CHAPTER SEVENTEENToo Good to be True
THE dulling of Davidina’s eye had a fatal effect upon the career of Mr. Trimblerigg. It removed the last obstacle from his way to thinking himself good. His own conscience had been malleable; but hers, serving in its place, had kept an integrity of its own which always left him with a doubt. Now the doubt vanished, and on that mercurial and magnetic temperament it had a surprising effect.
I wonder whether readers have realized the extraordinary spiritual comfort which Mr. Trimblerigg had derived from the friendly disarmament of Davidina’s suspicions. He had just come through a phase of success and public applause, with its accompanying sense of power, unprecedented in his career. But behind it all was the uneasy sense that he had been remiss in the protection of his own interests—that it had been a tight squeeze, and that only by the kind favour of Heaven had he got through not merely creditably, but with so much to spare.
The Native Industries shares might soon be—as he had joked to Davidina—a good investment; but he had blundered in holding them, or, at least, in not getting rid of them before starting on his campaign; and it always hurt Mr. Trimblerigg very much to feel that—even in his own eyes alone—he had made a fool of himself. It was obvious therefore that to make a fool of the redoubtable Davidina, who had for so many years given him an uneasy conscience whenever she wished, had redressed the balance. And so, according to his own practical standard, Mr. Trimblerigg stood purged and purified of self-reproof, with his conscience beautifully easy once more. He had fought uponthe side of the angels, and the battle was won hands down; in the process, by embarking all his savings in a venture which temporarily had crashed, he had seriously reduced his income; but even that, thanks to the prospect presented to him by Davidina did not now concern him, it even pleased him, for it was a proof of his disinterested devotion to the cause he had championed. And so, looking at himself from all sides, the spiritual, the public, and the domestic, he was abundantly satisfied with what he saw. Having made good, he felt good; and elated by that feeling, he decided that the family—that part of it which was not away at school—should have a holiday.
In order to begin the holiday as soon as possible—for himself as well as the others—he sent off Caroline and the little ones, remaining himself for a few days to clear up a few ends of work still in arrears at his central office, and in spite of those arrears, when he had seen Caroline into the train, his sense of holiday had already begun. For in spite of all the goodness that was in him, he continued to find her dull, with a dullness that did not diminish. And yet, he told himself, he was fond of her, and had never denied her anything that was her due. So, in that matter also, his conscience had left him nothing with which to reproach himself.
That day, when his office work was over, he took recreation in a characteristic way. Having bought some quite good cigars, he mounted to the top of a bus, and started to explore the metropolis, or, more accurately, to let destiny explore it for him. His method was to accompany the bus to its terminus, and there change into another, leaving chance to decide in what fresh direction it should carry him, east or west, north or south. In this way,through a variegation of lighted streets—from some wearing the shadiest subterfuge of life to others of a flamboyant brilliance, and back again, for a couple of hours and more he thoroughly enjoyed himself—seeing unconsciously in the kaleidoscopic life seething around him a reflex image of his own, and in it felt justified. It was all so quick, unexpected, and yet congruous, so criss-cross and various, and vitally abounding, and yet, in its main current uniform, flowing on with one general purpose common to all—meaning business, whatever the business might be. And here, sitting enthroned above it on the front seat of a swift-going motor-bus, he, a man who on the right side of middle age, had become almost famous, went happy and unrecognized, his hat drawn low over his eyes, his coat collar turned up to meet it, absorbing that large life of the crowd with which so deeply and instinctively he felt himself to be one.
And meanwhile destiny did its work. To the seat beside him, vacated at the last stopping-place, came a fresh occupant—a woman quick and alert of movement, well-dressed, not elderly. Before he had been able unobtrusively to get a look at her face, the conductor was collecting her fare. He heard a familiar voice naming a suburban destination; a moment later, quick and decided, annoyed rather than dismayed, the voice said, ‘I’ve lost my purse!’ ‘Allow me!’ said Mr. Trimblerigg. ‘Good evening.’ He tendered the money as he spoke.
One look at him, and Miss Isabel Sparling rose to go. ‘You shall do nothing of the sort,’ she said, ‘I’ll get down.’
And then—destiny. In the road below a coster’s barrow, cutting across the track of the swift-moving traffic, collided, shed a wheel, and sat jammed under the head ofthe oncoming motor-bus. The impact which lifted all the seated occupants from their seats, caused Miss Isabel Sparling to disappear from view. Breaking her fall by a well-sustained clutch upon the rail, she struck the hood, and slid sideways into the upset apple-cart.
Mr. Trimblerigg, with admirable agility, heels first, scrambled after her. The first to get to her, he found her conveniently unconscious, and taking possession of his implacable foe in her now defenceless condition, he hailed a taxi and carried her away to hospital.
