and\nso forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse of the life of pleasure in\nfoully drawn pictures of \"police raids\" on this and that. Interspersed\nwith these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had\nhis fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly empty faces\nof the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening\nthat, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing\neverything but anything, a wonderful, good-meaning, impenetrable race\napart.\n\nI have never revisited Chatham; the impression it has left on my mind is\none of squalid compression, unlit by any gleam of a maturer charity.\nAll its effects arranged themselves as antithetical to the Bladesover\neffects. They confirmed and intensified all that Bladesover suggested.\nBladesover declared itself to be the land, to be essentially England; I\nhave already told how its airy spaciousness, its wide dignity, seemed to\nthrust village, church, and vicarage into corners, into a secondary and\nconditional significance. Here one gathered the corollary of that. Since\nthe whole wide country of Kent was made up of contiguous Bladesovers\nand for the gentlefolk, the surplus of population, all who were not\ngood tenants nor good labourers, Church of England, submissive and\nrespectful, were necessarily thrust together, jostled out of sight, to\nfester as they might in this place that had the colours and even the\nsmells of a well-packed dustbin. They should be grateful even for that;\nthat, one felt, was the theory of it all.\n\nAnd I loafed about this wilderness of crowded dinginess, with young,\nreceptive, wide-open eyes, and through the blessing (or curse) of some\nfairy godmother of mine, asking and asking again: \"But after all, WHY--\"\n\nI wandered up through Rochester once, and had a glimpse of the Stour\nvalley above the town, all horrible with cement works and foully smoking\nchimneys and rows of workmen\'s cottages, minute, ugly, uncomfortable,\nand grimy. So I had my first intimation of how industrialism must live\nin a landlord\'s land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give\nupon the river, drawn by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and\nships stripped of magic and mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber, and\ncoal. The sailors looked to me gross and slovenly men, and the shipping\nstruck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I discovered that most sails\ndon\'t fit the ships that hoist them, and that there may be as pitiful\nand squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as with a man. When I\nsaw colliers unloading, watched the workers in the hold filling up silly\nlittle sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran to\nand fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and\nmud, I was first seized with admiration of their courage and toughness\nand then, \"But after all, WHY--?\" and the stupid ugliness of all this\nwaste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it\nobviously wasted and deteriorated the coal.... And I had imagined great\nthings of the sea!\n\nWell, anyhow, for a time that vocation was stilled.\n\nBut such impressions came into my leisure, and of that I had no excess.\nMost of my time was spent doing things for Uncle Frapp, and my evenings\nand nights perforce in the company of the two eldest of my cousins.\nHe was errand boy at an oil shop and fervently pious, and of him I saw\nnothing until the evening except at meals; the other was enjoying the\nmidsummer holidays without any great elation; a singularly thin and\nabject, stunted creature he was, whose chief liveliness was to pretend\nto be a monkey, and who I am now convinced had some secret disease that\ndrained his vitality away. If I met him now I should think him a pitiful\nlittle creature and be extremely sorry for him. Then I felt only a\nwondering aversion. He sniffed horribly, he was tired out by a couple\nof miles of loafing, he never started any conversation, and he seemed to\nprefer his own company to mine. His mother, poor woman, said he was the\n\"thoughtful one.\"\n\nSerious trouble came suddenly out of a conversation we held in bed one\nnight. Some particularly pious phrase of my elder cousin\'s irritated me\nextremely, and I avowed outright my entire disbelief in the whole scheme\nof revealed religion. I had never said a word about my doubts to any one\nbefore, except to Ewart who had first evolved them. I had never settled\nmy doubts until at this moment when I spoke. But it came to me then that\nthe whole scheme of salvation of the Frappes was not simply doubtful,\nbut impossible. I fired this discovery out into the darkness with the\ngreatest promptitude.\n\nMy abrupt denials certainly scared my cousin amazingly.\n\nAt first they could not understand what I was saying, and when they\ndid I fully believe they expected an instant answer in thunderbolts and\nflames. They gave me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder\nsat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little\nfrightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay\nwhat I had said, what could I do but confirm my repudiation?\n\n\"There\'s no hell,\" I said, \"and no eternal punishment. No God would be\nsuch a fool as that.\"\n\nMy elder cousin cried aloud in horror, and the younger lay scared, but\nlistening. \"Then you mean,\" said my elder cousin, when at last he could\nbring himself to argue, \"you might do just as you liked?\"\n\n\"If you were cad enough,\" said I.\n\nOur little voices went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got\nout of bed and made his brother do likewise, and knelt in the night\ndimness and prayed at me. That I found trying, but I held out valiantly.\n\"Forgive him,\" said my cousin, \"he knows not what he sayeth.\"\n\n\"You can pray if you like,\" I said, \"but if you\'re going to cheek me in\nyour prayers I draw the line.\"\n\nThe last I remember of that great discussion was my cousin deploring the\nfact that he \"should ever sleep in the same bed with an Infidel!\"\n\nThe next day he astonished me by telling the whole business to his\nfather. This was quite outside all my codes. Uncle Nicodemus sprang it\nupon me at the midday meal.\n\n\"You been sayin\' queer things, George,\" he said abruptly. \"You better\nmind what you\'re saying.\"\n\n\"What did he say, father?\" said Mrs. Frapp.\n\n\"Things I couldn\'t\' repeat,\" said he.\n\n\"What things?\" I asked hotly.\n\n\"Ask \'IM,\" said my uncle, pointing with his knife to his informant,\nand making me realise the nature of my offence. My aunt looked at the\nwitness. \"Not--?\" she framed a question.\n\n\"Wuss,\" said my uncle. \"Blarsphemy.\"\n\nMy aunt couldn\'t touch another mouthful. I was already a little troubled\nin my conscience by my daring, and now I began to feel the black\nenormity of the course upon which I had embarked.\n\n\"I was only talking sense,\" I said.\n\nI had a still more dreadful moment when presently I met my cousin in the\nbrick alley behind the yard, that led back to his grocer\'s shop.\n\n\"You sneak!\" I said, and smacked his face hard forthwith. \"Now then,\"\nsaid I.\n\nHe started back, astonished and alarmed. His eyes met mine, and I saw a\nsudden gleam of resolution. He turned his other cheek to me.\n\n\"\'It \'it,\" he said.\"\'It \'it. I\'LL forgive you.\"\n\nI felt I had never encountered a more detestable way of evading a\nlicking. I shoved him against the wall and left him there, forgiving me,\nand went back into the house.\n\n\"You better not speak to your cousins, George,\" said my aunt, \"till\nyou\'re in a better state of mind.\"\n\nI became an outcast forthwith. At supper that night a gloomy silence was\nbroken by my cousin saying,\n\n\"\'E \'it me for telling you, and I turned the other cheek, muvver.\"\n\n\"\'E\'s got the evil one be\'ind \'im now, a ridin\' on \'is back,\" said my\naunt, to the grave discomfort of the eldest girl, who sat beside me.\n\nAfter supper my uncle, in a few ill-chosen words, prayed me to repent\nbefore I slept.\n\n\"Suppose you was took in your sleep, George,\" he said; \"where\'d you\nbe then? You jest think of that me boy.\" By this time I was thoroughly\nmiserable and frightened, and this suggestion unnerved me dreadfully but\nI kept up an impenitent front. \"To wake in \'ell,\" said Uncle Nicodemus,\nin gentle tones. \"You don\'t want to wake in \'ell, George, burnin\' and\nscreamin\' for ever, do you? You wouldn\'t like that?\"\n\nHe tried very hard to get me to \"jest \'ave a look at the bake\'ouse fire\"\nbefore I retired. \"It might move you,\" he said.\n\nI was awake longest that night. My cousins slept, the sleep of faith\non either side of me. I decided I would whisper my prayers, and stopped\nmidway because I was ashamed, and perhaps also because I had an idea one\ndidn\'t square God like that.\n\n\"No,\" I said, with a sudden confidence, \"damn me if you\'re coward\nenough.... But you\'re not. No! You couldn\'t be!\"\n\nI woke my cousins up with emphatic digs, and told them as much,\ntriumphantly, and went very peacefully to sleep with my act of faith\naccomplished.\n\nI slept not only through that night, but for all my nights since then.\nSo far as any fear of Divine injustice goes, I sleep soundly, and\nshall, I know, to the end of things. That declaration was an epoch in my\nspiritual life.\n\nII\n\nBut I didn\'t expect to have the whole meeting on Sunday turned on to me.\n\nIt was. It all comes back to me, that convergence of attention, even the\nfaint leathery smell of its atmosphere returns, and the coarse feel of\nmy aunt\'s black dress beside me in contact with my hand. I see again\nthe old Welsh milkman \"wrestling\" with me, they all wrestled with me, by\nprayer or exhortation. And I was holding out stoutly, though convinced\nnow by the contagion of their universal conviction that by doing so I\nwas certainly and hopelessly damned. I felt that they were right, that\nGod was probably like them, and that on the whole it didn\'t matter.\nAnd to simplify the business thoroughly I had declared I didn\'t believe\nanything at all. They confuted me by texts from Scripture which I now\nperceive was an illegitimate method of reply. When I got home, still\nimpenitent and eternally lost and secretly very lonely and miserable and\nalarmed, Uncle Nicodemus docked my Sunday pudding.\n\nOne person only spoke to me like a human being on that day of wrath, and\nthat was the younger Frapp. He came up to me in the afternoon while I\nwas confined upstairs with a Bible and my own thoughts.\n\n\"\'Ello,\" he said, and fretted about.\n\n\"D\'you mean to say there isn\'t--no one,\" he said, funking the word.\n\n\"No one?\"\n\n\"No one watching yer--always.\"\n\n\"Why should there be?\" I asked.\n\n\"You can\'t \'elp thoughts,\" said my cousin, \"anyhow. You mean--\" He\nstopped hovering. \"I s\'pose I oughtn\'t to be talking to you.\"\n\nHe hesitated and flitted away with a guilty back glance over his\nshoulder....\n\nThe following week made life quite intolerable for me; these people\nforced me at last into an Atheism that terrified me. When I learnt\nthat next Sunday the wrestling was to be resumed, my courage failed me\naltogether.\n\nI happened upon a map of Kent in a stationer\'s window on Saturday, and\nthat set me thinking of one form of release. I studied it intently for\nhalf an hour perhaps, on Saturday night, got a route list of villages\nwell fixed in my memory, and got up and started for Bladesover about\nfive on Sunday morning while my two bed mates were still fast asleep.\n\nIII\n\nI remember something, but not so much of it as I should like to recall,\nof my long tramp to Bladesover House. The distance from Chatham is\nalmost exactly seventeen miles, and it took me until nearly one. It was\nvery interesting and I do not think I was very fatigued, though I got\nrather pinched by one boot.\n\nThe morning must have been very clear, because I remember that near\nItchinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that\nriver that has since played so large a part in my life. But at the time\nI did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud\nflats and water was the sea, which I had never yet seen nearly. And\nout upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a steamer or so, going up to\nLondon or down out into the great seas of the world. I stood for a long\ntime watching these and thinking whether after all I should not have\ndone better to have run away to sea.\n\nThe nearer I drew to Bladesover, the more doubtful I grew of the duality\nof my reception, and the more I regretted that alternative. I suppose it\nwas the dirty clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly, that put me\nout of mind of that. I took a short cut through the Warren across the\ncorner of the main park to intercept the people from the church. I\nwanted to avoid meeting any one before I met my mother, and so I went to\na place where the path passed between banks, and without exactly hiding,\nstood up among the bushes. This place among other advantages eliminated\nany chance of seeing Lady Drew, who would drive round by the carriage\nroad.\n\nStanding up to waylay in this fashion I had a queer feeling of\nbrigandage, as though I was some intrusive sort of bandit among these\norderly things. It is the first time I remember having that outlaw\nfeeling distinctly, a feeling that has played a large part in my\nsubsequent life. I felt there existed no place for me that I had to\ndrive myself in.\n\nPresently, down the hill, the servants appeared, straggling by twos and\nthrees, first some of the garden people and the butler\'s wife with them,\nthen the two laundry maids, odd inseparable old creatures, then the\nfirst footman talking to the butler\'s little girl, and at last, walking\ngrave and breathless beside old Ann and Miss Fison, the black figure of\nmy mother.\n\nMy boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance.\n\"Coo-ee, mother\" said I, coming out against the sky, \"Coo-ee!\"\n\nMy mother looked up, went very white, and put her hand to her bosom.\n\nI suppose there was a fearful fuss about me. And of course I was quite\nunable to explain my reappearance. But I held out stoutly, \"I won\'t\ngo back to Chatham; I\'ll drown myself first.\" The next day my mother\ncarried me off to Wimblehurst, took me fiercely and aggressively to an\nuncle I had never heard of before, near though the place was to us. She\ngave me no word as to what was to happen, and I was too subdued by\nher manifest wrath and humiliation at my last misdemeanour to demand\ninformation. I don\'t for one moment think Lady Drew was \"nice\" about me.\nThe finality of my banishment was endorsed and underlined and stamped\nhome. I wished very much now that I had run away to sea, in spite of the\ncoal dust and squalour Rochester had revealed to me. Perhaps over seas\none came to different lands.\n\n\nIV\n\nI do not remember much of my journey to Wimblehurst with my mother\nexcept the image of her as sitting bolt upright, as rather disdaining\nthe third-class carriage in which we traveled, and how she looked away\nfrom me out of the window when she spoke of my uncle. \"I have not seen\nyour uncle,\" she said, \"since he was a boy....\" She added grudgingly,\n\"Then he was supposed to be clever.\"\n\nShe took little interest in such qualities as cleverness.\n\n\"He married about three years ago, and set up for himself in\nWimblehurst.... So I suppose she had some money.\"\n\nShe mused on scenes she had long dismissed from her mind. \"Teddy,\" she\nsaid at last in the tone of one who has been feeling in the dark\nand finds. \"He was called Teddy... about your age.... Now he must be\ntwenty-six or seven.\"\n\nI thought of my uncle as Teddy directly I saw him; there was something\nin his personal appearance that in the light of that memory phrased\nitself at once as Teddiness--a certain Teddidity. To describe it in\nand other terms is more difficult. It is nimbleness without grace, and\nalertness without intelligence. He whisked out of his shop upon the\npavement, a short figure in grey and wearing grey carpet slippers; one\nhad a sense of a young fattish face behind gilt glasses, wiry hair that\nstuck up and forward over the forehead, an irregular nose that had its\naquiline moments, and that the body betrayed an equatorial laxity, an\nincipient \"bow window\" as the image goes. He jerked out of the shop,\ncame to a stand on the pavement outside, regarded something in the\nwindow with infinite appreciation, stroked his chin, and, as abruptly,\nshot sideways into the door again, charging through it as it were behind\nan extended hand.\n\n\"That must be him,\" said my mother, catching at her breath.\n\nWe came past the window whose contents I was presently to know by heart,\na very ordinary chemist\'s window except that there was a frictional\nelectrical machine, an air pump and two or three tripods and retorts\nreplacing the customary blue, yellow, and red bottles above. There was\na plaster of Paris horse to indicate veterinary medicines among these\nbreakables, and below were scent packets and diffusers and sponges and\nsoda-water syphons and such-like things. Only in the middle there was a\nrubricated card, very neatly painted by hand, with these words--\n\n\n Buy Ponderevo\'s Cough Linctus NOW.\n NOW!\n WHY?\n Twopence Cheaper than in Winter.\n You Store apples! why not the Medicine\n You are Bound to Need?\n\nin which appeal I was to recognise presently my uncle\'s distinctive\nnote.\n\nMy uncle\'s face appeared above a card of infant\'s comforters in the\nglass pane of the door. I perceived his eyes were brown, and that his\nglasses creased his nose. It was manifest he did not know us from Adam.\nA stare of scrutiny allowed an expression of commercial deference to\nappear in front of it, and my uncle flung open the door.\n\n\"You don\'t know me?\" panted my mother.\n\nMy uncle would not own he did not, but his curiosity was manifest. My\nmother sat down on one of the little chairs before the soap and patent\nmedicine-piled counter, and her lips opened and closed.\n\n\"A glass of water, madam,\" said my uncle, waved his hand in a sort of\ncurve and shot away.\n\nMy mother drank the water and spoke. \"That boy,\" she said, \"takes after\nhis father. He grows more like him every day.... And so I have brought\nhim to you.\"\n\n\"His father, madam?\"\n\n\"George.\"\n\nFor a moment the chemist was still at a loss. He stood behind the\ncounter with the glass my mother had returned to him in his hand. Then\ncomprehension grew.\n\n\"By Gosh!\" he said. \"Lord!\" he cried. His glasses fell off. He\ndisappeared replacing them, behind a pile of boxed-up bottles of blood\nmixture. \"Eleven thousand virgins!\" I heard him cry. The glass was\nbanged down. \"O-ri-ental Gums!\"\n\nHe shot away out of the shop through some masked door. One heard his\nvoice. \"Susan! Susan!\"\n\nThen he reappeared with an extended hand. \"Well, how are you?\" he said.\n\"I was never so surprised in my life. Fancy!... You!\"\n\nHe shook my mother\'s impassive hand and then mine very warmly holding\nhis glasses on with his left forefinger.\n\n\"Come right in!\" he cried--\"come right in! Better late than never!\" and\nled the way into the parlour behind the shop.\n\nAfter Bladesover that apartment struck me as stuffy and petty, but it\nwas very comfortable in comparison with the Frapp living-room. It had\na faint, disintegrating smell of meals about it, and my most immediate\nimpression was of the remarkable fact that something was hung about\nor wrapped round or draped over everything. There was bright-patterned\nmuslin round the gas-bracket in the middle of the room, round the mirror\nover the mantel, stuff with ball-fringe along the mantel and casing in\nthe fireplace,--I first saw ball-fringe here--and even the lamp on the\nlittle bureau wore a shade like a large muslin hat. The table-cloth had\nball-fringe and so had the window curtains, and the carpet was a bed of\nroses. There were little cupboards on either side of the fireplace, and\nin the recesses, ill-made shelves packed with books, and enriched with\npinked American cloth. There was a dictionary lying face downward on\nthe table, and the open bureau was littered with foolscap paper and\nthe evidences of recently abandoned toil. My eye caught \"The Ponderevo\nPatent Flat, a Machine you can Live in,\" written in large firm letters.\nMy uncle opened a little door like a cupboard door in the corner of this\nroom, and revealed the narrowest twist of staircase I had ever set\neyes upon. \"Susan!\" he bawled again. \"Wantje. Some one to see you.\nSurprisin\'.\"\n\nThere came an inaudible reply, and a sudden loud bump over our heads\nas of some article of domestic utility pettishly flung aside, then\nthe cautious steps of someone descending the twist, and then my aunt\nappeared in the doorway with her hand upon the jamb.\n\n\"It\'s Aunt Ponderevo,\" cried my uncle. \"George\'s wife--and she\'s brought\nover her son!\" His eye roamed about the room. He darted to the bureau\nwith a sudden impulse, and turned the sheet about the patent flat\nface down. Then he waved his glasses at us, \"You know, Susan, my elder\nbrother George. I told you about \'im lots of times.\"\n\nHe fretted across to the hearthrug and took up a position there,\nreplaced his glasses and coughed.\n\nMy aunt Susan seemed to be taking it in. She was then rather a pretty\nslender woman of twenty-three or four, I suppose, and I remember being\nstruck by the blueness of her eyes and the clear freshness of her\ncomplexion. She had little features, a button nose, a pretty chin and a\nlong graceful neck that stuck out of her pale blue cotton morning\ndress. There was a look of half-assumed perplexity on her face, a little\nquizzical wrinkle of the brow that suggested a faintly amused attempt\nto follow my uncle\'s mental operations, a vain attempt and a certain\nhopelessness that had in succession become habitual. She seemed to be\nsaying, \"Oh Lord! What\'s he giving me THIS time?\" And as came to know\nher better I detected, as a complication of her effort of apprehension,\na subsidiary riddle to \"What\'s he giving me?\" and that was--to borrow a\nphrase from my schoolboy language \"Is it keeps?\" She looked at my mother\nand me, and back to her husband again.\n\n\"You know,\" he said. \"George.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said to my mother, descending the last three steps of the\nstaircase and holding out her hand! \"you\'re welcome. Though it\'s a\nsurprise.... I can\'t ask you to HAVE anything, I\'m afraid, for there\nisn\'t anything in the house.\" She smiled, and looked at her husband\nbanteringly. \"Unless he makes up something with his old chemicals, which\nhe\'s quite equal to doing.\"\n\nMy mother shook hands stiffly, and told me to kiss my aunt....\n\n\"Well, let\'s all sit down,\" said my uncle, suddenly whistling through\nhis clenched teeth, and briskly rubbing his hands together. He put up a\nchair for my mother, raised the blind of the little window, lowered it\nagain, and returned to his hearthrug. \"I\'m sure,\" he said, as one who\ndecides, \"I\'m very glad to see you.\"\n\nV\n\nAs they talked I gave my attention pretty exclusively to my uncle.\n\nI noted him in great detail. I remember now his partially unbuttoned\nwaistcoat, as though something had occurred to distract him as he did\nit up, and a little cut upon his chin. I liked a certain humour in\nhis eyes. I watched, too, with the fascination that things have for an\nobservant boy, the play of his lips--they were a little oblique, and\nthere was something \"slipshod,\" if one may strain a word so far, about\nhis mouth, so that he lisped and sibilated ever and again and the coming\nand going of a curious expression, triumphant in quality it was, upon\nhis face as he talked. He fingered his glasses, which did not seem to\nfit his nose, fretted with things in his waistcoat pockets or put his\nhands behind him, looked over our heads, and ever and again rose to his\ntoes and dropped back on his heels. He had a way of drawing air in at\ntimes through his teeth that gave a whispering zest to his speech It\'s a\nsound I can only represent as a soft Zzzz.\n\nHe did most of the talking. My mother repeated what she had already said\nin the shop, \"I have brought George over to you,\" and then desisted\nfor a time from the real business in hand. \"You find this a\ncomfortable house?\" she asked; and this being affirmed: \"It looks--very\nconvenient.... Not too big to be a trouble--no. You like Wimblehurst, I\nsuppose?\"\n\nMy uncle retorted with some inquiries about the great people of\nBladesover, and my mother answered in the character of a personal friend\nof Lady Drew\'s. The talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked\nupon a dissertation upon Wimblehurst.\n\n\"This place,\" he began, \"isn\'t of course quite the place I ought to be\nin.\"\n\nMy mother nodded as though she had expected that.\n\n\"It gives me no Scope,\" he went on. \"It\'s dead-and-alive. Nothing\nhappens.\"\n\n\"He\'s always wanting something to happen,\" said my aunt Susan. \"Some day\nhe\'ll get a shower of things and they\'ll be too much for him.\"\n\n\"Not they,\" said my uncle, buoyantly.\n\n\"Do you find business--slack?\" asked my mother.\n\n\"Oh! one rubs along. But there\'s no Development--no growth. They just\ncome along here and buy pills when they want \'em--and a horseball or\nsuch. They\'ve got to be ill before there\'s a prescription. That sort\nthey are. You can\'t get \'em to launch out, you can\'t get \'em to take up\nanything new. For instance, I\'ve been trying lately--induce them to buy\ntheir medicines in advance, and in larger quantities. But they won\'t\nlook for it! Then I tried to float a little notion of mine, sort of an\ninsurance scheme for colds; you pay so much a week, and when you\'ve got\na cold you get a bottle of Cough Linctus so long as you can produce a\nsubstantial sniff. See? But Lord! they\'ve no capacity for ideas, they\ndon\'t catch on; no Jump about the place, no Life. Live!--they trickle,\nand what one has to do here is to trickle too--Zzzz.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said my mother.\n\n\"It doesn\'t suit me,\" said my uncle. \"I\'m the cascading sort.\"\n\n\"George was that,\" said my mother after a pondering moment.\n\nMy aunt Susan took up the parable with an affectionate glance at her\nhusband.\n\n\"He\'s always trying to make his old business jump,\" she said. \"Always\nputting fresh cards in the window, or getting up to something. You\'d\nhardly believe. It makes ME jump sometimes.\"\n\n\"But it does no good,\" said my uncle.\n\n\"It does no good,\" said his wife. \"It\'s not his miloo...\"\n\nPresently they came upon a wide pause.\n\nFrom the beginning of their conversation there had been the promise of\nthis pause, and I pricked my ears. I knew perfectly what was bound\nto come; they were going to talk of my father. I was enormously\nstrengthened in my persuasion when I found my mother\'s eyes resting\nthoughtfully upon me in the silence, and than my uncle looked at me and\nthen my aunt. I struggled unavailingly to produce an expression of meek\nstupidity.\n\n\"I think,\" said my uncle, \"that George will find it more amusing to have\na turn in the market-place than to sit here talking with us. There\'s a\npair of stocks there, George--very interesting. Old-fashioned stocks.\"\n\n\"I don\'t mind sitting here,\" I said.\n\nMy uncle rose and in the most friendly way led me through the shop. He\nstood on his doorstep and jerked amiable directions to me.\n\n\"Ain\'t it sleepy, George, eh? There\'s the butcher\'s dog over there,\nasleep in the road-half an hour from midday! If the last Trump sounded\nI don\'t believe it would wake. Nobody would wake! The chaps up there in\nthe churchyard--they\'d just turn over and say: \'Naar--you don\'t catch\nus, you don\'t! See?\'.... Well, you\'ll find the stocks just round that\ncorner.\"\n\nHe watched me out of sight.\n\nSo I never heard what they said about my father after all.\n\nVI\n\nWhen I returned, my uncle had in some remarkable way become larger and\ncentral. \"Tha\'chu, George?\" he cried, when the shop-door bell sounded.\n\"Come right through\"; and I found him, as it were, in the chairman\'s\nplace before the draped grate.\n\nThe three of them regarded me.\n\n\"We have been talking of making you a chemist, George,\" said my uncle.\n\nMy mother looked at me. \"I had hoped,\" she said, \"that Lady Drew would\nhave done something for him--\" She stopped.\n\n\"In what way?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"She might have spoken to some one, got him into something perhaps....\"\nShe had the servant\'s invincible persuasion that all good things are\ndone by patronage.\n\n\"He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done,\" she added,\ndismissing these dreams. \"He doesn\'t accommodate himself. When he thinks\nLady Drew wishes a thing, he seems not to wish it. Towards Mr. Redgrave,\ntoo, he has been--disrespectful--he is like his father.\"\n\n\"Who\'s Mr. Redgrave?\"\n\n\"The Vicar.\"\n\n\"A bit independent?\" said my uncle, briskly.\n\n\"Disobedient,\" said my mother. \"He has no idea of his place. He seems to\nthink he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He\'ll learn\nperhaps before it is too late.\"\n\nMy uncle stroked his cut chin and me. \"Have you learnt any Latin?\" he\nasked abruptly.\n\nI said I had not.\n\n\"He\'ll have to learn a little Latin,\" he explained to my mother,\n\"to qualify. H\'m. He could go down to the chap at the grammar school\nhere--it\'s just been routed into existence again by the Charity\nCommissioners and have lessons.\"\n\n\"What, me learn Latin!\" I cried, with emotion.\n\n\"A little,\" he said.\n\n\"I\'ve always wanted\" I said and; \"LATIN!\"\n\nI had long been obsessed by the idea that having no Latin was a\ndisadvantage in the world, and Archie Garvell had driven the point of\nthis pretty earnestly home. The literature I had read at Bladesover had\nall tended that way. Latin had had a quality of emancipation for me that\nI find it difficult to convey. And suddenly, when I had supposed all\nlearning was at an end for me, I heard this!\n\n\"It\'s no good to you, of course,\" said my uncle, \"except to pass exams\nwith, but there you are!\"\n\n\"You\'ll have to learn Latin because you have to learn Latin,\" said my\nmother, \"not because you want to. And afterwards you will have to learn\nall sorts of other things....\"\n\nThe idea that I was to go on learning, that to read and master the\ncontents of books was still to be justifiable as a duty, overwhelmed all\nother facts. I had had it rather clear in my mind for some weeks that\nall that kind of opportunity might close to me for ever. I began to take\na lively interest in this new project.\n\n\"Then shall I live here?\" I asked, \"with you, and study... as well as\nwork in the shop?\"\n\n\"That\'s the way of it,\" said my uncle.\n\nI parted from my mother that day in a dream, so sudden and important\nwas this new aspect of things to me. I was to learn Latin! Now that the\nhumiliation of my failure at Bladesover was past for her, now that she\nhad a little got over her first intense repugnance at this resort to my\nuncle and contrived something that seemed like a possible provision for\nmy future, the tenderness natural to a parting far more significant than\nany of our previous partings crept into her manner.\n\nShe sat in the train to return, I remember, and I stood at the open door\nof her compartment, and neither of us knew how soon we should cease for\never to be a trouble to one another.\n\n\"You must be a good boy, George,\" she said. \"You must learn.... And you\nmustn\'t set yourself up against those who are above you and better than\nyou.... Or envy them.\"\n\n\"No, mother,\" I said.\n\nI promised carelessly. Her eyes were fixed upon me. I was wondering\nwhether I could by any means begin Latin that night.\n\nSomething touched her heart then, some thought, some memory; perhaps\nsome premonition.... The solitary porter began slamming carriage doors.\n\n\"George\" she said hastily, almost shamefully, \"kiss me!\"\n\nI stepped up into her compartment as she bent downward.\n\nShe caught me in her arms quite eagerly, she pressed me to her--a\nstrange thing for her to do. I perceived her eyes were extraordinarily\nbright, and then this brightness burst along the lower lids and rolled\ndown her cheeks.\n\nFor the first and last time in my life I saw my mother\'s tears. Then she\nhad gone, leaving me discomforted and perplexed, forgetting for a time\neven that I was to learn Latin, thinking of my mother as of something\nnew and strange.\n\nThe thing recurred though I sought to dismiss it, it stuck itself\ninto my memory against the day of fuller understanding. Poor, proud,\nhabitual, sternly narrow soul! poor difficult and misunderstanding son!\nit was the first time that ever it dawned upon me that my mother also\nmight perhaps feel.\n\nVII\n\nMy mother died suddenly and, it was thought by Lady Drew,\ninconsiderately, the following spring. Her ladyship instantly fled to\nFolkestone with Miss Somerville and Fison, until the funeral should be\nover and my mother\'s successor installed.\n\nMy uncle took me over to the funeral. I remember there was a sort of\nprolonged crisis in the days preceding this because, directly he heard\nof my loss, he had sent a pair of check trousers to the Judkins people\nin London to be dyed black, and they did not come back in time. He\nbecame very excited on the third day, and sent a number of increasingly\nfiery telegrams without any result whatever, and succumbed next morning\nwith a very ill grace to my aunt Susan\'s insistence upon the resources\nof his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a\nparticularly thin and shiny black cloth--for evidently his dress-suit\ndated from adolescent and slenderer days--straddle like the Colossus\nof Rhodes over my approach to my mother\'s funeral. Moreover, I was\ninconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first\nsilk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a deep mourning band.\n\nI remember, but rather indistinctly, my mother\'s white paneled\nhousekeeper\'s room and the touch of oddness about it that she was not\nthere, and the various familiar faces made strange by black, and I seem\nto recall the exaggerated self-consciousness that arose out of their\nfocussed attention. No doubt the sense of the new silk hat came and went\nand came again in my emotional chaos. Then something comes out clear and\nsorrowful, rises out clear and sheer from among all these rather base\nand inconsequent things, and once again I walk before all the other\nmourners close behind her coffin as it is carried along the churchyard\npath to her grave, with the old vicar\'s slow voice saying regretfully\nand unconvincingly above me, triumphant solemn things.\n\n\"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth\nin me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and\nbelieveth in me shall never die.\"\n\nNever die! The day was a high and glorious morning in spring, and all\nthe trees were budding and bursting into green. Everywhere there were\nblossoms and flowers; the pear trees and cherry trees in the sexton\'s\ngarden were sunlit snow, there were nodding daffodils and early tulips\nin the graveyard beds, great multitudes of daisies, and everywhere\nthe birds seemed singing. And in the middle was the brown coffin end,\ntilting on men\'s shoulders and half occluded by the vicar\'s Oxford hood.\n\nAnd so we came to my mother\'s waiting grave.\n\nFor a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered, hearing\nthe words of the ritual. It seemed a very curious business altogether.\n\nSuddenly as the service drew to its end, I felt something had still\nto be said which had not been said, realised that she had withdrawn\nin silence, neither forgiving me nor hearing from me--those now lost\nassurances. Suddenly I knew I had not understood. Suddenly I saw her\ntenderly; remembered not so much tender or kindly things of her as her\ncrossed wishes and the ways in which I had thwarted her. Surprisingly\nI realised that behind all her hardness and severity she had loved me,\nthat I was the only thing she had ever loved and that until this moment\nI had never loved her. And now she was there and deaf and blind to me,\npitifully defeated in her designs for me, covered from me so that she\ncould not know....\n\nI dug my nails into the palms of my hands, I set my teeth, but tears\nblinded me, sobs would have choked me had speech been required of me.\nThe old vicar read on, there came a mumbled response--and so on to the\nend. I wept as it were internally, and only when we had come out of the\nchurchyard could I think and speak calmly again.\n\nStamped across this memory are the little black figures of my uncle and\nRabbits, telling Avebury, the sexton and undertaker, that \"it had all\npassed off very well--very well indeed.\"\n\nVIII\n\nThat is the last I shall tell of Bladesover. The dropscene falls on\nthat, and it comes no more as an actual presence into this novel. I\ndid indeed go back there once again, but under circumstances quite\nimmaterial to my story. But in a sense Bladesover has never left me;\nit is, as I said at the outset, one of those dominant explanatory\nimpressions that make the framework of my mind. Bladesover illuminates\nEngland; it has become all that is spacious, dignified pretentious, and\ntruly conservative in English life. It is my social datum. That is why I\nhave drawn it here on so large a scale.\n\nWhen I came back at last to the real Bladesover on an inconsequent\nvisit, everything was far smaller than I could have supposed possible.\nIt was as though everything had shivered and shrivelled a little at the\nLichtenstein touch. The harp was still in the saloon, but there was a\ndifferent grand piano with a painted lid and a metrostyle pianola, and\nan extraordinary quantity of artistic litter and bric-a-brac scattered\nabout. There was the trail of the Bond Street showroom over it all. The\nfurniture was still under chintz, but it wasn\'t the same sort of chintz\nalthough it pretended to be, and the lustre-dangling chandeliers had\npassed away. Lady Lichtenstein\'s books replaced the brown volumes I\nhad browsed among--they were mostly presentation copies of contemporary\nnovels and the National Review and the Empire Review, and the Nineteenth\nCentury and after jostled current books on the tables--English new books\nin gaudy catchpenny \"artistic\" covers, French and Italian novels in\nyellow, German art handbooks of almost incredible ugliness. There\nwere abundant evidences that her ladyship was playing with the\nKeltic renascence, and a great number of ugly cats made of china--she\n\"collected\" china and stoneware cats--stood about everywhere--in all\ncolours, in all kinds of deliberately comic, highly glazed distortion.\n\nIt is nonsense to pretend that finance makes any better aristocrats than\nrent. Nothing can make an aristocrat but pride, knowledge, training, and\nthe sword. These people were no improvement on the Drews, none whatever.\nThere was no effect of a beneficial replacement of passive unintelligent\npeople by active intelligent ones. One felt that a smaller but more\nenterprising and intensely undignified variety of stupidity had replaced\nthe large dullness of the old gentry, and that was all. Bladesover, I\nthought, had undergone just the same change between the seventies and\nthe new century that had overtaken the dear old Times, and heaven knows\nhow much more of the decorous British fabric. These Lichtensteins and\ntheir like seem to have no promise in them at all of any fresh vitality\nfor the kingdom. I do not believe in their intelligence or their\npower--they have nothing new about them at all, nothing creative nor\nrejuvenescent, no more than a disorderly instinct of acquisition; and\nthe prevalence of them and their kind is but a phase in the broad slow\ndecay of the great social organism of England. They could not have made\nBladesover they cannot replace it; they just happen to break out over\nit--saprophytically.\n\nWell--that was my last impression of Bladesover.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE THIRD\n\nTHE WIMBLEHURST APPRENTICESHIP\n\nI\n\nSo far as I can remember now, except for that one emotional phase by the\ngraveside, I passed through all these experiences rather callously. I\nhad already, with the facility of youth, changed my world, ceased to\nthink at all of the old school routine and put Bladesover aside for\ndigestion at a latter stage. I took up my new world in Wimblehurst with\nthe chemist\'s shop as its hub, set to work at Latin and materia medica,\nand concentrated upon the present with all my heart. Wimblehurst is an\nexceptionally quiet and grey Sussex town rare among south of England\ntowns in being largely built of stone. I found something very agreeable\nand picturesque in its clean cobbled streets, its odd turnings and\nabrupt corners; and in the pleasant park that crowds up one side of the\ntown. The whole place is under the Eastry dominion and it was the\nEastry influence and dignity that kept its railway station a mile and\nthree-quarters away. Eastry House is so close that it dominates the\nwhole; one goes across the marketplace (with its old lock-up and\nstocks), past the great pre-reformation church, a fine grey shell, like\nsome empty skull from which the life has fled, and there at once are the\nhuge wrought-iron gates, and one peeps through them to see the facade of\nthis place, very white and large and fine, down a long avenue of yews.\nEastry was far greater than Bladesover and an altogether completer\nexample of the eighteenth century system. It ruled not two villages, but\na borough, that had sent its sons and cousins to parliament almost as a\nmatter of right so long as its franchise endured. Every one was in the\nsystem, every one--except my uncle. He stood out and complained.\n\nMy uncle was the first real breach I found in the great front of\nBladesover the world had presented me, for Chatham was not so much a\nbreach as a confirmation. But my uncle had no respect for Bladesover and\nEastry--none whatever. He did not believe in them. He was blind even to\nwhat they were. He propounded strange phrases about them, he exfoliated\nand wagged about novel and incredible ideas.\n\n\"This place,\" said my uncle, surveying it from his open doorway in the\ndignified stillness of a summer afternoon, \"wants Waking Up!\"\n\nI was sorting up patent medicines in the corner.\n\n\"I\'d like to let a dozen young Americans loose into it,\" said my uncle.\n\"Then we\'d see.\"\n\nI made a tick against Mother Shipton\'s Sleeping Syrup. We had cleared\nour forward stock.\n\n\"Things must be happening SOMEWHERE, George,\" he broke out in a\nquerulously rising note as he came back into the little shop. He fiddled\nwith the piled dummy boxes of fancy soap and scent and so forth that\nadorned the end of the counter, then turned about petulantly, stuck his\nhands deeply into his pockets and withdrew one to scratch his head. \"I\nmust do SOMETHING,\" he said. \"I can\'t stand it.\n\n\"I must invent something. And shove it.... I could.\n\n\"Or a play. There\'s a deal of money in a play, George. What would you\nthink of me writing a play eh?... There\'s all sorts of things to be\ndone.\n\n\"Or the stog-igschange.\"\n\nHe fell into that meditative whistling of his.\n\n\"Sac-ramental wine!\" he swore, \"this isn\'t the world--it\'s Cold Mutton\nFat! That\'s what Wimblehurst is! Cold Mutton Fat!--dead and stiff! And\nI\'m buried in it up to the arm pits. Nothing ever happens, nobody\nwants things to happen \'scept me! Up in London, George, things happen.\nAmerica! I wish to Heaven, George, I\'d been born American--where things\nhum.\n\n\"What can one do here? How can one grow? While we\'re sleepin\' here with\nour Capital oozing away into Lord Eastry\'s pockets for rent-men are\nup there....\" He indicated London as remotely over the top of the\ndispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by a whirl of\nthe hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me.\n\n\"What sort of things do they do?\" I asked.\n\n\"Rush about,\" he said. \"Do things! Somethin\' glorious. There\'s cover\ngambling. Ever heard of that, George?\" He drew the air in through his\nteeth. \"You put down a hundred say, and buy ten thousand pounds worth.\nSee? That\'s a cover of one per cent. Things go up one, you sell, realise\ncent per cent; down, whiff, it\'s gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George,\nevery day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the shoutin\'!\nZzzz.... Well, that\'s one way, George. Then another way--there\'s\nCorners!\"\n\n\"They\'re rather big things, aren\'t they?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Oh, if you go in for wheat or steel--yes. But suppose you tackled a\nlittle thing, George. Just some little thing that only needed a few\nthousands. Drugs for example. Shoved all you had into it--staked your\nliver on it, so to speak. Take a drug--take ipecac, for example. Take\na lot of ipecac. Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren\'t\nunlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can\'t be!--and it\'s a thing people\nmust have. Then quinine again! You watch your chance, wait for a\ntropical war breaking out, let\'s say, and collar all the quinine. Where\nARE they? Must have quinine, you know. Eh? Zzzz.\n\n\"Lord! there\'s no end of things--no end of little things.\nDill-water--all the suffering babes yowling for it. Eucalyptus\nagain--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the toothache things. Then\nthere\'s antiseptics, and curare, cocaine....\"\n\n\"Rather a nuisance to the doctors,\" I reflected.\n\n\"They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They\'ll do you if\nthey can, and you do them. Like brigands. That makes it romantic. That\'s\nthe Romance of Commerce, George. You\'re in the mountains there! Think\nof having all the quinine in the world, and some millionaire\'s pampered\nwife gone ill with malaria, eh? That\'s a squeeze, George, eh? Eh?\nMillionaire on his motor car outside, offering you any price you liked.\nThat \'ud wake up Wimblehurst.... Lord! You haven\'t an Idea down here.\nNot an idea. Zzzz.\"\n\nHe passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such fragments as:\n\"Fifty per cent. advance sir; security--to-morrow. Zzzz.\"\n\nThe idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of\nirresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in\nreality. It was the sort of nonsense one would talk to make Ewart laugh\nand set him going on to still odder possibilities. I thought it was part\nof my uncle\'s way of talking. But I\'ve learnt differently since. The\nwhole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will\npresently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself\nwealthy. You buy up land upon which people will presently want to build\nhouses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments,\nand so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a boy does not\ngrasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with\na disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not\nrealise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and\ncustom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power\nas irresistible as a head master\'s to check mischievous and foolish\nenterprises of every sort. I will confess that when my uncle talked of\ncornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived\nto do that would pretty certainly go to jail. Now I know that any one\nwho could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the\nHouse of Lords!\n\nMy uncle ranged over the gilt labels of his bottles and drawers for a\nwhile, dreaming of corners in this and that. But at last he reverted to\nWimblehurst again.\n\n\"You got to be in London when these things are in hand. Down here--!\n\n\"Jee-rusalem!\" he cried. \"Why did I plant myself here? Everything\'s\ndone. The game\'s over. Here\'s Lord Eastry, and he\'s got everything,\nexcept what his lawyers get, and before you get any more change this way\nyou\'ll have to dynamite him--and them. HE doesn\'t want anything more\nto happen. Why should he? Any chance \'ud be a loss to him. He wants\neverything to burble along and burble along and go on as it\'s going\nfor the next ten thousand years, Eastry after Eastry, one parson down\nanother come, one grocer dead, get another! Any one with any ideas\nbetter go away. They HAVE gone away! Look at all these blessed people\nin this place! Look at \'em! All fast asleep, doing their business out\nof habit--in a sort of dream, Stuffed men would do just as well--just.\nThey\'ve all shook down into their places. THEY don\'t want anything to\nhappen either. They\'re all broken in. There you are! Only what are they\nall alive for?...\n\n\"Why can\'t they get a clockwork chemist?\"\n\nHe concluded as he often concluded these talks. \"I must invent\nsomething,--that\'s about what I must do. Zzzz. Some convenience.\nSomething people want.... Strike out.... You can\'t think, George, of\nanything everybody wants and hasn\'t got? I mean something you could turn\nout retail under a shilling, say? Well, YOU think, whenever you haven\'t\ngot anything better to do. See?\"\n\nII\n\nSo I remember my uncle in that first phase, young, but already a little\nfat, restless, fretful, garrulous, putting in my fermenting head all\nsorts of discrepant ideas. Certainly he was educational....\n\nFor me the years at Wimblehurst were years of pretty active growth.\nMost of my leisure and much of my time in the shop I spent in study.\nI speedily mastered the modicum of Latin necessary for my qualifying\nexaminations, and--a little assisted by the Government Science and Art\nDepartment classes that were held in the Grammar School--went on with my\nmathematics. There were classes in physics, in chemistry, in mathematics\nand machine drawing, and I took up these subjects with considerable\navidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the form of walks. There was some\ncricket in the summer and football in the winter sustained by young\nmen\'s clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail of the big people and the\nsitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I didn\'t find\nany very close companions among the youths of Wimblehurst. They struck\nme, after my cockney schoolmates, as loutish and slow, servile and\nfurtive, spiteful and mean. WE used to swagger, but these countrymen\ndragged their feet and hated an equal who didn\'t; we talked loud, but\nyou only got the real thoughts of Wimblehurst in a knowing undertone\nbehind its hand. And even then they weren\'t much in the way of thoughts.\n\nNo, I didn\'t like those young countrymen, and I\'m no believer in the\nEnglish countryside under the Bladesover system as a breeding ground for\nhonourable men. One hears a frightful lot of nonsense about the Rural\nExodus and the degeneration wrought by town life upon our population. To\nmy mind, the English townsman, even in the slums, is infinitely better\nspiritually, more courageous, more imaginative and cleaner, than his\nagricultural cousin. I\'ve seen them both when they didn\'t think\nthey were being observed, and I know. There was something about my\nWimblehurst companions that disgusted me. It\'s hard to define. Heaven\nknows that at that cockney boarding-school at Goudhurst we were coarse\nenough; the Wimblehurst youngsters had neither words nor courage for the\nsort of thing we used to do--for our bad language, for example; but,\non the other hand, they displayed a sort of sluggish, real lewdness,\nlewdness is the word--a baseness of attitude. Whatever we exiled urbans\ndid at Goudhurst was touched with something, however coarse, of romantic\nimagination. We had read the Boys of England, and told each other\nstories. In the English countryside there are no books at all, no songs,\nno drama, no valiant sin even; all these things have never come or they\nwere taken away and hidden generations ago, and the imagination aborts\nand bestialises. That, I think, is where the real difference against the\nEnglish rural man lies. It is because I know this that I do not share\nin the common repinings because our countryside is being depopulated,\nbecause our population is passing through the furnace of the towns. They\nstarve, they suffer, no doubt, but they come out of it hardened, they\ncome out of it with souls.\n\nOf an evening the Wimblehurst blade, shiny-faced from a wash and with\nsome loud finery, a coloured waistcoat or a vivid tie, would betake\nhimself to the Eastry Arms billiard-room, or to the bar parlour of\nsome minor pub where nap could be played. One soon sickened of his slow\nknowingness, the cunning observation of his deadened eyes, his idea of\na \"good story,\" always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his\nshrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the\ngood or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young\nHopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of\nWimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog\npipe, his riding breeches--he had no horse--and his gaiters, as he used\nto sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the\nbrim of his artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases constituted his\nconversation: \"hard lines!\" he used to say, and \"Good baazness,\" in a\nbass bleat. Moreover, he had a long slow whistle that was esteemed the\nvery cream of humorous comment. Night after night he was there.\n\nAlso you knew he would not understand that _I_ could play billiards, and\nregarded every stroke I made as a fluke. For a beginner I didn\'t play so\nbadly, I thought. I\'m not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time.\nBut young Dodd\'s scepticism and the \"good baazness\" finally cured me\nof my disposition to frequent the Eastry Arms, and so these noises had\ntheir value in my world.\n\nI made no friends among the young men of the place at all, and though I\nwas entering upon adolescence I have no love-affair to tell of here.\nNot that I was not waking up to that aspect of life in my middle teens I\ndid, indeed, in various slightly informal ways scrape acquaintance with\ncasual Wimblehurst girls; with a little dressmaker\'s apprentice I got\nupon shyly speaking terms, and a pupil teacher in the National School\nwent further and was \"talked about\" in connection with me but I was not\nby any means touched by any reality of passion for either of these young\npeople; love--love as yet came to me only in my dreams. I only kissed\nthese girls once or twice. They rather disconcerted than developed those\ndreams. They were so clearly not \"it.\" I shall have much to say of love\nin this story, but I may break it to the reader now that it is my role\nto be a rather ineffectual lover. Desire I knew well enough--indeed, too\nwell; but love I have been shy of. In all my early enterprises in the\nwar of the sexes, I was torn between the urgency of the body and a\nhabit of romantic fantasy that wanted every phase of the adventure to\nbe generous and beautiful. And I had a curiously haunting memory of\nBeatrice, of her kisses in the bracken and her kiss upon the wall, that\nsomehow pitched the standard too high for Wimblehurst\'s opportunities. I\nwill not deny I did in a boyish way attempt a shy, rude adventure or so\nin love-making at Wimblehurst; but through these various influences,\nI didn\'t bring things off to any extent at all. I left behind me no\ndevastating memories, no splendid reputation. I came away at last,\nstill inexperienced and a little thwarted, with only a natural growth of\ninterest and desire in sexual things.\n\nIf I fell in love with any one in Wimblehurst it was with my aunt. She\ntreated me with a kindliness that was only half maternal--she petted my\nbooks, she knew about my certificates, she made fun of me in a way that\nstirred my heart to her. Quite unconsciously I grew fond of her....\n\nMy adolescent years at Wimblehurst were on the whole laborious,\nuneventful years that began in short jackets and left me in many ways\nnearly a man, years so uneventful that the Calculus of Variations is\nassociated with one winter, and an examination in Physics for Science\nand Art department Honours marks an epoch. Many divergent impulses\nstirred within me, but the master impulse was a grave young disposition\nto work and learn and thereby in some not very clearly defined way get\nout of the Wimblehurst world into which I had fallen. I wrote with\nsome frequency to Ewart, self-conscious, but, as I remember them, not\nintelligent letters, dated in Latin and with lapses into Latin quotation\nthat roused Ewart to parody. There was something about me in those days\nmore than a little priggish. But it was, to do myself justice, something\nmore than the petty pride of learning. I had a very grave sense of\ndiscipline and preparation that I am not ashamed at all to remember. I\nwas serious. More serious than I am at the present time. More serious,\nindeed, than any adult seems to be. I was capable then of efforts--of\nnobilities.... They are beyond me now. I don\'t see why, at forty, I\nshouldn\'t confess I respect my own youth. I had dropped being a boy\nquite abruptly. I thought I was presently to go out into a larger and\nquite important world and do significant things there. I thought I\nwas destined to do something definite to a world that had a definite\npurpose. I did not understand then, as I do now, that life was to\nconsist largely in the world\'s doing things to me. Young people never\ndo seem to understand that aspect of things. And, as I say, among my\neducational influences my uncle, all unsuspected, played a leading part,\nand perhaps among other things gave my discontent with Wimblehurst, my\ndesire to get away from that clean and picturesque emptiness, a form and\nexpression that helped to emphasise it. In a way that definition made me\npatient. \"Presently I shall get to London,\" I said, echoing him.\n\nI remember him now as talking, always talking, in those days. He talked\nto me of theology, he talked of politics, of the wonders of science\nand the marvels of art, of the passions and the affections, of\nthe immortality of the soul and the peculiar actions of drugs; but\npredominantly and constantly he talked of getting on, of enterprises,\nof inventions and great fortunes, of Rothschilds, silver kings,\nVanderbilts, Goulds, flotations, realisations and the marvelous ways\nof Chance with men--in all localities, that is to say, that are not\nabsolutely sunken to the level of Cold Mutton Fat.\n\nWhen I think of those early talks, I figure him always in one of three\npositions. Either we were in the dispensing lair behind a high barrier,\nhe pounding up things in a mortar perhaps, and I rolling pill-stuff into\nlong rolls and cutting it up with a sort of broad, fluted knife, or\nhe stood looking out of the shop door against the case of sponges and\nspray-diffusers, while I surveyed him from behind the counter, or he\nleant against the little drawers behind the counter, and I hovered\ndusting in front. The thought of those early days brings back to my\nnostrils the faint smell of scent that was always in the air, marbled\nnow with streaks of this drug and now of that, and to my eyes the rows\nof jejune glass bottles with gold labels, mirror-reflected, that stood\nbehind him. My aunt, I remember, used sometimes to come into the shop\nin a state of aggressive sprightliness, a sort of connubial ragging\nexpedition, and get much fun over the abbreviated Latinity of those gilt\ninscriptions. \"Ol Amjig, George,\" she would read derisively, \"and he\npretends it\'s almond oil! Snap!--and that\'s mustard. Did you ever,\nGeorge?\n\n\"Look at him, George, looking dignified. I\'d like to put an old label\non to him round the middle like his bottles are, with Ol Pondo on it.\nThat\'s Latin for Impostor, George MUST be. He\'d look lovely with a\nstopper.\"\n\n\"YOU want a stopper,\" said my uncle, projecting his face....\n\nMy aunt, dear soul, was in those days quite thin and slender, with a\ndelicate rosebud completion and a disposition to connubial badinage, to\na sort of gentle skylarking. There was a silvery ghost of lisping in her\nspeech. She was a great humourist, and as the constraint of my presence\nat meals wore off, I became more and more aware of a filmy but extensive\nnet of nonsense she had woven about her domestic relations until it had\nbecome the reality of her life. She affected a derisive attitude to the\nworld at large and applied the epithet \"old\" to more things than I have\never heard linked to it before or since. \"Here\'s the old news-paper,\"\nshe used to say--to my uncle. \"Now don\'t go and get it in the butter,\nyou silly old Sardine!\"\n\n\"What\'s the day of the week, Susan?\" my uncle would ask.\n\n\"Old Monday, Sossidge,\" she would say, and add, \"I got all my Old\nWashing to do. Don\'t I KNOW it!\"...\n\nShe had evidently been the wit and joy of a large circle of\nschoolfellows, and this style had become a second nature with her. It\nmade her very delightful to me in that quiet place. Her customary walk\neven had a sort of hello! in it. Her chief preoccupation in life was, I\nbelieve, to make my uncle laugh, and when by some new nickname, some new\nquaintness or absurdity, she achieved that end, she was, behind a mask\nof sober amazement, the happiest woman on earth. My uncle\'s laugh when\nit did come, I must admit was, as Baedeker says, \"rewarding.\" It began\nwith gusty blowings and snortings, and opened into a clear \"Ha ha!\"\nbut in fullest development it included, in those youthful days, falling\nabout anyhow and doubling up tightly, and whackings of the stomach, and\ntears and cries of anguish. I never in my life heard my uncle laugh to\nhis maximum except at her; he was commonly too much in earnest for that,\nand he didn\'t laugh much at all, to my knowledge, after those early\nyears. Also she threw things at him to an enormous extent in her resolve\nto keep things lively in spite of Wimblehurst; sponges out of stock she\nthrew, cushions, balls of paper, clean washing, bread; and once up the\nyard when they thought that I and the errand boy and the diminutive\nmaid of all work were safely out of the way, she smashed a boxful of\neight-ounce bottles I had left to drain, assaulting my uncle with a new\nsoft broom. Sometimes she would shy things at me--but not often. There\nseemed always laughter round and about her--all three of us would share\nhysterics at times--and on one occasion the two of them came home from\nchurch shockingly ashamed of themselves, because of a storm of mirth\nduring the sermon. The vicar, it seems, had tried to blow his nose\nwith a black glove as well as the customary pocket-handkerchief. And\nafterwards she had picked up her own glove by the finger, and looking\ninnocently but intently sideways, had suddenly by this simple expedient\nexploded my uncle altogether. We had it all over again at dinner.\n\n\"But it shows you,\" cried my uncle, suddenly becoming grave, \"what\nWimblehurst is, to have us all laughing at a little thing like that! We\nweren\'t the only ones that giggled. Not by any means! And, Lord! it was\nfunny!\"\n\nSocially, my uncle and aunt were almost completely isolated. In places\nlike Wimblehurst the tradesmen\'s lives always are isolated socially,\nall of them, unless they have a sister or a bosom friend among the\nother wives, but the husbands met in various bar-parlours or in the\nbilliard-room of the Eastry Arms. But my uncle, for the most part, spent\nhis evenings at home. When first he arrived in Wimblehurst I think\nhe had spread his effect of abounding ideas and enterprise rather\ntoo aggressively; and Wimblehurst, after a temporary subjugation, had\nrebelled and done its best to make a butt of him. His appearance in a\npublic-house led to a pause in any conversation that was going on.\n\n\"Come to tell us about everything, Mr. Pond\'revo?\" some one would say\npolitely.\n\n\"You wait,\" my uncle used to answer, disconcerted, and sulk for the rest\nof his visit.\n\nOr some one with an immense air of innocence would remark to the world\ngenerally, \"They\'re talkin\' of rebuildin\' Wimblehurst all over again,\nI\'m told. Anybody heard anything of it? Going to make it a reg\'lar\nsmartgoin\', enterprisin\' place--kind of Crystal Pallas.\"\n\n\"Earthquake and a pestilence before you get that,\" my uncle would\nmutter, to the infinite delight of every one, and add something\ninaudible about \"Cold Mutton Fat.\"...\n\nIII\n\nWe were torn apart by a financial accident to my uncle of which I did\nnot at first grasp the full bearings. He had developed what I regarded\nas an innocent intellectual recreation which he called stock-market\nmeteorology. I think he got the idea from one use of curves in the\ngraphic presentation of associated variations that he saw me plotting.\nHe secured some of my squared paper and, having cast about for a time,\ndecided to trace the rise and fall of certain lines and railways.\n\"There\'s something in this, George,\" he said, and I little dreamt that\namong other things that were in it, was the whole of his spare money and\nmost of what my mother had left to him in trust for me.\n\n\"It\'s as plain as can be,\" he said. \"See, here\'s one system of waves and\nhere\'s another! These are prices for Union Pacifics--extending over a\nmonth. Now next week, mark my words, they\'ll be down one whole point.\nWe\'re getting near the steep part of the curve again. See? It\'s\nabsolutely scientific. It\'s verifiable. Well, and apply it! You buy in\nthe hollow and sell on the crest, and there you are!\"\n\nI was so convinced of the triviality of this amusement that to find at\nlast that he had taken it in the most disastrous earnest overwhelmed me.\n\nHe took me for a long walk to break it to me, over the hills towards\nYare and across the great gorse commons by Hazelbrow.\n\n\"There are ups and downs in life, George,\" he said--halfway across that\ngreat open space, and paused against the sky.... \"I left out one factor\nin the Union Pacific analysis.\"\n\n\"DID you?\" I said, struck by the sudden chance in his voice. \"But you\ndon\'t mean?\"\n\nI stopped and turned on him in the narrow sandy rut of pathway and he\nstopped likewise.\n\n\"I do, George. I DO mean. It\'s bust me! I\'m a bankrupt here and now.\"\n\n\"Then--?\"\n\n\"The shop\'s bust too. I shall have to get out of that.\"\n\n\"And me?\"\n\n\"Oh, you!--YOU\'RE all right. You can transfer your apprenticeship,\nand--er--well, I\'m not the sort of man to be careless with trust funds,\nyou can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. There\'s some of it left\nGeorge--trust me!--quite a decent little sum.\"\n\n\"But you and aunt?\"\n\n\"It isn\'t QUITE the way we meant to leave Wimblehurst, George; but we\nshall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and ticketed--lot\na hundred and one. Ugh!... It\'s been a larky little house in some ways.\nThe first we had. Furnishing--a spree in its way.... Very happy...\" His\nface winced at some memory. \"Let\'s go on, George,\" he said shortly, near\nchoking, I could see.\n\nI turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little\nwhile.\n\n\"That\'s how it is, you see, George.\" I heard him after a time.\n\nWhen we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a\ntime we walked in silence.\n\n\"Don\'t say anything home yet,\" he said presently. \"Fortunes of War. I\ngot to pick the proper time with Susan--else she\'ll get depressed. Not\nthat she isn\'t a first-rate brick whatever comes along.\"\n\n\"All right,\" I said, \"I\'ll be careful\"; and it seemed to me for the time\naltogether too selfish to bother him with any further inquiries about\nhis responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at\nmy note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his\nplans.... But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and\nwent suddenly. \"Those others!\" he said, as though the thought had stung\nhim for the first time.\n\n\"What others?\" I asked.\n\n\"Damn them!\" said he.\n\n\"But what others?\"\n\n\"All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck,\nthe butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape! Gord! George, HOW they\'ll grin!\"\n\nI thought him over in the next few weeks, and I remember now in great\ndetail the last talk we had together before he handed over the shop\nand me to his successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business,\n\"lock, stock, and barrel\"--in which expression I found myself and my\nindentures included. The horrors of a sale by auction of the furniture\neven were avoided.\n\nI remember that either coming or going on that occasion, Ruck, the\nbutcher, stood in his doorway and regarded us with a grin that showed\nhis long teeth.\n\n\"You half-witted hog!\" said my uncle. \"You grinning hyaena\"; and then,\n\"Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck.\"\n\n\"Goin\' to make your fortun\' in London, then?\" said Mr. Ruck, with slow\nenjoyment.\n\nThat last excursion took us along the causeway to Beeching, and so up\nthe downs and round almost as far as Steadhurst, home. My moods, as we\nwent, made a mingled web. By this time I had really grasped the fact\nthat my uncle had, in plain English, robbed me; the little accumulations\nof my mother, six hundred pounds and more, that would have educated me\nand started me in business, had been eaten into and was mostly gone\ninto the unexpected hollow that ought to have been a crest of the Union\nPacific curve, and of the remainder he still gave no account. I was too\nyoung and inexperienced to insist on this or know how to get it, but the\nthought of it all made streaks of decidedly black anger in that scheme\nof interwoven feelings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry for\nhim--almost as sorry as I was for my aunt Susan. Even then I had quite\nfound him out. I knew him to be weaker than myself; his incurable,\nirresponsible childishness was as clear to me then as it was on his\ndeathbed, his redeeming and excusing imaginative silliness. Through some\nodd mental twist perhaps I was disposed to exonerate him even at\nthe cost of blaming my poor old mother who had left things in his\nuntrustworthy hands.\n\nI should have forgiven him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any\nmanner apologetic to me; but he wasn\'t that. He kept reassuring me in\na way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt\nSusan and himself.\n\n\"It\'s these Crises, George,\" he said, \"try Character. Your aunt\'s come\nout well, my boy.\"\n\nHe made meditative noises for a space.\n\n\"Had her cry of course,\"--the thing had been only too painfully evident\nto me in her eyes and swollen face--\"who wouldn\'t? But now--buoyant\nagain!... She\'s a Corker.\n\n\"We\'ll be sorry to leave the little house of course. It\'s a bit like\nAdam and Eve, you know. Lord! what a chap old Milton was!\n\n \"\'The world was all before them, where to choose\n Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.\'\n\n\"It sounds, George.... Providence their guide!... Well--thank goodness\nthere\'s no imeedgit prospect of either Cain or Abel!\"\n\n\"After all, it won\'t be so bad up there. Not the scenery, perhaps, or\nthe air we get here, but--LIFE! We\'ve got very comfortable little rooms,\nvery comfortable considering, and I shall rise. We\'re not done yet,\nwe\'re not beaten; don\'t think that, George. I shall pay twenty shillings\nin the pound before I\'ve done--you mark my words, George,--twenty--five\nto you.... I got this situation within twenty-four hours--others\noffered. It\'s an important firm--one of the best in London. I looked to\nthat. I might have got four or five shillings a week more--elsewhere.\nQuarters I could name. But I said to them plainly, wages to go on with,\nbut opportunity\'s my game--development. We understood each other.\"\n\nHe threw out his chest, and the little round eyes behind his glasses\nrested valiantly on imaginary employers.\n\nWe would go on in silence for a space while he revised and restated that\nencounter. Then he would break out abruptly with some banal phrase.\n\n\"The Battle of Life, George, my boy,\" he would cry, or \"Ups and Downs!\"\n\nHe ignored or waived the poor little attempts I made to ascertain my own\nposition. \"That\'s all right,\" he would say; or, \"Leave all that to me.\nI\'LL look after them.\" And he would drift away towards the philosophy\nand moral of the situation. What was I to do?\n\n\"Never put all your resources into one chance, George; that\'s the lesson\nI draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a hundred to one,\nGeorge, that I was right--a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards.\nAnd here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I\'d have only kept back a\nlittle, I\'d have had it on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on\nthe rise. There you are!\"\n\nHis thoughts took a graver turn.\n\n\"It\'s where you\'ll bump up against Chance like this, George, that you\nfeel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific men--your\nSpencers and Huxleys--they don\'t understand that. I do. I\'ve thought\nof it a lot lately--in bed and about. I was thinking of it this morning\nwhile I shaved. It\'s not irreverent for me to say it, I hope--but God\ncomes in on the off-chance, George. See? Don\'t you be too cocksure of\nanything, good or bad. That\'s what I make out of it. I could have sworn.\nWell, do you think I--particular as I am--would have touched those Union\nPacifics with trust money at all, if I hadn\'t thought it a thoroughly\ngood thing--good without spot or blemish?... And it was bad!\n\n\"It\'s a lesson to me. You start in to get a hundred percent. and you\ncome out with that. It means, in a way, a reproof for Pride. I\'ve\nthought of that, George--in the Night Watches. I was thinking this\nmorning when I was shaving, that that\'s where the good of it all comes\nin. At the bottom I\'m a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you\'re\ngoing to do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all WHAT he\'s\ndoing? When you most think you\'re doing things, they\'re being done right\nover your head. YOU\'RE being done--in a sense. Take a hundred-to one\nchance, or one to a hundred--what does it matter? You\'re being Led.\"\n\nIt\'s odd that I heard this at the time with unutterable contempt, and\nnow that I recall it--well, I ask myself, what have I got better?\n\n\"I wish,\" said I, becoming for a moment outrageous, \"YOU were being Led\nto give me some account of my money, uncle.\"\n\n\"Not without a bit of paper to figure on, George, I can\'t. But you trust\nme about that never fear. You trust me.\"\n\nAnd in the end I had to.\n\nI think the bankruptcy hit my aunt pretty hard. There was, so far as I\ncan remember now, a complete cessation of all those cheerful outbreaks\nof elasticity, no more skylarking in the shop nor scampering about the\nhouse. But there was no fuss that I saw, and only little signs in her\ncomplexion of the fits of weeping that must have taken her. She didn\'t\ncry at the end, though to me her face with its strain of self-possession\nwas more pathetic than any weeping. \"Well\" she said to me as she came\nthrough the shop to the cab, \"Here\'s old orf, George! Orf to Mome number\ntwo! Good-bye!\" And she took me in her arms and kissed me and pressed me\nto her. Then she dived straight for the cab before I could answer her.\n\nMy uncle followed, and he seemed to me a trifle too valiant and\nconfident in his bearing for reality. He was unusually white in the\nface. He spoke to his successor at the counter. \"Here we go!\" he said.\n\"One down, the other up. You\'ll find it a quiet little business so long\nas you run it on quiet lines--a nice quiet little business. There\'s\nnothing more? No? Well, if you want to know anything write to me. I\'ll\nalways explain fully. Anything--business, place or people. You\'ll find\nPil Antibil. a little overstocked by-the-by, I found it soothed my mind\nthe day before yesterday making \'em, and I made \'em all day. Thousands!\nAnd where\'s George? Ah! there you are! I\'ll write to you, George, FULLY,\nabout all that affair. Fully!\"\n\nIt became clear to me as if for the first time, that I was really\nparting from my aunt Susan. I went out on to the pavement and saw her\nhead craned forward, her wide-open blue eyes and her little face intent\non the shop that had combined for her all the charms of a big doll\'s\nhouse and a little home of her very own. \"Good-bye!\" she said to it and\nto me. Our eyes met for a moment--perplexed. My uncle bustled out and\ngave a few totally unnecessary directions to the cabman and got in\nbeside her. \"All right?\" asked the driver. \"Right,\" said I; and he woke\nup the horse with a flick of his whip. My aunt\'s eyes surveyed me again.\n\"Stick to your old science and things, George, and write and tell me\nwhen they make you a Professor,\" she said cheerfully.\n\nShe stared at me for a second longer with eyes growing wider and\nbrighter and a smile that had become fixed, glanced again at the bright\nlittle shop still saying \"Ponderevo\" with all the emphasis of its\nfascia, and then flopped back hastily out of sight of me into the\nrecesses of the cab. Then it had gone from before me and I beheld Mr.\nSnape, the hairdresser, inside his store regarding its departure with a\nquiet satisfaction and exchanging smiles and significant headshakes with\nMr. Marbel.\n\nIV\n\nI was left, I say, as part of the lock, stock, and barrel, at\nWimblehurst with my new master, a Mr. Mantell; who plays no part in the\nprogress of this story except in so far as he effaced my uncle\'s traces.\nSo soon as the freshness of this new personality faded, I began to find\nWimblehurst not only a dull but a lonely place, and to miss my aunt\nSusan immensely. The advertisements of the summer terms for Cough\nLinctus were removed; the bottles of coloured water--red, green, and\nyellow--restored to their places; the horse announcing veterinary\nmedicine, which my uncle, sizzling all the while, had coloured in\ncareful portraiture of a Goodwood favourite, rewhitened; and I turned\nmyself even more resolutely than before to Latin (until the passing\nof my preliminary examination enabled me to drop that), and then to\nmathematics and science.\n\nThere were classes in Electricity and Magnetism at the Grammar School. I\ntook a little \"elementary\" prize in that in my first year and a medal\nin my third; and in Chemistry and Human Physiology and Sound, Light\nand Heat, I did well. There was also a lighter, more discursive\nsubject called Physiography, in which one ranged among the sciences\nand encountered Geology as a process of evolution from Eozoon to Eastry\nHouse, and Astronomy as a record of celestial movements of the most\naustere and invariable integrity. I learnt out of badly-written,\ncondensed little text-books, and with the minimum of experiment, but\nstill I learnt. Only thirty years ago it was, and I remember I learnt of\nthe electric light as an expensive, impracticable toy, the telephone as\na curiosity, electric traction as a practical absurdity. There was no\nargon, no radium, no phagocytes--at least to my knowledge, and aluminium\nwas a dear, infrequent metal. The fastest ships in the world went then\nat nineteen knots, and no one but a lunatic here and there ever thought\nit possible that men might fly.\n\nMany things have happened since then, but the last glance I had of\nWimblehurst two years ago remarked no change whatever in its pleasant\ntranquillity. They had not even built any fresh houses--at least not\nactually in the town, though about the station there had been some\nbuilding. But it was a good place to do work in, for all its quiescence.\nI was soon beyond the small requirements of the Pharmaceutical Society\'s\nexamination, and as they do not permit candidates to sit for that until\none and twenty, I was presently filling up my time and preventing my\nstudies becoming too desultory by making an attack upon the London\nUniversity degree of Bachelor of Science, which impressed me then as\na very splendid but almost impossible achievement. The degree\nin mathematics and chemistry appealed to me as particularly\ncongenial--albeit giddily inaccessible. I set to work. I had presently\nto arrange a holiday and go to London to matriculate, and so it was I\ncame upon my aunt and uncle again. In many ways that visit marked an\nepoch. It was my first impression of London at all. I was then nineteen,\nand by a conspiracy of chances my nearest approach to that human\nwilderness had been my brief visit to Chatham. Chatham too had been my\nlargest town. So that I got London at last with an exceptional freshness\nof effect, as the sudden revelation of a whole unsuspected other side to\nlife.\n\nI came to it on a dull and smoky day by the South Eastern Railway, and\nour train was half an hour late, stopping and going on and stopping\nagain. I marked beyond Chiselhurst the growing multitude of villas,\nand so came stage by stage through multiplying houses and diminishing\ninterspaces of market garden and dingy grass to regions of interlacing\nrailway lines, big factories, gasometers and wide reeking swamps of\ndingy little homes, more of them and more and more. The number of these\nand their dinginess and poverty increased, and here rose a great public\nhouse and here a Board School and there a gaunt factory; and away to the\neast there loomed for a time a queer, incongruous forest of masts and\nspars. The congestion of houses intensified and piled up presently into\ntenements; I marveled more and more at this boundless world of dingy\npeople; whiffs of industrial smell, of leather, of brewing, drifted into\nthe carriage; the sky darkened, I rumbled thunderously over bridges,\nvan-crowded streets, peered down on and crossed the Thames with an\nabrupt eclat of sound. I got an effect of tall warehouses, of grey\nwater, barge crowded, of broad banks of indescribable mud, and then\nI was in Cannon Street Station--a monstrous dirty cavern with trains\npacked across its vast floor and more porters standing along the\nplatform than I had ever been in my life before. I alighted with my\nportmanteau and struggled along, realising for the first time just how\nsmall and weak I could still upon occasion feel. In this world, I felt,\nan Honours medal in Electricity and magnetism counted for nothing at\nall.\n\nAfterwards I drove in a cab down a canon of rushing street between high\nwarehouses, and peeped up astonished at the blackened greys of Saint\nPaul\'s. The traffic of Cheapside--it was mostly in horse omnibuses in\nthose days--seemed stupendous, its roar was stupendous; I wondered where\nthe money came from to employ so many cabs, what industry could support\nthe endless jostling stream of silk-hatted, frock-coated, hurrying men.\nDown a turning I found the Temperance Hotel Mr. Mantell had recommended\nto me. The porter in a green uniform who took over my portmanteau,\nseemed, I thought, to despise me a good deal.\n\nV\n\nMatriculation kept me for four full days and then came an afternoon\nto spare, and I sought out Tottenham Court Road through a perplexing\nnetwork of various and crowded streets. But this London was vast! it was\nendless! it seemed the whole world had changed into packed frontages and\nhoardings and street spaces. I got there at last and made inquiries,\nand I found my uncle behind the counter of the pharmacy he managed, an\nestablishment that did not impress me as doing a particularly high-class\ntrade. \"Lord!\" he said at the sight of me, \"I was wanting something to\nhappen!\"\n\nHe greeted me warmly. I had grown taller, and he, I thought, had grown\nshorter and smaller and rounder but otherwise he was unchanged. He\nstruck me as being rather shabby, and the silk hat he produced and put\non, when, after mysterious negotiations in the back premises he achieved\nhis freedom to accompany me, was past its first youth; but he was as\nbuoyant and confident as ever.\n\n\"Come to ask me about all THAT,\" he cried. \"I\'ve never written yet.\"\n\n\"Oh, among other things,\" said I, with a sudden regrettable politeness,\nand waived the topic of his trusteeship to ask after my aunt Susan.\n\n\"We\'ll have her out of it,\" he said suddenly; \"we\'ll go somewhere. We\ndon\'t get you in London every day.\"\n\n\"It\'s my first visit,\" I said, \"I\'ve never seen London before\"; and\nthat made him ask me what I thought of it, and the rest of the talk was\nLondon, London, to the exclusion of all smaller topics. He took me up\nthe Hampstead Road almost to the Cobden statue, plunged into some back\nstreets to the left, and came at last to a blistered front door that\nresponded to his latch-key, one of a long series of blistered front\ndoors with fanlights and apartment cards above. We found ourselves in\na drab-coloured passage that was not only narrow and dirty but\ndesolatingly empty, and then he opened a door and revealed my aunt\nsitting at the window with a little sewing-machine on a bamboo\noccasional table before her, and \"work\"--a plum-coloured walking dress\nI judged at its most analytical stage--scattered over the rest of the\napartment.\n\nAt the first glance I judged my aunt was plumper than she had been, but\nher complexion was just as fresh and her China blue eye as bright as in\nthe old days.\n\n\"London,\" she said, didn\'t \"get blacks\" on her.\n\nShe still \"cheeked\" my uncle, I was pleased to find. \"What are you old\nPoking in for at THIS time--Gubbitt?\" she said when he appeared, and\nshe still looked with a practised eye for the facetious side of things.\nWhen she saw me behind him, she gave a little cry and stood up radiant.\nThen she became grave.\n\nI was surprised at my own emotion in seeing her. She held me at arm\'s\nlength for a moment, a hand on each shoulder, and looked at me with a\nsort of glad scrutiny. She seemed to hesitate, and then pecked little\nkiss off my cheek.\n\n\"You\'re a man, George,\" she said, as she released me, and continued to\nlook at me for a while.