VTHRIGSBYNothing I’ll bear from theeBut nakedness, thou detestable town!THATwas an appalling night. René lay with his wound roughly staunched. Ann crouched in the darkness by the bedside, fondling his hand, clinging to him, occasionally weeping. Both watched the light come creeping over the roofs and chimneys. Neither could say a word. Their eyes met, and hers were fixed hungrily on his face like a dog’s that has been whipped for fighting. She looked so scared that he desired only to reassure her.“Ann,” he said.She kissed his hand and fondled it, and pressed it to her cheek, and bathed it in her tears and kissed away the tears.“You’d better fetch Kilner,” he said. “He’ll know what to do.”“Don’t let him know how it happened. Don’t let him know I did it.”“No. Go and fetch him.”“Oh! I thought you was dead. I thought you wasdead. Oh! Renny, dear, what should I ha’ done if you’d been dead, my dear?”“Go and fetch Kilner. He’ll tell us what to do.”She brought Kilner and left them together. René made a clumsy attempt to shield Ann in a very incoherent account of the affair. Kilner saw through it but acquiesced in the intention.“Can you move?” he asked.“I think so.”“Can you walk to a doctor’s? There’s one just round the corner. Better than having him here. Some doctors talk. You’ll be better out of this.”Leaning on Kilner’s arm, René managed to reach the doctor’s, but there he fainted. Kilner invented a story of an early morning street attack, and the doctor, who was not interested, swallowed it. He patched René up, gave him a prescription, and told him to call again that day. René disliked the man so much that he refused inwardly ever to go near him again. Between them they had half the fee, and promised to send round the rest.Kilner made René comfortable in his room and was then sent off to find Miss Cleethorpe.Lotta came at once. She and Kilner liked each other. Kilner had begun to see the affair in a humorous light. Anything to do with René was to him never very far short of absurdity.“I wish I’d thought of it like that before,” he said. “I’d never have let him go to her. I might have known he would make a mess of it. He was simply bursting with exaltation, and when he’s like that it never occursto him that other people may have a different view. I half believe he expected Ann to share his enthusiasm for the other lady——”Lotta could not help laughing, though she protested: “What a shame!”“I can’t help it,” said Kilner, “other people’s love affairs always are comic, and Fourmy—well, he is simply inappropriate in a community of creatures who live by cunning.”“You’ve hit it,” replied Lotta. “I’ve been trying to understand what it was made him so exceptional. Creatures who live by cunning—— Thank you, Mr. Kilner.”“All artists are like that. Cunning is no use in the pursuit of art. But they are insulated by their work as ordinary people are by convention and habit. No artist takes personal relationships seriously. They happen. He handles them well or makes a mess of them. It does not greatly matter. The ordinary being cannot appreciate any personal relationship until it is conventionalized and stripped of its vigor and value. Well—you have seen your Fourmy in action.”“And well worth seeing too.”Kilner told her what he could make of the new disaster, and how Ann had hated him and destroyed his work.“I imagine,” he said, “that the same blind instinct operated against Fourmy. He’s creative also in a way. My pictures, his life, his precious romantic life, are both things slowly shaped out of chaos, and the creative process in a man is absolutely indifferent tothe stupid security most women value. Ann did her ridiculous little best to stop it in both of us.”“Poor girl,” said Lotta, “I can imagine the two of you driving her distracted. After all, what she was going through was important to her.”“But only to her. She wanted it to be important for him. It couldn’t be: it was quite meaningless.”“Nature is cruelly indifferent.”“If she weren’t,” said Kilner, “we should never have developed intelligence, let alone imagination.”“What are we to do with them?”“I’ll look after Fourmy if you’ll take charge of Ann. Only, remember, you are not supposed to know that she did it, and, please, I have told you nothing about my picture.”The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta’s kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged herself off to her work in order to fill in the creeping hours.Lotta said she was a friend of René’s, and wished to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to side, and cried:“Oh! I wish I was dead, I do. I nearly did myself in last night when he lay there in the dark not saying a word. I wish I had—I wish I had. I never been so miserable. . . .”Lotta comforted her as best she could, clumsilydropping a word in here and there as Ann poured out her confused narrative.Ann kept on saying:“He ought to have gone if he wanted to go.”“But he couldn’t leave you like that——”“It was seeing him again done it. I couldn’t bear it, seeing him and knowing he was wanting to go.”“He was wanting you to feel that—that he was not going out of indifference to you.”“He doesn’t want me. He said that.”“My dear child, you mustn’t think about it like that. You must see that it is ended now.”“I’ll never care for anybody again—not like that.”“Don’t make things harder for yourself. How do you know?”“You’re only young once.”“Love is stronger when youth is gone.”Ann believed that. She wanted to believe in Lotta, and she sat very quietly, almost like a child, while the quiet, gentle woman tried to explain to her that René had taken nothing away, that their love must die for all it had lacked, that there was no disgrace in a failure to bring a love to life, that it was happening everywhere, every day, and that a dead love was the most horrible of prisons. And, said Lotta, if a child was to be born, it were better not to bring it into such captivity, better not to have the joy and beauty of motherhood spoiled by jealousy and disappointment in the failure of love. Ann wept anew. People were so kind, she said: there was Old Martin, and now there was Lotta; and she had only dreaded her loneliness ofbeing left alone to face “that.” Lotta said there was no question of being left alone. If Ann liked, she could come to her hostel as maid, and when her time came she could go out to the country.