There, having learned that she was not dangerously hurt, and would probably have recovered sufficiently to give account of herself in an hour’s time, he left money to pay for conveyances or telegrams, and took himself off, a nameless benefactor, whose identity Miss Isabel Sparling might either nose out or ignore according to taste, but could not do otherwise than suspect.
And so, if there was one spot in his kaleidoscopic world where Mr. Trimblerigg, in retrospect, had not hitherto felt quite happy, he was able to feel happy now. His embrace of Isabel Sparling’s inanimate form, the first time for more than fifteen years—had given him the sudden inspiration that now, in his own time and in his own way, he should take up and fulfil the rash promise of his early youth, and be voice and champion of the ministerial call to women.
For now at last he had the standing and a following whereof he was the accepted leader, which would make the achievement no longer theirs but his, and give credit where the credit was due. Through him, almost through him alone, the chains of the Puto-Congo natives were already being struck off; following upon that, throughhim, the chains of sex-disability should go likewise. There was no time like the present. He would take a brief holiday, and then he would begin.
He dined at an old-fashioned restaurant in the city, which had its traditions; the head waiter, with recognition in his eye, but not a word said, installed him in the seat of honour, the seat once habitually occupied by one of the great eighteenth-century emancipators of the human brain. The attention pleased him, still more the respectful silence with which it was done—the acceptance of his right to be there incognito without remark.
He ate well of a wonderful pie containing oysters, and he drank white wine, followed by Stilton cheese, port, and a cigar. To all these good things life had gently led him away from the early training of his childhood. He accepted them now without scruple and felt the better for them.
When he got home, the elderly domestic, now in sole charge of the house since the family’s departure, had gone up to bed. About half an hour later, Mr. Trimblerigg, comfortably sleepy, went up to his own.
From habit, because he usually needed it, he took a bed-side book and began briefly to read; five minutes generally sufficed; it did so now.
The book he had chosen was of poems by an author whom he felt that he ought to admire more than he did; there was a splendour of beauty in them which yet managed somehow to escape him. This slight intellectual separation of mind from mind was good as a sedative: it helped his own to wander. His first selection from the poems was a very famous one, but too spiritual and elusive for his present mood: a transcendental game of hide-and-seek,he could not quite follow. He passed on to the next; large drops of sleep were already entering his brain, and he knew that presently it would be making nonsense; but the opening lines attracted him, gave him a picture of which he himself became a part. In the middle of every line there was a star—why, he did not know; but it gave an effect. He liked it, and making an effort to keep awake for a few moments longer, he read on:
‘Athwart the sod which is treading for God* the poet paced with his splendid eyes;
‘Isabel Starling he stately passes—’
No, that wasn’t right; Sparling, not Starling. No, no, what was he thinking about? Not Sparling, or Starling, or anything resembling it. ‘Paradise verdure he stately passes.’ That was better. The following line had long words in it which he didn’t understand. The next verse started pleasantly—
‘The angels at play on its fields of Summer* (their wild wings rustled his guide’s cigars).’ No, not cigars, something else, word he didn’t know: cigars would do.
‘Looked up from dessert at the passing comer* as they pelted each other with handfuls of stars.’
Ah! That was why the stars were there, they’d got loose on to the printed page: stars did, if you happened to get a knock or a fall.
‘And Isabel Sparling with startled feet rose,* hand on sword, by their tethered cars.’
Wrong, wrong! not ‘Isabel Sparling’—‘warden spirits’: whatever made him say Isabel Sparling? she wasn’t a warden spirit or anything like one. But ‘tethered cars’ was right: ‘motor-bus’ would have been better.
After that his reading ceased to be consecutive or toconvey any sense—only colour and a sort of atmosphere. ‘Plumes night-tinctured, englobed and cinctured,’ then a star, followed by ‘saints’: ‘crystalline pale,’ and another star: ‘Heaven’—ah, yes, Heaven, the place the stars came from: then ‘the immutable crocean dawn’—crocean meant yellow—‘enthusing’—no, not enthusing ‘effusing.’ ‘Crocean dawn effusing’ meant ‘yellow dawn coming.’ If that was what he meant, why couldn’t the fellow say so? Why did poets always choose the difficult words? Ahead lay more light and colour, mixed with other things he didn’t fully understand—or want to; he was getting too sleepy for it. ‘Bickering Conference’: no, not conference: ‘gonfalons’: better go back and read again, he was only making nonsense; but ‘Crocean dawn effusing’ was nonsense too. ‘Ribbed fire,’ ‘flame-plumed fan’—‘globing clusters,’ and stars everywhere with no sense to them. But the poet had splendid eyes—must have had, to see all that!
His lids closed, then opened again: he had almost gone to sleep with the light still on. ‘Crocean dawn’: half consciously he switched it off—not the dawn, the light; and with the crocean dawn still in his head slept till morning.