CHAPTER FIVE
I had gone out into the blackness of the night with a firmer step, witha new assurance. I had had my interview, the thing was definitelysettled; the first thing in my life that had ever been definitelysettled; and I felt I must tell Lea before I slept. Lea had helped me agood deal in the old days--he had helped everybody, for that matter. Youwould probably find traces of Lea's influence in the beginnings of everywriter of about my decade; of everybody who ever did anything decent,and of some who never got beyond the stage of burgeoning decently. Hehad given me the material help that a publisher's reader could give,until his professional reputation was endangered, and he had given methe more valuable help that so few can give. I had grown ashamed of thisone-sided friendship. It was, indeed, partly because of that that I hadtaken to the wilds--to a hut near a wood, and all the rest of what nowseemed youthful foolishness. I had desired to live alone, not to behelped any more, until I could make _some_ return. As a natural result Ihad lost nearly all my friends and found myself standing there as nakedas on the day I was born.
All around me stretched an immense town--an immense blackness.People--thousands of people hurried past me, had errands, had aims, hadothers to talk to, to trifle with. But I had nobody. This immense city,this immense blackness, had no interiors for me. There were housefronts, staring windows, closed doors, but nothing within; no rooms, nohollow places. The houses meant nothing to me, nothing more than thesolid earth. Lea remained the only one the thought of whom was not likethe reconsideration of an ancient, a musty pair of gloves.
He lived just anywhere. Being a publisher's reader, he had to reportupon the probable commercial value of the manuscripts that unknownauthors sent to his employer, and I suppose he had a settled plan oflife, of the sort that brought him within the radius of a given spot atapparently irregular, but probably ordered, intervals. It seemed to beno more than a piece of good luck that let me find him that night in alittle room in one of the by-ways of Bloomsbury. He was sprawlingangularly on a cane lounge, surrounded by whole rubbish heaps ofmanuscript, a grey scrawl in a foam of soiled paper. He peered up at meas I stood in the doorway.
"Hullo!" he said, "what's brought you here? Have a manuscript?" He wavedan abstracted hand round him. "You'll find a chair somewhere." A claretbottle stood on the floor beside him. He took it by the neck and passedit to me.
He bent his head again and continued his reading. I displaced threebulky folio sheaves of typewritten matter from a chair and seated myselfbehind him. He continued to read.
"I hadn't seen these rooms before," I said, for want of something tosay.
The room was not so much scantily as arbitrarily furnished. It containeda big mahogany sideboard; a common deal table, an extraordinary kind offolding wash-hand-stand; a deal bookshelf, the cane lounge, and threeunrelated chairs. There were three framed Dutch prints on the marblemantel-shelf; striped curtains before the windows. A square, cheaplooking-glass, with a razor above it, hung between them. And on thefloor, on the chairs, on the sideboard, on the unmade bed, the profusionof manuscripts.
He scribbled something on a blue paper and began to roll a cigarette. Hetook off his glasses, rubbed them, and closed his eyes tightly.
"Well, and how's Sussex?" he asked.
I felt a sudden attack of what, essentially, was nostalgia. The factthat I was really leaving an old course of life, was actually andfinally breaking with it, became vividly apparent. Lea, you see, stoodfor what was best in the mode of thought that I was casting aside. Hestood for the aspiration. The brooding, the moodiness; all the childishqualities, were my own importations. I was a little ashamed to tell him,that--that I was going to live, in fact. Some of the glory of it hadgone, as if one of two candles I had been reading by had flickered out.But I told him, after a fashion, that I had got a job at last.
"Oh, I congratulate you," he said.
"You see," I began to combat the objections he had not had time toutter, "even for my work it will be a good thing--I wasn't seeingenough of life to be able to...."
"Oh, of course not," he answered--"it'll be a good thing. You must havebeen having a pretty bad time."
It struck me as abominably unfair. I hadn't taken up with the _Hour_because I was tired of having a bad time, but for other reasons: becauseI had felt my soul being crushed within me.
"You're mistaken," I said. And I explained. He answered, "Yes, yes," butI fancied that he was adding to himself--"They all say that." I grewmore angry. Lea's opinion formed, to some extent, the background of mylife. For many years I had been writing quite as much to satisfy him asto satisfy myself, and his coldness chilled me. He thought that my heartwas not in my work, and I did not want Lea to think that of me. I triedto explain as much to him--but it was difficult, and he gave me no help.
I knew there had been others that he had fostered, only to see them, inthe end, drift into the back-wash. And now he thought I was goingtoo....
"Here," he said, suddenly breaking away from the subject, "look atthat."
He threw a heavy, ribbon-bound mass of matter into my lap, andrecommenced writing his report upon its saleability as a book. He was ofopinion that it was too delicately good to attract his employer's classof readers. I began to read it to get rid of my thoughts. The heavyblack handwriting of the manuscript sticks in my mind's eye. It musthave been good, but probably not so good as I then thought it--I haveentirely forgotten all about it; otherwise, I remember that we arguedafterward: I for its publication; he against. I was thinking of thewretched author whose fate hung in the balance. He became a patheticpossibility, hidden in the heart of the white paper that borepen-markings of a kind too good to be marketable. There was somethingappalling in Lea's careless--"Oh, it's too good!" He was used to it, butas for me, in arguing that man's case I suddenly became aware that I waspleading my own--pleading the case of my better work. Everything thatLea said of this work, of this man, applied to my work; and to myself."There's no market for that sort of thing, no public; this book's beenall round the trade. I've had it before. The man will never come to thefront. He'll take to inn-keeping, and that will finish him off." That'swhat he said, and he seemed to be speaking of me. Some one was knockingat the door of the room--tentative knocks of rather flabby knuckles. Itwas one of those sounds that one does not notice immediately. The manmight have been knocking for ten minutes. It happened to be Lea'semployer, the publisher of my first book. He opened the door at last,and came in rather peremptorily. He had the air of having worked himselfinto a temper--of being intellectually rather afraid of Lea, but ofbeing, for this occasion, determined to assert himself.
