"Ridgeon: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart; sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me, but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen....Sir Patrick: You are sure there are no voices?Ridgeon: Quite sure.Sir Patrick: Then it's only foolishness.Ridgeon: Have you ever met anything like it before in your practice?Sir Patrick: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see. It's not serious—if you're careful.Ridgeon: About my food?Sir Patrick: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."Bernard Shaw: "The Doctor's Dilemma."
"Ridgeon: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart; sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me, but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen....
Sir Patrick: You are sure there are no voices?
Ridgeon: Quite sure.
Sir Patrick: Then it's only foolishness.
Ridgeon: Have you ever met anything like it before in your practice?
Sir Patrick: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see. It's not serious—if you're careful.
Ridgeon: About my food?
Sir Patrick: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."
Bernard Shaw: "The Doctor's Dilemma."
I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet returning from India by P & O are usuallyso bleached and dried by the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are cherishing an illusion.
I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large enough to hold a rein.
When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked, golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with oldJasper to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't. I've had my fun."
The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third; but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in the suffrage agitation.
"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"
"Twenty years," I said. "You have—grown, rather."
She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure, and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.
I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only differences—until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I hardly know what to call it—homage, allegiance, devotion. She impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this life—Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more—with the feeling that I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.
Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.
"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose wedidmeet?"
"The last time I heard of you...." I began.
"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait a bit—'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front—he's too good for this world—he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed—that is, if we ever did meet."
"As I was saying...."
"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time we met...."
"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary to your happiness. It was anidée fixe, you were a fanatic, you broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an insufficient allowance of bread and water."
Joyce shook her head sadly.
"I was an awful child."
"Was?"
She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.
"Haven't I improved?"
"You were a wonderfully pretty child."
"Oh, never mind looks!"
"But I do. They're the only things worth having."
"They're not enough."
"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."
"In any case they don't last."
"And while they do, you slight them."
"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow, childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."
"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a dinner-service to get a pony."
"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"
"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you.Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.You are still not content with looking extremely nice, youmustbreak a dinner-service now and again."
Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident proposition.
"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.
"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince you of your error."
"I get condemned to that now."
"Dull eating, isn't it?"
"I don't know. I've never tried."
"You did then?"
"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."
We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.
"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful child of five that I remember so well."
"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.
"What's that?"
"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.
How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs. Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table, living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the future as the past....
I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into the Prime Minister's private room.
The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without thecertainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into the scale of the Opposition candidate.
Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat and Mouse" Bill.
I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often that Joyce herself would stick at nothing—fire, flood or dynamite—to secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right, responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and burning down unique, priceless houses.
"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I renewed my acquaintance withArthur Roden to-day, and he invited me down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant movement."
Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of mankind.
"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't you?"
"He seemed quite certain of the result."
"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."
I reminded her that she had not answered my question.
"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers," I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"
Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.
"What wouldyoudo?" she asked.
"Give it up," I answered. "Yield toforce majeure. I've lived long enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."
"But if wewon'tgive it up?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Whatcanyou do?"
"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the Amendment'srejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called theNew Militant, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign, rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."
Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.
"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away, or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you adopted militant tactics."
"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."
"I don't know that I can."
Joyce turned to her sister.
"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"
"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.
"There are so many without you," Joyce answered,laying her hand on my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."
She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.
"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still the stronger."
"And woman the more resourceful."
"Perhaps."
"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished her coffee and drew on her gloves.
"Warà outrance," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what after the war?"
"When we've got the vote...." she began.
"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.
"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win, do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.
"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"
"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was very angry and whipped her with a crop."
"Well?"
"That's all. Only—he said afterwards that she took it rather well, there was no crying."
I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.
"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.
"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.
"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."
Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out of the dining-room with Aintree.
"She'sworth some sacrifice."
"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation. She's up against the existingdivorce law, and that's buttressed by every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."
Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.
"Joyce?" she repeated.
"You were Joyce when last we met."
"That was twenty years ago."
"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."
"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"
"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with laborious antithesis.
"Then I haven't improved?"
"You're perfect—off duty, in private life."
"I have no private life."
"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."
"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I say good-bye to you."
"But not for good?"
"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If you like to come in as an ally...?"
"Do you think you could convert me?"
She looked at me closely.
"Yes."
I shook my head.
"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.
"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."
"How long will you be in England?"
"I've no idea."
"Six months? In six months I'll make you thePrince Rupert of the militant army. Then when we're sent to prison—Sir Arthur Roden's a friend of yours—you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and we'll tap on the dividing wall."
I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however, for captious criticism.
"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from your militant army."
"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"
"I've never found anything worth doing before."
"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."
"They haven't the monopoly of that."
Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the word "Cheek!"
"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of the law."
"I don't expect to hearyoucalling the law and the prophets in aid."
"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.
"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I am going to make the best of it."
"How?"
"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."
"How?" she repeated.
"I'll tell you in six months' time."
Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her sister vanished from sight.
"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.
"Which?" I asked.
"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.
"They are astonishingly alike," I saidà proposof nothing.
"They're often mistaken for each other."
"I can well believe it."
"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.
I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.
"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.
"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping imperceptibly away."
I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible. And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell. It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English imagination....
"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"
"What influence haveIgot over her?"
"Some—not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens,I've no control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."
"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I objected.
"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."
The play which the Seraph was taking us to see wasThe Heir-at-Law, and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going, and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know; possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats, possibly because at that age it amused us to pose asvirtuosi, and say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted substantial cutting.
"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "wereThe Second Mrs. Tanqueray, andA Woman of No Importance."
Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....
"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.
"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.
"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote plays."
"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"
"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the coming men."
I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage: then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his "Child of Misery."