\n\nTheir menage was one of a very common type in London. They occupied what\nis called the dining-room floor of a small house, and they had the use\nof a little inconvenient kitchen in the basement that had once been\nscullery. The two rooms, bedroom behind and living room in front, were\nseparated by folding-doors that were never now thrown back, and indeed,\nin the presence of a visitor, not used at all. There was of course no\nbathroom or anything of that sort available, and there was no water\nsupply except to the kitchen below. My aunt did all the domestic work,\nthough she could have afforded to pay for help if the build of the place\nhad not rendered that inconvenient to the pitch of impossibility. There\nwas no sort of help available except that of indoor servants, for whom\nshe had no accommodation. The furniture was their own; it was partly\nsecondhand, but on the whole it seemed cheerful to my eye, and my aunt\'s\nbias for cheap, gay-figured muslin had found ample score. In many ways\nI should think it must have been an extremely inconvenient and cramped\nsort of home, but at the time I took it, as I was taking everything, as\nbeing there and in the nature of things. I did not see the oddness of\nsolvent decent people living in a habitation so clearly neither designed\nnor adapted for their needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of\nbeauty as this was, and it is only now as I describe this that I find\nmyself thinking of the essential absurdity of an intelligent community\nliving in such makeshift homes. It strikes me now as the next thing to\nwearing second-hand clothes.\n\nYou see it was a natural growth, part of that system to which\nBladesover, I hold, is the key. There are wide regions of London, miles\nof streets of houses, that appear to have been originally designed for\nprosperous-middle-class homes of the early Victorian type. There must\nhave been a perfect fury of such building in the thirties, forties, and\nfifties. Street after street must have been rushed into being, Campden\nTown way, Pentonville way, Brompton way, West Kensington way in the\nVictoria region and all over the minor suburbs of the south side.\n\nI am doubtful if many of these houses had any long use as the residences\nof single families if from the very first almost their tenants did not\nmakeshift and take lodgers and sublet. They were built with basements,\nin which their servants worked and lived--servants of a more submissive\nand troglodytic generation who did not mind stairs. The dining-room\n(with folding doors) was a little above the ground level, and in that\nthe wholesome boiled and roast with damp boiled potatoes and then pie\nto follow, was consumed and the numerous family read and worked in the\nevening, and above was the drawing-room (also with folding doors), where\nthe infrequent callers were received. That was the vision at which those\nindustrious builders aimed. Even while these houses were being run up,\nthe threads upon the loom of fate were shaping to abolish altogether\nthe type of household that would have fitted them. Means of transit were\ndeveloping to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out\nof London, education and factory employment were whittling away at\nthe supply of rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand\nthe subterranean drudgery of these places, new classes of hard-up\nmiddle-class people such as my uncle, employees of various types, were\ncoming into existence, for whom no homes were provided. None of these\nclasses have ideas of what they ought to be, or fit in any legitimate\nway into the Bladesover theory that dominates our minds. It was nobody\'s\nconcern to see them housed under civilised conditions, and the beautiful\nlaws of supply and demand had free play. They had to squeeze in. The\nlandlords came out financially intact from their blundering enterprise.\nMore and more these houses fell into the hands of married artisans, or\nstruggling widows or old servants with savings, who became responsible\nfor the quarterly rent and tried to sweat a living by sub-letting\nfurnished or unfurnished apartments.\n\nI remember now that a poor grey-haired old woman who had an air of\nhaving been roused from a nap in the dust bin, came out into the area\nand looked up at us as we three went out from the front door to \"see\nLondon\" under my uncle\'s direction. She was the sub-letting occupier;\nshe squeezed out a precarious living by taking the house whole and\nsub-letting it in detail and she made her food and got the shelter of an\nattic above and a basement below by the transaction. And if she didn\'t\nchance to \"let\" steadily, out she went to pauperdom and some other poor,\nsordid old adventurer tried in her place....\n\nIt is a foolish community that can house whole classes, useful and\nhelpful, honest and loyal classes, in such squalidly unsuitable\ndwellings. It is by no means the social economy it seems, to use up old\nwomen, savings and inexperience in order to meet the landlord\'s demands.\nBut any one who doubts this thing is going on right up to to-day need\nonly spend an afternoon in hunting for lodgings in any of the regions of\nLondon I have named.\n\nBut where has my story got to? My uncle, I say, decided I must be shown\nLondon, and out we three went as soon as my aunt had got her hat on, to\ncatch all that was left of the day.\n\nVI\n\nIt pleased my uncle extremely to find I had never seen London before. He\ntook possession of the metropolis forthwith. \"London, George,\" he said,\n\"takes a lot of understanding. It\'s a great place. Immense. The richest\ntown in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town,\nthe Imperial city--the centre of civilisation, the heart of the world!\nSee those sandwich men down there! That third one\'s hat! Fair treat! You\ndon\'t see poverty like that in Wimblehurst George! And many of them high\nOxford honour men too. Brought down by drink! It\'s a wonderful place,\nGeorge--a whirlpool, a maelstrom! whirls you up and whirls you down.\"\n\nI have a very confused memory of that afternoon\'s inspection of\nLondon. My uncle took us to and fro showing us over his London, talking\nerratically, following a route of his own. Sometimes we were walking,\nsometimes we were on the tops of great staggering horse omnibuses in\na heaving jumble of traffic, and at one point we had tea in an Aerated\nBread Shop. But I remember very distinctly how we passed down Park Lane\nunder an overcast sky, and how my uncle pointed out the house of this\nchild of good fortune and that with succulent appreciation.\n\nI remember, too, that as he talked I would find my aunt watching my face\nas if to check the soundness of his talk by my expression.\n\n\"Been in love yet, George?\" she asked suddenly, over a bun in the\ntea-shop.\n\n\"Too busy, aunt,\" I told her.\n\nShe bit her bun extensively, and gesticulated with the remnant to\nindicate that she had more to say.\n\n\"How are YOU going to make your fortune?\" she said so soon as she could\nspeak again. \"You haven\'t told us that.\"\n\n\"\'Lectricity,\" said my uncle, taking breath after a deep draught of tea.\n\n\"If I make it at all,\" I said. \"For my part I think shall be satisfied\nwith something less than a fortune.\"\n\n\"We\'re going to make ours--suddenly,\" she said.\n\n\"So HE old says.\" She jerked her head at my uncle.\n\n\"He won\'t tell me when--so I can\'t get anything ready. But it\'s\ncoming. Going to ride in our carriage and have a garden. Garden--like a\nbishop\'s.\"\n\nShe finished her bun and twiddled crumbs from her fingers. \"I shall be\nglad of the garden,\" she said. \"It\'s going to be a real big one with\nrosaries and things. Fountains in it. Pampas grass. Hothouses.\"\n\n\"You\'ll get it all right,\" said my uncle, who had reddened a little.\n\n\"Grey horses in the carriage, George,\" she said. \"It\'s nice to think\nabout when one\'s dull. And dinners in restaurants often and often. And\ntheatres--in the stalls. And money and money and money.\"\n\n\"You may joke,\" said my uncle, and hummed for a moment.\n\n\"Just as though an old Porpoise like him would ever make money,\"\nshe said, turning her eyes upon his profile with a sudden lapse to\naffection. \"He\'ll just porpoise about.\"\n\n\"I\'ll do something,\" said my uncle, \"you bet! Zzzz!\" and rapped with a\nshilling on the marble table.\n\n\"When you do you\'ll have to buy me a new pair of gloves,\" she said,\n\"anyhow. That finger\'s past mending. Look! you Cabbage--you.\" And she\nheld the split under his nose, and pulled a face of comical fierceness.\n\nMy uncle smiled at these sallies at the time, but afterwards, when I\nwent back with him to the Pharmacy--the low-class business grew brisker\nin the evening and they kept open late--he reverted to it in a low\nexpository tone. \"Your aunt\'s a bit impatient, George. She gets at me.\nIt\'s only natural.... A woman doesn\'t understand how long it takes\nto build up a position. No.... In certain directions now--I\nam--quietly--building up a position. Now here.... I get this room. I\nhave my three assistants. Zzzz. It\'s a position that, judged by the\ncriterion of imeedjit income, isn\'t perhaps so good as I deserve,\nbut strategically--yes. It\'s what I want. I make my plans. I rally my\nattack.\"\n\n\"What plans,\" I said, \"are you making?\"\n\n\"Well, George, there\'s one thing you can rely upon, I\'m doing nothing in\na hurry. I turn over this one and that, and I don\'t talk--indiscreetly.\nThere\'s--No! I don\'t think I can tell you that. And yet, why NOT?\"\n\nHe got up and closed the door into the shop. \"I\'ve told no one,\" he\nremarked, as he sat down again. \"I owe you something.\"\n\nHis face flushed slightly, he leant forward over the little table\ntowards me.\n\n\"Listen!\" he said.\n\nI listened.\n\n\"Tono-Bungay,\" said my uncle very slowly and distinctly.\n\nI thought he was asking me to hear some remote, strange noise. \"I don\'t\nhear anything,\" I said reluctantly to his expectant face. He smiled\nundefeated. \"Try again,\" he said, and repeated, \"Tono-Bungay.\"\n\n\"Oh, THAT!\" I said.\n\n\"Eh?\" said he.\n\n\"But what is it?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said my uncle, rejoicing and expanding. \"What IS it? That\'s\nwhat you got to ask? What won\'t it be?\" He dug me violently in what he\nsupposed to be my ribs. \"George,\" he cried--\"George, watch this place!\nThere\'s more to follow.\"\n\nAnd that was all I could get from him.\n\nThat, I believe, was the very first time that the words Tono-Bungay ever\nheard on earth--unless my uncle indulged in monologues in his chamber--a\nhighly probable thing. Its utterance certainly did not seem to me at the\ntime to mark any sort of epoch, and had I been told this word was the\nOpen Sesame to whatever pride and pleasure the grimy front of London hid\nfrom us that evening, I should have laughed aloud.\n\n\"Coming now to business,\" I said after a pause, and with a chill sense\nof effort; and I opened the question of his trust.\n\nMy uncle sighed, and leant back in his chair. \"I wish I could make all\nthis business as clear to you as it is to me,\" he said. \"However--Go on!\nSay what you have to say.\"\n\nVII\n\nAfter I left my uncle that evening I gave way to a feeling of profound\ndepression. My uncle and aunt seemed to me to be leading--I have already\nused the word too often, but I must use it again--DINGY lives. They\nseemed to be adrift in a limitless crowd of dingy people, wearing shabby\nclothes, living uncomfortably in shabby second-hand houses, going to and\nfro on pavements that had always a thin veneer of greasy, slippery mud,\nunder grey skies that showed no gleam of hope of anything for them but\ndinginess until they died. It seemed absolutely clear to me that my\nmother\'s little savings had been swallowed up and that my own prospect\nwas all too certainly to drop into and be swallowed up myself sooner\nor later by this dingy London ocean. The London that was to be an\nadventurous escape from the slumber of Wimblehurst, had vanished from my\ndreams. I saw my uncle pointing to the houses in Park Lane and showing\na frayed shirt-cuff as he did so. I heard my aunt: \"I\'m to ride in my\ncarriage then. So he old says.\"\n\nMy feelings towards my uncle were extraordinarily mixed. I was intensely\nsorry not only for my aunt Susan but for him--for it seemed indisputable\nthat as they were living then so they must go on--and at the same time I\nwas angry with the garrulous vanity and illness that had elipped all\nmy chance of independent study, and imprisoned her in those grey\napartments. When I got back to Wimblehurst I allowed myself to write\nhim a boyishly sarcastic and sincerely bitter letter. He never replied.\nThen, believing it to be the only way of escape for me, I set myself far\nmore grimly and resolutely to my studies than I had ever done before.\nAfter a time I wrote to him in more moderate terms, and he answered\nme evasively. And then I tried to dismiss him from my mind and went on\nworking.\n\nYes, that first raid upon London under the moist and chilly depression\nof January had an immense effect upon me. It was for me an epoch-making\ndisappointment. I had thought of London as a large, free, welcoming,\nadventurous place, and I saw it slovenly and harsh and irresponsive.\n\nI did not realise at all what human things might be found behind\nthose grey frontages, what weakness that whole forbidding facade might\npresently confess. It is the constant error of youth to over-estimate\nthe Will in things. I did not see that the dirt, the discouragement, the\ndiscomfort of London could be due simply to the fact that London was\na witless old giantess of a town, too slack and stupid to keep herself\nclean and maintain a brave face to the word. No! I suffered from the\nsort of illusion that burnt witches in the seventeenth century. I\nendued her grubby disorder with a sinister and magnificent quality of\nintention.\n\nAnd my uncle\'s gestures and promises filled me with doubt and a sort of\nfear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be\nsilent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort\nof tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic\nfortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises.\n\nI was to learn better. But I worked with the terror of the grim\nunderside of London in my soul during all my last year at Wimblehurst.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE SECOND\n\nTHE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIRST\n\nHOW I BECAME A LONDON STUDENT AND WENT ASTRAY\n\nI came to live in London, as I shall tell you, when I was nearly\ntwenty-two. Wimblehurst dwindles in perspective, is now in this book a\nlittle place far off, Bladesover no more than a small pinkish speck\nof frontage among the distant Kentish hills; the scene broadens\nout, becomes multitudinous and limitless, full of the sense of vast\nirrelevant movement. I do not remember my second coming to London as I\ndo my first, for my early impressions, save that an October memory of\nsoftened amber sunshine stands out, amber sunshine falling on grey house\nfronts I know not where. That, and a sense of a large tranquillity.\n\nI could fill a book, I think, with a more or less imaginary account\nof how I came to apprehend London, how first in one aspect and then in\nanother it grew in my mind. Each day my accumulating impressions were\nadded to and qualified and brought into relationship with new ones; they\nfused inseparably with others that were purely personal and accidental.\nI find myself with a certain comprehensive perception of London,\ncomplete indeed, incurably indistinct in places and yet in some way a\nwhole that began with my first visit and is still being mellowed and\nenriched.\n\nLondon!\n\nAt first, no doubt, it was a chaos of streets and people and buildings\nand reasonless going to and fro. I do not remember that I ever struggled\nvery steadily to understand it, or explored it with any but a personal\nand adventurous intention. Yet in time there has grown up in me a kind\nof theory of London; I do think I see lines of an ordered structure out\nof which it has grown, detected a process that is something more than\na confusion of casual accidents though indeed it may be no more than a\nprocess of disease.\n\nI said at the outset of my first book that I find in Bladesover the\nclue to all England. Well, I certainly imagine it is the clue to the\nstructure of London. There have been no revolutions no deliberate\nrestatements or abandonments of opinion in England since the days of\nthe fine gentry, since 1688 or thereabouts, the days when Bladesover was\nbuilt; there have been changes, dissolving forest replacing forest, if\nyou will; but then it was that the broad lines of the English system\nset firmly. And as I have gone to and fro in London in certain regions\nconstantly the thought has recurred this is Bladesover House, this\nanswers to Bladesover House. The fine gentry may have gone; they have\nindeed largely gone, I think; rich merchants may have replaced them,\nfinancial adventurers or what not. That does not matter; the shape is\nstill Bladesover.\n\nI am most reminded of Bladesover and Eastry by all those regions round\nabout the West End parks; for example, estate parks, each more or less\nin relation to a palace or group of great houses. The roads and back\nways of Mayfair and all about St. James\'s again, albeit perhaps of a\nlater growth in point of time, were of the very spirit and architectural\ntexture of the Bladesover passages and yards; they had the same smells,\nthe space, the large cleanest and always going to and fro where one\nmet unmistakable Olympians and even more unmistakable valets, butlers,\nfootmen in mufti. There were moments when I seemed to glimpse down areas\nthe white panelling, the very chintz of my mother\'s room again.\n\nI could trace out now on a map what I would call the Great-House region;\npassing south-westward into Belgravia, becoming diffused and sporadic\nwestward, finding its last systematic outbreak round and about Regent\'s\nPark. The Duke of Devonshire\'s place in Piccadilly, in all its insolent\nugliness, pleases me particularly; it is the quintessence of the thing;\nApsley House is all in the manner of my theory, Park Lane has its quite\ntypical mansions, and they run along the border of the Green Park and\nSt. James\'s. And I struck out a truth one day in Cromwell Road quite\nsuddenly, as I looked over the Natural History Museum \"By Jove,\" said I\n\"but this is the little assemblage of cases of stuffed birds and\nanimals upon the Bladesover staircase grown enormous, and yonder as the\ncorresponding thing to the Bladesover curios and porcelain is the Art\nMuseume and there in the little observatories in Exhibition Road is old\nSir Cuthbert\'s Gregorian telescope that I hunted out in the storeroom\nand put together.\" And diving into the Art Museum under this\ninspiration, I came to a little reading-room and found as I had\ninferred, old brown books!\n\nIt was really a good piece of social comparative anatomy I did that\nday; all these museums and libraries that are dotted over London between\nPiccadilly and West Kensington, and indeed the museum and library\nmovement throughout the world, sprang from the elegant leisure of the\ngentlemen of taste. Theirs were the first libraries, the first houses\nof culture; by my rat-like raids into the Bladesover saloon I became,\nas it were, the last dwindled representative of such a man of letters\nas Swift. But now these things have escaped out of the Great House\naltogether, and taken on a strange independent life of their own.\n\nIt is this idea of escaping parts from the seventeenth century system of\nBladesover, of proliferating and overgrowing elements from the Estates,\nthat to this day seems to me the best explanation, not simply of London,\nbut of all England. England is a country of great Renascence landed\ngentlefolk who have been unconsciously outgrown and overgrown. The\nproper shops for Bladesover custom were still to be found in Regent\nStreet and Bond Street in my early London days in those days they\nhad been but lightly touched by the American\'s profaning hand--and in\nPiccadilly. I found the doctor\'s house of the country village or country\ntown up and down Harley Street, multiplied but not otherwise different,\nand the family solicitor (by the hundred) further eastward in the\nabandoned houses of a previous generation of gentlepeople, and down in\nWestminster, behind Palladian fronts, the public offices sheltered\nin large Bladesoverish rooms and looked out on St. James\'s Park. The\nParliament Houses of lords and gentlemen, the parliament house that was\nhorrified when merchants and brewers came thrusting into it a hundred\nyears ago, stood out upon its terrace gathering the whole system\ntogether into a head.\n\nAnd the more I have paralleled these things with my Bladesover-Eastry\nmodel, the more evident it has become to me that the balance is not the\nsame, and the more evident is the presence of great new forces, blind\nforces of invasion, of growth. The railway termini on the north side of\nLondon have been kept as remote as Eastry had kept the railway-station\nfrom Wimblehurst, they stop on the very outskirts of the estates, but\nfrom the south, the South Eastern railway had butted its great stupid\nrusty iron head of Charing Cross station, that great head that came\nsmashing down in 1905--clean across the river, between Somerset House\nand Whitehall. The south side had no protecting estate. Factory chimneys\nsmoke right over against Westminster with an air of carelessly not\nhaving permission, and the whole effect of industrial London and of all\nLondon east of Temple Bar and of the huge dingy immensity of London\nport is to me of something disproportionately large, something morbidly\nexpanded, without plan or intention, dark and sinister toward the\nclean clear social assurance of the West End. And south of this central\nLondon, south-east, south-west, far west, north-west, all round the\nnorthern hills, are similar disproportionate growths, endless streets\nof undistinguished houses, undistinguished industries, shabby families,\nsecond-rate shops, inexplicable people who in a once fashionable phrase\ndo not \"exist.\" All these aspects have suggested to my mind at times,\ndo suggest to this day, the unorganised, abundant substance of some\ntumorous growth-process, a process which indeed bursts all the outlines\nof the affected carcass and protrudes such masses as ignoble comfortable\nCroydon, as tragic impoverished West Ham. To this day I ask myself\nwill those masses ever become structural, will they indeed shape\ninto anything new whatever, or is that cancerous image their true and\nultimate diagnosis?...\n\nMoreover, together with this hypertrophy there is an immigration of\nelements that have never understood and never will understand the great\ntradition, wedges of foreign settlement embedded in the heart of this\nyeasty English expansion. One day I remember wandering eastward out\nof pure curiosity--it must have been in my early student days--and\ndiscovering a shabbily bright foreign quarter, shops displaying\nHebrew placards and weird, unfamiliar commodities and a concourse of\nbright-eyed, eagle-nosed people talking some incomprehensible gibberish\nbetween the shops and the barrows. And soon I became quite familiar with\nthe devious, vicious, dirtily-pleasant eroticism of Soho. I found those\ncrowded streets a vast relief from the dull grey exterior of Brompton\nwhere I lodged and lived my daily life. In Soho, indeed, I got my first\ninkling of the factor of replacement that is so important in both the\nEnglish and the American process.\n\nEven in the West End, in Mayfair and the square, about Pall Mall, Ewart\nwas presently to remind me the face of the old aristocratic dignity was\nfairer than its substance; here were actors and actresses, here money\nlenders and Jews, here bold financial adventurers, and I thought of my\nuncle\'s frayed cuff as he pointed out this house in Park Lane and\nthat. That was so and so\'s who made a corner in borax, and that palace\nbelonged to that hero among modern adventurers, Barmentrude, who used\nto be an I.D.B.,--an illicit diamond buyer that is to say. A city of\nBladesovers, the capital of a kingdom of Bladesovers, all much shaken\nand many altogether in decay, parasitically occupied, insidiously\nreplaced by alien, unsympathetic and irresponsible elements; and with\na ruling an adventitious and miscellaneous empire of a quarter of this\ndaedal earth complex laws, intricate social necessities, disturbing\ninsatiable suggestions, followed from this. Such was the world into\nwhich I had come, into which I had in some way to thrust myself and fit\nmy problem, my temptations, my efforts, my patriotic instinct, all my\nmoral instincts, my physical appetites, my dreams and my sanity.\n\nLondon! I came up to it, young and without advisers, rather\npriggish, rather dangerously open-minded and very open-eyed, and with\nsomething--it is, I think, the common gift of imaginative youth, and I\nclaim it unblushingly--fine in me, finer than the world and seeking fine\nresponses. I did not want simply to live or simply to live happily or\nwell; I wanted to serve and do and make--with some nobility. It was in\nme. It is in half the youth of the world.\n\nII\n\nI had come to London as a scholar. I had taken the Vincent Bradley\nscholarship of the Pharmaceutical Society, but I threw this up when I\nfound that my work of the Science and Art Department in mathematics,\nphysics and chemistry had given me one of the minor Technical Board\nScholarships at the Consolidated Technical Schools at South Kensington.\nThis latter was in mechanics and metallurgy; and I hesitated between the\ntwo. The Vincent Bradley gave me L70 a year and quite the best start-off\na pharmaceutical chemist could have; the South Kensington thing was\nworth about twenty-two shillings a week, and the prospects it opened\nwere vague. But it meant far more scientific work than the former, and I\nwas still under the impulse of that great intellectual appetite that is\npart of the adolescence of men of my type. Moreover it seemed to lead\ntowards engineering, in which I imagined--I imagine to this day--my\nparticular use is to be found. I took its greater uncertainty as a fair\nrisk. I came up very keen, not doubting that the really hard and steady\nindustry that had carried me through Wimblehurst would go on still in\nthe new surroundings.\n\nOnly from the very first it didn\'t....\n\nWhen I look back now at my Wimblehurst days, I still find myself\nsurprised at the amount of steady grinding study, of strenuous\nself-discipline that I maintained throughout my apprenticeship. In many\nways I think that time was the most honourable period in my life. I wish\nI could say with a certain mind that my motives in working so well were\nlarge and honourable too. To a certain extent they were so; there was\na fine sincere curiosity, a desire for the strength and power of\nscientific knowledge and a passion for intellectual exercise; but I\ndo not think those forces alone would have kept me at it so grimly\nand closely if Wimblehurst had not been so dull, so limited and so\nobservant. Directly I came into the London atmosphere, tasting freedom,\ntasting irresponsibility and the pull of new forces altogether, my\ndiscipline fell from me like a garment. Wimblehurst to a youngster in my\nposition offered no temptations worth counting, no interests to conflict\nwith study, no vices--such vices as it offered were coarsely stripped of\nany imaginative glamourfull drunkenness, clumsy leering shameful lust,\nno social intercourse even to waste one\'s time, and on the other hand it\nwould minister greatly to the self-esteem of a conspicuously industrious\nstudent. One was marked as \"clever,\" one played up to the part, and\none\'s little accomplishment stood out finely in one\'s private reckoning\nagainst the sunlit small ignorance of that agreeable place. One went\nwith an intent rush across the market square, one took one\'s exercise\nwith as dramatic a sense of an ordered day as an Oxford don, one burnt\nthe midnight oil quite consciously at the rare respectful, benighted\npasser-by. And one stood out finely in the local paper with one\'s\nunapproachable yearly harvest of certificates. Thus I was not only a\ngenuinely keen student, but also a little of a prig and poseur in those\ndays--and the latter kept the former at it, as London made clear.\n\nMoreover Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction.\n\nBut I did not realise all this when I came to London, did not perceive\nhow the change of atmosphere began at once to warp and distribute my\nenergies. In the first place I became invisible. If I idled for a day,\nno one except my fellow-students (who evidently had no awe for me)\nremarked it. No one saw my midnight taper; no one pointed me out as I\ncrossed the street as an astonishing intellectual phenomenon. In the\nnext place I became inconsiderable. In Wimblehurst I felt I stood for\nScience; nobody there seemed to have so much as I and to have it so\nfully and completely. In London I walked ignorant in an immensity, and\nit was clear that among my fellow-students from the midlands and the\nnorth I was ill-equipped and under-trained. With the utmost exertion I\nshould only take a secondary position among them. And finally, in the\nthird place, I was distracted by voluminous new interests; London took\nhold of me, and Science, which had been the universe, shrank back to the\ndimensions of tiresome little formulae compacted in a book. I came to\nLondon in late September, and it was a very different London from\nthat great greyly-overcast, smoke-stained house-wilderness of my first\nimpressions. I reached it by Victoria and not by Cannon Street, and its\ncentre was now in Exhibition Road. It shone, pale amber, blue-grey\nand tenderly spacious and fine under clear autumnal skies, a London of\nhugely handsome buildings and vistas and distances, a London of gardens\nand labyrinthine tall museums, of old trees and remote palaces and\nartificial waters. I lodged near by in West Brompton at a house in a\nlittle square.\n\nSo London faced me the second time, making me forget altogether for a\nwhile the grey, drizzling city visage that had first looked upon me. I\nsettled down and went to and fro to my lectures and laboratory; in\nthe beginning I worked hard, and only slowly did the curiosity that\npresently possessed me to know more of this huge urban province arise,\nthe desire to find something beyond mechanism that I could serve, some\nuse other than learning. With this was a growing sense of loneliness,\na desire for adventure and intercourse. I found myself in the evenings\nporing over a map of London I had bought, instead of copying out lecture\nnotes--and on Sundays I made explorations, taking omnibus rides east and\nwest and north and south, and to enlarging and broadening the sense of\ngreat swarming hinterlands of humanity with whom I had no dealings, of\nwhom I knew nothing....\n\nThe whole illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and\nsometimes outrageous possibility, of hidden but magnificent meanings.\n\nIt wasn\'t simply that I received a vast impression of space and\nmultitude and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged\nfrom neglected, veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of\nperception. Close at hand in the big art museum I came for the first\ntime upon the beauty of nudity, which I had hitherto held to be a\nshameful secret, flaunted and gloried in; I was made aware of beauty\nas not only permissible, but desirable and frequent and of a thousand\nhitherto unsuspected rich aspects of life. One night in a real rapture,\nI walked round the upper gallery of the Albert Hall and listened for\nthe first time to great music; I believe now that it was a rendering of\nBeethoven\'s Ninth Symphony....\n\nMy apprehension of spaces and places was reinforced by a quickened\napprehension of persons. A constant stream of people passed by me,\neyes met and challenged mine and passed--more and more I wanted then to\nstay--if I went eastward towards Piccadilly, women who seemed then to my\nboyish inexperience softly splendid and alluring, murmured to me as\nthey passed. Extraordinarily life unveiled. The very hoardings clamoured\nstrangely at one\'s senses and curiosities. One bought pamphlets and\npapers full of strange and daring ideas transcending one\'s boldest; in\nthe parks one heard men discussing the very existence of God, denying\nthe rights of property, debating a hundred things that one dared not\nthink about in Wimblehurst. And after the ordinary overcast day, after\ndull mornings, came twilight, and London lit up and became a thing of\nwhite and yellow and red jewels of light and wonderful floods of golden\nillumination and stupendous and unfathomable shadows--and there were\nno longer any mean or shabby people--but a great mysterious movement of\nunaccountable beings....\n\nAlways I was coming on the queerest new aspects. Late one Saturday night\nI found myself one of a great slow-moving crowd between the blazing\nshops and the flaring barrows in the Harrow Road; I got into\nconversation with two bold-eyed girls, bought them boxes of chocolate,\nmade the acquaintance of father and mother and various younger brothers\nand sisters, sat in a public-house hilariously with them all, standing\nand being stood drinks, and left them in the small hours at the door\nof \"home,\" never to see them again. And once I was accosted on\nthe outskirts of a Salvation Army meeting in one of the parks by a\nsilk-hatted young man of eager and serious discourse, who argued against\nscepticism with me, invited me home to tea into a clean and cheerful\nfamily of brothers and sisters and friends, and there I spent\nthe evening singing hymns to the harmonium (which reminded me of\nhalf-forgotten Chatham), and wishing all the sisters were not so\nobviously engaged....\n\nThen on the remote hill of this boundless city-world I found Ewart.\n\nIII\n\nHow well I remember the first morning, a bright Sunday morning in early\nOctober, when I raided in upon Ewart! I found my old schoolfellow in\nbed in a room over an oil-shop in a back street at the foot of Highgate\nHill. His landlady, a pleasant, dirty young woman with soft-brown eyes,\nbrought down his message for me to come up; and up I went. The room\npresented itself as ample and interesting in detail and shabby with a\nquite commendable shabbiness. I had an impression of brown walls--they\nwere papered with brown paper--of a long shelf along one side of the\nroom, with dusty plaster casts and a small cheap lay figure of a horse,\nof a table and something of grey wax partially covered with a cloth,\nand of scattered drawings. There was a gas stove in one corner, and some\nenameled ware that had been used for overnight cooking. The oilcloth on\nthe floor was streaked with a peculiar white dust. Ewart himself was not\nin the first instance visible, but only a fourfold canvas screen at the\nend of the room from which shouts proceeded of \"Come on!\" then his wiry\nblack hair, very much rumpled, and a staring red-brown eye and his stump\nof a nose came round the edge of this at a height of about three feet\nfrom the ground \"It\'s old Ponderevo!\" he said, \"the Early bird! And he\'s\ncaught the worm! By Jove, but it\'s cold this morning! Come round here\nand sit on the bed!\"\n\nI walked round, wrung his hand, and we surveyed one another.\n\nHe was lying on a small wooden fold-up bed, the scanty covering of which\nwas supplemented by an overcoat and an elderly but still cheerful pair\nof check trousers, and he was wearing pajamas of a virulent pink and\ngreen. His neck seemed longer and more stringy than it had been even in\nour schooldays, and his upper lip had a wiry black moustache. The rest\nof his ruddy, knobby countenance, his erratic hair and his general hairy\nleanness had not even--to my perceptions grown.\n\n\"By Jove!\" he said, \"you\'ve got quite decent-looking, Ponderevo! What do\nyou think of me?\"\n\n\"You\'re all right. What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Art, my son--sculpture! And incidentally--\" He hesitated. \"I ply a\ntrade. Will you hand me that pipe and those smoking things? So!\nYou can\'t make coffee, eh? Well, try your hand. Cast down this\nscreen--no--fold it up and so we\'ll go into the other room. I\'ll keep\nin bed all the same. The fire\'s a gas stove. Yes. Don\'t make it bang.\ntoo loud as you light it--I can\'t stand it this morning. You won\'t smoke\n... Well, it does me good to see you again, Ponderevo. Tell me what\nyou\'re doing, and how you\'re getting on.\"\n\nHe directed me in the service of his simple hospitality, and presently\nI came back to his bed and sat down and smiled at him there, smoking\ncomfortably, with his hands under his head, surveying me.\n\n\"How\'s Life\'s Morning, Ponderevo? By Jove, it must be nearly six years\nsince we met! They\'ve got moustaches. We\'ve fleshed ourselves a bit, eh?\nAnd you?\"\n\nI felt a pipe was becoming after all, and that lit, I gave him a\nfavourable sketch of my career.\n\n\"Science! And you\'ve worked like that! While I\'ve been potting round\ndoing odd jobs for stone-masons and people, and trying to get to\nsculpture. I\'ve a sort of feeling that the chisel--I began with\npainting, Ponderevo, and found I was colour-blind, colour-blind\nenough to stop it. I\'ve drawn about and thought about--thought more\nparticularly. I give myself three days a week as an art student, and the\nrest of the time I\'ve a sort of trade that keeps me. And we\'re still\nin the beginning of things, young men starting. Do you remember the\nold times at Goudhurst, our doll\'s-house island, the Retreat of the Ten\nThousand Young Holmes and the rabbits, eh? It\'s surprising, if you think\nof it, to find we are still young. And we used to talk of what we would\nbe, and we used to talk of love! I suppose you know all about that now,\nPonderevo?\"\n\nI finished and hesitated on some vague foolish lie, \"No,\" I said, a\nlittle ashamed of the truth. \"Do you? I\'ve been too busy.\"\n\n\"I\'m just beginning--just as we were then. Things happen.\"\n\nHe sucked at his pipe for a space and stared at the plaster cast of a\nflayed hand that hung on the wall.\n\n\"The fact is, Ponderevo, I\'m beginning to find life a most extraordinary\nqueer set-out; the things that pull one, the things that don\'t. The\nwants--This business of sex. It\'s a net. No end to it, no way out of it,\nno sense in it. There are times when women take possession of me, when\nmy mind is like a painted ceiling at Hampton Court with the pride of\nthe flesh sprawling all over it. WHY?... And then again sometimes when\nI have to encounter a woman, I am overwhelmed by a terror of tantalising\nboredom--I fly, I hide, I do anything. You\'ve got your scientific\nexplanations perhaps; what\'s Nature and the universe up to in that\nmatter?\"\n\n\"It\'s her way, I gather, of securing the continuity of the species.\"\n\n\"But it doesn\'t,\" said Ewart. \"That\'s just it! No. I have succumbed\nto--dissipation--down the hill there. Euston Road way. And it was damned\nugly and mean, and I hate having done it. And the continuity of the\nspecies--Lord!... And why does Nature make a man so infernally ready for\ndrinks? There\'s no sense in that anyhow.\" He sat up in bed, to put this\nquestion with the greater earnestness. \"And why has she given me a most\nviolent desire towards sculpture and an equally violent desire to leave\noff work directly I begin it, eh?... Let\'s have some more coffee. I put\nit to you, these things puzzle me, Ponderevo. They dishearten me. They\nkeep me in bed.\"\n\nHe had an air of having saved up these difficulties for me for some\ntime. He sat with his chin almost touching his knees, sucking at his\npipe.\n\n\"That\'s what I mean,\" he went on, \"when I say life is getting on to me\nas extraordinarily queer, I don\'t see my game, nor why I was invited.\nAnd I don\'t make anything of the world outside either. What do you make\nof it?\"\n\n\"London,\" I began. \"It\'s--so enormous!\"\n\n\"Isn\'t it! And it\'s all up to nothing. You find chaps keeping grocers\'\nshops--why the DEVIL, Ponderevo, do they keep grocers\' shops? They\nall do it very carefully, very steadily, very meanly. You find people\nrunning about and doing the most remarkable things being policemen, for\nexample, and burglars. They go about these businesses quite gravely and\nearnestly. I somehow--can\'t go about mine. Is there any sense in it at\nall--anywhere?\"\n\n\"There must be sense in it,\" I said. \"We\'re young.\"\n\n\"We\'re young--yes. But one must inquire. The grocer\'s a grocer because,\nI suppose, he sees he comes in there. Feels that on the whole it amounts\nto a call.... But the bother is I don\'t see where I come in at all. Do\nyou?\"\n\n\"Where you come in?\"\n\n\"No, where you come in.\"\n\n\"Not exactly, yet,\" I said. \"I want to do some good in the\nworld--something--something effectual, before I die. I have a sort of\nidea my scientific work--I don\'t know.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he mused. \"And I\'ve got a sort of idea my sculpture,--but now it\nis to come in and WHY,--I\'ve no idea at all.\" He hugged his knees for a\nspace. \"That\'s what puzzles me, Ponderevo, no end.\"\n\nHe became animated. \"If you will look in that cupboard,\" he said,\n\"you will find an old respectable looking roll on a plate and a knife\nsomewhere and a gallipot containing butter. You give them me and I\'ll\nmake my breakfast, and then if you don\'t mind watching me paddle about\nat my simple toilet I\'ll get up. Then we\'ll go for a walk and talk about\nthis affair of life further. And about Art and Literature and anything\nelse that crops up on the way.... Yes, that\'s the gallipot. Cockroach\ngot in it? Chuck him out--damned interloper....\"\n\nSo in the first five minutes of our talk, as I seem to remember it\nnow, old Ewart struck the note that ran through all that morning\'s\nintercourse....\n\nTo me it was a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new\nhorizons of thought. I\'d been working rather close and out of touch\nwith Ewart\'s free gesticulating way. He was pessimistic that day and\nsceptical to the very root of things. He made me feel clearly, what\nI had not felt at all before, the general adventurousness of life,\nparticularly of life at the stage we had reached, and also the absence\nof definite objects, of any concerted purpose in the lives that were\ngoing on all round us. He made me feel, too, how ready I was to take up\ncommonplace assumptions. Just as I had always imagined that somewhere\nin social arrangements there was certainly a Head-Master who would\nintervene if one went too far, so I had always had a sort of implicit\nbelief that in our England there were somewhere people who understood\nwhat we were all, as a nation, about. That crumpled into his pit of\ndoubt and vanished.\n\nHe brought out, sharply cut and certain, the immense effect of\npurposelessness in London that I was already indistinctly feeling. We\nfound ourselves at last returning through Highgate Cemetery and Waterlow\nPark--and Ewart was talking.\n\n\"Look at it there,\" he said, stopping and pointing to the great vale of\nLondon spreading wide and far. \"It\'s like a sea--and we swim in it. And\nat last down we go, and then up we come--washed up here.\" He swung\nhis arms to the long slopes about us, tombs and headstones in long\nperspectives, in limitless rows.\n\n\"We\'re young, Ponderevo, but sooner or later our whitened memories will\nwash up on one of these beaches, on some such beach as this. George\nPonderevo, F.R.S., Sidney Ewart, R.I.P. Look at the rows of \'em!\"\n\nHe paused. \"Do you see that hand? The hand, I mean, pointing upward,\non the top of a blunted obelisk. Yes. Well, that\'s what I do for a\nliving--when I\'m not thinking, or drinking, or prowling, or making love,\nor pretending I\'m trying to be a sculptor without either the money\nor the morals for a model. See? And I do those hearts afire and those\npensive angel guardians with the palm of peace. Damned well I do \'em and\ndamned cheap! I\'m a sweated victim, Ponderevo...\"\n\nThat was the way of it, anyhow. I drank deep of talk that day; we went\ninto theology, into philosophy; I had my first glimpse of socialism. I\nfelt as though I had been silent in a silence since I and he had parted.\nAt the thought of socialism Ewart\'s moods changed for a time to a sort\nof energy. \"After all, all this confounded vagueness might be altered.\nIf you could get men to work together...\"\n\nIt was a good talk that rambled through all the universe. I thought I\nwas giving my mind refreshment, but indeed it was dissipation. All sorts\nof ideas, even now, carry me back as it were to a fountain-head, to\nWaterlow Park and my resuscitated Ewart. There stretches away south\nof us long garden slopes and white gravestones and the wide expanse of\nLondon, and somewhere in the picture is a red old wall, sun-warmed, and\na great blaze of Michaelmas daisies set off with late golden sunflowers\nand a drift of mottled, blood-red, fallen leaves. It was with me that\nday as though I had lifted my head suddenly out of dull and immediate\nthings and looked at life altogether.... But it played the very devil\nwith the copying up of my arrears of notes to which I had vowed the\nlatter half of that day.\n\nAfter that reunion Ewart and I met much and talked much, and in our\nsubsequent encounters his monologue was interrupted and I took my share.\nHe had exercised me so greatly that I lay awake at nights thinking\nhim over, and discoursed and answered him in my head as I went in the\nmorning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a\ncritic; his philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of\nlife which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and\nenergetic nature to active protests. \"It\'s all so pointless,\" I said,\n\"because people are slack and because it\'s in the ebb of an age. But\nyou\'re a socialist. Well, let\'s bring that about! And there\'s a purpose.\nThere you are!\"\n\nEwart gave me all my first conceptions of socialism; in a little while\nI was an enthusiastic socialist and he was a passive resister to the\npractical exposition of the theories he had taught me. \"We must join\nsome organisation,\" I said. \"We ought to do things.... We ought to go\nand speak at street corners. People don\'t know.\"\n\nYou must figure me a rather ill-dressed young man in a state of great\nearnestness, standing up in that shabby studio of his and saying these\nthings, perhaps with some gesticulations, and Ewart with a clay-smudged\nface, dressed perhaps in a flannel shirt and trousers, with a pipe in\nhis mouth, squatting philosophically at a table, working at some chunk\nof clay that never got beyond suggestion.\n\n\"I wonder why one doesn\'t want to,\" he said.\n\nIt was only very slowly I came to gauge Ewart\'s real position in the\nscheme of things, to understand how deliberate and complete was this\ndetachment of his from the moral condemnation and responsibilities that\nplayed so fine a part in his talk. His was essentially the nature of\nan artistic appreciator; he could find interest and beauty in endless\naspects of things that I marked as evil, or at least as not negotiable;\nand the impulse I had towards self-deception, to sustained and\nconsistent self-devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was\nat that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy.\nLike many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and\nhe gave me a series of little shocks of discovery throughout our\nintercourse.\n\nThe first of these came in the realisation that he quite seriously meant\nto do nothing in the world at all towards reforming the evils he laid\nbare in so easy and dexterous a manner. The next came in the sudden\nappearance of a person called \"Milly\"--I\'ve forgotten her surname--whom\nI found in his room one evening, simply attired in a blue wrap--the\nrest of her costume behind the screen--smoking cigarettes and sharing\na flagon of an amazingly cheap and self-assertive grocer\'s wine Ewart\naffected, called \"Canary Sack.\" \"Hullo!\" said Ewart, as I came in. \"This\nis Milly, you know. She\'s been being a model--she IS a model really....\n(keep calm, Ponderevo!) Have some sack?\"\n\nMilly was a woman of thirty, perhaps, with a broad, rather pretty face,\na placid disposition, a bad accent and delightful blond hair that waved\noff her head with an irrepressible variety of charm; and whenever Ewart\nspoke she beamed at him. Ewart was always sketching this hair of hers\nand embarking upon clay statuettes of her that were never finished. She\nwas, I know now, a woman of the streets, whom Ewart had picked up in\nthe most casual manner, and who had fallen in love with him, but my\ninexperience in those days was too great for me to place her then, and\nEwart offered no elucidations. She came to him, he went to her, they\ntook holidays together in the country when certainly she sustained her\nfair share of their expenditure. I suspect him now even of taking money\nfrom her. Odd old Ewart! It was a relationship so alien to my orderly\nconceptions of honour, to what I could imagine any friend of mine doing,\nthat I really hardly saw it with it there under my nose. But I see it\nand I think I understand it now....\n\nBefore I fully grasped the discursive manner in which Ewart was\ncommitted to his particular way in life, I did, I say, as the broad\nconstructive ideas of socialism took hold of me, try to get him to work\nwith me in some definite fashion as a socialist.\n\n\"We ought to join on to other socialists,\" I said.\n\n\"They\'ve got something.\"\n\n\"Let\'s go and look at some first.\"\n\nAfter some pains we discovered the office of the Fabian Society, lurking\nin a cellar in Clement\'s Inn; and we went and interviewed a rather\ndiscouraging secretary who stood astraddle in front of a fire and\nquestioned us severely and seemed to doubt the integrity of our\nintentions profoundly. He advised us to attend the next open meeting in\nClifford\'s Inn and gave us the necessary data. We both contrived to get\nto the affair, and heard a discursive gritty paper on Trusts and one of\nthe most inconclusive discussions you can imagine. Three-quarters of\nthe speakers seemed under some jocular obsession which took the form\nof pretending to be conceited. It was a sort of family joke, and as\nstrangers to the family we did not like it.... As we came out through\nthe narrow passage from Clifford\'s Inn to the Strand, Ewart suddenly\npitched upon a wizened, spectacled little man in a vast felt hat and a\nlarge orange tie.\n\n\"How many members are there in this Fabian Society of yours?\" he asked.\n\nThe little man became at once defensive in his manner.\n\n\"About seven hundred,\" he said; \"perhaps eight.\"\n\n\"Like--like the ones here?\"\n\nThe little man gave a nervous self-satisfied laugh. \"I suppose they\'re\nup to sample,\" he said.\n\nThe little man dropped out of existence and we emerged upon the Strand.\nEwart twisted his arm into a queerly eloquent gesture that gathered up\nall the tall facades of the banks, the business places, the projecting\nclock and towers of the Law Courts, the advertisements, the luminous\nsigns, into one social immensity, into a capitalistic system gigantic\nand invincible.\n\n\"These socialists have no sense of proportion,\" he said. \"What can you\nexpect of them?\"\n\nIV\n\nEwart, as the embodiment of talk, was certainly a leading factor in my\nconspicuous failure to go on studying. Social theory in its first crude\nform of Democratic Socialism gripped my intelligence more and more\npowerfully. I argued in the laboratory with the man who shared my bench\nuntil we quarreled and did not speak and also I fell in love.\n\nThe ferment of sex had been creeping into my being like a slowly\nadvancing tide through all my Wimblehurst days, the stimulus of London\nwas like the rising of a wind out of the sea that brings the waves in\nfast and high. Ewart had his share in that. More and more acutely and\nunmistakably did my perception of beauty, form and sound, my desire\nfor adventure, my desire for intercourse, converge on this central and\ncommanding business of the individual life. I had to get me a mate.\n\nI began to fall in love faintly with girls I passed in the street,\nwith women who sat before me in trains, with girl fellow-students,\nwith ladies in passing carriages, with loiterers at the corners, with\nneat-handed waitresses in shops and tea-rooms, with pictures even\nof girls and women. On my rare visits to the theatre I always became\nexalted, and found the actresses and even the spectators about me\nmysterious, attractive, creatures of deep interest and desire. I had\na stronger and stronger sense that among these glancing, passing\nmultitudes there was somewhere one who was for me. And in spite of every\nantagonistic force in the world, there was something in my very marrow\nthat insisted: \"Stop! Look at this one! Think of her! Won\'t she do?\nThis signifies--this before all things signifies! Stop! Why are you\nhurrying by? This may be the predestined person--before all others.\"\n\nIt is odd that I can\'t remember when first I saw Marion, who became my\nwife--whom I was to make wretched, who was to make me wretched, who\nwas to pluck that fine generalised possibility of love out of my early\nmanhood and make it a personal conflict. I became aware of her as one of\na number of interesting attractive figures that moved about in my world,\nthat glanced back at my eyes, that flitted by with a kind of averted\nwatchfulness. I would meet her coming through the Art Museum, which\nwas my short cut to the Brompton Road, or see her sitting, reading as I\nthought, in one of the bays of the Education Library. But really, as I\nfound out afterwards, she never read. She used to come there to eat a\nbun in quiet. She was a very gracefully-moving figure of a girl then,\nvery plainly dressed, with dark brown hair I remember, in a knot low\non her neck behind that confessed the pretty roundness of her head\nand harmonised with the admirable lines of ears and cheek, the grave\nserenity of mouth and brow.\n\nShe stood out among the other girls very distinctly because they dressed\nmore than she did, struck emphatic notes of colour, startled one by\nnovelties in hats and bows and things. I\'ve always hated the rustle, the\ndisconcerting colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women\'s\nclothes. Her plain black dress gave her a starkness....\n\nI do remember, though, how one afternoon I discovered the peculiar\nappeal of her form for me. I had been restless with my work and had\nfinally slipped out of the Laboratory and come over to the Art Museum\nto lounge among the pictures. I came upon her in an odd corner of the\nSheepshanks gallery, intently copying something from a picture that hung\nhigh. I had just been in the gallery of casts from the antique, my mind\nwas all alive with my newly awakened sense of line, and there she stood\nwith face upturned, her body drooping forward from the hips just a\nlittle--memorably graceful--feminine.\n\nAfter that I know I sought to see her, felt a distinctive emotion at\nher presence, began to imagine things about her. I no longer thought\nof generalised womanhood or of this casual person or that. I thought of\nher.\n\nAn accident brought us together. I found myself one Monday morning in an\nomnibus staggering westward from Victoria--I was returning from a Sunday\nI\'d spent at Wimblehurst in response to a unique freak of hospitality\non the part of Mr. Mantell. She was the sole other inside passenger.\nAnd when the time came to pay her fare, she became an extremely scared,\ndisconcerted and fumbling young woman; she had left her purse at home.\n\nLuckily I had some money.\n\nShe looked at me with startled, troubled brown eyes; she permitted my\nproffered payment to the conductor with a certain ungraciousness that\nseemed a part of her shyness, and then as she rose to go, she thanked me\nwith an obvious affectation of ease.\n\n\"Thank you so much,\" she said in a pleasant soft voice; and then less\ngracefully, \"Awfully kind of you, you know.\"\n\nI fancy I made polite noises. But just then I wasn\'t disposed to be\ncritical. I was full of the sense of her presence; her arm was stretched\nout over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body\nwas near me. The words we used didn\'t seem very greatly to matter. I had\nvague ideas of getting out with her--and I didn\'t.\n\nThat encounter, I have no doubt, exercised me enormously. I lay awake\nat night rehearsing it, and wondering about the next phase of our\nrelationship. That took the form of the return of my twopence. I was\nin the Science Library, digging something out of the Encyclopedia\nBritannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an\nevidently premeditated thin envelope, bulgingly confessing the coins\nwithin.\n\n\"It was so very kind of you,\" she said, \"the other day. I don\'t know\nwhat I should have done, Mr.--\"\n\nI supplied my name. \"I knew,\" I said, \"you were a student here.\"\n\n\"Not exactly a student. I--\"\n\n\"Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I\'m a student myself\nat the Consolidated Technical Schools.\"\n\nI plunged into autobiography and questionings, and so entangled her in\na conversation that got a quality of intimacy through the fact that,\nout of deference to our fellow-readers, we were obliged to speak in\nundertones. And I have no doubt that in substance it was singularly\nbanal. Indeed I have an impression that all our early conversations were\nincredibly banal. We met several times in a manner half-accidental, half\nfurtive and wholly awkward. Mentally I didn\'t take hold of her. I never\ndid take hold of her mentally. Her talk, I now know all too clearly, was\nshallow, pretentious, evasive. Only--even to this day--I don\'t remember\nit as in any way vulgar. She was, I could see quite clearly, anxious\nto overstate or conceal her real social status, a little desirous to\nbe taken for a student in the art school and a little ashamed that she\nwasn\'t. She came to the museum to \"copy things,\" and this, I gathered,\nhad something to do with some way of partially earning her living that I\nwasn\'t to inquire into. I told her things about myself, vain things that\nI felt might appeal to her, but that I learnt long afterwards made her\nthink me \"conceited.\" We talked of books, but there she was very much on\nher guard and secretive, and rather more freely of pictures. She \"liked\"\npictures. I think from the outset I appreciated and did not for a moment\nresent that hers was a commonplace mind, that she was the unconscious\ncustodian of something that had gripped my most intimate instinct, that\nshe embodied the hope of a possibility, was the careless proprietor of a\nphysical quality that had turned my head like strong wine. I felt I had\nto stick to our acquaintance, flat as it was. Presently we should get\nthrough these irrelevant exterior things, and come to the reality of\nlove beneath.\n\nI saw her in dreams released, as it were, from herself, beautiful,\nworshipful, glowing. And sometimes when we were together, we would come\non silences through sheer lack of matter, and then my eyes would feast\non her, and the silence seemed like the drawing back of a curtain--her\nsuperficial self. Odd, I confess. Odd, particularly, the enormous hold\nof certain things about her upon me, a certain slight rounded duskiness\nof skin, a certain perfection of modelling in her lips, her brow, a\ncertain fine flow about the shoulders. She wasn\'t indeed beautiful\nto many people--these things are beyond explaining. She had manifest\ndefects of form and feature, and they didn\'t matter at all. Her\ncomplexion was bad, but I don\'t think it would have mattered if it\nhad been positively unwholesome. I had extraordinarily limited,\nextraordinarily painful, desires. I longed intolerably to kiss her lips.\n\nV\n\nThe affair was immensely serious and commanding to me. I don\'t remember\nthat in these earlier phases I had any thought of turning back at\nall. It was clear to me that she regarded me with an eye entirely\nmore critical than I had for her, that she didn\'t like my scholarly\nuntidiness, my want of even the most commonplace style. \"Why do you\nwear collars like that?\" she said, and sent me in pursuit of gentlemanly\nneckwear. I remember when she invited me a little abruptly one day to\ncome to tea at her home on the following Sunday and meet her father\nand mother and aunt, that I immediately doubted whether my hitherto\nunsuspected best clothes would create the impression she desired me to\nmake on her belongings. I put off the encounter until the Sunday after,\nto get myself in order. I had a morning coat made and I bought a silk\nhat, and had my reward in the first glance of admiration she ever gave\nme. I wonder how many of my sex are as preposterous. I was, you see,\nabandoning all my beliefs, my conventions unasked. I was forgetting\nmyself immensely. And there was a conscious shame in it all. Never a\nword--did I breathe to Ewart--to any living soul of what was going on.\n\nHer father and mother and aunt struck me as the dismalest of people,\nand her home in Walham Green was chiefly notable for its black and\namber tapestry carpets and curtains and table-cloths, and the age and\nirrelevance of its books, mostly books with faded gilt on the covers.\nThe windows were fortified against the intrusive eye by cheap lace\ncurtains and an \"art pot\" upon an unstable octagonal table. Several\nframed Art School drawings of Marion\'s, bearing official South\nKensington marks of approval, adorned the room, and there was a black\nand gilt piano with a hymn-book on the top of it. There were draped\nmirrors over all the mantels, and above the sideboard in the dining-room\nin which we sat at tea was a portrait of her father, villainously\ntruthful after the manner of such works. I couldn\'t see a trace of the\nbeauty I found in her in either parent, yet she somehow contrived to be\nlike them both.\n\nThese people pretended in a way that reminded me of the Three Great\nWomen in my mother\'s room, but they had not nearly so much social\nknowledge and did not do it nearly so well. Also, I remarked, they did\nit with an eye on Marion. They had wanted to thank me, they said, for\nthe kindness to their daughter in the matter of the \'bus fare, and so\naccounted for anything unusual in their invitation. They posed as simple\ngentlefolk, a little hostile to the rush and gadding-about of London,\npreferring a secluded and unpretentious quiet.\n\nWhen Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for\ntea, a card bearing the word \"APARTMENTS\" fell to the floor. I picked it\nup and gave it to her before I realised from her quickened colour that I\nshould not have seen it; that probably had been removed from the window\nin honour of my coming.\n\nHer father spoke once in a large remote way of he claims of business\nengagements, and it was only long afterwards I realised that he was a\nsupernumerary clerk in the Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful\nman at home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown\neyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a\npaper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a\nlarge Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also\nhe cultivated the little garden-yard behind the house, and he had a\nsmall greenhouse with tomatoes. \"I wish I \'ad \'eat,\" he said. \"One can\ndo such a lot with \'eat. But I suppose you can\'t \'ave everything you\nwant in this world.\"\n\nBoth he and Marion\'s mother treated her with a deference that struck me\nas the most natural thing in the world. Her own manner changed, became\nmore authoritative and watchful, her shyness disappeared. She had taken\na line of her own I gathered, draped the mirror, got the second-hand\npiano, and broken her parents in.\n\nHer mother must once have been a pretty woman; she had regular features\nand Marion\'s hair without its lustre, but she was thin and careworn.\nThe aunt, Miss Ramboat, was a large, abnormally shy person very like her\nbrother, and I don\'t recall anything she said on this occasion.\n\nTo begin with there was a good deal of tension, Marion was frightfully\nnervous and every one was under the necessity of behaving in a\nmysteriously unreal fashion until I plunged, became talkative and made\na certain ease and interest. I told them of the schools, of my lodgings,\nof Wimblehurst and my apprenticeship days. \"There\'s a lot of this\nScience about nowadays,\" Mr. Ramboat reflected; \"but I sometimes wonder\na bit what good it is?\"\n\nI was young enough to be led into what he called \"a bit of a\ndiscussion,\" which Marion truncated before our voices became unduly\nraised. \"I dare say,\" she said, \"there\'s much to be said on both sides.\"\n\nI remember Marion\'s mother asked me what church I attended, and that\nI replied evasively. After tea there was music and we sang hymns. I\ndoubted if I had a voice when this was proposed, but that was held to be\na trivial objection, and I found sitting close beside the sweep of\nhair from Marion\'s brow had many compensations. I discovered her mother\nsitting in the horsehair armchair and regarding us sentimentally. I went\nfor a walk with Marion towards Putney Bridge, and then there was more\nsinging and a supper of cold bacon and pie, after which Mr. Ramboat and\nI smoked. During that walk, I remember, she told me the import of her\nsketchings and copyings in the museum. A cousin of a friend of hers whom\nshe spoke of as Smithie, had developed an original business in a sort of\ntea-gown garment which she called a Persian Robe, a plain sort of wrap\nwith a gaily embroidered yoke, and Marion went there and worked in the\nbusy times. In the times that weren\'t busy she designed novelties in\nyokes by an assiduous use of eyes and note-book in the museum, and went\nhome and traced out the captured forms on the foundation material. \"I\ndon\'t get much,\" said Marion, \"but it\'s interesting, and in the busy\ntimes we work all day. Of course the workgirls are dreadfully common,\nbut we don\'t say much to them. And Smithie talks enough for ten.\"\n\nI quite understood the workgirls were dreadfully common.\n\nI don\'t remember that the Walham Green menage and the quality of these\npeople, nor the light they threw on Marion, detracted in the slightest\ndegree at that time from the intent resolve that held me to make her\nmine. I didn\'t like them. But I took them as part of the affair. Indeed,\non the whole, I think they threw her up by an effect of contrast; she\nwas so obviously controlling them, so consciously superior to them.\n\nMore and more of my time did I give to this passion that possessed me. I\nbegan to think chiefly of ways of pleasing Marion, of acts of devotion,\nof treats, of sumptuous presents for her, of appeals she would\nunderstand. If at times she was manifestly unintelligent, in her\nignorance became indisputable, I told myself her simple instincts were\nworth all the education and intelligence in the world. And to this day\nI think I wasn\'t really wrong about her. There was something\nextraordinarily fine about her, something simple and high, that\nflickered in and out of her ignorance and commonness and limitations\nlike the tongue from the mouth of a snake....\n\nOne night I was privileged to meet her and bring her home from an\nentertainment at the Birkbeck Institute. We came back on the underground\nrailway and we travelled first-class--that being the highest class\navailable. We were alone in the carriage, and for the first time I\nventured to put my arm about her.\n\n\"You mustn\'t,\" she said feebly.\n\n\"I love you,\" I whispered suddenly with my heart beating wildly, drew\nher to me, drew all her beauty to me and kissed her cool and unresisting\nlips.\n\n\"Love me?\" she said, struggling away from me, \"Don\'t!\" and then, as the\ntrain ran into a station, \"You must tell no one.... I don\'t know.... You\nshouldn\'t have done that....\"\n\nThen two other people got in with us and terminated my wooing for a\ntime.\n\nWhen we found ourselves alone together, walking towards Battersea, she\nhad decided to be offended. I parted from her unforgiven and terribly\ndistressed.\n\nWhen we met again, she told me I must never say \"that\" again.\n\nI had dreamt that to kiss her lips was ultimate satisfaction. But it was\nindeed only the beginning of desires. I told her my one ambition was to\nmarry her.\n\n\"But,\" she said, \"you\'re not in a position--What\'s the good of talking\nlike that?\"\n\nI stared at her. \"I mean to,\" I said.\n\n\"You can\'t,\" she answered. \"It will be years\"\n\n\"But I love you,\" I insisted.\n\nI stood not a yard from the sweet lips I had kissed; I stood within\narm\'s length of the inanimate beauty I desired to quicken, and I saw\nopening between us a gulf of years, toil, waiting, disappointments and\nan immense uncertainty.\n\n\"I love you,\" I said. \"Don\'t you love me?\"\n\nShe looked me in the face with grave irresponsive eyes.\n\n\"I don\'t know,\" she said. \"I LIKE you, of course.... One has to be\nsensibl...\"\n\nI can remember now my sense of frustration by her unresilient reply.\nI should have perceived then that for her my ardour had no quickening\nfire. But how was I to know? I had let myself come to want her, my\nimagination endowed her with infinite possibilities. I wanted her and\nwanted her, stupidly and instinctively....\n\n\"But,\" I said \"Love--!\"\n\n\"One has to be sensible,\" she replied. \"I like going about with you.\nCan\'t we keep as we are?\'\"\n\nVI\n\nWell, you begin to understand my breakdown now, I have been copious\nenough with these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my\nbehaviour degenerated, my punctuality declined; I was more and more\noutclassed in the steady grind by my fellow-students. Such supplies of\nmoral energy as I still had at command shaped now in the direction of\nserving Marion rather than science.\n\nI fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped\nmen from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent,\nhard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen\nrivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the\nlists. Then indeed I made it a point of honour to show by my public\ndisregard of every rule that I really did not even pretend to try.\n\nSo one day I found myself sitting in a mood of considerable astonishment\nin Kensington Gardens, reacting on a recent heated interview with the\nschool Registrar in which I had displayed more spirit than sense. I was\nastonished chiefly at my stupendous falling away from all the militant\nideals of unflinching study I had brought up from Wimblehurst. I had\ndisplayed myself, as the Registrar put it, \"an unmitigated rotter.\" My\nfailure to get marks in the written examination had only been equalled\nby the insufficiency of my practical work.\n\n\"I ask you,\" the Registrar had said, \"what will become of you when your\nscholarship runs out?\"\n\nIt certainly was an interesting question. What was going to become of\nme?\n\nIt was clear there would be nothing for me in the schools as I had once\ndared to hope; there seemed, indeed, scarcely anything in the world\nexcept an illpaid assistantship in some provincial organized Science\nSchool or grammar school. I knew that for that sort of work, without\na degree or any qualification, one earned hardly a bare living and had\nlittle leisure to struggle up to anything better. If only I had even\nas little as fifty pounds I might hold out in London and take my\nB.Sc. degree, and quadruple my chances! My bitterness against my uncle\nreturned at the thought. After all, he had some of my money still, or\nought to have. Why shouldn\'t I act within my rights, threaten to \'take\nproceedings\'? I meditated for a space on the idea, and then returned to\nthe Science Library and wrote him a very considerable and occasionally\npungent letter.\n\nThat letter to my uncle was the nadir of my failure. Its remarkable\nconsequences, which ended my student days altogether, I will tell in the\nnext chapter.\n\nI say \"my failure.\" Yet there are times when I can even doubt whether\nthat period was a failure at all, when I become defensively critical of\nthose exacting courses I did not follow, the encyclopaedic process\nof scientific exhaustion from which I was distracted. My mind was not\ninactive, even if it fed on forbidden food. I did not learn what my\nprofessors and demonstrators had resolved I should learn, but I learnt\nmany things. My mind learnt to swing wide and to swing by itself.\n\nAfter all, those other fellows who took high places in the College\nexaminations and were the professor\'s model boys haven\'t done so\namazingly. Some are professors themselves, some technical experts; not\none can show things done such as I, following my own interest, have\nachieved. For I have built boats that smack across the water like\nwhiplashes; no one ever dreamt of such boats until I built them; and I\nhave surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries,\nin the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying\nthan any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn for\nobeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed\nto train my mind? If I had been trained in research--that ridiculous\ncontradiction in terms--should I have done more than produce additions\nto the existing store of little papers with blunted conclusions, of\nwhich there are already too many? I see no sense in mock modesty upon\nthis matter. Even by the standards of worldly success I am, by the side\nof my fellow-students, no failure. I had my F.R.S. by the time I was\nthirty-seven, and if I am not very wealthy poverty is as far from me as\nthe Spanish Inquisition. Suppose I had stamped down on the head of my\nwandering curiosity, locked my imagination in a box just when it wanted\nto grow out to things, worked by so-and-so\'s excellent method and\nso-and-so\'s indications, where should I be now?\n\nI may be all wrong in this. It may be I should be a far more efficient\nman than I am if I had cut off all those divergent expenditures of\nenergy, plugged up my curiosity about society with more currently\nacceptable rubbish or other, abandoned Ewart, evaded Marion instead of\npursuing her, concentrated. But I don\'t believe it!\n\nHowever, I certainly believed it completely and was filled with remorse\non that afternoon when I sat dejectedly in Kensington Gardens and\nreviewed, in the light of the Registrar\'s pertinent questions my first\ntwo years in London.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SECOND\n\nTHE DAWN COMES, AND MY UNCLE APPEARS IN A NEW SILK HAT\n\nI\n\nThroughout my student days I had not seen my uncle. I refrained from\ngoing to him in spite of an occasional regret that in this way I\nestranged myself from my aunt Susan, and I maintained a sulky attitude\nof mind towards him. And I don\'t think that once in all that time I gave\na thought to that mystic word of his that was to alter all the world\nfor us. Yet I had not altogether forgotten it. It was with a touch of\nmemory, dim transient perplexity if no more--why did this thing seem in\nsome way personal?--that I read a new inscription upon the hoardings:\n\n THE SECRET OF VIGOUR,\n TONO-BUNGAY.\n\nThat was all. It was simple and yet in some way arresting. I found\nmyself repeating the word after I had passed; it roused one\'s attention\nlike the sound of distant guns. \"Tono\"--what\'s that? and deep, rich,\nunhurrying;--\"BUN--gay!\"\n\nThen came my uncle\'s amazing telegram, his answer to my hostile\nnote: \"Come to me at once you are wanted three hundred a year certain\ntono-bungay.\"\n\n\"By Jove!\" I cried, \"of course!\n\n\"It\'s something--. A patent-medicine! I wonder what he wants with me.\"\n\nIn his Napoleonic way my uncle had omitted to give an address. His\ntelegram had been handed in at Farringdon Road, and after complex\nmeditations I replied to Ponderevo, Farringdon Road, trusting to the\nrarity of our surname to reach him.\n\n\"Where are you?\" I asked.\n\nHis reply came promptly:\n\n\"192A, Raggett Street, E.C.\"\n\nThe next day I took an unsanctioned holiday after the morning\'s lecture.\nI discovered my uncle in a wonderfully new silk hat--oh, a splendid\nhat! with a rolling brim that went beyond the common fashion. It was\ndecidedly too big for him--that was its only fault. It was stuck on the\nback of his head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt sleeves.\nHe welcomed me with a forgetfulness of my bitter satire and my hostile\nabstinence that was almost divine. His glasses fell off at the sight of\nme. His round inexpressive eyes shone brightly. He held out his plump\nshort hand.\n\n\"Here we are, George! What did I tell you? Needn\'t whisper it now, my\nboy. Shout it--LOUD! spread it about! Tell every one! Tono--TONO--,\nTONO-BUNGAY!\"\n\nRaggett Street, you must understand, was a thoroughfare over which some\none had distributed large quantities of cabbage stumps and leaves. It\nopened out of the upper end of Farringdon Street, and 192A was a shop\nwith the plate-glass front coloured chocolate, on which several of the\nsame bills I had read upon the hoardings had been stuck. The floor was\ncovered by street mud that had been brought in on dirty boots, and three\nenergetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps, were\npacking wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw and\nconfusion. The counter was littered with these same swathed bottles, of\na pattern then novel but now amazingly familiar in the world, the blue\npaper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude giant, and the\nprinted directions of how under practically all circumstances to take\nTono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side opened a staircase down\nwhich I seem to remember a girl descending with a further consignment\nof bottles, and the rest of the background was a high partition, also\nchocolate, with \"Temporary Laboratory\" inscribed upon it in white\nletters, and over a door that pierced it, \"Office.\" Here I rapped,\ninaudible amid much hammering, and then entered unanswered to find\nmy uncle, dressed as I have described, one hand gripping a sheath of\nletters, and the other scratching his head as he dictated to one of\nthree toiling typewriter girls. Behind him was a further partition and\na door inscribed \"ABSOLUTELY PRIVATE--NO ADMISSION,\" thereon. This\npartition was of wood painted the universal chocolate, up to about eight\nfeet from the ground, and then of glass. Through the glass I saw dimly\na crowded suggestion of crucibles and glass retorts, and--by\nJove!--yes!--the dear old Wimblehurst air-pump still! It gave me quite\na little thrill--that air-pump! And beside it was the electrical\nmachine--but something--some serious trouble--had happened to that. All\nthese were evidently placed on a shelf just at the level to show.\n\n\"Come right into the sanctum,\" said my uncle, after he had finished\nsomething about \"esteemed consideration,\" and whisked me through the\ndoor into a room that quite amazingly failed to verify the promise of\nthat apparatus. It was papered with dingy wall-paper that had peeled in\nplaces; it contained a fireplace, an easy-chair with a cushion, a table\non which stood two or three big bottles, a number of cigar-boxes on\nthe mantel, whisky Tantalus and a row of soda syphons. He shut the door\nafter me carefully.\n\n\"Well, here we are!\" he said. \"Going strong! Have a whisky, George?\nNo!--Wise man! Neither will I! You see me at it! At it--hard!\"\n\n\"Hard at what?\"\n\n\"Read it,\" and he thrust into my hand a label--that label that has\nnow become one of the most familiar objects of the chemist\'s shop, the\ngreenish-blue rather old-fashioned bordering, the legend, the name\nin good black type, very clear, and the strong man all set about with\nlightning flashes above the double column of skilful lies in red--the\nlabel of Tono-Bungay. \"It\'s afloat,\" he said, as I stood puzzling at\nthis. \"It\'s afloat. I\'m afloat!\" And suddenly he burst out singing in\nthat throaty tenor of his--\n\n\"I\'m afloat, I\'m afloat on the fierce flowing tide, The ocean\'s my home\nand my bark is my bride!\n\n\"Ripping song that is, George. Not so much a bark as a solution, but\nstill--it does! Here we are at it! By-the-by! Half a mo\'! I\'ve thought\nof a thing.\" He whisked out, leaving me to examine this nuclear spot at\nleisure while his voice became dictatorial without. The den struck me as\nin its large grey dirty way quite unprecedented and extraordinary. The\nbottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that dear\nold apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patiently \"on\nthe shelf\" than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. I saw\nnothing for it but to sit down in the chair and await my uncle\'s\nexplanations. I remarked a frock-coat with satin lapels behind the door;\nthere was a dignified umbrella in the corner and a clothes-brush and\na hat-brush stood on a side-table. My uncle returned in five minutes\nlooking at his watch--a gold watch--\"Gettin\' lunch-time, George,\" he\nsaid. \"You\'d better come and have lunch with me!\"\n\n\"How\'s Aunt Susan?\" I asked.\n\n\"Exuberant. Never saw her so larky. This has bucked her up something\nwonderful--all this.\"\n\n\"All what?\"\n\n\"Tono-Bungay.\"\n\n\"What is Tono-Bungay?\" I asked.\n\nMy uncle hesitated. \"Tell you after lunch, George,\" he said. \"Come\nalong!\" and having locked up the sanctum after himself, led the way\nalong a narrow dirty pavement, lined with barrows and swept at times by\navalanche-like porters bearing burthens to vans, to Farringdon Street.\nHe hailed a passing cab superbly, and the cabman was infinitely\nrespectful. \"Schafer\'s,\" he said, and off we went side by side--and with\nme more and more amazed at all these things--to Schafer\'s Hotel, the\nsecond of the two big places with huge lace curtain-covered windows,\nnear the corner of Blackfriars Bridge.\n\nI will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions as the\ntwo colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of Schafers\' held open\nthe inner doors for us with a respectful salutation that in some manner\nthey seemed to confine wholly to my uncle. Instead of being about\nfour inches taller, I felt at least the same size as he, and very much\nslenderer. Still more respectful--waiters relieved him of the new hat\nand the dignified umbrella, and took his orders for our lunch. He gave\nthem with a fine assurance.\n\nHe nodded to several of the waiters.\n\n\"They know me, George, already,\" he said. \"Point me out. Live place! Eye\nfor coming men!\"\n\nThe detailed business of the lunch engaged our attention for a while,\nand then I leant across my plate. \"And NOW?\" said I.\n\n\"It\'s the secret of vigour. Didn\'t you read that label?\"\n\n\"Yes, but--\"\n\n\"It\'s selling like hot cakes.\"\n\n\"And what is it?\" I pressed.\n\n\"Well,\" said my uncle, and then leant forward and spoke softly under\ncover of his hand, \"It\'s nothing more or less than...\"\n\n(But here an unfortunate scruple intervenes. After all, Tono-Bungay is\nstill a marketable commodity and in the hands of purchasers, who bought\nit from--among other vendors--me. No! I am afraid I cannot give it\naway--)\n\n\"You see,\" said my uncle in a slow confidential whisper, with eyes\nvery wide and a creased forehead, \"it\'s nice because of the\" (here he\nmentioned a flavouring matter and an aromatic spirit), \"it\'s stimulating\nbecause of\" (here he mentioned two very vivid tonics, one with a\nmarked action on the kidney.) \"And the\" (here he mentioned two other\ningredients) \"makes it pretty intoxicating. Cocks their tails. Then\nthere\'s\" (but I touch on the essential secret.) \"And there you are. I\ngot it out of an old book of recipes--all except the\" (here he mentioned\nthe more virulent substance, the one that assails the kidneys), \"which\nis my idea! Modern touch! There you are!\"\n\nHe reverted to the direction of our lunch.\n\nPresently he was leading the way to the lounge--sumptuous piece in red\nmorocco and yellow glazed crockery, with incredible vistas of settees\nand sofas and things, and there I found myself grouped with him in two\nexcessively upholstered chairs with an earthenware Moorish table between\nus bearing coffee and Benedictine, and I was tasting the delights of a\ntenpenny cigar. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in an habituated manner,\nand he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly\na little bounder, round the end of it. It was just a trivial flaw\nupon our swagger, perhaps that we both were clear our cigars had to be\n\"mild.\" He got obliquely across the spaces of his great armchair so as\nto incline confidentially to my ear, he curled up his little legs, and\nI, in my longer way, adopted a corresponding receptive obliquity. I felt\nthat we should strike an unbiased observer as a couple of very deep and\nwily and developing and repulsive persons.\n\n\"I want to let you into this\"--puff--\"George,\" said my uncle round the\nend of his cigar. \"For many reasons.\"\n\nHis voice grew lower and more cunning. He made explanations that to my\ninexperience did not completely explain. I retain an impression of a\nlong credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit\nand a prospective share with some pirate printers, of a third share for\na leading magazine and newspaper proprietor.\n\n\"I played \'em off one against the other,\" said my uncle. I took his\npoint in an instant. He had gone to each of them in turn and said the\nothers had come in.\n\n\"I put up four hundred pounds,\" said my uncle, \"myself and my all. And\nyou know--\"\n\nHe assumed a brisk confidence. \"I hadn\'t five hundred pence. At least--\"\n\nFor a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. \"I DID\" he said,\n\"produce capital. You see, there was that trust affair of yours--I\nought, I suppose--in strict legality--to have put that straight first.\nZzzz....