“And don’t think I’m not serious because I don’t use the traditional arguments—making money, a sphere awaiting you, and so on—all of which are, for various reasons, cant.” She sewed on. “I’m only your sister. I haven’t any authority over you, and I don’t want to have any. Just to put before you what I think the truth. You see”—she shook off the pince-nez to which she had recently taken—“in a few years we shall be the same age practically, and I shall want you to help me. Men are so much nicer than women.”
“Labouring under such a delusion, why do you not marry?”
“I sometimes jolly well think I would if I got the chance.”
“Has nobody arst you?”
“Only ninnies.”
“Do people ask Helen?”
“Plentifully.”
“Tell me about them.”
“No.”
“Tell me about your ninnies, then.”
“They were men who had nothing better to do,” said his sister, feeling that she was entitled to score this point. “So take warning: you must work, or else you must pretend to work, which is what I do. Work, work, work if you’d save your soul and your body. It is honestly a necessity, dear boy. Look at the Wilcoxes, look at Mr. Pembroke. With all their defects of temper and understanding, such men give me more pleasure than many who are better equipped, and I think it is because they have worked regularly and honestly.”
“Spare me the Wilcoxes,” he moaned.
“I shall not. They are the right sort.”
“Oh, goodness me, Meg!” he protested, suddenly sitting up, alert and angry. Tibby, for all his defects, had a genuine personality.
“Well, they’re as near the right sort as you can imagine.”
“No, no—oh, no!”
“I was thinking of the younger son, whom I once classed as a ninny, but who came back so ill from Nigeria. He’s gone out there again, Evie Wilcox tells me—out to his duty.”
“Duty” always elicited a groan.
“He doesn’t want the money, it is work he wants, though it is beastly work—dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh water and food. A nation who can produce men of that sort may well be proud. No wonder England has become an Empire.”
“Empire!”
“I can’t bother over results,” said Margaret, a little sadly. “They are too difficult for me. I can only look at the men. An Empire bores me, so far, but I can appreciate the heroism that builds it up. London bores me, but what thousands of splendid people are labouring to make London—”
“What it is,” he sneered.
“What it is, worse luck. I want activity without civilization. How paradoxical! Yet I expect that is what we shall find in heaven.”
“And I,” said Tibby, “want civilization without activity, which, I expect, is what we shall find in the other place.”
“You needn’t go as far as the other place, Tibbikins, if you want that. You can find it at Oxford.”
“Stupid—”
“If I’m stupid, get me back to the house-hunting. I’ll even live in Oxford if you like—North Oxford. I’ll live anywhere except Bournemouth, Torquay, and Cheltenham. Oh yes, or Ilfracombe and Swanage and Tunbridge Wells and Surbiton and Bedford. There on no account.”
“London, then.”
“I agree, but Helen rather wants to get away from London. However, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have a house in the country and also a flat in town, provided we all stick together and contribute. Though of course—Oh, how one does maunder on, and to think, to think of the people who are really poor. How do they live? Not to move about the world would kill me.”
As she spoke, the door was flung open, and Helen burst in in a state of extreme excitement.
“Oh, my dears, what do you think? You’ll never guess. A woman’s been here asking me for her husband. Her what?” (Helen was fond of supplying her own surprise.) “Yes, for her husband, and it really is so.”
“Not anything to do with Bracknell?” cried Margaret, who had lately taken on an unemployed of that name to clean the knives and boots.
“I offered Bracknell, and he was rejected. So was Tibby. (Cheer up, Tibby!) It’s no one we know. I said: ‘Hunt, my good woman; have a good look round, hunt under the tables, poke up the chimney, shake out the antimacassars. Husband? husband?’ Oh, and she so magnificently dressed and tinkling like a chandelier. ”
“Now, Helen, what did happen really?”
“What I say. I was, as it were, orating my speech. Annie opens the door like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open. Then we began—very civilly. ‘I want my husband, what I have reason to believe is here.’ No—how unjust one is. She said ‘whom,’ not ‘what.’ She got it perfectly. So I said: ‘Name, please?’ and she said: ‘Lan, Miss,’ and there we were. ”
“Lan?”
“Lan or Len. We were not nice about our vowels. Lanoline.”
“But what an extraordinary—”
“I said: ‘My good Mrs. Lanoline, we have some grave misunderstanding here. Beautiful as I am, my modesty is even more remarkable than my beauty, and never, never has Mr. Lanoline rested his eyes on mine.’ ”
“I hope you were pleased,” said Tibby.