The introduction to myself--I had never met him--which took place afterhe had hastily brought out half a sentence or so, had the effect ofputting him out of his stride, but, after having remotely acknowledgedthe possibility of my existence, he began again.
The matter was one of some delicacy. I myself should have hesitated tobroach it before a third party, even one so negligible as myself. ButMr. Polehampton apparently did not. He had to catch the last post.
Lea, it appeared, had advised him to publish a manuscript by a mancalled Howden--a moderately known writer....
"But I am disturbed to find, Mr. Lea, that is, my daughter tells me thatthe manuscript is not ... is not at all the thing.... In fact, it'squite--and--eh ... I suppose it's too late to draw back?"
"Oh, it's altogether too late for _that_" Lea said, nonchalantly."Besides, Howden's theories always sell."
"Oh, yes, of course, of course," Mr. Polehampton interjected, hastily,"but don't you think now ... I mean, taking into consideration thedamage it may do our reputation ... that we ought to ask Mr. Howden toaccept, say fifty pounds less than...."
"I should think it's an excellent idea," Lea said. Mr. Polehamptonglanced at him suspiciously, then turned to me.
"You see," he began to explain, "one has to be _so_ careful about thesethings."
"Oh, I can quite understand," I answered. There was something so naivein the ma
n's point of view that I had felt my heart go out to him. Andhe had taught me at last how it is that the godly grow fat at theexpense of the unrighteous. Mr. Polehampton, however, was not fat. Hewas even rather thin, and his peaked grey hair, though it was actuallywell brushed, looked as if it ought not to have been. He had even ananxious expression. People said he speculated in some stock or other,and I should say they were right.
"I ... eh ... believe I published your first book ... I lost money byit, but I can assure you that I bear no grudge--almost a hundred pounds.I bear no grudge...."
The man was an original. He had no idea that I might feel insulted;indeed, he really wanted to be pleasant, and condescending, andforgiving. I didn't feel insulted. He was too big for his clothes, gavethat impression at least, and he wore black kid gloves. Moreover, hiseyes never left the cornice of the room. I saw him rather often afterthat night, but never without his gloves and never with his eyeslowered.
"And ... eh ..." he asked, "what are you doing now, Mr. Granger?"
Lea told him Fox had taken me up; that I was going to go. I suddenlyremembered it was said of Fox that everyone he took up did "go." Thefact was obviously patent to Mr. Polehampton. He unbent with remarkablesuddenness; it reminded me of the abrupt closing of a stiff umbrella. Hebecame distinctly and crudely cordial--hoped that we should worktogether again; once more reminded me that he had published my firstbook (the words had a different savour now), and was enchanted todiscover that we were neighbours in Sussex. My cottage was within fourmiles of his villa, and we were members of the same golf club.
"We must have a game--several games," he said. He struck me as the sortof man to find a difficulty in getting anyone to play with him.
After that he went away. As I had said, I did not dislike him--he waspathetic; but his tone of mind, his sudden change of front, unnerved me.It proved so absolutely that I was "going to go," and I did not want togo--in that sense. The thing is a little difficult to explain, I wantedto take the job because I wanted to have money--for a little time, for ayear or so, but if I once began to go, the temptation would be strong tokeep on going, and I was by no means sure that I should be able toresist the temptation. So many others had failed. What if I wrote toFox, and resigned?... Lea was deep in a manuscript once more.
"Shall I throw it up?" I asked suddenly. I wanted the thing settled.
"Oh, go on with it, by all means go on with it," Lea answered.
"And ...?" I postulated.
"Take your chance of the rest," he supplied; "you've had a pretty badtime."
"I suppose," I reflected, "if I haven't got the strength of mind to getout of it in time, I'm not up to much."
"There's that, too," he commented, "the game may not be worth thecandle." I was silent. "You must take your chance when you get it," headded.
He had resumed his reading, but he looked up again when I gave way, as Idid after a moment's thought.
"Of course," he said, "it will probably be all right. You do your best.It's a good thing ... might even do you good."
In that way the thing went through. As I was leaving the room, the ideaoccurred to me, "By the way, you don't know anything of a clique: theDimensionists--_Fourth_ Dimensionists?"
"Never heard of them," he negatived. "What's their specialty?"
"They're going to inherit the earth," I answered.
"Oh, I wish them joy," he closed.
"You don't happen to be one yourself? I believe it's a sort of secretsociety." He wasn't listening. I went out quietly.
The night effects of that particular neighbourhood have always affectedme dismally. That night they upset me, upset me in much the same way,acting on much the same nerves as the valley in which I had walked withthat puzzling girl. I remembered that she had said she stood for thefuture, that she was a symbol of my own decay--the whole silly farrago,in fact. I reasoned with myself--that I was tired, out of trim, and soon, that I was in a fit state to be at the mercy of any nightmare. Iplunged into Southampton Row. There was safety in the contact with thecrowd, in jostling, in being jostled.