\n\n\"It was a bold thing to do,\" said my uncle, shifting the venue from\nthe region of honour to the region of courage. And then with a\ncharacteristic outburst of piety, \"Thank God it\'s all come right!\n\n\"And now, I suppose, you ask where do YOU come in? Well, fact is I\'ve\nalways believed in you, George. You\'ve got--it\'s a sort of dismal grit.\nBark your shins, rouse you, and you\'ll go! You\'d rush any position you\nhad a mind to rush. I know a bit about character, George--trust me.\nYou\'ve got--\" He clenched his hands and thrust them out suddenly, and at\nthe same time said, with explosive violence, \"Wooosh! Yes. You have! The\nway you put away that Latin at Wimblehurst; I\'ve never forgotten it.\n\n\"Wo-oo-oo-osh! Your science and all that! Wo-oo-oo-osh! I know my\nlimitations. There\'s things I can do, and\" (he spoke in a whisper, as\nthough this was the first hint of his life\'s secret) \"there\'s things I\ncan\'t. Well, I can create this business, but I can\'t make it go. I\'m too\nvoluminous--I\'m a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it. You keep on\nHOTTING UP AND HOTTING UP. Papin\'s digester. That\'s you, steady and\nlong and piling up,--then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiffen these\nniggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That\'s what I\'m\nafter. You! Nobody else believes you\'re more than a boy. Come right in\nwith me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun of it--a thing on\nthe go--a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up! Making it buzz and spin!\nWhoo-oo-oo.\"--He made alluring expanding circles in the air with his\nhand. \"Eh?\"\n\nHis proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more\ndefinite shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and\norganising. \"You shan\'t write a single advertisement, or give a single\nassurance\" he declared. \"I can do all that.\" And the telegram was no\nflourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year.\n(\"That\'s nothing,\" said my uncle, \"the thing to freeze on to, when the\ntime comes, is your tenth of the vendor\'s share.\")\n\nThree hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an enormous income to me.\nFor a moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that much money\nin the whole concern? I looked about me at the sumptuous furniture of\nSchafer\'s Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes.\n\nMy head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy.\n\n\"Let me go back and look at the game again,\" I said. \"Let me see\nupstairs and round about.\"\n\nI did.\n\n\"What do you think of it all?\" my uncle asked at last.\n\n\"Well, for one thing,\" I said, \"why don\'t you have those girls working\nin a decently ventilated room? Apart from any other consideration,\nthey\'d work twice as briskly. And they ought to cover the corks before\nlabelling round the bottle.\"\n\n\"Why?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"Because--they sometimes make a mucker of the cork job, and then the\nlabel\'s wasted.\"\n\n\"Come and change it, George,\" said my uncle, with sudden fervour \"Come\nhere and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all slick, and then make\nit woosh. I know you can. Oh! I know you can.\"\n\nII\n\nI seem to remember very quick changes of mind after that lunch. The\nmuzzy exaltation of the unaccustomed stimulants gave way very rapidly\nto a model of pellucid and impartial clairvoyance which is one of my\nhabitual mental states. It is intermittent; it leaves me for weeks\ntogether, I know, but back it comes at last like justice on circuit,\nand calls up all my impression, all my illusions, all my willful and\npassionate proceedings. We came downstairs again into that inner room\nwhich pretended to be a scientific laboratory through its high glass\nlights, and indeed was a lurking place. My uncle pressed a cigarette on\nme, and I took it and stood before the empty fireplace while he propped\nhis umbrella in the corner, deposited the new silk hat that was a little\ntoo big for him on the table, blew copiously and produced a second\ncigar.\n\nIt came into my head that he had shrunken very much in size since the\nWimblehurst days, that the cannon ball he had swallowed was rather more\nevident and shameless than it had been, his skin less fresh and the nose\nbetween his glasses, which still didn\'t quite fit, much redder. And just\nthen he seemed much laxer in his muscles and not quite as alertly quick\nin his movements. But he evidently wasn\'t aware of the degenerative\nnature of his changes as he sat there, looking suddenly quite little\nunder my eyes.\n\n\"Well, George!\" he said, quite happily unconscious of my silent\ncriticism, \"what do you think of it all?\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"in the first place--it\'s a damned swindle!\"\n\n\"Tut! tut!\" said my uncle. \"It\'s as straight as--It\'s fair trading!\"\n\n\"So much the worse for trading,\" I said.\n\n\"It\'s the sort of thing everybody does. After all, there\'s no harm in\nthe stuff--and it may do good. It might do a lot of good--giving people\nconfidence, f\'rinstance, against an epidemic. See? Why not? don\'t see\nwhere your swindle comes in.\"\n\n\"H\'m,\" I said. \"It\'s a thing you either see or don\'t see.\"\n\n\"I\'d like to know what sort of trading isn\'t a swindle in its way.\nEverybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something common\non the strength of saying it\'s uncommon. Look at Chickson--they made him\na baronet. Look at Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in\nsoap! Rippin\' ads those were of his too!\"\n\n\"You don\'t mean to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and\nswearing it\'s the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it\nat that, is straight?\"\n\n\"Why not, George? How do we know it mayn\'t be the quintessence to them\nso far as they\'re concerned?\"\n\n\"Oh!\" I said, and shrugged my shoulders.\n\n\"There\'s Faith. You put Faith in \'em.... I grant our labels are a bit\nemphatic. Christian Science, really. No good setting people against the\nmedicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that hasn\'t to be--emphatic.\nIt\'s the modern way! Everybody understands it--everybody allows for it.\"\n\n\"But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of\nyours was run down a conduit into the Thames.\"\n\n\"Don\'t see that, George, at all. \'Mong other things, all our people\nwould be out of work. Unemployed! I grant you Tono-Bungay MAY be--not\nQUITE so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but the point\nis, George--it MAKES TRADE! And the world lives on trade. Commerce! A\nromantic exchange of commodities and property. Romance. \'Magination.\nSee? You must look at these things in a broad light. Look at the\nwood--and forget the trees! And hang it, George! we got to do these\nthings! There\'s no way unless you do. What do YOU mean to do--anyhow?\"\n\n\"There\'s ways of living,\" I said, \"Without either fraud or lying.\"\n\n\"You\'re a bit stiff, George. There\'s no fraud in this affair, I\'ll bet\nmy hat. But what do you propose to do? Go as chemist to some one who IS\nrunning a business, and draw a salary without a share like I offer you.\nMuch sense in that! It comes out of the swindle as you call it--just the\nsame.\"\n\n\"Some businesses are straight and quiet, anyhow; supply a sound article\nthat is really needed, don\'t shout advertisements.\"\n\n\"No, George. There you\'re behind the times. The last of that sort was\nsold up \'bout five years ago.\"\n\n\"Well, there\'s scientific research.\"\n\n\"And who pays for that? Who put up that big City and Guilds place at\nSouth Kensington? Enterprising business men! They fancy they\'ll have a\nbit of science going on, they want a handy Expert ever and again, and\nthere you are! And what do you get for research when you\'ve done\nit? Just a bare living and no outlook. They just keep you to make\ndiscoveries, and if they fancy they\'ll use \'em they do.\"\n\n\"One can teach.\"\n\n\"How much a year, George? How much a year? I suppose you must respect\nCarlyle! Well, you take Carlyle\'s test--solvency. (Lord! what a book\nthat French Revolution of his is!) See what the world pays teachers and\ndiscoverers and what it pays business men! That shows the ones it really\nwants. There\'s a justice in these big things, George, over and above the\napparent injustice. I tell you it wants trade. It\'s Trade that makes the\nworld go round! Argosies! Venice! Empire!\"\n\nMy uncle suddenly rose to his feet.\n\n\"You think it over, George. You think it over! And come up on Sunday\nto the new place--we got rooms in Gower Street now--and see your aunt.\nShe\'s often asked for you, George often and often, and thrown it up at\nme about that bit of property--though I\'ve always said and always\nwill, that twenty-five shillings in the pound is what I\'ll pay you and\ninterest up to the nail. And think it over. It isn\'t me I ask you to\nhelp. It\'s yourself. It\'s your aunt Susan. It\'s the whole concern.\nIt\'s the commerce of your country. And we want you badly. I tell you\nstraight, I know my limitations. You could take this place, you could\nmake it go! I can see you at it--looking rather sour. Woosh is the word,\nGeorge.\"\n\nAnd he smiled endearingly.\n\n\"I got to dictate a letter,\" he said, ending the smile, and vanished\ninto the outer room.\n\nIII\n\nI didn\'t succumb without a struggle to my uncle\'s allurements. Indeed, I\nheld out for a week while I contemplated life and my prospects. It was a\ncrowded and muddled contemplation. It invaded even my sleep.\n\nMy interview with the Registrar, my talk with my uncle, my abrupt\ndiscovery of the hopeless futility of my passion for Marion, had\ncombined to bring me to sense of crisis. What was I going to do with\nlife?\n\nI remember certain phases of my indecisions very well.\n\nI remember going home from our talk. I went down Farringdon Street to\nthe Embankment because I thought to go home by Holborn and Oxford Street\nwould be too crowded for thinking.... That piece of Embankment\nfrom Blackfriars to Westminster still reminds me of that momentous\nhesitation.\n\nYou know, from first to last, I saw the business with my eyes open, I\nsaw its ethical and moral values quite clearly. Never for a moment do\nI remember myself faltering from my persuasion that the sale of\nTono-Bungay was a thoroughly dishonest proceeding. The stuff was, I\nperceived, a mischievous trash, slightly stimulating, aromatic and\nattractive, likely to become a bad habit and train people in the\nhabitual use of stronger tonics and insidiously dangerous to people with\ndefective kidneys. It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to\nmake, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus\nthe cost of the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess\ndeterred me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in\nthis affair, was the supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still\nclung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane and just\norganisation, and the idea that I should set myself gravely, just at\nthe fine springtime of my life, to developing a monstrous bottling and\npacking warehouse, bottling rubbish for the consumption of foolish,\ncredulous and depressed people, had in it a touch of insanity. My early\nbeliefs still clung to me. I felt assured that somewhere there must be\na hitch in the fine prospect of ease and wealth under such conditions;\nthat somewhere, a little overgrown, perhaps, but still traceable, lay a\nneglected, wasted path of use and honour for me.\n\nMy inclination to refuse the whole thing increased rather than\ndiminished at first as I went along the Embankment. In my uncle\'s\npresence there had been a sort of glamour that had prevented an outright\nrefusal. It was a revival of affection for him I felt in his presence, I\nthink, in part, and in part an instinctive feeling that I must consider\nhim as my host. But much more was it a curious persuasion he had the\nknack of inspiring--a persuasion not so much of his integrity and\ncapacity as of the reciprocal and yielding foolishness of the world. One\nfelt that he was silly and wild, but in some way silly and wild after\nthe fashion of the universe. After all, one must live somehow. I\nastonished him and myself by temporising.\n\n\"No,\" said I, \"I\'ll think it over!\"\n\nAnd as I went along the embankment the first effect was all against\nmy uncle. He shrank--for a little while he continued to shrink--in\nperspective until he was only a very small shabby little man in a dirty\nback street, sending off a few hundred bottles of rubbish to foolish\nbuyers. The great buildings on the right of us, the Inns and the School\nBoard place--as it was then--Somerset House, the big hotels, the great\nbridges, Westminster\'s outlines ahead, had an effect of grey largeness\nthat reduced him to the proportions of a busy black beetle in a crack in\nthe floor.\n\nAnd then my eye caught the advertisements on the south side of \"Sorber\'s\nFood,\" of \"Cracknell\'s Ferric Wine,\" very bright and prosperous signs,\nilluminated at night, and I realised how astonishingly they looked at\nhome there, how evidently part they were in the whole thing.\n\nI saw a man come charging out of Palace Yard--the policeman touched his\nhelmet to him--with a hat and a bearing astonishingly like my uncle\'s.\nAfter all,--didn\'t Cracknell himself sit in the House?\n\nTono-Bungay shouted at me from a hoarding near Adelphi Terrace; I saw\nit afar off near Carfax Street; it cried out again upon me in Kensington\nHigh Street, and burst into a perfect clamour; six or seven times I\nsaw it as I drew near my diggings. It certainly had an air of being\nsomething more than a dream.\n\nYes, I thought it over--thoroughly enough.... Trade rules the world.\nWealth rather than trade! The thing was true, and true too was my\nuncle\'s proposition that the quickest way to get wealth is to sell the\ncheapest thing possible in the dearest bottle. He was frightfully right\nafter all. Pecunnia non olet,--a Roman emperor said that. Perhaps my\ngreat heroes in Plutarch were no more than such men, fine now only\nbecause they are distant; perhaps after all this Socialism to which I\nhad been drawn was only a foolish dream, only the more foolish because\nall its promises were conditionally true. Morris and these others\nplayed with it wittingly; it gave a zest, a touch of substance, to their\naesthetic pleasures. Never would there be good faith enough to bring\nsuch things about. They knew it; every one, except a few young fools,\nknew it. As I crossed the corner of St. James\'s Park wrapped in thought,\nI dodged back just in time to escape a prancing pair of greys. A stout,\ncommon-looking woman, very magnificently dressed, regarded me from the\ncarriage with a scornful eye. \"No doubt,\" thought I, \"a pill-vendor\'s\nwife....\"\n\nRunning through all my thoughts, surging out like a refrain, was my\nuncle\'s master-stroke, his admirable touch of praise: \"Make it all\nslick--and then make it go Woosh. I know you can! Oh! I KNOW you can!\"\n\nIV\n\nEwart as a moral influence was unsatisfactory. I had made up my mind to\nput the whole thing before him, partly to see how he took it, and partly\nto hear how it sounded when it was said. I asked him to come and eat\nwith me in an Italian place near Panton Street where one could get a\ncurious, interesting, glutting sort of dinner for eighteen-pence. He\ncame with a disconcerting black-eye that he wouldn\'t explain. \"Not so\nmuch a black-eye,\" he said, \"as the aftermath of a purple patch....\nWhat\'s your difficulty?\"\n\n\"I\'ll tell you with the salad,\" I said.\n\nBut as a matter of fact I didn\'t tell him. I threw out that I was\ndoubtful whether I ought to go into trade, or stick to teaching in\nview of my deepening socialist proclivities; and he, warming with the\nunaccustomed generosity of a sixteen-penny Chianti, ran on from that\nwithout any further inquiry as to my trouble.\n\nHis utterances roved wide and loose.\n\n\"The reality of life, my dear Ponderevo,\" I remember him saying very\nimpressively and punctuating with the nut-crackers as he spoke, \"is\nChromatic Conflict ... and Form. Get hold of that and let all these\nother questions go. The Socialist will tell you one sort of colour and\nshape is right, the Individualist another. What does it all amount\nto? What DOES it all amount to? NOTHING! I have no advice to give\nanyone,--except to avoid regrets. Be yourself, seek after such beautiful\nthings as your own sense determines to be beautiful. And don\'t mind\nthe headache in the morning.... For what, after all, is a morning,\nPonderevo? It isn\'t like the upper part of a day!\"\n\nHe paused impressively.\n\n\"What Rot!\" I cried, after a confused attempt to apprehend him.\n\n\"Isn\'t it! And it\'s my bedrock wisdom in the matter! Take it or\nleave it, my dear George; take it or leave it.\"... He put down the\nnut-crackers out of my reach and lugged a greasy-looking note-book from\nhis pocket. \"I\'m going to steal this mustard pot,\" he said.\n\nI made noises of remonstrance.\n\n\"Only as a matter of design. I\'ve got to do an old beast\'s tomb.\n\n\"Wholesale grocer. I\'ll put it on his corners,--four mustard pots. I dare\nsay he\'d be glad of a mustard plaster now to cool him, poor devil, where\nhe is. But anyhow,--here goes!\"\n\nV\n\nIt came to me in the small hours that the real moral touchstone for\nthis great doubting of mind was Marion. I lay composing statements of\nmy problem and imagined myself delivering them to her--and she,\ngoddess-like and beautiful; giving her fine, simply-worded judgment.\n\n\"You see, it\'s just to give one\'s self over to the Capitalistic System,\"\nI imagined myself saying in good Socialist jargon; \"it\'s surrendering\nall one\'s beliefs. We MAY succeed, we MAY grow rich, but where would the\nsatisfaction be?\"\n\nThen she would say, \"No! That wouldn\'t be right.\"\n\n\"But the alternative is to wait!\"\n\nThen suddenly she would become a goddess. She would turn upon me frankly\nand nobly, with shining eyes, with arms held out. \"No,\" she would say,\n\"we love one another. Nothing ignoble shall ever touch us. We love one\nanother. Why wait to tell each other that, dear? What does it matter\nthat we are poor and may keep poor?\"\n\nBut indeed the conversation didn\'t go at all in that direction. At the\nsight of her my nocturnal eloquence became preposterous and all the\nmoral values altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door\nof the Parsian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked\nhome with her thence. I remember how she emerged into the warm evening\nlight and that she wore a brown straw hat that made her, for once not\nonly beautiful but pretty.\n\n\"I like that hat,\" I said by way of opening; and she smiled her rare\ndelightful smile at me.\n\n\"I love you,\" I said in an undertone, as we jostled closer on the\npavement.\n\nShe shook her head forbiddingly, but she still smiled. Then--\"Be\nsensible!\"\n\nThe High Street pavement is too narrow and crowded for conversation and\nwe were some way westward before we spoke again.\n\n\"Look here,\" I said; \"I want you, Marion. Don\'t you understand? I want\nyou.\"\n\n\"Now!\" she cried warningly.\n\nI do not know if the reader will understand how a passionate lover,\nan immense admiration and desire, can be shot with a gleam of positive\nhatred. Such a gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of\nthat \"NOW!\" It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no warning in\nit of the antagonisms latent between us.\n\n\"Marion,\" I said, \"this isn\'t a trifling matter to me. I love you; I\nwould die to get you.... Don\'t you care?\"\n\n\"But what is the good?\"\n\n\"You don\'t care,\" I cried. \"You don\'t care a rap!\"\n\n\"You know I care,\" she answered. \"If I didn\'t--If I didn\'t like you very\nmuch, should I let you come and meet me--go about with you?\"\n\n\"Well then,\" I said, \"promise to marry me!\"\n\n\"If I do, what difference will it make?\"\n\nWe were separated by two men carrying a ladder who drove between us\nunawares.\n\n\"Marion,\" I asked when we got together again, \"I tell you I want you to\nmarry me.\"\n\n\"We can\'t.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"We can\'t marry--in the street.\"\n\n\"We could take our chance!\"\n\n\"I wish you wouldn\'t go on talking like this. What is the good?\"\n\nShe suddenly gave way to gloom. \"It\'s no good marrying\" she said. \"One\'s\nonly miserable. I\'ve seen other girls. When one\'s alone one has a little\npocket-money anyhow, one can go about a little. But think of being\nmarried and no money, and perhaps children--you can\'t be sure....\"\n\nShe poured out this concentrated philosophy of her class and type in\njerky uncompleted sentences, with knitted brows, with discontented eyes\ntowards the westward glow--forgetful, it seemed, for a moment even of\nme.\n\n\"Look here, Marion,\" I said abruptly, \"what would you marry on?\"\n\n\"What IS the good?\" she began.\n\n\"Would you marry on three hundred a year?\"\n\nShe looked at me for a moment. \"That\'s six pounds a week,\" she said.\n\"One could manage on that, easily. Smithie\'s brother--No, he only gets\ntwo hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting girl.\"\n\n\"Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?\"\n\nShe looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope.\n\n\"IF!\" she said.\n\nI held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. \"It\'s a bargain,\" I said.\n\nShe hesitated and touched my hand for an instant. \"It\'s silly,\" she\nremarked as she did so. \"It means really we\'re--\" She paused.\n\n\"Yes?\" said I.\n\n\"Engaged. You\'ll have to wait years. What good can it do you?\"\n\n\"Not so many years.\" I answered.\n\nFor a moment she brooded.\n\nThen she glanced at me with a smile, half-sweet, half-wistful, that has\nstuck in my memory for ever.\n\n\"I like you!\" she said. \"I shall like to be engaged to you.\"\n\nAnd, faint on the threshold of hearing, I caught her ventured \"dear!\"\nIt\'s odd that in writing this down my memory passed over all that\nintervened and I feel it all again, and once again I\'m Marion\'s boyish\nlover taking great joy in such rare and little things.\n\nVI\n\nAt last I went to the address my uncle had given me in Gower Street, and\nfound my aunt Susan waiting tea for him.\n\nDirectly I came into the room I appreciated the change in outlook that\nthe achievement of Tono-Bungay had made almost as vividly as when I\nsaw my uncle\'s new hat. The furniture of the room struck upon my eye as\nalmost stately. The chairs and sofa were covered with chintz which gave\nit a dim, remote flavour of Bladesover; the mantel, the cornice, the\ngas pendant were larger and finer than the sort of thing I had grown\naccustomed to in London. And I was shown in by a real housemaid with\nreal tails to her cap, and great quantities of reddish hair. There was\nmy aunt too looking bright and pretty, in a blue-patterned tea-wrap with\nbows that seemed to me the quintessence of fashion. She was sitting in\na chair by the open window with quite a pile of yellow-labelled books\non the occasional table beside her. Before the large, paper-decorated\nfireplace stood a three-tiered cake-stand displaying assorted cakes,\nand a tray with all the tea equipage except the teapot, was on the large\ncentre-table. The carpet was thick, and a spice of adventure was given\nit by a number of dyed sheep-skin mats.\n\n\"Hello!\" said my aunt as I appeared. \"It\'s George!\"\n\n\"Shall I serve the tea now, Mem?\" said the real housemaid, surveying our\ngreeting coldly.\n\n\"Not till Mr. Ponderevo comes, Meggie,\" said my aunt, and grimaced with\nextraordinary swiftness and virulence as the housemaid turned her back.\n\n\"Meggie she calls herself,\" said my aunt as the door closed, and left me\nto infer a certain want of sympathy.\n\n\"You\'re looking very jolly, aunt,\" said I.\n\n\"What do you think of all this old Business he\'s got?\" asked my aunt.\n\n\"Seems a promising thing,\" I said.\n\n\"I suppose there is a business somewhere?\"\n\n\"Haven\'t you seen it?\"\n\n\"\'Fraid I\'d say something AT it George, if I did. So he won\'t let me. It\ncame on quite suddenly. Brooding he was and writing letters and sizzling\nsomething awful--like a chestnut going to pop. Then he came home one\nday saying Tono-Bungay till I thought he was clean off his onion, and\nsinging--what was it?\"\n\n\"\'I\'m afloat, I\'m afloat,\'\" I guessed.\n\n\"The very thing. You\'ve heard him. And saying our fortunes were made.\nTook me out to the Ho\'burm Restaurant, George,--dinner, and we had\nchampagne, stuff that blows up the back of your nose and makes you go\nSO, and he said at last he\'d got things worthy of me--and we moved here\nnext day. It\'s a swell house, George. Three pounds a week for the rooms.\nAnd he says the Business\'ll stand it.\"\n\nShe looked at me doubtfully.\n\n\"Either do that or smash,\" I said profoundly.\n\nWe discussed the question for a moment mutely with our eyes. My aunt\nslapped the pile of books from Mudie\'s.\n\n\"I\'ve been having such a Go of reading, George. You never did!\"\n\n\"What do you think of the business?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, they\'ve let him have money,\" she said, and thought and raised her\neyebrows.\n\n\"It\'s been a time,\" she went on. \"The flapping about! Me sitting doing\nnothing and him on the go like a rocket. He\'s done wonders. But he wants\nyou, George--he wants you. Sometimes he\'s full of hope--talks of when\nwe\'re going to have a carriage and be in society--makes it seem so\nnatural and topsy-turvy, I hardly know whether my old heels aren\'t up\nhere listening to him, and my old head on the floor.... Then he gets\ndepressed. Says he wants restraint. Says he can make a splash but can\'t\nkeep on. Says if you don\'t come in everything will smash--But you are\ncoming in?\"\n\nShe paused and looked at me.\n\n\"Well--\"\n\n\"You don\'t say you won\'t come in!\"\n\n\"But look here, aunt,\" I said, \"do you understand quite?... It\'s a quack\nmedicine. It\'s trash.\"\n\n\"There\'s no law against selling quack medicine that I know of,\" said\nmy aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grave. \"It\'s our\nonly chance, George,\" she said. \"If it doesn\'t go...\"\n\nThere came the slamming of a door, and a loud bellowing from the next\napartment through the folding doors. \"Here-er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom\nBo--oling.\"\n\n\"Silly old Concertina! Hark at him, George!\" She raised her voice.\n\"Don\'t sing that, you old Walrus, you! Sing \'I\'m afloat!\'\"\n\nOne leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared.\n\n\"Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan?\"\n\n\"Thought it over George?\" he said abruptly.\n\n\"Yes,\" said I.\n\n\"Coming in?\"\n\nI paused for a last moment and nodded yes.\n\n\"Ah!\" he cried. \"Why couldn\'t you say that a week ago?\"\n\n\"I\'ve had false ideas about the world,\" I said. \"Oh! they don\'t matter\nnow! Yes, I\'ll come, I\'ll take my chance with you, I won\'t hesitate\nagain.\"\n\nAnd I didn\'t. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE THIRD\n\nHOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM\n\nI\n\nSo I made my peace with my uncle, and we set out upon this\nbright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at\none-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine a bottle, including the\nGovernment stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth,\ninfluence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my uncle\npromised me proved truth and understatement; Tono-Bungay carried me to\nfreedoms and powers that no life of scientific research, no passionate\nservice of humanity could ever have given me....\n\nIt was my uncle\'s genius that did it. No doubt he needed me,--I was,\nI will admit, his indispensable right hand; but his was the brain to\nconceive. He wrote every advertisement; some of them even he sketched.\nYou must remember that his were the days before the Time took to\nenterprise and the vociferous hawking of that antiquated\nEncyclopedia. That alluring, button-holing, let-me\n-just-tell-you-quite-soberly-something-you-ought-to-know style of\nnewspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of\nsome attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. \"Many\npeople who are MODERATELY well think they are QUITE well,\" was one of\nhis early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, \"DO NOT NEED DRUGS OR\nMEDICINE,\" and \"SIMPLY A PROPER REGIMEN TO GET YOU IN TONE.\" One was\nwarned against the chemist or druggist who pushed \"much-advertised\nnostrums\" on one\'s attention. That trash did more harm than good. The\nthing needed was regimen--and Tono-Bungay!\n\nVery early, too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was\nusually a quarter column in the evening papers: \"HILARITY--Tono-Bungay.\nLike Mountain Air in the Veins.\" The penetrating trio of questions: \"Are\nyou bored with your Business? Are you bored with your Dinner. Are you\nbored with your Wife?\"--that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both\nthese we had in our first campaign when we worked London south central,\nand west; and then, too, we had our first poster--the HEALTH, BEAUTY,\nAND STRENGTH one. That was his design; I happen still to have got by me\nthe first sketch he made for it. I have reproduced it here with one or\ntwo others to enable the reader to understand the mental quality that\ninitiated these familiar ornaments of London.\n\n(The second one is about eighteen months later, the germ of the\nwell-known \"Fog\" poster; the third was designed for an influenza\nepidemic, but never issued.)\n\nThese things were only incidental in my department.\n\nI had to polish them up for the artist and arrange the business of\nprinting and distribution, and after my uncle had had a violent and\nneedless quarrel with the advertising manager of the Daily Regulator\nabout the amount of display given to one of his happy thoughts, I also\ntook up the negotiations of advertisements for the press.\n\nWe discussed and worked out distribution together first in the\ndrawing-room floor in Gower Street with my aunt sometimes helping very\nshrewdly, and then, with a steadily improving type of cigar and older\nand older whisky, in his smuggery at their first house, the one in\nBeckenham. Often we worked far into the night sometimes until dawn.\n\nWe really worked infernally hard, and, I recall, we worked with a very\ndecided enthusiasm, not simply on my uncle\'s part but mine, It was\na game, an absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were\nscored in cases of bottles. People think a happy notion is enough to\nmake a man rich, that fortunes can be made without toil. It\'s a dream,\nas every millionaire (except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify;\nI doubt if J.D. Rockefeller in the early days of Standard Oil, worked\nharder than we did. We worked far into the night--and we also worked all\nday. We made a rule to be always dropping in at the factory unannounced\nto keep things right--for at first we could afford no properly\nresponsible underlings--and we traveled London, pretending to be our own\nrepresentatives and making all sorts of special arrangements.\n\nBut none of this was my special work, and as soon as we could get other\nmen in, I dropped the traveling, though my uncle found it particularly\ninteresting and kept it up for years. \"Does me good, George, to see the\nchaps behind their counters like I was once,\" he explained. My special\nand distinctive duty was to give Tono-Bungay substance and an outward\nand visible bottle, to translate my uncle\'s great imaginings into the\ncreation of case after case of labelled bottles of nonsense, and the\npunctual discharge of them by railway, road and steamer towards\ntheir ultimate goal in the Great Stomach of the People. By all modern\nstandards the business was, as my uncle would say, \"absolutely bona\nfide.\" We sold our stuff and got the money, and spent the money honestly\nin lies and clamour to sell more stuff. Section by section we spread\nit over the whole of the British Isles; first working the middle-class\nLondon suburbs, then the outer suburbs, then the home counties, then\ngoing (with new bills and a more pious style of \"ad\") into Wales, a\ngreat field always for a new patent-medicine, and then into Lancashire.\n\nMy uncle had in his inner office a big map of England, and as we took\nup fresh sections of the local press and our consignments invaded new\nareas, flags for advertisements and pink underlines for orders showed\nour progress.\n\n\"The romance of modern commerce, George!\" my uncle would say, rubbing\nhis hands together and drawing in air through his teeth. \"The romance of\nmodern commerce, eh? Conquest. Province by province. Like sogers.\"\n\nWe subjugated England and Wales; we rolled over the Cheviots with a\nspecial adaptation containing eleven per cent. of absolute alcohol;\n\"Tono-Bungay: Thistle Brand.\" We also had the Fog poster adapted to a\nkilted Briton in a misty Highland scene.\n\nUnder the shadow of our great leading line we were presently taking\nsubsidiary specialties into action; \"Tono-Bungay Hair Stimulant\" was\nour first supplement. Then came \"Concentrated Tono-Bungay\" for the\neyes. That didn\'t go, but we had a considerable success with the Hair\nStimulant. We broached the subject, I remember, in a little catechism\nbeginning: \"Why does the hair fall out? Because the follicles are\nfagged. What are the follicles?...\" So it went on to the climax that\nthe Hair Stimulant contained all \"The essential principles of that most\nreviving tonic, Tono-Bungay, together with an emollient and nutritious\noil derived from crude Neat\'s Foot Oil by a process of refinement,\nseparation and deodorization.... It will be manifest to any one of\nscientific attainments that in Neat\'s Foot Oil derived from the hoofs\nand horns of beasts, we must necessarily have a natural skin and hair\nlubricant.\"\n\nAnd we also did admirable things with our next subsidiaries,\n\"Tono-Bungay Lozenges,\" and \"Tono-Bungay Chocolate.\" These we urged upon\nthe public for their extraordinary nutritive and recuperative value\nin cases of fatigue and strain. We gave them posters and illustrated\nadvertisements showing climbers hanging from marvelously vertical\ncliffs, cyclist champions upon the track, mounted messengers engaged in\nAix-to-Ghent rides, soldiers lying out in action under a hot sun. \"You\ncan GO for twenty-four hours,\" we declared, \"on Tono-Bungay Chocolate.\"\nWe didn\'t say whether you could return on the same commodity. We also\nshowed a dreadfully barristerish barrister, wig, side-whiskers, teeth,\na horribly life-like portrait of all existing barristers, talking at a\ntable, and beneath, this legend: \"A Four Hours\' Speech on Tono-Bungay\nLozenges, and as fresh as when he began.\" Then brought in regiments\nof school-teachers, revivalist ministers, politicians and the like. I\nreally do believe there was an element of \"kick\" in the strychnine\nin these lozenges, especially in those made according to our earlier\nformula. For we altered all our formulae--invariably weakening them\nenormously as sales got ahead.\n\nIn a little while--so it seems to me now--we were employing travelers\nand opening up Great Britain at the rate of a hundred square miles a\nday. All the organisation throughout was sketched in a crude, entangled,\nhalf-inspired fashion by my uncle, and all of it had to be worked out\ninto a practicable scheme of quantities and expenditure by me. We had a\nlot of trouble finding our travelers; in the end at least half of them\nwere Irish-Americans, a wonderful breed for selling medicine. We had\nstill more trouble over our factory manager, because of the secrets of\nthe inner room, and in the end we got a very capable woman, Mrs. Hampton\nDiggs, who had formerly managed a large millinery workroom, whom we\ncould trust to keep everything in good working order without finding out\nanything that wasn\'t put exactly under her loyal and energetic nose.\nShe conceived a high opinion of Tono-Bungay and took it in all forms\nand large quantities so long as I knew her. It didn\'t seem to do her any\nharm. And she kept the girls going quite wonderfully.\n\nMy uncle\'s last addition to the Tono-Bungay group was the Tono-Bungay\nMouthwash. The reader has probably read a hundred times that inspiring\ninquiry of his, \"You are Young Yet, but are you Sure Nothing has Aged\nyour Gums?\"\n\nAnd after that we took over the agency for three or four good American\nlines that worked in with our own, and could be handled with it; Texan\nEmbrocation, and \"23--to clear the system\" were the chief....\n\nI set down these bare facts. To me they are all linked with the figure\nof my uncle. In some of the old seventeenth and early eighteenth century\nprayerbooks at Bladesover there used to be illustrations with long\nscrolls coming out of the mouths of the wood-cut figures. I wish I could\nwrite all this last chapter on a scroll coming out of the head of my\nuncle, show it all the time as unfolding and pouring out from a short,\nfattening, small-legged man with stiff cropped hair, disobedient glasses\non a perky little nose, and a round stare behind them. I wish I could\nshow you him breathing hard and a little through his nose as his pen\nscrabbled out some absurd inspiration for a poster or a picture page,\nand make you hear his voice, charged with solemn import like the voice\nof a squeaky prophet, saying, \"George! list\'n! I got an ideer. I got a\nnotion! George!\"\n\nI should put myself into the same picture. Best setting for us, I think,\nwould be the Beckenham snuggery, because there we worked hardest. It\nwould be the lamplit room of the early nineties, and the clock upon the\nmantel would indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting on either\nside of the fire, I with a pipe, my uncle with a cigar or cigarette.\nThere would be glasses standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions\nwould be very grave. My uncle used to sit right back in his armchair;\nhis toes always turned in when he was sitting down and his legs had a\nway of looking curved, as though they hadn\'t bones or joints but were\nstuffed with sawdust.\n\n\"George, whad\'yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?\" he would say.\n\n\"No good that I can imagine.\"\n\n\"Oom! No harm TRYING, George. We can but try.\"\n\nI would suck my pipe. \"Hard to get at. Unless we sold our stuff\nspecially at the docks. Might do a special at Cook\'s office, or in the\nContinental Bradshaw.\"\n\n\"It \'ud give \'em confidence, George.\"\n\nHe would Zzzz, with his glasses reflecting the red of the glowing coals.\n\n\"No good hiding our light under a Bushel,\" he would remark.\n\nI never really determined whether my uncle regarded Tono-Bungay as a\nfraud, or whether he didn\'t come to believe in it in a kind of way by\nthe mere reiteration of his own assertions. I think that his average\nattitude was one of kindly, almost parental, toleration. I remember\nsaying on one occasion, \"But you don\'t suppose this stuff ever did a\nhuman being the slightest good all?\" and how his face assumed a look of\nprotest, as of one reproving harshness and dogmatism.\n\n\"You\'ve a hard nature, George,\" he said. \"You\'re too ready to run things\ndown. How can one TELL? How can one venture to TELL!...\"\n\nI suppose any creative and developing game would have interested me\nin those years. At any rate, I know I put as much zeal into this\nTono-Bungay as any young lieutenant could have done who suddenly found\nhimself in command of a ship. It was extraordinarily interesting to me\nto figure out the advantage accruing from this shortening of the process\nor that, and to weigh it against the capital cost of the alteration. I\nmade a sort of machine for sticking on the labels, that I patented; to\nthis day there is a little trickle of royalties to me from that. I also\ncontrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got the bottles, which\nall came sliding down a guarded slant-way, nearly filled with distilled\nwater at one tap, and dripped our magic ingredients in at the next. This\nwas an immense economy of space for the inner sanctum. For the bottling\nwe needed special taps, and these, too, I invented and patented.\n\nWe had a sort of endless band of bottles sliding along an inclined glass\ntrough made slippery with running water. At one end a girl held them up\nto the light, put aside any that were imperfect and placed the others in\nthe trough; the filling was automatic; at the other end a girl slipped\nin the cork and drove it home with a little mallet. Each tank, the\nlittle one for the vivifying ingredients and the big one for distilled\nwater, had a level indicator, and inside I had a float arrangement that\nstopped the slide whenever either had sunk too low. Another girl stood\nready with my machine to label the corked bottles and hand them to the\nthree packers, who slipped them into their outer papers and put them,\nwith a pad of corrugated paper between each pair, into a little groove\nfrom which they could be made to slide neatly into position in our\nstandard packing-case. It sounds wild, I know, but I believe I was the\nfirst man in the city of London to pack patent medicines through the\nside of the packing-case, to discover there was a better way in than by\nthe lid. Our cases packed themselves, practically; had only to be put\ninto position on a little wheeled tray and when full pulled to the lift\nthat dropped them to the men downstairs, who padded up the free space\nand nailed on top and side. Our girls, moreover, packed with corrugated\npaper and matchbook-wood box partitions when everybody else was using\nexpensive young men to pack through the top of the box with straw, many\nbreakages and much waste and confusion.\n\nII\n\nAs I look back at them now, those energetic years seem all compacted\nto a year or so; from the days of our first hazardous beginning in\nFarringdon Street with barely a thousand pounds\' worth of stuff or\ncredit all told--and that got by something perilously like snatching--to\nthe days when my uncle went to the public on behalf of himself and me\n(one-tenth share) and our silent partners, the drug wholesalers and the\nprinting people and the owner of that group of magazines and newspapers,\nto ask with honest confidence for L150,000. Those silent partners were\nremarkably sorry, I know, that they had not taken larger shares and\ngiven us longer credit when the subscriptions came pouring in. My uncle\nhad a clear half to play with (including the one-tenth understood to be\nmine).\n\nL150,000--think of it!--for the goodwill in a string of lies and a trade\nin bottles of mitigated water! Do you realise the madness of the world\nthat sanctions such a thing? Perhaps you don\'t. At times use and wont\ncertainly blinded me. If it had not been for Ewart, I don\'t think I\nshould have had an inkling of the wonderfulness of this development of\nmy fortunes; I should have grown accustomed to it, fallen in with all\nits delusions as completely as my uncle presently did. He was immensely\nproud of the flotation. \"They\'ve never been given such value,\" he said,\n\"for a dozen years.\" But Ewart, with his gesticulating hairy hands and\nbony wrists, his single-handed chorus to all this as it played\nitself over again in my memory, and he kept my fundamental absurdity\nilluminated for me during all this astonishing time.\n\n\"It\'s just on all fours with the rest of things,\" he remarked; \"only\nmore so. You needn\'t think you\'re anything out of the way.\"\n\nI remember one disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had\nbeen to Paris on a mysterious expedition to \"rough in\" some work for\na rising American sculptor. This young man had a commission for an\nallegorical figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State Capitol,\nand he needed help. Ewart had returned with his hair cut en brosse and\nwith his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I remember,\na bicycling suit of purplish-brown, baggy beyond ageing--the only\ncreditable thing about it was that it had evidently not been made for\nhim--a voluminous black tie, a decadent soft felt hat and several French\nexpletives of a sinister description. \"Silly clothes, aren\'t they?\" he\nsaid at the sight of my startled eye. \"I don\'t know why I got\'m. They\nseemed all right over there.\"\n\nHe had come down to our Raggett Street place to discuss a benevolent\nproject of mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable\ndiscourse over the heads (I hope it was over the heads) of our bottlers.\n\n\"What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry.... That\'s where\nwe get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory\nlike this. Think!... One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very\npossibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round \'em and sell\n\'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I\'ll admit, him and his dams, but\nafter all there\'s a sort of protection about \'em, a kind of muddy\npracticality! They prevent things getting at him. And it\'s not your\npoetry only. It\'s the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to\npoet--soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty--in a bottle--the magic\nphiltre! Like a fairy tale....\n\n\"Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I\'m calling it\nfootle, Ponderevo, out of praise,\" he said in parenthesis.)\n\n\"Think of the little clerks and jaded women and overworked people.\nPeople overstrained with wanting to do, people overstrained with wanting\nto be.... People, in fact, overstrained.... The real trouble of life,\nPonderevo, isn\'t that we exist--that\'s a vulgar error; the real trouble\nis that we DON\'T really exist and we want to. That\'s what this--in\nthe highest sense--just stands for! The hunger to be--for once--really\nalive--to the finger tips!...\n\n\"Nobody wants to do and be the things people are--nobody. YOU don\'t want\nto preside over this--this bottling; I don\'t want to wear these beastly\nclothes and be led about by you; nobody wants to keep on sticking labels\non silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn\'t existing!\nThat\'s--sus--substratum. None of us want to be what we are, or to do\nwhat we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? You know. I\nknow. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is something perpetually\nyoung and beautiful--young Joves--young Joves, Ponderevo\"--his voice\nbecame loud, harsh and declamatory--\"pursuing coy half-willing nymphs\nthrough everlasting forests.\"...\n\nThere was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us.\n\n\"Come downstairs,\" I interrupted, \"we can talk better there.\"\n\n\"I can talk better here,\" he answered.\n\nHe was just going on, but fortunately the implacable face of Mrs.\nHampton Diggs appeared down the aisle of bottling machines.\n\n\"All right,\" he said, \"I\'ll come.\"\n\nIn the little sanctum below, my uncle was taking a digestive pause after\nhis lunch and by no means alert. His presence sent Ewart back to the\ntheme of modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him. He\nbehaved with the elaborate deference due to a business magnate from an\nunknown man.\n\n\"What I was pointing out to your nephew, sir,\" said Ewart, putting both\nelbows on the table, \"was the poetry of commerce. He doesn\'t, you know,\nseem to see it at all.\"\n\nMy uncle nodded brightly. \"Whad I tell \'im,\" he said round his cigar.\n\n\"We are artists. You and I, sir, can talk, if you will permit me, as one\nartist to another. It\'s advertisement has--done it. Advertisement has\nrevolutionised trade and industry; it is going to revolutionise the\nworld. The old merchant used to tote about commodities; the new one\ncreates values. Doesn\'t need to tote. He takes something that isn\'t\nworth anything--or something that isn\'t particularly worth anything--and\nhe makes it worth something. He takes mustard that is just like anybody\nelse\'s mustard, and he goes about saying, shouting, singing, chalking\non walls, writing inside people\'s books, putting it everywhere, \'Smith\'s\nMustard is the Best.\' And behold it is the best!\"\n\n\"True,\" said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of mysticism;\n\"true!\"\n\n\"It\'s just like an artist; he takes a lump of white marble on the verge\nof a lime-kiln, he chips it about, he makes--he makes a monument to\nhimself--and others--a monument the world will not willingly let die.\nTalking of mustard, sir, I was at Clapham Junction the other day, and\nall the banks are overgrown with horse radish that\'s got loose from\na garden somewhere. You know what horseradish is--grows like\nwildfire--spreads--spreads. I stood at the end of the platform looking\nat the stuff and thinking about it. \'Like fame,\' I thought, \'rank and\nwild where it isn\'t wanted. Why don\'t the really good things in life\ngrow like horseradish?\' I thought. My mind went off in a peculiar way\nit does from that to the idea that mustard costs a penny a tin--I bought\nsome the other day for a ham I had. It came into my head that it would\nbe ripping good business to use horseradish to adulterate mustard. I had\na sort of idea that I could plunge into business on that, get rich and\ncome back to my own proper monumental art again. And then I said, \'But\nwhy adulterate? I don\'t like the idea of adulteration.\'\"\n\n\"Shabby,\" said my uncle, nodding his head. \"Bound to get found out!\"\n\n\"And totally unnecessary, too! Why not do up a mixture--three-quarters\npounded horseradish and a quarter mustard--give it a fancy name--and\nsell it at twice the mustard price. See? I very nearly started the\nbusiness straight away, only something happened. My train came along.\"\n\n\"Jolly good ideer,\" said my uncle. He looked at me. \"That really is an\nideer, George,\" he said.\n\n\"Take shavin\'s, again! You know that poem of Longfellow\'s, sir, that\nsounds exactly like the first declension. What is it?--\'Marr\'s a maker,\nmen say!\'\"\n\nMy uncle nodded and gurgled some quotation that died away.\n\n\"Jolly good poem, George,\" he said in an aside to me.\n\n\"Well, it\'s about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you know,\nand some shavin\'s. The child made no end out of the shavin\'s. So\nmight you. Powder \'em. They might be anything. Soak \'em in\njipper,--Xylo-tobacco! Powder\'em and get a little tar and turpentinous\nsmell in,--wood-packing for hot baths--a Certain Cure for the scourge\nof Influenza! There\'s all these patent grain foods,--what Americans call\ncereals. I believe I\'m right, sir, in saying they\'re sawdust.\"\n\n\"No!\" said my uncle, removing his cigar; \"as far as I can find out it\'s\nreally grain,--spoilt grain.... I\'ve been going into that.\"\n\n\"Well, there you are!\" said Ewart. \"Say it\'s spoilt grain. It carried\nout my case just as well. Your modern commerce is no more buying and\nselling than sculpture. It\'s mercy--it\'s salvation. It\'s rescue work! It\ntakes all sorts of fallen commodities by the hand and raises them. Cana\nisn\'t in it. You turn water--into Tono-Bungay.\"\n\n\"Tono-Bungay\'s all right,\" said my uncle, suddenly grave. \"We aren\'t\ntalking of Tono-Bungay.\"\n\n\"Your nephew, sir, is hard; he wants everything to go to a sort of\npredestinated end; he\'s a Calvinist of Commerce. Offer him a dustbin\nfull of stuff; he calls it refuse--passes by on the other side. Now YOU,\nsir you\'d make cinders respect themselves.\"\n\nMy uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of\nappreciation in his eye.\n\n\"Might make \'em into a sort of sanitary brick,\" he reflected over his\ncigar end.\n\n\"Or a friable biscuit. Why NOT? You might advertise: \'Why are Birds so\nBright? Because they digest their food perfectly! Why do they digest\ntheir food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn\'t man\na gizzard? Because he can buy Ponderevo\'s Asphalt Triturating, Friable\nBiscuit--Which is Better.\'\"\n\nHe delivered the last words in a shout, with his hairy hand flourished\nin the air....\n\n\"Damn clever fellow,\" said my uncle, after he had one. \"I know a man\nwhen I see one. He\'d do. But drunk, I should say. But that only makes\nsome chap brighter. If he WANTS to do that poster, he can. Zzzz. That\nideer of his about the horseradish. There\'s something in that, George.\nI\'m going to think over that....\"\n\nI may say at once that my poster project came to nothing in the end,\nthough Ewart devoted an interesting week to the matter. He let his\nunfortunate disposition to irony run away with him. He produced a\npicture of two beavers with a subtle likeness, he said, to myself and my\nuncle--the likeness to my uncle certainly wasn\'t half bad--and they\nwere bottling rows and rows of Tono-Bungay, with the legend \"Modern\ncommerce.\" It certainly wouldn\'t have sold a case, though he urged it on\nme one cheerful evening on the ground that it would \"arouse curiosity.\"\nIn addition he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively\nand needlessly nude, but, so far as I was able to judge, an admirable\nlikeness, engaged in feats of strength of a Gargantuan type before an\naudience of deboshed and shattered ladies. The legend, \"Health, Beauty,\nStrength,\" below, gave a needed point to his parody. This he hung up in\nthe studio over the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper; by way of a\ncurtain over it to accentuate its libellous offence.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FOURTH\n\nMARION I\n\nAs I look back on those days in which we built up the great Tono-Bungay\nproperty out of human hope and credit for bottles and rent and printing,\nI see my life as it were arranged in two parallel columns of unequal\nwidth, a wider, more diffused, eventful and various one which\ncontinually broadens out, the business side of my life, and a narrow,\ndarker and darkling one shot ever and again with a gleam of happiness,\nmy home-life with Marion. For, of course, I married Marion.\n\nI didn\'t, as a matter of fact, marry her until a year after Tono-Bungay\nwas thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts and discussions\nof a quite strenuous sort. By that time I was twenty-four. It seems\nthe next thing to childhood now. We were both in certain directions\nunusually ignorant and simple; we were temperamentally antagonistic, and\nwe hadn\'t--I don\'t think we were capable of--an idea in common. She was\nyoung and extraordinarily conventional--she seemed never to have an\nidea of her own but always the idea of her class--and I was young and\nsceptical, enterprising and passionate; the two links that held us\ntogether were the intense appeal her physical beauty had for me, and her\nappreciation of her importance in my thoughts. There can be no doubt of\nmy passion for her. In her I had discovered woman desired. The nights I\nhave lain awake on account of her, writhing, biting my wrists in a fever\nof longing! ...\n\nI have told how I got myself a silk hat and black coat to please her\non Sunday--to the derision of some of my fellow-students who charged to\nmeet me, and how we became engaged. But that was only the beginning\nof our difference. To her that meant the beginning of a not unpleasant\nlittle secrecy, an occasional use of verbal endearments, perhaps even\nkisses. It was something to go on indefinitely, interfering in no way\nwith her gossiping spells of work at Smithie\'s. To me it was a pledge\nto come together into the utmost intimacy of soul and body so soon as we\ncould contrive it....\n\nI don\'t know if it will strike the reader that I am setting out to\ndiscuss the queer, unwise love relationship and my bungle of a marriage\nwith excessive solemnity. But to me it seems to reach out to vastly\nwider issues than our little personal affair. I\'ve thought over my life.\nIn these last few years I\'ve tried to get at least a little wisdom out\nof it. And in particular I\'ve thought over this part of my life. I\'m\nenormously impressed by the ignorant, unguided way in which we two\nentangled ourselves with each other. It seems to me the queerest thing\nin all this network of misunderstandings and misstatements and faulty\nand ramshackle conventions which makes up our social order as the\nindividual meets it, that we should have come together so accidentally\nand so blindly. Because we were no more than samples of the common fate.\nLove is not only the cardinal fact in the individual life, but the most\nimportant concern of the community; after all, the way in which the\nyoung people of this generation pair off determines the fate of the\nnation; all the other affairs of the State are subsidiary to that.\nAnd we leave it to flushed and blundering youth to stumble on its own\nsignificance, with nothing to guide in but shocked looks and sentimental\ntwaddle and base whisperings and cant-smeared examples.\n\nI have tried to indicate something of my own sexual development in the\npreceding chapter. Nobody was ever frank and decent with me in this\nrelation; nobody, no book, ever came and said to me thus and thus is\nthe world made, and so and so is necessary. Everything came obscurely,\nindefinitely, perplexingly; and all I knew of law or convention in the\nmatter had the form of threatenings and prohibitions. Except through the\nfurtive, shameful talk of my coevals at Goudhurst and Wimblehurst, I\nwas not even warned against quite horrible dangers. My ideas were made\npartly of instinct, partly of a romantic imagination, partly woven out\nof a medley of scraps of suggestion that came to me haphazard. I had\nread widely and confusedly \"Vathek,\" Shelley, Tom Paine, Plutarch,\nCarlyle, Haeckel, William Morris, the Bible, the Freethinker, the\nClarion, \"The Woman Who Did,\"--I mention the ingredients that come first\nto mind. All sorts of ideas were jumbled up in me and never a lucid\nexplanation. But it was evident to me that the world regarded Shelley,\nfor example, as a very heroic as well as beautiful person; and that\nto defy convention and succumb magnificently to passion was the proper\nthing to do to gain the respect and affection of all decent people.\n\nAnd the make-up of Marion\'s mind in the matter was an equally irrational\naffair. Her training had been one, not simply of silences, but\nsuppressions. An enormous force of suggestion had so shaped her that\nthe intense natural fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into\nan absolute perversion of instinct. For all that is cardinal in this\nessential business of life she had one inseparable epithet--\"horrid.\"\nWithout any such training she would have been a shy lover, but now she\nwas an impossible one. For the rest she had derived, I suppose, partly\nfrom the sort of fiction she got from the Public Library, and partly\nfrom the workroom talk at Smithie\'s. So far as the former origin went,\nshe had an idea of love as a state of worship and service on the part of\nthe man and of condescension on the part of the woman. There was nothing\n\"horrid\" about it in any fiction she had read. The man gave presents,\ndid services, sought to be in every way delightful. The woman \"went out\"\nwith him, smiled at him, was kissed by him in decorous secrecy, and if\nhe chanced to offend, denied her countenance and presence. Usually she\ndid something \"for his good\" to him, made him go to church, made him\ngive up smoking or gambling, smartened him up. Quite at the end of the\nstory came a marriage, and after that the interest ceased.\n\nThat was the tenor of Marion\'s fiction; but I think the work-table\nconversation at Smithie\'s did something to modify that. At Smithie\'s it\nwas recognised, I think, that a \"fellow\" was a possession to be desired;\nthat it was better to be engaged to a fellow than not; that fellows had\nto be kept--they might be mislaid, they might even be stolen. There was\na case of stealing at Smithie\'s, and many tears.\n\nSmithie I met before we were married, and afterwards she became a\nfrequent visitor to our house at Ealing. She was a thin, bright-eyed,\nhawk-nosed girl of thirtyodd, with prominent teeth, a high-pitched,\neager voice and a disposition to be urgently smart in her dress. Her\nhats were startling and various, but invariably disconcerting, and she\ntalked in a rapid, nervous flow that was hilarious rather than witty,\nand broken by little screams of \"Oh, my dear!\" and \"you never did!\" She\nwas the first woman I ever met who used scent. Poor old Smithie! What a\nharmless, kindly soul she really was, and how heartily I detested her!\nOut of the profits on the Persian robes she supported a sister\'s family\nof three children, she \"helped\" a worthless brother, and overflowed\nin help even to her workgirls, but that didn\'t weigh with me in those\nyouthfully-narrow times. It was one of the intense minor irritations of\nmy married life that Smithie\'s whirlwind chatter seemed to me to have\nfar more influence with Marion than anything I had to say. Before all\nthings I coveted her grip upon Marion\'s inaccessible mind.\n\nIn the workroom at Smithie\'s, I gathered, they always spoke of me\ndemurely as \"A Certain Person.\" I was rumoured to be dreadfully\n\"clever,\" and there were doubts--not altogether without\njustification--of the sweetness of my temper.\n\nII\n\nWell, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand\nthe distressful times we two had together when presently I began to feel\non a footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the mind and\nthe wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidity, must be in her.\nI think she thought me the maddest of sane men; \"clever,\" in fact,\nwhich at Smithie\'s was, I suppose, the next thing to insanity, a word\nintimating incomprehensible and incalculable motives.... She could be\nshocked at anything, she misunderstood everything, and her weapon was\na sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed her\nface of beauty. \"Well, if we can\'t agree, I don\'t see why you should\ngo on talking,\" she used to say. That would always enrage me beyond\nmeasure. Or, \"I\'m afraid I\'m not clever enough to understand that.\"\n\nSilly little people! I see it all now, but then I was no older than\nshe and I couldn\'t see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable\nreason, wouldn\'t come alive.\n\nWe would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sunday, and part\nspeechless with the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The\nthings I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about theology,\nabout Socialism, about aesthetics--the very words appalled her, gave her\nthe faint chill of approaching impropriety, the terror of a very present\nintellectual impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would suppress\nmyself for a time and continue a talk that made her happy, about\nSmithie\'s brother, about the new girl who had come to the workroom,\nabout the house we would presently live in. But there we differed\na little. I wanted to be accessible to St. Paul\'s or Cannon Street\nStation, and she had set her mind quite resolutely upon Eating.... It\nwasn\'t by any means quarreling all the time, you understand. She liked\nme to play the lover \"nicely\"; she liked the effect of going about--we\nhad lunches, we went to Earl\'s Court, to Kew, to theatres and concerts,\nbut not often to concerts, because, though Marion \"liked\" music,\nshe didn\'t like \"too much of it,\" to picture shows--and there was a\nnonsensical sort of babytalk I picked up--I forget where now--that\nbecame a mighty peacemaker.\n\nHer worst offence for me was an occasional excursion into the Smithie\nstyle of dressing, debased West Kensington. For she had no sense at all\nof her own beauty. She had no comprehension whatever of beauty of the\nbody, and she could slash her beautiful lines to rags with hat-brims and\ntrimmings. Thank Heaven! a natural refinement, a natural timidity,\nand her extremely slender purse kept her from the real Smithie\nefflorescence! Poor, simple, beautiful, kindly limited Marion! Now that\nI am forty-five, I can look back at her with all my old admiration\nand none of my old bitterness with a new affection and not a scrap\nof passion, and take her part against the equally stupid,\ndrivingly-energetic, sensuous, intellectual sprawl I used to be. I was\na young beast for her to have married--a hound beast. With her it was\nmy business to understand and control--and I exacted fellowship,\npassion....\n\nWe became engaged, as I have told; we broke it off and joined again. We\nwent through a succession of such phases. We had no sort of idea what\nwas wrong with us. Presently we were formally engaged. I had a wonderful\ninterview with her father, in which he was stupendously grave\nand H--less, wanted to know about my origins and was tolerant\n(exasperatingly tolerant) because my mother was a servant, and\nafterwards her mother took to kissing me, and I bought a ring. But\nthe speechless aunt, I gathered, didn\'t approve--having doubts of my\nreligiosity. Whenever we were estranged we could keep apart for days;\nand to begin with, every such separation was a relief. And then I would\nwant her; a restless longing would come upon me. I would think of the\nflow of her arms, of the soft, gracious bend of her body. I would lie\nawake or dream of a transfigured Marion of light and fire. It was indeed\nDame Nature driving me on to womankind in her stupid, inexorable way;\nbut I thought it was the need of Marion that troubled me. So I always\nwent back to Marion at last and made it up and more or less conceded or\nignored whatever thing had parted us, and more and more I urged her to\nmarry me....\n\nIn the long run that became a fixed idea. It entangled my will and my\npride; I told myself I was not going to be beaten. I hardened to the\nbusiness. I think, as a matter of fact, my real passion for Marion had\nwaned enormously long before we were married, that she had lived it down\nby sheer irresponsiveness. When I felt sure of my three hundred a year\nshe stipulated for delay, twelve months\' delay, \"to see how things would\nturn out.\" There were times when she seemed simply an antagonist holding\nout irritatingly against something I had to settle. Moreover, I began\nto be greatly distracted by the interest and excitement of Tono-Bungay\'s\nsuccess, by the change and movement in things, the going to and fro.\nI would forget her for days together, and then desire her with an\nirritating intensity at last, one Saturday afternoon, after a brooding\nmorning, I determined almost savagely that these delays must end.\n\nI went off to the little home at Walham Green, and made Marion come with\nme to Putney Common. Marion wasn\'t at home when I got there and I had\nto fret for a time and talk to her father, who was just back from\nhis office, he explained, and enjoying himself in his own way in the\ngreenhouse.\n\n\"I\'m going to ask your daughter to marry me!\" I said. \"I think we\'ve\nbeen waiting long enough.\"\n\n\"I don\'t approve of long engagements either,\" said her father. \"But\nMarion will have her own way about it, anyhow. Seen this new powdered\nfertiliser?\"\n\nI went in to talk to Mrs. Ramboat. \"She\'ll want time to get her things,\"\nsaid Mrs. Ramboat....\n\nI and Marion sat down together on a little seat under some trees at the\ntop of Putney Hill, and I came to my point abruptly.\n\n\"Look here, Marion,\" I said, \"are you going to marry me or are you not?\"\n\nShe smiled at me. \"Well,\" she said, \"we\'re engaged--aren\'t we?\"\n\n\"That can\'t go on for ever. Will you marry me next week?\"\n\nShe looked me in the face. \"We can\'t,\" she said.\n\n\"You promised to marry me when I had three hundred a year.\"\n\nShe was silent for a space. \"Can\'t we go on for a time as we are? We\nCOULD marry on three hundred a year. But it means a very little house.\nThere\'s Smithie\'s brother. They manage on two hundred and fifty, but\nthat\'s very little. She says they have a semi-detached house almost on\nthe road, and hardly a bit of garden. And the wall to next-door is so\nthin they hear everything. When her baby cries--they rap. And people\nstand against the railings and talk.... Can\'t we wait? You\'re doing so\nwell.\"\n\nAn extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the\nstupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered\nher with immense restraint.\n\n\"If,\" I said, \"we could have a double-fronted, detached house--at\nEaling, say--with a square patch of lawn in front and a garden\nbehind--and--and a tiled bathroom.\"\n\n\"That would be sixty pounds a year at least.\"\n\n\"Which means five hundred a year.... Yes, well, you see, I told my uncle\nI wanted that, and I\'ve got it.\"\n\n\"Got what?\"\n\n\"Five hundred pounds a year.\"\n\n\"Five hundred pounds!\"\n\nI burst into laughter that had more than a taste of bitterness.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"really! and NOW what do you think?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, a little flushed; \"but be sensible! Do you really mean\nyou\'ve got a Rise, all at once, of two hundred a year?\"\n\n\"To marry on--yes.\"\n\nShe scrutinised me a moment. \"You\'ve done this as a surprise!\" she said,\nand laughed at my laughter. She had become radiant, and that made me\nradiant, too.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"yes,\" and laughed no longer bitterly.\n\nShe clasped her hands and looked me in the eyes.\n\nShe was so pleased that I forgot absolutely my disgust of a moment\nbefore. I forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds a year\nand that I had bought her at that.\n\n\"Come!\" I said, standing up; \"let\'s go towards the sunset, dear, and\ntalk about it all. Do you know--this is a most beautiful world, an\namazingly beautiful world, and when the sunset falls upon you it\nmakes you into shining gold. No, not gold--into golden glass.... Into\nsomething better that either glass or gold.\"...\n\nAnd for all that evening I wooed her and kept her glad. She made me\nrepeat my assurances over again and still doubted a little.\n\nWe furnished that double-fronted house from attic--it ran to an\nattic--to cellar, and created a garden.\n\n\"Do you know Pampas Grass?\" said Marion. \"I love Pampas Grass... if\nthere is room.\"\n\n\"You shall have Pampas Grass,\" I declared. And there were moments as we\nwent in imagination about that house together, when my whole being cried\nout to take her in my arms--now. But I refrained. On that aspect of life\nI touched very lightly in that talk, very lightly because I had had\nmy lessons. She promised to marry me within two months\' time. Shyly,\nreluctantly, she named a day, and next afternoon, in heat and wrath,\nwe \"broke it off\" again for the last time. We split upon procedure.\nI refused flatly to have a normal wedding with wedding cake, in white\nfavours, carriages and the rest of it. It dawned upon me suddenly in\nconversation with her and her mother, that this was implied. I blurted\nout my objection forthwith, and this time it wasn\'t any ordinary\ndifference of opinion; it was a \"row.\" I don\'t remember a quarter of the\nthings we flung out in that dispute. I remember her mother reiterating\nin tones of gentle remonstrance: \"But, George dear, you must have\na cake--to send home.\" I think we all reiterated things. I seem to\nremember a refrain of my own: \"A marriage is too sacred a thing, too\nprivate a thing, for this display. Her father came in and stood behind\nme against the wall, and her aunt appeared beside the sideboard and\nstood with arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a sternly gratified\nprophetess. It didn\'t occur to me then! How painful it was to Marion for\nthese people to witness my rebellion.\n\n\"But, George,\" said her father, \"what sort of marriage do you want? You\ndon\'t want to go to one of those there registry offices?\"\n\n\"That\'s exactly what I\'d like to do. Marriage is too private a thing--\"\n\n\"I shouldn\'t feel married,\" said Mrs. Ramboat.\n\n\"Look here, Marion,\" I said; \"we are going to be married at a registry\noffice. I don\'t believe in all these fripperies and superstitions, and I\nwon\'t submit to them. I\'ve agreed to all sorts of things to please you.\"\n\n\"What\'s he agreed to?\" said her father--unheeded.\n\n\"I can\'t marry at a registry office,\" said Marion, sallow-white.\n\n\"Very well,\" I said. \"I\'ll marry nowhere else.\"\n\n\"I can\'t marry at a registry office.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" I said, standing up, white and tense and it amazed me, but\nI was also exultant; \"then we won\'t marry at all.\"\n\nShe leant forward over the table, staring blankly. But presently her\nhalf-averted face began to haunt me as she had sat at the table, and her\narm and the long droop of her shoulder.\n\nIII\n\nThe next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle,\n\"Bad temper not coming to business,\" and set off for Highgate and Ewart.\nHe was actually at work--on a bust of Millie, and seemed very glad for\nany interruption.\n\n\"Ewart, you old Fool,\" I said, \"knock off and come for a day\'s gossip.\nI\'m rotten. There\'s a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let\'s go to\nStaines and paddle up to Windsor.\"\n\n\"Girl?\" said Ewart, putting down a chisel.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThat was all I told him of my affair.\n\n\"I\'ve got no money,\" he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my\ninvitation.\n\nWe got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart\'s suggestion,\ntwo Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the\nboathouse and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and\nmeditation, our boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor.\nI seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and\nsunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more,\nagainst the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and bushes.\n\n\"It\'s not worth it,\" was the burthen of the voice. \"You\'d better get\nyourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you wouldn\'t feel so upset.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said decidedly, \"that\'s not my way.\"\n\nA thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an\naltar.\n\n\"Everything\'s a muddle, and you think it isn\'t. Nobody knows where\nwe are--because, as a matter of fact we aren\'t anywhere. Are women\nproperty--or are they fellow-creatures? Or a sort of proprietary\ngoddesses? They\'re so obviously fellow-creatures. You believe in the\ngoddess?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"that\'s not my idea.\"\n\n\"What is your idea?\"\n\n\"Well\"\n\n\"H\'m,\" said Ewart, in my pause.\n\n\"My idea,\" I said, \"is to meet one person who will belong to me--to whom\nI shall belong--body and soul. No half-gods! Wait till she comes. If she\ncomes at all.... We must come to each other young and pure.\"\n\n\"There\'s no such thing as a pure person or an impure person.... Mixed to\nbegin with.\"\n\nThis was so manifestly true that it silenced me altogether.\n\n\"And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponderevo--which end\'s the\nhead?\"\n\nI made no answer except an impatient \"oh!\"\n\nFor a time we smoked in silence....\n\n\"Did I tell you, Ponderevo, of a wonderful discovery I\'ve made?\" Ewart\nbegan presently.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"what is it?\"\n\n\"There\'s no Mrs. Grundy.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"No! Practically not. I\'ve just thought all that business out. She\'s\nmerely an instrument, Ponderevo. She\'s borne the blame. Grundy\'s a man.\nGrundy unmasked. Rather lean and out of sorts. Early middle age. With\nbunchy black whiskers and a worried eye. Been good so far, and it\'s\nfretting him! Moods! There\'s Grundy in a state of sexual panic, for\nexample,--\'For God\'s sake cover it up! They get together--they get\ntogether! It\'s too exciting! The most dreadful things are happening!\'\nRushing about--long arms going like a windmill. \'They must be kept\napart!\' Starts out for an absolute obliteration of everything absolute\nseparations. One side of the road for men, and the other for women, and\na hoarding--without posters between them. Every boy and girl to be sewed\nup in a sack and sealed, just the head and hands and feet out until\ntwenty-one. Music abolished, calico garments for the lower animals!\nSparrows to be suppressed--ab-so-lutely.\"\n\nI laughed abruptly.\n\n\"Well, that\'s Mr. Grundy in one mood--and it puts Mrs. Grundy--She\'s a\nmuch-maligned person, Ponderevo--a rake at heart--and it puts her in a\nmost painful state of fluster--most painful! She\'s an amenable creature.\nWhen Grundy tells her things are shocking, she\'s shocked--pink and\nbreathless. She goes about trying to conceal her profound sense of guilt\nbehind a haughty expression....\n\n\"Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of complete whirlabout. Long lean\nknuckly hands pointing and gesticulating! \'They\'re still thinking of\nthings--thinking of things! It\'s dreadful. They get it out of books.\nI can\'t imagine where they get it! I must watch! There\'re people over\nthere whispering! Nobody ought to whisper!--There\'s something suggestive\nin the mere act! Then, pictures! In the museum--things too dreadful for\nwords. Why can\'t we have pure art--with the anatomy all wrong and pure\nand nice--and pure fiction pure poetry, instead of all this stuff with\nallusions--allusions?... Excuse me! There\'s something up behind that\nlocked door! The keyhole! In the interests of public morality--yes, Sir,\nas a pure good man--I insist--I\'LL look--it won\'t hurt me--I insist on\nlooking my duty--M\'m\'m--the keyhole!\'\"\n\nHe kicked his legs about extravagantly, and I laughed again.\n\n\"That\'s Grundy in one mood, Ponderevo. It isn\'t Mrs. Grundy. That\'s one\nof the lies we tell about women. They\'re too simple. Simple! Woman ARE\nsimple! They take on just what men tell \'em.\"\n\nEwart meditated for a space. \"Just exactly as it\'s put to them,\" he\nsaid, and resumed the moods of Mr. Grundy.\n\n\"Then you get old Grundy in another mood. Ever caught him nosing,\nPonderevo? Mad with the idea of mysterious, unknown, wicked, delicious\nthings. Things that aren\'t respectable. Wow! Things he mustn\'t do!...\nAny one who knows about these things, knows there\'s just as much mystery\nand deliciousness about Grundy\'s forbidden things as there is about\neating ham. Jolly nice if it\'s a bright morning and you\'re well and\nhungry and having breakfast in the open air. Jolly unattractive if\nyou\'re off colour. But Grundy\'s covered it all up and hidden it and\nput mucky shades and covers over it until he\'s forgotten it. Begins to\nfester round it in his mind. Has dreadful struggles--with himself about\nimpure thoughts.... Then you set Grundy with hot ears,--curious in\nundertones. Grundy on the loose, Grundy in a hoarse whisper and\nwith furtive eyes and convulsive movements--making things indecent.\nEvolving--in dense vapours--indecency!\n\n\"Grundy sins. Oh, yes, he\'s a hypocrite. Sneaks round a corner and\nsins ugly. It\'s Grundy and his dark corners that make vice, vice! We\nartists--we have no vices.\n\n\"And then he\'s frantic with repentance. And wants to be cruel to fallen\nwomen and decent harmless sculptors of the simple nude--like me--and so\nback to his panic again.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Grundy, I suppose, doesn\'t know he sins,\" I remarked.\n\n\"No? I\'m not so sure.... But, bless her heart she\'s a woman.... She\'s\na woman. Then again you get Grundy with a large greasy smile--like\nan accident to a butter tub--all over his face, being Liberal\nMinded--Grundy in his Anti-Puritan moments, \'trying not to see Harm in\nit\'--Grundy the friend of innocent pleasure. He makes you sick with the\nHarm he\'s trying not to see in it...\n\n\"And that\'s why everything\'s wrong, Ponderevo. Grundy, damn him! stands\nin the light, and we young people can\'t see. His moods affect us. We\ncatch his gusts of panic, his disease of nosing, his greasiness. We\ndon\'t know what we may think, what we may say, he does his silly\nutmost to prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one sort of\ndiscussion we find--quite naturally and properly--supremely interesting.\nSo we don\'t adolescence; we blunder up to sex. Dare--dare to look--and\nhe may dirt you for ever! The girls are terror-stricken to silence by\nhis significant whiskers, by the bleary something in his eyes.\"\n\nSuddenly Ewart, with an almost Jack-in-the-box effect, sat up.\n\n\"He\'s about us everywhere, Ponderevo,\" he said, very solemnly.\n\"Sometimes--sometimes I think he is--in our blood. In MINE.\"\n\nHe regarded me for my opinion very earnestly, with his pipe in the\ncorner of his mouth.\n\n\"You\'re the remotest cousin he ever had,\" I said.\n\nI reflected. \"Look here, Ewart,\" I asked, \"how would you have things\ndifferent?\"\n\nHe wrinkled up his queer face, regarded the wait and made his pipe\ngurgle for a space, thinking deeply.\n\n\"There are complications, I admit. We\'ve grown up under the terror of\nGrundy and that innocent but docile and--yes--formidable lady, his\nwife. I don\'t know how far the complications aren\'t a disease, a sort of\nbleaching under the Grundy shadow.... It is possible there are things\nI have still to learn about women.... Man has eaten of the Tree of\nKnowledge. His innocence is gone. You can\'t have your cake and eat\nit. We\'re in for knowledge; let\'s have it plain and straight. I should\nbegin, I think, by abolishing the ideas of decency and indecency....\"\n\n\"Grundy would have fits!\" I injected.\n\n\"Grundy, Ponderevo, would have cold douches--publicly--if the sight was\nnot too painful--three times a day.... But I don\'t think, mind you,\nthat I should let the sexes run about together. No. The fact behind the\nsexes--is sex. It\'s no good humbugging. It trails about--even in the\nbest mixed company. Tugs at your ankle. The men get showing off and\nquarrelling--and the women. Or they\'re bored. I suppose the ancestral\nmales have competed for the ancestral females ever since they were both\nsome sort of grubby little reptile. You aren\'t going to alter that in\na thousand years or so.... Never should you have a mixed company,\nnever--except with only one man or only one woman. How would that be?...\n\n\"Or duets only?...\n\n\"How to manage it? Some rule of etiquette, perhaps.\"... He became\nportentously grave.\n\nThen his long hand went out in weird gestures.\n\n\"I seem to see--I seem to see--a sort of City of Women, Ponderevo.\nYes.... A walled enclosure--good stone-mason\'s work--a city wall, high\nas the walls of Rome, going about a garden. Dozens of square miles of\ngarden--trees--fountains--arbours--lakes. Lawns on which the women play,\navenues in which they gossip, boats.... Women like that sort of thing.\nAny woman who\'s been to a good eventful girls\' school lives on the\nmemory of it for the rest of her life. It\'s one of the pathetic things\nabout women--the superiority of school and college--to anything they get\nafterwards. And this city-garden of women will have beautiful places\nfor music, places for beautiful dresses, places for beautiful work.\nEverything a woman can want. Nurseries. Kindergartens. Schools. And no\nman--except to do rough work, perhaps--ever comes in. The men live in a\nworld where they can hunt and engineer, invent and mine and manufacture,\nsail ships, drink deep and practice the arts, and fight--\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"but--\"\n\nHe stilled me with a gesture.\n\n\"I\'m coming to that. The homes of the women, Ponderevo, will be set in\nthe wall of their city; each woman will have her own particular house\nand home, furnished after her own heart in her own manner--with a little\nbalcony on the outside wall. Built into the wall--and a little balcony.\nAnd there she will go and look out, when the mood takes her, and all\nround the city there will be a broad road and seats and great shady\ntrees. And men will stroll up and down there when they feel the need\nof feminine company; when, for instance, they want to talk about their\nsouls or their characters or any of the things that only women will\nstand.... The women will lean over and look at the men and smile and\ntalk to them as they fancy. And each woman will have this; she will have\na little silken ladder she can let down if she chooses--if she wants to\ntalk closer...\"\n\n\"The men would still be competing.\"\n\n\"There perhaps--yes. But they\'d have to abide by the women\'s decisions.\"\n\nI raised one or two difficulties, and for a while we played with this\nidea.\n\n\"Ewart,\" I said, \"this is like Doll\'s Island.\n\n\"Suppose,\" I reflected, \"an unsuccessful man laid siege to a balcony and\nwouldn\'t let his rival come near it?\"\n\n\"Move him on,\" said Ewart, \"by a special regulation. As one does\norgan-grinders. No difficulty about that. And you could forbid it--make\nit against the etiquette. No life is decent without etiquette.... And\npeople obey etiquette sooner than laws...\"\n\n\"H\'m,\" I said, and was struck by an idea that is remote in the world of\na young man. \"How about children?\" I asked; \"in the City? Girls are all\nvery well. But boys, for example--grow up.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Ewart. \"Yes. I forgot. They mustn\'t grow up inside.... They\'d\nturn out the boys when they were seven. The father must come with a\nlittle pony and a little gun and manly wear, and take the boy away. Then\none could come afterwards to one\'s mother\'s balcony.... It must be fine\nto have a mother. The father and the son...\"\n\n\"This is all very pretty in its way,\" I said at last, \"but it\'s a dream.\nLet\'s come back to reality. What I want to know is, what are you going\nto do in Brompton, let us say, or Walham Green NOW?\"\n\n\"Oh! damn it!\" he remarked, \"Walham Green! What a chap you are,\nPonderevo!\" and he made an abrupt end to his discourse. He wouldn\'t even\nreply to my tentatives for a time.