“Of course,” Helen squeaked. “A perfectly delightful experience. Oh, Mrs. Lanoline’s a dear—she asked for a husband as if he was an umbrella. She mislaid him Saturday afternoon—and for a long time suffered no inconvenience. But all night, and all this morning her apprehensions grew. Breakfast didn’t seem the same—no, no more did lunch, and so she strolled up to 2 Wickham Place as being the most likely place for the missing article. ”
“But how on earth—”
“Don’t begin how on earthing. ‘I know what I know,’ she kept repeating, not uncivilly, but with extreme gloom. In vain I asked her what she did know. Some knew what others knew, and others didn‘t, and if they didn’t, then others again had better be careful. Oh dear, she was incompetent! She had a face like a silkworm, and the dining-room reeks of orris-root. We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She thanked me. We agreed that Mr. Lanoline’s a notty, notty man, and hasn’t no business to go on the lardy-da. But I think she suspected me up to the last. Bags I writing to Aunt Juley about this. Now, Meg, remember—bags I.”
“Bag it by all means,” murmured Margaret, putting down her work. “I’m not sure that this is so funny, Helen. It means some horrible volcano smoking somewhere, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so—she doesn’t really mind. The admirable creature isn’t capable of tragedy.”
“Her husband may be, though,” said Margaret, moving to the window.
“Oh, no, not likely. No one capable of tragedy could have married Mrs. Lanoline.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Her figure may have been good once.”
The flats, their only outlook, hung like an ornate curtain between Margaret and the welter of London. Her thoughts turned sadly to house-hunting. Wickham Place had been so safe. She feared, fantastically, that her own little flock might be moving into turmoil and squalor, into nearer contact with such episodes as these.
“Tibby and I have again been wondering where we’ll live next September,” she said at last.
“Tibby had better first wonder what he’ll do,” retorted Helen; and that topic was resumed, but with acrimony. Then tea came, and after tea Helen went on preparing her speech, and Margaret prepared one, too, for they were going out to a discussion society on the morrow. But her thoughts were poisoned. Mrs. Lanoline had risen out of the abyss, like a faint smell, a goblin footfall, telling of a life where love and hatred had both decayed.
Chapter XIV
The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a clerk in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus much from his card. H
e had come “about the lady yesterday.” Thus much from Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.
“Cheers, children!” cried Helen. “It’s Mr. Lanoline.”
Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so common in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the shepherd or ploughboy whom civilization had sucked into the town; as one of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to reach the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well—the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books. She knew the very tones in which he would address her. She was only unprepared for an example of her own visiting-card.
“You wouldn’t remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?” said he, uneasily familiar.
“No; I can’t say I do.”
“Well, that was how it happened, you see.”
“Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For a minute I don’t remember.”
“It was a concert at the Queen’s Hall. I think you will recollect,” he added pretentiously, “when I tell you that it included a performance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven.”
“We hear the Fifth practically every time it’s done, so I’m not sure—do you remember, Helen?”
“Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the balustrade?”
He thought not.
“Then I don’t remember. That’s the only Beethoven I ever remember specially.”
“And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of course.”
“Likely enough,” Helen laughed, “for I steal umbrellas even oftener than I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?”
“Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel.”
“The mistake arose out of my card, did it?” interposed Margaret.
“Yes, the mistake arose—it was a mistake.”
“The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too, and that she could find you?” she continued, pushing him forward, for, though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.
“That’s so, calling too—a mistake.”
“Then why—?” began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.
“I said to my wife,” he continued more rapidly—“I said to Mrs. Bast: ‘I have to pay a call on some friends,’ and Mrs. Bast said to me: ‘Do go.’ While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused you.”
“No inconvenience,” said Helen; “but I still don’t understand.”
An air of evasion characterized Mr. Bast. He explained again, but was obviously lying, and Helen didn’t see why he should get off. She had the cruelty of youth. Neglecting her sister’s pressure, she said: “I still don’t understand. When did you say you paid this call?”
“Call? What call?” said he, staring as if her question had been a foolish one, a favourite device of those in mid-stream.
“This afternoon call.”
“In the afternoon, of course!” he replied, and looked at Tibby to see how the repartee went. But Tibby, himself a repartee, was unsympathetic, and said: “Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon?”
“S—Saturday.”
“Really!” said Helen; “and you were still calling on Sunday, when your wife came here. A long visit.”
“I don’t call that fair,” said Mr. Bast, going scarlet and handsome. There was fight in his eyes. “I know what you mean, and it isn’t so.”
“Oh, don’t let us mind,” said Margaret, distressed again by odours from the abyss.
“It was something else,” he asserted, his elaborate manner breaking down. “I was somewhere else to what you think, so there!”