“I think,” said Lotta, “that all children ought to be born and bred in the country. Don’t you?”“The mews,” replied Ann, “is not much of a place for them.”She did not quite like the idea of being “in service,” but Lotta explained that it did not necessarily mean for always. Once the baby was born and provided for, Ann could go back to her factory and take up her life, if she wished, where it was before René came into it.“But I’ll always want to hear about him,” said Ann.“Of course. He’ll always want to hear about you.”“And see him.”“He’ll want to see you too.”So it was arranged, and Ann promised to be at the hostel next morning.When Lotta had gone, she sat down and wrote:“DEARRENNY,—I do want you to forgive me. I have been awful, but not without excuse. I do like Miss Lotta. She’s been an angel to me and made me feel awfuller. I’m going to her. A letter for you to say you ’ad come into some money. I tore it up when I first began to feel bad toward you. I don’t feel bad any more.—Your loving ANN.”This confession reached René at the same time as a letter from his brother George conveying the samenews. The attorney in Edinburgh had written to say he had no reply from Mr. René Fourmy, and to ask for information as to his whereabouts. “This,” said George, “has been a bit of a shock to us. We’d counted on something from the old lady. However, it makes a difference to you. If you feel inclined to come up and see us I’ll be glad to have you. I suppose you’ll give up the street-slogging. The old man has been in London. Did you see him?”René announced his intention of going to Thrigsby. His mind was going back and back over his life in the attempt to understand it. If he could see George and his mother, he felt and hoped that he might be able to follow up the threads placed in his hands by his chance encounter with his father.A day or two later saw him arriving at the Albert Station with his arm in a sling. George was there to meet him.“Hullo, old sport,” he said, “been in the wars?”René told the lie invented by Kilner for the doctor.“By Jove,” said George, “you have been roughing it. I’ll tell that to the youngsters in our office when they get dotty about Canada and the Wild West. Wild West of London, eh?” and he chuckled at his own joke.“Elsie’s quite excited,” he said, as they boarded the Hog Lane tram.“And mother?” asked René.“Well. Hum. You’ll find a difference in the mother.”René was struck by many changes. New warehouses, new rows of shops, some attempt to bring distinction into the architecture of the city, though, for the most part, nothing but ostentation was attained. They passed the university. There were new buildings there, more like an insurance office than ever. Streets that he remembered as respectable and prosperous had become slums swarming with grimy children. A great piece had been taken out of Potter’s Park for the building of a hideous art gallery. The trams now passed down Hog Lane West, with the result that most of the houses had apartment cards in their fanlights. George had moved from The Nest into 168. He could get a larger house for the same rent. His house was exactly the same as their old home. It gave René a depressing idea that nothing had changed. George was fatter: Elsie thinner. They had four children.George was in the same office, and, as he said, had flung away ambition: too many children to take risks, and after all there was nothing in the small firm now. The one or two connections you depended on might go bust any day. It needed enormous capital to stand the fluctuations of prices. He had got a rise by pretending to go and was quite content. He played bowls in the summer and bridge in the winter. And Elsie? What with the house and the mother she had plenty to do, plenty to do.As René walked along the passage he felt uncannily certain that he would find his mother sitting by the fireplace knitting. And it was so. She raised hereyes and looked at him with timid anxiety, held out her cheek to be kissed, went on knitting, and said:“Now sit down and give an account of yourself.”He edited his experiences, and she listened without interest. Most of his talk was of Kilner.“Artists are very immoral men, aren’t they?”René shrugged.“It depends,” he said, “on what you mean by morality.”“Therearerules,” said she, “and commandments.”“My friend has rules,” he replied, “rather good ones. He dislikes doing anything which interferes with his power to paint.”“To me that sounds very selfish.”“I don’t think we can argue about that, mother.”“No. I suppose you made very little money.”“Three pounds a week.”“I suppose you could do with that, with only yourself to keep. Though it seems a pity, considering the amount of time and money spent on your education.”Was it his mother speaking? What had happened to her? Whence had come the dry hardness in her voice? Why were her eyes so dead? They used to steal quick little glances when she spoke. Now she only stared listlessly. A home-coming? This for a home? In the house next door there had been some stirring of life: the night when he had returned home from Scotland: the strange days after his father’s restoration.The windows of the room were shut. René felt stifled. He made some excuse and went away out ofthe house, and roamed through the familiar streets. There were many houses empty: the gardens, some of which had once been trim, were now unkempt. The whole district was dismal and devitalized. Only the red trams clanging and clanking down the cobbled streets made any stir and gaiety.He found himself presently in Galt’s Park. The little pink brick houses had invaded it. Many of the big houses were pulled