\n\n\"While I was talking just now,\" he remarked presently,\n\n\"I had a quite different idea.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"For a masterpiece. A series. Like the busts of the Caesars. Only\nnot heads, you know. We don\'t see the people who do things to us\nnowadays...\"\n\n\"How will you do it, then?\"\n\n\"Hands--a series of hands! The hands of the Twentieth Century. I\'ll do\nit. Some day some one will discover it--go there--see what I have done,\nand what is meant by it.\"\n\n\"See it where?\"\n\n\"On the tombs. Why not? The Unknown Master of the Highgate Slope! All\nthe little, soft feminine hands, the nervous ugly males, the hands of\nthe flops, and the hands of the snatchers! And Grundy\'s loose, lean,\nknuckly affair--Grundy the terror!--the little wrinkles and the thumb!\nOnly it ought to hold all the others together--in a slightly disturbing\nsqueeze....Like Rodin\'s great Hand--you know the thing!\"\n\nIV\n\nI forget how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our\nengagement and Marion\'s surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my\nemotion, the concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as\nI read the words of her unexpected letter--\"I have thought over\neverything, and I was selfish....\" I rushed off to Walham Green that\nevening to give back all she had given me, to beat her altogether\nat giving. She was extraordinarily gentle and generous that time, I\nremember, and when at last I left her, she kissed me very sweetly.\n\nSo we were married.\n\nWe were married with all the customary incongruity. I gave--perhaps\nafter a while not altogether ungrudgingly--and what I gave, Marion took,\nwith a manifest satisfaction. After all, I was being sensible. So that\nwe had three livery carriages to the church (one of the pairs of horses\nmatched) and coachmen--with improvised flavour and very shabby silk\nhats--bearing white favours on their whips, and my uncle intervened with\nsplendour and insisted upon having a wedding breakfast sent in from\na caterer\'s in Hammersmith. The table had a great display of\nchrysanthemums, and there was orange blossom in the significant place\nand a wonderful cake. We also circulated upwards of a score of wedges\nof that accompanied by silver-printed cards in which Marion\'s name of\nRamboat was stricken out by an arrow in favour of Ponderevo. We had a\nlittle rally of Marion\'s relations, and several friends and friends\'\nfriends from Smithie\'s appeared in the church and drifted vestry-ward.\nI produced my aunt and uncle a select group of two. The effect in that\nshabby little house was one of exhilarating congestion. The side-board,\nin which lived the table-cloth and the \"Apartments\" card, was used for\na display of the presents, eked out by the unused balance of the\nsilver-printed cards.\n\nMarion wore the white raiment of a bride, white silk and satin, that did\nnot suit her, that made her seem large and strange to me; she obtruded\nbows and unfamiliar contours. She went through all this strange ritual\nof an English wedding with a sacramental gravity that I was altogether\ntoo young and egotistical to comprehend. It was all extraordinarily\ncentral and important to her; it was no more than an offensive,\ncomplicated, and disconcerting intrusion of a world I was already\nbeginning to criticise very bitterly, to me. What was all this fuss for?\nThe mere indecent advertisement that I had been passionately in love\nwith Marion! I think, however, that Marion was only very remotely aware\nof my smouldering exasperation at having in the end behaved \"nicely.\" I\nhad played--up to the extent of dressing my part; I had an admirably\ncut frock--coat, a new silk hat, trousers as light as I could endure\nthem--lighter, in fact--a white waistcoat, night tie, light gloves.\nMarion, seeing me despondent had the unusual enterprise to whisper to\nme that I looked lovely; I knew too well I didn\'t look myself. I looked\nlike a special coloured supplement to Men\'s Wear, or The Tailor\nand Cutter, Full Dress For Ceremonial Occasions. I had even the\ndisconcerting sensations of an unfamiliar collar. I felt lost--in\na strange body, and when I glanced down myself for reassurance, the\nstraight white abdomen, the alien legs confirmed that impression.\n\nMy uncle was my best man, and looked like a banker--a little banker--in\nflower. He wore a white rose in his buttonhole. He wasn\'t, I think,\nparticularly talkative. At least I recall very little from him.\n\n\"George\" he said once or twice, \"this is a great occasion for you--a\nvery great occasion.\" He spoke a little doubtfully.\n\nYou see I had told him nothing about Marion until about a week before\nthe wedding; both he and my aunt had been taken altogether by surprise.\nThey couldn\'t, as people say, \"make it out.\" My aunt was intensely\ninterested, much more than my uncle; it was then, I think, for the\nfirst time that I really saw that she cared for me. She got me alone,\nI remember, after I had made my announcement. \"Now, George,\" she\nsaid, \"tell me everything about her. Why didn\'t you tell--ME at\nleast--before?\"\n\nI was surprised to find how difficult it was to tell her about Marion. I\nperplexed her.\n\n\"Then is she beautiful?\" she asked at last.\n\n\"I don\'t know what you\'ll think of her,\" I parried. \"I think--\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"I think she might be the most beautiful person in the world.\"\n\n\"And isn\'t she? To you?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I said, nodding my head. \"Yes. She IS...\"\n\nAnd while I don\'t remember anything my uncle said or did at the\nwedding, I do remember very distinctly certain little things, scrutiny,\nsolicitude, a curious rare flash of intimacy in my aunt\'s eyes. It\ndawned on me that I wasn\'t hiding anything from her at all. She was\ndressed very smartly, wearing a big-plumed hat that made her neck seem\nlonger and slenderer than ever, and when she walked up the aisle with\nthat rolling stride of hers and her eye all on Marion, perplexed into\nself-forgetfulness, it wasn\'t somehow funny. She was, I do believe,\ngiving my marriage more thought than I had done, she was concerned\nbeyond measure at my black rage and Marion\'s blindness, she was looking\nwith eyes that knew what loving is--for love.\n\nIn the vestry she turned away as we signed, and I verily believe she was\ncrying, though to this day I can\'t say why she should have cried, and\nshe was near crying too when she squeezed my hand at parting--and she\nnever said a word or looked at me, but just squeezed my hand....\n\nIf I had not been so grim in spirit, I think I should have found much\nof my wedding amusing. I remember a lot of ridiculous detail that still\ndeclines to be funny in my memory. The officiating clergyman had a\ncold, and turned his \"n\'s\" to \"d\'s,\" and he made the most mechanical\ncompliment conceivable about the bride\'s age when the register was\nsigned. Every bride he had ever married had had it, one knew. And two\nmiddle-aged spinsters, cousins of Marion\'s and dressmakers at Barking,\nstand out. They wore marvellously bright and gay blouses and dim old\nskirts, and had an immense respect for Mr. Ramboat. They threw rice;\nthey brought a whole bag with them and gave handfuls away to unknown\nlittle boys at the church door and so created a Lilliputian riot; and\none had meant to throw a slipper. It was a very warm old silk slipper,\nI know, because she dropped it out of a pocket in the aisle--there was\na sort of jumble in the aisle--and I picked it up for her. I don\'t think\nshe actually threw it, for as we drove away from the church I saw her\nin a dreadful, and, it seemed to me, hopeless, struggle with her pocket;\nand afterwards my eye caught the missile of good fortune lying, it or\nits fellow, most obviously mislaid, behind the umbrella-stand in the\nhall....\n\nThe whole business was much more absurd, more incoherent, more human\nthan I had anticipated, but I was far too young and serious to let the\nlatter quality atone for its shortcomings. I am so remote from this\nphase of my youth that I can look back at it all as dispassionately as\none looks at a picture--at some wonderful, perfect sort of picture\nthat is inexhaustible; but at the time these things filled me with\nunspeakable resentment. Now I go round it all, look into its details,\ngeneralise about its aspects. I\'m interested, for example, to square it\nwith my Bladesover theory of the British social scheme. Under stress of\ntradition we were all of us trying in the fermenting chaos of London to\ncarry out the marriage ceremonies of a Bladesover tenant or one of the\nchubby middling sort of people in some dependent country town. There\na marriage is a public function with a public significance. There the\nchurch is to a large extent the gathering-place of the community, and\nyour going to be married a thing of importance to every one you pass on\nthe road. It is a change of status that quite legitimately interests\nthe whole neighbourhood. But in London there are no neighbours, nobody\nknows, nobody cares. An absolute stranger in an office took my notice,\nand our banns were proclaimed to ears that had never previously heard\nour names. The clergyman, even, who married us had never seen us before,\nand didn\'t in any degree intimate that he wanted to see us again.\n\nNeighbours in London! The Ramboats did not know the names of the people\non either side of them. As I waited for Marion before we started off\nupon our honeymoon flight, Mr. Ramboat, I remember, came and stood\nbeside me and stared out of the window.\n\n\"There was a funeral over there yesterday,\" he said, by way of making\nconversation, and moved his head at the house opposite. \"Quite a smart\naffair it was with a glass \'earse....\"\n\nAnd our little procession of three carriages with white-favour-adorned\nhorses and drivers, went through all the huge, noisy, indifferent\ntraffic like a lost china image in the coal-chute of an ironclad. Nobody\nmade way for us, nobody cared for us; the driver of an omnibus jeered;\nfor a long time we crawled behind an unamiable dust-cart. The irrelevant\nclatter and tumult gave a queer flavour of indecency to this public\ncoming together of lovers. We seemed to have obtruded ourselves\nshamelessly. The crowd that gathered outside the church would have\ngathered in the same spirit and with greater alacrity for a street\naccident....\n\nAt Charing Cross--we were going to Hastings--the experienced eye of the\nguard detected the significance of our unusual costume and he secured us\na compartment.\n\n\"Well,\" said I, as the train moved out of the station, \"That\'s all\nover!\" And I turned to Marion--a little unfamiliar still, in her\nunfamiliar clothes--and smiled.\n\nShe regarded me gravely, timidly.\n\n\"You\'re not cross?\" she asked.\n\n\"Cross! Why?\"\n\n\"At having it all proper.\"\n\n\"My dear Marion!\" said I, and by way of answer took and kissed her\nwhite-gloved, leather-scented hand....\n\nI don\'t remember much else about the journey, an hour or so it was of\nundistinguished time--for we were both confused and a little fatigued\nand Marion had a slight headache and did not want caresses. I fell into\na reverie about my aunt, and realised as if it were a new discovery,\nthat I cared for her very greatly. I was acutely sorry I had not told\nher earlier of my marriage.\n\nBut you will not want to hear the history of my honeymoon. I have told\nall that was needed to serve my present purpose. Thus and thus it was\nthe Will in things had its way with me. Driven by forces I did not\nunderstand, diverted altogether from the science, the curiosities and\nwork to which I had once given myself, I fought my way through a tangle\nof traditions, customs, obstacles and absurdities, enraged myself,\nlimited myself, gave myself to occupations I saw with the clearest\nvision were dishonourable and vain, and at last achieved the end of\npurblind Nature, the relentless immediacy of her desire, and held, far\nshort of happiness, Marion weeping and reluctant in my arms.\n\nV\n\nWho can tell the story of the slow estrangement of two married people,\nthe weakening of first this bond and then that of that complex contact?\nLeast of all can one of the two participants. Even now, with an\ninterval of fifteen years to clear it up for me, I still find a mass of\nimpressions of Marion as confused, as discordant, as unsystematic and\nself-contradictory as life. I think of this thing and love her, of that\nand hate her--of a hundred aspects in which I can now see her with an\nunimpassioned sympathy. As I sit here trying to render some vision of\nthis infinitely confused process, I recall moments of hard and fierce\nestrangement, moments of clouded intimacy, the passage of transition all\nforgotten. We talked a little language together whence were \"friends,\"\nand I was \"Mutney\" and she was \"Ming,\" and we kept up such an outward\nshow that till the very end Smithie thought our household the most\namiable in the world.\n\nI cannot tell to the full how Marion thwarted me and failed in that life\nof intimate emotions which is the kernel of love. That life of intimate\nemotions is made up of little things. A beautiful face differs from an\nugly one by a difference of surfaces and proportions that are sometimes\nalmost infinitesimally small. I find myself setting down little things\nand little things; none of them do more than demonstrate those essential\ntemperamental discords I have already sought to make clear. Some readers\nwill understand--to others I shall seem no more than an unfeeling brute\nwho couldn\'t make allowances.... It\'s easy to make allowances now; but\nto be young and ardent and to make allowances, to see one\'s married life\nopen before one, the life that seemed in its dawn a glory, a garden of\nroses, a place of deep sweet mysteries and heart throbs and wonderful\nsilences, and to see it a vista of tolerations and baby-talk; a\ncompromise, the least effectual thing in all one\'s life.\n\nEvery love romance I read seemed to mock our dull intercourse, every\npoem, every beautiful picture reflected upon the uneventful succession\nof grey hours we had together. I think our real difference was one of\naesthetic sensibility.\n\nI do still recall as the worst and most disastrous aspect of all that\ntime, her absolute disregard of her own beauty. It\'s the pettiest thing\nto record, I know, but she could wear curl-papers in my presence. It was\nher idea, too, to \"wear out\" her old clothes and her failures at home\nwhen \"no one was likely to see her\"--\"no one\" being myself. She allowed\nme to accumulate a store of ungracious and slovenly memories....\n\nAll our conceptions of life differed. I remember how we differed about\nfurniture. We spent three or four days in Tottenham Court Road, and she\nchose the things she fancied with an inexorable resolution,--sweeping\naside my suggestions with--\"Oh, YOU want such queer things.\" She pursued\nsome limited, clearly seen and experienced ideal--that excluded all\nother possibilities. Over every mantel was a mirror that was draped, our\nsideboard was wonderfully good and splendid with beveled glass, we had\nlamps on long metal stalks and cozy corners and plants in grog-tubs.\nSmithie approved it all. There wasn\'t a place where one could sit and\nread in the whole house. My books went upon shelves in the dining-room\nrecess. And we had a piano though Marion\'s playing was at an elementary\nlevel.\n\nYou know, it was the cruelest luck for Marion that I, with my\nrestlessness, my scepticism, my constantly developing ideas, had\ninsisted on marriage with her. She had no faculty of growth or change;\nshe had taken her mould, she had set in the limited ideas of her\npeculiar class. She preserved her conception of what was right in\ndrawing-room chairs and in marriage ceremonial and in every relation of\nlife with a simple and luminous honesty and conviction, with an immense\nunimaginative inflexibility--as a tailor-bird builds its nest or a\nbeaver makes its dam.\n\nLet me hasten over this history of disappointments and separation. I\nmight tell of waxings and waning of love between us, but the whole was\nwaning. Sometimes she would do things for me, make me a tie or a pair\nof slippers, and fill me with none the less gratitude because the things\nwere absurd. She ran our home and our one servant with a hard, bright\nefficiency. She was inordinately proud of house and garden. Always, by\nher lights, she did her duty by me.\n\nPresently the rapid development of Tono-Bungay began to take me into the\nprovinces, and I would be away sometimes for a week together. This she\ndid not like; it left her \"dull,\" she said, but after a time she began\nto go to Smithie\'s again and to develop an independence of me. At\nSmithie\'s she was now a woman with a position; she had money to\nspend. She would take Smithie to theatres and out to lunch and talk\ninterminably of the business, and Smithie became a sort of permanent\nweekender with us. Also Marion got a spaniel and began to dabble with\nthe minor arts, with poker-work and a Kodak and hyacinths in glasses.\nShe called once on a neighbour. Her parents left Walham Green--her\nfather severed his connection with the gas-works--and came to live in a\nsmall house I took for them near us, and they were much with us.\n\nOdd the littleness of the things that exasperate when the fountains of\nlife are embittered! My father-in-law was perpetually catching me in\nmoody moments and urging me to take to gardening. He irritated me beyond\nmeasure.\n\n\"You think too much,\" he would say. \"If you was to let in a bit with\na spade, you might soon \'ave that garden of yours a Vision of Flowers.\nThat\'s better than thinking, George.\"\n\nOr in a torrent of exasperation, \"I CARN\'T think, George, why you don\'t\nget a bit of glass \'ere. This sunny corner you c\'d do wonders with a bit\nof glass.\"\n\nAnd in the summer time he never came in without performing a sort of\nconjuring trick in the hall, and taking cucumbers and tomatoes from\nunexpected points of his person. \"All out o\' MY little bit,\" he\'d say\nin exemplary tones. He left a trail of vegetable produce in the most\nunusual places, on mantel boards, sideboards, the tops of pictures.\nHeavens! how the sudden unexpected tomato could annoy me!...\n\nIt did much to widen our estrangement that Marion and my aunt failed to\nmake friends, became, by a sort of instinct, antagonistic.\n\nMy aunt, to begin with, called rather frequently, for she was really\nanxious to know Marion. At first she would arrive like a whirlwind and\npervade the house with an atmosphere of hello! She dressed already with\nthat cheerfully extravagant abandon that signalised her accession to\nfortune, and dressed her best for these visits.\n\nShe wanted to play the mother to me, I fancy, to tell Marion occult\nsecrets about the way I wore out my boots and how I never could think to\nput on thicker things in cold weather. But Marion received her with\nthat defensive suspiciousness of the shy person, thinking only of the\npossible criticism of herself; and my aunt, perceiving this, became\nnervous and slangy...\n\n\"She says such queer things,\" said Marion once, discussing her. \"But I\nsuppose it\'s witty.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said; \"it IS witty.\"\n\n\"If I said things like she does--\"\n\nThe queer things my aunt said were nothing to the queer things she\ndidn\'t say. I remember her in our drawing-room one day, and how she\ncocked her eye--it\'s the only expression--at the India-rubber plant in a\nDoulton-ware pot which Marion had placed on the corner of the piano.\n\nShe was on the very verge of speech. Then suddenly she caught my\nexpression, and shrank up like a cat that has been discovered looking at\nthe milk.\n\nThen a wicked impulse took her.\n\n\"Didn\'t say an old word, George,\" she insisted, looking me full in the\neye.\n\nI smiled. \"You\'re a dear,\" I said, \"not to,\" as Marion came lowering\ninto the room to welcome her. But I felt extraordinarily like a\ntraitor--to the India-rubber plant, I suppose--for all that nothing had\nbeen said...\n\n\"Your aunt makes Game of people,\" was Marion\'s verdict, and,\nopen-mindedly: \"I suppose it\'s all right... for her.\"\n\nSeveral times we went to the house in Beckenham for lunch, and once or\ntwice to dinner. My aunt did her peculiar best to be friends, but Marion\nwas implacable. She was also, I know, intensely uncomfortable, and she\nadopted as her social method, an exhausting silence, replying compactly\nand without giving openings to anything that was said to her.\n\nThe gaps between my aunt\'s visits grew wider and wider.\n\nMy married existence became at last like a narrow deep groove in the\nbroad expanse of interests in which I was living. I went about the\nworld; I met a great number of varied personalities; I read endless\nbooks in trains as I went to and fro. I developed social relationships\nat my uncle\'s house that Marion did not share. The seeds of new ideas\npoured in upon me and grew in me. Those early and middle years of one\'s\nthird decade are, I suppose, for a man the years of greatest mental\ngrowth. They are restless years and full of vague enterprise.\n\nEach time I returned to Ealing, life there seemed more alien, narrow,\nand unattractive--and Marion less beautiful and more limited and\ndifficult--until at last she was robbed of every particle of her magic.\nShe gave me always a cooler welcome, I think, until she seemed entirely\napathetic. I never asked myself then what heartaches she might hide or\nwhat her discontents might be.\n\nI would come home hoping nothing, expecting nothing.\n\nThis was my fated life, and I had chosen it. I became more sensitive to\nthe defects I had once disregarded altogether; I began to associate her\nsallow complexion with her temperamental insufficiency, and the heavier\nlines of her mouth and nostril with her moods of discontent. We\ndrifted apart; wider and wider the gap opened. I tired of baby-talk and\nstereotyped little fondlings; I tired of the latest intelligence from\nthose wonderful workrooms, and showed it all too plainly; we hardly\nspoke when we were alone together. The mere unreciprocated physical\nresidue of my passion remained--an exasperation between us.\n\nNo children came to save us. Marion had acquired at Smithie\'s a disgust\nand dread of maternity. All that was the fruition and quintessence of\nthe \"horrid\" elements in life, a disgusting thing, a last indignity that\novertook unwary women. I doubt indeed a little if children would have\nsaved us; we should have differed so fatally about their upbringing.\n\nAltogether, I remember my life with Marion as a long distress, now hard,\nnow tender. It was in those days that I first became critical of my life\nand burdened with a sense of error and maladjustment. I would lie\nawake in the night, asking myself the purpose of things, reviewing my\nunsatisfying, ungainly home-life, my days spent in rascal enterprise\nand rubbish-selling, contrasting all I was being and doing with my\nadolescent ambitions, my Wimblehurst dreams. My circumstances had an\nair of finality, and I asked myself in vain why I had forced myself into\nthem.\n\nVI\n\nThe end of our intolerable situation came suddenly and unexpectedly, but\nin a way that I suppose was almost inevitable.\n\nMy alienated affections wandered, and I was unfaithful to Marion.\n\nI won\'t pretend to extenuate the quality of my conduct. I was a young\nand fairly vigorous male; all my appetite for love had been roused\nand whetted and none of it had been satisfied by my love affair and my\nmarriage. I had pursued an elusive gleam of beauty to the disregard of\nall else, and it had failed me. It had faded when I had hoped it would\ngrow brighter. I despaired of life and was embittered. And things\nhappened as I am telling. I don\'t draw any moral at all in the matter,\nand as for social remedies, I leave them to the social reformer. I\'ve\ngot to a time of life when the only theories that interest me are\ngeneralisations about realities.\n\nTo go to our inner office in Raggett Street I had to walk through a room\nin which the typists worked. They were the correspondence typists; our\nbooks and invoicing had long since overflowed into the premises we had\nhad the luck to secure on either side of us. I was, I must confess,\nalways in a faintly cloudily-emotional way aware of that collection of\nfor the most part round-shouldered femininity, but presently one of\nthe girls detached herself from the others and got a real hold upon\nmy attention. I appreciated her at first as a straight little back,\na neater back than any of the others; as a softly rounded neck with a\nsmiling necklace of sham pearls; as chestnut hair very neatly done--and\nas a side-long glance; presently as a quickly turned face that looked\nfor me.\n\nMy eye would seek her as I went through on business things--I dictated\nsome letters to her and so discovered she had pretty, soft-looking hands\nwith pink nails. Once or twice, meeting casually, we looked one another\nfor the flash of a second in the eyes.\n\nThat was all. But it was enough in the mysterious free-masonry of sex to\nsay essential things. We had a secret between us.\n\nOne day I came into Raggett Street at lunch time and she was alone,\nsitting at her desk. She glanced up as I entered, and then became very\nstill, with a downcast face and her hands clenched on the table. I\nwalked right by her to the door of the inner office, stopped, came back\nand stood over her.\n\nWe neither of us spoke for quite a perceptible time. I was trembling\nviolently.\n\n\"Is that one of the new typewriters?\" I asked at last for the sake of\nspeaking.\n\nShe looked up at me without a word, with her face flushed and her eyes\nalight, and I bent down and kissed her lips. She leant back to put\nan arm about me, drew my face to her and kissed me again and again. I\nlifted her and held her in my arms. She gave a little smothered cry to\nfeel herself so held.\n\nNever before had I known the quality of passionate kisses.\n\nSomebody became audible in the shop outside.\n\nWe started back from one another with flushed faces and bright and\nburning eyes.\n\n\"We can\'t talk here,\" I whispered with a confident intimacy. \"Where do\nyou go at five?\"\n\n\"Along the Embankment to Charing Cross,\" she answered as intimately.\n\"None of the others go that way...\"\n\n\"About half-past five?\"\n\n\"Yes, half-past five...\"\n\nThe door from the shop opened, and she sat down very quickly.\n\n\"I\'m glad,\" I said in a commonplace voice, \"that these new typewriters\nare all right.\"\n\nI went into the inner office and routed out the paysheet in order to\nfind her name--Effie Rink. And did no work at all that afternoon. I\nfretted about that dingy little den like a beast in a cage.\n\nWhen presently I went out, Effie was working with an extraordinary\nappearance of calm--and there was no look for me at all....\n\nWe met and had our talk that evening, a talk in whispers when there was\nnone to overhear; we came to an understanding. It was strangely unlike\nany dream of romance I had ever entertained.\n\nVII\n\nI came back after a week\'s absence to my home again--a changed man.\nI had lived out my first rush of passion for Effie, had come to a\ncontemplation of my position. I had gauged Effie\'s place in the scheme\nof things, and parted from her for a time. She was back in her place at\nRaggett Street after a temporary indisposition. I did not feel in any\nway penitent or ashamed, I know, as I opened the little cast-iron gate\nthat kept Marion\'s front grader and Pampas Grass from the wandering dog.\nIndeed, if anything, I felt as if I had vindicated some right that had\nbeen in question. I came back to Marion with no sense of wrong-doing at\nall with, indeed, a new friendliness towards her. I don\'t know how it\nmay be proper to feel on such occasions; that is how I felt.\n\nI followed her in our drawing-room, standing beside the tall lamp-stand\nthat half filled the bay as though she had just turned from watching for\nme at the window. There was something in her pale face that arrested me.\nShe looked as if she had not been sleeping. She did not come forward to\ngreet me.\n\n\"You\'ve come home,\" she said.\n\n\"As I wrote to you.\"\n\nShe stood very still, a dusky figure against the bright window.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" she asked.\n\n\"East Coast,\" I said easily.\n\nShe paused for a moment. \"I KNOW,\" she said.\n\nI stared at her. It was the most amazing moment in any life....\n\n\"By Jove!\" I said at last, \"I believe you do!\"\n\n\"And then you come home to me!\"\n\nI walked to the hearthrug and stood quite still there regarding this new\nsituation.\n\n\"I didn\'t dream,\" she began. \"How could you do such a thing?\"\n\nIt seemed a long interval before either of us spoke another word.\n\n\"Who knows about it?\" I asked at last.\n\n\"Smithie\'s brother. They were at Cromer.\"\n\n\"Confound Cromer! Yes!\"\n\n\"How could you bring yourself\"\n\nI felt a spasm of petulant annoyance at this unexpected catastrophe.\n\n\"I should like to wring Smithie\'s brother\'s neck,\" I said....\n\nMarion spoke in dry, broken fragments of sentences. \"You... I\'d always\nthought that anyhow you couldn\'t deceive me... I suppose all men are\nhorrid--about this.\"\n\n\"It doesn\'t strike me as horrid. It seems to me the most necessary\nconsequence--and natural thing in the world.\"\n\nI became aware of some one moving about in the passage, and went and\nshut the door of the room, then I walked back to the hearthrug and\nturned.\n\n\"It\'s rough on you,\" I said. \"But I didn\'t mean you to know. You\'ve\nnever cared for me. I\'ve had the devil of a time. Why should you mind?\"\n\nShe sat down in a draped armchair. \"I HAVE cared for you,\" she said.\n\nI shrugged my shoulders.\n\n\"I suppose,\" she said, \"SHE cares for you?\"\n\nI had no answer.\n\n\"Where is she now?\"\n\n\"Oh! does it matter to you?... Look here, Marion! This--this I didn\'t\nanticipate. I didn\'t mean this thing to smash down on you like this.\nBut, you know, something had to happen. I\'m sorry--sorry to the bottom\nof my heart that things have come to this between us. But indeed, I\'m\ntaken by surprise. I don\'t know where I am--I don\'t know how we got\nhere. Things took me by surprise. I found myself alone with her one day.\nI kissed her. I went on. It seemed stupid to go back. And besides--why\nshould I have gone back? Why should I? From first to last, I\'ve hardly\nthought of it as touching you.... Damn!\"\n\nShe scrutinised my face, and pulled at the ball-fringe of the little\ntable beside her.\n\n\"To think of it,\" she said. \"I don\'t believe I can ever touch you\nagain.\"\n\nWe kept a long silence. I was only beginning to realise in the most\nsuperficial way the immense catastrophe that had happened between us.\nEnormous issues had rushed upon us. I felt unprepared and altogether\ninadequate. I was unreasonably angry. There came a rush of stupid\nexpressions to my mind that my rising sense of the supreme importance\nof the moment saved me from saying. The gap of silence widened until\nit threatened to become the vast memorable margin of some one among a\nthousand trivial possibilities of speech that would vex our relations\nfor ever.\n\nOur little general servant tapped at the door--Marion always liked the\nservant to tap--and appeared.\n\n\"Tea, M\'m,\" she said--and vanished, leaving the door open.\n\n\"I will go upstairs,\" said I, and stopped. \"I will go upstairs\" I\nrepeated, \"and put my bag in the spare room.\"\n\nWe remained motionless and silent for a few seconds.\n\n\"Mother is having tea with us to-day,\" Marion remarked at last, and\ndropped the worried end of ball-fringe and stood up slowly....\n\nAnd so, with this immense discussion of our changed relations hanging\nover us, we presently had tea with the unsuspecting Mrs. Ramboat and\nthe spaniel. Mrs. Ramboat was too well trained in her position to remark\nupon our somber preoccupation. She kept a thin trickle of talk going,\nand told us, I remember, that Mr. Ramboat was \"troubled\" about his\ncannas.\n\n\"They don\'t come up and they won\'t come up. He\'s been round and had an\nexplanation with the man who sold him the bulbs--and he\'s very heated\nand upset.\"\n\nThe spaniel was a great bore, begging and doing small tricks first at\none and then at the other of us. Neither of us used his name. You see\nwe had called him Miggles, and made a sort of trio in the baby-talk of\nMutney and Miggles and Ming.\n\nVIII\n\n\nThen presently we resumed our monstrous, momentous dialogue. I can\'t now\nmake out how long that dialogue went on. It spread itself, I know,\nin heavy fragments over either three days or four. I remember myself\ngrouped with Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking\nstanding in our dining-room, saving this thing or that. Twice we went\nfor long walks. And we had a long evening alone together, with jaded\nnerves and hearts that fluctuated between a hard and dreary recognition\nof facts and, on my part at least, a strange unwonted tenderness;\nbecause in some extraordinary way this crisis had destroyed our mutual\napathy and made us feel one another again.\n\nIt was a dialogue that had discrepant parts that fell into lumps of\ntalk that failed to join on to their predecessors, that began again at\na different level, higher or lower, that assumed new aspects in the\nintervals and assimilated new considerations. We discussed the fact that\nwe two were no longer lovers; never before had we faced that. It seems\na strange thing to write, but as I look back, I see clearly that those\nseveral days were the time when Marion and I were closest together,\nlooked for the first and last time faithfully and steadfastly into each\nother\'s soul. For those days only, there were no pretences, I made no\nconcessions to her nor she to me; we concealed nothing, exaggerated\nnothing. We had done with pretending. We had it out plainly and soberly\nwith each other. Mood followed mood and got its stark expression.\n\nOf course there was quarreling between us, bitter quarreling, and we\nsaid things to one another--long pent-up things that bruised and crushed\nand cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate\nconfrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy,\ntear-stained, injured, implacable and dignified.\n\n\"You love her?\" she asked once, and jerked that doubt into my mind.\n\nI struggled with tangled ideas and emotions. \"I don\'t know what love\nis. It\'s all sorts of things--it\'s made of a dozen strands twisted in a\nthousand ways.\"\n\n\"But you want her? You want her now--when you think of her?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I reflected. \"I want her--right enough.\"\n\n\"And me? Where do I come in?\"\n\n\"I suppose you come in here.\"\n\n\"Well, but what are you going to do?\"\n\n\"Do!\" I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon me.\n\"What do you want me to do?\"\n\nAs I look back upon all that time--across a gulf of fifteen active\nyears--I find I see it with an understanding judgment. I see it as if\nit were the business of some one else--indeed of two other\npeople--intimately known yet judged without passion. I see now that this\nshock, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in real fact bring out\na mind and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged\nfrom habits, timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow\nwill-impulse, and became a personality.\n\nHer ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged\npride. This situation must end. She asked me categorically to give up\nEffie, and I, full of fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused.\n\n\"It\'s too late, Marion,\" I said. \"It can\'t be done like that.\"\n\n\"Then we can\'t very well go on living together,\" she said. \"Can we?\"\n\n\"Very well,\" I deliberated \"if you must have it so.\"\n\n\"Well, can we?\"\n\n\"Can you stay in this house? I mean--if I go away?\"\n\n\"I don\'t know.... I don\'t think I could.\"\n\n\"Then--what do you want?\"\n\nSlowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word\n\"divorce\" was before us.\n\n\"If we can\'t live together we ought to be free,\" said Marion.\n\n\"I don\'t know anything of divorce,\" I said--\"if you mean that. I don\'t\nknow how it is done. I shall have to ask somebody--or look it up....\nPerhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We may as well face it.\"\n\nWe began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent\nfutures might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my\nquestions answered by a solicitor.\n\n\"We can\'t as a matter of fact,\" I said, \"get divorced as things are.\nApparently, so far as the law goes you\'ve got to stand this sort of\nthing. It\'s silly but that is the law. However, it\'s easy to arrange a\ndivorce. In addition to adultery there must be desertion or cruelty.\nTo establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that\nsort, before witnesses. That\'s impossible--but it\'s simple to desert you\nlegally. I have to go away from you; that\'s all. I can go on sending you\nmoney--and you bring a suit, what is it?--for Restitution of Conjugal\nRights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey. Then you can go on to\ndivorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make\nme come back. If we don\'t make it up within six months and if you don\'t\nbehave scandalously the Decree is made absolute. That\'s the end of the\nfuss. That\'s how one gets unmarried. It\'s easier, you see, to marry than\nunmarry.\"\n\n\"And then--how do I live? What becomes of me?\"\n\n\"You\'ll have an income. They call it alimony. From a third to a half of\nmy present income--more if you like--I don\'t mind--three hundred a year,\nsay. You\'ve got your old people to keep and you\'ll need all that.\"\n\n\"And then--then you\'ll be free?\"\n\n\"Both of us.\"\n\n\"And all this life you\'ve hated\"\n\nI looked up at her wrung and bitter face. \"I haven\'t hated it,\" I lied,\nmy voice near breaking with the pain of it all. \"Have you?\"\n\nIX\n\nThe perplexing thing about life is the irresolvable complexity of\nreality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong\ndone has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil.\nAs for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, resounded\na hundred discordant notes in the harsh angle of that shock. We were\nfuriously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously\nselfish, generously self-sacrificing.\n\nI remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn\'t hang\ntogether one with another, that contradicted one another, that were,\nnevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see\nthem now as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the\ncrumpled confusions of our complex moral landslide. Some I found\nirritating beyond measure. I answered her--sometimes quite abominably.\n\n\"Of course,\" she would say again and again, \"my life has been a\nfailure.\"\n\n\"I\'ve besieged you for three years,\" I would retort \"asking it not to\nbe. You\'ve done as you pleased. If I\'ve turned away at last--\"\n\nOr again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage.\n\n\"How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well now--I suppose you have\nyour revenge.\"\n\n\"REVENGE!\" I echoed.\n\nThen she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives.\n\n\"I ought to earn my own living,\" she would insist.\n\n\"I want to be quite independent. I\'ve always hated London. Perhaps I\nshall try a poultry farm and bees. You won\'t mind at first my being a\nburden. Afterwards--\"\n\n\"We\'ve settled all that,\" I said.\n\n\"I suppose you will hate me anyhow...\"\n\nThere were times when she seemed to regard our separation with\nabsolute complacency, when she would plan all sorts of freedoms and\ncharacteristic interests.\n\n\"I shall go out a lot with Smithie,\" she said.\n\nAnd once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed hate her for that I\ncannot even now quite forgive her.\n\n\"Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me...\"\n\nInto my memory of these pains and stresses comes the figure of Smithie,\nfull-charged with emotion, so breathless in the presence of the horrid\nvillain of the piece that she could make no articulate sounds. She\nhad long tearful confidences with Marion, I know, sympathetic close\nclingings. There were moments when only absolute speechlessness\nprevented her giving me a stupendous \"talking-to\"--I could see it in\nher eye. The wrong things she would have said! And I recall, too,\nMrs. Ramboat\'s slow awakening to something in, the air, the growing\nexpression of solicitude in her eye, only her well-trained fear of\nMarion keeping her from speech.\n\nAnd at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether\nbeyond our control, parting came to Marion and me.\n\nI hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came\nto Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all other\nthings, had turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time\nthe prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on her\nproprietorship and pride. For the first time in her life she really\nshowed strong emotions in regard to me, for the first time, perhaps,\nthey really came to her. She began to weep slow, reluctant tears. I came\ninto her room, and found her asprawl on the bed, weeping.\n\n\"I didn\'t know,\" she cried. \"Oh! I didn\'t understand!\"\n\n\"I\'ve been a fool. All my life is a wreck!\n\n\"I shall be alone!...MUTNEY! Mutney, don\'t leave me! Oh! Mutney! I\ndidn\'t understand.\"\n\nI had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in those\nlast hours together that at last, too late, the longed-for thing had\nhappened and Marion had come alive. A new-born hunger for me lit her\neyes.\n\n\"Don\'t leave me!\" she said, \"don\'t leave me!\" She clung to me; she\nkissed me with tear-salt lips.\n\nI was promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this\nimpossible dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it\nneeded but a cry, but one word to have united us again for all our\nlives. Could we have united again? Would that passage have enlightened\nus for ever or should we have fallen back in a week or so into the old\nestrangement, the old temperamental opposition?\n\nOf that there is now no telling. Our own resolve carried us on our\npredestined way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers,\nparting inexorably, but all the preparations we had set going worked on\nlike a machine, and we made no attempt to stop them. My trunks and boxes\nwent to the station. I packed my bag with Marion standing before me. We\nwere like children who had hurt each other horribly in sheer stupidity,\nwho didn\'t know now how to remedy it. We belonged to each other\nimmensely--immensely. The cab came to the little iron gate.\n\n\"Good-bye!\" I said.\n\n\"Good-bye.\"\n\nFor a moment we held one another in each other\'s arms and\nkissed--incredibly without malice. We heard our little servant in the\npassage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves\nto one another. We were not lovers nor enemies, but two human souls in a\nfrank community of pain. I tore myself from her.\n\n\"Go away,\" I said to the servant, seeing that Marion had followed me\ndown.\n\nI felt her standing behind me as I spoke to the cab man.\n\nI got into the cab, resolutely not looking back, and then as it started\njumped up, craned out and looked at the door.\n\nIt was wide open, but she had disappeared....\n\nI wonder--I suppose she ran upstairs.\n\nX\n\nSo I parted from Marion at an extremity of perturbation and regret, and\nwent, as I had promised and arranged, to Effie, who was waiting for me\nin apartments near Orpington. I remember her upon the station platform,\na bright, flitting figure looking along the train for me, and our walk\nover the fields in the twilight. I had expected an immense sense of\nrelief where at last the stresses of separation were over, but now\nI found I was beyond measure wretched and perplexed, full of the\nprofoundest persuasion of irreparable error. The dusk and somber Marion\nwere so alike, her sorrow seemed to be all about me. I had to hold\nmyself to my own plans, to remember that I must keep faith with Effie,\nwith Effie who had made no terms, exacted no guarantees, but flung\nherself into my hands.\n\nWe went across the evening fields in silence, towards a sky of deepening\ngold and purple, and Effie was close beside me always, very close,\nglancing up ever and again at my face.\n\nCertainly she knew I grieved for Marion, that ours was now no joyful\nreunion. But she showed no resentment and no jealousy. Extraordinarily,\nshe did not compete against Marion. Never once in all our time together\ndid she say an adverse word of Marion....\n\nShe set herself presently to dispel the shadow that brooded over me with\nthe same instinctive skill that some women will show with the trouble\nof a child. She made herself my glad and pretty slave and handmaid; she\nforced me at last to rejoice in her. Yet at the back of it all Marion\nremained, stupid and tearful and infinitely distressful, so that I was\nalmost intolerably unhappy for her--for her and the dead body of my\nmarried love.\n\nIt is all, as I tell it now, unaccountable to me. I go back into these\nremote parts, these rarely visited uplands and lonely tares of memory,\nand it seems to me still a strange country. I had thought I might be\ngoing to some sensuous paradise with Effie, but desire which fills the\nuniverse before its satisfaction, vanishes utterly like the going of\ndaylight--with achievement. All the facts and forms of life remain\ndarkling and cold. It was an upland of melancholy questionings, a region\nfrom which I saw all the world at new angles and in new aspects; I had\noutflanked passion and romance.\n\nI had come into a condition of vast perplexities. For the first time in\nmy life, at least so it seems to me now in this retrospect, I looked at\nmy existence as a whole.\n\nSince this was nothing, what was I doing? What was I for?\n\nI was going to and fro about Tono-Bungay--the business I had taken up\nto secure Marion and which held me now in spite of our intimate\nseparation--and snatching odd week-ends and nights for Orpington, and\nall the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations. I used\nto fall into musing in the trains, I became even a little inaccurate and\nforgetful about business things. I have the clearest memory of myself\nsitting thoughtful in the evening sunlight on a grassy hillside that\nlooked toward Seven Oaks and commanded a wide sweep of country, and that\nI was thinking out my destiny. I could almost write my thought down now,\nI believe, as they came to me that afternoon. Effie, restless little\ncockney that she was, rustled and struggled in a hedgerow below,\ngathering flowers, discovering flowers she had never seen before. I\nhad. I remember, a letter from Marion in my pocket. I had even made some\ntentatives for return, for a reconciliation; Heaven knows now how I\nhad put it! but her cold, ill-written letter repelled me. I perceived\nI could never face that old inconclusive dullness of life again, that\nstagnant disappointment. That, anyhow, wasn\'t possible. But what was\npossible? I could see no way of honour or fine living before me at all.\n\n\"What am I to do with life?\" that was the question that besieged me.\n\nI wondered if all the world was even as I, urged to this by one motive\nand to that by another, creatures of chance and impulse and unmeaning\ntraditions. Had I indeed to abide by what I had said and done and\nchosen? Was there nothing for me in honour but to provide for Effie, go\nback penitent to Marion and keep to my trade in rubbish--or find some\nfresh one--and so work out the residue of my days? I didn\'t accept that\nfor a moment. But what else was I to do? I wondered if my case was\nthe case of many men, whether in former ages, too, men had been so\nguideless, so uncharted, so haphazard in their journey into life. In the\nMiddle Ages, in the old Catholic days, one went to a priest, and he said\nwith all the finality of natural law, this you are and this you must do.\nI wondered whether even in the Middle Ages I should have accepted that\nruling without question.\n\nI remember too very distinctly how Effie came and sat beside me on a\nlittle box: that was before the casement window of our room.\n\n\"Gloomkins,\" said she.\n\nI smiled and remained head on hand, looking out of the window forgetful\nof her.\n\n\"Did you love your wife so well?\" she whispered softly.\n\n\"Oh!\" I cried, recalled again; \"I don\'t know. I don\'t understand these\nthings. Life is a thing that hurts, my dear! It hurts without logic or\nreason. I\'ve blundered! I didn\'t understand. Anyhow--there is no need to\ngo hurting you, is there?\"\n\nAnd I turned about and drew her to me, and kissed her ear....\n\nYes, I had a very bad time--I still recall. I suffered, I suppose, from\na sort of ennui of the imagination. I found myself without an object to\nhold my will together. I sought. I read restlessly and discursively.\nI tried Ewart and got no help from him. As I regard it all now in this\nretrospect, it seems to me as if in those days of disgust and abandoned\naims I discovered myself for the first time. Before that I had seen only\nthe world and things in it, had sought them self-forgetful of all but\nmy impulse. Now I found myself GROUPED with a system of appetites and\nsatisfactions, with much work to do--and no desire, it seemed, left in\nme.\n\nThere were moments when I thought of suicide. At times my life appeared\nbefore me in bleak, relentless light, a series of ignorances, crude\nblunderings, degradation and cruelty. I had what the old theologians\ncall a \"conviction of sin.\" I sought salvation--not perhaps in the\nformula a Methodist preacher would recognise but salvation nevertheless.\n\nMen find their salvation nowadays in many ways. Names and forms don\'t, I\nthink, matter very much; the real need is something that we can hold\nand that holds one. I have known a man find that determining factor in\na dry-plate factory, and another in writing a history of the Manor. So\nlong as it holds one, it does not matter. Many men and women nowadays\ntake up some concrete aspect of Socialism or social reform. But\nSocialism for me has always been a little bit too human, too set about\nwith personalities and foolishness. It isn\'t my line. I don\'t like\nthings so human. I don\'t think I\'m blind to the fun, the surprises, the\njolly little coarsenesses and insufficiency of life, to the \"humour of\nit,\" as people say, and to adventure, but that isn\'t the root of the\nmatter with me. There\'s no humour in my blood. I\'m in earnest in warp\nand woof. I stumble and flounder, but I know that over all these merry\nimmediate things, there are other things that are great and serene, very\nhigh, beautiful things--the reality. I haven\'t got it, but it\'s there\nnevertheless. I\'m a spiritual guttersnipe in love with unimaginable\ngoddesses. I\'ve never seen the goddesses nor ever shall--but it takes\nall the fun out of the mud--and at times I fear it takes all the\nkindliness, too.\n\nBut I\'m talking of things I can\'t expect the reader to understand,\nbecause I don\'t half understand them myself. There is something links\nthings for me, a sunset or so, a mood or so, the high air, something\nthere was in Marion\'s form and colour, something I find and lose in\nMantegna\'s pictures, something in the lines of these boats I make. (You\nshould see X2, my last and best!)\n\nI can\'t explain myself, I perceive. Perhaps it all comes to this, that\nI am a hard and morally limited cad with a mind beyond my merits.\nNaturally I resist that as a complete solution. Anyhow, I had a sense of\ninexorable need, of distress and insufficiency that was unendurable, and\nfor a time this aeronautical engineering allayed it....\n\nIn the end of this particular crisis of which I tell so badly, I\nidealised Science. I decided that in power and knowledge lay the\nsalvation of my life, the secret that would fill my need; that to these\nthings I would give myself.\n\nI emerged at last like a man who has been diving in darkness, clutching\nat a new resolve for which he had groped desperately and long.\n\nI came into the inner office suddenly one day--it must have been just\nbefore the time of Marion\'s suit for restitution--and sat down before my\nuncle.\n\n\"Look here,\" I said, \"I\'m sick of this.\"\n\n\"HulLO!\" he answered, and put some papers aside.\n\n\"What\'s up, George?\"\n\n\"Things are wrong.\"\n\n\"As how?\"\n\n\"My life,\" I said, \"it\'s a mess, an infinite mess.\"\n\n\"She\'s been a stupid girl, George,\" he said; \"I partly understand. But\nyou\'re quit of her now, practically, and there\'s just as good fish in\nthe sea--\"\n\n\"Oh! it\'s not that!\" I cried. \"That\'s only the part that shows. I\'m\nsick--I\'m sick of all this damned rascality.\"\n\n\"Eh? Eh?\" said my uncle. \"WHAT--rascality?\"\n\n\"Oh, YOU know. I want some STUFF, man. I want something to hold on to. I\nshall go amok if I don\'t get it. I\'m a different sort of beast from\nyou. You float in all this bunkum. _I_ feel like a man floundering in a\nuniverse of soapsuds, up and downs, east and west. I can\'t stand it. I\nmust get my foot on something solid or--I don\'t know what.\"\n\nI laughed at the consternation in his face.\n\n\"I mean it,\" I said. \"I\'ve been thinking it over. I\'ve made up my mind.\nIt\'s no good arguing. I shall go in for work--real work. No! this isn\'t\nwork; it\'s only laborious cheating. But I\'ve got an idea! It\'s an old\nidea--I thought of years ago, but it came back to me. Look here! Why\nshould I fence about with you? I believe the time has come for flying to\nbe possible. Real flying!\"\n\n\"Flying!\"\n\nI stuck to that, and it helped me through the worst time in my life.\nMy uncle, after some half-hearted resistance and a talk with my aunt,\nbehaved like the father of a spoilt son. He fixed up an arrangement that\ngave me capital to play with, released me from too constant a solicitude\nfor the newer business developments--this was in what I may call the\nlater Moggs period of our enterprises--and I went to work at once with\ngrim intensity.\n\nBut I will tell of my soaring and flying machines in the proper place.\nI\'ve been leaving the story of my uncle altogether too long. I\nwanted merely to tell how it was I took to this work. I took to these\nexperiments after I had sought something that Marion in some indefinable\nway had seemed to promise. I toiled and forgot myself for a time, and\ndid many things. Science too has been something of an irresponsive\nmistress since, though I\'ve served her better than I served Marion. But\nat the time Science, with her order, her inhuman distance, yet steely\ncertainties, saved me from despair.\n\nWell, I have still to fly; but incidentally I have invented the lightest\nengines in the world.\n\nI am trying to tell of all the things that happened to me. It\'s hard\nenough simply to get it put down in the remotest degree right. But this\nis a novel, not a treatise. Don\'t imagine that I am coming presently\nto any sort of solution of my difficulties. Here among my drawings and\nhammerings NOW, I still question unanswering problems. All my life has\nbeen at bottom, SEEKING, disbelieving always, dissatisfied always with\nthe thing seen and the thing believed, seeking something in toil, in\nforce, in danger, something whose name and nature I do not clearly\nunderstand, something beautiful, worshipful, enduring, mine profoundly\nand fundamentally, and the utter redemption of myself; I don\'t know--all\nI can tell is that it is something I have ever failed to find.\n\nXI\n\nBut before I finish this chapter and book altogether and go on with\nthe great adventure of my uncle\'s career. I may perhaps tell what else\nremains to tell of Marion and Effie, and then for a time set my private\nlife behind me.\n\nFor a time Marion and I corresponded with some regularity, writing\nfriendly but rather uninforming letters about small business things. The\nclumsy process of divorce completed itself.\n\nShe left the house at Ealing and went into the country with her aunt and\nparents, taking a small farm near Lewes in Sussex. She put up glass, she\nput in heat for her father, happy man! and spoke of figs and peaches.\nThe thing seemed to promise well throughout a spring and summer, but the\nSussex winter after London was too much for the Ramboats. They got very\nmuddy and dull; Mr. Ramboat killed a cow by improper feeding, and that\ndisheartened them all. A twelvemonth saw the enterprise in difficulties.\nI had to help her out of this, and then they returned to London and she\nwent into partnership with Smithie at Streatham, and ran a business that\nwas intimated on the firm\'s stationery as \"Robes.\" The parents and aunt\nwere stowed away in a cottage somewhere. After that the letters became\ninfrequent. But in one I remember a postscript that had a little stab of\nour old intimacy: \"Poor old Miggles is dead.\"\n\nNearly eight years slipped by. I grew up. I grew in experience, in\ncapacity, until I was fully a man, but with many new interests, living\non a larger scale in a wider world than I could have dreamt of in my\nMarion days. Her letters become rare and insignificant. At last came a\ngap of silence that made me curious. For eighteen months or more I had\nnothing from Marion save her quarterly receipts through the bank. Then I\ndamned at Smithie, and wrote a card to Marion.\n\n\"Dear Marion,\" I said, \"how goes it?\"\n\nShe astonished me tremendously by telling me she had married again--\"a\nMr. Wachorn, a leading agent in the paper-pattern trade.\" But she still\nwrote on the Ponderevo and Smith (Robes) notepaper, from the Ponderevo\nand Smith address.\n\nAnd that, except for a little difference of opinion about the\ncontinuance of alimony which gave me some passages of anger, and the use\nof my name by the firm, which also annoyed me, is the end of Marion\'s\nhistory for me, and she vanishes out of this story. I do not know where\nshe is or what she is doing. I do not know whether she is alive or dead.\nIt seems to me utterly grotesque that two people who have stood so close\nto one another as she and I should be so separated, but so it is between\nus.\n\nEffie, too, I have parted from, though I still see her at times. Between\nus there was never any intention of marriage nor intimacy of soul. She\nhad a sudden, fierce, hot-blooded passion for me and I for her, but\nI was not her first lover nor her last. She was in another world from\nMarion. She had a queer, delightful nature; I\'ve no memory of\never seeing her sullen or malicious. She was--indeed she was\nmagnificently--eupeptic. That, I think, was the central secret of her\nagreeableness, and, moreover, that she was infinitely kind-hearted. I\nhelped her at last into an opening she coveted, and she amazed me by a\nsudden display of business capacity. She has now a typewriting bureau\nin Riffle\'s Inn, and she runs it with a brisk vigour and considerable\nsuccess, albeit a certain plumpness has overtaken her. And she still\nloves her kind. She married a year or so ago a boy half her age--a\nwretch of a poet, a wretched poet, and given to drugs, a thing with lank\nfair hair always getting into his blue eyes, and limp legs. She did it,\nshe said, because he needed nursing....\n\nBut enough of this disaster of my marriage and of my early love affairs;\nI have told all that is needed for my picture to explain how I came to\ntake up aeroplane experiments and engineering science; let me get back\nto my essential story, to Tono-Bungay and my uncle\'s promotions and to\nthe vision of the world these things have given me.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE THIRD\n\nTHE GREAT DAYS OF TONO-BUNGAY\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIRST\n\nTHE HARDINGHAM HOTEL, AND HOW WE BECAME BIG PEOPLE\n\nI\n\nBut now that I resume the main line of my story it may be well to\ndescribe the personal appearance of my uncle as I remember him during\nthose magnificent years that followed his passage from trade to finance.\nThe little man plumped up very considerably during the creation of the\nTono-Bungay property, but with the increasing excitements that followed\nthat first flotation came dyspepsia and a certain flabbiness and falling\naway. His abdomen--if the reader will pardon my taking his features\nin the order of their value--had at first a nice full roundness, but\nafterwards it lost tone without, however, losing size. He always went as\nthough he was proud of it and would make as much of it as possible. To\nthe last his movements remained quick and sudden, his short firm legs,\nas he walked, seemed to twinkle rather than display the scissors-stride\nof common humanity, and he never seemed to have knees, but instead, a\ndispersed flexibility of limb.\n\nThere was, I seem to remember, a secular intensification of his\nfeatures; his nose developed character, became aggressive, stuck out at\nthe world more and more; the obliquity of his mouth, I think, increased.\nFrom the face that returns to my memory projects a long cigar that is\nsometimes cocked jauntily up from the higher corner, that sometimes\ndroops from the lower;--it was as eloquent as a dog\'s tail, and he\nremoved it only for the more emphatic modes of speech. He assumed a\nbroad black ribbon for his glasses, and wore them more and more askew as\ntime went on. His hair seemed to stiffen with success, but towards the\nclimax it thinned greatly over the crown, and he brushed it hard back\nover his ears where, however, it stuck out fiercely. It always stuck out\nfiercely over his forehead, up and forward.\n\nHe adopted an urban style of dressing with the onset of Tono-Bungay and\nrarely abandoned it. He preferred silk hats with ample rich brims, often\na trifle large for him by modern ideas, and he wore them at various\nangles to his axis; his taste in trouserings was towards fairly emphatic\nstripes and his trouser cut was neat; he liked his frock-coat long and\nfull, although that seemed to shorten him. He displayed a number of\nvaluable rings, and I remember one upon his left little finger with a\nlarge red stone bearing Gnostic symbols. \"Clever chaps, those Gnostics,\nGeorge,\" he told me. \"Means a lot. Lucky!\" He never had any but a black\nmohair watch-chair. In the country he affected grey and a large\ngrey cloth top-hat, except when motoring; then he would have a brown\ndeer-stalker cap and a fur suit of esquimaux cut with a sort of boot-end\nto the trousers. Of an evening he would wear white waistcoats and plain\ngold studs. He hated diamonds. \"Flashy,\" he said they were. \"Might as\nwell wear--an income tax-receipt. All very well for Park Lane. Unsold\nstock. Not my style. Sober financier, George.\"\n\nSo much for his visible presence. For a time it was very familiar to\nthe world, for at the crest of the boom he allowed quite a number\nof photographs and at least one pencil sketch to be published in the\nsixpenny papers.\n\nHis voice declined during those years from his early tenor to a flat\nrich quality of sound that my knowledge of music is inadequate to\ndescribe. His Zzz-ing inrush of air became less frequent as he ripened,\nbut returned in moments of excitement. Throughout his career, in spite\nof his increasing and at last astounding opulence, his more intimate\nhabits remained as simple as they had been at Wimblehurst. He would\nnever avail himself of the services of a valet; at the very climax of\nhis greatness his trousers were folded by a housemaid and his shoulders\nbrushed as he left his house or hotel. He became wary about breakfast\nas life advanced, and at one time talked much of Dr. Haig and uric acid.\nBut for other meals he remained reasonably omnivorous. He was something\nof a gastronome, and would eat anything he particularly liked in an\naudible manner, and perspire upon his forehead. He was a studiously\nmoderate drinker--except when the spirit of some public banquet or some\ngreat occasion caught him and bore him beyond his wariness--there\nhe would, as it were, drink inadvertently and become flushed and\ntalkative--about everything but his business projects.\n\nTo make the portrait complete one wants to convey an effect of sudden,\nquick bursts of movement like the jumps of a Chinese-cracker to indicate\nthat his pose whatever it is, has been preceded and will be followed\nby a rush. If I were painting him, I should certainly give him for\na background that distressed, uneasy sky that was popular in the\neighteenth century, and at a convenient distance a throbbing motor-car,\nvery big and contemporary, a secretary hurrying with papers, and an\nalert chauffeur.\n\nSuch was the figure that created and directed the great property of\nTono-Bungay, and from the successful reconstruction of that company\npassed on to a slow crescendo of magnificent creations and promotions\nuntil the whole world of investors marveled. I have already I think,\nmentioned how, long before we offered Tono Bungay to the public, we took\nover the English agency of certain American specialties. To this was\npresently added our exploitation of Moggs\' Domestic Soap, and so he took\nup the Domestic Convenience Campaign that, coupled with his equatorial\nrotundity and a certain resolute convexity in his bearings won my uncle\nhis Napoleonic title.\n\nII\n\nIt illustrates the romantic element in modern commerce that my uncle\nmet young Moggs at a city dinner--I think it was the Bottle-makers\'\nCompany--when both were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety\nof the occasion. This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a very\ntypical instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His\npeople had taken him about in his youth as the Ruskins took their John\nand fostered a passion for history in him, and the actual management of\nthe Moggs\' industry had devolved upon a cousin and a junior partner.\n\nMr. Moggs, being of a studious and refined disposition, had just\ndecided--after a careful search for a congenial subject in which he\nwould not be constantly reminded of soap--to devote himself to the\nHistory of the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated\nresponsibilities upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs\nbewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle\noffered to lighten his burden by a partnership then and there. They even\ngot to terms--extremely muzzy terms, but terms nevertheless.\n\nEach gentleman wrote the name and address of the other on his cuff, and\nthey separated in a mood of brotherly carelessness, and next morning\nneither seems to have thought to rescue his shirt from the wash until\nit was too late. My uncle made a painful struggle--it was one of my\nbusiness mornings--to recall name and particulars.\n\n\"He was an aquarium-faced, long, blond sort of chap, George, with\nglasses and a genteel accent,\" he said.\n\nI was puzzled. \"Aquarium-faced?\"\n\n\"You know how they look at you. His stuff was soap, I\'m pretty\nnearly certain. And he had a name--And the thing was the straightest\nBit-of-All-right you ever. I was clear enough to spot that...\"\n\nWe went out at last with knitted brows, and wandered up into Finsbury\nseeking a good, well-stocked looking grocer. We called first on a\nchemist for a pick-me-up for my uncle, and then we found the shop we\nneeded.\n\n\"I want,\" said my uncle, \"half a pound of every sort of soap you got.\nYes, I want to take them now. Wait a moment, George.... Now what sort of\nsoap d\'you call THAT?\"\n\nAt the third repetition of that question the young man said, \"Moggs\'\nDomestic.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said my uncle. \"You needn\'t guess again. Come along, George,\nlet\'s go to a telephone and get on to Moggs. Oh--the order? Certainly. I\nconfirm it. Send it all--send it all to the Bishop of London; he\'ll have\nsome good use for it--(First-rate man, George, he is--charities and all\nthat)--and put it down to me, here\'s a card--Ponderevo--Tono-Bungay.\"\n\nThen we went on to Moggs and found him in a camel-hair dressing-jacket\nin a luxurious bed, drinking China tea, and got the shape of everything\nbut the figures fixed by lunch time.\n\nYoung Moggs enlarged my mind considerably; he was a sort of thing\nI hadn\'t met before; he seemed quite clean and well-informed and he\nassured me to never read newspapers nor used soap in any form at all,\n\"Delicate skin,\" he said.\n\n\"No objection to our advertising you wide and free?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"I draw the line at railway stations,\" said Moggs, \"south-coast cliffs,\ntheatre programmes, books by me and poetry generally--scenery--oh!--and\nthe Mercure de France.\"\n\n\"We\'ll get along,\" said my uncle.\n\n\"So long as you don\'t annoy me,\" said Moggs, lighting a cigarette, \"you\ncan make me as rich as you like.\"\n\nWe certainly made him no poorer. His was the first firm that was\nadvertised by a circumstantial history; we even got to illustrated\nmagazine articles telling of the quaint past of Moggs. We concocted\nMoggsiana. Trusting to our partner\'s preoccupation with the uncommercial\naspects of life, we gave graceful history--of Moggs the First, Moggs the\nSecond, Moggs the Third, and Moggs the Fourth. You must, unless you are\nvery young, remember some of them and our admirable block of a Georgian\nshop window. My uncle brought early nineteenth-century memoirs, soaked\nhimself in the style, and devised stories about old Moggs the First and\nthe Duke of Wellington, George the Third and the soap dealer (\"almost\ncertainly old Moggs\"). Very soon we had added to the original Moggs\'\nPrimrose several varieties of scented and superfatted, a \"special\nnurseries used in the household of the Duke of Kent and for the old\nQueen in Infancy,\" a plate powder, \"the Paragon,\" and a knife powder.\nWe roped in a good little second-rate black-lead firm, and carried their\norigins back into the mists of antiquity. It was my uncle\'s own unaided\nidea that we should associate that commodity with the Black Prince. He\nbecame industriously curious about the past of black-lead. I remember\nhis button-holing the president of the Pepys Society.\n\n\"I say, is there any black-lead in Pepys? You know--black-lead--for\ngrates! OR DOES HE PASS IT OVER AS A MATTER OF COURSE?\"\n\nHe became in those days the terror of eminent historians. \"Don\'t want\nyour drum and trumpet history--no fear,\" he used to say. \"Don\'t want\nto know who was who\'s mistress, and why so-and-so devastated such a\nprovince; that\'s bound to be all lies and upsy-down anyhow. Not my\naffair. Nobody\'s affair now. Chaps who did it didn\'t clearly know....\nWhat I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for\nHousemaid\'s Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting,\nand was the Black Prince--you know the Black Prince--was he enameled\nor painted, or what? I think myself, black-leaded--very likely--like\npipe-clay--but DID they use blacking so early?\"\n\nSo it came about that in designing and writing those Moggs\' Soap\nAdvertisements, that wrought a revolution in that department of\nliterature, my uncle was brought to realise not only the lost history,\nbut also the enormous field for invention and enterprise that lurked\namong the little articles, the dustpans and mincers, the mousetraps\nand carpet-sweepers that fringe the shops of the oilman and domestic\nironmonger. He was recalled to one of the dreams of his youth, to his\nconception of the Ponderevo Patent Flat that had been in his mind so\nearly as the days before I went to serve him at Wimblehurst. \"The Home,\nGeorge,\" he said, \"wants straightening up. Silly muddle! Things that get\nin the way. Got to organise it.\"\n\nFor a time he displayed something like the zeal of a genuine social\nreformer in relation to these matters.\n\n\"We\'ve got to bring the Home Up to Date? That\'s my idee, George. We got\nto make a civilised domestic machine out of these relics of barbarism.\nI\'m going to hunt up inventors, make a corner in d\'mestic ideas.\nEverything. Balls of string that won\'t dissolve into a tangle, and gum\nthat won\'t dry into horn. See? Then after conveniences--beauty. Beauty,\nGeorge! All these few things ought to be made fit to look at; it\'s your\naunt\'s idea, that. Beautiful jam-pots! Get one of those new art chaps\nto design all the things they make ugly now. Patent carpet-sweepers by\nthese greenwood chaps, housemaid\'s boxes it\'ll be a pleasure to fall\nover--rich coloured house-flannels. Zzzz. Pails, f\'rinstance. Hang \'em\nup on the walls like warming-pans. All the polishes and things in such\ntins--you\'ll want to cuddle \'em, George! See the notion? \'Sted of all\nthe silly ugly things we got.\"...\n\nWe had some magnificent visions; they so affected me that when I passed\nironmongers and oil-shops they seemed to me as full of promise as\ntrees in late winter, flushed with the effort to burst into leaf and\nflower.... And really we did do much towards that very brightness these\nshops display. They were dingy things in the eighties compared to what\nour efforts have made them now, grey quiet displays.\n\nWell, I don\'t intend to write down here the tortuous financial history\nof Moggs\' Limited, which was our first development of Moggs and Sons;\nnor will I tell very much of how from that we spread ourselves with\na larger and larger conception throughout the chandlery and minor\nironmongery, how we became agents for this little commodity, partners in\nthat, got a tentacle round the neck of a specialised manufacturer or so,\nsecured a pull upon this or that supply of raw material, and so prepared\nthe way for our second flotation, Domestic Utilities; \"Do it,\"\nthey reordered it in the city. And then came the reconstruction of\nTono-Bungay, and then \"Household services\" and the Boom!\n\nThat sort of development is not to be told in detail in a novel. I have,\nindeed, told much of it elsewhere. It is to be found set out at\nlength, painfully at length, in my uncle\'s examination and mine in\nthe bankruptcy proceedings, and in my own various statements after his\ndeath. Some people know everything in that story, some know it all\ntoo well, most do not want the details, it is the story of a man of\nimagination among figures, and unless you are prepared to collate\ncolumns of pounds, shillings and pence, compare dates and check\nadditions, you will find it very unmeaning and perplexing. And after\nall, you wouldn\'t find the early figures so much wrong as STRAINED. In\nthe matter of Moggs and Do Ut, as in the first Tono-Bungay promotion\nand in its reconstruction, we left the court by city standards without\na stain on our characters. The great amalgamation of Household Services\nwas my uncle\'s first really big-scale enterprise and his first display\nof bolder methods: for this we bought back Do Ut, Moggs (going strong\nwith a seven per cent. dividend) and acquired Skinnerton\'s polishes, the\nRiffleshaw properties and the Runcorn\'s mincer and coffee-mill business.\nTo that Amalgamation I was really not a party; I left it to my uncle\nbecause I was then beginning to get keen upon the soaring experiments\nI had taken on from the results then to hand of Lilienthal, Pilcher and\nthe Wright brothers. I was developing a glider into a flyer. I meant\nto apply power to this glider as soon as I could work out one or two\nresidual problems affecting the longitudinal stability. I knew that I\nhad a sufficiently light motor in my own modification of Bridger\'s\nlight turbine, but I knew too that until I had cured my aeroplane of a\ntendency demanding constant alertness from me, a tendency to jerk up its\nnose at unexpected moments and slide back upon me, the application of an\nengine would be little short of suicide.\n\nBut that I will tell about later. The point I was coming to was that I\ndid not realise until after the crash how recklessly my uncle had kept\nhis promise of paying a dividend of over eight per cent. on the ordinary\nshares of that hugely over-capitalised enterprise, Household Services.\n\nI drifted out of business affairs into my research much more than either\nI or my uncle had contemplated. Finance was much less to my taste\nthan the organisation of the Tono-Bungay factory. In the new field of\nenterprise there was a great deal of bluffing and gambling, of taking\nchances and concealing material facts--and these are hateful things to\nthe scientific type of mind. It wasn\'t fear I felt so much as an uneasy\ninaccuracy. I didn\'t realise dangers, I simply disliked the sloppy,\nrelaxing quality of this new sort of work. I was at last constantly\nmaking excuses not to come up to him in London. The latter part of his\nbusiness career recedes therefore beyond the circle of any particular\nlife. I lived more or less with him; I talked, I advised, I helped him\nat times to fight his Sunday crowd at Crest Hill, but I did not follow\nnor guide him. From the Do Ut time onward he rushed up the financial\nworld like a bubble in water and left me like some busy water-thing down\nbelow in the deeps.\n\nAnyhow, he was an immense success. The public was, I think, particularly\nattracted by the homely familiarity of his field of work--you never lost\nsight of your investment they felt, with the name on the house-flannel\nand shaving-strop--and its allegiance was secured by the Egyptian\nsolidity of his apparent results. Tono-Bungay, after its reconstruction,\npaid thirteen, Moggs seven, Domestic Utilities had been a safe-looking\nnine; here was Household Services with eight; on such a showing he had\nmerely to buy and sell Roeburn\'s Antiseptic fluid, Razor soaks and Bath\ncrystals in three weeks to clear twenty thousand pounds.\n\nI do think that as a matter of fact Roeburn\'s was good value at the\nprice at which he gave it to the public, at least until it was strained\nby ill-conserved advertisement. It was a period of expansion and\nconfidence; much money was seeking investment and \"Industrials\" were the\nfashion. Prices were rising all round. There remained little more for\nmy uncle to do therefore, in his climb to the high unstable crest\nof Financial Greatness but, as he said, to \"grasp the cosmic oyster,\nGeorge, while it gaped,\" which, being translated, meant for him to buy\nrespectable businesses confidently and courageously at the vendor\'s\nestimate, add thirty or forty thousand to the price and sell them again.\nHis sole difficulty indeed was the tactful management of the load\nof shares that each of these transactions left upon his hands. But I\nthought so little of these later things that I never fully appreciated\nthe peculiar inconveniences of that until it was too late to help him.\n\nIII\n\nWhen I think of my uncle near the days of his Great Boom and in\nconnection with the actualities of his enterprises, I think of him as\nI used to see him in the suite of rooms he occupied in the Hardingham\nHotel, seated at a great old oak writing-table, smoking, drinking, and\nincoherently busy; that was his typical financial aspect--our evenings,\nour mornings, our holidays, our motor-car expeditions, Lady Grove and\nCrest Hill belong to an altogether different set of memories.\n\nThese rooms in the Hardingham were a string of apartments along one\nhandsome thick-carpeted corridor. All the doors upon the corridor were\nlocked except the first; and my uncle\'s bedroom, breakfast-room and\nprivate sanctum were the least accessible and served by an entrance from\nthe adjacent passage, which he also used at times as a means of\nescape from importunate callers. The most eternal room was a general\nwaiting-room and very business-like in quality; it had one or two uneasy\nsofas, a number of chairs, a green baize table, and a collection of the\nvery best Moggs and Tone posters: and the plush carpets normal to the\nHardingham had been replaced by a grey-green cork linoleum; Here I\nwould always find a remarkable miscellany of people presided over by\na peculiarly faithful and ferocious looking commissioner, Ropper, who\nguarded the door that led a step nearer my uncle. Usually there would\nbe a parson or so, and one or two widows; hairy, eyeglassy, middle-aged\ngentlemen, some of them looking singularly like Edward Ponderevos\nwho hadn\'t come off, a variety of young and youngish men more or less\nattractively dressed, some with papers protruding from their pockets,\nothers with their papers decently concealed. And wonderful, incidental,\nfrowsy people.\n\nAll these persons maintained a practically hopeless siege--sometimes for\nweeks together; they had better have stayed at home. Next came a room\nfull of people who had some sort of appointment, and here one would find\nsmart-looking people, brilliantly dressed, nervous women hiding behind\nmagazines, nonconformist divines, clergy in gaiters, real business men,\nthese latter for the most part gentlemen in admirable morning dress who\nstood up and scrutinised my uncle\'s taste in water colours manfully and\nsometimes by the hour together. Young men again were here of various\nsocial origins, young Americans, treasonable clerks from other concerns,\nuniversity young men, keen-looking, most of them, resolute, reserved,\nbut on a sort of hair trigger, ready at any moment to be most voluble,\nmost persuasive.\n\nThis room had a window, too, looking out into the hotel courtyard with\nits fern-set fountains and mosaic pavement, and the young men would\nstand against this and sometimes even mutter. One day I heard one\nrepeating in all urgent whisper as I passed \"But you don\'t quite see,\nMr. Ponderevo, the full advantages, the FULL advantages--\" I met his eye\nand he was embarrassed.\n\nThen came a room with a couple of secretaries--no typewriters, because\nmy uncle hated the clatter--and a casual person or two sitting about,\nprojectors whose projects were being entertained. Here and in a further\nroom nearer the private apartments, my uncle\'s correspondence underwent\nan exhaustive process of pruning and digestion before it reached him.\nThen the two little rooms in which my uncle talked; my magic uncle who\nhad got the investing public--to whom all things were possible. As one\ncame in we would find him squatting with his cigar up and an expression\nof dubious beatitude upon his face, while some one urged him to grow\nstill richer by this or that.\n\n\"That\'ju, George?\" he used to say. \"Come in. Here\'s a thing. Tell\nhim--Mister--over again. Have a drink, George? No! Wise man! Liss\'n.\"\n\nI was always ready to listen. All sorts of financial marvels came out of\nthe Hardingham, more particularly during my uncle\'s last great flurry,\nbut they were nothing to the projects that passed in. It was the little\nbrown and gold room he sat in usually. He had had it redecorated by\nBordingly and half a dozen Sussex pictures by Webster hung about it.\nLatterly he wore a velveteen jacket of a golden-brown colour in this\napartment that I think over-emphasised its esthetic intention, and he\nalso added some gross Chinese bronzes.\n\nHe was, on the whole, a very happy man throughout all that wildly\nenterprising time. He made and, as I shall tell in its place, spent\ngreat sums of money. He was constantly in violent motion, constantly\nstimulated mentally and physically and rarely tired. About him was an\natmosphere of immense deference much of his waking life was triumphal\nand all his dreams. I doubt if he had any dissatisfaction with himself\nat all until the crash bore him down. Things must have gone very rapidly\nwith him.... I think he must have been very happy.\n\nAs I sit here writing about all these things, jerking down notes and\nthrowing them aside in my attempt to give some literary form to the tale\nof our promotions, the marvel of it all comes to me as if it came for\nthe first time the supreme unreason of it. At the climax of his Boom, my\nuncle at the most sparing estimate must have possessed in substance and\ncredit about two million pounds\'-worth of property to set off against\nhis vague colossal liabilities, and from first to last he must have had\na controlling influence in the direction of nearly thirty millions.\n\nThis irrational muddle of a community in which we live gave him that,\npaid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling\nit lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing, he economised\nnothing. I cannot claim that a single one of the great businesses\nwe organised added any real value to human life at all. Several like\nTono-Bungay were unmitigated frauds by any honest standard, the giving\nof nothing coated in advertisements for money. And the things the\nHardingham gave out, I repeat, were nothing to the things that came\nin. I think of the long procession of people who sat down before us and\npropounded this and that. Now it was a device for selling bread under\na fancy name and so escaping the laws as to weight--this was afterwards\nfloated as the Decorticated Health-Bread Company and bumped against the\nlaw--now it was a new scheme for still more strident advertisement,\nnow it was a story of unsuspected deposits of minerals, now a cheap and\nnasty substitute for this or that common necessity, now the treachery of\na too well-informed employee, anxious to become our partner. It was\nall put to us tentatively, persuasively. Sometimes one had a large pink\nblusterous person trying to carry us off our feet by his pseudo-boyish\nfrankness, now some dyspeptically yellow whisperer, now some earnest,\nspecially dressed youth with an eye-glass and a buttonhole, now some\nhomely-speaking, shrewd Manchester man or some Scotchman eager to be\nvery clear and full.\n\nMany came in couples or trios, often in tow of an explanatory solicitor.\nSome were white and earnest, some flustered beyond measure at their\nopportunity. Some of them begged and prayed to be taken up. My uncle\nchose what he wanted and left the rest. He became very autocratic to\nthese applicants.\n\nHe felt he could make them, and they felt so too. He had but to say\n\"No!