CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We reached London somewhat late in the evening--in the twilight of asummer day. There was the hurry and bustle of arrival, a hurry andbustle that changed the tenor of my thoughts and broke their train. As Istood reflecting before the door of the carriage, I felt a friendlypressure of a hand on my shoulder.
"You'll see to that," Churchill's voice said in my ear. "You'll set thecopyists to work."
"I'll go to the Museum to-morrow," I said. There were certain extractsto be made for the "Life of Cromwell"--extracts from pamphlets that wehad not conveniently at disposal. He nodded, walked swiftly toward hisbrougham, opened the door and entered.
I remember so well that last sight of him--of his long, slim figurebending down for the entrance, woefully solitary, woefully weighted;remember so well the gleam of the carriage panels reflecting the murkylight of the bare London terminus, the attitude of the coachman stifflyreining back the horse; the thin hand that reached out, a gleam ofwhite, to turn the gleaming handle. There was something intimatelysuggestive of the man in the motion of that hand, in its tentativeoutstretching, its gentle, half-persuasive--almost theoretic--grasp ofthe handle. The pleasure of its friendly pressure on my shoulder carriedme over some minutes of solitude; its weight on my body removing anotherfrom my mind. I had feared that my ineffective disclosure had chilledwhat of regard he had for me. He had said nothing, his manner had saidnothing, but I had feared. In the railway carriage he had sat remotefrom me, buried in papers. But that touch on my shoulder was enough toset me well with myself again, if not to afford scope for pleasantimprovisation. It at least showed me that he bore me no ill-will,otherwise he would hardly have touched me. Perhaps, even, he wasgrateful to me, not for service, but for ineffectual good-will. WhateverI read into it, that was the last time he spoke to me, and the last timehe touched me. And I loved him very well. Things went so quickly afterthat.
In a moderately cheerful frame of mind I strolled the few yards thatseparated me from my club--intent on dining. In my averseness tosolitude I sat down at a table where sat already a little, bald-headed,false-toothed Anglo-Indian, a man who bored me into fits of nervousexcitement. He was by way of being an incredibly distant uncle of myown. As a rule I avoided him, to-night I dined with him. He was a personof interminable and incredibly inaccurate reminiscences. His longresidence in an indigo-producing swamp had affected his memory, whichwas supported by only very occasional visits to England.
He told me tales of my poor father and of my poor, dear mother, and ofMr. Bromptons and Mrs. Kenwards who had figured on their visiting listsaway back in the musty sixties.
"Your poor, dear father was precious badly off then," he said; "he had ahard struggle for it. I had a bad time of it too; worm had got at all myplantations, so I couldn't help him, poor chap. I think, mind you, KennyGranger treated him very badly. He might have done something for him--hehad influence, Kenny had."
Kenny was my uncle, the head of the family, the husband of my aunt.
"They weren't on terms," I said.
"Oh, I know, I know," the old man mumbled, "but still, for one's onlybrother ... However, you contrive to do yourselves pretty well. You'remaking your pile, aren't you? Someone said to me the other day--can'tremember who it was--that you were quite one of the rising men--quiteone of _the_ men."
"Very kind of someone," I said.
"And now I see," he went on, lifting up a copy of a morning paper, overwhich I had found him munching his salmon cutlet, "now I see your sisteris going to marry a cabinet minister. Ah!" he shook his poor, muddled,baked head, "I remember you both as tiny little dots."
"Why," I said, "she can hardly have been born then."
"Oh, yes," he affirmed, "that was when I came over in '78. Sheremembered, too, that I brought her over an ivory doll--she remembered."
"You have seen her?" I asked.
"Oh, I called two or three weeks--no, months--ago. She's the image ofyour poor, dear mother," he added, "at that age; I remarked upon it toyour aunt, but, of course, she could not remember. They were not marrieduntil after the quarrel."
A sudden restlessness made me bolt the rest of my tepid dinner. With myreturn to the upper world, and the return to me of a will, despair of asort had come back. I had before me the problem--the necessity--ofwinning her. Once I was out of contact with her she grew smaller, lessof an idea, more of a person--that one could win. And there were twoways. I must either woo her as one woos a person barred; must compel herto take flight, to abandon, to cast away everything; or I must go to heras an eligible suitor with the Etchingham acres and possibilities of afuture on that basis. This fantastic old man with his mumbledreminiscences spoilt me for the last. One remembers sooner or later thata county-man may not marry his reputed sister without scandal. And Icraved her intensely.