down: others were being demolished, and only jagged walls and gaping windows were left. On the site of the Brocks’ house stood a little red-brick chapel outside which were announcements in Welsh and English. That gave him a shock. Some of the past life had been brushed away. He disliked the idea of its room being usurped by a chapel, a place of Christian worship. He did not know why he disliked this idea so much, but it was connected vaguely with the image of his mother sitting in that room, knitting and talking in an empty voice, and clinging obstinately to rules of conduct.At the other end of Galt’s Park he came on a new street, flung straight across what he remembered as fields. Following its dreary length, he found himself near the Smallmans’ house. It was now completely shut in with little pink brick houses. He turned in at the gate, rang at the bell and asked the maid if he could see the Professor. He was left waiting in the hall where he had seen Linda’s green parasol. Here, too, there was no change. The Professor came out looking very mysterious. He took a hat down, seized René by the arm and led him out into the street.“Well, well,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, glad to see you. How are you?”“Very well.” René felt inclined to laugh. Clearly the Professor was trying not to hurt his feelings and to disguise the fact that he did not think him fit to enter his house, that temple of domesticity.“Tell me about yourself. One doesn’t lose interest, you know.”This time René did not edit his experiences.“I had heard stories,” said the Professor. “I was reluctant to believe them.”“Why?”“Well—er— You know—one expects——”“That every man will do his duty.”“It is hardly a subject for satire,” said the Professor.René exploded:“Good God! What else is it a subject for? England expects? Does the whole duty of man consist in self-mutilation? Why, then, the noblest man is he who shirks every responsibility, let his mind rot and his feelings wither, so that he can attain a devilish efficiency at the job into which he tumbles before he has begun to develop enough to know what he can do. These are your successful men, your pundits, your Lord Mayors, your merchant princes, your politicians——”“My dear Fourmy, I think you should recollect that you hardly gave yourself time to recognize what Thrigsby stands for, the greatest industrial center in the world.”“I had time enough to realize what it has done for my father, my mother, my brother, and myself.”“Two wrongs do not make a right, and I do not think you set about remedying matters in the right way. You had every opportunity here. You had escaped the pressure of industrialism. You had good brains.”“Brains!” cried René. “I had escaped from industrialism only to talk about it.”“We are doing useful work. The defects of the system are slowly being recognized as a result of our investigations.”“Can’t you realize them without investigation? Aren’t they as plain as the nose on your face?”“You can’t find a remedy without investigation. That leads to mere sentimental socialism. But why need we quarrel about that? You didn’t like the work. I hope you found more satisfaction in your vagabondage.”“London is just as bad, rather worse, because the wickedness of it all is glossed over with a kind of boastfulness. Here you either make money or you don’t. There, as far as I can see, your only chance is to spend money: not that I saw much of that except from the outside; still I did see all sorts and kinds of people, and you can make rough conclusions about them.”“You don’t mind my suggesting that you were hardly in a condition to make impartial observations?”“We don’t seem able to use the same terms. You still think I was a fool not to stay in my nice littlehome, with my nice little job and my nice little income.”“I don’t judge you. I only say that if everybody were to do the same——”“I only wish more people would. There’d soon be an end of congestion. I only came round to-night because I couldn’t stand the sight of my brother settling down to his nice little home and my mother fast freezing into a nice old lady—and then I find you terrified lest I should enter and pollute your nice little home. I tell you, what I have seen to-day has settled me. I came up here in a muddle about it all, half feeling that I had made an ass of myself, but I’m absolutely certain now——”“But a man must think of his wife and children, and, indeed, you are unjust. I have no fear of your disturbing my household. We should be only too glad to see you, only it happened, if you must know, that my wife was expecting Linda Brock. She uses her own name now.”René gave a shout of laughter.“But I’d like to see her. How is she?”“Her mother died six months ago and left her a great deal of money, a fortune. We had no idea she was so rich. Linda wrote some plays, you know. She has bought the theater and presented it to the Players. I am one of the trustees. Thrigsby is very proud of the theater——“It used to be music when I was young,” said René, “and the orchestra was always in debt.”“Art,” said the Professor, “cannot be expected topay for itself. We are running the theater to a certain extent in connection with the university——”He had assumed the voice in which he lectured. René cut him short:“I’d like to see Linda. Will you take me back with you.”“I—er——”“You needn’t thrust me on her. Just ask her if she’d like to see me, and come out and tell me: yes or no. After all, if it comes to that, we’re still married. I believe, by the brutal laws of the country, I could insist on seeing her whether she liked it or not. You might tell her that I have come into some money also.”“Really? I’m so glad.”“Hurrah!” cried René, “you think I’ll have to live up to it and settle down.”