\" and they faded out of existence.... He had become a sort of vortex\nto which wealth flowed of its own accord. His possessions increased by\nheaps; his shares, his leaseholds and mortgages and debentures.\n\nBehind his first-line things he found it necessary at last, and\nsanctioned by all the precincts, to set up three general trading\ncompanies, the London and African Investment Company, the British\nTraders\' Loan Company, and Business Organisations Limited. This was in\nthe culminating time when I had least to do with affairs. I don\'t say\nthat with any desire to exculpate myself; I admit I was a director\nof all three, and I will confess I was willfully incurious in that\ncapacity. Each of these companies ended its financial year solvent by\nselling great holdings of shares to one or other of its sisters, and\npaying a dividend out of the proceeds. I sat at the table and agreed.\nThat was our method of equilibrium at the iridescent climax of the\nbubble.\n\nYou perceive now, however, the nature of the services for which this\nfantastic community have him unmanageable wealth and power and real\nrespect. It was all a monstrous payment for courageous fiction, a\ngratuity in return for the one reality of human life--illusion. We gave\nthem a feeling of hope and profit; we sent a tidal wave of water and\nconfidence into their stranded affairs. \"We mint Faith, George,\" said my\nuncle one day. \"That\'s what we do. And by Jove we got to keep minting!\nWe been making human confidence ever since I drove the first cork of\nTono-Bungay.\"\n\n\"Coining\" would have been a better word than minting! And yet, you\nknow, in a sense he was right. Civilisation is possible only through\nconfidence, so that we can bank our money and go unarmed about the\nstreets. The bank reserve or a policeman keeping order in a jostling\nmultitude of people, are only slightly less impudent bluffs than my\nuncle\'s prospectuses. They couldn\'t for a moment \"make good\" if the\nquarter of what they guarantee was demanded of them. The whole of this\nmodern mercantile investing civilisation is indeed such stuff as dreams\nare made of. A mass of people swelters and toils, great railway systems\ngrow, cities arise to the skies and spread wide and far, mines are\nopened, factories hum, foundries roar, ships plough the seas, countries\nare settled; about this busy striving world the rich owners go,\ncontrolling all, enjoying all, confident and creating the confidence\nthat draws us all together into a reluctant, nearly unconscious\nbrotherhood. I wonder and plan my engines. The flags flutter, the crowds\ncheer, the legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me indeed at times that\nall this present commercial civilisation is no more than my poor uncle\'s\ncareer writ large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances; that\nits arithmetic is just as unsound, its dividends as ill-advised, its\nultimate aim as vague and forgotten; that it all drifts on perhaps to\nsome tremendous parallel to his individual disaster...\n\nWell, so it was we Boomed, and for four years and a half we lived a life\nof mingled substance and moonshine. Until our particular unsoundness\novertook us we went about in the most magnificent of motor-cars upon\ntangible high roads, made ourselves conspicuous and stately in splendid\nhouses, ate sumptuously and had a perpetual stream of notes and money\ntrickling into our pockets; hundreds of thousands of men and women\nrespected us, saluted us and gave us toil and honour; I asked, and my\nworksheets rose, my aeroplanes swooped out of nothingness to scare the\ndownland pe-wits; my uncle waved his hand and Lady Grove and all its\nassociations of chivalry and ancient peace were his; waved again, and\narchitects were busy planning the great palace he never finished at\nCrest Hill and an army of folkmen gathered to do his bidding, blue\nmarble came from Canada, and timber from New Zealand; and beneath it\nall, you know, there was nothing but fictitious values as evanescent as\nrainbow gold.\n\nIV\n\nI pass the Hardingham ever and again and glance aside through the great\narchway at the fountain and the ferns, and think of those receding days\nwhen I was so near the centre of our eddy of greed and enterprise. I see\nagain my uncle\'s face, white and intent, and hear him discourse, hear\nhim make consciously Napoleonic decisions, \"grip\" his nettles, put\nhis \"finger on the spot,\" \"bluff,\" say \"snap.\" He became particularly\naddicted to the last idiom. Towards the end every conceivable act took\nthe form of saying \"snap!\"\n\nThe odd fish that came to us! And among others came Gordon-Nasmyth, that\nqueer blend of romance and illegality who was destined to drag me into\nthe most irrelevant adventure in my life the Mordet Island affair; and\nleave me, as they say, with blood upon my hands. It is remarkable how\nlittle it troubles my conscience and how much it stirs my imagination,\nthat particular memory of the life I took. The story of Mordet Island\nhas been told in a government report and told all wrong; there are still\nexcellent reasons for leaving it wrong in places, but the liveliest\nappeals of discretion forbid my leaving it out altogether.\n\nI\'ve still the vividest memory of Gordon-Nasmyth\'s appearance in the\ninner sanctum, a lank, sunburnt person in tweeds with a yellow-brown\nhatchet face and one faded blue eye--the other was a closed and sunken\nlid--and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible\nstory of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered\non the beach behind Mordet\'s Island among white dead mangroves and the\nblack ooze of brackish water.\n\n\"What\'s quap?\" said my uncle on the fourth repetition of the word.\n\n\"They call it quap, or quab, or quabb,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth; \"but our\nrelations weren\'t friendly enough to get the accent right....\n\n\"But there the stuff is for the taking. They don\'t know about it.\nNobody knows about it. I got down to the damned place in a canoe alone.\nThe boys wouldn\'t come. I pretended to be botanising.\" ...\n\nTo begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic.\n\n\"Look here,\" he said when he first came in, shutting the door rather\ncarefully behind him as he spoke, \"do you two men--yes or no--want to\nput up six thousand--for--a clear good chance of fifteen hundred per\ncent. on your money in a year?\"\n\n\"We\'re always getting chances like that,\" said my uncle, cocking his\ncigar offensively, wiping his glasses and tilting his chair back. \"We\nstick to a safe twenty.\"\n\nGordon-Nasmyth\'s quick temper showed in a slight stiffening of his\nattitude.\n\n\"Don\'t you believe him,\" said I, getting up before he could reply.\n\"You\'re different, and I know your books. We\'re very glad you\'ve come\nto us. Confound it, uncle! Its Gordon-Nasmyth! Sit down. What is it?\nMinerals?\"\n\n\"Quap,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth, fixing his eye on me, \"in heaps.\"\n\n\"In heaps,\" said my uncle softly, with his glasses very oblique.\n\n\"You\'re only fit for the grocery,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth scornfully,\nsitting down and helping himself to one of my uncle\'s cigars. \"I\'m sorry\nI came. But, still, now I\'m here.... And first as to quap; quap, sir, is\nthe most radio-active stuff in the world. That\'s quap! It\'s a festering\nmass of earths and heavy metals, polonium, radium, ythorium, thorium,\ncarium, and new things, too. There\'s a stuff called Xk--provisionally.\nThere they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand. What it\nis, how it got made, I don\'t know. It\'s like as if some young creator\nhad been playing about there. There it lies in two heaps, one small,\none great, and the world for miles about it is blasted and scorched and\ndead. You can have it for the getting. You\'ve got to take it--that\'s\nall!\"\n\n\"That sounds all right,\" said I. \"Have you samples?\"\n\n\"Well--should I? You can have anything--up to two ounces.\"\n\n\"Where is it?\"...\n\nHis blue eye smiled at me and scrutinised me. He smoked and was\nfragmentary for a time, fending off my questions; then his story began\nto piece itself together. He conjured up a vision of this strange\nforgotten kink in the world\'s littoral, of the long meandering channels\nthat spread and divaricate and spend their burden of mud and silt within\nthe thunderbelt of Atlantic surf, of the dense tangled vegetation that\ncreeps into the shimmering water with root and sucker. He gave a sense\nof heat and a perpetual reek of vegetable decay, and told how at last\ncomes a break among these things, an arena fringed with bone-white dead\ntrees, a sight of the hard-blue sea line beyond the dazzling surf and\na wide desolation of dirty shingle and mud, bleached and scarred....\nA little way off among charred dead weeds stands the abandoned\nstation,--abandoned because every man who stayed two months at that\nstation stayed to die, eaten up mysteriously like a leper with its\ndismantled sheds and its decaying pier of wormrotten and oblique piles\nand planks, still insecurely possible.\n\nAnd in the midst, two clumsy heaps shaped like the backs of hogs, one\nsmall, one great, sticking out under a rib of rock that cuts the space\nacross,--quap!\n\n\"There it is,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth, \"worth three pounds an ounce, if\nit\'s worth a penny; two great heaps of it, rotten stuff and soft, ready\nto shovel and wheel, and you may get it by the ton!\"\n\n\"How did it get there?\"\n\n\"God knows! ... There it is--for the taking! In a country where you\nmustn\'t trade. In a country where the company waits for good kind men\nto find it riches and then take \'em away from \'em. There you have\nit--derelict.\"\n\n\"Can\'t you do any sort of deal?\"\n\n\"They\'re too damned stupid. You\'ve got to go and take it. That\'s all.\"\n\n\"They might catch you.\"\n\n\"They might, of course. But they\'re not great at catching.\"\n\nWe went into the particulars of that difficulty. \"They wouldn\'t catch\nme, because I\'d sink first. Give me a yacht,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth;\n\"that\'s all I need.\"\n\n\"But if you get caught,\" said my uncle.\n\nI am inclined to think Gordon-Nasmyth imagined we would give him a\ncheque for six thousand pounds on the strength of his talk. It was very\ngood talk, but we didn\'t do that. I stipulated for samples of his stuff\nfor analysis, and he consented--reluctantly.\n\nI think, on the whole, he would rather I didn\'t examine samples. He made\na motion pocketwards, that gave us an invincible persuasion that he\nhad a sample upon him, and that at the last instant he decided not to\nproduce it prematurely.\n\nThere was evidently a curious strain of secretiveness in him. He didn\'t\nlike to give us samples, and he wouldn\'t indicate within three hundred\nmiles the position of this Mordet Island of his. He had it clear in his\nmind that he had a secret of immense value, and he had no idea at all of\njust how far he ought to go with business people. And so presently,\nto gain time for these hesitations of his, he began to talk of other\nthings. He talked very well. He talked of the Dutch East Indies and of\nthe Congo, of Portuguese East Africa and Paraguay, of Malays and rich\nChinese merchants, Dyaks and negroes and the spread of the Mahometan\nworld in Africa to-day. And all this time he was trying to judge if\nwe were good enough to trust with his adventure. Our cosy inner office\nbecame a little place, and all our business cold and lifeless exploits\nbeside his glimpses of strange minglings of men, of slayings unavenged\nand curious customs, of trade where no writs run, and the dark\ntreacheries of eastern ports and uncharted channels.\n\nWe had neither of us gone abroad except for a few vulgar raids on Paris;\nour world was England, are the places of origin of half the raw material\nof the goods we sold had seemed to us as remote as fairyland or the\nforest of Arden. But Gordon-Nasmyth made it so real and intimate for us\nthat afternoon--for me, at any rate--that it seemed like something seen\nand forgotten and now again remembered.\n\nAnd in the end he produced his sample, a little lump of muddy clay\nspeckled with brownish grains, in a glass bottle wrapped about with lead\nand flannel--red flannel it was, I remember--a hue which is, I know,\npopularly supposed to double all the mystical efficacies of flannel.\n\n\"Don\'t carry it about on you,\" said Gordon-Nasmyth. \"It makes a sore.\"\n\nI took the stuff to Thorold, and Thorold had the exquisite agony of\ndiscovering two new elements in what was then a confidential\nanalysis. He has christened them and published since, but at the time\nGordon-Nasmyth wouldn\'t hear for a moment of our publication of any\nfacts at all; indeed, he flew into a violent passion and abused me\nmercilessly even for showing the stuff to Thorold. \"I thought you were\ngoing to analyse it yourself,\" he said with the touching persuasion of\nthe layman that a scientific man knows and practises at the sciences.\n\nI made some commercial inquiries, and there seemed even then much truth\nin Gordon-Nasmyth\'s estimate of the value of the stuff. It was before\nthe days of Capern\'s discovery of the value of canadium and his use of\nit in the Capern filament, but the cerium and thorium alone were worth\nthe money he extracted for the gas-mantles then in vogue. There were,\nhowever, doubts. Indeed, there were numerous doubts. What were the\nlimits of the gas-mantle trade? How much thorium, not to speak of\ncerium, could they take at a maximum. Suppose that quantity was high\nenough to justify our shipload, came doubts in another quarter. Were\nthe heaps up to sample? Were they as big as he said? Was\nGordon-Nasmyth--imaginative? And if these values held, could we after\nall get the stuff? It wasn\'t ours. It was on forbidden ground. You see,\nthere were doubts of every grade and class in the way of this adventure.\n\nWe went some way, nevertheless, in the discussion of his project, though\nI think we tried his patience. Then suddenly he vanished from London,\nand I saw no more of him for a year and a half.\n\nMy uncle said that was what he had expected, and when at last\nGordon-Nasmyth reappeared and mentioned in an incidental way that he\nhad been to Paraguay on private (and we guessed passionate) affairs,\nthe business of the \"quap\" expedition had to be begun again at the\nbeginning. My uncle was disposed to be altogether sceptical, but I\nwasn\'t so decided. I think I was drawn by its picturesque aspects.\nBut we neither of us dreamt of touching it seriously until Capern\'s\ndiscovery.\n\nNasmyth\'s story had laid hold of my imagination like one small, intense\npicture of tropical sunshine hung on a wall of grey business affairs.\nI kept it going during Gordon-Nasmyth\'s intermittent appearances in\nEngland. Every now and then he and I would meet and reinforce its\neffect. We would lunch in London, or he would cone to see my gliders at\nCrest Hill, and make new projects for getting at those heaps again now\nwith me, now alone.\n\nAt times they became a sort of fairy-story with us, an imaginative\nexercise. And there came Capern\'s discovery of what he called the ideal\nfilament and with it an altogether less problematical quality about the\nbusiness side of quap. For the ideal filament needed five per cent. of\ncanadium, and canadium was known to the world only as a newly separated\nconstituent of a variety of the rare mineral rutile. But to Thorold it\nwas better known as an element in a mysterious sample brought to him\nby me, and to me it was known as one of the elements in quap. I told\nmy uncle, and we jumped on to the process at once. We found that\nGordon-Nasmyth, still unaware of the altered value of the stuff, and\nstill thinking of the experimental prices of radium and the rarity\nvalue of cerium, had got hold of a cousin named Pollack, made some\nextraordinary transaction about his life insurance policy, and was\nbuying a brig. We put in, put down three thousand pounds, and forthwith\nthe life insurance transaction and the Pollack side of this finance\nvanished into thin air, leaving Pollack, I regret to say, in the brig\nand in the secret--except so far as canadium and the filament went--as\nresiduum. We discussed earnestly whether we should charter a steamer or\ngo on with the brig, but we decided on the brig as a less conspicuous\ninstrument for an enterprise that was after all, to put it plainly,\nstealing.\n\nBut that was one of our last enterprises before our great crisis, and I\nwill tell of it in its place.\n\nSo it was quap came into our affairs, came in as a fairy-tale and became\nreal. More and more real it grew until at last it was real, until at\nlast I saw with my eyes the heaps my imagination had seen for so long,\nand felt between my fingers again that half-gritty, half soft texture\nof quap, like sanded moist-sugar mixed with clay in which there stirs\nsomething--\n\nOne must feel it to understand.\n\nV\n\nAll sorts of things came to the Hardingham and offered themselves to my\nuncle. Gordon-Nasmyth stands but only because he played a part at last\nin the crisis of our fortunes. So much came to us that it seemed to\nme at times as though the whole world of human affairs was ready to\nprostitute itself to our real and imaginary millions. As I look back,\nI am still dazzled and incredulous to think of the quality of our\nopportunities.\n\nWe did the most extraordinary things; things that it seems absurd to\nme to leave to any casual man of wealth and enterprise who cares to do\nthem. I had some amazing perceptions of just how modern thought and the\nsupply of fact to the general mind may be controlled by money. Among\nother things that my uncle offered for, he tried very hard to buy the\nBritish Medical Journal and the Lancet, and run them on what he called\nmodern lines, and when they resisted him he talked very vigorously for a\ntime of organising a rival enterprise. That was a very magnificent idea\nindeed in its way; it would have given a tremendous advantage in the\nhandling of innumerable specialties and indeed I scarcely know how\nfar it would not have put the medical profession in our grip. It still\namazes me--I shall die amazed--that such a thing can be possible in the\nmodern state. If my uncle failed to bring the thing off, some one\nelse may succeed. But I doubt, even if he had got both these weeklies,\nwhether his peculiar style would have suited them. The change of purpose\nwould have shown. He would have found it difficult to keep up their\ndignity.\n\nHe certainly did not keep up the dignity of the Sacred Grove,\nan important critical organ which he acquired one day--by saying\n\"snap\"--for eight hundred pounds. He got it \"lock, stock and\nbarrel\"--under one or other of which three aspects the editor was\nincluded. Even at that price it didn\'t pay. If you are a literary person\nyou will remember the bright new cover he gave that representative organ\nof British intellectual culture, and how his sound business instincts\njarred with the exalted pretensions of a vanishing age. One old wrapper\nI discovered the other day runs:--\n\n \"THE SACRED GROVE.\"\n\n Weekly Magazine of Art, Philosophy, Science and\n Belles Lettres.\n ----------------------------------------------\n\n HAVE YOU A NASTY TASTE IN YOUR MOUTH?\n IT IS LIVER.\n\n YOU NEED ONE TWENTY-THREE PILL.\n\n (JUST ONE.)\n\n NOT A DRUG BUT A LIVE AMERICAN REMEDY.\n -----------------------------------------------\n\n CONTENTS.\n\n A Hitherto Unpublished Letter from Walter Pater.\n Charlotte Bronte\'s Maternal Great Aunt.\n A New Catholic History of England.\n The Genius of Shakespeare.\n Correspondence:--The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive;\n\n \"Commence,\" or \"Begin;\" Claverhouse; Socialism and the\n\n Individual; The Dignity of Letters.\n Folk-lore Gossip.\n The Stage; the Paradox of Acting.\n Travel Biography, Verse, Fiction, etc.\n ----------------------------------------------------\n THE BEST PILL IN THE WORLD FOR AN IRREGULAR LIVER\n\nI suppose it is some lingering traces of the Bladesover tradition to me\nthat makes this combination of letters and pills seem so incongruous,\njust as I suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my\nineradicable boyish imagination that at bottom our State should be\nwise, sane and dignified, that makes me think a country which leaves\nits medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important\ncriticism, entirely to private enterprise and open to the advances of\nany purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition. These are ideal\nconceptions of mine.\n\nAs a matter of fact, nothing would be more entirely natural and\nrepresentative of the relations of learning, thought and the economic\nsituation in the world at the present time than this cover of the\nSacred Grove--the quiet conservatism of the one element embedded in\nthe aggressive brilliance of the other; the contrasted notes of bold\nphysiological experiment and extreme mental immobility.\n\nVI\n\nThere comes back, too, among these Hardingham memories, an impression\nof a drizzling November day, and how we looked out of the windows upon a\nprocession of the London unemployed.\n\nIt was like looking down a well into some momentarily revealed nether\nworld. Some thousands of needy ineffectual men had been raked together\nto trail their spiritless misery through the West Eire with an appeal\nthat was also in its way a weak and insubstantial threat: \"It is Work we\nneed, not Charity.\"\n\nThere they were, half-phantom through the fog, a silent, foot-dragging,\ninterminable, grey procession. They carried wet, dirty banners, they\nrattled boxes for pence; these men who had not said \"snap\" in the right\nplace, the men who had \"snapped\" too eagerly, the men who had never\nsaid \"snap,\" the men who had never had a chance of saying \"snap.\" A\nshambling, shameful stream they made, oozing along the street, the\ngutter waste of competitive civilisation. And we stood high out of it\nall, as high as if we looked godlike from another world, standing in\na room beautifully lit and furnished, skillfully warmed, filled with\ncostly things.\n\n\"There,\" thought I, \"but for the grace of God, go George and Edward\nPonderevo.\"\n\nBut my uncle\'s thoughts ran in a different channel, and he made that\nvision the test of a spirited but inconclusive harangue upon Tariff\nReform.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SECOND\n\nOUR PROGRESS FROM CAMDEN TOWN TO CREST HILL\n\nI\n\nSo far my history of my aunt and uncle has dealt chiefly with his\nindustrial and financial exploits. But side by side with that history of\ninflation from the infinitesimal to the immense is another development,\nthe change year by year from the shabby impecuniosity of the Camden Town\nlodging to the lavish munificence of the Crest Hill marble staircase and\nmy aunt\'s golden bed, the bed that was facsimiled from Fontainebleau.\nAnd the odd thing is that as I come to this nearer part of my story I\nfind it much more difficult to tell than the clear little perspective\nmemories of the earlier days. Impressions crowd upon one another and\noverlap one another; I was presently to fall in love again, to be seized\nby a passion to which I still faintly respond, a passion that still\nclouds my mind. I came and went between Ealing and my aunt and uncle,\nand presently between Effie and clubland, and then between business\nand a life of research that became far more continuous, infinitely more\nconsecutive and memorable than any of these other sets of experiences.\nI didn\'t witness a regular social progress therefore; my aunt and\nuncle went up in the world, so far as I was concerned, as if they were\ndisplayed by an early cinematograph, with little jumps and flickers.\n\nAs I recall this side of our life, the figure of my round-eyes,\nbutton-nosed, pink-and-white Aunt Susan tends always to the central\nposition. We drove the car and sustained the car, she sat in it with\na magnificent variety of headgear poised upon her delicate neck,\nand always with that faint ghost of a lisp no misspelling can\nrender--commented on and illuminated the new aspects.\n\nI\'ve already sketched the little home behind the Wimblehurst chemist\'s\nshop, the lodging near the Cobden statue, and the apartments in Gower\nStreet. Thence my aunt and uncle went into a flat in Redgauntlet\nMansions. There they lived when I married. It was a compact flat, with\nvery little for a woman to do in it In those days my aunt, I think,\nused to find the time heavy upon her hands, and so she took to books and\nreading, and after a time even to going to lectures in the afternoon.\nI began to find unexpected books upon her table: sociological books,\ntravels, Shaw\'s plays. \"Hullo!\" I said, at the sight of some volume of\nthe latter.\n\n\"I\'m keeping a mind, George,\" she explained.\n\n\"Eh?\"\n\n\"Keeping a mind. Dogs I never cared for. It\'s been a toss-up between\nsetting up a mind and setting up a soul. It\'s jolly lucky for Him and\nyou it\'s a mind. I\'ve joined the London Library, and I\'m going in for\nthe Royal Institution and every blessed lecture that comes along next\nwinter. You\'d better look out.\"...\n\nAnd I remember her coming in late one evening with a note-book in her\nhand.\n\n\"Where ya been, Susan?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"Birkbeck--Physiology. I\'m getting on.\" She sat down and took off her\ngloves. \"You\'re just glass to me,\" she sighed, and then in a note of\ngrave reproach: \"You old PACKAGE! I had no idea! The Things you\'ve kept\nfrom me!\"\n\nPresently they were setting; up the house at Beckengham, and my aunt\nintermitted her intellectual activities. The house at Beckengham was\nsomething of an enterprise for them at that time, a reasonably large\nplace by the standards of the early years of Tono-Bungay. It was a big,\nrather gaunt villa, with a conservatory and a shrubbery, a tennis-lawn,\na quite considerable vegetable garden, and a small disused coach-house.\nI had some glimpses of the excitements of its inauguration, but not many\nbecause of the estrangement between my aunt and Marion.\n\nMy aunt went into that house with considerable zest, and my uncle\ndistinguished himself by the thoroughness with which he did the\nrepainting and replumbing. He had all the drains up and most of the\ngarden with them, and stood administrative on heaps--administrating\nwhisky to the workmen. I found him there one day, most Napoleonic, on\na little Elba of dirt, in an atmosphere that defies print. He also, I\nremember, chose what he considered cheerful contrasts of colours for the\npainting of the woodwork. This exasperated my aunt extremely--she\ncalled him a \"Pestilential old Splosher\" with an unusual note of\nearnestness--and he also enraged her into novelties of abuse by giving\neach bedroom the name of some favourite hero--Cliff, Napoleon, Caesar,\nand so forth--and having it painted on the door in gilt letters on\na black label. \"Martin Luther\" was kept for me. Only her respect for\ndomestic discipline, she said, prevented her retaliating with \"Old\nPondo\" on the housemaid\'s cupboard.\n\nAlso he went and ordered one of the completest sets of garden requisites\nI have ever seen--and had them all painted a hard clear blue. My aunt\ngot herself large tins of a kindlier hued enamel and had everything\nsecretly recoated, and this done, she found great joy in the garden and\nbecame an ardent rose grower and herbaceous borderer, leaving her Mind,\nindeed, to damp evenings and the winter months. When I think of her at\nBeckenham, I always think first of her as dressed in that blue cotton\nstuff she affected, with her arms in huge gauntleted gardening gloves, a\ntrowel in one hand and a small but no doubt hardy and promising annual,\nlimp and very young-looking and sheepish, in the other.\n\nBeckenham, in the persons of a vicar, a doctor\'s wife, and a large proud\nlady called Hogberry, \"called\" on my uncle and aunt almost at once, so\nsoon in fact as the lawn was down again, and afterwards my aunt made\nfriends with a quiet gentlewoman next door, a propos of an overhanging\ncherry tree and the need of repairing the party fence. So she resumed\nher place in society from which she had fallen with the disaster of\nWimblehurst. She made a partially facetious study of the etiquette of\nher position, had cards engraved and retaliated calls. And then she\nreceived a card for one of Mrs. Hogberry\'s At Homes, gave an old garden\nparty herself, participated in a bazaar and sale of work, and was really\nbecoming quite cheerfully entangled in Beckenham society when she was\nsuddenly taken up by the roots again by my uncle and transplanted to\nChiselhurst.\n\n\"Old Trek, George,\" she said compactly, \"Onward and Up,\" when I found\nher superintending the loading of two big furniture vans. \"Go up and say\ngood-bye to \'Martin Luther,\' and then I\'ll see what you can do to help\nme.\"\n\nII\n\nI look into the jumbled stores of the middle distance of memory, and\nBeckenham seems to me a quite transitory phase. But really they were\nthere several years; through nearly all my married life, in fact,\nand far longer than the year and odd months we lived together at\nWimblehurst. But the Wimblehurst time with them is fuller in my memory\nby far then the Beckenham period. There comes back to me with a quite\nconsiderable amount of detail the effect of that garden party of my\naunt\'s and of a little social misbehaviour of which I was guilty on that\noccasion. It\'s like a scrap from another life. It\'s all set in what is\nfor me a kind of cutaneous feeling, the feeling of rather ill-cut city\nclothes, frock coat and grey trousers, and of a high collar and tie\nworn in sunshine among flowers. I have still a quite vivid memory of the\nlittle trapezoidal lawn, of the gathering, and particularly of the\nhats and feathers of the gathering, of the parlour-maid and the blue\ntea-cups, and of the magnificent presence of Mrs. Hogberry and of her\nclear, resonant voice. It was a voice that would have gone with a garden\nparty on a larger scale; it went into adjacent premises; it included the\ngardener who was far up the vegetable patch and technically out of play.\nThe only other men were my aunt\'s doctor, two of the clergy, amiable\ncontrasted men, and Mrs. Hogberry\'s imperfectly grown-up son, a youth\njust bursting into collar. The rest were women, except for a young girl\nor so in a state of speechless good behaviour. Marion also was there.\n\nMarion and I had arrived a little estranged, and I remember her as\na silent presence, a shadow across all that sunlit emptiness of\nintercourse. We had embittered each other with one of those miserable\nlittle disputes that seemed so unavoidable between us. She had, with the\nhelp of Smithie, dressed rather elaborately for the occasion, and when\nshe saw me prepared to accompany her in, I think it was a grey suit,\nshe protested that silk hat and frock coat were imperative. I was\nrecalcitrant, she quoted an illustrated paper showing a garden party\nwith the King present, and finally I capitulated--but after my evil\nhabit, resentfully.... Eh, dear! those old quarrels, how pitiful they\nwere, how trivial! And how sorrowful they are to recall! I think they\ngrow more sorrowful as I grow older, and all the small passionate\nreasons for our mutual anger fade and fade out of memory.\n\nThe impression that Beckenham company has left on my mind is one of\na modest unreality; they were all maintaining a front of unspecified\nsocial pretension, and evading the display of the economic facts of the\ncase. Most of the husbands were \"in business\" off stage, it would have\nbeen outrageous to ask what the business was--and the wives were\ngiving their energies to produce, with the assistance of novels and the\nillustrated magazines, a moralised version of the afternoon life of the\naristocratic class. They hadn\'t the intellectual or moral enterprise\nof the upper-class woman, they had no political interests, they had no\nviews about anything, and consequently they were, I remember, extremely\ndifficult to talk to. They all sat about in the summer-house and in\ngarden-chairs, and were very hatty and ruffley and sunshady. Three\nladies and the curate played croquet with a general immense gravity,\nbroken by occasional loud cries of feigned distress from the curate.\n\"Oh! Whacking me about again! Augh!\"\n\nThe dominant social fact that afternoon was Mrs. Hogberry; she took up a\ncertain position commanding the croquet and went on, as my aunt said to\nme in an incidental aside, \"like an old Roundabout.\" She talked of the\nway in which Beckenham society was getting mixed, and turned on to\na touching letter she had recently received from her former nurse at\nLittle Gossdean. Followed a loud account of Little Gossdean and how much\nshe and her eight sisters had been looked up to there. \"My poor mother\nwas quite a little Queen there,\" she said. \"And such NICE Common people!\nPeople say the country labourers are getting disrespectful nowadays. It\nisn\'t so--not if they\'re properly treated. Here of course in Beckenham\nit\'s different. I won\'t call the people we get here a Poor--they\'re\ncertainly not a proper Poor. They\'re Masses. I always tell Mr. Bugshoot\nthey\'re Masses, and ought to be treated as such.\"...\n\nDim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to\nher....\n\nI was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to\nfall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as\nMrs. Mumble--but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that\nafternoon, either by way of humour or necessity.\n\nThat must have been one of my earliest essays in the art of polite\nconversation, and I remember that I began by criticising the local\nrailway service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs.\nMumble said in a distinctly bright and encouraging way that she feared I\nwas a very \"frivolous\" person.\n\nI wonder now what it was I said that was \"frivolous.\"\n\nI don\'t know what happened to end that conversation, or if it had\nan end. I remember talking to one of the clergy for a time rather\nawkwardly, and being given a sort of topographical history of Beckenham,\nwhich he assured me time after time was \"Quite an old place. Quite an\nold place.\" As though I had treated it as new and he meant to be very\npatient but very convincing. Then we hung up in a distinct pause, and my\naunt rescued me. \"George,\" she said in a confidential undertone, \"keep\nthe pot a-boiling.\" And then audibly, \"I say, will you both old trot\nabout with tea a bit?\"\n\n\"Only too delighted to TROT for you, Mrs. Ponderevo,\" said the\nclergyman, becoming fearfully expert and in his elements; \"only too\ndelighted.\"\n\nI found we were near a rustic table, and that the housemaid was behind\nus in a suitable position to catch us on the rebound with the tea\nthings.\n\n\"Trot!\" repeated the clergyman to me, much amused; \"excellent\nexpression!\" And I just saved him from the tray as he turned about.\n\nWe handed tea for a while....\n\n\"Give \'em cakes,\" said my aunt, flushed, but well in hand. \"Helps \'em to\ntalk, George. Always talk best after a little nourishment. Like throwing\na bit of turf down an old geyser.\"\n\nShe surveyed the gathering with a predominant blue eye and helped\nherself to tea.\n\n\"They keep on going stiff,\" she said in an undertone.... \"I\'ve done my\nbest.\"\n\n\"It\'s been a huge success,\" I said encouragingly.\n\n\"That boy has had his legs crossed in that position and hasn\'t spoken\nfor ten minutes. Stiffer and stiffer. Brittle. He\'s beginning a dry\ncough--always a bad sign, George.... Walk \'em about, shall I?--rub their\nnoses with snow?\"\n\nHappily she didn\'t. I got myself involved with the gentlewoman from next\ndoor, a pensive, languid-looking little woman with a low voice, and fell\ntalking; our topic, Cats and Dogs, and which it was we liked best.\n\n\"I always feel,\" said the pensive little woman, \"that there\'s something\nabout a dog--A cat hasn\'t got it.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I found myself admitting with great enthusiasm, \"there is\nsomething. And yet again--\"\n\n\"Oh! I know there\'s something about a cat, too. But it isn\'t the same.\"\n\n\"Not quite the same,\" I admitted; \"but still it\'s something.\"\n\n\"Ah! But such a different something!\"\n\n\"More sinuous.\"\n\n\"Much more.\"\n\n\"Ever so much more.\"\n\n\"It makes all the difference, don\'t you think?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"ALL.\"\n\nShe glanced at me gravely and sighed a long, deeply felt \"Yes.\" A long\npause.\n\nThe thing seemed to me to amount to a stale-mate. Fear came into my\nheart and much perplexity.\n\n\"The--er--Roses,\" I said. I felt like a drowning man. \"Those\nroses--don\'t you think they are--very beautiful flowers?\"\n\n\"Aren\'t they!\" she agreed gently. \"There seems to be something in\nroses--something--I don\'t know how to express it.\"\n\n\"Something,\" I said helpfully.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"something. Isn\'t there?\"\n\n\"So few people see it,\" I said; \"more\'s the pity!\"\n\nShe sighed and said again very softly, \"Yes.\"...\n\nThere was another long pause. I looked at her and she was thinking\ndreamily. The drowning sensation returned, the fear and enfeeblement. I\nperceived by a sort of inspiration that her tea-cup was empty.\n\n\"Let me take your cup,\" I said abruptly, and, that secured, made for the\ntable by the summer-house. I had no intention then of deserting my\naunt. But close at hand the big French window of the drawing-room\nyawned inviting and suggestive. I can feel all that temptation now, and\nparticularly the provocation of my collar. In an instant I was lost. I\nwould--Just for a moment!\n\nI dashed in, put down the cup on the keys of the grand piano and fled\nupstairs, softly, swiftly, three steps at a time, to the sanctuary of my\nuncle\'s study, his snuggery. I arrived there breathless, convinced\nthere was no return for me. I was very glad and ashamed of myself, and\ndesperate. By means of a penknife I contrived to break open his cabinet\nof cigars, drew a chair to the window, took off my coat, collar and tie,\nand remained smoking guiltily and rebelliously, and peeping through the\nblind at the assembly on the lawn until it was altogether gone....\n\nThe clergymen, I thought, were wonderful.\n\nIII\n\nA few such pictures of those early days at Beckenham stand out, and then\nI find myself among the Chiselhurst memories. The Chiselhurst mansion\nhad \"grounds\" rather than a mere garden, and there was a gardener\'s\ncottage and a little lodge at the gate. The ascendant movement was\nalways far more in evidence there than at Beckenham. The velocity was\nincreasing.\n\nOne night picks itself out as typical, as, in its way, marking an epoch.\nI was there, I think, about some advertisement stuff, on some sort of\nbusiness anyhow, and my uncle and aunt had come back in a fly from a\ndinner at the Runcorns. (Even there he was nibbling at Runcorn with the\nidea of our great Amalgamation budding in his mind.) I got down there, I\nsuppose, about eleven. I found the two of them sitting in the study, my\naunt on a chair-arm with a whimsical pensiveness on her face, regarding\nmy uncle, and he, much extended and very rotund, in the low arm-chair\ndrawn up to the fender.\n\n\"Look here, George,\" said my uncle, after my first greetings. \"I just\nbeen saying: We aren\'t Oh Fay!\"\n\n\"Eh?\"\n\n\"Not Oh Fay! Socially!\"\n\n\"Old FLY, he means, George--French!\"\n\n\"Oh! Didn\'t think of French. One never knows where to have him. What\'s\ngone wrong to-night?\"\n\n\"I been thinking. It isn\'t any particular thing. I ate too much of that\nfishy stuff at first, like salt frog spawn, and was a bit confused by\nolives; and--well, I didn\'t know which wine was which. Had to say THAT\neach time. It puts your talk all wrong. And she wasn\'t in evening dress,\nnot like the others. We can\'t go on in that style, George--not a proper\nad.\"\n\n\"I\'m not sure you were right,\" I said, \"in having a fly.\"\n\n\"We got to do it all better,\" said my uncle, \"we got to do it in Style.\nSmart business, smart men. She tries to pass it off as humorous\"--my\naunt pulled a grimace--\"it isn\'t humorous! See! We\'re on the up-grade\nnow, fair and square. We\'re going to be big. We aren\'t going to be\nlaughed at as Poovenoos, see!\"\n\n\"Nobody laughed at you,\" said my aunt. \"Old Bladder!\"\n\n\"Nobody isn\'t going to laugh at me,\" said my uncle, glancing at his\ncontours and suddenly sitting up.\n\nMy aunt raised her eyebrows slightly, swung her foot, and said nothing.\n\n\"We aren\'t keeping pace with our own progress, George. We got to. We\'re\nbumping against new people, and they set up to be gentlefolks--etiquette\ndinners and all the rest of it. They give themselves airs and expect\nus to be fish-out-of-water. We aren\'t going to be. They think we\'ve no\nStyle. Well, we give them Style for our advertisements, and we\'re going\nto give \'em Style all through.... You needn\'t be born to it to dance\nwell on the wires of the Bond Street tradesmen. See?\"\n\nI handed him the cigar-box.\n\n\"Runcorn hadn\'t cigars like these,\" he said, truncating one lovingly.\n\"We beat him at cigars. We\'ll beat him all round.\"\n\nMy aunt and I regarded him, full of apprehensions.\n\n\"I got idees,\" he said darkly to the cigar, deepening our dread.\n\nHe pocketed his cigar-cutter and spoke again.\n\n\"We got to learn all the rotten little game first. See, F\'rinstance, we\ngot to get samples of all the blessed wines there are--and learn \'em up.\nStern, Smoor, Burgundy, all of \'em! She took Stern to-night--and when\nshe tasted it first--you pulled a face, Susan, you did. I saw you. It\nsurprised you. You bunched your nose. We got to get used to wine and not\ndo that. We got to get used to wearing evening dress--YOU, Susan, too.\"\n\n\"Always have had a tendency to stick out of my clothes,\" said my aunt.\n\"However--Who cares?\" She shrugged her shoulders.\n\nI had never seen my uncle so immensely serious.\n\n\"Got to get the hang of etiquette,\" he went on to the fire. \"Horses\neven. Practise everything. Dine every night in evening dress.... Get\na brougham or something. Learn up golf and tennis and things. Country\ngentleman. Oh Fay. It isn\'t only freedom from Goochery.\"\n\n\"Eh?\" I said.\n\n\"Oh!--Gawshery, if you like!\"\n\n\"French, George,\" said my aunt. \"But I\'M not ol\' Gooch. I made that face\nfor fun.\"\n\n\"It isn\'t only freedom from Gawshery. We got to have Style. See! Style!\nJust all right and one better. That\'s what I call Style. We can do it,\nand we will.\"\n\nHe mumbled his cigar and smoked for a space, leaning forward and looking\ninto the fire.\n\n\"What is it,\" he asked, \"after all? What is it? Tips about eating; tips\nabout drinking. Clothes. How to hold yourself, and not say jes\' the\nfew little things they know for certain are wrong--jes\' the shibboleth\nthings.\"\n\nHe was silent again, and the cigar crept up from the horizontal towards\nthe zenith as the confidence of his mouth increased.\n\n\"Learn the whole bag of tricks in six months.\" he said, becoming more\ncheerful. \"Ah, Susan? Beat it out! George, you in particular ought to\nget hold of it. Ought to get into a good club, and all that.\"\n\n\"Always ready to learn!\" I said. \"Ever since you gave me the chance of\nLatin. So far we don\'t seem to have hit upon any Latin-speaking stratum\nin the population.\"\n\n\"We\'ve come to French,\" said my aunt, \"anyhow.\"\n\n\"It\'s a very useful language,\" said my uncle. \"Put a point on things.\nZzzz. As for accent, no Englishman has an accent. No Englishman\npronounces French properly. Don\'t you tell ME. It\'s a Bluff.--It\'s all a\nBluff. Life\'s a Bluff--practically. That\'s why it\'s so important, Susan,\nfor us to attend to Style. Le Steel Say Lum. The Style it\'s the man.\nWhad you laughing at, Susan? George, you\'re not smoking. These cigars\nare good for the mind.... What do YOU think of it all? We got to adapt\nourselves. We have--so far.... Not going to be beat by these silly\nthings.\"\n\nIV\n\n\"What do you think of it, George?\" he insisted.\n\nWhat I said I thought of it I don\'t now recall. Only I have very\ndistinctly the impression of meeting for a moment my aunt\'s impenetrable\neye. And anyhow he started in with his accustomed energy to rape the\nmysteries of the Costly Life, and become the calmest of its lords. On\nthe whole, I think he did it--thoroughly. I have crowded memories,\na little difficult to disentangle, of his experimental stages, his\nexperimental proceedings. It\'s hard at times to say which memory comes\nin front of which. I recall him as presenting on the whole a series of\nsmall surprises, as being again and again, unexpectedly, a little more\nself-confident, a little more polished, a little richer and finer, a\nlittle more aware of the positions and values of things and men.\n\nThere was a time--it must have been very early--when I saw him deeply\nimpressed by the splendours of the dining-room of the National Liberal\nClub. Heaven knows who our host was or what that particular little\n\"feed\" was about now!--all that sticks is the impression of our\nstraggling entry, a string of six or seven guests, and my uncle looking\nabout him at the numerous bright red-shaded tables, at the exotics in\ngreat Majolica jars, at the shining ceramic columns and pilasters, at\nthe impressive portraits of Liberal statesmen and heroes, and all that\ncontributes to the ensemble of that palatial spectacle. He was betrayed\ninto a whisper to me, \"This is all Right, George!\" he said. That artless\ncomment seems almost incredible as I set it down; there came a time\nso speedily when not even the clubs of New York could have overawed my\nuncle, and when he could walk through the bowing magnificence of the\nRoyal Grand Hotel to his chosen table in that aggressively exquisite\ngallery upon the river, with all the easy calm of one of earth\'s\nlegitimate kings.\n\nThe two of them learnt the new game rapidly and well; they experimented\nabroad, they experimented at home. At Chiselhurst, with the aid of\na new, very costly, but highly instructive cook, they tried over\neverything they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any\nreputation for difficulty, from asparagus to plover\'s eggs. They\nafterwards got a gardener who could wait at table--and he brought the\nsoil home to one. Then there came a butler.\n\nI remember my aunt\'s first dinner-gown very brightly, and how she stood\nbefore the fire in the drawing-room confessing once unsuspected pretty\narms with all the courage she possessed, and looking over her shoulder\nat herself in a mirror.\n\n\"A ham,\" she remarked reflectively, \"must feel like this. Just a\nnecklace.\"...\n\nI attempted, I think, some commonplace compliment.\n\nMy uncle appeared at the door in a white waistcoat and with his hands in\nhis trouser pockets; he halted and surveyed her critically.\n\n\"Couldn\'t tell you from a duchess, Susan,\" he remarked. \"I\'d like\nto have you painted, standin\' at the fire like that. Sargent! You\nlook--spirited, somehow. Lord!--I wish some of those damned tradesmen at\nWimblehurst could see you.\"...\n\nThey did a lot of week-ending at hotels, and sometimes I went down with\nthem. We seemed to fall into a vast drifting crowd of social learners. I\ndon\'t know whether it is due simply to my changed circumstances, but it\nseems to me there have been immensely disproportionate developments of\nthe hotel-frequenting and restaurant-using population during the last\ntwenty years. It is not only, I think, that there are crowds of people\nwho, like we were, are in the economically ascendant phase, but whole\nmasses of the prosperous section of the population must be altering its\nhabits, giving up high-tea for dinner and taking to evening dress, using\nthe week-end hotels as a practise-ground for these new social arts. A\nswift and systematic conversion to gentility has been going on, I am\nconvinced, throughout the whole commercial upper-middle class since I\nwas twenty-one. Curiously mixed was the personal quality of the\npeople one saw in these raids. There were conscientiously refined\nand low-voiced people reeking with proud bashfulness; there were\naggressively smart people using pet diminutives for each other loudly\nand seeking fresh occasions for brilliant rudeness; there were awkward\nhusbands and wives quarrelling furtively about their manners and ill\nat ease under the eye of the winter; cheerfully amiable and often\ndiscrepant couples with a disposition to inconspicuous corners, and the\njolly sort, affecting an unaffected ease; plump happy ladies who laughed\ntoo loud, and gentlemen in evening dress who subsequently \"got their\npipes.\" And nobody, you knew, was anybody, however expensively they\ndressed and whatever rooms they took.\n\nI look back now with a curious remoteness of spirit to those crowded\ndining-rooms with their dispersed tables and their inevitable red-shaded\nlights and the unsympathetic, unskillful waiters, and the choice of\n\"Thig or Glear, Sir?\" I\'ve not dined in that way, in that sort of place,\nnow for five years--it must be quite five years, so specialised and\nnarrow is my life becoming.\n\nMy uncle\'s earlier motor-car phases work in with these associations,\nand there stands out a little bright vignette of the hall of the\nMagnificent, Bexhill-on-Sea, and people dressed for dinner and sitting\nabout amidst the scarlet furniture--satin and white-enameled woodwork\nuntil the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very\nmarvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and\nthere are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious\nmanager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised\ninto admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making\nhis first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned,\na short figure, compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of\nbrown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a table-land of motoring cap.\n\nV\n\nSo it was we recognised our new needs as fresh invaders of the upper\nlevels of the social system, and set ourselves quite consciously to\nthe acquisition of Style and Savoir Faire. We became part of what is\nnowadays quite an important element in the confusion of our world, that\nmultitude of economically ascendant people who are learning how to spend\nmoney. It is made up of financial people, the owners of the businesses\nthat are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources of\nwealth, such as ourselves; it includes nearly all America as one sees\nit on the European stage. It is a various multitude having only this\nin common: they are all moving, and particularly their womankind are\nmoving, from conditions in which means were insistently finite, things\nwere few, and customs simple, towards a limitless expenditure and the\nsphere of attraction of Bond Street, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. Their\ngeneral effect is one of progressive revolution, of limitless rope.\n\nThey discover suddenly indulgences their moral code never foresaw and\nhas no provision for, elaborations, ornaments, possessions beyond their\nwildest dreams. With an immense astonished zest they begin shopping\nbegin a systematic adaptation to a new life crowded and brilliant\nwith things shopped, with jewels, maids, butlers, coachmen, electric\nbroughams, hired town and country houses. They plunge into it as\none plunges into a career; as a class, they talk, think, and dream\npossessions. Their literature, their Press, turns all on that; immense\nillustrated weeklies of unsurpassed magnificence guide them in domestic\narchitecture, in the art of owning a garden, in the achievement of the\nsumptuous in motor-cars, in an elaborate sporting equipment, in the\npurchase and control of their estates, in travel and stupendous hotels.\nOnce they begin to move they go far and fast. Acquisition becomes the\nsubstance of their lives. They find a world organised to gratify that\npassion. In a brief year or so they are connoisseurs. They join in\nthe plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old\npictures, good old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling\nsuites of the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by a\njackdaw dream of accumulating costly discrepant old things.\n\nI seem to remember my uncle taking to shopping quite suddenly. In\nthe Beckenham days and in the early Chiselhurst days he was chiefly\ninterested in getting money, and except for his onslaught on the\nBeckenham house, bothered very little about his personal surroundings\nand possessions. I forget now when the change came and he began to\nspend. Some accident must have revealed to him this new source of power,\nor some subtle shifting occurred in the tissues of his brain. He began\nto spend and \"shop.\" So soon as he began to shop, he began to shop\nviolently. He began buying pictures, and then, oddly enough, old clocks.\nFor the Chiselhurst house he bought nearly a dozen grandfather clocks\nand three copper warming pans. After that he bought much furniture. Then\nhe plunged into art patronage, and began to commission pictures and to\nmake presents to churches and institutions. His buying increased with a\nregular acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes\nthat came to him in the wild excitements of the last four years of his\nascent. Towards the climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with\nlarge unexpected purchases, he shopped like a mind seeking expression,\nhe shopped to astonish and dismay; shopped crescendo, shopped\nfortissimo, con molto espressione until the magnificent smash of Crest\nHill eroded his shopping for ever. Always it was he who shopped. My aunt\ndid not shine as a purchaser. It is a curious thing, due to I know not\nwhat fine strain in her composition, that my aunt never set any great\nstore upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded bazaar of\nVanity Fair during those feverish years, spending no doubt freely and\nlargely, but spending with detachment and a touch of humorous contempt\nfor the things, even the \"old\" things, that money can buy. It came to\nme suddenly one afternoon just how detached she was, as I saw her going\ntowards the Hardingham, sitting up, as she always did, rather stiffly\nin her electric brougham, regarding the glittering world with interested\nand ironically innocent blue eyes from under the brim of a hat that\ndefied comment. \"No one,\" I thought, \"would sit so apart if she hadn\'t\ndreams--and what are her dreams?\"\n\nI\'d never thought.\n\nAnd I remember, too, an outburst of scornful description after she had\nlunched with a party of women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She came\nround to my rooms on the chance of finding me there, and I gave her\ntea. She professed herself tired and cross, and flung herself into my\nchair....\n\n\"George,\" she cried, \"the Things women are! Do _I_ stink of money?\"\n\n\"Lunching?\" I asked.\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Plutocratic ladies?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Oriental type?\"\n\n\"Oh! Like a burst hareem!... Bragging of possessions.... They feel you.\nThey feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good!\"\n\nI soothed her as well as I could. \"They ARE Good aren\'t they?\" I said.\n\n\"It\'s the old pawnshop in their blood,\" she said, drinking tea; and then\nin infinite disgust, \"They run their hands over your clothes--they paw\nyou.\"\n\nI had a moment of doubt whether perhaps she had not been discovered in\npossession of unsuspected forgeries. I don\'t know. After that my eyes\nwere quickened, and I began to see for myself women running their hands\nover other women\'s furs, scrutinising their lace, even demanding to\nhandle jewelry, appraising, envying, testing. They have a kind of\netiquette. The woman who feels says, \"What beautiful sables?\" \"What\nlovely lace?\" The woman felt admits proudly: \"It\'s Real, you know,\"\nor disavows pretension modestly and hastily, \"It\'s Rot Good.\" In\neach other\'s houses they peer at the pictures, handle the selvage of\nhangings, look at the bottoms of china....\n\nI wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood.\n\nI doubt if Lady Drew and the Olympians did that sort of thing, but\nhere I may be only clinging to another of my former illusions about\naristocracy and the State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty,\nand never anywhere has there been such a thing as house and furnishings\nnative and natural to the women and men who made use of them....\n\nVI\n\nFor me, at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle\'s career when I learnt\none day that he had \"shopped\" Lady Grove. I realised a fresh, wide,\nunpreluded step. He took me by surprise with the sudden change of scale\nfrom such portable possessions as jewels and motor-cars to a stretch of\ncountryside. The transaction was Napoleonic; he was told of the place;\nhe said \"snap\"; there were no preliminary desirings or searchings. Then\nhe came home and said what he had done. Even my aunt was for a day or\nso measurably awestricken by this exploit in purchase, and we both went\ndown with him to see the house in a mood near consternation. It struck\nus then as a very lordly place indeed. I remember the three of\nus standing on the terrace that looked westward, surveying the\nsky-reflecting windows of the house, and a feeling of unwarrantable\nintrusion comes back to me.\n\nLady Grove, you know, is a very beautiful house indeed, a still and\ngracious place, whose age-long seclusion was only effectively broken\nwith the toot of the coming of the motor-car. An old Catholic family\nhad died out in it, century by century, and was now altogether\ndead. Portions of the fabric are thirteenth century, and its last\narchitectural revision was Tudor; within, it is for the most part dark\nand chilly, save for two or three favoured rooms and its tall-windowed,\noak-galleried hall. Its terrace is its noblest feature; a very wide,\nbroad lawn it is, bordered by a low stone battlement, and there is\na great cedar in one corner under whose level branches one looks out\nacross the blue distances of the Weald, blue distances that are made\nextraordinarily Italian in quality by virtue of the dark masses of that\nsingle tree. It is a very high terrace; southward one looks down upon\nthe tops of wayfaring trees and spruces, and westward on a steep slope\nof beechwood, through which the road comes. One turns back to the still\nold house, and sees a grey and lichenous facade with a very finely\narched entrance. It was warmed by the afternoon light and touched with\nthe colour of a few neglected roses and a pyracanthus. It seemed to me\nthat the most modern owner conceivable in this serene fine place\nwas some bearded scholarly man in a black cassock, gentle-voiced and\nwhite-handed, or some very soft-robed, grey gentlewoman. And there was\nmy uncle holding his goggles in a sealskin glove, wiping the glass with\na pocket-handkerchief, and asking my aunt if Lady Grove wasn\'t a \"Bit of\nall Right.\"\n\nMy aunt made him no answer.\n\n\"The man who built this,\" I speculated, \"wore armour and carried a\nsword.\"\n\n\"There\'s some of it inside still,\" said my uncle.\n\nWe went inside. An old woman with very white hair was in charge of the\nplace and cringed rather obviously to the new master. She evidently\nfound him a very strange and frightful apparition indeed, and was\ndreadfully afraid of him. But if the surviving present bowed down to\nus, the past did not. We stood up to the dark, long portraits of the\nextinguished race--one was a Holbein--and looked them in their sidelong\neyes. They looked back at us. We all, I know, felt the enigmatical\nquality in them. Even my uncle was momentarily embarrassed, I think, by\nthat invincibly self-complacent expression. It was just as though, after\nall, he had not bought them up and replaced them altogether; as though\nthat, secretly, they knew better and could smile at him.\n\nThe spirit of the place was akin to Bladesover, but touched with\nsomething older and remoter. That armour that stood about had once\nserved in tilt-yards, if indeed it had not served in battle, and this\nfamily had sent its blood and treasure, time after time, upon the most\nromantic quest in history, to Palestine. Dreams, loyalties, place and\nhonour, how utterly had it all evaporated, leaving, at last, the final\nexpression of its spirit, these quaint painted smiles, these smiles\nof triumphant completion! It had evaporated, indeed, long before the\nultimate Durgan had died, and in his old age he had cumbered the place\nwith Early Victorian cushions and carpets and tapestry table-cloths and\ninvalid appliances of a type even more extinct, it seemed to us, than\nthe crusades.... Yes, it was different from Bladesover.\n\n\"Bit stuffy, George,\" said my uncle. \"They hadn\'t much idea of\nventilation when this was built.\"\n\nOne of the panelled rooms was half-filled with presses and a four-poster\nbed. \"Might be the ghost room,\" said my uncle; but it did not seem to\nme that so retiring a family as the Durgans, so old and completely\nexhausted a family as the Durgans, was likely to haunt anybody. What\nliving thing now had any concern with their honour and judgments and\ngood and evil deeds? Ghosts and witchcraft were a later innovation--that\nfashion came from Scotland with the Stuarts.\n\nAfterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a\nbroken nose, under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the\nrestricted limits of the present Duffield church, and half buried in\nnettles. \"Ichabod,\" said my uncle. \"Eh? We shall be like that, Susan,\nsome day.... I\'m going to clean him up a bit and put a railing to keep\noff the children.\"\n\n\"Old saved at the eleventh hour,\" said my aunt, quoting one of the less\nsuccessful advertisements of Tono-Bungay.\n\nBut I don\'t think my uncle heard her.\n\nIt was by our captured crusader that the vicar found us. He came round\nthe corner at us briskly, a little out of breath. He had an air of\nhaving been running after us since the first toot of our horn had warned\nthe village of our presence. He was an Oxford man, clean-shaven, with\na cadaverous complexion and a guardedly respectful manner, a cultivated\nintonation, and a general air of accommodation to the new order of\nthings. These Oxford men are the Greeks of our plutocratic empire. He\nwas a Tory in spirit, and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress\nof circumstances; that is to say, he was no longer a legitimist; he was\nprepared for the substitution of new lords for old. We were pill vendors\nhe knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul; but then it might have\nbeen some polygamous Indian rajah, a great strain on a good man\'s tact,\nor some Jew with an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were\nEnglish, and neither Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully\nprepared to do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us. He might\nhave preferred Americans for some reasons; they are not so obviously\ntaken from one part of the social system and dumped down in another, and\nthey are more teachable; but in this world we cannot always be choosers.\nSo he was very bright and pleasant with us, showed us the church,\ngossiped informingly about our neighbours on the countryside--Tux, the\nbanker; Lord Boom, the magazine and newspaper proprietor; Lord Carnaby,\nthat great sportsman, and old Lady Osprey. And finally he took us by\nway of a village lane--three children bobbed convulsively with eyes\nof terror for my uncle--through a meticulous garden to a big, slovenly\nVicarage with faded Victorian furniture and a faded Victorian wife, who\ngave us tea and introduced us to a confusing family dispersed among a\nlot of disintegrating basket chairs upon the edge of a well-used tennis\nlawn.\n\nThese people interested me. They were a common type, no doubt, but they\nwere new to me. There were two lank sons who had been playing singles\nat tennis, red-eared youths growing black moustaches, and dressed in\nconscientiously untidy tweeds and unbuttoned and ungirt Norfolk jackets.\nThere were a number of ill-nourished-looking daughters, sensible\nand economical in their costume, the younger still with long,\nbrown-stockinged legs, and the eldest present--there were, we\ndiscovered, one or two hidden away--displaying a large gold cross\nand other aggressive ecclesiastical symbols; there were two or three\nfox-terriers, a retrieverish mongrel, and an old, bloody-eyed and very\nevil-smelling St. Bernard. There was a jackdaw. There was, moreover, an\nambiguous, silent lady that my aunt subsequently decided must be a very\ndeaf paying guest. Two or three other people had concealed themselves at\nour coming and left unfinished teas behind them. Rugs and cushions lay\namong the chairs, and two of the latter were, I noted, covered with\nUnion Jacks.\n\nThe vicar introduced us sketchily, and the faded Victorian wife regarded\nmy aunt with a mixture of conventional scorn and abject respect,\nand talked to her in a languid, persistent voice about people in the\nneighbourhood whom my aunt could not possibly know.\n\nMy aunt received these personalia cheerfully, with her blue eyes\nflitting from point to point, and coming back again and again to the\npinched faces of the daughters and the cross upon the eldest\'s breast.\nEncouraged by my aunt\'s manner, the vicar\'s wife grew patronising and\nkindly, and made it evident that she could do much to bridge the social\ngulf between ourselves and the people of family about us.\n\nI had just snatches of that conversation. \"Mrs. Merridew brought him\nquite a lot of money. Her father, I believe, had been in the Spanish\nwine trade--quite a lady though. And after that he fell off his horse\nand cracked his brain pan and took to fishing and farming. I\'m sure\nyou\'ll like to know them. He\'s most amusing.... The daughter had a\ndisappointment and went to China as a missionary and got mixed up in a\nmassacre.\"...\n\n\"The most beautiful silks and things she brought back, you\'d hardly\nbelieve!\"\n\n\"Yes, they gave them to propitiate her. You see, they didn\'t understand\nthe difference, and they thought that as they\'d been massacring people,\nTHEY\'D be massacred. They didn\'t understand the difference Christianity\nmakes.\"...\n\n\"Seven bishops they\'ve had in the family!\"\n\n\"Married a Papist and was quite lost to them.\"...\n\n\"He failed some dreadful examination and had to go into the militia.\"...\n\n\"So she bit his leg as hard as ever she could and he let go.\"...\n\n\"Had four of his ribs amputated.\"...\n\n\"Caught meningitis and was carried off in a week.\"\n\n\"Had to have a large piece of silver tube let into his throat, and if he\nwants to talk he puts his finger on it. It makes him so interesting, I\nthink. You feel he\'s sincere somehow. A most charming man in every way.\"\n\n\"Preserved them both in spirits very luckily, and there they are in his\nstudy, though of course he doesn\'t show them to everybody.\"\n\nThe silent lady, unperturbed by these apparently exciting topics,\nscrutinised my aunt\'s costume with a singular intensity, and was visibly\nmoved when she unbuttoned her dust cloak and flung it wide. Meanwhile we\nmen conversed, one of the more spirited daughters listened brightly, and\nthe youths lay on the grass at our feet. My uncle offered them cigars,\nbut they both declined,--out of bashfulness, it seemed to me, whereas\nthe vicar, I think, accepted out of tact. When we were not looking at\nthem directly, these young men would kick each other furtively.\n\nUnder the influence of my uncle\'s cigar, the vicar\'s mind had soared\nbeyond the limits of the district. \"This Socialism,\" he said, \"seems\nmaking great headway.\"\n\nMy uncle shook his head. \"We\'re too individualistic in this country\nfor that sort of nonsense,\" he said \"Everybody\'s business is nobody\'s\nbusiness. That\'s where they go wrong.\"\n\n\"They have some intelligent people in their ranks, I am told,\" said\nthe vicar, \"writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished playwright, my\neldest daughter was telling me--I forget his name.\n\n\"Milly, dear! Oh! she\'s not here. Painters, too, they have. This\nSocialist, it seems to me, is part of the Unrest of the Age.... But, as\nyou say, the spirit of the people is against it. In the country, at any\nrate. The people down here are too sturdily independent in their small\nway--and too sensible altogether.\"...\n\n\"It\'s a great thing for Duffield to have Lady Grove occupied again,\" he\nwas saying when my wandering attention came back from some attractive\ncasualty in his wife\'s discourse. \"People have always looked up to\nthe house and considering all things, old Mr. Durgan really was\nextraordinarily good--extraordinarily good. You intend to give us a good\ndeal of your time here, I hope.\"\n\n\"I mean to do my duty by the Parish,\" said my uncle.\n\n\"I\'m sincerely glad to hear it--sincerely. We\'ve missed--the house\ninfluence. An English village isn\'t complete--People get out of hand.\nLife grows dull. The young people drift away to London.\"\n\nHe enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment.\n\n\"We shall look to you to liven things up,\" he said, poor man!\n\nMy uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth.\n\n\"What you think the place wants?\" he asked.\n\nHe did not wait for an answer. \"I been thinking while you been\ntalking--things one might do. Cricket--a good English game--sports.\nBuild the chaps a pavilion perhaps. Then every village ought to have a\nminiature rifle range.\"\n\n\"Ye-ees,\" said the vicar. \"Provided, of course, there isn\'t a constant\npopping.\"...\n\n\"Manage that all right,\" said my uncle. \"Thing\'d be a sort of long shed.\nPaint it red. British colour. Then there\'s a Union Jack for the church\nand the village school. Paint the school red, too, p\'raps. Not enough\ncolour about now. Too grey. Then a maypole.\"\n\n\"How far our people would take up that sort of thing--\" began the vicar.\n\n\"I\'m all for getting that good old English spirit back again,\" said\nmy uncle. \"Merrymakings. Lads and lasses dancing on the village green.\nHarvest home. Fairings. Yule Log--all the rest of it.\"\n\n\"How would old Sally Glue do for a May Queen?\" asked one of the sons in\nthe slight pause that followed.\n\n\"Or Annie Glassbound?\" said the other, with the huge virile guffaw of a\nyoung man whose voice has only recently broken.\n\n\"Sally Glue is eighty-five,\" explained the vicar, \"and Annie Glassbound\nis well--a young lady of extremely generous proportions. And not quite\nright, you know. Not quite right--here.\" He tapped his brow.\n\n\"Generous proportions!\" said the eldest son, and the guffaws were\nrenewed.\n\n\"You see,\" said the vicar, \"all the brisker girls go into service in\nor near London. The life of excitement attracts them. And no doubt\nthe higher wages have something to do with it. And the liberty to wear\nfinery. And generally--freedom from restraint. So that there might be\na little difficulty perhaps to find a May Queen here just at present who\nwas really young and er--pretty.... Of course I couldn\'t think of any of\nmy girls--or anything of that sort.\"\n\n\"We got to attract \'em back,\" said my uncle. \"That\'s what I feel about\nit. We got to Buck-Up the country. The English country is a going\nconcern still; just as the Established Church--if you\'ll excuse me\nsaying it, is a going concern. Just as Oxford is--or Cambridge. Or any\nof those old, fine old things. Only it wants fresh capital, fresh\nidees and fresh methods. Light railways, f\'rinstance--scientific use of\ndrainage. Wire fencing machinery--all that.\"\n\nThe vicar\'s face for one moment betrayed dismay. Perhaps he was thinking\nof his country walks amids the hawthorns and honeysuckle.\n\n\"There\'s great things,\" said my uncle, \"to be done on Mod\'un lines with\nVillage Jam and Pickles--boiled in the country.\"\n\nIt was the reverberation of this last sentence in my mind, I think,\nthat sharpened my sentimental sympathy as we went through the straggling\nvillage street and across the trim green on our way back to London.\nIt seemed that afternoon the most tranquil and idyllic collection of\ncreeper-sheltered homes you can imagine; thatch still lingered on a\nwhitewashed cottage or two, pyracanthus, wall-flowers, and daffodils\nabounded, and an unsystematic orchard or so was white with blossom\nabove and gay with bulbs below. I noted a row of straw beehives,\nbeehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since condemned as inefficient\nby all progressive minds, and in the doctor\'s acre of grass a flock of\ntwo whole sheep was grazing,--no doubt he\'d taken them on account. Two\nmen and one old woman made gestures of abject vassalage, and my uncle\nreplied with a lordly gesture of his great motoring glove....\n\n\"England\'s full of Bits like this,\" said my uncle, leaning over the\nfront seat and looking back with great satisfaction. The black glare of\nhis goggles rested for a time on the receding turrets of Lady Grove just\npeeping over the trees.\n\n\"I shall have a flagstaff, I think,\" he considered. \"Then one could show\nwhen one is in residence. The villagers will like to know.\"...\n\nI reflected. \"They will\" I said. \"They\'re used to liking to know.\"...\n\nMy aunt had been unusually silent. Suddenly she spoke. \"He says Snap,\"\nshe remarked; \"he buys that place. And a nice old job of Housekeeping he\ngives me! He sails through the village swelling like an old turkey. And\nwho\'ll have to scoot the butler? Me! Who\'s got to forget all she ever\nknew and start again? Me! Who\'s got to trek from Chiselhurst and be a\ngreat lady? Me! ... You old Bother! Just when I was settling down and\nbeginning to feel at home.\"\n\nMy uncle turned his goggles to her. \"Ah! THIS time it is home, Susan....\nWe got there.\"\n\nVII\n\nIt seems to me now but a step from the buying of Lady Grove to the\nbeginning of Crest Hill, from the days when the former was a stupendous\nachievement to the days when it was too small and dark and inconvenient\naltogether for a great financier\'s use. For me that was a period of\nincreasing detachment from our business and the great world of London; I\nsaw it more and more in broken glimpses, and sometimes I was working in\nmy little pavilion above Lady Grove for a fortnight together; even when\nI came up it was often solely for a meeting of the aeronautical society\nor for one of the learned societies or to consult literature or employ\nsearchers or some such special business. For my uncle it was a period\nof stupendous inflation. Each time I met him I found him more confident,\nmore comprehensive, more consciously a factor in great affairs. Soon he\nwas no longer an associate of merely business men; he was big enough for\nthe attentions of greater powers.\n\nI grew used to discovering some item of personal news about him in\nmy evening paper, or to the sight of a full-page portrait of him in a\nsixpenny magazine. Usually the news was of some munificent act,\nsome romantic piece of buying or giving or some fresh rumour of\nreconstruction. He saved, you will remember, the Parbury Reynolds\nfor the country. Or at times, it would be an interview or my uncle\'s\ncontribution to some symposium on the \"Secret of Success,\" or such-like\ntopic. Or wonderful tales of his power of work, of his wonderful\norganisation to get things done, of his instant decisions and remarkable\npower of judging his fellow-men. They repeated his great mot: \"Eight\nhour working day--I want eighty hours!\"\n\nHe became modestly but resolutely \"public.\" They cartooned him in Vanity\nFair. One year my aunt, looking indeed a very gracious, slender lady,\nfaced the portrait of the King in the great room at Burlington House,\nand the next year saw a medallion of my uncle by Ewart, looking out upon\nthe world, proud and imperial, but on the whole a trifle too prominently\nconvex, from the walls of the New Gallery.\n\nI shared only intermittently in his social experiences. People knew of\nme, it is true, and many of them sought to make through me a sort of\nflank attack upon him, and there was a legend, owing, very unreasonably,\npartly to my growing scientific reputation and partly to an element of\nreserve in my manner, that I played a much larger share in planning\nhis operations than was actually the case. This led to one or two very\nintimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one or two house parties\nand various odd offers of introductions and services that I didn\'t for\nthe most part accept. Among other people who sought me in this way\nwas Archie Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no particular\ndistinction, who would, I think, have been quite prepared to develop any\nsporting instincts I possessed, and who was beautifully unaware of our\nformer contact. He was always offering me winners; no doubt in a\nspirit of anticipatory exchange for some really good thing in our more\nscientific and certain method of getting something for nothing....\n\nIn spite of my preoccupation with my experiments, work, I did, I find\nnow that I come to ransack my impressions, see a great deal of the great\nworld during those eventful years; I had a near view of the machinery\nby which an astounding Empire is run, rubbed shoulders and exchanged\nexperiences with bishops and statesmen, political women and women who\nwere not political, physicians and soldiers, artists and authors, the\ndirectors of great journals, philanthropists and all sorts of eminent,\nsignificant people. I saw the statesmen without their orders and the\nbishops with but a little purple silk left over from their canonicals,\ninhaling, not incensen but cigar smoke. I could look at them all the\nbetter because, for the most part, they were not looking at me but at my\nuncle, and calculating consciously or unconsciously how they might use\nhim and assimilate him to their system, the most unpremeditated, subtle,\nsuccessful and aimless plutocracy that ever encumbered the destinies of\nmankind. Not one of them, so far as I could see, until disaster overtook\nhim, resented his lies, his almost naked dishonesty of method, the\ndisorderly disturbance of this trade and that, caused by his spasmodic\noperations. I can see them now about him, see them polite, watchful,\nvarious; his stiff compact little figure always a centre of\nattention, his wiry hair, his brief nose, his under-lip, electric with\nself-confidence. Wandering marginally through distinguished gatherings,\nI would catch the whispers: \"That\'s Mr. Ponderevo!\"\n\n\"The little man?\"\n\n\"Yes, the little bounder with the glasses.\"\n\n\"They say he\'s made--\"...\n\nOr I would see him on some parterre of a platform beside my aunt\'s\nhurraying hat, amidst titles and costumes, \"holding his end up,\" as\nhe would say, subscribing heavily to obvious charities, even at times\nmaking brief convulsive speeches in some good cause before the most\nexalted audiences. \"Mr. Chairman, your Royal Highness, my Lords, Ladies\nand Gentlemen,\"`he would begin amidst subsiding applause and adjust\nthose obstinate glasses and thrust back the wings of his frock-coat and\nrest his hands upon his hips and speak his fragment with ever and again\nan incidental Zzzz. His hands would fret about him as he spoke, fiddle\nhis glasses, feel in his waistcoat pockets; ever and again he would rise\nslowly to his toes as a sentence unwound jerkily like a clockwork snake,\nand drop back on his heels at the end. They were the very gestures of\nour first encounter when he had stood before the empty fireplace in his\nminute draped parlour and talked of my future to my mother.\n\nIn those measurelessly long hot afternoons in the little shop at\nWimblehurst he had talked and dreamt of the Romance of Modern Commerce.\nHere, surely, was his romance come true.\n\nVIII\n\nPeople say that my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes,\nbut if one may tell so much truth of a man one has in a manner loved,\nhe never had very much head to lose. He was always imaginative, erratic,\ninconsistent, recklessly inexact, and his inundation of wealth merely\ngave him scope for these qualities. It is true, indeed, that towards\nthe climax he became intensely irritable at times and impatient of\ncontradiction, but that, I think, was rather the gnawing uneasiness of\nsanity than any mental disturbance. But I find it hard either to judge\nhim or convey the full development of him to the reader. I saw too much\nof him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects. Now\nhe is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is\nquarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden,\njerky, fragmentary, energetic, and--in some subtle fundamental way that\nI find difficult to define--absurd.\n\nThere stands out--because of the tranquil beauty of its setting\nperhaps--a talk we had in the veranda of the little pavilion near\nmy worksheds behind Crest Hill in which my aeroplanes and navigable\nballoons were housed. It was one of many similar conversations, and I do\nnot know why it in particular should survive its fellows. It happens\nso. He had come up to me after his coffee to consult me about a certain\nchalice which in a moment of splendour and under the importunity of\na countess he had determined to give to a deserving church in the\neast-end. I, in a moment of even rasher generosity, had suggested Ewart\nas a possible artist. Ewart had produced at once an admirable sketch for\nthe sacred vessel surrounded by a sort of wreath of Millies with open\narms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it. After\nthat came a series of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and\nless of a commercial man\'s chalice, acquired more and more the elusive\nquality of the Holy Grail, and at last even the drawing receded.\n\nMy uncle grew restive.... \"You see, George, they\'ll begin to want the\nblasted thing!\"\n\n\"What blasted thing?\"\n\n\"That chalice, damn it! They\'re beginning to ask questions. It isn\'t\nBusiness, George.\"\n\n\"It\'s art,\" I protested, \"and religion.\"\n\n\"That\'s all very well. But it\'s not a good ad for us, George, to make a\npromise and not deliver the goods.... I\'ll have to write off your\nfriend Ewart as a bad debt, that\'s what it comes to, and go to a decent\nfirm.\"...\n\nWe sat outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked,\ndrank whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated. His temporary\nannoyance passed. It was an altogether splendid summer night, following\na blazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines\nof the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the\npin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage\nfrom which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed like wet steel. The\nseason must have been high June, for down in the woods that hid the\nlights of the Lady Grove windows, I remember the nightingales thrilled\nand gurgled....\n\n\"We got here, George,\" said my uncle, ending a long pause. \"Didn\'t I\nsay?\"\n\n\"Say!--when?\" I asked.\n\n\"In that hole in the To\'nem Court Road, eh? It\'s been a Straight Square\nFight, and here we are!\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"\'Member me telling you--Tono-Bungay?.... Well.... I\'d just that\nafternoon thought of it!\"\n\n\"I\'ve fancied at times;\" I admitted.\n\n\"It\'s a great world, George, nowadays, with a fair chance for every\none who lays hold of things. The career ouvert to the Talons--eh?\nTono-Bungay. Think of it! It\'s a great world and a growing world, and\nI\'m glad we\'re in it--and getting a pull. We\'re getting big people,\nGeorge. Things come to us. Eh? This Palestine thing.\"...\n\nHe meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly. Then he became still.\n\nHis theme was taken up by a cricket in the grass until he himself was\nready to resume it. The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some scheme\nof its own it had got there. \"Chirrrrrrup\" it said; \"chirrrrrrup.\"\n\n\"Lord, what a place that was at Wimblehurst!\" he broke out. \"If ever\nI get a day off we\'ll motor there, George, and run over that dog that\nsleeps in the High Street. Always was a dog asleep there--always.\nAlways... I\'d like to see the old shop again. I daresay old Ruck still\nstands between the sheep at his door, grinning with all his teeth, and\nMarbel, silly beggar! comes out with his white apron on and a pencil\nstuck behind his ear, trying to look awake... Wonder if they know it\'s\nme? I\'d like \'em somehow to know it\'s me.\"\n\n\"They\'ll have had the International Tea Company and all sorts of people\ncutting them up,\" I said. \"And that dog\'s been on the pavement this six\nyears--can\'t sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor-horns and\nits shattered nerves.\"\n\n\"Movin\' everywhere,\" said my uncle. \"I expect you\'re right.... It\'s a\nbig time we\'re in, George. It\'s a big Progressive On-coming Imperial\nTime. This Palestine business--the daring of it.... It\'s, it\'s a\nProcess, George. And we got our hands on it. Here we sit--with our hands\non it, George. Entrusted.\n\n\"It seems quiet to--night. But if we could see and hear.\" He waved his\ncigar towards Leatherhead and London.\n\n\"There they are, millions, George. Jes\' think of what they\'ve been up to\nto-day--those ten millions--each one doing his own particular job. You\ncan\'t grasp it. It\'s like old Whitman says--what is it he says? Well,\nanyway it\'s like old Whitman. Fine chap, Whitman! Fine old chap! Queer,\nyou can\'t quote him. ... And these millions aren\'t anything. There\'s\nthe millions over seas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, M\'rocco, Africa\ngenerally, \'Merica.... Well, here we are, with power, with leisure,\npicked out--because we\'ve been energetic, because we\'ve seized\nopportunities, because we\'ve made things hum when other people have\nwaited for them to hum. See? Here we are--with our hands on it. Big\npeople. Big growing people. In a sort of way,--Forces.