THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 
 (
 
 <
 
 RESPONSIBILITY
 
 />'// I lie sillilC AufJiov 
 
 L. OF V. (Lines of C'diimuinication) 
 BUZZ, IJUZZ! Essays ol' the Theatre
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES E. AGATE 
 
 ? 
 
 LONDON 
 GRANT RICHARDS LTD. 
 
 ST MARTINS STREET 
 MDCCCCXIX
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN IIY THE RIVERSIDE FKESS LIMITED 
 EDINBURGH
 
 
 TO 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 IN 
 DISCIPLINED ADMIRATION 
 
 LUS LA CROIX HAUTE 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 Midsummer, iqiS 
 
 83591.'$
 
 Au grand jour du Seigneur sera-ce un grand refuge 
 
 D'avoir connu de tout et la cause et I'eftet ? 
 
 Et ce qu'on aura su llechira-t-il un juge 
 
 Qui ne regardera que ce qu'on aura fait ? . . . 
 
 IJ Iinilatjon de Jt'stis- Chris/. 
 
 We sang to-night in Church, " But when I know Tliee 
 as Thou art, I'll praise Thee as I ought." Exactly ! 
 Till then, farewell. We are a great little people, we 
 humans. If there be no next world, still the Spirit of 
 Man will have lived and uttered its protest. 
 
 W. N. P. Bari!Ellion. 
 
 Read Thomas a Kempis in the train. It made me so 
 angry I nearly flung it out of the window. " Meddle 
 not with things that be too deep for thee," he says, 
 '* but read such things as yield compunction to thtr 
 heart rather than elevation to the head." Forsooth ! 
 
 W. N. P. Barbellion.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ^A^ toute chose ilfaut considirer la fin. In all things 
 the end is to be looked to — in the case of novels 
 the last chapter. Curious that the weakness of the 
 frail — heart beating too flutteringly for a " good 
 read " until assured of the fate of the beleaguered 
 and distressed — should go hand-in-hand with dis- 
 cernment. The good reader demanding a bouquet of 
 writing as well as his bellyful of story does well 
 to take the edge off grosser appetite that he may 
 properly savour the fineness of the dish. It is for the 
 epicure's sake, therefore, that I begin my story at the 
 end, simple madness to the plain man who will see 
 scant reason for not beginning at the beginning. But 
 I confess to being an opportunist who would make the 
 best of as many worlds as there may be, hankering in 
 truth after a still more generous provision. Alas that 
 man's creation of new worlds is nowhere possible save 
 in's own brain ! The wise man does the best with 
 what he has, still on this poor planet rejoicing in his 
 liberty to tell his story in his own way. I beg, there- 
 fore, to inform my readers — or such of them as have 
 already indulged in furtive glances at my last leaves — 
 that I have been before them. The chapter which 
 finds itself last in point of binding is in reality my last 
 but one, the present page the end of the tale. 
 
 I am in a Base Hospital, my turn at the war done, 
 mj'^ " bit " accomplished. The doctors have decided 
 that I am to be sent home " for discharge." Then 
 
 9
 
 10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 England, formalities, and release. I am unfit for 
 further service, without scars to show, returnable to 
 civil life at forty-nine and with liberty to wring out 
 ol" the world whatever entertainment or what I'lnthcr 
 bitterness it yet may hold. My chief feeling is that I 
 nmst be good for effort yet, that life cannot be over. 
 There is atonement to be made, an atonement non- 
 cloistral, giving scope for effort. I have little patience 
 with those natural heartaches to which the most 
 innocent flesh is heir, the unmerited sufferings that are 
 a part of normal inheritance. My sympathies are with 
 the man who has " only himself" and not Providence 
 to blame, with the well-meaning blackguard, the 
 rascal who has found it easier to deceive the world 
 than to silence " the promptings of his better nature." 
 It is twenty years since I " sat under " parson, but 
 the worn phrases die hard. Jargon sticks like a 
 burr. 
 
 One of my small activities on return to civil life 
 will be the founding of a Society for the Establishment 
 of Greater Confidence between Author and Reader. 
 I hate to hold you, Sir, in suspense ; a denouement which 
 depends upon the element of surprise is essentially a 
 disappointment at a second reading — and who is the 
 writer who will be content with a single taste of his 
 quality? Certain it is that a tale which is tolerated 
 only for its happenings is not worth the dog's labour 
 of setting down. So I lay my cards on the table. 
 They consist of a sorry hero, a mistress adored and 
 abandoned, and a son. That's the superficial story. 
 Shuffle the cards as you will and you get the same 
 essentials, the same passion, the same remorse. And 
 yet remorse is hardly the word. Remorse implies
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 the promise that were you granted Hfe again you 
 would Hve differently. Oh last poltroonery ! I under- 
 stand a vow to greater prudence and a more careful 
 closing of shutters, but not a deliberate avoidance 
 and lessening of experience. I am what I am, and if 
 I am to act differently at a second venture I must be 
 made differently. 
 
 I turn over those sheets which have been this year's 
 constant companion and wonder how a story so absorb- 
 ing in the living can become so trivial in the telling. 
 I set out to write soberly ; correct as I will, zest, 
 flippancy even, obtrude themselves and half-obliterate 
 the page. But this, it seems to me, is to the reader's 
 good ; "No whining " ever a proud device. I do not 
 understand the subordination of general interest to 
 private emotion. Colour and sound go on though the 
 texture of one's own life be temporarily darkened. 
 No grief so poignant that one cannot take up Macbeth ; 
 no reason why we should not bury our dead and 
 desolately turn to Hamlet. To lock the piano till the 
 cripe is worn out — see any bourgeois household — is 
 the most preposterous of quarantines. . . . 
 