“It would certainly be a splendid thing if——”The Professor’s whole attitude toward him was changed. Already, it was clear, he was beginning to plan a grand scene of reconciliation, a reformed René, a forgiving Linda, the Smallman family in the background, symbolical of Impregnable Matrimony. René caught the hint and his mind played with it and blew it out into a grotesque. It gave him so much pleasure that he chuckled and said:“It won’t do, you know. We couldn’t come together again without a scandal.”The Professor was so intent on his own thoughts that he did not notice the savage irony of the remark. He said:“It would soon die down.”“Sooner than the other?”“Well——!”“I’ve got you there,” observed René. “It wasn’t fair though. I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing any such thing.”“Why, then——?”“Why do I want to see her? I don’t know. I want to. Isn’t that reason enough?”They had returned to the house.“You just ask her. Tell her I’m in Thrigsby for a few days and would like to see her. If she doesn’t wish it, don’t worry. I’ll wait ten minutes.”“Very well,” said the Professor, not altogether giving up hope, “I’ll tell her, but the way you talk of it seems to me almost indecent.”He let himself in at the front door, and in ten minutes was out again.“Very well,” he said, “she will see you. . . . If you don’t mind, my wife has gone up to her room.”“I wonder,” thought René, “what they would make of Ann. They wouldn’t mind my leaving her.”He felt rather nervous as he reached the threshold of the study, but stiffened himself for the plunge. The door opened and he found himself shaking Linda warmly by the hand and asking after her health, and explaining how he came to be in Thrigsby. Linda was noticeably plumper, rounder, and more solid. He could see no charm in her and thought her unsuitably dressed, tactlessly, provincially. On the whole, heliked her. The handshake was firm, her eyes were frank.“It was nice of you to come and see me,” she said. “So much better to have no nonsense about it.”“If you like,” said the Professor, “I—I—will——”Linda appealed to René.“Oh, no. I’ve nothing to say. I only wanted to know that there was to be no nonsense between us. I’m very glad. I wish we could have arrived at that sooner, but I suppose that was impossible.”Linda smiled:“You’ve changed, René. That would have been blasphemy to you a few years ago. You hated coming to your senses.”“I should think so,” said the Professor.“You’re not going to stay in Thrigsby?” asked Linda.“No. That’s impossible, even if I wanted to. We should be crossing each other’s tracks. Not that I should mind that, but—— Well, it wouldn’t do, would it?”“No. I prefer being without a husband. Really, for an active woman it seems to me to be the ideal condition. She has a status and no risk.”The Professor sat bolt upright:“Whatdoyou mean, Linda?”“I won’t insist on the advantages if it shocks you, Phil. René understands me.”“Oh, yes,” said René, “Linda means she can lose her head without any danger of getting married.”The Professor exploded:“I never heard of anything so—so abominable.”“But I did mean that,” said Linda. “Women do lose their heads, you know, even when they are married. Ask Freda. Don’t look so hurt. She and I were talking it over yesterday, and we agreed that the law was so horrid that all I could do was to disregard it. And if René is willing that is what I propose doing. You shall represent the world at large. You do represent its opinion. You know——”“I do not.”Linda passed over the interruption:“You are the world at large and I say to you: ‘This man is no longer my husband.’ No more than that should be necessary. You don’t want any more than that, do you, René?”“Even that seems to me a needless statement of fact, but perhaps I’m extreme.”The Professor rose and stood with his back to the fireplace: “All this,” he said, “is extremely distasteful. You are making a mock of marriage.”Said René:“We know more about it than you. We’ve tried disruption and you haven’t. We’re both the better for it. The fact is, there is no such thing as marriage. There are marriages, and precious few of them. Yours, no doubt, is one of the few.”The Professor was mollified, swallowed the harangue he had prepared, and sat down again.René took Linda to her house in a remote suburb. She said:“You know I quite dreaded meeting you again. I always had a feeling I should. The poor dear Professor was quite disappointed because we didn’t make a scene.”“Oh, he didn’t mind once we made it quite clear that we were casting no shadow of doubt upon the sanctity of his own domestic happiness. They’re all like that.”“I’m sure he’s quite convinced that you have become very wicked. Have you?”“No. Strict monogamist.”“What do you mean by that?”“One wife at a time.”Linda laughed at him. “You always were uncompromising.”Her laughter grated on René. He had a revulsion of feeling against her. She was, he realized, and always had been, cynical.At her gate she held his hand for a long time, and asked him if he would not come and see her again.“I think not,” he said.“I wish you would. We might be such friends. And you have become so interesting.”“I think not,” he repeated. “Any friendship we might have would only be an——” He could not find the word and stopped rather foolishly. He could not move until he had found it. So they stood there hand in hand waiting in a ridiculous and empty silence.“Would be what?” she asked in irritation.He found the word.“An impertinence.”She shook his hand from hers almost angrily and walked away.He knew then why he had come to Thrigsby. It was to make a clean cut with her. That achieved, there was nothing more in the grim city of his youth to keep him.
Nothing I’ll bear from theeBut nakedness, thou detestable town!
Nothing I’ll bear from thee
But nakedness, thou detestable town!
THATwas an appalling night. René lay with his wound roughly staunched. Ann crouched in the darkness by the bedside, fondling his hand, clinging to him, occasionally weeping. Both watched the light come creeping over the roofs and chimneys. Neither could say a word. Their eyes met, and hers were fixed hungrily on his face like a dog’s that has been whipped for fighting. She looked so scared that he desired only to reassure her.