\"\n\nHe paused. \"It\'s wonderful, George,\" he said.\n\n\"Anglo-Saxon energy,\" I said softly to the night.\n\n\"That\'s it, George--energy. It\'s put things in our grip--threads, wires,\nstretching out and out, George, from that little office of ours, out to\nWest Africa, out to Egypt, out to Inja, out east, west, north and south.\nRunning the world practically. Running it faster and faster. Creative.\nThere\'s that Palestine canal affair. Marvellous idee! Suppose we take\nthat up, suppose we let ourselves in for it, us and the others, and run\nthat water sluice from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea Valley--think\nof the difference it will make! All the desert blooming like a rose,\nJericho lost for ever, all the Holy Places under water.... Very likely\ndestroy Christianity.\"...\n\nHe mused for a space. \"Cuttin\' canals,\" murmured my uncle. \"Making\ntunnels.... New countries.... New centres.... Zzzz.... Finance.... Not\nonly Palestine.\n\n\"I wonder where we shall get before we done, George? We got a lot of big\nthings going. We got the investing public sound and sure. I don\'t see\nwhy in the end we shouldn\'t be very big. There\'s difficulties but I\'m\nequal to them. We\'re still a bit soft in our bones, but they\'ll harden\nall right.... I suppose, after all, I\'m worth something like a million,\nGeorge, cleared up and settled. If I got out of things now. It\'s a great\ntime, George, a wonderful time!\"...\n\nI glanced through the twilight at his convexity and I must confess it\nstruck me that on the whole he wasn\'t particularly good value.\n\n\"We got our hands on things, George, us big people. We got to hang\ntogether, George run the show. Join up with the old order like that\nmill-wheel of Kipling\'s. (Finest thing he ever wrote, George; I jes\'\nbeen reading it again. Made me buy Lady Grove.) Well, we got to run\nthe country, George. It\'s ours. Make it a Scientific Organised Business\nEnterprise. Put idees into it. \'Lectrify it. Run the Press. Run all\nsorts of developments. All sorts of developments. I been talking to Lord\nBoom. I been talking to all sorts of people. Great things. Progress. The\nworld on business lines. Only jes\' beginning.\"...\n\nHe fell into a deep meditation.\n\nHe Zzzzed for a time and ceased.\n\n\"YES,\" he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with\nultimate solutions to the profoundest problems.\n\n\"What?\" I said after a seemly pause.\n\nMy uncle hung fire for a moment and it seemed to me the fate of nations\ntrembled in the balance. Then he spoke as one who speaks from the very\nbottom of his heart--and I think it was the very bottom of his heart.\n\n\"I\'d jes\' like to drop into the Eastry Arms, jes\' when all those beggars\nin the parlour are sittin\' down to whist, Ruck and Marbel and all, and\ngive \'em ten minutes of my mind, George. Straight from the shoulder.\nJes\' exactly what I think of them. It\'s a little thing, but I\'d like to\ndo it jes\' once before I die.\"...\n\nHe rested on that for some time Zzzz-ing.\n\nThen he broke out at a new place in a tone of detached criticism.\n\n\"There\'s Boom,\" he reflected.\n\n\"It\'s a wonderful system this old British system, George. It\'s staid\nand stable and yet it has a place for new men. We come up and take our\nplaces. It\'s almost expected. We take a hand. That\'s where our Democracy\ndiffers from America. Over there a man succeeds; all he gets is money.\nHere there\'s a system open to every one--practically.... Chaps like\nBoom--come from nowhere.\"\n\nHis voice ceased. I reflected upon the spirit of his words. Suddenly I\nkicked my feet in the air, rolled on my side and sat up suddenly on my\ndeck chair with my legs down.\n\n\"You don\'t mean it!\" I said.\n\n\"Mean what, George?\"\n\n\"Subscription to the party funds. Reciprocal advantage. Have we got to\nthat?\"\n\n\"Whad you driving at, George?\"\n\n\"You know. They\'d never do it, man!\"\n\n\"Do what?\" he said feebly; and, \"Why shouldn\'t they?\"\n\n\"They\'d not even go to a baronetcy. NO!.... And yet, of course, there\'s\nBoom! And Collingshead and Gorver. They\'ve done beer, they\'ve done\nsnippets! After all Tono-Bungay--it\'s not like a turf commission\nagent or anything like that!... There have of course been some very\ngentlemanly commission agents. It isn\'t like a fool of a scientific man\nwho can\'t make money!\"\n\nMy uncle grunted; we\'d differed on that issue before.\n\nA malignant humour took possession of me. \"What would they call you?\"\nI speculated. \"The vicar would like Duffield. Too much like Duffer!\nDifficult thing, a title.\" I ran my mind over various possibilities.\n\"Why not take a leaf from a socialist tract I came upon yesterday. Chap\nsays we\'re all getting delocalised. Beautiful word--delocalised! Why not\nbe the first delocalised peer? That gives you--Tono-Bungay! There is a\nBungay, you know. Lord Tono of Bungay--in bottles everywhere. Eh?\"\n\nMy uncle astonished me by losing his temper.\n\n\"Damn it. George, you don\'t seem to see I\'m serious! You\'re always\nsneering at Tono-Bungay! As though it was some sort of swindle. It was\nperfec\'ly legitimate trade, perfec\'ly legitimate. Good value and a\ngood article.... When I come up here and tell you plans and exchange\nidees--you sneer at me. You do. You don\'t see--it\'s a big thing. It\'s\na big thing. You got to get used to new circumstances. You got to face\nwhat lies before us. You got to drop that tone.\"\n\nIX\n\nMy uncle was not altogether swallowed up in business and ambition. He\nkept in touch with modern thought. For example, he was, I know, greatly\nswayed by what he called \"This Overman idee, Nietzsche--all that stuff.\"\n\nHe mingled those comforting suggestions of a potent and exceptional\nhuman being emancipated from the pettier limitations of integrity with\nthe Napoleonic legend. It gave his imagination a considerable outlet.\nThat Napoleonic legend! The real mischief of Napoleon\'s immensely\ndisastrous and accidental career began only when he was dead and the\nromantic type of mind was free to elaborate his character. I do believe\nthat my uncle would have made a far less egregious smash if there had\nbeen no Napoleonic legend to misguide him. He was in many ways better\nand infinitely kinder than his career. But when in doubt between\ndecent conduct and a base advantage, that cult came in more and more\ninfluentially: \"think of Napoleon; think what the inflexibly-wilful\nNapoleon would have done with such scruples as yours;\" that was the\nrule, and the end was invariably a new step in dishonour.\n\nMy uncle was in an unsystematic way a collector of Napoleonic relics;\nthe bigger the book about his hero the more readily he bought it; he\npurchased letters and tinsel and weapons that bore however remotely\nupon the Man of Destiny, and he even secured in Geneva, though he never\nbrought home, an old coach in which Buonaparte might have ridden; he\ncrowded the quiet walls of Lady Grove with engravings and figures of\nhim, preferring, my aunt remarked, the more convex portraits with the\nwhite vest and those statuettes with the hands behind the back which\nthrew forward the figure. The Durgans watched him through it all,\nsardonically.\n\nAnd he would stand after breakfast at times in the light of the window\nat Lady Grove, a little apart, with two fingers of one hand stuck\nbetween his waistcoat-buttons and his chin sunken, thinking,--the most\npreposterous little fat man in the world. It made my aunt feel, she\nsaid, \"like an old Field Marshal--knocks me into a cocked hat, George!\"\n\nPerhaps this Napoleonic bias made him a little less frequent with his\ncigars than he would otherwise have been, but of that I cannot be sure,\nand it certainly caused my aunt a considerable amount of vexation after\nhe had read Napoleon and the Fair Sex, because for a time that roused\nhim to a sense of a side of life he had in his commercial preoccupations\nvery largely forgotten. Suggestion plays so great a part in this field.\nMy uncle took the next opportunity and had an \"affair\"!\n\nIt was not a very impassioned affair, and the exact particulars never of\ncourse reached me. It is quite by chance I know anything of it at\nall. One evening I was surprised to come upon my uncle in a mixture of\nBohemia and smart people at an At Home in the flat of Robbert, the R.A.\nwho painted my aunt, and he was standing a little apart in a recess,\ntalking or rather being talked to in undertones by a plump, blond\nlittle woman in pale blue, a Helen Scrymgeour who wrote novels and was\norganising a weekly magazine. I elbowed a large lady who was saying\nsomething about them, but I didn\'t need to hear the thing she said to\nperceive the relationship of the two. It hit me like a placard on a\nhoarding. I was amazed the whole gathering did not see it. Perhaps they\ndid. She was wearing a remarkably fine diamond necklace, much too fine\nfor journalism, and regarding him with that quality of questionable\nproprietorship, of leashed but straining intimacy, that seems\ninseparable from this sort of affair. It is so much more palpable than\nmatrimony. If anything was wanted to complete my conviction it was\nmy uncles\'s eyes when presently he became aware of mine, a certain\nembarrassment and a certain pride and defiance. And the next day he made\nan opportunity to praise the lady\'s intelligence to me concisely, lest I\nshould miss the point of it all.\n\nAfter that I heard some gossip--from a friend of the lady\'s. I was\nmuch too curious to do anything but listen. I had never in all my life\nimagined my uncle in an amorous attitude. It would appear that she\ncalled him her \"God in the Car\"--after the hero in a novel of Anthony\nHope\'s. It was essential to the convention of their relations that he\nshould go relentlessly whenever business called, and it was generally\narranged that it did call. To him women were an incident, it was\nunderstood between them; Ambition was the master-passion. A great world\ncalled him and the noble hunger for Power. I have never been able to\ndiscover just how honest Mrs. Scrymgeour was in all this, but it is\nquite possible the immense glamour of his financial largeness prevailed\nwith her and that she did bring a really romantic feeling to their\nencounters. There must have been some extraordinary moments....\n\nI was a good deal exercised and distressed about my aunt when I realised\nwhat was afoot. I thought it would prove a terrible humiliation to her.\nI suspected her of keeping up a brave front with the loss of my uncle\'s\naffections fretting at her heart, but there I simply underestimated her.\nShe didn\'t hear for some time and when she did hear she was extremely\nangry and energetic. The sentimental situation didn\'t trouble her for\na moment. She decided that my uncle \"wanted smacking.\" She accentuated\nherself with an unexpected new hat, went and gave him an inconceivable\ntalking-to at the Hardingham, and then came round to \"blow-up\" me for\nnot telling her what was going on before....\n\nI tried to bring her to a proper sense of the accepted values in this\naffair, but my aunt\'s originality of outlook was never so invincible.\n\"Men don\'t tell on one another in affairs of passion,\" I protested, and\nsuch-like worldly excuses.\n\n\"Women!\" she said in high indignation, \"and men! It isn\'t women and\nmen--it\'s him and me, George! Why don\'t you talk sense?\n\n\"Old passion\'s all very well, George, in its way, and I\'m the last\nperson to be jealous. But this is old nonsense.... I\'m not going to let\nhim show off what a silly old lobster he is to other women....\nI\'ll mark every scrap of his underclothes with red letters,\n\'Ponderevo-Private\'--every scrap.\n\n\"Going about making love indeed,--in abdominal belts!--at his time of\nlife!\"\n\nI cannot imagine what passed between her and my uncle. But I have no\ndoubt that for once her customary badinage was laid aside. How they\ntalked then I do not know, for I who knew them so well had never heard\nthat much of intimacy between them. At any rate it was a concerned and\npreoccupied \"God in the Car\" I had to deal with in the next few days,\nunusually Zzzz-y and given to slight impatient gestures that had nothing\nto do with the current conversation. And it was evident that in all\ndirections he was finding things unusually difficult to explain.\n\nAll the intimate moments in this affair were hidden from me, but in\nthe end my aunt triumphed. He did not so much throw as jerk over Mrs.\nScrymgeour, and she did not so much make a novel of it as upset a huge\npailful of attenuated and adulterated female soul upon this occasion.\nMy aunt did not appear in that, even remotely. So that it is doubtful\nif the lady knew the real causes of her abandonment. The Napoleonic hero\nwas practically unmarried, and he threw over his lady as Napoleon threw\nover Josephine for a great alliance.\n\nIt was a triumph for my aunt, but it had its price. For some time it was\nevident things were strained between them. He gave up the lady, but he\nresented having to do so, deeply. She had meant more to his imagination\nthan one could have supposed. He wouldn\'t for a long time \"come round.\"\nHe became touchy and impatient and secretive towards my aunt, and she, I\nnoted, after an amazing check or so, stopped that stream of kindly abuse\nthat had flowed for so long and had been so great a refreshment in their\nlives. They were both the poorer for its cessation, both less happy.\nShe devoted herself more and more to Lady Grove and the humours and\ncomplications of its management. The servants took to her--as they\nsay--she god-mothered three Susans during her rule, the coachman\'s, the\ngardener\'s, and the Up Hill gamekeeper\'s. She got together a library of\nold household books that were in the vein of the place. She revived the\nstill-room, and became a great artist in jellies and elder and cowslip\nwine.\n\nX\n\nAnd while I neglected the development of my uncle\'s finances--and\nmy own, in my scientific work and my absorbing conflict with the\ndifficulties of flying,--his schemes grew more and more expansive and\nhazardous, and his spending wilder and laxer. I believe that a haunting\nsense of the intensifying unsoundness of his position accounts largely\nfor his increasing irritability and his increasing secretiveness with my\naunt and myself during these crowning years. He dreaded, I think, having\nto explain, he feared our jests might pierce unwittingly to the truth.\nEven in the privacy of his mind he would not face the truth. He was\naccumulating unrealisable securities in his safes until they hung a\npotential avalanche over the economic world. But his buying became a\nfever, and his restless desire to keep it up with himself that he was\nmaking a triumphant progress to limitless wealth gnawed deeper and\ndeeper. A curious feature of this time with him was his buying over and\nover again of similar things. His ideas seemed to run in series. Within\na twelve-month he bought five new motor-cars, each more swift and\npowerful than its predecessor, and only the repeated prompt resignation\nof his chief chauffeur at each moment of danger, prevented his driving\nthem himself. He used them more and more. He developed a passion for\nlocomotion for its own sake.\n\nThen he began to chafe at Lady Grove, fretted by a chance jest he had\noverheard at a dinner. \"This house, George,\" he said. \"It\'s a misfit.\nThere\'s no elbow-room in it; it\'s choked with old memories. And I can\'t\nstand all these damned Durgans!\n\n\"That chap in the corner, George. No! the other corner! The man in a\ncherry-coloured coat. He watched you! He\'d look silly if I stuck a poker\nthrough his Gizzard!\"\n\n\"He\'d look,\" I reflected, \"much as he does now. As though he was\namused.\"\n\nHe replaced his glasses, which had fallen at his emotion, and glared at\nhis antagonists. \"What are they? What are they all, the lot of \'em?\nDead as Mutton! They just stuck in the mud. They didn\'t even rise to the\nReformation. The old out-of-date Reformation! Move with the times!--they\nmoved against the times.\n\n\"Just a Family of Failure,--they never even tried!\n\n\"They\'re jes\', George, exactly what I\'m not. Exactly. It isn\'t\nsuitable.... All this living in the Past.\n\n\"And I want a bigger place too, George. I want air and sunlight and\nroom to move about and more service. A house where you can get a Move\non things! Zzzz. Why! it\'s like a discord--it jars--even to have the\ntelephone.... There\'s nothing, nothing except the terrace, that\'s worth\na Rap. It\'s all dark and old and dried up and full of old-fashioned\nthings--musty old idees--fitter for a silver-fish than a modern man....\nI don\'t know how I got here.\"\n\nHe broke out into a new grievance. \"That damned vicar,\" he complained,\n\"thinks I ought to think myself lucky to get this place! Every time I\nmeet him I can see him think it.... One of these days, George I\'ll show\nhim what a Mod\'un house is like!\"\n\nAnd he did.\n\nI remember the day when he declared, as Americans say, for Crest\nHill. He had come up to see my new gas plant, for I was then only just\nbeginning to experiment with auxiliary collapsible balloons, and all\nthe time the shine of his glasses was wandering away to the open down\nbeyond. \"Let\'s go back to Lady Grove over the hill,\" he said. \"Something\nI want to show you. Something fine!\"\n\nIt was an empty sunlit place that summer evening, sky and earth\nwarm with sundown, and a pe-wit or so just accentuating the pleasant\nstillness that ends a long clear day. A beautiful peace, it was, to\nwreck for ever. And there was my uncle, the modern man of power, in his\ngrey top-hat and his grey suit and his black-ribboned glasses, short,\nthin-legged, large-stomached, pointing and gesticulating, threatening\nthis calm.\n\nHe began with a wave of his arm. \"That\'s the place, George,\" he said.\n\"See?\"\n\n\"Eh!\" I cried--for I had been thinking of remote things.\n\n\"I got it.\"\n\n\"Got what?\"\n\n\"For a house!--a Twentieth Century house! That\'s the place for it!\"\n\nOne of his characteristic phrases was begotten in him.\n\n\"Four-square to the winds of heaven, George!\" he said. \"Eh? Four-square\nto the winds of heaven!\"\n\n\"You\'ll get the winds up here,\" I said.\n\n\"A mammoth house it ought to be, George--to suit these hills.\"\n\n\"Quite,\" I said.\n\n\"Great galleries and things--running out there and there--See? I been\nthinking of it, George! Looking out all this way--across the Weald. With\nits back to Lady Grove.\"\n\n\"And the morning sun in its eye.\"\n\n\"Like an eagle, George,--like an eagle!\"\n\nSo he broached to me what speedily became the leading occupation of\nhis culminating years, Crest Hill. But all the world has heard of that\nextravagant place which grew and changed its plans as it grew, and\nbubbled like a salted snail, and burgeoned and bulged and evermore\ngrew. I know not what delirium of pinnacles and terraces and arcades and\ncorridors glittered at last upon the uplands of his mind; the place,\nfor all that its expansion was terminated abruptly by our collapse, is\nwonderful enough as it stands,--that empty instinctive building of a\nchildless man. His chief architect was a young man named Westminster,\nwhose work he had picked out in the architecture room of the Royal\nAcademy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him\nhe associated from time to time a number of fellow professionals,\nstonemasons, sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes, metal\nworkers, wood carvers, furniture designers, ceramic specialists,\nlandscape gardeners, and the man who designs the arrangement and\nventilation of the various new houses in the London Zoological Gardens.\nIn addition he had his own ideas. The thing occupied his mind at all\ntimes, but it held it completely from Friday night to Monday morning.\nHe would come down to Lady Grove on Friday night in a crowded motor-car\nthat almost dripped architects. He didn\'t, however, confine himself to\narchitects; every one was liable to an invitation to week-end and view\nCrest Hill, and many an eager promoter, unaware of how Napoleonically\nand completely my uncle had departmentalised his mind, tried to creep up\nto him by way of tiles and ventilators and new electric fittings. Always\non Sunday mornings, unless the weather was vile, he would, so soon as\nbreakfast and his secretaries were disposed of, visit the site with a\nconsiderable retinue, and alter and develop plans, making modifications,\nZzzz-ing, giving immense new orders verbally--an unsatisfactory way, as\nWestminster and the contractors ultimately found.\n\nThere he stands in my memory, the symbol of this age for me, the man of\nluck and advertisement, the current master of the world. There he\nstands upon the great outward sweep of the terrace before the huge\nmain entrance, a little figure, ridiculously disproportionate to that\nforty-foot arch, with the granite ball behind him--the astronomical\nball, brass coopered, that represented the world, with a little\nadjustable tube of lenses on a gun-metal arm that focussed the sun\nupon just that point of the earth on which it chanced to be shining\nvertically. There he stands, Napoleonically grouped with his retinue men\nin tweeds and golfing-suits, a little solicitor, whose name I forget,\nin grey trousers and a black jacket, and Westminster in Jaeger\nunderclothing, a floriferous tie, and peculiar brown cloth of his own.\n\nThe downland breeze flutters my uncle\'s coat-tails, disarranges his\nstiff hair, and insists on the evidence of undisciplined appetites in\nface and form, as he points out this or that feature in the prospect to\nhis attentive collaborator.\n\nBelow are hundreds of feet of wheeling-planks, ditches, excavations,\nheaps of earth, piles of garden stone from the Wealden ridges. On either\nhand the walls of his irrelevant unmeaning palace rise at one time he\nhad working in that place--disturbing the economic balance of the whole\ncountryside by their presence--upwards of three thousand men....\n\nSo he poses for my picture amidst the raw beginnings that were never to\nbe completed. He did the strangest things about that place, things more\nand more detached from any conception of financial scale, things more\nand more apart from sober humanity. He seemed to think himself, at last,\nreleased from any such limitations. He moved a quite considerable hill,\nand nearly sixty mature trees were moved with it to open his prospect\neastward, moved it about two hundred feet to the south. At another\ntime he caught a suggestion from some city restaurant and made a\nbilliard-room roofed with plate glass beneath the waters of his\nornamental lake. He furnished one wing while its roof still awaited\ncompletion. He had a swimming bath thirty feet square next to his\nbedroom upstairs, and to crown it all he commenced a great wall to hold\nall his dominions together, free from the invasion of common men. It\nwas a ten-foot wall, glass surmounted, and had it been completed as he\nintended it, it would have had a total length of nearly eleven miles.\nSome of it towards the last was so dishonestly built that it collapsed\nwithin a year upon its foundations, but some miles of it still stand. I\nnever think of it now but what I think of the hundreds of eager little\ninvestors who followed his \"star,\" whose hopes and lives, whose wives\'\nsecurity and children\'s prospects are all mixed up beyond redemption\nwith that flaking mortar....\n\nIt is curious how many of these modern financiers of chance and bluff\nhave ended their careers by building. It was not merely my uncle. Sooner\nor later they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation,\ntry to make their fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar,\nbring moonshine into relations with a weekly wages-sheet. Then the whole\nfabric of confidence and imagination totters--and down they come....\n\nWhen I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of bricks\nand mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the\ngeneral quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I\nam reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had\nwitnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey\nand shorts beside my machine, fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous\nface failed to conceal a peculiar desolation that possessed him.\n\n\"Almost you convince me,\" he said, coming up to me, \"against my will....\nA marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir, before\nyou can emulate that perfect mechanism--the wing of a bird.\"\n\nHe looked at my sheds.\n\n\"You\'ve changed the look of this valley, too,\" he said.\n\n\"Temporary defilements,\" I remarked, guessing what was in his mind.\n\n\"Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But--H\'m. I\'ve\njust been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo\'s new house.\nThat--that is something more permanent. A magnificent place!--in many\nways. Imposing. I\'ve never somehow brought myself to go that way before.\nThings are greatly advanced.... We find--the great number of strangers\nintroduced into the villages about here by these operations, working-men\nchiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They bring a new\nspirit into the place; betting--ideas--all sorts of queer notions.\nOur publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one\'s\nouthouses--and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The other\nmorning I couldn\'t sleep--a slight dyspepsia--and I looked out of\nthe window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A silent\nprocession. I counted ninety-seven--in the dawn. All going up to the new\nroad for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I\'ve been up to see\nwhat they were doing.\"\n\n\"They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at\nall--comparatively. And that big house--\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows. \"Really stupendous! Stupendous.\n\n\"All the hillside--the old turf--cut to ribbons!\"\n\nHis eye searched my face. \"We\'ve grown so accustomed to look up to Lady\nGrove,\" he said, and smiled in search of sympathy. \"It shifts our centre\nof gravity.\"\n\n\"Things will readjust themselves,\" I lied.\n\nHe snatched at the phrase. \"Of course,\" he said.\n\n\"They\'ll readjust themselves--settle down again. Must. In the old way.\nIt\'s bound to come right again--a comforting thought. Yes. After all,\nLady Grove itself had to be built once upon a time--was--to begin\nwith--artificial.\"\n\nHis eye returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver\npreoccupations. \"I should think twice,\" he remarked, \"before I trusted\nmyself to that concern.... But I suppose one grows accustomed to the\nmotion.\"\n\nHe bade me good morning and went his way, bowed and thoughtful....\n\nHe had kept the truth from his mind a long time, but that morning it had\nforced its way to him with an aspect that brooked no denial that this\ntime it was not just changes that were coming in his world, but that all\nhis world lay open and defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so\nfar as he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike, to change.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE THIRD\n\nSOARING\n\nI\n\nFor nearly all the time that my uncle was incubating and hatching\nCrest Hill I was busy in a little transverse valley between that\ngreat beginning and Lady Grove with more and more costly and ambitious\nexperiments in aerial navigation. This work was indeed the main\nsubstance of my life through all the great time of the Tono-Bungay\nsymphony.\n\nI have told already how I came to devote myself to this system of\ninquiries, how in a sort of disgust with the common adventure of life\nI took up the dropped ends of my college studies, taking them up again\nwith a man\'s resolution instead of a boy\'s ambition. From the first\nI did well at this work. It--was, I think, largely a case of special\naptitude, of a peculiar irrelevant vein of faculty running through my\nmind. It is one of those things men seem to have by chance, that has\nlittle or nothing to do with their general merit, and which it is\nridiculous to be either conceited or modest about. I did get through\na very big mass of work in those years, working for a time with a\nconcentrated fierceness that left little of such energy or capacity as\nI possess unused. I worked out a series of problems connected with the\nstability of bodies pitching in the air and the internal movements of\nthe wind, and I also revolutionised one leading part at last of the\ntheory of explosive engines. These things are to be found in the\nPhilosophical Transactions, the Mathematical Journal, and less\nfrequently in one or two other such publications, and they needn\'t\ndetain us here. Indeed, I doubt if I could write about them here. One\nacquires a sort of shorthand for one\'s notes and mind in relation to\nsuch special work. I have never taught; nor lectured, that is to say,\nI have never had to express my thoughts about mechanical things in\nordinary everyday language, and I doubt very much if I could do so now\nwithout extreme tedium.\n\nMy work was, to begin with, very largely theoretical. I was able to\nattack such early necessities of verification as arose with quite little\nmodels, using a turntable to get the motion through the air, and\ncane, whalebone and silk as building material. But a time came when\nincalculable factors crept in, factors of human capacity and factors of\ninsufficient experimental knowledge, when one must needs guess and\ntry. Then I had to enlarge the scale of my operations, and soon I had\nenlarged them very greatly. I set to work almost concurrently on the\nbalance and stability of gliders and upon the steering of inflated bags,\nthe latter a particularly expensive branch of work. I was no doubt moved\nby something of the same spirit of lavish expenditure that was running\naway with my uncle in these developments. Presently my establishment\nabove Lady Grove had grown to a painted wood chalet big enough to\naccommodate six men, and in which I would sometimes live for three\nweeks together; to a gasometer, to a motor-house, to three big\ncorrugated-roofed sheds and lock-up houses, to a stage from which to\nstart gliders, to a workshop and so forth. A rough road was made. We\nbrought up gas from Cheaping and electricity from Woking, which place\nI found also afforded a friendly workshop for larger operations than\nI could manage. I had the luck also to find a man who seemed my\nheaven-sent second-in-command--Cothope his name was. He was a\nself-educated-man; he had formerly been a sapper and he was one of the\nbest and handiest working engineers alive. Without him I do not think I\ncould have achieved half what I have done. At times he has been not so\nmuch my assistant as my collaborator, and has followed my fortunes to\nthis day. Other men came and went as I needed them.\n\nI do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not\nexperienced it, the peculiar interest, the peculiar satisfaction that\nlies in a sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money.\nIt is a different thing from any other sort of human effort. You\nare free from the exasperating conflict with your fellow-creatures\naltogether--at least so far as the essential work goes; that for me is\nits peculiar merit. Scientific truth is the remotest of mistresses;\nshe hides in strange places, she is attained by tortuous and laborious\nroads, but SHE IS ALWAYS THERE! Win to her and she will not fail you;\nshe is yours and mankind\'s for ever. She is reality, the one reality I\nhave found in this strange disorder of existence. She will not sulk with\nyou nor misunderstand you nor cheat you of your reward upon some petty\ndoubt. You cannot change her by advertisement or clamour, nor stifle her\nin vulgarities. Things grow under your hands when you serve her, things\nthat are permanent as nothing else is permanent in the whole life of\nman. That, I think, is the peculiar satisfaction of science and its\nenduring reward....\n\nThe taking up of experimental work produced a great change in my\npersonal habits. I have told how already once in my life at Wimblehurst\nI had a period of discipline and continuous effort, and how, when I\ncame to South Kensington, I became demoralised by the immense effect\nof London, by its innumerable imperative demands upon my attention and\ncuriosity. And I parted with much of my personal pride when I gave\nup science for the development of Tono-Bungay. But my poverty kept me\nabstinent and my youthful romanticism kept me chaste until my married\nlife was well under way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I did a large\namount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my maximum\nnor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were\navoidable things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and\nfoolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more\ncarelessly. I felt no reason why I should do anything else. Never at any\npoint did I use myself to the edge of my capacity. The emotional crisis\nof my divorce did not produce any immediate change in these matters of\npersonal discipline. I found some difficulty at first in concentrating\nmy mind upon scientific work, it was so much more exacting than\nbusiness, but I got over that difficulty by smoking. I became an\ninordinate cigar smoker; it gave me moods of profound depression, but\nI treated these usually by the homeopathic method,--by lighting another\ncigar. I didn\'t realise at all how loose my moral and nervous fibre had\nbecome until I reached the practical side of my investigations and was\nface to face with the necessity of finding out just how it felt to use a\nglider and just what a man could do with one.\n\nI got into this relaxed habit of living in spite of very real\ntendencies in my nature towards discipline. I\'ve never been in love with\nself-indulgence. That philosophy of the loose lip and the lax paunch\nis one for which I\'ve always had an instinctive distrust. I like bare\nthings, stripped things, plain, austere and continent things, fine lines\nand cold colours. But in these plethoric times when there is too much\ncoarse stuff for everybody and the struggle for life takes the form of\ncompetitive advertisement and the effort to fill your neighbour\'s eye,\nwhen there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves\nor stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident. Always before these\ntimes the bulk of the people did not over-eat themselves, because they\ncouldn\'t, whether they wanted to do so or not, and all but a very few\nwere kept \"fit\" by unavoidable exercise and personal danger. Now, if\nonly he pitch his standard low enough and keep free from pride, almost\nany one can achieve a sort of excess. You can go through contemporary\nlife fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry\nnor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest moment a mere\nsentimental orgasm, and your first real contact with primary and\nelemental necessities, the sweat of your death-bed. So I think it was\nwith my uncle; so, very nearly, it was with me.\n\nBut the glider brought me up smartly. I had to find out how these things\nwent down the air, and the only way to find out is to go down with one.\nAnd for a time I wouldn\'t face it.\n\nThere is something impersonal about a book, I suppose. At any rate I\nfind myself able to write down here just the confession I\'ve never been\nable to make to any one face to face, the frightful trouble it was to\nme to bring myself to do what I suppose every other coloured boy in the\nWest Indies could do without turning a hair, and that is to fling myself\noff for my first soar down the wind. The first trial was bound to be the\nworst; it was an experiment I made with life, and the chance of death or\ninjury was, I supposed, about equal to the chance of success. I believed\nthat with a dawn-like lucidity. I had begun with a glider that I\nimagined was on the lines of the Wright brothers\' aeroplane, but I could\nnot be sure. It might turn over. I might upset it. It might burrow its\nnose at the end and smash itself and me. The conditions of the flight\nnecessitated alert attention; it wasn\'t a thing to be done by jumping\noff and shutting one\'s eyes or getting angry or drunk to do it. One\nhad to use one\'s weight to balance. And when at last I did it it was\nhorrible--for ten seconds. For ten seconds or so, as I swept down the\nair flattened on my infernal framework and with the wind in my eyes, the\nrush of the ground beneath me filled me with sick and helpless terror;\nI felt as though some violent oscillatory current was throbbing in brain\nand back bone, and I groaned aloud. I set my teeth and groaned. It was\na groan wrung out of me in spite of myself. My sensations of terror\nswooped to a climax. And then, you know, they ended!\n\nSuddenly my terror was over and done with. I was soaring through the air\nright way up, steadily, and no mischance had happened. I felt intensely\nalive and my nerves were strung like a bow. I shifted a limb, swerved\nand shouted between fear and triumph as I recovered from the swerve and\nheeled the other way and steadied myself.\n\nI thought I was going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me,--it\nwas queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of\nnothingness, and I yelled helplessly, \"Get out of the way!\" The bird\ndoubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the\nright abruptly and vanished from my circle of interest. Then I saw\nthe shadow of my aeroplane keeping a fixed distance before me and very\nsteady, and the turf as it seemed streaming out behind it. The turf!--it\nwasn\'t after all streaming so impossibly fast.\n\nWhen I came gliding down to the safe spread of level green I had chosen,\nI was as cool and ready as a city clerk who drops off an omnibus in\nmotion, and I had learnt much more than soaring. I tilted up her nose\nat the right moment, levelled again and grounded like a snowflake on a\nwindless day. I lay flat for an instant and then knelt up and got on my\nfeet atremble, but very satisfied with myself. Cothope was running down\nthe hill to me. ...\n\nBut from that day I went into training, and I kept myself in training\nfor many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks\non various excuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of\nthe slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business\nlife. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it\nwas probably altogether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate\nmight suspect. Well,--he shouldn\'t suspect again.\n\nIt is curious that I remember that shame and self accusation and its\nconsequences far more distinctly than I recall the weeks of vacillation\nbefore I soared. For a time I went altogether without alcohol, I stopped\nsmoking altogether and ate very sparingly, and every day I did something\nthat called a little upon my nerves and muscles. I soared as frequently\nas I could. I substituted a motor-bicycle for the London train and took\nmy chances in the southward traffic, and I even tried what thrills were\nto be got upon a horse. But they put me on made horses, and I conceived\na perhaps unworthy contempt for the certitudes of equestrian exercise\nin comparison with the adventures of mechanism. Also I walked along the\nhigh wall at the back of Lady Grove garden, and at last brought myself\nto stride the gap where the gate comes. If I didn\'t altogether get rid\nof a certain giddy instinct by such exercises, at least I trained my\nwill until it didn\'t matter. And soon I no longer dreaded flight, but\nwas eager to go higher into the air, and I came to esteem soaring upon\na glider, that even over the deepest dip in the ground had barely forty\nfeet of fall beneath it, a mere mockery of what flight might be. I began\nto dream of the keener freshness in the air high above the beechwoods,\nand it was rather to satisfy that desire than as any legitimate\ndevelopment of my proper work that presently I turned a part of my\nenergies and the bulk of my private income to the problem of the\nnavigable balloon.\n\nII\n\nI had gone far beyond that initial stage; I had had two smashes and a\nbroken rib which my aunt nursed with great energy, and was getting some\nreputation in the aeronautic world when, suddenly, as though she had\nnever really left it, the Honourable Beatrice Normandy, dark-eyed, and\nwith the old disorderly wave of the hair from her brow, came back into\nmy life. She came riding down a grass path in the thickets below Lady\nGrove, perched up on a huge black horse, and the old Earl of Carnaby\nand Archie Garvell, her half-brother, were with her. My uncle had been\nbothering me about the Crest Hill hot-water pipes, and we were returning\nby a path transverse to theirs and came out upon them suddenly. Old\nCarnaby was trespassing on our ground, and so he hailed us in a friendly\nfashion and pulled up to talk to us.\n\nI didn\'t note Beatrice at all at first. I was interested in Lord\nCarnaby, that remarkable vestige of his own brilliant youth. I had heard\nof him, but never seen him. For a man of sixty-five who had sinned all\nthe sins, so they said, and laid waste the most magnificent political\ndebut of any man of his generation, he seemed to me to be looking\nremarkably fit and fresh. He was a lean little man with grey-blue eyes\nin his brown face, and his cracked voice was the worst thing in his\neffect.\n\n\"Hope you don\'t mind us coming this way, Ponderevo,\" he cried; and my\nuncle, who was sometimes a little too general and generous with titles,\nanswered, \"Not at all, my lord, not at all! Glad you make use of it!\"\n\n\"You\'re building a great place over the hill,\" said Carnaby.\n\n\"Thought I\'d make a show for once,\" said my uncle. \"It looks big because\nit\'s spread out for the sun.\"\n\n\"Air and sunlight,\" said the earl. \"You can\'t have too much of them. But\nbefore our time they used to build for shelter and water and the high\nroad.\"\n\nThen I discovered that the silent figure behind the earl was Beatrice.\n\nI\'d forgotten her sufficiently to think for a moment that she hadn\'t\nchanged at all since she had watched me from behind the skirts of Lady\nDrew. She was looking at me, and her dainty brow under her broad brimmed\nhat--she was wearing a grey hat and loose unbuttoned coat--was knit with\nperplexity, trying, I suppose, to remember where she had seen me before.\nHer shaded eyes met mine with that mute question....\n\nIt seemed incredible to me she didn\'t remember.\n\n\"Well,\" said the earl and touched his horse.\n\nGarvell was patting the neck of his horse, which was inclined to fidget,\nand disregarding me. He nodded over his shoulder and followed. His\nmovement seemed to release a train of memories in her. She glanced\nsuddenly at him and then back at me with a flash of recognition that\nwarmed instantly to a faint smile. She hesitated as if to speak to me,\nsmiled broadly and understandingly and turned to follow the others.\nAll three broke into a canter and she did not look back. I stood for a\nsecond or so at the crossing of the lanes, watching her recede, and then\nbecame aware that my uncle was already some paces off and talking over\nhis shoulder in the belief that I was close behind. I turned about and\nstrode to overtake him. My mind was full of Beatrice and this surprise.\nI remembered her simply as a Normandy. I\'d clean forgotten that Garvell\nwas the son and she the step-daughter of our neighbour, Lady Osprey.\nIndeed, I\'d probably forgotten at that time that we had Lady Osprey as a\nneighbour. There was no reason at all for remembering it. It was amazing\nto find her in this Surrey countryside, when I\'d never thought of her\nas living anywhere in the world but at Bladesover Park, near forty miles\nand twenty years away. She was so alive--so unchanged! The same quick\nwarm blood was in her cheeks. It seemed only yesterday that we had\nkissed among the bracken stems....\n\n\"Eh?\" I said.\n\n\"I say he\'s good stuff,\" said my uncle. \"You can say what you like\nagainst the aristocracy, George; Lord Carnaby\'s rattling good stuff.\nThere\'s a sort of Savoir Faire, something--it\'s an old-fashioned phrase,\nGeorge, but a good one there\'s a Bong-Tong.... It\'s like the Oxford\nturf, George, you can\'t grow it in a year. I wonder how they do it.\nIt\'s living always on a Scale, George. It\'s being there from the\nbeginning.\"...\n\n\"She might,\" I said to myself, \"be a picture by Romney come alive!\"\n\n\"They tell all these stories about him,\" said my uncle, \"but what do\nthey all amount to?\"\n\n\"Gods!\" I said to myself; \"but why have I forgotten for so long? Those\nqueer little brows of hers, the touch of mischief in her eyes--the way\nshe breaks into a smile!\"\n\n\"I don\'t blame him,\" said my uncle. \"Mostly it\'s imagination. That and\nleisure, George. When I was a young man I was kept pretty busy. So were\nyou. Even then--!\"\n\nWhat puzzled me more particularly was the queer trick of my memory\nthat had never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I\nmet Garvell again that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish\nantagonism and our fight. Now when my senses were full of her, it seemed\nincredible that I could ever have forgotten....\n\nIII\n\n\"Oh, Crikey!\" said my aunt, reading a letter behind her coffee-machine.\n\"HERE\'S a young woman, George!\"\n\nWe were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that\nlooks upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London.\n\nI sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg.\n\n\"Who\'s Beatrice Normandy?\" asked my aunt. \"I\'ve not heard of her\nbefore.\"\n\n\"She the young woman?\"\n\n\"Yes. Says she knows you. I\'m no hand at old etiquette, George, but\nher line is a bit unusual. Practically she says she\'s going to make her\nmother--\"\n\n\"Eh? Step-mother, isn\'t it?\"\n\n\"You seem to know a lot about her. She says \'mother\'--Lady Osprey.\nThey\'re to call on me, anyhow, next Wednesday week at four, and there\'s\ngot to be you for tea.\"\n\n\"Eh?\"\n\n\"You--for tea.\n\n\"H\'m. She had rather--force of character. When I knew her before.\"\n\nI became aware of my aunt\'s head sticking out obliquely from behind the\ncoffee-machine and regarding me with wide blue curiosity. I met her gaze\nfor a moment, flinched, coloured, and laughed.\n\n\"I\'ve known her longer than I\'ve known you,\" I said, and explained at\nlength.\n\nMy aunt kept her eye on me over and round the coffee-machine as I did\nso. She was greatly interested, and asked several elucidatory questions.\n\n\"Why didn\'t you tell me the day you saw her? You\'ve had her on your mind\nfor a week,\" she said.\n\n\"It IS odd I didn\'t tell you,\" I admitted.\n\n\"You thought I\'d get a Down on her,\" said my aunt conclusively. \"That\'s\nwhat you thought\" and opened the rest of her letters.\n\nThe two ladies came in a pony-carriage with conspicuous punctuality, and\nI had the unusual experience of seeing my aunt entertaining callers. We\nhad tea upon the terrace under the cedar, but old Lady Osprey, being an\nembittered Protestant, had never before seen the inside of the house,\nand we made a sort of tour of inspection that reminded me of my first\nvisit to the place. In spite of my preoccupation with Beatrice, I stored\na queer little memory of the contrast between the two other women; my\naunt, tall, slender and awkward, in a simple blue homekeeping dress, an\nomnivorous reader and a very authentic wit, and the lady of pedigree,\nshort and plump, dressed with Victorian fussiness, living at the\nintellectual level of palmistry and genteel fiction, pink in the face\nand generally flustered by a sense of my aunt\'s social strangeness and\ndisposed under the circumstances to behave rather like an imitation\nof the more queenly moments of her own cook. The one seemed made of\nwhalebone, the other of dough. My aunt was nervous, partly through the\nintrinsic difficulty of handling the lady and partly because of her\npassionate desire to watch Beatrice and me, and her nervousness took a\ncommon form with her, a wider clumsiness of gesture and an exacerbation\nof her habitual oddity of phrase which did much to deepen the pink\nperplexity of the lady of title. For instance, I heard my aunt admit\nthat one of the Stuart Durgan ladies did look a bit \"balmy on\nthe crumpet\"; she described the knights of the age of chivalry as\n\"korvorting about on the off-chance of a dragon\"; she explained she\nwas \"always old mucking about the garden,\" and instead of offering me a\nGaribaldi biscuit, she asked me with that faint lisp of hers, to\n\"have some squashed flies, George.\" I felt convinced Lady Osprey\nwould describe her as \"a most eccentric person\" on the very first\nopportunity;--\"a most eccentric person.\" One could see her, as people\nsay, \"shaping\" for that.\n\nBeatrice was dressed very quietly in brown, with a simple but courageous\nbroad-brimmed hat, and an unexpected quality of being grown-up and\nresponsible. She guided her step-mother through the first encounter,\nscrutinised my aunt, and got us all well in movement through the house,\nand then she turned her attention to me with a quick and half-confident\nsmile.\n\n\"We haven\'t met,\" she said, \"since--\"\n\n\"It was in the Warren.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said, \"the Warren! I remembered it all except just the\nname.... I was eight.\"\n\nHer smiling eyes insisted on my memories being thorough. I looked up and\nmet them squarely, a little at a loss for what I should say.\n\n\"I gave you away pretty completely,\" she said, meditating upon my face.\n\"And afterwards I gave way Archie.\"\n\nShe turned her face away from the others, and her voice fell ever so\nlittle.\n\n\"They gave him a licking for telling lies!\" she said, as though that was\na pleasant memory. \"And when it was all over I went to our wigwam. You\nremember the wigwam?\"\n\n\"Out in the West Wood?\"\n\n\"Yes--and cried--for all the evil I had done you, I suppose.... I\'ve\noften thought of it since.\"...\n\nLady Osprey stopped for us to overtake her. \"My dear!\" she said to\nBeatrice. \"Such a beautiful gallery!\" Then she stared very hard at me,\npuzzled in the most naked fashion to understand who I might be.\n\n\"People say the oak staircase is rather good,\" said my aunt, and led the\nway.\n\nLady Osprey, with her skirts gathered for the ascent to the gallery\nand her hand on the newel, turned and addressed a look full of meaning\noverflowing indeed with meanings--at her charge. The chief meaning\nno doubt was caution about myself, but much of it was just meaning at\nlarge. I chanced to catch the response in a mirror and detected Beatrice\nwith her nose wrinkled into a swift and entirely diabolical grimace.\nLady Osprey became a deeper shade of pink and speechless with\nindignation--it was evident she disavowed all further responsibility, as\nshe followed my aunt upstairs.\n\n\"It\'s dark, but there\'s a sort of dignity,\" said Beatrice very\ndistinctly, regarding the hall with serene tranquillity, and allowing\nthe unwilling feet on the stairs to widen their distance from us. She\nstood a step up, so that she looked down a little upon me and over me at\nthe old hall.\n\nShe turned upon me abruptly when she thought her step-mother was beyond\near-shot.\n\n\"But how did you get here?\" she asked.\n\n\"Here?\"\n\n\"All this.\" She indicated space and leisure by a wave of the hand at\nhall and tall windows and sunlit terrace. \"Weren\'t you the housekeeper\'s\nson?\"\n\n\"I\'ve adventured. My uncle has become--a great financier. He used to\nbe a little chemist about twenty miles from Bladesover. We\'re promoters\nnow, amalgamators, big people on the new model.\"\n\n\"I understand.\" She regarded me with interested eyes, visibly thinking\nme out.\n\n\"And you recognised me?\" I asked.\n\n\"After a second or so. I saw you recognised me. I couldn\'t place you,\nbut I knew I knew you. Then Archie being there helped me to remember.\"\n\n\"I\'m glad to meet again,\" I ventured. \"I\'d never forgotten you.\"\n\n\"One doesn\'t forget those childish things.\"\n\nWe regarded one another for a moment with a curiously easy and confident\nsatisfaction in coming together again. I can\'t explain our ready zest in\none another. The thing was so. We pleased each other, we had no doubt in\nour minds that we pleased each other. From the first we were at our ease\nwith one another. \"So picturesque, so very picturesque,\" came a voice\nfrom above, and then: \"Bee-atrice!\"\n\n\"I\'ve a hundred things I want to know about you,\" she said with an easy\nintimacy, as we went up the winding steps....\n\nAs the four of us sat at tea together under the cedar on the terrace she\nasked questions about my aeronautics. My aunt helped with a word or so\nabout my broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most\nindesirable and improper topic--a blasphemous intrusion upon the angels.\n\"It isn\'t flying,\" I explained. \"We don\'t fly yet.\"\n\n\"You never will,\" she said compactly. \"You never will.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"we do what we can.\"\n\nThe little lady lifted a small gloved hand and indicated a height of\nabout four feet from the ground. \"Thus far,\" she said, \"thus far--AND NO\nFARTHER! No!\"\n\nShe became emphatically pink. \"NO,\" she said again quite conclusively,\nand coughed shortly. \"Thank you,\" she said to her ninth or tenth cake.\nBeatrice burst into cheerful laughter with her eye on me. I was lying\non the turf, and this perhaps caused a slight confusion about the\nprimordial curse in Lady Osprey\'s mind.\n\n\"Upon his belly shall he go,\" she said with quiet distinctness, \"all the\ndays of his life.\"\n\nAfter which we talked no more of aeronautics.\n\nBeatrice sat bunched together in a chair and regarded me with exactly\nthe same scrutiny, I thought, the same adventurous aggression, that\nI had faced long ago at the tea-table in my mother\'s room. She was\namazingly like that little Princess of my Bladesover memories, the\nwilful misbehaviours of her hair seemed the same--her voice; things one\nwould have expected to be changed altogether. She formed her plans in\nthe same quick way, and acted with the same irresponsible decision.\n\nShe stood up abruptly.\n\n\"What is there beyond the terrace?\" she said, and found me promptly\nbeside her.\n\nI invented a view for her.\n\nAt the further corner from the cedar she perched herself up upon the\nparapet and achieved an air of comfort among the lichenous stones. \"Now\ntell me,\" she said, \"all about yourself. Tell me about yourself; I know\nsuch duffers of men! They all do the same things. How did you get--here?\nAll my men WERE here. They couldn\'t have got here if they hadn\'t been\nhere always. They wouldn\'t have thought it right. You\'ve climbed.\"\n\n\"If it\'s climbing,\" I said.\n\nShe went off at a tangent. \"It\'s--I don\'t know if you\'ll\nunderstand--interesting to meet you again. I\'ve remembered you. I don\'t\nknow why, but I have. I\'ve used you as a sort of lay figure--when I\'ve\ntold myself stories. But you\'ve always been rather stiff and difficult\nin my stories--in ready-made clothes--a Labour Member or a Bradlaugh, or\nsomething like that. You\'re not like that a bit. And yet you ARE!\"\n\nShe looked at me. \"Was it much of a fight? They make out it is.\"\n\n\"I don\'t know why.\"\n\n\"I was shot up here by an accident,\" I said. \"There was no fight at all.\nExcept to keep honest, perhaps and I made no great figure in that. I\nand my uncle mixed a medicine and it blew us up. No merit in that! But\nyou\'ve been here all the time. Tell me what you have done first.\"\n\n\"One thing we didn\'t do.\" She meditated for a moment.\n\n\"What?\" said I.\n\n\"Produce a little half-brother for Bladesover. So it went to the\nPhillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and my step-mother--we let, too.\nAnd live in a little house.\"\n\nShe nodded her head vaguely over her shoulder and turned to me again.\n\"Well, suppose it was an accident. Here you are! Now you\'re here, what\nare you going to do? You\'re young. Is it to be Parliament? heard some\nmen the other day talking about you. Before I knew you were you. They\nsaid that was what you ought to do.\"...\n\nShe put me through my intentions with a close and vital curiosity. It\nwas just as she had tried to imagine me a soldier and place me years\nago. She made me feel more planless and incidental than ever. \"You want\nto make a flying-machine,\" she pursued, \"and when you fly? What then?\nWould it be for fighting?\"\n\nI told her something of my experimental work. She had never heard of\nthe soaring aeroplane, and was excited by the thought, and keen to hear\nabout it. She had thought all the work so far had been a mere projecting\nof impossible machines. For her Pilcher and Lilienthal had died in vain.\nShe did not know such men had lived in the world.\n\n\"But that\'s dangerous!\" she said, with a note of discovery.\n\n\"Oh!--it\'s dangerous.\"\n\n\"Bee-atrice!\" Lady Osprey called.\n\nBeatrice dropped from the wall to her feet.\n\n\"Where do you do this soaring?\"\n\n\"Beyond the high Barrows. East of Crest Hill and the wood.\"\n\n\"Do you mind people coming to see?\"\n\n\"Whenever you please. Only let me know\"\n\n\"I\'ll take my chance some day. Some day soon.\" She looked at me\nthoughtfully, smiled, and our talk was at an end.\n\nIV\n\nAll my later work in aeronautics is associated in my memory with the\nquality of Beatrice, with her incidental presence, with things she said\nand did and things I thought of that had reference to her.\n\nIn the spring of that year I had got to a flying machine that lacked\nnothing but longitudinal stability. My model flew like a bird for fifty\nor a hundred yards or so, and then either dived and broke its nose or,\nwhat was commoner, reared up, slid back and smashed its propeller. The\nrhythm of the pitching puzzled me. I felt it must obey some laws not\nyet quite clearly stated. I became therefore a student of theory and\nliterature for a time; I hit upon the string of considerations that led\nme to what is called Ponderevo\'s Principle and my F.R.S., and I worked\nthis out in three long papers. Meanwhile I made a lot of turn-table\nand glider models and started in upon an idea of combining gas-bags and\ngliders. Balloon work was new to me. I had made one or two ascents in\nthe balloons of the Aero Club before I started my gasometer and\nthe balloon shed and gave Cothope a couple of months with Sir Peter\nRumchase. My uncle found part of the money for these developments; he\nwas growing interested and competitive in this business because of\nLord Boom\'s prize and the amount of reclame involved, and it was at his\nrequest that I named my first navigable balloon Lord Roberts Alpha.\n\nLord Roberts A very nearly terminated all my investigations. My idea\nboth in this and its more successful and famous younger brother, Lord\nRoberts B, was to utilise the idea of a contractile balloon with a rigid\nflat base, a balloon shaped rather like an inverted boat that should\nalmost support the apparatus, but not quite. The gas-bag was of the\nchambered sort used for these long forms, and not with an internal\nballoonette. The trouble was to make the thing contractile. This I\nsought to do by fixing a long, fine-meshed silk net over it that\nwas fastened to be rolled up on two longitudinal rods. Practically I\ncontracted my sausage gas-bag by netting it down. The ends were too\ncomplex for me to describe here, but I thought them out elaborately and\nthey were very carefully planned. Lord Roberts A was furnished with a\nsingle big screw forward, and there was a rudder aft. The engine was the\nfirst one to be, so to speak, right in the plane of the gas-bag. I lay\nimmediately under the balloon on a sort of glider framework, far away\nfrom either engine or rudder, controlling them by wire-pulls constructed\non the principle of the well-known Bowden brake of the cyclist.\n\nBut Lord Roberts A has been pretty exhaustively figured and described in\nvarious aeronautical publications. The unforeseen defect was the badness\nof the work in the silk netting. It tore aft as soon as I began to\ncontract the balloon, and the last two segments immediately bulged\nthrough the hole, exactly as an inner tube will bulge through the\nruptured outer cover of a pneumatic tire, and then the sharp edge of the\ntorn net cut the oiled-silk of the distended last segment along a weak\nseam and burst it with a loud report.\n\nUp to that point the whole thing had been going on extremely well. As a\nnavigable balloon and before I contracted it, the Lord Roberts A was an\nunqualified success. It had run out of the shed admirably at nine or\nten miles an hour or more, and although there was a gentle southwester\nblowing, it had gone up and turned and faced it as well as any craft of\nthe sort I have ever seen.\n\nI lay in my customary glider position, horizontal and face downward, and\nthe invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of\nindependent levitation. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my\nhead back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and\nthe rapid successive passages, swish, swish, swish of the vans of the\npropeller. I made a wide circle over Lady Grove and Duffield and\nout towards Effingham and came back quite successfully to the\nstarting-point.\n\nDown below in the October sunlight were my sheds and the little group\nthat had been summoned to witness the start, their faces craned upward\nand most of them scrutinising my expression through field-glasses. I\ncould see Carnaby and Beatrice on horseback, and two girls I did not\nknow with them; Cothope and three or four workmen I employed; my aunt\nand Mrs. Levinstein, who was staying with her, on foot, and Dimmock, the\nveterinary surgeon, and one or two others. My shadow moved a little to\nthe north of them like the shadow of a fish. At Lady Grove the servants\nwere out on the lawn, and the Duffield school playground swarmed with\nchildren too indifferent to aeronautics to cease their playing. But in\nthe Crest Hill direction--the place looked extraordinarily squat\nand ugly from above--there were knots and strings of staring workmen\neverywhere--not one of them working, but all agape. (But now I write it,\nit occurs to me that perhaps it was their dinner hour; it was certainly\nnear twelve.) I hung for a moment or so enjoying the soar, then turned\nabout to face a clear stretch of open down, let the engine out to full\nspeed and set my rollers at work rolling in the net, and so tightening\nthe gas-bags. Instantly the pace quickened with the diminished\nresistance...\n\nIn that moment before the bang I think I must have been really flying.\nBefore the net ripped, just in the instant when my balloon was at its\nsystole, the whole apparatus was, I am convinced, heavier than air.\nThat, however, is a claim that has been disputed, and in any case this\nsort of priority is a very trivial thing.\n\nThen came a sudden retardation, instantly followed by an inexpressibly\ndisconcerting tilt downward of the machine. That I still recall with\nhorror. I couldn\'t see what was happening at all and I couldn\'t imagine.\nIt was a mysterious, inexplicable dive. The thing, it seemed, without\nrhyme or reason, was kicking up its heels in the air. The bang followed\nimmediately, and I perceived I was falling rapidly.\n\nI was too much taken by surprise to think of the proper cause of the\nreport. I don\'t even know what I made of it. I was obsessed, I suppose,\nby that perpetual dread of the modern aeronaut, a flash between engine\nand balloon. Yet obviously I wasn\'t wrapped in flames. I ought to have\nrealised instantly it wasn\'t that. I did, at any rate, whatever other\nimpressions there were, release the winding of the outer net and let the\nballoon expand again, and that no doubt did something to break my fall.\nI don\'t remember doing that. Indeed, all I do remember is the giddy\neffect upon the landscape of falling swiftly upon it down a flat spiral,\nthe hurried rush of fields and trees and cottages on my left shoulder\nand the overhung feeling as if the whole apparatus was pressing down\nthe top of my head. I didn\'t stop or attempt to stop the screw. That was\ngoing on, swish, swish, swish all the time.\n\nCothope really knows more about the fall than I do. He describes the\neasterly start, the tilt, and the appearance and bursting of a sort\nof bladder aft. Then down I swooped, very swiftly, but not nearly so\nsteeply as I imagined I was doing. \"Fifteen or twenty degrees,\" said\nCothope, \"to be exact.\" From him it was that I learnt that I let the\nnets loose again, and so arrested my fall. He thinks I was more in\ncontrol of myself than I remember.\n\nBut I do not see why I should have forgotten so excellent a resolution.\nHis impression is that I was really steering and trying to drop into\nthe Farthing Down beeches. \"You hit the trees,\" he said, \"and the whole\naffair stood on its nose among them, and then very slowly crumpled up.\nI saw you\'d been jerked out, as I thought, and I didn\'t stay for more. I\nrushed for my bicycle.\"\n\nAs a matter of fact, it was purely accidental that I came down in the\nwoods. I am reasonably certain that I had no more control then than a\nthing in a parcel. I remember I felt a sort of wincing, \"Now it comes!\"\nas the trees rushed up to me. If I remember that, I should remember\nsteering. Then the propeller smashed, everything stopped with a jerk,\nand I was falling into a mass of yellowing leaves, and Lord Roberts A,\nso it seemed to me, was going back into the sky.\n\nI felt twigs and things hit me in the face, but I didn\'t feel injured\nat the time; I clutched at things that broke, tumbled through a froth\nof green and yellow into a shadowy world of great bark-covered arms, and\nthere, snatching wildly, got a grip on a fair round branch, and hung.\n\nI became intensely alert and clear-headed. I held by that branch for a\nmoment and then looked about me, and caught at another, and then found\nmyself holding to a practicable fork. I swung forward to that and got a\nleg around it below its junction, and so was able presently to clamber\ndown, climbing very coolly and deliberately. I dropped ten feet or so\nfrom the lowest branch and fell on my feet. \"That\'s all right,\" I said,\nand stared up through the tree to see what I could of the deflated and\ncrumpled remains that had once been Lord Roberts A festooned on the\nbranches it had broken. \"Gods!\" I said, \"what a tumble!\"\n\nI wiped something that trickled from my face and was shocked to see my\nhand covered with blood. I looked at myself and saw what seemed to me\nan astonishing quantity of blood running down my arm and shoulder.\nI perceived my mouth was full of blood. It\'s a queer moment when one\nrealises one is hurt, and perhaps badly hurt, and has still to discover\njust how far one is hurt. I explored my face carefully and found\nunfamiliar contours on the left side. The broken end of a branch had\ndriven right through my cheek, damaging my cheek and teeth and gums,\nand left a splinter of itself stuck, like an explorer\'s fartherest-point\nflag, in the upper maxillary. That and a sprained wrist were all my\ndamage. But I bled as though I had been chopped to pieces, and it\nseemed to me that my face had been driven in. I can\'t describe just the\nhorrible disgust I felt at that.\n\n\"This blood must be stopped, anyhow,\" I said, thickheadedly.\n\n\"I wonder where there\'s a spider\'s web\"--an odd twist for my mind to\ntake. But it was the only treatment that occurred to me.\n\nI must have conceived some idea of going home unaided, because I was\nthirty yards from the tree before I dropped.\n\nThen a kind of black disc appeared in the middle of the world and rushed\nout to the edge of things and blotted them out. I don\'t remember falling\ndown. I fainted from excitement, disgust at my injury and loss of blood,\nand lay there until Cothope found me.\n\nHe was the first to find me, scorching as he did over the downland\nturf, and making a wide course to get the Carnaby plantations at their\nnarrowest. Then presently, while he was trying to apply the methodical\nteachings of the St. John\'s Ambulance classes to a rather abnormal case,\nBeatrice came galloping through the trees full-tilt, with Lord Carnaby\nhard behind her, and she was hatless, muddy from a fall, and white as\ndeath. \"And cool as a cucumber, too,\" said Cothope, turning it over in\nhis mind as he told me.\n\n(\"They never seem quite to have their heads, and never seem quite to\nlose \'em,\" said Cothope, generalising about the sex.)\n\nAlso he witnessed she acted with remarkable decision. The question\nwas whether I should be taken to the house her step-mother occupied at\nBedley Corner, the Carnaby dower house, or down to Carnaby\'s place at\nEasting. Beatrice had no doubt in the matter, for she meant to nurse me.\nCarnaby didn\'t seem to want that to happen. \"She WOULD have it wasn\'t\nhalf so far,\" said Cothope. \"She faced us out....\n\n\"I hate to be faced out of my opinion, so I\'ve taken a pedometer over it\nsince. It\'s exactly forty-three yards further.\n\n\"Lord Carnaby looked at her pretty straight,\" said Cothope, finishing\nthe picture; \"and then he give in.\"\n\nV\n\nBut my story has made a jump from June to October, and during that time\nmy relations with Beatrice and the countryside that was her setting had\ndeveloped in many directions. She came and went, moving in an orbit\nfor which I had no data, going to London and Paris, into Wales and\nNorthampton, while her stepmother, on some independent system of her\nown, also vanished and recurred intermittently. At home they obeyed the\nrule of an inflexible old maid, Charlotte, and Beatrice exercised\nall the rights of proprietorship in Carnaby\'s extensive stables. Her\ninterest in me was from the first undisguised. She found her way to my\nworksheds and developed rapidly, in spite of the sincere discouragement\nof Cothope, into a keen amateur of aeronautics. She would come sometimes\nin the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes afoot with an\nIrish terrier, sometimes riding. She would come for three or four days\nevery day, vanish for a fortnight or three weeks, return.\n\nIt was not long before I came to look for her. From the first I\nfound her immensely interesting. To me she was a new feminine type\naltogether--I have made it plain, I think, how limited was my knowledge\nof women. But she made me not simply interested in her, but in myself.\nShe became for me something that greatly changes a man\'s world. How\nshall I put it? She became an audience. Since I\'ve emerged from the\nemotional developments of the affair I have thought it out in a hundred\naspects, and it does seem to me that this way in which men and women\nmake audiences for one another is a curiously influential force in their\nlives. For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they seek\naudiences as creatures seek food; others again, my uncle among them,\ncan play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and can live\nwithout one. In my adolescence I was my own audience and my own court\nof honour. And to have an audience in one\'s mind is to play a part,\nto become self-conscious and dramatic. For many years I had been\nself-forgetful and scientific. I had lived for work and impersonal\ninterests until I found scrutiny, applause and expectation in Beatrice\'s\neyes. Then I began to live for the effect I imagined I made upon her, to\nmake that very soon the principal value in my life. I played to her.\nI did things for the look of them. I began to dream more and more of\nbeautiful situations and fine poses and groupings with her and for her.\n\nI put these things down because they puzzle me. I think I was in love\nwith Beatrice, as being in love is usually understood; but it was quite\na different state altogether from my passionate hunger for Marion, or\nmy keen, sensuous desire for and pleasure in Effie. These were selfish,\nsincere things, fundamental and instinctive, as sincere as the leap of\na tiger. But until matters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was\nan immense imaginative insurgence of a quite different quality. I am\nsetting down here very gravely, and perhaps absurdly, what are no doubt\nelementary commonplaces for innumerable people. This love that grew up\nbetween Beatrice and myself was, I think--I put it quite tentatively and\nrather curiously--romantic love. That unfortunate and truncated affair\nof my uncle and the Scrymgeour lady was really of the same stuff, if\na little different in quality. I have to admit that. The factor of\naudience was of primary importance in either else.\n\nIts effect upon me was to make me in many respects adolescent again.\nIt made me keener upon the point of honour, and anxious and eager to\ndo high and splendid things, and in particular, brave things. So far it\nennobled and upheld me. But it did also push me towards vulgar and showy\nthings. At bottom it was disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of\nstage scenery, with one side to the audience, another side that wasn\'t\nmeant to show, and an economy of substance. It certainly robbed my work\nof high patience and quality. I cut down the toil of research in my\neagerness and her eagerness for fine flourishes in the air, flights that\nwould tell. I shirked the longer road.\n\nAnd it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity.\n\nYet that was not everything in our relationship. The elemental thing was\nthere also. It came in very suddenly.\n\nIt was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without\nreference to my experimental memoranda whether it was in July or\nAugust. I was working with a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing\ncurvatures studied from Lilienthal, Pilcher and Phillips, that I\nthought would give a different rhythm for the pitching oscillations than\nanything I\'d had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework\non the old barrow by my sheds down to Tinker\'s Corner. It is a clear\nstretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn\nto the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush\nand a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started,\nand was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which any new\narrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me\nappeared Beatrice, riding towards Tinker\'s Corner to waylay and talk to\nme. She looked round over her shoulder, saw me coming, touched her\nhorse to a gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my\nmachine.\n\nThere was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn\'t all smash\ntogether. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up\nand drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undamaged--a\npoor chance it would have been--in order to avoid any risk to her, or\nwhether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This\nlatter I did. She had already got her horse in hand when I came up to\nher. Her woman\'s body lay along his neck, and she glanced up as I, with\nwings aspread, and every nerve in a state of tension, swept over her.\n\nThen I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and\ntrembling.\n\nWe exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and\nfor one instant I held her.\n\n\"Those great wings,\" she said, and that was all.\n\nShe lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted.\n\n\"Very near a nasty accident,\" said Cothope, coming up and regarding\nour grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. \"Very\ndangerous thing coming across us like that.\"\n\nBeatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and\nthen sat down on the turf \"I\'ll just sit down for a moment,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh!\" she said.\n\nShe covered her face with her hands, while Cothope looked at her with an\nexpression between suspicion and impatience.\n\nFor some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he\'d\nbetter get her water.\n\nAs for me, I was filled with a new outrageous idea, begotten I scarcely\nknow how from this incident, with its instant contacts and swift\nemotions, and that was that I must make love to and possess Beatrice. I\nsee no particular reason why that thought should have come to me in that\nmoment, but it did. I do not believe that before then I had thought\nof our relations in such terms at all. Suddenly, as I remember it, the\nfactor of passion came. She crouched there, and I stood over her, and\nneither of us said a word. But it was just as though something had been\nshouted from the sky.\n\nCothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. \"I\nshan\'t want any water,\" she said. \"Call him back.\"\n\nVI\n\nAfter that the spirit of our relations changed. The old ease had gone.\nShe came to me less frequently, and when she came she would have some\none with her, usually old Carnaby, and he would do the bulk of the\ntalking. All through September she was away. When we were alone together\nthere was a curious constraint. We became clouds of inexpressible\nfeeling towards one another; we could think of nothing that was not too\nmomentous for words.\n\nThen came the smash of Lord Roberts A, and I found myself with a\nbandaged face in a bedroom in the Bedley Corner dower-house with\nBeatrice presiding over an inefficient nurse, Lady Osprey very pink and\nshocked in the background, and my aunt jealously intervening.\n\nMy injuries were much more showy than serious, and I could have been\ntaken to Lady Grove next day, but Beatrice would not permit that, and\nkept me at Bedley Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the\nsecond day she became extremely solicitous for the proper aeration of\nthe nurse, packed her off for an hour in a brisk rain, and sat by me\nalone.\n\nI asked her to marry me.\n\nAll the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to\neloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages, and with\nsome little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was\nfeverish and in pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long\nwith regard to her became now an unendurable impatience.\n\n\"Comfortable?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Shall I read to you?\"\n\n\"No. I want to talk.\"\n\n\"You can\'t. I\'d better talk to you.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"I want to talk to you.\"\n\nShe came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. \"I don\'t--I\ndon\'t want you to talk to me,\" she said. \"I thought you couldn\'t talk.\"\n\n\"I get few chances--of you.\"\n\n\"You\'d better not talk. Don\'t talk now. Let me chatter instead. You\nought not to talk.\"\n\n\"It isn\'t much,\" I said.\n\n\"I\'d rather you didn\'t.\"\n\n\"I\'m not going to be disfigured,\" I said. \"Only a scar.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she said, as if she had expected something quite different. \"Did\nyou think you\'d become a sort of gargoyle?\"\n\n\"L\'Homme qui Rit!--I didn\'t know. But that\'s all right. Jolly flowers\nthose are!\"\n\n\"Michaelmas daisies,\" she said. \"I\'m glad you\'r not disfigured, and\nthose are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I\nsaw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to\nhave been, by all the rules of the game.\"\n\nShe said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move.\n\n\"Are we social equals?\" I said abruptly.\n\nShe stared at me. \"Queer question,\" she said.\n\n\"But are we?\"\n\n\"H\'m. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a\ncourtesy Baron who died--of general disreputableness, I believe--before\nhis father--? I give it up. Does it matter?\"\n\n\"No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me.\"\n\nShe whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her.\n\"Damn these bandages!\" I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage.\n\nShe roused herself to her duties as nurse. \"What are you doing? Why are\nyou trying to sit up? Sit down! Don\'t touch your bandages. I told you\nnot to talk.\"\n\nShe stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders\nand pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I\nhad raised to my face.\n\n\"I told you not to talk,\" she whispered close to my face. \"I asked you\nnot to talk. Why couldn\'t you do as I asked you?\"\n\n\"You\'ve been avoiding me for a month,\" I said.\n\n\"I know. You might have known. Put your hand back--down by your side.\"\n\nI obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her\ncheeks, and her eyes were very bright. \"I asked you,\" she repeated, \"not\nto talk.\"\n\nMy eyes questioned her mutely.\n\nShe put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented.\n\n\"How can I answer you now?\" she said.\n\n\"How can I say anything now?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked.\n\nShe made no answer.\n\n\"Do you mean it must be \'No\'?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"But\" I said, and my whole soul was full of accusations.\n\n\"I know,\" she said. \"I can\'t explain. I can\'t. But it has to be \'No!\' It\ncan\'t be. It\'s utterly, finally, for ever impossible.... Keep your hands\nstill!\"\n\n\"But,\" I said, \"when we met again--\"\n\n\"I can\'t marry. I can\'t and won\'t.\"\n\nShe stood up. \"Why did you talk?\" she cried, \"couldn\'t you SEE?\"\n\nShe seemed to have something it was impossible to say.\n\nShe came to the table beside my bed and pulled the Michaelmas daisies\nawry. \"Why did you talk like that?\" she said in a tone of infinite\nbitterness. \"To begin like that!\"\n\n\"But what is it?\" I said. \"Is it some circumstance--my social position?\"\n\n\"Oh, DAMN your social position!\" she cried.\n\nShe went and stood at the further window, staring out at the rain. For\na long time we were absolutely still. The wind and rain came in little\ngusts upon the pane. She turned to me abruptly.\n\n\"You didn\'t ask me if I loved you,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, if it\'s THAT!\" said I.\n\n\"It\'s not that,\" she said. \"But if you want to know--\" She paused.\n\n\"I do,\" she said.\n\nWe stared at one another.\n\n\"I do--with all my heart, if you want to know.\"\n\n\"Then, why the devil--?\" I asked.\n\nShe made no answer. She walked across the room to the piano and began\nto play, rather noisily and rapidly, with odd gusts of emphasis,\nthe shepherd\'s pipe music from the last act in \"Tristan and Isolde.\"\nPresently she missed a note, failed again, ran her finger heavily up the\nscale, struck the piano passionately with her fist, making a feeble jar\nin the treble, jumped up, and went out of the room....\n\nThe nurse found me still wearing my helmet of bandages, partially\ndressed, and pottering round the room to find the rest of my clothes.\nI was in a state of exasperated hunger for Beatrice, and I was too\ninflamed and weakened to conceal the state of my mind. I was feebly\nangry because of the irritation of dressing, and particularly of the\nstruggle to put on my trousers without being able to see my legs. I was\nstaggering about, and once I had fallen over a chair and I had upset the\njar of Michaelmas daisies.\n\nI must have been a detestable spectacle. \"I\'ll go back to bed,\" said I,\n\"if I may have a word with Miss Beatrice. I\'ve got something to say to\nher. That\'s why I\'m dressing.\"\n\nMy point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the household\nhad my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do not know,\nand what Lady Osprey can have made of it in the former case I don\'t\nimagine.\n\nAt last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. \"Well?\" she said.\n\n\"All I want to say,\" I said with the querulous note of a misunderstood\nchild, \"is that I can\'t take this as final. I want to see you and talk\nwhen I\'m better, and write. I can\'t do anything now. I can\'t argue.\"\n\nI was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, \"I can\'t rest. You\nsee? I can\'t do anything.\"\n\nShe sat down beside me again and spoke softly. \"I promise I will talk\nit all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I will meet you\nsomewhere so that we can talk. You can\'t talk now.\n\n\"I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know... Will\nthat do?\"\n\n\"I\'d like to know\"\n\nShe looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it.\n\nThen she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly\nwith her face close to me.\n\n\"Dear,\" she said, \"I love you. If it will make you happy to marry me, I\nwill marry you. I was in a mood just now--a stupid, inconsiderate mood.\nOf course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. Women are such\nthings of mood--or I would have behaved differently. We say \'No\' when we\nmean \'Yes\'--and fly into crises. So now, Yes--yes--yes. I will. I can\'t\neven kiss you. Give me your hand to kiss that. Understand, I am yours.\nDo you understand? I am yours just as if we had been married fifty\nyears. Your wife--Beatrice. Is that enough? Now--now will you rest?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"but why?\"\n\n\"There are complications. There are difficulties. When you are better\nyou will be able to--understand them. But now they don\'t matter. Only\nyou know this must be secret--for a time. Absolutely secret between us.\nWill you promise that?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I understand. I wish I could kiss you.\"\n\nShe laid her head down beside mine for a moment and then she kissed my\nhand.\n\n\"I don\'t care what difficulties there are,\" I said, and I shut my eyes.\n\nVII\n\nBut I was only beginning to gauge the unaccountable elements in\nBeatrice. For a week after my return to Lady Grove I had no sign of\nher, and then she called with Lady Osprey and brought a huge bunch of\nperennial sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, \"just the old flowers there\nwere in your room,\" said my aunt, with a relentless eye on me. I didn\'t\nget any talk alone with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us\nshe was going to London for some indefinite number of weeks. I couldn\'t\neven pledge her to write to me, and when she did it was a brief,\nenigmatical, friendly letter with not a word of the reality between us.