She had upon me the effect of an incredible stimulant; away from her Iwas like a drunkard cut off from his liquor; an opium-taker from hisdrug. I hardly existed; I hardly thought.
I had an errand at my aunt's house; had a message to deliver,sympathetic enquiries to make--and I wanted to see her, to gain somesort of information from her; to spy out the land; to ask her for terms.There was a change in the appearance of the house, an adventitiousbrightness that indicated the rise in the fortunes of the family. For methe house was empty and the great door closed hollowly behind me. Mysister was not at home. It seemed abominable to me that she should beout; that she could be talking to anyone, or could exist without me. Iwent sullenly across the road to the palings of the square. As I turnedthe corner I found my head pivoting on my neck. I was looking over myshoulder at the face of the house, was wondering which was her window.
"Like a love-sick boy--like a damn love-sick boy," I growled at myself.My sense of humour was returning to me. There began a pilgrimage insearch of companionship.
London was a desert more solitary than was believable. On thosebrilliant summer evenings the streets were crowded, were alive, bustledwith the chitter-chatter of footsteps, with the chitter-chatter ofvoices, of laughter.
It was impossible to walk, impossible to do more than tread on one's owntoes; one was almost blinded by the constant passing of faces. It waslike being in a wheat-field with one's eyes on a level with theindistinguishable ears. One was alone in one's intense contempt for allthese faces, all these contented faces; one towered intellectually abovethem; one towered into regions of rarefaction. And down below theyenjoyed themselves. One understood life better; they better how to live.That struck me then--in Oxford Street. There was the intensegood-humour, the absolute disregard of the minor inconveniences, of theinconveniences of a crowd, of the ignominy of being one of a crowd.There was the intense poetry of the soft light, the poetry of thesummer-night coolness, and they understood how to enjoy it. I turned upan ancient court near Bedford Row.
"In the name of God," I said, "I will enjoy ..." and I did. The poetryof those old deserted quarters came suddenly home to me--all the littlecommonplace thoughts; all the commonplace associations of GeorgianLondon. For the time I was done with the meanings of things.
I was seeking Lea--he was not at home. The quarter was honeycombed withthe homes of people one knows; of people one used to know, excellentyoung men who wrote for the papers, who sub-edited papers, who designedposters, who were always just the same. One forgot them for a year ortwo, one came across them again and found them just the same--stillwriting for the same papers, still sub-editing the same papers,designing the same posters. I was in the mood to rediscover them in theprivacies of their hearths, with the same excellent wives making faircopies of the same manuscripts, with the same gaiety of the sameindifferent whiskey, brown or pale or suspicious-looking, in heavy,square, cut-glass stoppered decanters, and with the same indifferentVirginian tobacco at the same level in the same jars.
I was in the mood for this stability, for the excellent householdarticle that was their view of life and literature. I wanted to see itagain, to hear again how it was filling the unvarying, all
otted columnsof the daily, the weekly, or the monthly journals. I wanted to breatheagain this mild atmosphere where there are no longer hopes or fears.But, alas!...
I rang bell after bell of that gloomy central London district. You knowwhat happens. One pulls the knob under the name of the person oneseeks--pulls it three, or, it may be, four times in vain. One rings thehousekeeper's bell; it reverberates, growing fainter and fainter,gradually stifled by a cavernous subterranean atmosphere. After an age ahead peeps round the opening door, the head of a hopeless anachronism,the head of a widow of early Victorian merit, or of an orphan ofincredible age. One asks for So-and-so--he's out; for Williams--he'sexpecting an increase of family, and has gone into the country withmadame. And Waring? Oh, he's gone no one knows where, and Johnson whoused to live at Number 44 only comes up to town on Tuesdays now. Iexhausted the possibilities of that part of Bloomsbury, thepossibilities of variety in the types of housekeepers. The rest ofLondon divided itself into bands--into zones. Between here andKensington the people that I knew could not be called on after dinner,those who lived at Chiswick and beyond were hyperborean--one was boundby the exigencies of time. It was ten o'clock as I stood reflecting on adoorstep--on Johnson's doorstep. I must see somebody, must talk tosomebody, before I went to bed in the cheerless room at the club. It wastrue I might find a political stalwart in the smoking-room--but that wasa last resort, a desperate and ignominious _pis aller_.