“Ann,” he said.
She kissed his hand and fondled it, and pressed it to her cheek, and bathed it in her tears and kissed away the tears.
“You’d better fetch Kilner,” he said. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Don’t let him know how it happened. Don’t let him know I did it.”
“No. Go and fetch him.”
“Oh! I thought you was dead. I thought you wasdead. Oh! Renny, dear, what should I ha’ done if you’d been dead, my dear?”
“Go and fetch Kilner. He’ll tell us what to do.”
She brought Kilner and left them together. René made a clumsy attempt to shield Ann in a very incoherent account of the affair. Kilner saw through it but acquiesced in the intention.
“Can you move?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Can you walk to a doctor’s? There’s one just round the corner. Better than having him here. Some doctors talk. You’ll be better out of this.”
Leaning on Kilner’s arm, René managed to reach the doctor’s, but there he fainted. Kilner invented a story of an early morning street attack, and the doctor, who was not interested, swallowed it. He patched René up, gave him a prescription, and told him to call again that day. René disliked the man so much that he refused inwardly ever to go near him again. Between them they had half the fee, and promised to send round the rest.
Kilner made René comfortable in his room and was then sent off to find Miss Cleethorpe.
Lotta came at once. She and Kilner liked each other. Kilner had begun to see the affair in a humorous light. Anything to do with René was to him never very far short of absurdity.
“I wish I’d thought of it like that before,” he said. “I’d never have let him go to her. I might have known he would make a mess of it. He was simply bursting with exaltation, and when he’s like that it never occursto him that other people may have a different view. I half believe he expected Ann to share his enthusiasm for the other lady——”
Lotta could not help laughing, though she protested: “What a shame!”
“I can’t help it,” said Kilner, “other people’s love affairs always are comic, and Fourmy—well, he is simply inappropriate in a community of creatures who live by cunning.”
“You’ve hit it,” replied Lotta. “I’ve been trying to understand what it was made him so exceptional. Creatures who live by cunning—— Thank you, Mr. Kilner.”
“All artists are like that. Cunning is no use in the pursuit of art. But they are insulated by their work as ordinary people are by convention and habit. No artist takes personal relationships seriously. They happen. He handles them well or makes a mess of them. It does not greatly matter. The ordinary being cannot appreciate any personal relationship until it is conventionalized and stripped of its vigor and value. Well—you have seen your Fourmy in action.”
“And well worth seeing too.”
Kilner told her what he could make of the new disaster, and how Ann had hated him and destroyed his work.
“I imagine,” he said, “that the same blind instinct operated against Fourmy. He’s creative also in a way. My pictures, his life, his precious romantic life, are both things slowly shaped out of chaos, and the creative process in a man is absolutely indifferent tothe stupid security most women value. Ann did her ridiculous little best to stop it in both of us.”
“Poor girl,” said Lotta, “I can imagine the two of you driving her distracted. After all, what she was going through was important to her.”
“But only to her. She wanted it to be important for him. It couldn’t be: it was quite meaningless.”
“Nature is cruelly indifferent.”
“If she weren’t,” said Kilner, “we should never have developed intelligence, let alone imagination.”
“What are we to do with them?”
“I’ll look after Fourmy if you’ll take charge of Ann. Only, remember, you are not supposed to know that she did it, and, please, I have told you nothing about my picture.”
The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta’s kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged herself off to her work in order to fill in the creeping hours.
Lotta said she was a friend of René’s, and wished to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to side, and cried:
“Oh! I wish I was dead, I do. I nearly did myself in last night when he lay there in the dark not saying a word. I wish I had—I wish I had. I never been so miserable. . . .”
Lotta comforted her as best she could, clumsilydropping a word in here and there as Ann poured out her confused narrative.
Ann kept on saying:
“He ought to have gone if he wanted to go.”
“But he couldn’t leave you like that——”
“It was seeing him again done it. I couldn’t bear it, seeing him and knowing he was wanting to go.”
“He was wanting you to feel that—that he was not going out of indifference to you.”
“He doesn’t want me. He said that.”
“My dear child, you mustn’t think about it like that. You must see that it is ended now.”
“I’ll never care for anybody again—not like that.”
“Don’t make things harder for yourself. How do you know?”
“You’re only young once.”
“Love is stronger when youth is gone.”
Ann believed that. She wanted to believe in Lotta, and she sat very quietly, almost like a child, while the quiet, gentle woman tried to explain to her that René had taken nothing away, that their love must die for all it had lacked, that there was no disgrace in a failure to bring a love to life, that it was happening everywhere, every day, and that a dead love was the most horrible of prisons. And, said Lotta, if a child was to be born, it were better not to bring it into such captivity, better not to have the joy and beauty of motherhood spoiled by jealousy and disappointment in the failure of love. Ann wept anew. People were so kind, she said: there was Old Martin, and now there was Lotta; and she had only dreaded her loneliness ofbeing left alone to face “that.” Lotta said there was no question of being left alone. If Ann liked, she could come to her hostel as maid, and when her time came she could go out to the country.