\n\nI wrote back a love letter--my first love letter--and she made no reply\nfor eight days. Then came a scrawl: \"I can\'t write letters. Wait till we\ncan talk. Are you better?\"\n\nI think the reader would be amused if he could see the papers on my desk\nas I write all this, the mangled and disfigured pages, the experimental\narrangements of notes, the sheets of suggestions balanced in\nconstellations, the blottesque intellectual battlegrounds over which\nI have been fighting. I find this account of my relations to Beatrice\nquite the most difficult part of my story to write. I happen to be a\nvery objective-minded person, I forget my moods, and this was so much an\naffair of moods. And even such moods and emotions as I recall are very\ndifficult to convey. To me it is about as difficult as describing a\ntaste or a scent.\n\nThen the objective story is made up of little things that are difficult\nto set in a proper order. And love in an hysterical passion, now high,\nnow low, now exalted, and now intensely physical. No one has ever yet\ndared to tell a love story completely, its alternations, its comings and\ngoings, its debased moments, its hate. The love stories we tell, tell\nonly the net consequence, the ruling effect....\n\nHow can I rescue from the past now the mystical quality of Beatrice; my\nintense longing for her; the overwhelming, irrational, formless desire?\nHow can I explain how intimately that worship mingled with a high,\nimpatient resolve to make her mine, to take her by strength and courage,\nto do my loving in a violent heroic manner? And then the doubts, the\npuzzled arrest at the fact of her fluctuations, at her refusal to marry\nme, at the fact that even when at last she returned to Bedley Corner she\nseemed to evade me?\n\nThat exasperated me and perplexed me beyond measure.\n\nI felt that it was treachery. I thought of every conceivable\nexplanation, and the most exalted and romantic confidence in her did not\nsimply alternate, but mingled with the basest misgivings.\n\nAnd into the tangle of memories comes the figure of Carnaby, coming\nout slowly from the background to a position of significance, as an\ninfluence, as a predominant strand in the nets that kept us apart, as a\nrival. What were the forces that pulled her away from me when it was\nso clearly manifest she loved me? Did she think of marrying him? Had\nI invaded some long-planned scheme? It was evident he did not like me,\nthat in some way I spoilt the world for him. She returned to Bedley\nCorner, and for some weeks she was flitting about me, and never once\ncould I have talk with her alone. When she came to my sheds Carnaby was\nalways with her, jealously observant. (Why the devil couldn\'t she send\nhim about his business?) The days slipped by and my anger gathered.\n\nAll this mingles with the making of Lord Roberts B. I had resolved upon\nthat one night as I lay awake at Bedley Corner; I got it planned out\nbefore the bandages were off my face. I conceived this second navigable\nballoon in a grandiose manner. It was to be a second Lord Roberts A,\nonly more so; it was to be three times as big, large enough to carry\nthree men, and it was to be an altogether triumphant vindication of my\nclaims upon the air. The framework was to be hollow like a bird\'s bones,\nairtight, and the air pumped in or out, and the weight of fuel I carried\nchanged. I talked much and boasted to Cothope--whom I suspected\nof scepticisms about this new type--of what it would do, and it\nprogressed--slowly. It progressed slowly because I was restless and\nuncertain. At times I would go away to London to snatch some chance of\nseeing Beatrice there, at times nothing but a day of gliding and hard\nand dangerous exercise would satisfy me. And now in the newspapers, in\nconversation, in everything about me, arose a new invader of my mental\nstates. Something was happening to the great schemes of my uncle\'s\naffairs; people were beginning to doubt, to question. It was the first\nquiver of his tremendous insecurity, the first wobble of that gigantic\ncredit top he had kept spinning so long.\n\nThere were comings and goings, November and December slipped by. I\nhad two unsatisfactory meetings with Beatrice, meetings that had no\nprivacy--in which we said things of the sort that need atmosphere,\nbaldly and furtively. I wrote to her several times and she wrote back\nnotes that I would sometimes respond to altogether, sometimes condemn as\ninsincere evasions. \"You don\'t understand. I can\'t just now explain. Be\npatient with me. Leave things a little while to me.\" She wrote.\n\nI would talk aloud to these notes and wrangle over them in my\nworkroom--while the plans of Lord Roberts B waited.\n\n\"You don\'t give me a chance!\" I would say. \"Why don\'t you let me\nknow the secret? That\'s what I\'m for--to settle difficulties! to tell\ndifficulties to!\"\n\nAnd at last I could hold out no longer against these accumulating\npressures.\n\nI took an arrogant, outrageous line that left her no loopholes; I\nbehaved as though we were living in a melodrama.\n\n\"You must come and talk to me,\" I wrote, \"or I will come and take you. I\nwant you--and the time runs away.\"\n\nWe met in a ride in the upper plantations. It must have been early in\nJanuary, for there was snow on the ground and on the branches of the\ntrees. We walked to and fro for an hour or more, and from the first I\npitched the key high in romance and made understandings impossible. It\nwas our worst time together. I boasted like an actor, and she, I know\nnot why, was tired and spiritless.\n\nNow I think over that talk in the light of all that has happened since,\nI can imagine how she came to me full of a human appeal I was too\nfoolish to let her make. I don\'t know. I confess I have never completely\nunderstood Beatrice. I confess I am still perplexed at many things she\nsaid and did. That afternoon, anyhow, I was impossible. I posed and\nscolded. I was--I said it--for \"taking the Universe by the throat!\"\n\n\"If it was only that,\" she said, but though I heard, I did not heed her.\n\nAt last she gave way to me and talked no more. Instead she looked\nat me--as a thing beyond her controlling, but none the less\ninteresting--much as she had looked at me from behind the skirts of Lady\nDrew in the Warren when we were children together.\n\nOnce even I thought she smiled faintly.\n\n\"What are the difficulties\" I cried, \"there\'s no difficulty I will not\novercome for you! Do your people think I\'m no equal for you? Who says\nit? My dear, tell me to win a title! I\'ll do it in five years!...\n\n\"Here am I just grown a man at the sight of you. I have wanted something\nto fight for. Let me fight for you!...\n\n\"I\'m rich without intending it. Let me mean it, give me an honourable\nexcuse for it, and I\'ll put all this rotten old Warren of England at\nyour feet!\"\n\nI said such things as that. I write them down here in all their\nresounding base pride. I said these empty and foolish things, and they\nare part of me. Why should I still cling to pride and be ashamed? I\nshouted her down.\n\nI passed from such megalomania to petty accusations.\n\n\"You think Carnaby is a better man than I?\" I said.\n\n\"No!\" she cried, stung to speech. \"No!\"\n\n\"You think we\'re unsubstantial. You\'ve listened to all these rumours\nBoom has started because we talked of a newspaper of our own. When you\nare with me you know I\'m a man; when you get away from me you think I\'m\na cheat and a cad.... There\'s not a word of truth in the things they say\nabout us. I\'ve been slack. I\'ve left things. But we have only to exert\nourselves. You do not know how wide and far we have spread our nets.\nEven now we have a coup--an expedition--in hand. It will put us on a\nfooting.\"...\n\nHer eyes asked mutely and asked in vain that I would cease to boast of\nthe very qualities she admired in me.\n\nIn the night I could not sleep for thinking of that talk and the vulgar\nthings I had said in it. I could not understand the drift my mind had\ntaken. I was acutely disgusted. And my unwonted doubts about myself\nspread from a merely personal discontent to our financial position.\nIt was all very well to talk as I had done of wealth and power and\npeerages, but what did I know nowadays of my uncle\'s position? Suppose\nin the midst of such boasting and confidence there came some turn I did\nnot suspect, some rottenness he had concealed from me? I resolved I had\nbeen playing with aeronautics long enough; that next morning I would go\nto him and have things clear between us.\n\nI caught an early train and went up to the Hardingham.\n\nI went up to the Hardingham through a dense London fog to see how things\nreally stood. Before I had talked to my uncle for ten minutes I felt\nlike a man who has just awakened in a bleak, inhospitable room out of a\ngrandiose dream.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FOURTH\n\nHOW I STOLE THE HEAPS OF QUAP FROM MORDET ISLAND\n\nI\n\n\"We got to make a fight for it,\" said my uncle. \"We got to face the\nmusic!\"\n\nI remember that even at the sight of him I had a sense of impending\ncalamity. He sat under the electric light with the shadow of his hair\nmaking bars down his face. He looked shrunken, and as though his skin\nhad suddenly got loose and yellow. The decorations of the room seemed\nto have lost freshness, and outside the blinds were up--there was not so\nmuch fog as a dun darkness. One saw the dingy outlines of the chimneys\nopposite quite distinctly, and then a sky of such brown as only London\ncan display.\n\n\"I saw a placard,\" I said: \"\'More Ponderevity.\'\"\n\n\"That\'s Boom,\" he said. \"Boom and his damned newspapers. He\'s trying to\nfight me down. Ever since I offered to buy the Daily Decorator he\'s\nbeen at me. And he thinks consolidating Do Ut cut down the ads. He wants\neverything, damn him! He\'s got no sense of dealing. I\'d like to bash his\nface!\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"what\'s to be done?\"\n\n\"Keep going,\" said my uncle.\n\n\"I\'ll smash Boom yet,\" he said, with sudden savagery.\n\n\"Nothing else?\" I asked.\n\n\"We got to keep going. There\'s a scare on. Did you notice the rooms?\nHalf the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they\ntouch it up!... They didn\'t used to touch things up! Now they put in\ncharacter touches--insulting you. Don\'t know what journalism\'s coming\nto. It\'s all Boom\'s doing.\"\n\nHe cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour.\n\n\"Well,\" said I, \"what can he do?\"\n\n\"Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been\nhandling a lot of money--and he tightens us up.\"\n\n\"We\'re sound?\"\n\n\"Oh, we\'re sound, George. Trust me for that! But all the same--There\'s\nsuch a lot of imagination in these things.... We\'re sound enough. That\'s\nnot it.\"\n\nHe blew. \"Damn Boom!\" he said, and his eyes over his glasses met mine\ndefiantly.\n\n\"We can\'t, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop expenditure?\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Well,--Crest Hill\"\n\n\"What!\" he shouted. \"Me stop Crest Hill for Boom!\" He waved a fist as if\nto hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty. He spoke at\nlast in a reasonable voice. \"If I did,\" he said, \"he\'d kick up a fuss.\nIt\'s no good, even if I wanted to. Everybody\'s watching the place. If I\nwas to stop building we\'d be down in a week.\"\n\nHe had an idea. \"I wish I could do something to start a strike or\nsomething. No such luck. Treat those workmen a sight too well. No, sink\nor swim, Crest Hill goes on until we\'re under water.\"\n\nI began to ask questions and irritated him instantly.\n\n\"Oh, dash these explanations, George!\" he cried; \"You only make things\nlook rottener than they are. It\'s your way. It isn\'t a case of figures.\nWe\'re all right--there\'s only one thing we got to do.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Show value, George. That\'s where this quap comes in; that\'s why I fell\nin so readily with what you brought to me week before last. Here we are,\nwe got our option on the perfect filament, and all we want\'s canadium.\nNobody knows there\'s more canadium in the world than will go on the\nedge of a sixpence except me and you. Nobody has an idee the perfect\nfilament\'s more than just a bit of theorising. Fifty tons of quap and\nwe\'d turn that bit of theorising into something. We\'d make the lamp\ntrade sit on its tail and howl. We\'d put Ediswan and all of \'em into a\nparcel without last year\'s trousers and a hat, and swap \'em off for a\npot of geraniums. See? We\'d do it through Business Organisations, and\nthere you are! See? Capern\'s Patent Filament!\n\n\"The Ideal and the Real! George, we\'ll do it! We\'ll bring it off! And\nthen we\'ll give such a facer to Boom, he\'ll think for fifty years. He\'s\nlaying up for our London and African meeting. Let him. He can turn the\nwhole paper on to us. He says the Business Organisations shares aren\'t\nworth fifty-two and we quote \'em at eighty-four. Well, here we are\ngettin\' ready for him--loading our gun.\"\n\nHis pose was triumphant.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"that\'s all right. But I can\'t help thinking where should\nwe be if we hadn\'t just by accident got Capern\'s Perfect Filament.\nBecause, you know it was an accident--my buying up that.\"\n\nHe crumpled up his nose into an expression of impatient distaste at my\nunreasonableness.\n\n\"And after all, the meeting\'s in June, and you haven\'t begun to get the\nquap! After all, we\'ve still got to load our gun.\"\n\n\"They start on Toosday.\"\n\n\"Have they got the brig?\"\n\n\"They\'ve got a brig.\"\n\n\"Gordon-Nasmyth!\" I doubted.\n\n\"Safe as a bank,\" he said. \"More I see of that man the more I like him.\nAll I wish is we\'d got a steamer instead of a sailing ship.\"\n\n\"And,\" I went on, \"you seem to overlook what used to weigh with us a\nbit. This canadium side of the business and the Capern chance has\nrushed you off your legs. After all--it\'s stealing, and in its way an\ninternational outrage. They\'ve got two gunboats on the coast.\"\n\nI jumped up and went and stared out at the fog.\n\n\"And, by Jove, it\'s about our only chance! I didn\'t dream.\"\n\nI turned on him. \"I\'ve been up in the air,\" I said.\n\n\"Heaven knows where I haven\'t been. And here\'s our only chance--and you\ngive it to that adventurous lunatic to play in his own way--in a brig!\"\n\n\"Well, you had a voice--\"\n\n\"I wish I\'d been in this before. We ought to have run out a steamer to\nLagos or one of those West Coast places and done it from there. Fancy a\nbrig in the channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest!\"\n\n\"I dessay you\'d have shoved it, George. Still you know, George.... I\nbelieve in him.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. Still--\"\n\nWe took up a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it. His\nface became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow,\nreluctant movement and took off his glasses.\n\n\"George,\" he said, \"the luck\'s against us.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHe grimaced with his mouth--in the queerest way at the telegram.\n\n\"That.\"\n\nI took it up and read:\n\n\"Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon nasmyth what price\nmordet now\"\n\nFor a moment neither of us spoke.\n\n\"That\'s all right,\" I said at last.\n\n\"Eh?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"I\'M going. I\'ll get that quap or bust.\"\n\nII\n\nI had a ridiculous persuasion that I was \"saving the situation.\"\n\n\"I\'m going,\" I said quite consciously and dramatically. I saw the whole\naffair--how shall I put it?--in American colours.\n\nI sat down beside him. \"Give me all the data you\'ve got,\" I said, \"and\nI\'ll pull this thing off.\"\n\n\"But nobody knows exactly where--\"\n\n\"Nasmyth does, and he\'ll tell me.\"\n\n\"He\'s been very close,\" said my uncle, and regarded me.\n\n\"He\'ll tell me all right, now he\'s smashed.\"\n\nHe thought. \"I believe he will.\"\n\n\"George,\" he said, \"if you pull this thing off--Once or twice before\nyou\'ve stepped in--with that sort of Woosh of yours--\"\n\nHe left the sentence unfinished.\n\n\"Give me that note-book,\" I said, \"and tell me all you know. Where\'s the\nship? Where\'s Pollack? And where\'s that telegram from? If that quap\'s\nto be got, I\'ll get it or bust. If you\'ll hold on here until I get back\nwith it.\"...\n\nAnd so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life.\n\nI requisitioned my uncle\'s best car forthwith. I went down that night\nto the place of despatch named on Nasmyth\'s telegram, Bampton S.O. Oxon,\nrouted him out with a little trouble from that centre, made things right\nwith him and got his explicit directions; and I was inspecting the Maud\nMary with young Pollack, his cousin and aide, the following afternoon.\nShe was rather a shock to me and not at all in my style, a beast of a\nbrig inured to the potato trade, and she reeked from end to end with the\nfaint, subtle smell of raw potatoes so that it prevailed even over the\ntemporary smell of new paint. She was a beast of a brig, all hold and\ndirty framework, and they had ballasted her with old iron and old\nrails and iron sleepers, and got a miscellaneous lot of spades and iron\nwheelbarrows against the loading of the quap. I thought her over with\nPollack, one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes and don\'t\nhelp much, and then by myself, and as a result I did my best to sweep\nGravesend clean of wheeling planks, and got in as much cord and small\nrope as I could for lashing. I had an idea we might need to run up a\njetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort\nof inadvertent way a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn\'t\nexamine, but which I gathered were a provision against the need of a\ntrade.\n\nThe captain was a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we\nwere after copper ore; he was a Roumanian Jew, with twitching, excitable\nfeatures, who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary\nnaval experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of\nimpenetrable reserve. The crew were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute\nand dirty; most of them youths, unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook\nwas a mulatto; and one, the best-built fellow of them all, was a Breton.\nThere was some subterfuge about our position on board--I forget the\nparticulars now--I was called the supercargo and Pollack was the\nsteward. This added to the piratical flavour that insufficient funds and\nGordon-Nasmyth\'s original genius had already given the enterprise.\n\nThose two days of bustle at Gravesend, under dingy skies, in narrow,\ndirty streets, were a new experience for me. It is like nothing else in\nmy life. I realised that I was a modern and a civilised man. I found\nthe food filthy and the coffee horrible; the whole town stank in my\nnostrils, the landlord of the Good Intent on the quay had a stand-up\nquarrel with us before I could get even a hot bath, and the bedroom\nI slept in was infested by a quantity of exotic but voracious flat\nparasites called locally \"bugs,\" in the walls, in the woodwork,\neverywhere. I fought them with insect powder, and found them comatose\nin the morning. I was dipping down into the dingy underworld of the\ncontemporary state, and I liked it no better than I did my first dip\ninto it when I stayed with my Uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at\nChatham--where, by-the-by, we had to deal with cockroaches of a smaller,\ndarker variety, and also with bugs of sorts.\n\nLet me confess that through all this time before we started I was\nimmensely self-conscious, and that Beatrice played the part of audience\nin my imagination throughout. I was, as I say, \"saving the situation,\"\nand I was acutely aware of that. The evening before we sailed, instead\nof revising our medicine-chest as I had intended, I took the car and\nran across country to Lady Grove to tell my aunt of the journey I was\nmaking, dress, and astonish Lady Osprey by an after dinner call.\n\nThe two ladies were at home and alone beside a big fire that seemed\nwonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I remember the effect of\nthe little parlour in which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady\nOsprey, in a costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played\nan elaborately spread-out patience by the light of a tall shaded lamp;\nBeatrice, in a whiteness that showed her throat, smoked a cigarette\nin an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow. The room was\nwhite-panelled and chintz-curtained. About those two bright centres of\nlight were warm dark shadow, in which a circular mirror shone like a\npool of brown water. I carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of\netiquette. There were moments when I think I really made Lady Osprey\nbelieve that my call was an unavoidable necessity, that it would have\nbeen negligent of me not to call just how and when I did. But at the\nbest those were transitory moments.\n\nThey received me with disciplined amazement. Lady Osprey was interested\nin my face and scrutinised the scar. Beatrice stood behind\nher solicitude. Our eyes met, and in hers I could see startled\ninterrogations.\n\n\"I\'m going,\" I said, \"to the west coast of Africa.\"\n\nThey asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague.\n\n\"We\'ve interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don\'t know when I\nmay return.\"\n\nAfter that I perceived Beatrice surveyed me steadily.\n\nThe conversation was rather difficult. I embarked upon lengthy thanks\nfor their kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady\nOsprey\'s game of patience, but it didn\'t appear that Lady Osprey was\nanxious for me to understand her patience. I came to the verge of taking\nmy leave.\n\n\"You needn\'t go yet,\" said Beatrice, abruptly.\n\nShe walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet\nnear, surveyed Lady Osprey\'s back, and with a gesture to me dropped it\nall deliberately on to the floor.\n\n\"Must talk,\" she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick it\nup. \"Turn my pages. At the piano.\"\n\n\"I can\'t read music.\"\n\n\"Turn my pages.\"\n\nPresently we were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy\ninaccuracy. She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey had resumed\nher patience. The old lady was very pink, and appeared to be absorbed in\nsome attempt to cheat herself without our observing it.\n\n\"Isn\'t West Africa a vile climate?\" \"Are you going to live there?\" \"Why\nare you going?\"\n\nBeatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to\nanswer. Then taking a rhythm from the music before her, she said--\n\n\"At the back of the house is a garden--a door in the wall--on the lane.\nUnderstand?\"\n\nI turned over the pages without any effect on her playing.\n\n\"When?\" I asked.\n\nShe dealt in chords. \"I wish I COULD play this!\" she said. \"Midnight.\"\n\nShe gave her attention to the music for a time.\n\n\"You may have to wait.\"\n\n\"I\'ll wait.\"\n\nShe brought her playing to an end by--as school boys say--\"stashing it\nup.\"\n\n\"I can\'t play to-night,\" she said, standing up and meeting my eyes. \"I\nwanted to give you a parting voluntary.\"\n\n\"Was that Wagner, Beatrice?\" asked Lady Osprey looking up from her\ncards. \"It sounded very confused.\"\n\nI took my leave. I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from\nLady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience\nin romantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection\nto the prospect of invading this good lady\'s premises from the garden\ndoor. I motored up to the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed,\ntold him for the first time of West Africa, spent an hour with him in\nsettling all the outstanding details of Lord Roberts B, and left that\nin his hands to finish against my return. I sent the motor back to Lady\nGrove, and still wearing my fur coat--for the January night was damp and\nbitterly cold--walked to Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the back of\nthe Dower House without any difficulty, and was at the door in the wall\nwith ten minutes to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking up and\ndown. This queer flavour of intrigue, this nocturnal garden-door\nbusiness, had taken me by surprise and changed my mental altitudes.\nI was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of\nBeatrice, of that elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that\nalways took me by surprise, that had made her for example so instantly\nconceive this meeting.\n\nShe came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she\nappeared, a short, grey figure in a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded\nto the cold drizzle. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in\nher dusky face.\n\n\"Why are you going to West Africa?\" she asked at once.\n\n\"Business crisis. I have to go.\"\n\n\"You\'re not going--? You\'re coming back?\"\n\n\"Three or four months,\" I said, \"at most.\"\n\n\"Then, it\'s nothing to do with me?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" I said. \"Why should it have?\"\n\n\"Oh, that\'s all right. One never knows what people think or what people\nfancy.\" She took me by the arm, \"Let\'s go for a walk,\" she said.\n\nI looked about me at darkness and rain.\n\n\"That\'s all right,\" she laughed. \"We can go along the lane and into the\nOld Woking Road. Do you mind? Of course you don\'t. My head. It doesn\'t\nmatter. One never meets anybody.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"I\'ve wandered like this before.... Of course. Did you think\"--she\nnodded her head back at her home--\"that\'s all?\"\n\n\"No, by Jove!\" I cried; \"it\'s manifest it isn\'t.\"\n\nShe took my arm and turned me down the lane. \"Night\'s my time,\" she\nsaid by my side. \"There\'s a touch of the werewolf in my blood. One never\nknows in these old families.... I\'ve wondered often.... Here we are,\nanyhow, alone in the world. Just darkness and cold and a sky of clouds\nand wet. And we--together.\n\n\"I like the wet on my face and hair, don\'t you? When do you sail?\"\n\nI told her to-morrow.\n\n\"Oh, well, there\'s no to-morrow now. You and I!\" She stopped and\nconfronted me.\n\n\"You don\'t say a word except to answer!\"\n\n\"No,\" I said.\n\n\"Last time you did all the talking.\"\n\n\"Like a fool. Now--\"\n\nWe looked at each other\'s two dim faces. \"You\'re glad to be here?\"\n\n\"I\'m glad--I\'m beginning to be--it\'s more than glad.\"\n\nShe put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her.\n\n\"Ah!\" she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one another.\n\n\"That\'s all,\" she said, releasing herself. \"What bundles of clothes we\nare to-night. I felt we should kiss some day again. Always. The last\ntime was ages ago.\"\n\n\"Among the fern stalks.\"\n\n\"Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold. Were mine?\nThe same lips--after so long--after so much!... And now let\'s trudge\nthrough this blotted-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take\nyour arm. Just trudge. See? Hold tight to me because I know the way--and\ndon\'t talk--don\'t talk. Unless you want to talk.... Let me tell you\nthings! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out--it\'s dead and\ngone, and we\'re in this place. This dark wild place.... We\'re dead. Or\nall the world is dead. No! We\'re dead. No one can see us. We\'re shadows.\nWe\'ve got out of our positions, out of our bodies--and together. That\'s\nthe good thing of it--together. But that\'s why the world can\'t see us\nand why we hardly see the world. Sssh! Is it all right?\"\n\n\"It\'s all right,\" I said.\n\nWe stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit,\nrain-veiled window.\n\n\"The silly world,\" she said, \"the silly world! It eats and sleeps.\nIf the wet didn\'t patter so from the trees we\'d hear it snoring. It\'s\ndreaming such stupid things--stupid judgments. It doesn\'t know we are\npassing, we two--free of it--clear of it. You and I!\"\n\nWe pressed against each other reassuringly.\n\n\"I\'m glad we\'re dead,\" she whispered. \"I\'m glad we\'re dead. I was tired\nof it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and so entangled.\"\n\nShe stopped abruptly.\n\nWe splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember things I\nhad meant to say.\n\n\"Look here!\" I cried. \"I want to help you beyond measure. You are\nentangled. What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me. You said you\nwould. But there\'s something.\"\n\nMy thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them.\n\n\"Is it something about my position?... Or is it\nsomething--perhaps--about some other man?\"\n\nThere was an immense assenting silence.\n\n\"You\'ve puzzled me so. At first--I mean quite early--I thought you meant\nto make me marry you.\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"To-night,\" she said after a long pause, \"I can\'t explain. No! I can\'t\nexplain. I love you! But--explanations! To-night my dear, here we are in\nthe world alone--and the world doesn\'t matter. Nothing matters. Here I\nam in the cold with you and my bed away there deserted. I\'d tell you--I\nwill tell you when things enable me to tell you, and soon enough they\nwill. But to-night--I won\'t--I won\'t.\"\n\nShe left my side and went in front of me.\n\nShe turned upon me. \"Look here,\" she said, \"I insist upon your being\ndead. Do you understand? I\'m not joking. To-night you and I are out\nof life. It\'s our time together. There may be other times, but this we\nwon\'t spoil. We\'re--in Hades if you like. Where there\'s nothing to\nhide and nothing to tell. No bodies even. No bothers. We loved each\nother--down there--and were kept apart, but now it doesn\'t matter. It\'s\nover.... If you won\'t agree to that--I will go home.\"\n\n\"I wanted,\" I began.\n\n\"I know. Oh! my dear, if you\'d only understand I understand. If you\'d\nonly not care--and love me to-night.\"\n\n\"I do love you,\" I said.\n\n\"Then LOVE me,\" she answered, \"and leave all the things that bother you.\nLove me! Here I am!\"\n\n\"But!--\"\n\n\"No!\" she said.\n\n\"Well, have your way.\"\n\nSo she carried her point, and we wandered into the night together and\nBeatrice talked to me of love....\n\nI\'d never heard a woman before in all my life who could talk of love,\nwho could lay bare and develop and touch with imagination all that mass\nof fine emotion every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love,\nshe had thought of love, a thousand sweet lyrics had sounded through her\nbrain and left fine fragments in her memory; she poured it out, all\nof it, shamelessly, skilfully, for me. I cannot give any sense of that\ntalk, I cannot even tell how much of the delight of it was the magic of\nher voice, the glow of her near presence. And always we walked swathed\nwarmly through a chilly air, along dim, interminable greasy roads--with\nnever a soul abroad it seemed to us, never a beast in the fields.\n\n\"Why do people love each other?\" I said.\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"But why do I love you? Why is your voice better than any voice, your\nface sweeter than any face?\"\n\n\"And why do I love you?\" she asked; \"not only what is fine in you,\nbut what isn\'t? Why do I love your dullness, your arrogance? For I do.\nTo--night I love the very raindrops on the fur of your coat!\"...\n\nSo we talked; and at last very wet, still glowing but a little tired,\nwe parted at the garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in our\nstrange irrational community of happiness, and all the world about us,\nand particularly Lady Osprey and her household, had been asleep--and\ndreaming of anything rather than Beatrice in the night and rain.\n\nShe stood in the doorway, a muffled figure with eyes that glowed.\n\n\"Come back,\" she whispered. \"I shall wait for you.\"\n\nShe hesitated.\n\nShe touched the lapel of my coat. \"I love you NOW,\" she said, and lifted\nher face to mine.\n\nI held her to me and was atremble from top to toe. \"O God!\" I cried.\n\"And I must go!\"\n\nShe slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the\nworld seemed full of fantastic possibilities.\n\n\"Yes, GO!\" she said, and vanished and slammed the door upon me, leaving\nme alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black darkness of\nthe night.\n\nIII\n\nThat expedition to Mordet Island stands apart from all the rest of my\nlife, detached, a piece by itself with an atmosphere of its own. It\nwould, I suppose, make a book by itself--it has made a fairly voluminous\nofficial report--but so far as this novel of mine goes it is merely an\nepisode, a contributory experience, and I mean to keep it at that.\n\nVile weather, an impatient fretting against unbearable slowness\nand delay, sea--sickness, general discomfort and humiliating\nself--revelation are the master values of these memories.\n\nI was sick all through the journey out. I don\'t know why. It was the\nonly time I was ever sea-sick, and I have seen some pretty bad weather\nsince I became a boat-builder. But that phantom smell of potatoes was\npeculiarly vile to me. Coming back on the brig we were all ill, every\none of us, so soon as we got to sea, poisoned, I firmly believe, by\nquap. On the way out most of the others recovered in a few days, but the\nstuffiness below, the coarse food, the cramped dirty accommodation kept\nme, if not actually sea-sick, in a state of acute physical wretchedness\nthe whole time. The ship abounded in cockroaches and more intimate\nvermin. I was cold all the time until after we passed Cape Verde, then\nI became steamily hot; I had been too preoccupied with Beatrice and my\nkeen desire to get the Maud Mary under way at once, to consider a proper\nwardrobe for myself, and in particular I lacked a coat. Heavens! how I\nlacked that coat! And, moreover, I was cooped up with two of the worst\nbores in Christendom, Pollack and the captain. Pollack, after conducting\nhis illness in a style better adapted to the capacity of an opera house\nthan a small compartment, suddenly got insupportably well and breezy,\nand produced a manly pipe in which he smoked a tobacco as blond as\nhimself, and divided his time almost equally between smoking it and\ntrying to clean it. \"There\'s only three things you can clean a pipe\nwith,\" he used to remark with a twist of paper in hand. \"The best\'s a\nfeather, the second\'s a straw, and the third\'s a girl\'s hairpin. I never\nsee such a ship. You can\'t find any of \'em. Last time I came this way\nI did find hairpins anyway, and found \'em on the floor of the captain\'s\ncabin. Regular deposit. Eh?... Feelin\' better?\"\n\nAt which I usually swore.\n\n\"Oh, you\'ll be all right soon. Don\'t mind my puffin\' a bit? Eh?\"\n\nHe never tired of asking me to \"have a hand at Nap. Good game. Makes you\nforget it, and that\'s half the battle.\"\n\nHe would sit swaying with the rolling of the ship and suck at his pipe\nof blond tobacco and look with an inexpressibly sage but somnolent blue\neye at the captain by the hour together. \"Captain\'s a Card,\" he would\nsay over and over again as the outcome of these meditations. \"He\'d like\nto know what we\'re up to. He\'d like to know--no end.\"\n\nThat did seem to be the captain\'s ruling idea. But he also wanted to\nimpress me with the notion that he was a gentleman of good family and to\nair a number of views adverse to the English, to English literature, to\nthe English constitution, and the like.\n\nHe had learnt the sea in the Roumanian navy, and English out of a book;\nhe would still at times pronounce the e\'s at the end of \"there\"\nand \"here\"; he was a naturalised Englishman, and he drove me into a\nreluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his everlasting carping at\nthings English. Pollack would set himself to \"draw him out.\" Heaven\nalone can tell how near I came to murder.\n\nFifty-three days I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and\nprofoundly depressed mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the\nrest of his leisure in lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up\nin a perpetual smell, in a persistent sick hunger that turned from the\nsight of food, in darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship\nthat rolled and pitched and swayed. And all the time the sands in the\nhour-glass of my uncle\'s fortunes were streaming out. Misery! Amidst it\nall I remember only one thing brightly, one morning of sunshine in the\nBay of Biscay and a vision of frothing waves, sapphire green, a bird\nfollowing our wake and our masts rolling about the sky. Then wind and\nrain close in on us again.\n\nYou must not imagine they were ordinary days, days, I mean, of an\naverage length; they were not so much days as long damp slabs of time\nthat stretched each one to the horizon, and much of that length was\nnight. One paraded the staggering deck in a borrowed sou\'-wester hour\nafter hour in the chilly, windy, splashing and spitting darkness, or\nsat in the cabin, bored and ill, and looked at the faces of those\ninseparable companions by the help of a lamp that gave smell rather than\nlight. Then one would see going up, up, up, and then sinking down, down,\ndown, Pollack, extinct pipe in mouth, humorously observant, bringing his\nmind slowly to the seventy-seventh decision that the captain was a Card,\nwhile the words flowed from the latter in a nimble incessant good.\n\"Dis England eet is not a country aristocratic, no! Eet is a glorified\nbourgeoisie! Eet is plutocratic. In England dere is no aristocracy since\nde Wars of Roses. In the rest of Europe east of the Latins, yes; in\nEngland, no.\n\n\"Eet is all middle-class, youra England. Everything you look at,\nmiddle-class. Respectable! Everything good--eet is, you say, shocking.\nMadame Grundy! Eet is all limited and computing and self-seeking. Dat is\nwhy your art is so limited, youra fiction, your philosophin, why you\nare all so inartistic. You want nothing but profit! What will pay! What\nwould you?\"...\n\nHe had all those violent adjuncts to speech we Western Europeans have\nabandoned, shruggings of the shoulders, waving of the arms, thrusting\nout of the face, wonderful grimaces and twiddlings of the hands under\nyour nose until you wanted to hit them away. Day after day it went on,\nand I had to keep any anger to myself, to reserve myself for the time\nahead when it would be necessary to see the quap was got aboard and\nstowed--knee deep in this man\'s astonishment. I knew he would make a\nthousand objections to all we had before us. He talked like a drugged\nman. It ran glibly over his tongue. And all the time one could see his\nseamanship fretting him, he was gnawed by responsibility, perpetually\nuneasy about the ship\'s position, perpetually imagining dangers. If a\nsea hit us exceptionally hard he\'d be out of the cabin in an instant\nmaking an outcry of inquiries, and he was pursued by a dread of the\nhold, of ballast shifting, of insidious wicked leaks. As we drew near\nthe African coast his fear of rocks and shoals became infectious.\n\n\"I do not know dis coast,\" he used to say. \"I cama hera because\nGordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den he does not come!\"\n\n\"Fortunes of war,\" I said, and tried to think in vain if any motive but\nsheer haphazard could have guided Gordon-Nasmyth in the choice of these\ntwo men. I think perhaps Gordon-Nasmyth had the artistic temperament and\nwanted contrasts, and also that the captain helped him to express his\nown malignant Anti-Britishism.\n\nHe was indeed an exceptionally inefficient captain. On the whole I was\nglad I had come even at the eleventh hour to see to things.\n\n(The captain, by-the-by, did at last, out of sheer nervousness, get\naground at the end of Mordet\'s Island, but we got off in an hour or so\nwith a swell and a little hard work in the boat.)\n\nI suspected the mate of his opinion of the captain long before he\nexpressed it. He was, I say, a taciturn man, but one day speech broke\nthrough him. He had been sitting at the table with his arms folded on\nit, musing drearily, pipe in mouth, and the voice of the captain drifted\ndown from above.\n\nThe mate lifted his heavy eyes to me and regarded me for a moment.\nThen he began to heave with the beginnings of speech. He disembarrassed\nhimself of his pipe. I cowered with expectation. Speech was coming at\nlast. Before he spoke he nodded reassuringly once or twice.\n\n\"E--\"\n\nHe moved his head strangely and mysteriously, but a child might have\nknown he spoke of the captain.\n\n\"E\'s a foreigner.\"\n\nHe regarded me doubtfully for a time, and at last decided for the sake\nof lucidity to clench the matter.\n\n\"That\'s what E is--a DAGO!\"\n\nHe nodded like a man who gives a last tap to a nail, and I could see\nhe considered his remark well and truly laid. His face, though still\nresolute, became as tranquil and uneventful as a huge hall after a\npublic meeting has dispersed out of it, and finally he closed and locked\nit with his pipe.\n\n\"Roumanian Jew, isn\'t he?\" I said.\n\nHe nodded darkly and almost forbiddingly.\n\nMore would have been too much. The thing was said. But from that time\nforth I knew I could depend upon him and that he and I were friends. It\nhappens I never did have to depend upon him, but that does not affect\nour relationship.\n\nForward the crew lived lives very much after the fashion of ours, more\ncrowded, more cramped and dirty, wetter, steamier, more verminous. The\ncoarse food they had was still not so coarse but that they did not think\nthey were living \"like fighting cocks.\" So far as I could make out\nthey were all nearly destitute men; hardly any of them had a proper\nsea outfit, and what small possessions they had were a source of mutual\ndistrust. And as we pitched and floundered southward they gambled and\nfought, were brutal to one another, argued and wrangled loudly, until we\nprotested at the uproar.\n\nThere\'s no romance about the sea in a small sailing ship as I saw it.\nThe romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer. These brigs and\nschooners and brigantines that still stand out from every little port\nare relics from an age of petty trade, as rotten and obsolescent as\na Georgian house that has sunken into a slum. They are indeed just\nfloating fragments of slum, much as icebergs are floating fragments of\nglacier. The civilised man who has learnt to wash, who has developed\na sense of physical honour, of cleanly temperate feeding, of time, can\nendure them no more. They pass, and the clanking coal-wasting steamers\nwill follow them, giving place to cleaner, finer things....\n\nBut so it was I made my voyage to Africa, and came at last into a world\nof steamy fogs and a hot smell of vegetable decay, and into sound and\nsight of surf and distant intermittent glimpses of the coast. I lived\na strange concentrated life through all that time, such a life as a\ncreature must do that has fallen in a well. All my former ways ceased,\nall my old vistas became memories.\n\nThe situation I was saving was very small and distant now; I felt its\nurgency no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove, my uncle and the Hardingham,\nmy soaring in the air and my habitual wide vision of swift effectual\nthings, became as remote as if they were in some world I had left for\never....\n\nIV\n\nAll these African memories stand by themselves. It was for me an\nexpedition into the realms of undisciplined nature out of the world that\nis ruled by men, my first bout with that hot side of our mother that\ngives you the jungle--that cold side that gives you the air-eddy I was\nbeginning to know passing well. They are memories woven upon a fabric\nof sunshine and heat and a constant warm smell of decay. They end\nin rain--such rain as I had never seen before, a vehement, a frantic\ndownpouring of water, but our first slow passage through the channels\nbehind Mordet\'s Island was in incandescent sunshine.\n\nThere we go in my memory still, a blistered dirty ship with patched\nsails and a battered mermaid to present Maud Mary, sounding and taking\nthought between high ranks of forest whose trees come out knee-deep\nat last in the water. There we go with a little breeze on our quarter,\nMordet Island rounded and the quap, it might be within a day of us.\n\nHere and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities of green with\na trumpet call of colour. Things crept among the jungle and peeped and\ndashed back rustling into stillness. Always in the sluggishly drifting,\nopaque water were eddyings and stirrings; little rushes of bubbles came\nchuckling up light-heartedly from this or that submerged conflict and\ntragedy; now and again were crocodiles like a stranded fleet of logs\nbasking in the sun. Still it was by day, a dreary stillness broken only\nby insect sounds and the creaking and flapping of our progress, by the\ncalling of the soundings and the captain\'s confused shouts; but in\nthe night as we lay moored to a clump of trees the darkness brought a\nthousand swampy things to life and out of the forest came screaming and\nhowlings, screaming and yells that made us glad to be afloat. And once\nwe saw between the tree stems long blazing fires. We passed two or three\nvillages landward, and brown-black women and children came and stared at\nus and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a boat from a creek and\nhailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at last we came to a great open\nplace, a broad lake rimmed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse\nand dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound\nof any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the\nruins of the deserted station, and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued\nrubbish under a great rib of rock, the quap! The forest receded. The\nland to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far on across\nnotch in its backbone was surf and the sea.\n\nWe took the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty slowly and\ncarefully. The captain came and talked.\n\n\"This is eet?\" he said.\n\n\"Yes,\" said I.\n\n\"Is eet for trade we have come?\"\n\nThis was ironical.\n\n\"No,\" said I.\n\n\"Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf come.\"\n\n\"I\'ll tell you now,\" I said. \"We are going to lay in as close as we can\nto those two heaps of stuff--you see them?--under the rock. Then we are\ngoing to chuck all our ballast overboard and take those in. Then we\'re\ngoing home.\"\n\n\"May I presume to ask--is eet gold?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said incivilly, \"it isn\'t.\"\n\n\"Then what is it?\"\n\n\"It\'s stuff--of some commercial value.\"\n\n\"We can\'t do eet,\" he said.\n\n\"We can,\" I answered reassuringly.\n\n\"We can\'t,\" he said as confidently. \"I don\'t mean what you mean. You\nknow so liddle--But--dis is forbidden country.\"\n\nI turned on him suddenly angry and met bright excited eyes. For a minute\nwe scrutinised one another. Then I said, \"That\'s our risk. Trade is\nforbidden. But this isn\'t trade.... This thing\'s got to be done.\"\n\nHis eyes glittered and he shook his head....\n\nThe brig stood in slowly through the twilight toward this strange\nscorched and blistered stretch of beach, and the man at the wheel\nstrained his ears to listening the low-voiced angry argument that began\nbetween myself and the captain, that was presently joined by Pollack. We\nmoored at last within a hundred yards of our goal, and all through our\ndinner and far into the night we argued intermittently and fiercely with\nthe captain about our right to load just what we pleased. \"I will haf\nnothing to do with eet,\" he persisted. \"I wash my hands.\" It seemed that\nnight as though we argued in vain. \"If it is not trade,\" he said, \"it\nis prospecting and mining. That is worse. Any one who knows\nanything--outside England--knows that is worse.\"\n\nWe argued and I lost my temper and swore at him. Pollack kept cooler and\nchewed his pipe watchfully with that blue eye of his upon the captain\'s\ngestures. Finally I went on deck to cool. The sky was overcast I\ndiscovered all the men were in a knot forward, staring at the faint\nquivering luminosity that had spread over the heaps of quap, a\nphosphorescence such as one sees at times on rotting wood. And about\nthe beach east and west there were patches and streaks of something like\ndiluted moonshine....\n\nIn the small hours I was still awake and turning over scheme after\nscheme in my mind whereby I might circumvent the captain\'s opposition. I\nmeant to get that quap aboard if I had to kill some one to do it. Never\nin my life had I been so thwarted! After this intolerable voyage! There\ncame a rap at my cabin door and then it opened and I made out a bearded\nface. \"Come in,\" I said, and a black voluble figure I could just see\nobscurely came in to talk in my private ear and fill my cabin with its\nwhisperings and gestures. It was the captain. He, too, had been awake\nand thinking things over. He had come to explain--enormously. I lay\nthere hating him and wondering if I and Pollack could lock him in\nhis cabin and run the ship without him. \"I do not want to spoil dis\nexpedition,\" emerged from a cloud of protestations, and then I was able\nto disentangle \"a commission--shush a small commission--for special\nrisks!\" \"Special risks\" became frequent. I let him explain himself out.\nIt appeared he was also demanding an apology for something I had said.\nNo doubt I had insulted him generously. At last came definite offers. I\nbroke my silence and bargained.\n\n\"Pollack!\" I cried and hammered the partition.\n\n\"What\'s up?\" asked Pollack.\n\nI stated the case concisely.\n\nThere came a silence.\n\n\"He\'s a Card,\" said Pollack. \"Let\'s give him his commission. I don\'t\nmind.\"\n\n\"Eh?\" I cried.\n\n\"I said he was a Card, that\'s all,\" said Pollack. \"I\'m coming.\"\n\nHe appeared in my doorway a faint white figure joined our vehement\nwhisperings.\n\nWe had to buy the captain off; we had to promise him ten per cent. of\nour problematical profits. We were to give him ten per cent. on what we\nsold the cargo for over and above his legitimate pay, and I found in my\nout-bargained and disordered state small consolation in the thought that\nI, as the Gordon-Nasmyth expedition, was to sell the stuff to myself as\nBusiness Organisations. And he further exasperated me by insisting on\nhaving our bargain in writing. \"In the form of a letter,\" he insisted.\n\n\"All right,\" I acquiesced, \"in the form of a letter. Here goes! Get a\nlight!\"\n\n\"And the apology,\" he said, folding up the letter.\n\n\"All right,\" I said; \"Apology.\"\n\nMy hand shook with anger as I wrote, and afterwards I could not sleep\nfor hate of him. At last I got up. I suffered, I found, from an unusual\nclumsiness. I struck my toe against my cabin door, and cut myself as I\nshaved. I found myself at last pacing the deck under the dawn in a\nmood of extreme exasperation. The sun rose abruptly and splashed light\nblindingly into my eyes and I swore at the sun. I found myself imagining\nfresh obstacles with the men and talking aloud in anticipatory rehearsal\nof the consequent row.\n\nThe malaria of the quap was already in my blood.\n\nV\n\nSooner or later the ridiculous embargo that now lies upon all the coast\neastward of Mordet Island will be lifted and the reality of the deposits\nof quap ascertained. I am sure that we were merely taking the outcrop\nof a stratum of nodulated deposits that dip steeply seaward. Those heaps\nwere merely the crumbled out contents of two irregular cavities in the\nrock; they are as natural as any talus or heap of that kind, and the\nmud along the edge of the water for miles is mixed with quap, and is\nradio-active and lifeless and faintly phosphorescent at night. But the\nreader will find the full particulars of my impression of all this in\nthe Geological Magazine for October, 1905, and to that I must refer him.\nThere, too, he will find my unconfirmed theories of its nature. If I am\nright it is something far more significant from the scientific point\nof view than those incidental constituents of various rare metals,\npitchblende, rutile, and the like, upon which the revolutionary\ndiscoveries of the last decade are based. Those are just little\nmolecular centres of disintegration, of that mysterious decay and\nrotting of those elements, elements once regarded as the most stable\nthings in nature. But there is something--the only word that comes near\nit is CANCEROUS--and that is not very near, about the whole of quap,\nsomething that creeps and lives as a disease lives by destroying; an\nelemental stirring and disarrangement, incalculably maleficent and\nstrange.\n\nThis is no imaginative comparison of mine. To my mind radio-activity\nis a real disease of matter. Moreover, it is a contagious disease. It\nspreads. You bring those debased and crumbling atoms near others and\nthose too presently catch the trick of swinging themselves out of\ncoherent existence. It is in matter exactly what the decay of our old\nculture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured\nreactions. When I think of these inexplicable dissolvent centres that\nhave come into being in our globe--these quap heaps are surely by far\nthe largest that have yet been found in the world; the rest as yet mere\nspecks in grains and crystals--I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the\nultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world. So\nthat while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change\nand crumble from beneath him. I mention this here as a queer persistent\nfancy. Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no splendid\nclimax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but\njust--atomic decay! I add that to the ideas of the suffocating comet,\nthe dark body out of space, the burning out of the sun, the distorted\norbit, as a new and far more possible end--as Science can see ends--to\nthis strange by-play of matter that we call human life. I do not believe\nthis can be the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on\nliving, but to it science points as a possible thing, science and reason\nalike. If single human beings--if one single ricketty infant--can be\nborn as it were by accident and die futile, why not the whole race?\nThese are questions I have never answered, that now I never attempt to\nanswer, but the thought of quap and its mysteries brings them back to\nme.\n\nI can witness that the beach and mud for two miles or more either way\nwas a lifeless beach--lifeless as I could have imagined no tropical mud\ncould ever be, and all the dead branches and leaves and rotting dead\nfish and so forth that drifted ashore became presently shrivelled and\nwhite. Sometimes crocodiles would come up out of the water and bask, and\nnow and then water birds would explore the mud and rocky ribs that rose\nout of it, in a mood of transitory speculation. That was its utmost\nadmiration. And the air felt at once hot and austere, dry and\nblistering, and altogether different the warm moist embrace that had met\nus at our first African landfall and to which we had grown accustomed.\n\nI believe that the primary influence of the quap upon us was to increase\nthe conductivity of our nerves, but that is a mere unjustifiable\nspeculation on my part. At any rate it gave a sort of east wind effect\nto life. We all became irritable, clumsy, languid and disposed to\nbe impatient with our languor. We moored the brig to the rocks with\ndifficulty, and got aground on mud and decided to stick there and tow\noff when we had done--the bottom was as greasy as butter. Our efforts\nto fix up planks and sleepers in order to wheel the quap aboard were as\nill-conceived as that sort of work can be--and that sort of work can at\ntimes be very ill-conceived. The captain had a superstitious fear of his\nhold: he became wildly gesticulatory and expository and incompetent at\nthe bare thought of it. His shouts still echo in my memory, becoming as\neach crisis approached less and less like any known tongue.\n\nBut I cannot now write the history of those days of blundering and toil:\nof how Milton, one of the boys, fell from a plank to the beach, thirty\nfeet perhaps, with his barrow and broke his arm and I believe a rib,\nof how I and Pollack set the limb and nursed him through the fever that\nfollowed, of how one man after another succumbed to a feverish malaria,\nand how I--by virtue of my scientific reputation--was obliged to play\nthe part of doctor and dose them with quinine, and then finding that\nworse than nothing, with rum and small doses of Easton\'s Syrup, of which\nthere chanced to be a case of bottles aboard--Heaven and Gordon-Nasmyth\nknow why. For three long days we lay in misery and never shipped a\nbarrow-load. Then, when they resumed, the men\'s hands broke out into\nsores. There were no gloves available; and I tried to get them, while\nthey shovelled and wheeled, to cover their hands with stockings\nor greased rags. They would not do this on account of the heat and\ndiscomfort. This attempt of mine did, however, direct their attention to\nthe quap as the source of their illness and precipitated what in the\nend finished our lading, an informal strike. \"We\'ve had enough of this,\"\nthey said, and they meant it. They came aft to say as much. They cowed\nthe captain.\n\nThrough all these days the weather was variously vile, first a furnace\nheat under a sky of a scowling intensity of blue, then a hot fog that\nstuck in one\'s throat like wool and turned the men on the planks into\ncolourless figures of giants, then a wild burst of thunderstorms,\nmad elemental uproar and rain. Through it all, against illness, heat,\nconfusion of mind, one master impetus prevailed with me, to keep the\nshipping going, to maintain one motif at least, whatever else arose\nor ceased, the chuff of the spades, the squeaking and shriek of the\nbarrows, the pluppa, pluppa, pluppa, as the men came trotting along the\nswinging high planks, and then at last, the dollop, dollop, as the stuff\nshot into the hold. \"Another barrow-load, thank God! Another\nfifteen hundred, or it may be two thousand pounds, for the saving of\nPonderevo!...\"\n\nI found out many things about myself and humanity in those weeks of\neffort behind Mordet Island. I understand now the heart of the sweater,\nof the harsh employer, of the nigger-driver. I had brought these\nmen into a danger they didn\'t understand, I was fiercely resolved to\novercome their opposition and bend and use them for my purpose, and I\nhated the men. But I hated all humanity during the time that the quap\nwas near me.\n\nAnd my mind was pervaded, too, by a sense of urgency and by the fear\nthat we should be discovered and our proceedings stopped. I wanted to\nget out to sea again--to be beating up northward with our plunder. I was\nafraid our masts showed to seaward and might betray us to some curious\npasser on the high sea. And one evening near the end I saw a canoe\nwith three natives far off down the lake; I got field-glasses from the\ncaptain and scrutinised them, and I could see them staring at us. One\nman might have been a half-breed and was dressed in white. They watched\nus for some time very quietly and then paddled off into some channel in\nthe forest shadows.\n\nAnd for three nights running, so that it took a painful grip upon my\ninflamed imagination, I dreamt of my uncle\'s face, only that it was\nghastly white like a clown\'s, and the throat was cut from ear to ear--a\nlong ochreous cut. \"Too late,\" he said; \"Too late!...\"\n\nVI\n\nA day or so after we had got to work upon the quap I found myself so\nsleepless and miserable that the ship became unendurable. Just before\nthe rush of sunrise I borrowed Pollack\'s gun, walked down the planks,\nclambered over the quap heaps and prowled along the beach. I went\nperhaps a mile and a half that day and some distance beyond the ruins\nof the old station. I became interested in the desolation about me, and\nfound when I returned that I was able to sleep for nearly an hour. It\nwas delightful to have been alone for so long,--no captain, no Pollack,\nno one. Accordingly I repeated this expedition the next morning and the\nnext until it became a custom with me. There was little for me to do\nonce the digging and wheeling was organised, and so these prowlings of\nmine grew longer and longer, and presently I began to take food with me.\n\nI pushed these walks far beyond the area desolated by the quap. On the\nedges of that was first a zone of stunted vegetation, then a sort of\nswampy jungle that was difficult to penetrate, and then the beginnings\nof the forest, a scene of huge tree stems and tangled creeper ropes\nand roots mingled with oozy mud. Here I used to loaf in a state between\nbotanising and reverie--always very anxious to know what was up above in\nthe sunlight--and here it was I murdered a man.\n\nIt was the most unmeaning and purposeless murder imaginable. Even as I\nwrite down its well-remembered particulars there comes again the sense\nof its strangeness, its pointlessness, its incompatibility with any of\nthe neat and definite theories people hold about life and the meaning of\nthe world. I did this thing and I want to tell of my doing it, but why I\ndid it and particularly why I should be held responsible for it I cannot\nexplain.\n\nThat morning I had come upon a track in the forest, and it had occurred\nto me as a disagreeable idea that this was a human pathway. I didn\'t\nwant to come upon any human beings. The less our expedition saw of the\nAfrican population the better for its prospects. Thus far we had been\nsingularly free from native pestering. So I turned back and was making\nmy way over mud and roots and dead fronds and petals scattered from the\ngreen world above when abruptly I saw my victim.\n\nI became aware of him perhaps forty feet off standing quite still and\nregarding me.\n\nHe wasn\'t by any means a pretty figure. He was very black and naked\nexcept for a dirty loin-cloth, his legs were ill-shaped and his toes\nspread wide and the upper edge of his cloth and a girdle of string cut\nhis clumsy abdomen into folds. His forehead was low, his nose very\nflat and his lower lip swollen and purplish-red. His hair was short and\nfuzzy, and about his neck was a string and a little purse of skin. He\ncarried a musket, and a powder-flask was stuck in his girdle. It was a\ncurious confrontation. There opposed to him stood I, a little soiled,\nperhaps, but still a rather elaborately civilised human being, born,\nbred and trained in a vague tradition. In my hand was an unaccustomed\ngun. And each of us was essentially a teeming, vivid brain, tensely\nexcited by the encounter, quite unaware of the other\'s mental content or\nwhat to do with him.\n\nHe stepped back a pace or so, stumbled and turned to run.\n\n\"Stop,\" I cried; \"stop, you fool!\" and started to run after him,\nshouting such things in English. But I was no match for him over the\nroots and mud.\n\nI had a preposterous idea. \"He mustn\'t get away and tell them!\"\n\nAnd with that instantly I brought both feet together, raised my gun,\naimed quite coolly, drew the trigger carefully and shot him neatly in\nthe back.\n\nI saw, and saw with a leap of pure exaltation, the smash of my bullet\nbetween his shoulder blades. \"Got him,\" said I, dropping my gun and down\nhe flopped and died without a groan. \"By Jove!\" I cried with note of\nsurprise, \"I\'ve killed him!\" I looked about me and then went forward\ncautiously, in a mood between curiosity and astonishment, to look at\nthis man whose soul I had flung so unceremoniously out of our common\nworld. I went to him, not as one goes to something one has made or done,\nbut as one approaches something found.\n\nHe was frightfully smashed out in front; he must have died in the\ninstant. I stooped and raised him by his shoulder and realised that. I\ndropped him, and stood about and peered about me through the trees. \"My\nword!\" I said. He was the second dead human being--apart, I mean, from\nsurgical properties and mummies and common shows of that sort--that I\nhave ever seen. I stood over him wondering, wondering beyond measure.\n\nA practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one heard the gun?\n\nI reloaded.\n\nAfter a time I felt securer, and gave my mind again to the dead I had\nkilled. What must I do?\n\nIt occurred to me that perhaps I ought to bury him. At any rate, I ought\nto hide him. I reflected coolly, and then put my gun within easy reach\nand dragged him by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft,\nand thrust him in. His powder-flask slipped from his loin-cloth, and I\nwent back to get it. Then I pressed him down with the butt of my rifle.\n\nAfterwards this all seemed to me most horrible, but at the time it was\nentirely a matter-of-fact transaction. I looked round for any other\nvisible evidence of his fate, looked round as one does when one packs\none\'s portmanteau in an hotel bedroom.\n\nWhen I got my bearings, and carefully returned towards the ship. I had\nthe mood of grave concentration of a boy who has lapsed into poaching.\nAnd the business only began to assume proper proportions for me as I\ngot near the ship, to seem any other kind of thing than the killing of a\nbird or rabbit.\n\nIn the night, however, it took on enormous and portentous forms. \"By\nGod!\" I cried suddenly, starting wide awake; \"but it was murder!\"\n\nI lay after that wide awake, staring at my memories. In some odd way\nthese visions mixed up with my dream of in my uncle in his despair.\nThe black body which saw now damaged and partly buried, but which,\nnevertheless, I no longer felt was dead but acutely alive and\nperceiving, I mixed up with the ochreous slash under my uncle\'s face. I\ntried to dismiss this horrible obsession from my mind, but it prevailed\nover all my efforts.\n\nThe next day was utterly black with my sense of that ugly creature\'s\nbody. I am the least superstitious of men, but it drew me. It drew me\nback into those thickets to the very place where I had hidden him.\n\nSome evil and detestable beast had been at him, and he lay disinterred.\n\nMethodically I buried his swollen and mangled carcass again, and\nreturned to the ship for another night of dreams. Next day for all the\nmorning I resisted the impulse to go to him, and played nap with Pollack\nwith my secret gnawing at me, and in the evening started to go and was\nnear benighted. I never told a soul of them of this thing I had done.\n\nNext day I went early, and he had gone, and there were human footmarks\nand ugly stains round the muddy hole from which he had been dragged.\n\nI returned to the ship, disconcerted and perplexed. That day it was the\nmen came aft, with blistered hands and faces, and sullen eyes. When they\nproclaimed, through Edwards, their spokesman, \"We\'ve had enough of this,\nand we mean it,\" I answered very readily, \"So have I. Let\'s go.\"\n\nVII\n\nWe were none too soon. People had been reconnoitring us, the telegraph\nhad been at work, and we were not four hours at sea before we ran\nagainst the gunboat that had been sent down the coast to look for us and\nthat would have caught us behind the island like a beast in a trap. It\nwas a night of driving cloud that gave intermittent gleams of moonlight;\nthe wind and sea were strong and we were rolling along through a drift\nof rails and mist. Suddenly the world was white with moonshine. The\ngunboat came out as a long dark shape wallowing on the water to the\neast.\n\nShe sighted the Maud Mary at once, and fired some sort of popgun to\narrest us.\n\nThe mate turned to me.\n\n\"Shall I tell the captain?\"\n\n\"The captain be damned\" said I, and we let him sleep through two hours\nof chase till a rainstorm swallowed us up. Then we changed our course\nand sailed right across them, and by morning only her smoke was showing.\n\nWe were clear of Africa--and with the booty aboard I did not see what\nstood between us and home.\n\nFor the first time since I had fallen sick in the Thames my spirits\nrose. I was sea-sick and physically disgusted, of course, but I felt\nkindly in spite of my qualms. So far as I could calculate then the\nsituation was saved. I saw myself returning triumphantly into the\nThames, and nothing on earth to prevent old Capern\'s Perfect Filament\ngoing on the market in fortnight. I had the monopoly of electric lamps\nbeneath my feet.\n\nI was released from the spell of that bloodstained black body all mixed\nup with grey-black mud. I was going back to baths and decent food and\naeronautics and Beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and my real life\nagain--out of this well into which I had fallen. It would have needed\nsomething more than sea-sickness and quap fever to prevent my spirits\nrising.\n\nI told the captain that I agreed with him that the British were the scum\nof Europe, the westward drift of all the people, a disgusting rabble,\nand I lost three pounds by attenuated retail to Pollack at ha\'penny nap\nand euchre.\n\nAnd then you know, as we got out into the Atlantic this side of Cape\nVerde, the ship began to go to pieces. I don\'t pretend for one moment to\nunderstand what happened. But I think Greiffenhagen\'s recent work on\nthe effects of radium upon ligneous tissue does rather carry out my idea\nthat emanations from quap have rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre.\n\nFrom the first there had been a different feel about the ship, and as\nthe big winds and waves began to strain her she commenced leaking. Soon\nshe was leaking--not at any particular point, but everywhere. She did\nnot spring a leak, I mean, but water came in first of all near the\ndecaying edges of her planks, and then through them.\n\nI firmly believe the water came through the wood. First it began to\nooze, then to trickle. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin\npaper bag. Soon we were taking in water as though we had opened a door\nin her bottom.\n\nOnce it began, the thing went ahead beyond all fighting. For a day or\nso we did our best, and I can still remember in my limbs and back the\npumping--the fatigue in my arms and the memory of a clear little dribble\nof water that jerked as one pumped, and of knocking off and the being\nawakened to go on again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At\nlast we ceased to think of anything but pumping; one became a thing of\ntorment enchanted, doomed to pump for ever. I still remember it as pure\nrelief when at last Pollack came to me pipe in mouth.\n\n\"The captain says the damned thing\'s going down right now;\" he remarked,\nchewing his mouthpiece. \"Eh?\"\n\n\"Good idea!\" I said. \"One can\'t go on pumping for ever.\"\n\nAnd without hurry or alacrity, sullenly and wearily we got into the\nboats and pulled away from the Maud Mary until we were clear of her,\nand then we stayed resting on our oars, motionless upon a glassy sea,\nwaiting for her to sink. We were all silent, even the captain was silent\nuntil she went down. And then he spoke quite mildly in an undertone.\n\n\"Dat is the first ship I haf ever lost.... And it was not a fair game!\nIt wass not a cargo any man should take. No!\"\n\nI stared at the slow eddies that circled above the departed Maud Mary,\nand the last chance of Business Organisations. I felt weary beyond\nemotion. I thought of my heroics to Beatrice and my uncle, of my prompt\n\"I\'LL go,\" and of all the ineffectual months I had spent after this\nheadlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself and fate.\n\nBut the captain and the men did not laugh. The men scowled at me and\nrubbed their sore and blistered hands, and set themselves to row....\n\nAs all the world knows we were picked up by the Union Castle liner,\nPortland Castle.\n\nThe hairdresser aboard was a wonderful man, and he even improvised me a\ndress suit, and produced a clean shirt and warm underclothing. I had a\nhot bath, and dressed and dined and drank a bottle of Burgundy.\n\n\"Now,\" I said, \"are there any newspapers? I want to know what\'s been\nhappening in the world.\"\n\nMy steward gave me what he had, but I landed at Plymouth still largely\nignorant of the course of events. I shook off Pollack, and left the\ncaptain and mate in an hotel, and the men in a Sailor\'s Home until I\ncould send to pay them off, and I made my way to the station.\n\nThe newspapers I bought, the placards I saw, all England indeed\nresounded to my uncle\'s bankruptcy.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE FOURTH\n\nTHE AFTERMATH OF TONO-BUNGAY\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIRST\n\nTHE STICK OF THE ROCKET\n\nI\n\nThat evening I talked with my uncle in the Hardingham for the last time.\nThe atmosphere of the place had altered quite shockingly. Instead of the\ncrowd of importunate courtiers there were just half a dozen uninviting\nmen, journalists waiting for an interview. Ropper the big commissionaire\nwas still there, but now indeed he was defending my uncle from something\nmore than time-wasting intrusions. I found the little man alone in the\ninner office pretending to work, but really brooding. He was looking\nyellow and deflated.\n\n\"Lord!\" he said at the sight of me. \"You\'re lean, George. It makes that\nscar of yours show up.\"\n\nWe regarded each other gravely for a time.\n\n\"Quap,\" I said, \"is at the bottom of the Atlantic. There\'s some\nbills--We\'ve got to pay the men.\"\n\n\"Seen the papers?\"\n\n\"Read \'em all in the train.\"\n\n\"At bay,\" he said. \"I been at bay for a week.... Yelping round me....\nAnd me facing the music. I\'m feelin\' a bit tired.\"\n\nHe blew and wiped his glasses.\n\n\"My stomack isn\'t what it was,\" he explained. \"One finds it--these\ntimes. How did it all happen, George? Your Marconigram--it took me in\nthe wind a bit.\"\n\nI told him concisely. He nodded to the paragraphs of my narrative and at\nthe end he poured something from a medicine bottle into a sticky little\nwineglass and drank it. I became aware of the presence of drugs, of\nthree or four small bottles before him among his disorder of papers, of\na faint elusively familiar odour in the room.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, wiping his lips and recorking the bottle. \"You\'ve done\nyour best, George. The luck\'s been against us.\"\n\nHe reflected, bottle in hand. \"Sometimes the luck goes with you and\nsometimes it doesn\'t. Sometimes it doesn\'t. And then where are you?\nGrass in the oven! Fight or no fight.\"\n\nHe asked a few questions and then his thoughts came back to his own\nurgent affairs. I tried to get some comprehensive account of the\nsituation from him, but he would not give it.\n\n\"Oh, I wish I\'d had you. I wish I\'d had you, George. I\'ve had a lot on\nmy hands. You\'re clear headed at times.\"\n\n\"What has happened?\"\n\n\"Oh! Boom!--infernal things.\"\n\n\"Yes, but--how? I\'m just off the sea, remember.\"\n\n\"It\'d worry me too much to tell you now. It\'s tied up in a skein.\"\n\nHe muttered something to himself and mused darkly, and roused himself to\nsay--\n\n\"Besides--you\'d better keep out of it. It\'s getting tight. Get \'em\ntalking. Go down to Crest Hill and fly. That\'s YOUR affair.\"\n\nFor a time his manner set free queer anxieties in my brain again.\n\nI will confess that that Mordet Island nightmare of mine returned,\nand as I looked at him his hand went out for the drug again. \"Stomach,\nGeorge,\" he said.\n\n\"I been fightin\' on that. Every man fights on some thing--gives way\nsomewheres--head, heart, liver--something. Zzzz. Gives way somewhere.\nNapoleon did at last. All through the Waterloo campaign, his stomach--it\nwasn\'t a stomach! Worse than mine, no end.\"\n\nThe mood of depression passed as the drug worked within him. His eyes\nbrightened. He began to talk big. He began to dress up the situation for\nmy eyes, to recover what he had admitted to me. He put it as a retreat\nfrom Russia. There were still the chances of Leipzig.\n\n\"It\'s a battle, George--a big fight. We\'re fighting for millions.\nI\'ve still chances. There\'s still a card or so. I can\'t tell all my\nplans--like speaking on the stroke.\"\n\n\"You might,\" I began.\n\n\"I can\'t, George. It\'s like asking to look at some embryo. You got to\nwait. I know. In a sort of way, I know. But to tell it--No! You been\naway so long. And everything\'s got complicated.\"\n\nMy perception of disastrous entanglements deepened with the rise of his\nspirits. It was evident that I could only help to tie him up in whatever\nnet was weaving round his mind by forcing questions and explanations\nupon him. My thoughts flew off at another angle. \"How\'s Aunt Susan?\"\nsaid I.\n\nI had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped for a\nmoment, and he answered in the note of one who repeats a formula.\n\n\"She\'d like to be in the battle with me. She\'d like to be here in\nLondon. But there\'s corners I got to turn alone.\" His eye rested for a\nmoment on the little bottle beside him. \"And things have happened.\n\n\"You might go down now and talk to her,\" he said, in a directer voice.\n\"I shall be down to-morrow night, I think.\"\n\nHe looked up as though he hoped that would end our talk.\n\n\"For the week-end?\" I asked.\n\n\"For the week-end. Thank God for week-ends, George!\"\n\nII\n\nMy return home to Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I had\nanticipated when I had got out to sea with my load of quap and fancied\nthe Perfect-Filament was safe within my grasp. As I walked through the\nevening light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the\nstillness of something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen any\nmore, no cyclists on the high road.\n\nCessation was manifest everywhere. There had been, I learnt from my\naunt, a touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill\nwork had come to an end and the men had drawn their last pay; they had\ncheered my uncle and hooted the contractors and Lord Boom.\n\nI cannot now recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted one\nanother. I must have been very tired there, but whatever impression was\nmade has gone out of my memory. But I recall very clearly how we sat at\nthe little round table near the big window that gave on the terrace, and\ndined and talked. I remember her talking of my uncle.\n\nShe asked after him, and whether he seemed well. \"I wish I could help,\"\nshe said. \"But I\'ve never helped him much, never. His way of doing\nthings was never mine. And since--since--. Since he began to get so\nrich, he\'s kept things from me. In the old days--it was different....\n\n\"There he is--I don\'t know what he\'s doing. He won\'t have me near\nhim....\n\n\"More\'s kept from me than anyone. The very servants won\'t let me know.\nThey try and stop the worst of the papers--Boom\'s things--from coming\nupstairs.... I suppose they\'ve got him in a corner, George. Poor old\nTeddy! Poor old Adam and Eve we are! Ficial Receivers with flaming\nswords to drive us out of our garden! I\'d hoped we\'d never have another\nTrek. Well--anyway, it won\'t be Crest Hill.... But it\'s hard on Teddy.\nHe must be in such a mess up there. Poor old chap. I suppose we\ncan\'t help him. I suppose we\'d only worry him. Have some more soup\nGeorge--while there is some?...\"\n\nThe next day was one of those days of strong perception that stand out\nclear in one\'s memory when the common course of days is blurred. I can\nrecall now the awakening in the large familiar room that was always kept\nfor me, and how I lay staring at its chintz-covered chairs, its spaced\nfine furniture, its glimpse of the cedars without, and thought that all\nthis had to end.\n\nI have never been greedy for money, I have never wanted to be rich,\nbut I felt now an immense sense of impending deprivation. I read the\nnewspapers after breakfast--I and my aunt together--and then I walked\nup to see what Cothope had done in the matter of Lord Roberts B. Never\nbefore had I appreciated so acutely the ample brightness of the Lady\nGrove gardens, the dignity and wide peace of all about me. It was one\nof those warm mornings in late May that have won all the glory of summer\nwithout losing the gay delicacy of spring. The shrubbery was bright with\nlaburnum and lilac, the beds swarmed with daffodils and narcissi and\nwith lilies of the valley in the shade.\n\nI went along the well-kept paths among the rhododendra and through the\nprivate gate into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were\nin profusion. Never before had I tasted so completely the fine sense\nof privilege and ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all\nthis has to end.\n\nNeither my uncle nor I had made any provision for disaster; all we had\nwas in the game, and I had little doubt now of the completeness of our\nruin. For the first time in my life since he had sent me that\nwonderful telegram of his I had to consider that common anxiety of\nmankind,--Employment. I had to come off my magic carpet and walk once\nmore in the world.\n\nAnd suddenly I found myself at the cross drives where I had seen\nBeatrice for the first time after so many years. It is strange, but so\nfar as I can recollect I had not thought of her once since I had landed\nat Plymouth. No doubt she had filled the background of my mind, but I do\nnot remember one definite, clear thought. I had been intent on my uncle\nand the financial collapse.\n\nIt came like a blow in the face now; all that, too, had to end!\n\nSuddenly I was filled with the thought of her and a great longing for\nher. What would she do when she realised our immense disaster? What\nwould she do? How would she take it? It filled me with astonishment to\nrealise how little I could tell....\n\nShould I perhaps presently happen upon her?\n\nI went on through the plantations and out upon the downs, and thence I\nsaw Cothope with a new glider of his own design soaring down wind to\nmy old familiar \"grounding\" place. To judge by its long rhythm it was a\nvery good glider. \"Like Cothope\'s cheek,\" thought I, \"to go on with the\nresearch. I wonder if he\'s keeping notes.... But all this will have to\nstop.\"\n\nHe was sincerely glad to see me. \"It\'s been a rum go,\" he said.\n\nHe had been there without wages for a month, a man forgotten in the rush\nof events.\n\n\"I just stuck on and did what I could with the stuff. I got a bit of\nmoney of my own--and I said to myself, \'Well, here you are with the gear\nand no one to look after you. You won\'t get such a chance again, my boy,\nnot in all your born days. Why not make what you can with it? \'\"\n\n\"How\'s Lord Roberts B?\"\n\nCothope lifted his eyebrows. \"I\'ve had to refrain,\" he said. \"But he\'s\nlooking very handsome.\"\n\n\"Gods!\" I said, \"I\'d like to get him up just once before we smash. You\nread the papers? You know we\'re going to smash?\"\n\n\"Oh! I read the papers. It\'s scandalous, sir, such work as ours should\ndepend on things like that. You and I ought to be under the State, sir,\nif you\'ll excuse me.\"\n\n\"Nothing to excuse,\" I said. \"I\'ve always been a Socialist--of a\nsort--in theory. Let\'s go and have a look at him. How is he? Deflated?\"\n\n\"Just about quarter full. That last oil glaze of yours holds the gas\nsomething beautiful. He\'s not lost a cubic metre a week.\"...\n\nCothope returned to Socialism as we went toward the sheds.\n\n\"Glad to think you\'re a Socialist, sir,\" he said, \"it\'s the only\ncivilised state. I been a Socialist some years--off the Clarion. It\'s a\nrotten scramble, this world. It takes the things we make and invent and\nit plays the silly fool with \'em. We scientific people, we\'ll have to\ntake things over and stop all this financing and advertisement and that.\nIt\'s too silly. It\'s a noosance. Look at us!\"\n\nLord Roberts B, even in his partially deflated condition in his shed,\nwas a fine thing to stare up at. I stood side by side with Cothope\nregarding him, and it was borne in upon me more acutely than ever that\nall this had to end. I had a feeling just like the feeling of a boy who\nwants to do wrong, that I would use up the stuff while I had it before\nthe creditors descended. I had a queer fancy, too, I remember, that if I\ncould get into the air it would advertise my return to Beatrice.\n\n\"We\'ll fill her,\" I said concisely.\n\n\"It\'s all ready,\" said Cothope, and added as an afterthought, \"unless\nthey cut off the gas.\"...\n\nI worked and interested myself with Cothope all the morning and for a\ntime forgot my other troubles. But the thought of Beatrice flooded me\nslowly and steadily. It became an unintelligent sick longing to see her.\nI felt that I could not wait for the filling of Lord Roberts B, that I\nmust hunt her up and see her soon. I got everything forward and lunched\nwith Cothope, and then with the feeblest excuses left him in order to\nprowl down through the woods towards Bedley Corner. I became a prey to\nwretched hesitations and diffidence. Ought I to go near her now? I asked\nmyself, reviewing all the social abasements of my early years. At\nlast, about five, I called at the Dower House. I was greeted by their\nCharlotte--with a forbidding eye and a cold astonishment.\n\nBoth Beatrice and Lady Osprey were out.\n\nThere came into my head some prowling dream of meeting her. I went along\nthe lane towards Woking, the lane down which we had walked five months\nago in the wind and rain.\n\nI mooned for a time in our former footsteps, then swore and turned back\nacross the fields, and then conceived a distaste for Cothope and went\nDownward. At last I found myself looking down on the huge abandoned\nmasses of the Crest Hill house.