I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece of self-revelation—"Jean Christophe"—which in many ways it so closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and "Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than "Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero—for want of abetter name—was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you the childhood and upbringing of Rupert—and incidentally revealed to my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how the third volume would shape....
"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.
"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.
From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that occasion for the first, last and only time.
The Heir-at-Lawwent with a fine swing. There were calls at the end of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of "Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.
"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.
"How do you know?"
Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was not in the house.
We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.
"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.
He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs. Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be credited with the dominant mind of the party.
"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill were four gigantic words:—
Defeat of Suffrage Amendment.
Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.
"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I go to bed."
"When shall I see you again?" I asked.
She held out a small gloved hand.
"You won't. It's good-bye."
"But why?"
"It's warà outrance."
"That's no concern of mine."
"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."
I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.
"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.
She shook her head provokingly.
"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason, justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when I think of my wasted chances...."
"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."
"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put the two women inside it.
"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.
"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."
"I shall convert you."
"If there's any conversion...."
"When are you coming?" she interrupted.
"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun with the Rodens."
Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and then abruptly congratulated me.
"What on?" I asked.
"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"
"Why?"
"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked itself epileptically away from the kerb.
"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ... I see your soul."—John Masefield, "The Tragedy of Nan."
"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ... I see your soul."—John Masefield, "The Tragedy of Nan."
I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an invitation to supper.
"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me alone," I heard him murmuring.
At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down by myself, and think—think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion of thinking.
"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose, I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at dinner."
"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of what he calls "drugs." At the same time I donot like to see boys of six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the need.
"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.
"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled to-night."
He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for the powders had trembled more than was necessary.
"You were all right at dinner," I said.
"That was some time ago," he answered.
"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."
"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.
Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told him to talk to me.
"What about?" he asked.
"Anything."
"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."
"Oh?"
"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past three hours in particular."
"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.
He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs crossed.
"Don't you think it strange and—unsettling?Three months ago life was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt lonely—lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on? You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent, that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall tell you how I know."
I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.
"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true, wasn't it?"
"Suppose it was?"
His shoulders gave a slight shrug.
"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."
I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.
"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"
"Not the world."
"You?"
"As a rule. Not more than other people."
"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"
"I can with a good many men."
"Not women?"
He shook his head.
"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and starts—jerkily; it's hard to follow them."
"How do you do it?"
"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in succession—you justsee."
"I'm hanged if I do."
"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be. You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're flabbergasted thatIshould be the person. You're impotently angry. Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little thought—will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head because it'll hurt more. Still another thought—how hard to hit? You don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide to be on the safeside and hit rather gently. Then—then at last you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"
I thought it over very carefully.
"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each other. There isn't time."
The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.
"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into such attitudes."
"How do you account for it?" I asked.
"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."
I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.
"Anything else?" I asked.
He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh—er—porter, taxi, please."
"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.
"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"
"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.
He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."
I jumped up and ran into the hall.
"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.
"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.
I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.
"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get interested."
He shook his head.
"Why not?" I persisted.
"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot more that I haven't told you about. I only——"
"Well?"
"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather—abnormal."
"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"
"Such as?"
"Occupy your mind more."
"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.
As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace, our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent conversation.
As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh train of thought.
"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness one employs in advancing these general propositions.
"What about?"
"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that gets published,the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and observation, comes to you—by some freak of nature—ready made. You could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"
"I might try."
"I know what that means."
"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your advice."
"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.
"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."
"I'm still waiting to see the result."
"You've seen it."
"What do you mean?"
"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."
"In my sleep?"
"I hope not."
"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."
"I didn't write in my own name."
"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.
His lips opened, and then shut in silence.
"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.
"It won't go any further," I promised.
"I don't want even you to know."
"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."
We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us thought of turning in.
"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the Wellington Street crossing and werewaiting for a stream of traffic to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.
"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.
"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.
"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.
"Try something a little less well—known: get hold of a book that's been published anonymously."
"'Gretchen' was published over anom de plume."
"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."
"You don't know him?"
"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you didn't."
"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.
"A mere quibble," I protested.
"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody whohasmet him?"
I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.
"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.
"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he answered in parenthesis.
He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the fantastic tangle was straightened out.
Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of "Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the same way:even theHeir-at-LawI had just witnessed came to a similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without criticism or suggestion from the author.
I could see no reason for anom de plumein the case of "Gretchen" or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering termination, had taken place a few months—a few weeks, I might say—before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona Macleod.'"
"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence. "You think after what's passed...."
"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he hesitated.
"I know. 'Tisn't that—altogether. It's the future."
"What's going to happen?"
"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him writing plays."
Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before mustering resolution to take a step forward....
"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.
"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out; as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.
"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....
I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the close of the previouswinter he had found himself in attendance at a costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.
The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met, but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and frightened.
It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and intimately withthe Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched away. Gradually—like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist—the outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.
The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters, with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.
"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean? Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've never felt so ... soconsciousof anybody in my life. I saw her for those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall meet her again——"
"Don't you want to?"
He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once more in mine.
"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ... she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink. He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was reluctant to be left to his own company.
"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"
He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.
"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a diversion. Come to oblige me."
He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat and jerking it out straight.
"All right," he said at last.
"You will be my salvation."
"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered, turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by reflectingthat a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered occasional pangs of disappointment?
Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed. Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More charitable than the Psalmist—from whom indeed he differs in all material respects—Brian could not bring himself to believe that any one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked. At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.
For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge; indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.
When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would cause me no trouble, and an inconsistentexhortation that I was not to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle"; "Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I had passed out of the life of all three—presumably for ever.
In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.
I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited—tasting life for the first time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before wedlock called her tothe responsibilities of the drab, workaday world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.
I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board theBessarabia. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.
"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her ingenious explanation.
As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a bachelor party."