“I think,” said Lotta, “that all children ought to be born and bred in the country. Don’t you?”
“The mews,” replied Ann, “is not much of a place for them.”
She did not quite like the idea of being “in service,” but Lotta explained that it did not necessarily mean for always. Once the baby was born and provided for, Ann could go back to her factory and take up her life, if she wished, where it was before René came into it.
“But I’ll always want to hear about him,” said Ann.
“Of course. He’ll always want to hear about you.”
“And see him.”
“He’ll want to see you too.”
So it was arranged, and Ann promised to be at the hostel next morning.
When Lotta had gone, she sat down and wrote:
“DEARRENNY,—I do want you to forgive me. I have been awful, but not without excuse. I do like Miss Lotta. She’s been an angel to me and made me feel awfuller. I’m going to her. A letter for you to say you ’ad come into some money. I tore it up when I first began to feel bad toward you. I don’t feel bad any more.—Your loving ANN.”
“DEARRENNY,—I do want you to forgive me. I have been awful, but not without excuse. I do like Miss Lotta. She’s been an angel to me and made me feel awfuller. I’m going to her. A letter for you to say you ’ad come into some money. I tore it up when I first began to feel bad toward you. I don’t feel bad any more.—Your loving ANN.”
This confession reached René at the same time as a letter from his brother George conveying the samenews. The attorney in Edinburgh had written to say he had no reply from Mr. René Fourmy, and to ask for information as to his whereabouts. “This,” said George, “has been a bit of a shock to us. We’d counted on something from the old lady. However, it makes a difference to you. If you feel inclined to come up and see us I’ll be glad to have you. I suppose you’ll give up the street-slogging. The old man has been in London. Did you see him?”
René announced his intention of going to Thrigsby. His mind was going back and back over his life in the attempt to understand it. If he could see George and his mother, he felt and hoped that he might be able to follow up the threads placed in his hands by his chance encounter with his father.
A day or two later saw him arriving at the Albert Station with his arm in a sling. George was there to meet him.
“Hullo, old sport,” he said, “been in the wars?”
René told the lie invented by Kilner for the doctor.
“By Jove,” said George, “you have been roughing it. I’ll tell that to the youngsters in our office when they get dotty about Canada and the Wild West. Wild West of London, eh?” and he chuckled at his own joke.
“Elsie’s quite excited,” he said, as they boarded the Hog Lane tram.
“And mother?” asked René.
“Well. Hum. You’ll find a difference in the mother.”
René was struck by many changes. New warehouses, new rows of shops, some attempt to bring distinction into the architecture of the city, though, for the most part, nothing but ostentation was attained. They passed the university. There were new buildings there, more like an insurance office than ever. Streets that he remembered as respectable and prosperous had become slums swarming with grimy children. A great piece had been taken out of Potter’s Park for the building of a hideous art gallery. The trams now passed down Hog Lane West, with the result that most of the houses had apartment cards in their fanlights. George had moved from The Nest into 168. He could get a larger house for the same rent. His house was exactly the same as their old home. It gave René a depressing idea that nothing had changed. George was fatter: Elsie thinner. They had four children.
George was in the same office, and, as he said, had flung away ambition: too many children to take risks, and after all there was nothing in the small firm now. The one or two connections you depended on might go bust any day. It needed enormous capital to stand the fluctuations of prices. He had got a rise by pretending to go and was quite content. He played bowls in the summer and bridge in the winter. And Elsie? What with the house and the mother she had plenty to do, plenty to do.
As René walked along the passage he felt uncannily certain that he would find his mother sitting by the fireplace knitting. And it was so. She raised hereyes and looked at him with timid anxiety, held out her cheek to be kissed, went on knitting, and said:
“Now sit down and give an account of yourself.”
He edited his experiences, and she listened without interest. Most of his talk was of Kilner.
“Artists are very immoral men, aren’t they?”
René shrugged.
“It depends,” he said, “on what you mean by morality.”
“Therearerules,” said she, “and commandments.”
“My friend has rules,” he replied, “rather good ones. He dislikes doing anything which interferes with his power to paint.”
“To me that sounds very selfish.”
“I don’t think we can argue about that, mother.”
“No. I suppose you made very little money.”
“Three pounds a week.”
“I suppose you could do with that, with only yourself to keep. Though it seems a pity, considering the amount of time and money spent on your education.”
Was it his mother speaking? What had happened to her? Whence had come the dry hardness in her voice? Why were her eyes so dead? They used to steal quick little glances when she spoke. Now she only stared listlessly. A home-coming? This for a home? In the house next door there had been some stirring of life: the night when he had returned home from Scotland: the strange days after his father’s restoration.
The windows of the room were shut. René felt stifled. He made some excuse and went away out ofthe house, and roamed through the familiar streets. There were many houses empty: the gardens, some of which had once been trim, were now unkempt. The whole district was dismal and devitalized. Only the red trams clanging and clanking down the cobbled streets made any stir and gaiety.