\n\nThat gave my mind a twist into a new channel. My uncle came uppermost\nagain. What a strange, melancholy emptiness of intention that stricken\nenterprise seemed in the even evening sunlight, what vulgar magnificence\nand crudity and utter absurdity! It was as idiotic as the pyramids. I\nsat down on the stile, staring at it as though I had never seen that\nforest of scaffold poles, that waste of walls and bricks and plaster and\nshaped stones, that wilderness of broken soil and wheeling tracks and\ndumps before. It struck me suddenly as the compactest image and sample\nof all that passes for Progress, of all the advertisement-inflated\nspending, the aimless building up and pulling down, the enterprise and\npromise of my age. This was our fruit, this was what he had done, I and\nmy uncle, in the fashion of our time. We were its leaders and exponents,\nwe were the thing it most flourishingly produced. For this futility in\nits end, for an epoch of such futility, the solemn scroll of history had\nunfolded....\n\n\"Great God!\" I cried, \"but is this Life?\"\n\nFor this the armies drilled, for this the Law was administered and the\nprisons did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in\nsuffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never\nfinished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round\nirrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise\nflying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd\ninto chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast,\ndismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me then, and for a time\nI could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! It came to me\nlike a revelation, a revelation at once incredible and indisputable of\nthe abysmal folly of our being.\n\nIII\n\nI was roused from such thoughts by the sound of footsteps behind me.\n\nI turned half hopeful--so foolish is a lover\'s imagination, and stopped\namazed. It was my uncle. His face was white--white as I had seen it in\nmy dream.\n\n\"Hullo!\" I said, and stared. \"Why aren\'t you in London?\"\n\n\"It\'s all up,\" he said....\n\n\"Adjudicated?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\nI stared at him for a moment, and then got off the stile.\n\nWe stood swaying and then came forward with a weak motion of his arms\nlike a man who cannot see distinctly, and caught at and leant upon the\nstile. For a moment we were absolutely still. He made a clumsy gesture\ntowards the great futility below and choked. I discovered that his face\nwas wet with tears, that his wet glasses blinded him. He put up his\nlittle fat hand and clawed them off clumsily, felt inefficiently for his\npocket-handkerchief, and then, to my horror, as he clung to me, he\nbegan to weep aloud, this little, old worldworn swindler. It wasn\'t just\nsobbing or shedding tears, it was crying as a child cries. It was oh!\nterrible!\n\n\"It\'s cruel,\" he blubbered at last. \"They asked me questions. They KEP\'\nasking me questions, George.\"\n\nHe sought for utterance, and spluttered.\n\n\"The Bloody bullies!\" he shouted. \"The Bloody Bullies.\"\n\nHe ceased to weep. He became suddenly rapid and explanatory.\n\n\"It\'s not a fair game, George. They tire you out. And I\'m not well. My\nstomach\'s all wrong. And I been and got a cold. I always been li\'ble to\ncold, and this one\'s on my chest. And then they tell you to speak up.\nThey bait you--and bait you, and bait you. It\'s torture. The strain\nof it. You can\'t remember what you said. You\'re bound to contradict\nyourself. It\'s like Russia, George.... It isn\'t fair play.... Prominent\nman. I\'ve been next at dinners with that chap, Neal; I\'ve told him\nstories--and he\'s bitter! Sets out to ruin me. Don\'t ask a civil\nquestion--bellows.\" He broke down again. \"I\'ve been bellowed at, I been\nbullied, I been treated like a dog. Dirty cads they are! Dirty cads!\nI\'d rather be a Three-Card Sharper than a barrister; I\'d rather sell\ncat\'s-meat in the streets.\n\n\"They sprung things on me this morning, things I didn\'t expect. They\nrushed me! I\'d got it all in my hands and then I was jumped. By Neal!\nNeal I\'ve given city tips to! Neal! I\'ve helped Neal....\n\n\"I couldn\'t swallow a mouthful--not in the lunch hour. I couldn\'t face\nit. It\'s true, George--I couldn\'t face it. I said I\'d get a bit of air\nand slipped out and down to the Embankment, and there I took a boat to\nRichmond. Some idee. I took a rowing boat when I got there and I rowed\nabout on the river for a bit. A lot of chaps and girls there was on the\nbank laughed at my shirt-sleeves and top hat. Dessay they thought it was\na pleasure trip. Fat lot of pleasure! I rowed round for a bit and came\nin. Then I came on here. Windsor way. And there they are in London doing\nwhat they like with me.... I don\'t care!\"\n\n\"But\" I said, looking down at him, perplexed.\n\n\"It\'s abscondin\'. They\'ll have a warrant.\"\n\n\"I don\'t understand,\" I said.\n\n\"It\'s all up, George--all up and over.\n\n\"And I thought I\'d live in that place, George and die a lord! It\'s a\ngreat place, reely, an imperial--if anyone has the sense to buy it and\nfinish it. That terrace--\"\n\nI stood thinking him over.\n\n\"Look here!\" I said. \"What\'s that about--a warrant? Are you sure they\'ll\nget a warrant? I\'m sorry uncle; but what have you done?\"\n\n\"Haven\'t I told you?\"\n\n\"Yes, but they won\'t do very much to you for that. They\'ll only bring\nyou up for the rest of your examination.\"\n\nHe remained silent for a time. At last he spoke--speaking with\ndifficulty.\n\n\"It\'s worse than that. I\'ve done something. They\'re bound to get it out.\nPractically they HAVE got it out.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Writin\' things down--I done something.\"\n\nFor the first time in his life, I believe, he felt and looked ashamed.\nIt filled me with remorse to see him suffer so.\n\n\"We\'ve all done things,\" I said. \"It\'s part of the game the world makes\nus play. If they want to arrest you--and you\'ve got no cards in your\nhand--! They mustn\'t arrest you.\"\n\n\"No. That\'s partly why I went to Richmond. But I never thought--\"\n\nHis little bloodshot eyes stared at Crest Hill.\n\n\"That chap Wittaker Wright,\" he said, \"he had his stuff ready. I\nhaven\'t. Now you got it, George. That\'s the sort of hole I\'m in.\"\n\nIV\n\nThat memory of my uncle at the gate is very clear and full. I am able\nto recall even the undertow of my thoughts while he was speaking.\nI remember my pity and affection for him in his misery growing and\nstirring within me, my realisation that at any risk I must help him.\nBut then comes indistinctness again. I was beginning to act. I know I\npersuaded him to put himself in my hands, and began at once to plan and\ndo. I think that when we act most we remember least, that just in the\nmeasure that the impulse of our impressions translates itself into\nschemes and movements, it ceases to record itself in memories. I know\nI resolved to get him away at once, and to use the Lord Roberts B in\neffecting that. It was clear he was soon to be a hunted man, and it\nseemed to me already unsafe for him to try the ordinary Continental\nroutes in his flight. I had to evolve some scheme, and evolve it\nrapidly, how we might drop most inconspicuously into the world across\nthe water. My resolve to have one flight at least in my airship fitted\nwith this like hand to glove. It seemed to me we might be able to cross\nover the water in the night, set our airship adrift, and turn up as\npedestrian tourists in Normandy or Brittany, and so get away. That, at\nany rate, was my ruling idea.\n\nI sent off Cothope with a dummy note to Woking, because I did not want\nto implicate him, and took my uncle to the pavilion. I went down to my\naunt, and made a clean breast of the situation. She became admirably\ncompetent. We went into his dressing-room and ruthlessly broke his\nlocks. I got a pair of brown boots, a tweed suit and a cap of his,\nand indeed a plausible walking outfit, and a little game bag for his\npedestrian gear; and, in addition, a big motoring overcoat and a supply\nof rugs to add to those I had at the pavilion. I also got a flask\nof brandy, and she made sandwiches. I don\'t remember any servants\nappearing, and I forget where she got those sandwiches. Meanwhile we\ntalked. Afterwards I thought with what a sure confidence we talked to\neach other.\n\n\"What\'s he done?\" she said.\n\n\"D\'you mind knowing?\"\n\n\"No conscience left, thank God!\"\n\n\"I think--forgery!\"\n\nThere was just a little pause. \"Can you carry this bundle?\" she asked.\n\nI lifted it.\n\n\"No woman ever has respected the law--ever,\" she said. \"It\'s too\nsilly.... The things it lets you do! And then pulls you up--like a mad\nnurse minding a child.\"\n\nShe carried some rugs for me through the shrubbery in the darkling.\n\n\"They\'ll think we\'re going mooning,\" she said, jerking her head at the\nhousehold. \"I wonder what they make of us--criminals.\" ... An immense\ndroning note came as if in answer to that. It startled us both for a\nmoment. \"The dears!\" she said. \"It\'s the gong for dinner!... But I wish\nI could help little Teddy, George. It\'s awful to think of him there with\nhot eyes, red and dry. And I know--the sight of me makes him feel sore.\nThings I said, George. If I could have seen, I\'d have let him have an\nomnibusful of Scrymgeours. I cut him up. He\'d never thought I meant it\nbefore.... I\'ll help all I can, anyhow.\"\n\nI turned at something in her voice, and got a moon light gleam of tears\nupon her face.\n\n\"Could SHE have helped?\" she asked abruptly.\n\n\"SHE?\"\n\n\"That woman.\"\n\n\"My God!\" I cried, \"HELPED! Those--things don\'t help!\"\n\n\"Tell me again what I ought to do,\" she said after a silence.\n\nI went over the plans I had made for communicating, and the things I\nthought she might do. I had given her the address of a solicitor she\nmight put some trust in.\n\n\"But you must act for yourself,\" I insisted.\n\n\"Roughly,\" I said, \"it\'s a scramble. You must get what you can for us,\nand follow as you can.\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\nShe came right up to the pavilion and hovered for a time shyly, and then\nwent away.\n\nI found my uncle in my sitting-room in an arm-chair, with his feet upon\nthe fender of the gas stove, which he had lit, and now he was feebly\ndrunken with my whisky, and very weary in body and spirit, and inclined\nto be cowardly.\n\n\"I lef\' my drops,\" he said.\n\nHe changed his clothes slowly and unwillingly. I had to bully him, I had\nalmost to shove him to the airship and tuck him up upon its wicker flat.\nSingle-handed I made but a clumsy start; we scraped along the roof\nof the shed and bent a van of the propeller, and for a time I hung\nunderneath without his offering a hand to help me to clamber up. If it\nhadn\'t been for a sort of anchoring trolley device of Cothope\'s, a sort\nof slip anchor running on a rail, we should never have got clear at all.\n\nV\n\nThe incidents of our flight in Lord Roberts B do not arrange themselves\nin any consecutive order. To think of that adventure is like dipping\nhaphazard into an album of views. One is reminded first of this and then\nof that. We were both lying down on a horizontal plate of basketwork;\nfor Lord Roberts B had none of the elegant accommodation of a balloon. I\nlay forward, and my uncle behind me in such a position that he could\nsee hardly anything of our flight. We were protected from rolling over\nsimply by netting between the steel stays. It was impossible for us to\nstand up at all; we had either to lie or crawl on all fours over\nthe basket work. Amidships were lockers made of Watson\'s Aulite\nmaterial,--and between these it was that I had put my uncle, wrapped in\nrugs. I wore sealskin motoring boots and gloves, and a motoring fur coat\nover my tweeds, and I controlled the engine by Bowden wires and levers\nforward.\n\nThe early part of that night\'s experience was made up of warmth, of\nmoonlit Surrey and Sussex landscape, and of a rapid and successful\nflight, ascending and swooping, and then ascending again southward. I\ncould not watch the clouds because the airship overhung me; I could not\nsee the stars nor gauge the meteorological happening, but it was\nfairly clear to me that a wind shifting between north and northeast\nwas gathering strength, and after I had satisfied myself by a series\nof entirely successful expansions and contractions of the real\nair-worthiness of Lord Roberts B, I stopped the engine to save my\npetrol, and let the monster drift, checking its progress by the dim\nlandscape below. My uncle lay quite still behind me, saying little\nand staring in front of him, and I was left to my own thoughts and\nsensations.\n\nMy thoughts, whatever they were, have long since faded out of memory,\nand my sensations have merged into one continuous memory of an\ncountryside lying, as it seemed, under snow, with square patches of\ndimness, white phantoms of roads, rents and pools of velvety blackness,\nand lamp-jewelled houses. I remember a train boring its way like a\nhastening caterpillar of fire across the landscape, and how distinctly I\nheard its clatter. Every town and street was buttoned with street lamps.\nI came quite close to the South Downs near Lewes, and all the lights\nwere out in the houses, and the people gone to bed. We left the land a\nlittle to the east of Brighton, and by that time Brighton was well abed.\nand the brightly lit sea-front deserted. Then I let out the gas chamber\nto its fullest extent and rose. I like to be high above water.\n\nI do not clearly know what happened in the night. I think I must have\ndozed, and probably my uncle slept. I remember that once or twice\nI heard him talking in an eager, muffled voice to himself, or to an\nimaginary court. But there can be no doubt the wind changed right round\ninto the east, and that we were carried far down the Channel without any\nsuspicion of the immense leeway we were making. I remember the kind of\nstupid perplexity with which I saw the dawn breaking over a grey waste\nof water, below, and realised that something was wrong. I was so stupid\nthat it was only after the sunrise I really noticed the trend of the\nfoam caps below, and perceived we were in a severe easterly gale. Even\nthen, instead of heading southeasterly, I set the engine going, headed\nsouth, and so continued a course that must needs have either just hit\nUshant, or carry us over the Bay of Biscay. I thought I was east of\nCherbourg, when I was far to the west and stopped my engine in that\nbelief, and then set it going again. I did actually sight the coast of\nBrittany to the southeast in the late afternoon, and that it was woke\nme up to the gravity of our position. I discovered it by accident in the\nsoutheast, when I was looking for it in the southwest. I turned about\neast and faced the wind for some time, and finding I had no chance in\nits teeth, went high, where it seemed less violent, and tried to make a\ncourse southeast. It was only then that I realised what a gale I was in.\nI had been going westward, and perhaps even in gusts north of west, at a\npace of fifty or sixty miles an hour.\n\nThen I began what I suppose would be called a Fight against the east\nwind. One calls it a Fight, but it was really almost as unlike a fight\nas plain sewing. The wind tried to drive me westwardly, and I tried to\nget as much as I could eastwardly, with the wind beating and rocking us\nirregularly, but by no means unbearably, for about twelve hours. My\nhope lay in the wind abating, and our keeping in the air and eastward of\nFinisterre until it did, and the chief danger was the exhaustion of our\npetrol. It was a long and anxious and almost meditative time; we were\nfairly warm, and only slowly getting hungry, and except that my uncle\ngrumbled a little and produced some philosophical reflections, and began\nto fuss about having a temperature, we talked very little. I was tired\nand sulky, and chiefly worried about the engine. I had to resist\na tendency to crawl back and look at it. I did not care to risk\ncontracting our gas chamber for fear of losing gas. Nothing was less\nlike a fight. I know that in popular magazines, and so forth, all such\noccasions as this are depicted in terms of hysteria. Captains save their\nships engineers complete their bridges, generals conduct their battles,\nin a state of dancing excitement, foaming recondite technicalities at\nthe lips. I suppose that sort of thing works up the reader, but so far\nas it professes to represent reality, I am convinced it is all childish\nnonsense, schoolboys of fifteen, girls of eighteen, and literary men\nall their lives, may have these squealing fits, but my own experience\nis that most exciting scenes are not exciting, and most of the urgent\nmoments in life are met by steady-headed men.\n\nNeither I nor my uncle spent the night in ejaculations, nor in humorous\nallusions, nor any of these things. We remained lumpish.\n\nMy uncle stuck in his place and grumbled about his stomach, and\noccasionally rambled off into expositions of his financial position and\ndenunciations of Neal--he certainly struck out one or two good phrases\nfor Neal--and I crawled about at rare intervals in a vague sort of way\nand grunted, and our basketwork creaked continually, and the wind on our\nquarter made a sort of ruffled flapping in the wall of the gas chamber.\nFor all our wraps we got frightfully cold as the night wore on.\n\nI must have dozed, and it was still dark when I realised with a\nstart that we were nearly due south of, and a long way from, a\nregularly-flashing lighthouse, standing out before the glow of some\ngreat town, and then that the thing that had awakened me was the\ncessation of our engine, and that we were driving back to the west.\n\nThen, indeed, for a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I crawled\nforward to the cords of the release valves, made my uncle crawl forward\ntoo, and let out the gas until we were falling down through the air like\na clumsy glider towards the vague greyness that was land.\n\nSomething must have intervened here that I have forgotten.\n\nI saw the lights of Bordeaux when it was quite dark, a nebulous haze\nagainst black; of that I am reasonably sure. But certainly our fall\ntook place in the cold, uncertain light of early dawn. I am, at least,\nequally sure of that. And Mimizan, near where we dropped, is fifty miles\nfrom Bordeaux, whose harbour lights I must have seen.\n\nI remember coming down at last with a curious indifference, and actually\nrousing myself to steer. But the actual coming to earth was exciting\nenough. I remember our prolonged dragging landfall, and the difficulty\nI had to get clear, and how a gust of wind caught Lord Roberts B as my\nuncle stumbled away from the ropes and litter, and dropped me heavily,\nand threw me on to my knees. Then came the realisation that the monster\nwas almost consciously disentangling itself for escape, and then the\nlight leap of its rebound. The rope slipped out of reach of my hand.\nI remember running knee-deep in a salt pool in hopeless pursuit of the\nairship.\n\nAs it dragged and rose seaward, and how only after it had escaped my\nuttermost effort to recapture it, did I realise that this was quite the\nbest thing that could have happened. It drove swiftly over the sandy\ndunes, lifting and falling, and was hidden by a clump of windbitten\ntrees. Then it reappeared much further off, and still receding. It\nsoared for a time, and sank slowly, and after that I saw it no more. I\nsuppose it fell into the sea and got wetted with salt water and heavy,\nand so became deflated and sank.\n\nIt was never found, and there was never a report of anyone seeing it\nafter it escaped from me.\n\nVI\n\nBut if I find it hard to tell the story of our long flight through the\nair overseas, at least that dawn in France stands cold and clear and\nfull. I see again almost as if I saw once more with my bodily eyes\nthe ridges of sand rising behind ridges of sand, grey and cold and\nblack-browed, with an insufficient grass. I feel again the clear, cold\nchill of dawn, and hear the distant barking of a dog. I find myself\nasking again, \"What shall we do now?\" and trying to scheme with brain\ntired beyond measure.\n\nAt first my uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering a good\ndeal, and it was all I could do to resist my desire to get him into a\ncomfortable bed at once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in this part\nof the world. I felt it would not do to turn up anywhere at dawn and\nrest, it would be altogether too conspicuous; we must rest until the day\nwas well advanced, and then appear as road-stained pedestrians seeking\na meal. I gave him most of what was left of the biscuits, emptied our\nflasks, and advised him to sleep, but at first it was too cold, albeit I\nwrapped the big fur rug around him.\n\nI was struck now by the flushed weariness of his face, and the look of\nage the grey stubble on his unshaved chin gave him. He sat crumpled up,\nshivering and coughing, munching reluctantly, but drinking eagerly, and\nwhimpering a little, a dreadfully pitiful figure to me. But we had to go\nthrough with it; there was no way out for us.\n\nPresently the sun rose over the pines, and the sand grew rapidly warm.\nMy uncle had done eating, and sat with his wrists resting on his knees,\nthe most hopeless looking of lost souls.\n\n\"I\'m ill,\" he said, \"I\'m damnably ill! I can feel it in my skin!\"\n\nThen--it was horrible to me--he cried, \"I ought to be in bed; I ought to\nbe in bed... instead of flying about,\" and suddenly he burst into tears.\n\nI stood up. \"Go to sleep, man!\" I said, and took the rug from him, and\nspread it out and rolled him up in it.\n\n\"It\'s all very well,\" he protested; \"I\'m not young enough--\"\n\n\"Lift up your head,\" I interrupted, and put his knapsack under it.\n\n\"They\'ll catch us here, just as much as in an inn,\" he grumbled and then\nlay still.\n\nPresently, after a long time, I perceived he was asleep. His breath came\nwith peculiar wheezings, and every now and again he would cough. I was\nvery stiff and tired myself, and perhaps I dozed. I don\'t remember. I\nremember only sitting, as it seemed, nigh interminably, beside him, too\nweary even to think in that sandy desolation.\n\nNo one came near us; no creature, not even a dog. I roused myself at\nlast, feeling that it was vain to seek to seem other than abnormal,\nand with an effort that was like lifting a sky of lead, we made our way\nthrough the wearisome sand to a farmhouse. There I feigned even a more\ninsufficient French than I possess naturally, and let it appear that we\nwere pedestrians from Biarritz who had lost our way along the shore and\ngot benighted.\n\nThis explained us pretty well, I thought, and we got most heartening\ncoffee and a cart to a little roadside station. My uncle grew more\nand more manifestly ill with every stage of our journey. I got him to\nBayonne, where he refused at first to eat, and was afterwards very sick,\nand then took him shivering and collapsed up a little branch line to a\nfrontier place called Luzon Gare.\n\nWe found one homely inn with two small bedrooms, kept by a kindly Basque\nwoman. I got him to bed, and that night shared his room, and after an\nhour or so of sleep he woke up in a raging fever and with a wandering\nmind, cursing Neal and repeating long, inaccurate lists of figures. He\nwas manifestly a case for a doctor, and in the morning we got one in.\nHe was a young man from Montpelier, just beginning to practise, and very\nmysterious and technical and modern and unhelpful. He spoke of cold\nand exposure, and la grippe and pneumonia. He gave many explicit and\ndifficult directions.... I perceived it devolved upon me to organise\nnursing and a sick-room. I installed a religieuse in the second bedroom\nof the inn, and took a room for myself in the inn of Port de Luzon, a\nquarter of a mile away.\n\nVII\n\nAnd now my story converges on what, in that queer corner of refuge\nout of the world, was destined to be my uncle\'s deathbed. There is a\nbackground of the Pyrenees, of blue hills and sunlit houses, of the old\ncastle of Luzon and a noisy cascading river, and for a foreground the\ndim, stuffy room whose windows both the religieuse and hostess\nconspired to shut, with its waxed floor, its four-poster bed, its\ncharacteristically French chairs and fireplace, its champagne bottles\nand dirty basins and used towels and packets of Somatose on the table.\nAnd in the sickly air of the confined space in behind the curtains\nof the bed lay my little uncle, with an effect of being enthroned and\nsecluded, or sat up, or writhed and tossed in his last dealings of life.\nOne went and drew back the edge of the curtains if one wanted to speak\nto him or look at him.\n\nUsually he was propped up against pillows, because so he breathed more\neasily. He slept hardly at all.\n\nI have a confused memory of vigils and mornings and afternoons spent by\nthat bedside, and how the religieuse hovered about me, and how meek and\ngood and inefficient she was, and how horribly black were her nails.\nOther figures come and go, and particularly the doctor, a young man\nplumply rococo, in bicycling dress, with fine waxen features, a little\npointed beard, and the long black frizzy hair and huge tie of a minor\npoet. Bright and clear-cut and irrelevant are memories of the Basque\nhostess of my uncle\'s inn and of the family of Spanish people who\nentertained me and prepared the most amazingly elaborate meals for me,\nwith soup and salad and chicken and remarkable sweets. They were all\nvery kind and sympathetic people, systematically so. And constantly,\nwithout attracting attention, I was trying to get newspapers from home.\n\nMy uncle is central to all these impressions.\n\nI have tried to make you picture him, time after time, as the young man\nof the Wimblehurst chemist\'s shop, as the shabby assistant in Tottenham\nCourt Road, as the adventurer of the early days of Tono-Bungay, as\nthe confident, preposterous plutocrat. And now I have to tell of him\nstrangely changed under the shadow of oncoming death, with his skin lax\nand yellow and glistening with sweat, his eyes large and glassy, his\ncountenance unfamiliar through the growth of a beard, his nose pinched\nand thin. Never had he looked so small as now. And he talked to me in\na whispering, strained voice of great issues, of why his life had been,\nand whither he was going. Poor little man! that last phase is, as it\nwere, disconnected from all the other phases. It was as if he crawled\nout from the ruins of his career, and looked about him before he died.\nFor he had quite clear-minded states in the intervals of his delirium.\n\nHe knew he was almost certainly dying. In a way that took the burthen of\nhis cares off his mind. There was no more Neal to face, no more flights\nor evasions, no punishments.\n\n\"It has been a great career, George,\" he said, \"but I shall be glad to\nrest. Glad to rest!... Glad to rest.\"\n\nHis mind ran rather upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall,\nwith a note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he\nwould most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his\nsplendours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare before him, and\nwhisper half-audible fragments of sentences.\n\n\"What is this great place, these cloud-capped towers, these any\npinnacles?... Ilion. Sky-pointing.... Ilion House, the residence of one\nof our great merchant princes.... Terrace above terrace. Reaching to the\nheavens.... Kingdoms Caesar never knew.... A great poet, George. Zzzz.\nKingdoms Caesar never knew.... Under entirely new management.\n\n\"Greatness....Millions... Universities.... He stands on the terrace--on\nthe upper terrace--directing--directing--by the globe--directing--the\ntrade.\"\n\nIt was hard at times to tell when his sane talk ceased and his delirium\nbegan. The secret springs of his life, the vain imaginations were\nrevealed. I sometimes think that all the life of man sprawls abed,\ncareless and unkempt, until it must needs clothe and wash itself\nand come forth seemly in act and speech for the encounter with one\'s\nfellow-men. I suspect that all things unspoken in our souls partake\nsomewhat of the laxity of delirium and dementia. Certainly from those\nslimy, tormented lips above the bristling grey beard came nothing but\ndreams and disconnected fancies....\n\nSometimes he raved about Neal, threatened Neal. \"What has he got\ninvested?\" he said. \"Does he think he can escape me?... If I followed\nhim up.... Ruin. Ruin.... One would think _I_ had taken his money.\"\n\nAnd sometimes he reverted to our airship flight. \"It\'s too long, George,\ntoo long and too cold. I\'m too old a man--too old--for this sort of\nthing.... You know you\'re not saving--you\'re killing me.\"\n\nTowards the end it became evident our identity was discovered. I found\nthe press, and especially Boom\'s section of it, had made a sort of hue\nand cry for us, sent special commissioners to hunt for us, and though\nnone of these emissaries reached us until my uncle was dead, one felt\nthe forewash of that storm of energy. The thing got into the popular\nFrench press. People became curious in their manner towards us, and a\nnumber of fresh faces appeared about the weak little struggle that went\non in the closeness behind the curtains of the bed. The young doctor\ninsisted on consultations, and a motor-car came up from Biarritz,\nand suddenly odd people with questioning eyes began to poke in with\ninquiries and help. Though nothing was said, I could feel that we were\nno longer regarded as simple middle-class tourists; about me, as I went,\nI perceived almost as though it trailed visibly, the prestige of Finance\nand a criminal notoriety. Local personages of a plump and prosperous\nquality appeared in the inn making inquiries, the Luzon priest became\nhelpful, people watched our window, and stared at me as I went to and\nfro; and then we had a raid from a little English clergyman and his\namiable, capable wife in severely Anglican blacks, who swooped down\nupon us like virtuous but resolute vultures from the adjacent village of\nSaint Jean de Pollack.\n\nThe clergyman was one of those odd types that oscillate between remote\ncountry towns in England and the conduct of English Church services\non mutual terms in enterprising hotels abroad, a tremulous, obstinate\nlittle being with sporadic hairs upon his face, spectacles, a red button\nnose, and aged black raiment. He was evidently enormously impressed by\nmy uncle\'s monetary greatness, and by his own inkling of our identity,\nand he shone and brimmed over with tact and fussy helpfulness. He\nwas eager to share the watching of the bedside with me, he proffered\nservices with both hands, and as I was now getting into touch with\naffairs in London again, and trying to disentangle the gigantic details\nof the smash from the papers I had succeeded in getting from Biarritz,\nI accepted his offers pretty generously, and began the studies in modern\nfinance that lay before me. I had got so out of touch with the old\ntraditions of religion that I overlooked the manifest possibility of\nhis attacking my poor, sinking vestiges of an uncle with theological\nsolicitudes. My attention was called to that, however, very speedily by\na polite but urgent quarrel between himself and the Basque landlady as\nto the necessity of her hanging a cheap crucifix in the shadow over the\nbed, where it might catch my uncle\'s eye, where, indeed, I found it had\ncaught his eye.\n\n\"Good Lord!\" I cried; \"is THAT still going on!\"\n\nThat night the little clergyman watched, and in the small hours he\nraised a false alarm that my uncle was dying, and made an extraordinary\nfuss. He raised the house. I shall never forget that scene, I think,\nwhich began with a tapping at my bedroom door just after I had fallen\nasleep, and his voice--\n\n\"If you want to see your uncle before he goes, you must come now.\"\n\nThe stuffy little room was crowded when I reached it, and lit by three\nflickering candles. I felt I was back in the eighteenth century. There\nlay my poor uncle amidst indescribably tumbled bedclothes, weary of life\nbeyond measure, weary and rambling, and the little clergyman trying to\nhold his hand and his attention, and repeating over and over again:\n\n\"Mr. Ponderevo, Mr. Ponderevo, it is all right. It is all right.\n\n\"Only Believe! \'Believe on me, and ye shall be saved\'!\"\n\nClose at hand was the doctor with one of those cruel and idiotic\ninjection needles modern science puts in the hands of these\nhalf-educated young men, keeping my uncle flickeringly alive for no\nreason whatever. The religieuse hovered sleepily in the background with\nan overdue and neglected dose. In addition, the landlady had not only\ngot up herself, but roused an aged crone of a mother and a partially\nimbecile husband, and there was also a fattish, stolid man in grey\nalpaca, with an air of importance--who he was and how he got there, I\ndon\'t know. I rather fancy the doctor explained him to me in French I\ndid not understand. And they were all there, wearily nocturnal, hastily\nand carelessly dressed, intent upon the life that flickered and sank,\nmaking a public and curious show of its going, queer shapes of human\nbeings lit by three uncertain candles, and every soul of them keenly and\navidly resolved to be in at the death. The doctor stood, the others were\nall sitting on chairs the landlady had brought in and arranged for them.\n\nAnd my uncle spoilt the climax, and did not die.\n\nI replaced the little clergyman on the chair by the bedside, and he\nhovered about the room.\n\n\"I think,\" he whispered to me mysteriously, as he gave place to me, \"I\nbelieve--it is well with him.\"\n\nI heard him trying to render the stock phrases of Low Church piety into\nFrench for the benefit of the stolid man in grey alpaca. Then he knocked\na glass off the table, and scrabbled for the fragments. From the first\nI doubted the theory of an immediate death. I consulted the doctor in\nurgent whispers. I turned round to get champagne, and nearly fell over\nthe clergyman\'s legs. He was on his knees at the additional chair the\nBasque landlady had got on my arrival, and he was praying aloud, \"Oh,\nHeavenly Father, have mercy on this thy Child....\" I hustled him up\nand out of the way, and in another minute he was down at another chair\npraying again, and barring the path of the religieuse, who had found me\nthe corkscrew. Something put into my head that tremendous blasphemy of\nCarlyle\'s about \"the last mew of a drowning kitten.\" He found a third\nchair vacant presently; it was as if he was playing a game.\n\n\"Good Heavens!\" I said, \"we must clear these people out,\" and with a\ncertain urgency I did.\n\nI had a temporary lapse of memory, and forgot all my French. I drove\nthem out mainly by gesture, and opened the window, to the universal\nhorror. I intimated the death scene was postponed, and, as a matter of\nfact, my uncle did not die until the next night.\n\nI did not let the little clergyman come near him again, and I was\nwatchful for any sign that his mind had been troubled. But he made none.\nHe talked once about \"that parson chap.\"\n\n\"Didn\'t bother you?\" I asked.\n\n\"Wanted something,\" he said.\n\nI kept silence, listening keenly to his mutterings. I understood him to\nsay, \"They wanted too much.\" His face puckered like a child\'s going to\ncry. \"You can\'t get a safe six per cent.,\" he said. I had for a moment\na wild suspicion that those urgent talks had not been altogether\nspiritual, but that, I think, was a quite unworthy and unjust suspicion.\nThe little clergyman was as simple and honest as the day. My uncle was\nsimply generalising about his class.\n\nBut it may have been these talks that set loose some long dormant string\nof ideas in my uncle\'s brain, ideas the things of this world had long\nsuppressed and hidden altogether. Near the end he suddenly became\nclearminded and lucid, albeit very weak, and his voice was little, but\nclear.\n\n\"George,\" he said.\n\n\"I\'m here,\" I said, \"close beside you.\"\n\n\"George. You have always been responsible for the science. George. You\nknow better than I do. Is--Is it proved?\"\n\n\"What proved?\"\n\n\"Either way?\"\n\n\"I don\'t understand.\"\n\n\"Death ends all. After so much--Such splendid beginnin\'s. Somewhere.\nSomething.\"\n\nI stared at him amazed. His sunken eyes were very grave.\n\n\"What do you expect?\" I said in wonder.\n\nHe would not answer. \"Aspirations,\" he whispered. He fell into a broken\nmonologue, regardless of me. \"Trailing clouds of glory,\" he said, and\n\"first-rate poet, first-rate....George was always hard. Always.\"\n\nFor a long time there was silence.\n\nThen he made a gesture that he wished to speak.\n\n\"Seems to me, George\"\n\nI bent my head down, and he tried to lift his hand to my shoulder. I\nraised him a little on his pillows, and listened.\n\n\"It seems to me, George, always--there must be something in me--that\nwon\'t die.\"\n\nHe looked at me as though the decision rested with me.\n\n\"I think,\" he said; \"--something.\"\n\nThen, for a moment, his mind wandered. \"Just a little link,\" he\nwhispered almost pleadingly, and lay quite still, but presently he was\nuneasy again.\n\n\"Some other world\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I said. \"Who knows?\"\n\n\"Some other world.\"\n\n\"Not the same scope for enterprise,\" I said.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nHe became silent. I sat leaning down to him, and following out my own\nthoughts, and presently the religieuse resumed her periodic conflict\nwith the window fastening. For a time he struggled for breath.... It\nseemed such nonsense that he should have to suffer so--poor silly little\nman!\n\n\"George,\" he whispered, and his weak little hand came out. \"PERHAPS--\"\n\nHe said no more, but I perceived from the expression of his eyes that he\nthought the question had been put.\n\n\"Yes, I think so;\" I said stoutly.\n\n\"Aren\'t you sure?\"\n\n\"Oh--practically sure,\" said I, and I think he tried to squeeze my hand.\nAnd there I sat, holding his hand tight, and trying to think what seeds\nof immortality could be found in all his being, what sort of ghost there\nwas in him to wander out into the bleak immensities. Queer fancies came\nto me.... He lay still for a long time, save for a brief struggle or so\nfor breath and ever and again I wiped his mouth and lips.\n\nI fell into a pit of thought. I did not remark at first the change that\nwas creeping over his face. He lay back on his pillow, made a\nfaint zzzing sound that ceased, and presently and quite quietly he\ndied--greatly comforted by my assurance. I do not know when he died. His\nhand relaxed insensibly. Suddenly, with a start, with a shock, I found\nthat his mouth had fallen open, and that he was dead....\n\nVIII\n\nIt was dark night when I left his deathbed and went back to my own inn\ndown the straggling street of Luzon.\n\nThat return to my inn sticks in my memory also as a thing apart, as an\nexperience apart. Within was a subdued bustle of women, a flitting of\nlights, and the doing of petty offices to that queer, exhausted thing\nthat had once been my active and urgent little uncle. For me those\noffices were irksome and impertinent. I slammed the door, and went out\ninto the warm, foggy drizzle of the village street lit by blurred specks\nof light in great voids of darkness, and never a soul abroad. That warm\nveil of fog produced an effect of vast seclusion. The very houses by the\nroadside peered through it as if from another world. The stillness of\nthe night was marked by an occasional remote baying of dogs; all these\npeople kept dogs because of the near neighbourhood of the frontier.\n\nDeath!\n\nIt was one of those rare seasons of relief, when for a little time one\nwalks a little outside of and beside life. I felt as I sometimes feel\nafter the end of a play. I saw the whole business of my uncle\'s life as\nsomething familiar and completed. It was done, like a play one leaves,\nlike a book one closes. I thought of the push and the promotions, the\nnoise of London, the crowded, various company of people through which\nour lives had gone, the public meetings, the excitements, the dinners\nand disputations, and suddenly it appeared to me that none of these\nthings existed.\n\nIt came to me like a discovery that none of these things existed.\n\nBefore and after I have thought and called life a phantasmagoria, but\nnever have I felt its truth as I did that night.... We had parted; we\ntwo who had kept company so long had parted. But there was, I knew, no\nend to him or me. He had died a dream death, and ended a dream; his pain\ndream was over. It seemed to me almost as though I had died, too. What\ndid it matter, since it was unreality, all of it, the pain and desire,\nthe beginning and the end? There was no reality except this solitary\nroad, this quite solitary road, along which one went rather puzzled,\nrather tired....\n\nPart of the fog became a big mastiff that came towards me and stopped\nand slunk round me, growling, barked gruffly, and shortly and presently\nbecame fog again.\n\nMy mind swayed back to the ancient beliefs and fears of our race.\n\nMy doubts and disbeliefs slipped from me like a loosely fitting garment.\nI wondered quite simply what dogs bayed about the path of that other\nwalker in the darkness, what shapes, what lights, it might be, loomed\nabout him as he went his way from our last encounter on earth--along the\npaths that are real, and the way that endures for ever?\n\nIX\n\nLast belated figure in that grouping round my uncle\'s deathbed is my\naunt. When it was beyond all hope that my uncle could live I threw aside\nwhatever concealment remained to us and telegraphed directly to her.\nBut she came too late to see him living. She saw him calm and still,\nstrangely unlike his habitual garrulous animation, an unfamiliar\ninflexibility.\n\n\"It isn\'t like him,\" she whispered, awed by this alien dignity.\n\nI remember her chiefly as she talked and wept upon the bridge below the\nold castle. We had got rid of some amateurish reporters from Biarritz,\nand had walked together in the hot morning sunshine down through Port\nLuzon. There, for a time, we stood leaning on the parapet of the bridge\nand surveying the distant peeks, the rich blue masses of the Pyrenees.\nFor a long time we said nothing, and then she began talking.\n\n\"Life\'s a rum Go, George!\" she began. \"Who would have thought, when I\nused to darn your stockings at old Wimblehurst, that this would be the\nend of the story? It seems far away now--that little shop, his and my\nfirst home. The glow of the bottles, the big coloured bottles! Do you\nremember how the light shone on the mahogany drawers? The little\ngilt letters! Ol Amjig, and Snap! I can remember it all--bright and\nshining--like a Dutch picture. Real! And yesterday. And here we are in\na dream. You a man--and me an old woman, George. And poor little Teddy,\nwho used to rush about and talk--making that noise he did--Oh!\"\n\nShe choked, and the tears flowed unrestrained. She wept, and I was glad\nto see her weeping.\n\nShe stood leaning over the bridge; her tear-wet handkerchief gripped in\nher clenched hand.\n\n\"Just an hour in the old shop again--and him talking. Before things got\ndone. Before they got hold of him. And fooled him.\n\n\"Men oughtn\'t to be so tempted with business and things....\n\n\"They didn\'t hurt him, George?\" she asked suddenly.\n\nFor a moment I was puzzled.\n\n\"Here, I mean,\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" I lied stoutly, suppressing the memory of that foolish injection\nneedle I had caught the young doctor using.\n\n\"I wonder, George, if they\'ll let him talk in Heaven....\"\n\nShe faced me. \"Oh! George, dear, my heart aches, and I don\'t know what\nI say and do. Give me your arm to lean on--it\'s good to have you,\ndear, and lean upon you.... Yes, I know you care for me. That\'s why I\'m\ntalking. We\'ve always loved one another, and never said anything about\nit, and you understand, and I understand. But my heart\'s torn to pieces\nby this, torn to rags, and things drop out I\'ve kept in it. It\'s true he\nwasn\'t a husband much for me at the last. But he was my child, George,\nhe was my child and all my children, my silly child, and life has\nknocked him about for me, and I\'ve never had a say in the matter; never\na say; it\'s puffed him up and smashed him--like an old bag--under my\neyes. I was clever enough to see it, and not clever enough to prevent\nit, and all I could do was to jeer. I\'ve had to make what I could of\nit. Like most people. Like most of us.... But it wasn\'t fair, George.\nIt wasn\'t fair. Life and Death--great serious things--why couldn\'t they\nleave him alone, and his lies and ways? If WE could see the lightness of\nit--\n\n\"Why couldn\'t they leave him alone?\" she repeated in a whisper as we\nwent towards the inn.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SECOND\n\nLOVE AMONG THE WRECKAGE\n\nI\n\nWhen I came back I found that my share in the escape and death of my\nuncle had made me for a time a notorious and even popular character.\nFor two weeks I was kept in London \"facing the music,\" as he would have\nsaid, and making things easy for my aunt, and I still marvel at the\nconsideration with which the world treated me. For now it was open and\nmanifest that I and my uncle were no more than specimens of a modern\nspecies of brigand, wasting the savings of the public out of the sheer\nwantonness of enterprise. I think that in a way, his death produced\na reaction in my favour and my flight, of which some particulars now\nappeared stuck in the popular imagination. It seemed a more daring and\ndifficult feat than it was, and I couldn\'t very well write to the papers\nto sustain my private estimate. There can be little doubt that men\ninfinitely prefer the appearance of dash and enterprise to simple\nhonesty. No one believed I was not an arch plotter in his financing. Yet\nthey favoured me. I even got permission from the trustee to occupy\nmy chalet for a fortnight while I cleared up the mass of papers,\ncalculations, notes of work, drawings and the like, that I left in\ndisorder when I started on that impulsive raid upon the Mordet quap\nheaps.\n\nI was there alone. I got work for Cothope with the Ilchesters, for whom\nI now build these destroyers. They wanted him at once, and he was short\nof money, so I let him go and managed very philosophically by myself.\n\nBut I found it hard to fix my attention on aeronautics, I had been away\nfrom the work for a full half-year and more, a half-year crowded with\nintense disconcerting things. For a time my brain refused these fine\nproblems of balance and adjustment altogether; it wanted to think about\nmy uncle\'s dropping jaw, my aunt\'s reluctant tears, about dead negroes\nand pestilential swamps, about the evident realities of cruelty and\npain, about life and death. Moreover, it was weary with the frightful\npile of figures and documents at the Hardingham, a task to which this\nraid to Lady Grove was simply an interlude. And there was Beatrice.\n\nOn the second morning, as I sat out upon the veranda recalling memories\nand striving in vain to attend to some too succinct pencil notes of\nCothope\'s, Beatrice rode up suddenly from behind the pavilion, and\npulled rein and became still; Beatrice, a little flushed from riding and\nsitting on a big black horse.\n\nI did not instantly rise. I stared at her. \"YOU!\" I said.\n\nShe looked at me steadily. \"Me,\" she said\n\nI did not trouble about any civilities. I stood up and asked point blank\na question that came into my head.\n\n\"Whose horse is that?\" I said.\n\nShe looked me in the eyes. \"Carnaby\'s,\" she answered.\n\n\"How did you get here--this way?\"\n\n\"The wall\'s down.\"\n\n\"Down? Already?\"\n\n\"A great bit of it between the plantations.\"\n\n\"And you rode through, and got here by chance?\"\n\n\"I saw you yesterday. And I rode over to see you.\" I had now come close\nto her, and stood looking up into her face.\n\n\"I\'m a mere vestige,\" I said.\n\nShe made no answer, but remained regarding me steadfastly with a curious\nair of proprietorship.\n\n\"You know I\'m the living survivor now of the great smash. I\'m rolling\nand dropping down through all the scaffolding of the social system....\nIt\'s all a chance whether I roll out free at the bottom, or go down a\ncrack into the darkness out of sight for a year or two.\"\n\n\"The sun,\" she remarked irrelevantly, \"has burnt you.... I\'m getting\ndown.\"\n\nShe swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face.\n\n\"Where\'s Cothope?\" she asked.\n\n\"Gone.\"\n\nHer eyes flitted to the pavilion and back to me. We stood close\ntogether, extraordinarily intimate, and extraordinarily apart.\n\n\"I\'ve never seen this cottage of yours,\" she said, \"and I want to.\"\n\nShe flung the bridle of her horse round the veranda post, and I helped\nher tie it.\n\n\"Did you get what you went for to Africa?\" she asked.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"I lost my ship.\"\n\n\"And that lost everything?\"\n\n\"Everything.\"\n\nShe walked before me into the living-room of the chalet, and I saw that\nshe gripped her riding-whip very tightly in her hand. She looked about\nher for a moment,--and then at me.\n\n\"It\'s comfortable,\" she remarked.\n\nOur eyes met in a conversation very different from the one upon our\nlips. A sombre glow surrounded us, drew us together; an unwonted shyness\nkept us apart. She roused herself, after an instant\'s pause, to examine\nmy furniture.\n\n\"You have chintz curtains. I thought men were too feckless to have\ncurtains without a woman. But, of course, your aunt did that! And a\ncouch and a brass fender, and--is that a pianola? That is your desk.\nI thought men\'s desks were always untidy, and covered with dust and\ntobacco ash.\"\n\nShe flitted to my colour prints and my little case of books. Then she\nwent to the pianola. I watched her intently.\n\n\"Does this thing play?\" she said.\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"Does this thing play?\"\n\nI roused myself from my preoccupation.\n\n\"Like a musical gorilla with fingers all of one length. And a sort of\nsoul.... It\'s all the world of music to me.\"\n\n\"What do you play?\"\n\n\"Beethoven, when I want to clear up my head while I\'m working. He\nis--how one would always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those\nothers, but Beethoven. Beethoven mainly. Yes.\"\n\nSilence again between us. She spoke with an effort.\n\n\"Play me something.\" She turned from me and explored the rack of\nmusic rolls, became interested and took a piece, the first part of the\nKreutzer Sonata, hesitated. \"No,\" she said, \"that!\"\n\nShe gave me Brahms\' Second Concerto, Op. 58, and curled up on the sofa\nwatching me as I set myself slowly to play....\n\n\"I say,\" he said when I had done, \"that\'s fine. I didn\'t know those\nthings could play like that. I\'m all astir...\"\n\nShe came and stood over me, looking at me. \"I\'m going to have a\nconcert,\" she said abruptly, and laughed uneasily and hovered at the\npigeon-holes. \"Now--now what shall I have?\" She chose more of Brahms.\nThen we came to the Kreutzer Sonata. It is queer how Tolstoy has loaded\nthat with suggestions, debauched it, made it a scandalous and intimate\nsymbol. When I had played the first part of that, she came up to the\npianola and hesitated over me. I sat stiffly--waiting.\n\nSuddenly she seized my downcast head and kissed my hair. She caught at\nmy face between her hands and kissed my lips. I put my arms about her\nand we kissed together. I sprang to my feet and clasped her.\n\n\"Beatrice!\" I said. \"Beatrice!\"\n\n\"My dear,\" she whispered, nearly breathless, with her arms about me.\n\"Oh! my dear!\"\n\nII\n\nLove, like everything else in this immense process of social\ndisorganisation in which we live, is a thing adrift, a fruitless thing\nbroken away from its connexions. I tell of this love affair here because\nof its irrelevance, because it is so remarkable that it should mean\nnothing, and be nothing except itself. It glows in my memory like some\nbright casual flower starting up amidst the debris of a catastrophe.\nFor nearly a fortnight we two met and made love together. Once more this\nmighty passion, that our aimless civilisation has fettered and maimed\nand sterilised and debased, gripped me and filled me with passionate\ndelights and solemn joys--that were all, you know, futile and\npurposeless. Once more I had the persuasion \"This matters. Nothing\nelse matters so much as this.\" We were both infinitely grave in such\nhappiness as we had. I do not remember any laughter at all between us.\n\nTwelve days it lasted from that encounter in my chalet until our\nparting.\n\nExcept at the end, they were days of supreme summer, and there was a\nwaxing moon. We met recklessly day by day. We were so intent upon each\nother at first so intent upon expressing ourselves to each other, and\ngetting at each other, that we troubled very little about the appearance\nof our relationship. We met almost openly.... We talked of ten thousand\nthings, and of ourselves. We loved. We made love. There is no prose\nof mine that can tell of hours transfigured. The facts are nothing.\nEverything we touched, the meanest things, became glorious. How can I\nrender bare tenderness and delight and mutual possession? I sit here at\nmy desk thinking of untellable things.\n\nI have come to know so much of love that I know now what love might be.\nWe loved, scarred and stained; we parted--basely and inevitably, but at\nleast I met love.\n\nI remember as we sat in a Canadian canoe, in a reedy, bush-masked\nshallow we had discovered operating out of that pine-shaded Woking\ncanal, how she fell talking of the things that happened to her before\nshe met me again....\n\nShe told me things, and they so joined and welded together other things\nthat lay disconnected in my memory, that it seemed to me I had always\nknown what she told me. And yet indeed I had not known nor suspected it,\nsave perhaps for a luminous, transitory suspicion ever and again.\n\nShe made me see how life had shaped her. She told me of her girlhood\nafter I had known her. \"We were poor and pretending and managing. We\nhacked about on visits and things. I ought to have married. The chances\nI had weren\'t particularly good chances. I didn\'t like \'em.\"\n\nShe paused. \"Then Carnaby came along.\"\n\nI remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one finger\njust touching the water.\n\n\"One gets bored, bored beyond redemption. One does about to these huge\nexpensive houses I suppose--the scale\'s immense. One makes one\'s\nself useful to the other women, and agreeable to the men. One has to\ndress.... One has food and exercise and leisure, It\'s the leisure, and\nthe space, and the blank opportunity it seems a sin not to fill. Carnaby\nisn\'t like the other men. He\'s bigger.... They go about making love.\nEverybody\'s making love. I did.... And I don\'t do things by halves.\"\n\nShe stopped.\n\n\"You knew?\"--she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded.\n\n\"Since when?\"\n\n\"Those last days.... It hasn\'t seemed to matter really. I was a little\nsurprised.\"\n\nShe looked at me quietly. \"Cothope knew,\" she said. \"By instinct. I\ncould feel it.\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" I began, \"once, this would have mattered immensely. Now--\"\n\n\"Nothing matters,\" she said, completing me. \"I felt I had to tell you. I\nwanted you to understand why I didn\'t marry you--with both hands. I have\nloved you\"--she paused--\"have loved you ever since the day I kissed you\nin the bracken. Only--I forgot.\"\n\nAnd suddenly she dropped her face upon her hands, and sobbed\npassionately--\n\n\"I forgot--I forgot,\" she cried, and became still....\n\nI dabbled my paddle in the water. \"Look here!\" I said; \"forget again!\nHere am I--a ruined man. Marry me.\"\n\nShe shook her head without looking up.\n\nWe were still for a long time. \"Marry me!\" I whispered.\n\nShe looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered\ndispassionately--\n\n\"I wish I could. Anyhow, we have had this time. It has been a fine\ntime--has it been--for you also? I haven\'t nudged you all I had to give.\nIt\'s a poor gift--except for what it means and might have been. But we\nare near the end of it now.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"Marry me! Why should we two--\"\n\n\"You think,\" she said, \"I could take courage and come to you and be your\neveryday wife--while you work and are poor?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" said I.\n\nShe looked at me gravely, with extended finger. \"Do you really think\nthat--of me? Haven\'t you seen me--all?\"\n\nI hesitated.\n\n\"Never once have I really meant marrying you,\" she insisted. \"Never\nonce. I fell in love with you from the first. But when you seemed a\nsuccessful man, I told myself I wouldn\'t. I was love-sick for you,\nand you were so stupid, I came near it then. But I knew I wasn\'t good\nenough. What could I have been to you? A woman with bad habits and bad\nassociations, a woman smirched. And what could I do for you or be to\nyou? If I wasn\'t good enough to be a rich man\'s wife, I\'m certainly not\ngood enough to be a poor one\'s. Forgive me for talking sense to you now,\nbut I wanted to tell you this somehow.\"\n\nShe stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my\nmovement.\n\n\"I don\'t care,\" I said. \"I want to marry you and make you my wife!\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"don\'t spoil things. That is impossible!\"\n\n\"Impossible!\"\n\n\"Think! I can\'t do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a maid?\"\n\n\"Good God!\" I cried, disconcerted beyond measure, \"won\'t you learn to do\nyour own hair for me? Do you mean to say you can love a man--\"\n\nShe flung out her hands at me. \"Don\'t spoil it,\" she cried. \"I have\ngiven you all I have, I have given you all I can. If I could do it, if\nI was good enough to do it, I would. But I am a woman spoilt and\nruined, dear, and you are a ruined man. When we are making love we\'re\nlovers--but think of the gulf between us in habits and ways of thought,\nin will and training, when we are not making love. Think of it--and\ndon\'t think of it! Don\'t think of it yet. We have snatched some hours.\nWe still may have some hours!\"\n\nShe suddenly knelt forward toward me, with a glowing darkness in her\neyes. \"Who cares if it upsets?\" she cried. \"If you say another word I\nwill kiss you. And go to the bottom clutching you.\n\n\"I\'m not afraid of that. I\'m not a bit afraid of that. I\'ll die with you.\nChoose a death, and I\'ll die with you--readily. Do listen to me! I love\nyou. I shall always love you. It\'s because I love you that I won\'t go\ndown to become a dirty familiar thing with you amidst the grime. I\'ve\ngiven all I can. I\'ve had all I can.... Tell me,\" and she crept nearer,\n\"have I been like the dusk to you, like the warm dusk? Is there magic\nstill? Listen to the ripple of water from your paddle. Look at the warm\nevening light in the sky. Who cares if the canoe upsets? Come nearer to\nme. Oh, my love! come near! So.\"\n\nShe drew me to her and our lips met.\n\nIII\n\nI asked her to marry me once again.\n\nIt was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about\nsunrise, knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky\nwas overcast, the morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless\nlight. A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain. When I think of\nthat morning, it has always the quality of greying ashes wet with rain.\n\nBeatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it\ncame to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She\nhad become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness\nhad gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had\ngone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry\nfor them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it\nnothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I\ncame dully to my point.\n\n\"And now,\" I cried, \"will you marry me?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"I shall keep to my life here.\"\n\nI asked her to marry me in a year\'s time. She shook her head.\n\n\"This world is a soft world,\" I said, \"in spite of my present disasters.\nI know now how to do things. If I had you to work for--in a year I could\nbe a prosperous man.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby.\"\n\n\"But--!\" I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded\npride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of\nhopeless cross-purposes.\n\n\"Look here,\" she said. \"I have been awake all night and every night. I\nhave been thinking of this--every moment when we have not been together.\nI\'m not answering you on an impulse. I love you. I love you. I\'ll say\nthat over ten thousand times. But here we are--\"\n\n\"The rest of life together,\" I said.\n\n\"It wouldn\'t be together. Now we are together. Now we have been\ntogether. We are full of memories I do not feel I can ever forget a\nsingle one.\"\n\n\"Nor I.\"\n\n\"And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else\nis there to do?\"\n\nShe turned her white face to me. \"All I know of love, all I have ever\ndreamt or learnt of love I have packed into these days for you. You\nthink we might live together and go on loving. No! For you I will have\nno vain repetitions. You have had the best and all of me. Would you have\nus, after this, meet again in London or Paris or somewhere, scuffle to\nsome wretched dressmaker\'s, meet in a cabinet particulier?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"I want you to marry me. I want you to play the game of\nlife with me as an honest woman should. Come and live with me. Be my\nwife and squaw. Bear me children.\"\n\nI looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry her\nyet. I spluttered for words.\n\n\"My God! Beatrice!\" I cried; \"but this is cowardice and folly! Are you\nafraid of life? You of all people! What does it matter what has been or\nwhat we were? Here we are with the world before us! Start clean and new\nwith me. We\'ll fight it through! I\'m not such a simple lover that I\'ll\nnot tell you plainly when you go wrong, and fight our difference out\nwith you. It\'s the one thing I want, the one thing I need--to have you,\nand more of you and more! This love-making--it\'s love-making. It\'s just\na part of us, an incident--\"\n\nShe shook her head and stopped me abruptly. \"It\'s all,\" she said.\n\n\"All!\" I protested.\n\n\"I\'m wiser than you. Wiser beyond words.\" She turned her eyes to me and\nthey shone with tears.\n\n\"I wouldn\'t have you say anything--but what you\'re saying,\" she said.\n\"But it\'s nonsense, dear. You know it\'s nonsense as you say it.\"\n\nI tried to keep up the heroic note, but she would not listen to it.\n\n\"It\'s no good,\" she cried almost petulantly. \"This little world has made\nus what we are. Don\'t you see--don\'t you see what I am? I can make love.\nI can make love and be loved, prettily. Dear, don\'t blame me. I have\ngiven you all I have. If I had anything more--I have gone through it\nall over and over again--thought it out. This morning my head aches, my\neyes ache.\n\n\"The light has gone out of me and I am a sick and tired woman. But I\'m\ntalking wisdom--bitter wisdom. I couldn\'t be any sort of helper to you,\nany sort of wife, any sort of mother. I\'m spoilt.\n\n\"I\'m spoilt by this rich idle way of living, until every habit is wrong,\nevery taste wrong. The world is wrong. People can be ruined by wealth\njust as much as by poverty. Do you think I wouldn\'t face life with you\nif I could, if I wasn\'t absolutely certain I should be down and dragging\nin the first half-mile of the journey? Here I am--damned! Damned! But\nI won\'t damn you. You know what I am! You know. You are too clear and\nsimple not to know the truth. You try to romance and hector, but you\nknow the truth. I am a little cad--sold and done. I\'m--. My dear, you\nthink I\'ve been misbehaving, but all these days I\'ve been on my best\nbehaviour.... You don\'t understand, because you\'re a man.\n\n\"A woman, when she\'s spoilt, is SPOILT. She\'s dirty in grain. She\'s\ndone.\"\n\nShe walked on weeping.\n\n\"You\'re a fool to want me,\" she said. \"You\'re a fool to want me--for\nmy sake just as much as yours. We\'ve done all we can. It\'s just\nromancing--\"\n\nShe dashed the tears from her eyes and turned upon me. \"Don\'t you\nunderstand?\" she challenged. \"Don\'t you know?\"\n\nWe faced one another in silence for a moment.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I know.\"\n\nFor a long time we spoke never a word, but walked on together, slowly\nand sorrowfully, reluctant to turn about towards our parting. When at\nlast we did, she broke silence again.\n\n\"I\'ve had you,\" she said.\n\n\"Heaven and hell,\" I said, \"can\'t alter that.\"\n\n\"I\'ve wanted--\" she went on. \"I\'ve talked to you in the nights and made\nup speeches. Now when I want to make them I\'m tongue-tied. But to me\nit\'s just as if the moments we have had lasted for ever. Moods and\nstates come and go. To-day my light is out...\"\n\nTo this day I cannot determine whether she said or whether I imagined\nshe said \"chloral.\" Perhaps a half-conscious diagnosis flashed it on\nmy brain. Perhaps I am the victim of some perverse imaginative freak\nof memory, some hinted possibility that scratched and seared. There the\nword stands in my memory, as if it were written in fire.\n\nWe came to the door of Lady Osprey\'s garden at last, and it was\nbeginning to drizzle.\n\nShe held out her hands and I took them.\n\n\"Yours,\" she said, in a weary unimpassioned voice; \"all that I had--such\nas it was. Will you forget?\"\n\n\"Never,\" I answered.\n\n\"Never a touch or a word of it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You will,\" she said.\n\nWe looked at one another in silence, and her face full of fatigue and\nmisery.\n\nWhat could I do? What was there to do?\n\n\"I wish--\" I said, and stopped.\n\n\"Good-bye.\"\n\nIV\n\nThat should have been the last I saw of her, but, indeed, I was destined\nto see her once again. Two days after I was at Lady Grove, I forget\naltogether upon what errand, and as I walked back to the station\nbelieving her to be gone away she came upon me, and she was riding with\nCarnaby, just as I had seen them first. The encounter jumped upon us\nunprepared. She rode by, her eyes dark in her white face, and scarcely\nnoticed me. She winced and grew stiff at the sight of me and bowed her\nhead. But Carnaby, because he thought I was a broken and discomfited\nman, saluted me with an easy friendliness, and shouted some genial\ncommonplace to me.\n\nThey passed out of sight and left me by the roadside....\n\nAnd then, indeed, I tasted the ultimate bitterness of life. For the\nfirst time I felt utter futility, and was wrung by emotion that begot no\naction, by shame and pity beyond words. I had parted from her dully and\nI had seen my uncle break and die with dry eyes and a steady mind, but\nthis chance sight of my lost Beatrice brought me to tears. My face was\nwrung, and tears came pouring down my cheeks. All the magic she had for\nme had changed to wild sorrow. \"Oh God!\" I cried, \"this is too much,\"\nand turned my face after her and made appealing gestures to the beech\ntrees and cursed at fate. I wanted to do preposterous things, to pursue\nher, to save her, to turn life back so that she might begin again.\nI wonder what would have happened had I overtaken them in pursuit,\nbreathless with running, uttering incoherent words, weeping,\nexpostulatory. I came near to doing that.\n\nThere was nothing in earth or heaven to respect my curses or weeping. In\nthe midst of it a man who had been trimming the opposite hedge appeared\nand stared at me.\n\nAbruptly, ridiculously, I dissembled before him and went on and caught\nmy train....\n\nBut the pain I felt then I have felt a hundred times; it is with me as\nI write. It haunts this book, I see, that is what haunts this book, from\nend to end.\n\n\nCHAPTER THE THIRD\n\nNIGHT AND THE OPEN SEA\n\nI\n\nI have tried throughout all this story to tell things as they happened\nto me. In the beginning--the sheets are still here on the table, grimy\nand dogs-eared and old-looking--I said I wanted to tell MYSELF and the\nworld in which I found myself, and I have done my best. But whether I\nhave succeeded I cannot imagine. All this writing is grey now and dead\nand trite and unmeaning to me; some of it I know by heart. I am the last\nperson to judge it.\n\nAs I turn over the big pile of manuscript before me certain things\nbecome clearer to me, and particularly the immense inconsequences of my\nexperiences. It is, I see now that I have it all before me, a story of\nactivity and urgency and sterility. I have called it Tono-Bungay, but I\nhad far better have called it Waste. I have told of childless Marion, of\nmy childless aunt, of Beatrice wasted and wasteful and futile. What hope\nis there for a people whose women become fruitless? I think of all the\nenergy I have given to vain things. I think of my industrious scheming\nwith my uncle, of Crest Hill\'s vast cessation, of his resonant strenuous\ncareer. Ten thousand men have envied him and wished to live as he lived.\nIt is all one spectacle of forces running to waste, of people who use\nand do not replace, the story of a country hectic with a wasting aimless\nfever of trade and money-making and pleasure-seeking. And now I build\ndestroyers!\n\nOther people may see this country in other terms; this is how I have\nseen it. In some early chapter in this heap I compared all our present\ncolour and abundance to October foliage before the frosts nip down the\nleaves. That I still feel was a good image. Perhaps I see wrongly. It\nmay be I see decay all about me because I am, in a sense, decay. To\nothers it may be a scene of achievement and construction radiant with\nhope. I, too, have a sort of hope, but it is a remote hope, a hope that\nfinds no promise in this Empire or in any of the great things of our\ntime.\n\nHow they will look in history I do not know, how time and chance will\nprove them I cannot guess; that is how they have mirrored themselves on\none contemporary mind.\n\nII\n\nConcurrently with writing the last chapter of this book I have been much\nengaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been\nan oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago\nthis novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time\nday and night to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday\nX 2, for so we call her, was done and I took her down the Thames and\nwent out nearly to Texel for a trial of speed.\n\nIt is curious how at times one\'s impressions will all fuse and run\ntogether into a sort of unity and become continuous with things that\nhave hitherto been utterly alien and remote. That rush down the river\nbecame mysteriously connected with this book.\n\nAs I passed down the Thames I seemed in a new and parallel manner to be\npassing all England in review. I saw it then as I had wanted my readers\nto see it. The thought came to me slowly as I picked my way through the\nPool; it stood out clear as I went dreaming into the night out upon the\nwide North Sea.\n\nIt wasn\'t so much thinking at the time as a sort of photographic thought\nthat came and grew clear. X2 went ripping through the dirty oily water\nas scissors rip through canvas, and the front of my mind was all intent\nwith getting her through under the bridges and in and out among the\nsteam-boats and barges and rowing-boats and piers. I lived with my\nhands and eyes hard ahead. I thought nothing then of any appearances but\nobstacles, but for all that the back of my mind took the photographic\nmemory of it complete and vivid....\n\n\"This,\" it came to me, \"is England. That is what I wanted to give in my\nbook. This!\"\n\nWe started in the late afternoon. We throbbed out of our yard above\nHammersmith Bridge, fussed about for a moment, and headed down stream.\nWe came at an easy rush down Craven Reach, past Fulham and Hurlingham,\npast the long stretches of muddy meadow And muddy suburb to Battersea\nand Chelsea, round the cape of tidy frontage that is Grosvenor Road and\nunder Vauxhall Bridge, and Westminster opened before us. We cleared\na string of coal barges and there on the left in the October sunshine\nstood the Parliament houses, and the flag was flying and Parliament was\nsitting.\n\nI saw it at the time unseeingly; afterwards it came into my mind as the\ncentre of the whole broad panoramic effect of that afternoon. The stiff\nsquare lace of Victorian Gothic with its Dutch clock of a tower came\nupon me suddenly and stared and whirled past in a slow half pirouette\nand became still, I know, behind me as if watching me recede. \"Aren\'t\nyou going to respect me, then?\" it seemed to say.\n\nNot I! There in that great pile of Victorian architecture the landlords\nand the lawyers, the bishops, the railway men and the magnates of\ncommerce go to and fro--in their incurable tradition of commercialised\nBladesovery, of meretricious gentry and nobility sold for riches. I have\nbeen near enough to know. The Irish and the Labour-men run about among\ntheir feet, making a fuss, effecting little, they\'ve got no better plans\nthat I can see. Respect it indeed! There\'s a certain paraphernalia of\ndignity, but whom does it deceive? The King comes down in a gilt coach\nto open the show and wears long robes and a crown; and there\'s a display\nof stout and slender legs in white stockings and stout and slender legs\nin black stockings and artful old gentlemen in ermine. I was reminded\nof one congested afternoon I had spent with my aunt amidst a cluster of\nagitated women\'s hats in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords and\nhow I saw the King going to open Parliament, and the Duke of Devonshire\nlooking like a gorgeous pedlar and terribly bored with the cap of\nmaintenance on a tray before him hung by slings from his shoulder. A\nwonderful spectacle!\n\nIt is quaint, no doubt, this England--it is even dignified in\nplaces--and full of mellow associations. That does not alter the quality\nof the realities these robes conceal. The realities are greedy trade,\nbase profit--seeking, bold advertisement; and kingship and chivalry,\nspite of this wearing of treasured robes, are as dead among it all\nas that crusader my uncle championed against the nettles outside the\nDuffield church.\n\nI have thought much of that bright afternoon\'s panorama.\n\nTo run down the Thames so is to run one\'s hand over the pages in the\nbook of England from end to end. One begins in Craven Reach and it is as\nif one were in the heart of old England. Behind us are Kew and Hampton\nCourt with their memories of Kings and Cardinals, and one runs at first\nbetween Fulham\'s episcopal garden parties and Hurlingham\'s playground\nfor the sporting instinct of our race. The whole effect is English.\nThere is space, there are old trees and all the best qualities of\nthe home-land in that upper reach. Putney, too, looks Anglican on a\ndwindling scale. And then for a stretch the newer developments slop\nover, one misses Bladesover and there come first squalid stretches of\nmean homes right and left and then the dingy industrialism of the\nsouth side, and on the north bank the polite long front of nice houses,\nartistic, literary, administrative people\'s residences, that stretches\nfrom Cheyne Walk nearly to Westminster and hides a wilderness of slums.\nWhat a long slow crescendo that is, mile after mile, with the houses\ncrowding closelier, the multiplying succession of church towers, the\narchitectural moments, the successive bridges, until you come out into\nthe second movement of the piece with Lambeth\'s old palace under your\nquarter and the houses of Parliament on your bow! Westminster Bridge\nis ahead of you then, and through it you flash, and in a moment the\nround-faced clock tower cranes up to peer at you again and New\nScotland Yard squares at you, a fat beef-eater of a policeman disguised\nmiraculously as a Bastille.\n\nFor a stretch you have the essential London; you have Charing Cross\nrailway station, heart of the world, and the Embankment on the north\nside with its new hotels overshadowing its Georgian and Victorian\narchitecture, and mud and great warehouses and factories, chimneys, shot\ntowers, advertisements on the south. The northward skyline grows more\nintricate and pleasing, and more and more does one thank God for Wren.\nSomerset House is as picturesque as the civil war, one is reminded again\nof the original England, one feels in the fretted sky the quality of\nRestoration Lace.\n\nAnd then comes Astor\'s strong box and the lawyers\' Inns.\n\n(I had a passing memory of myself there, how once I had trudged along\nthe Embankment westward, weighing my uncle\'s offer of three hundred\npounds a year....)\n\nThrough that central essential London reach I drove, and X2 bored\nher nose under the foam regardless of it all like a black hound going\nthrough reeds--on what trail even I who made her cannot tell.\n\nAnd in this reach, too, one first meets the seagulls and is reminded of\nthe sea. Blackfriars one takes--just under these two bridges and just\nbetween them is the finest bridge moment in the world--and behold,\nsoaring up, hanging in the sky over a rude tumult of warehouses, over a\njostling competition of traders, irrelevantly beautiful and altogether\nremote, Saint Paul\'s! \"Of course!\" one says, \"Saint Paul\'s!\" It is the\nvery figure of whatever fineness the old Anglican culture achieved,\ndetached, a more dignified and chastened Saint Peter\'s, colder, greyer,\nbut still ornate; it has never been over thrown, never disavowed, only\nthe tall warehouses and all the roar of traffic have forgotten it,\nevery one has forgotten it; the steamships, the barges, go heedlessly by\nregardless of it, intricacies of telephone wires and poles cut blackly\ninto its thin mysteries, and presently, when in a moment the traffic\npermits you and you look round for it, it has dissolved like a cloud\ninto the grey blues of the London sky.\n\nAnd then the traditional and ostensible England falls from you\naltogether. The third movement begins, the last great movement in the\nLondon symphony, in which the trim scheme of the old order is altogether\ndwarfed and swallowed up. Comes London Bridge, and the great warehouses\ntower up about you, waving stupendous cranes, the gulls circle and\nscream in your ears, large ships lie among their lighters, and one is\nin the port of the world. Again and again in this book I have written\nof England as a feudal scheme overtaken by fatty degeneration and\nstupendous accidents of hypertrophy.\n\nFor the last time I must strike that note as the memory of the dear\nneat little sunlit ancient Tower of London lying away in a gap among the\nwarehouses comes back to me, that little accumulation of buildings so\nprovincially pleasant and dignified, overshadowed by the vulgarest,\nmost typical exploit of modern England, the sham Gothic casings to the\nironwork of the Tower Bridge. That Tower Bridge is the very balance and\nconfirmation of Westminster\'s dull pinnacles and tower. That sham Gothic\nbridge; in the very gates of our mother of change, the Sea!\n\nBut after that one is in a world of accident and nature. For the third\npart of the panorama of London is beyond all law, order, and precedence;\nit is the seaport and the sea. One goes down the widening reaches\nthrough a monstrous variety of shipping, great steamers, great\nsailing-ships, trailing the flags of all the world, a monstrous\nconfusion of lighters, witches\' conferences of brown-sailed barges,\nwallowing tugs, a tumultuous crowding and jostling of cranes and spars,\nand wharves and stores, and assertive inscriptions. Huge vistas of dock\nopen right and left of one, and here and there beyond and amidst it all\nare church towers, little patches of indescribably old-fashioned and\nworn-out houses, riverside pubs and the like, vestiges of townships that\nwere long since torn to fragments and submerged in these new growths.\nAnd amidst it all no plan appears, no intention, no comprehensive\ndesire. That is the very key of it all. Each day one feels that the\npressure of commerce and traffic grew, grew insensibly monstrous, and\nfirst this man made a wharf and that erected a crane, and then this\ncompany set to work and then that, and so they jostled together to make\nthis unassimilable enormity of traffic. Through it we dodged and drove\neager for the high seas.\n\nI remember how I laughed aloud at the glimpse of the name of a London\nCounty Council steamboat that ran across me. Caxton it was called, and\nanother was Pepys, and another was Shakespeare. They seemed so wildly\nout of place, splashing about in that confusion. One wanted to take them\nout and wipe them and put them back in some English gentleman\'s library.\nEverything was alive about them, flash ing, splashing, and passing,\nships moving, tugs panting, hawsers taut, barges going down with men\ntoiling at the sweeps, the water all a-swirl with the wash of shipping,\nscaling into millions of little wavelets, curling and frothing under the\nwhip of the unceasing wind. Past it all we drove. And at Greenwich to\nthe south, you know, there stands a fine stone frontage where all the\nvictories are recorded in a Painted Hall, and beside it is the \"Ship\"\nwhere once upon a time those gentlemen of Westminster used to have\nan annual dinner--before the port of London got too much for them\naltogether. The old facade of the Hospital was just warming to the\nsunset as we went by, and after that, right and left, the river opened,\nthe sense of the sea increased and prevailed, reach after reach from\nNorthfleet to the Nore.\n\nAnd out you come at last with the sun behind you into the eastern\nsea. You speed up and tear the oily water louder and faster, siroo,\nsiroo-swish-siroo, and the hills of Kent--over which I once fled from\nthe Christian teachings of Nicodemus Frapp--fall away on the right hand\nand Essex on the left. They fall away and vanish into blue haze, and\nthe tall slow ships behind the tugs, scarce moving ships and wallowing\nsturdy tugs, are all wrought of wet gold as one goes frothing by. They\nstand out, bound on strange missions of life and death, to the killing\nof men in unfamiliar lands. And now behind us is blue mystery and the\nphantom flash of unseen lights, and presently even these are gone, and\nI and my destroyer tear out to the unknown across a great grey space.\nWe tear into the great spaces of the future and the turbines fall to\ntalking in unfamiliar tongues. Out to the open we go, to windy freedom\nand trackless ways. Light after light goes down. England and the\nKingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions,\nglide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass--pass. The river\npasses--London passes, England passes...\n\nIII\n\nThis is the note I have tried to emphasise, the note that sounds clear\nin my mind when I think of anything beyond the purely personal aspects\nof my story.\n\nIt is a note of crumbling and confusion, of change and seemingly aimless\nswelling, of a bubbling up and medley of futile loves and sorrows.\nBut through the confusion sounds another note. Through the confusion\nsomething drives, something that is at once human achievement and the\nmost inhuman of all existing things. Something comes out of it....\nHow can I express the values of a thing at once so essential and so\nimmaterial. It is something that calls upon such men as I with an\nirresistible appeal.\n\nI have figured it in my last section by the symbol of my destroyer,\nstark and swift, irrelevant to most human interests. Sometimes I call\nthis reality Science, sometimes I call it Truth. But it is something we\ndraw by pain and effort ont of the heart of life, that we disentangle\nand make clear. Other men serve it, I know, in art, in literature, in\nsocial invention, and see it in a thousand different figures, under a\nhundred names. I see it always as austerity, as beauty. This thing we\nmake clear is the heart of life. It is the one enduring thing. Men and\nnations, epochs and civilisation pass each making its contribution I do\nnot know what it is, this something, except that it is supreme. It is,\na something, a quality, an element, one may find now in colours, now in\nnorms, now in sounds, now in thoughts. It emerges from life with each\nyear one lives and feels, and generation by generation and age by age,\nbut the how and why of it are all beyond the compass of my mind....\n\nYet the full sense of it was with me all that night as I drove, lonely\nabove the rush and murmur of my engines, out upon the weltering circle\nof the sea.\n\nFar out to the northeast there came the flicker of a squadron of\nwarships waving white swords of light about the sky. I kept them\nhull-down, and presently they were mere summer lightning over the watery\nedge of the globe.... I fell into thought that was nearly formless, into\ndoubts and dreams that have no words, and it seemed good to me to drive\nahead and on and or through the windy starlight, over the long black\nwaves.\n\nIV\n\nIt was morning and day before I returned with the four sick and starving\njournalists who had got permission to come with me, up the shining\nriver, and past the old grey Tower....\n\nI recall the back views of those journalists very distinctly, going with\na certain damp weariness of movement, along a side street away from the\nriver. They were good men and bore me no malice, and they served me up\nto the public in turgid degenerate Kiplingese, as a modest button on the\ncomplacent stomach of the Empire. Though as a matter of fact, X2 isn\'t\nintended for the empire, or indeed for the hands of any European power.\nWe offered it to our own people first, but they would have nothing to\ndo with me, and I have long since ceased to trouble much about such\nquestions. I have come to see myself from the outside, my country from\nthe outside--without illusions. We make and pass.\n\nWe are all things that make and pass striving upon a hidden mission, out\nto the open sea.'"