There was Fox, I should find him at the office. But it needed a changeof tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of thatindividual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethicallyexcellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent,middle-aged, rubicund, leery--a free lance of genius. I made thenecessary change in my tone of mind and ran him to earth.
The Watteau room was further enlivened by the introduction of a scarletplush couch of sumptuous design. By its side stood a couple of electriclights. The virulent green of their shades made the colours of thebe-shepherded wall-panels appear almost unearthly, and threw impossibleshadows on the deal partition. Round the couch stood chairs with pilesof papers neatly arranged on them; round it, on the floor, were morepapers lying like the leaves of autumn that one sings of. On it lay Fox,enveloped in a Shetland shawl--a good shawl that was the only honestpiece of workmanship in the torn-tawdry place. Fox was as rubicund asever, but his features were noticeably peaked and there were heavy linesunder his eyes--lines cast into deep shadow by the light by which he wasreading. I entered unannounced, and was greeted by an indifferent upwardglance that changed into one of something like pleasure as he made outmy features in the dim light.
"Hullo, you old country hawbuck," he said, with spasmodic jocularity;"I'm uncommon glad to see you." He came to a jerky close, with anindrawing of his breath. "I'm about done," he went on. "Same oldthing--sciatica. Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent outone of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I've been ever since.Well, and what's brought you up--don't answer, I know all about it. I'vegot to keep on talking until this particular spasm's over, or else Ishall scream and disturb the flow of Soane's leader. Well, and nowyou've come, you'll stop and help me to put the _Hour_ to bed, won'tyou? And then you can come and put me to bed."
He went on talking at high pressure, exaggerating his expressions,heightening his humorous touches with punctuations of rather wildlaughter. At last he came to a stop with a half suppressed "Ah!" and along indrawing of the breath.
"That's over," he said. "Give me a drop of brandy--there's a goodfellow." I gave him his nip. Then I explained to him that I couldn'twork for the _Hour_; that I wasn't on terms with de Mersch.
"Been dropping money over him?" he asked, cheerfully. I explained alittle more--that there was a lady.
"Oh, it's _that_," Fox said. "The man _is_ a fool ... But anyhow Merschdon't count for much in this particular show. He's no money in it even,so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it. It'sall right. Straight. He's only the small change."
"But," I said, "everyone says; you said yourself...."
"To be sure," he answered. "But you don't think that _I_ play secondfiddle to a bounder of that calibre. Not really?"
He looked at me with a certain seriousness. I remembered, as I hadremembered once before, that Fox was a personality--a power. I had neverrealised till then how entirely--fundamentally--different he was fromany other man that I knew. He was surprising enough to have belonged toanother race. He looked at me, not as if he cared whether I gave him hisdue or no, but as if he were astonished at my want of perception of thefact. He let his towzled head fall back upon the plush cushions. "Youmight kick him from here to Greenland for me," he said; "I wouldn'tweep. It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore hisequilibrium. I'm sick of him--I've told him so. I knew there _was_ awoman. But don't you worry; _I'm_ the man here."
"If that's the case ..." I said.
"Oh, that's it," he answered.
I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off hishands. It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming ofrusty armour; and I wanted to pass the night. I was not unused to it,as it happened. Fox had had several of these fits during my year, andduring most of them I had helped him through the night; once or twicefor three on end. Once I had had entire control for a matter of fivenights. But they gave me a new idea of Fox, those two or three weirdhours that night. It was as if I had never seen him before. The attacksgrew more virulent as the night advanced. He groaned and raved, and saidthings--oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one'snerves and everything else. At the height he sang hymns, and then, asthe fits passed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness. It gave me,I say, a new idea of Fox. It was as if, for all the time I had knownhim, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium ofhis pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments ofthe real man thrown to the surface. I grew, at last, almost afraid to bealone with him in the dead small hours of the morning, and longed forthe time when I could go to bed among the uninspiring, marble-toppedfurniture of my club.