He found himself presently in Galt’s Park. The little pink brick houses had invaded it. Many of the big houses were pulled down: others were being demolished, and only jagged walls and gaping windows were left. On the site of the Brocks’ house stood a little red-brick chapel outside which were announcements in Welsh and English. That gave him a shock. Some of the past life had been brushed away. He disliked the idea of its room being usurped by a chapel, a place of Christian worship. He did not know why he disliked this idea so much, but it was connected vaguely with the image of his mother sitting in that room, knitting and talking in an empty voice, and clinging obstinately to rules of conduct.
At the other end of Galt’s Park he came on a new street, flung straight across what he remembered as fields. Following its dreary length, he found himself near the Smallmans’ house. It was now completely shut in with little pink brick houses. He turned in at the gate, rang at the bell and asked the maid if he could see the Professor. He was left waiting in the hall where he had seen Linda’s green parasol. Here, too, there was no change. The Professor came out looking very mysterious. He took a hat down, seized René by the arm and led him out into the street.
“Well, well,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, glad to see you. How are you?”
“Very well.” René felt inclined to laugh. Clearly the Professor was trying not to hurt his feelings and to disguise the fact that he did not think him fit to enter his house, that temple of domesticity.
“Tell me about yourself. One doesn’t lose interest, you know.”
This time René did not edit his experiences.
“I had heard stories,” said the Professor. “I was reluctant to believe them.”
“Why?”
“Well—er— You know—one expects——”
“That every man will do his duty.”
“It is hardly a subject for satire,” said the Professor.
René exploded:
“Good God! What else is it a subject for? England expects? Does the whole duty of man consist in self-mutilation? Why, then, the noblest man is he who shirks every responsibility, let his mind rot and his feelings wither, so that he can attain a devilish efficiency at the job into which he tumbles before he has begun to develop enough to know what he can do. These are your successful men, your pundits, your Lord Mayors, your merchant princes, your politicians——”
“My dear Fourmy, I think you should recollect that you hardly gave yourself time to recognize what Thrigsby stands for, the greatest industrial center in the world.”
“I had time enough to realize what it has done for my father, my mother, my brother, and myself.”
“Two wrongs do not make a right, and I do not think you set about remedying matters in the right way. You had every opportunity here. You had escaped the pressure of industrialism. You had good brains.”
“Brains!” cried René. “I had escaped from industrialism only to talk about it.”
“We are doing useful work. The defects of the system are slowly being recognized as a result of our investigations.”
“Can’t you realize them without investigation? Aren’t they as plain as the nose on your face?”
“You can’t find a remedy without investigation. That leads to mere sentimental socialism. But why need we quarrel about that? You didn’t like the work. I hope you found more satisfaction in your vagabondage.”
“London is just as bad, rather worse, because the wickedness of it all is glossed over with a kind of boastfulness. Here you either make money or you don’t. There, as far as I can see, your only chance is to spend money: not that I saw much of that except from the outside; still I did see all sorts and kinds of people, and you can make rough conclusions about them.”
“You don’t mind my suggesting that you were hardly in a condition to make impartial observations?”
“We don’t seem able to use the same terms. You still think I was a fool not to stay in my nice littlehome, with my nice little job and my nice little income.”
“I don’t judge you. I only say that if everybody were to do the same——”
“I only wish more people would. There’d soon be an end of congestion. I only came round to-night because I couldn’t stand the sight of my brother settling down to his nice little home and my mother fast freezing into a nice old lady—and then I find you terrified lest I should enter and pollute your nice little home. I tell you, what I have seen to-day has settled me. I came up here in a muddle about it all, half feeling that I had made an ass of myself, but I’m absolutely certain now——”
“But a man must think of his wife and children, and, indeed, you are unjust. I have no fear of your disturbing my household. We should be only too glad to see you, only it happened, if you must know, that my wife was expecting Linda Brock. She uses her own name now.”
René gave a shout of laughter.
“But I’d like to see her. How is she?”
“Her mother died six months ago and left her a great deal of money, a fortune. We had no idea she was so rich. Linda wrote some plays, you know. She has bought the theater and presented it to the Players. I am one of the trustees. Thrigsby is very proud of the theater——
“It used to be music when I was young,” said René, “and the orchestra was always in debt.”
“Art,” said the Professor, “cannot be expected topay for itself. We are running the theater to a certain extent in connection with the university——”
He had assumed the voice in which he lectured. René cut him short:
“I’d like to see Linda. Will you take me back with you.”
“I—er——”
“You needn’t thrust me on her. Just ask her if she’d like to see me, and come out and tell me: yes or no. After all, if it comes to that, we’re still married. I believe, by the brutal laws of the country, I could insist on seeing her whether she liked it or not. You might tell her that I have come into some money also.”
“Really? I’m so glad.”
“Hurrah!” cried René, “you think I’ll have to live up to it and settle down.”