“It was good of you to come and explain,” she said. “The rest is naturally no concern of ours.”
“Yes, but I want—I wanted—have you ever read The Ordeal of Richard Feverel?”
Margaret nodded.
“It’s a beautiful book. I wanted to get back to the Earth, don’t you see, like Richard does in the end. Or have you ever read Stevenson’s Prince Otto?”
Helen and Tibby groaned gently.
“That’s another beautiful book. You get back to the Earth in that. I wanted—” He mouthed affectedly. Then through the mists of his culture came a hard fact, hard as a pebble. “I walked all the Saturday night,” said Leonard. “I walked.” A thrill of approval ran through the sisters. But culture closed in again. He asked whether they had ever read E. V. Lucas’s Open Road.
Said Helen: “No doubt it’s another beautiful book, but I’d rather hear about your road.”
“Oh, I walked.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know, nor for how long. It got too dark to see my watch. ”
“Were you walking alone, may I ask?”
“Yes,” he said, straightening himself; “but we’d been talking it over at the office. There’s been a lot of talk at the office lately about these things. The fellows there said one steers by the Pole Star, and I looked it up in the celestial atlas, but once out of doors everything gets so mixed—”
“Don’t talk to me about the Pole Star,” interrupted Helen, who was becoming interested. “I know its little ways. It goes round and round, and you go round after it.”
“Well, I lost it entirely. First of all the street lamps, then the trees, and towards morning it got cloudy.”
Tibby, who preferred his comedy undiluted, slipped from the room. He knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry, and did not want to hear him trying. Margaret and Helen remained. Their brother influenced them more than they knew: in his absence they were stirred to enthusiasm more easily.
“Where did you start from?” cried Margaret. “Do tell us more.”
“I took the underground to Wimbledon. As I came out of the office I said to myself: ‘I must have a walk once in a way. If I don’t take this walk now, I shall never take it.’ I had a bit of dinner at Wimbledon, and then—”
“But not good country there, is it?”
“It was gas-lamps for hours. Still, I had all the night, and being out was the great thing. I did get into woods, too, presently.”
“Yes, go on,” said Helen.
“You’ve no idea how difficult uneven ground is when it’s dark.”
“Did you actually go off the roads?”
“Oh yes. I always meant to go off the roads, but the worst of it is that it’s more difficult to find one’s way.”
“Mr. Bast, you’re a born adventurer,” laughed Margaret. “No professional athlete would have attempted what you’ve done. It’s a wonder your walk didn’t end in a broken neck. Whatever did your wife say?”
“Professional athletes never move without lanterns and compasses,” said Helen. “Besides, they can’t walk. It tires them. Go on.”
“I felt like R. L. S. You probably remember how in Virginibus—”
“Yes, but the wood. This ‘ere wood. How did you get out of it?”
“I managed one wood, and found a road the other side which went a good bit uphill. I rather fancy it was those North Downs, for the road went off into grass, and I got into another wood. That was awful, with gorse bushes. I did wish I’d ne
ver come, but suddenly it got light—just while I seemed going under one tree. Then I found a road down to a station, and took the first train I could back to London.”
“But was the dawn wonderful?” asked Helen.
With unforgettable sincerity he replied: “No.” The word flew again like a pebble from the sling. Down toppled all that had seemed ignoble or literary in his talk, down toppled tiresome R. L. S. and the “love of the earth” and his silk top-hat. In the presence of these women Leonard had arrived, and he spoke with a flow, an exultation, that he had seldom known.
“The dawn was only grey, it was nothing to mention—”
“Just a grey evening turned upside down, I know.”
“—and I was too tired to lift up my head to look at it, and so cold too. I’m glad I did it, and yet at the time it bored me more than I can say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon—I meant it to last me all night like other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a difference. Why, when you’re walking you want, as it were, a breakfast and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I’d nothing but a packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn’t what you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did stick. I—I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what’s the good—I mean, the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day, same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any other game. You ought to see once in a way what’s going on outside, if it’s only nothing particular after all.”
“I should just think you ought,” said Helen, sitting on the edge of the table.
The sound of a lady’s voice recalled him from sincerity, and he said: “Curious it should all come about from reading something of Richard Jefferies.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Bast, but you’re wrong there. It didn’t. It came from something far greater.”
But she could not stop him. Borrow was imminent after Jefferies—Borrow, Thoreau, and sorrow. R. L. S. brought up the rear, and the outburst ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The fault is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination. And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’s books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them; and his dawn, though revealing nothing but monotones, was part of the eternal sunrise that shows George Borrow Stonehenge.