“It would certainly be a splendid thing if——”
The Professor’s whole attitude toward him was changed. Already, it was clear, he was beginning to plan a grand scene of reconciliation, a reformed René, a forgiving Linda, the Smallman family in the background, symbolical of Impregnable Matrimony. René caught the hint and his mind played with it and blew it out into a grotesque. It gave him so much pleasure that he chuckled and said:
“It won’t do, you know. We couldn’t come together again without a scandal.”
The Professor was so intent on his own thoughts that he did not notice the savage irony of the remark. He said:
“It would soon die down.”
“Sooner than the other?”
“Well——!”
“I’ve got you there,” observed René. “It wasn’t fair though. I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing any such thing.”
“Why, then——?”
“Why do I want to see her? I don’t know. I want to. Isn’t that reason enough?”
They had returned to the house.
“You just ask her. Tell her I’m in Thrigsby for a few days and would like to see her. If she doesn’t wish it, don’t worry. I’ll wait ten minutes.”
“Very well,” said the Professor, not altogether giving up hope, “I’ll tell her, but the way you talk of it seems to me almost indecent.”
He let himself in at the front door, and in ten minutes was out again.
“Very well,” he said, “she will see you. . . . If you don’t mind, my wife has gone up to her room.”
“I wonder,” thought René, “what they would make of Ann. They wouldn’t mind my leaving her.”
He felt rather nervous as he reached the threshold of the study, but stiffened himself for the plunge. The door opened and he found himself shaking Linda warmly by the hand and asking after her health, and explaining how he came to be in Thrigsby. Linda was noticeably plumper, rounder, and more solid. He could see no charm in her and thought her unsuitably dressed, tactlessly, provincially. On the whole, heliked her. The handshake was firm, her eyes were frank.
“It was nice of you to come and see me,” she said. “So much better to have no nonsense about it.”
“If you like,” said the Professor, “I—I—will——”
Linda appealed to René.
“Oh, no. I’ve nothing to say. I only wanted to know that there was to be no nonsense between us. I’m very glad. I wish we could have arrived at that sooner, but I suppose that was impossible.”
Linda smiled:
“You’ve changed, René. That would have been blasphemy to you a few years ago. You hated coming to your senses.”
“I should think so,” said the Professor.
“You’re not going to stay in Thrigsby?” asked Linda.
“No. That’s impossible, even if I wanted to. We should be crossing each other’s tracks. Not that I should mind that, but—— Well, it wouldn’t do, would it?”
“No. I prefer being without a husband. Really, for an active woman it seems to me to be the ideal condition. She has a status and no risk.”
The Professor sat bolt upright:
“Whatdoyou mean, Linda?”
“I won’t insist on the advantages if it shocks you, Phil. René understands me.”
“Oh, yes,” said René, “Linda means she can lose her head without any danger of getting married.”
The Professor exploded:
“I never heard of anything so—so abominable.”
“But I did mean that,” said Linda. “Women do lose their heads, you know, even when they are married. Ask Freda. Don’t look so hurt. She and I were talking it over yesterday, and we agreed that the law was so horrid that all I could do was to disregard it. And if René is willing that is what I propose doing. You shall represent the world at large. You do represent its opinion. You know——”
“I do not.”
Linda passed over the interruption:
“You are the world at large and I say to you: ‘This man is no longer my husband.’ No more than that should be necessary. You don’t want any more than that, do you, René?”
“Even that seems to me a needless statement of fact, but perhaps I’m extreme.”
The Professor rose and stood with his back to the fireplace: “All this,” he said, “is extremely distasteful. You are making a mock of marriage.”
Said René:
“We know more about it than you. We’ve tried disruption and you haven’t. We’re both the better for it. The fact is, there is no such thing as marriage. There are marriages, and precious few of them. Yours, no doubt, is one of the few.”
The Professor was mollified, swallowed the harangue he had prepared, and sat down again.
René took Linda to her house in a remote suburb. She said:
“You know I quite dreaded meeting you again. I always had a feeling I should. The poor dear Professor was quite disappointed because we didn’t make a scene.”
“Oh, he didn’t mind once we made it quite clear that we were casting no shadow of doubt upon the sanctity of his own domestic happiness. They’re all like that.”
“I’m sure he’s quite convinced that you have become very wicked. Have you?”
“No. Strict monogamist.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“One wife at a time.”
Linda laughed at him. “You always were uncompromising.”
Her laughter grated on René. He had a revulsion of feeling against her. She was, he realized, and always had been, cynical.
At her gate she held his hand for a long time, and asked him if he would not come and see her again.
“I think not,” he said.
“I wish you would. We might be such friends. And you have become so interesting.”
“I think not,” he repeated. “Any friendship we might have would only be an——” He could not find the word and stopped rather foolishly. He could not move until he had found it. So they stood there hand in hand waiting in a ridiculous and empty silence.
“Would be what?” she asked in irritation.
He found the word.
“An impertinence.”
She shook his hand from hers almost angrily and walked away.
He knew then why he had come to Thrigsby. It was to make a clean cut with her. That achieved, there was nothing more in the grim city of his youth to keep him.