 I hope to stress my private melancholy as little- as 
 may be. Let me make it clear that though the end 
 of the story is not enlivened with wedding-bells neither 
 is it faisanM with the flavour of the divorce court. 
 It does not end conclusively as a well-thought-out 
 symphony of life should end. It does not go down in 
 gloom like the pathetieal Russian's. Its final chord 
 has neither the stained-glass quality of Tod mid 
 Verkidrung nor the last din and crow of Heldenleben. 
 Still less do I find it paralleled by the tinkle of the 
 sHppered, inconsiderable Farewell. If you urge me to
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 a comparison I would say an apotheosis of Don Quixofe 
 — heavens ! how high we fly — with a hint of Til 
 Eulenspiegel. I may have missed my way in hfe, but 
 at least 1 know my visionaries and my rogues. 
 
 Illegitimacy's my theme, the slur of illegitimacy — 
 oh, not the slur on the child, that old stumbling- blo(;k 
 which has defrayed the tears of the servants' hall since 
 servants learned to read, but the slur on the father. 
 And yet not slur — I am to stress the essential difference 
 between that fatherhood which is wilful and that which 
 is careless, between the fulfilment of great pur])ose and 
 meaningless gratification. And the moral ? I have 
 puzzled the nights through over any possibility of moral 
 deduction. I have not been content to let life come 
 to me, I have gone towards it urgently. I have 
 satisfied curiosity and desire and no obvious punish- 
 ment has attended the evil I have done. " What 
 have we to do with genus and species, the dry notions 
 of logicians ? He to whom the Eternal Word speaketh 
 is delivered from a world of unnecessary conceptions." 
 So Thomas a Kempis. I have talked my fill of 
 genus and species, I have teased my brain with the 
 driest notions of logicians. I have denied dogma and 
 taken my stand upon the Eternal Word of reason and 
 natural law. And, embracing logic, I have neglected 
 the one logical act of man's existence-^the handing on 
 of the will to live. My unknown son comes to me late 
 in life and my worst punishment is that the joy I have 
 in him is illicit, a theft from nature ; my sacrifice of 
 him shorn of all that nobility and grandeur which was 
 every English father's. And even now, it is not plain 
 sailing. There was never any question of marriage 
 with Clare. Conmion-sense was against it ; worldly
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 wisdom has always opposed such marriages. And 
 to preach an earher renunciation were for fools and 
 children. So that we come to the weighing of the injury 
 to Clare against the existence of that fine, sensitive 
 creature of our fashioning — a weighing in the balance 
 which is altogether too brainsickly. 
 
 11 
 
 Were I a French writer I would depict for you my 
 ward in hospital and the blue, tideless wash of the 
 Mediterranean — all in half-a dozen sentences and in 
 terms of chair-legs, table-covers and garnitures de 
 chemin^e. No writers are defter at deducing a people 
 from its furniture. They are the Cuviers of fiction, 
 supposing it to have been that philosopher who first 
 reconsti-ucted the prehistoric from its jaw-bone. But 
 I am neither Cuvier nor a Frenchman, nor anything 
 more subtle than your loyal Briton, and a military 
 hospital is, alas ! the most familiar thing in the world. 
 I shall merely postulate truckle-beds, bare boards and 
 strips of matting, charts and electric light, neatness and 
 order. 
 
 As I sit about the ward my mind goes back to those 
 infinitesimal or world-shaking happenings — so much 
 depends upon the point of view — which have brought 
 me to my present middling and inconclusive pass. It 
 occurs to me that there is something wrong with man's 
 sense of proportion. Which of us has not heard some 
 Astronomer Royal announce amid apathy the relative 
 sizes of the planet men inhabit and the one they call 
 Jupiter ? The sun, he will thunder out amid silence 
 which you would do wrong to take for apprehension,
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 is I forget how astoundingly many times greater 
 than this miserable suburb. Infinite Space is so vast, 
 the lecturer declares, that it is permissible to conceive 
 of stars — why do astronomers always invite us to 
 conceive of a thing ?— whose light, though travelling 
 at a preposterous number of miles a second, will be too 
 late for the Earth's cooling. Infinite Time is so long 
 that a bird which shall brush Ossa with its wing once 
 in a million years will, before his first second is run, 
 reduce that mountain to a wart. The lecturer has 
 some literature, it would seem, but enthusiasm is con- 
 fined to water-bottle and glass, skipping like the little 
 hills to the thudding of a declamatory fist. We are 
 invited to conceive the inconceivable by imagining the 
 universe as a coi-puscle in the blood of an undetected 
 organism. Where, is aii we wonder, did astronomers 
 find time for Anatole France ? Then in pleasant vein — 
 for our lecturer is not the pedagogic ass pure and simple 
 —he will upbraid us for pretending to the particle, for 
 presmning to call ourselves The Earth instead of 
 Vulcan or Apollo. Are not our noses in danger of 
 being put out if it be found at some future date that a 
 rival body, say the flighty and presumably French- 
 speaking Venus, shall all this time have been callintv 
 herself La Terre ? Would she not have done better 
 to content herself with the humbler Chez Nous, and 
 we with the Saxon equivalent ? Is not all that we are 
 allowed to know represented in these two simple words ? 
 The earth is ours for the moment, though there are 
 those who would assure us of some future habitation, 
 nebulous, elusive, non-committal. Nor are they even 
 dimensionally precise, these others ; to hear them it 
 may be our destiny to become flatter than plaice, or.
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 like wraiths, elongable at will. In the meantime we 
 have earth and the minute, bon souper, bon gtte . . . 
 and mankind makes war one upon another. 
 
 I sit in this tidy ward and watch the " Sisters " — 
 chivalry's neatest designation. Common soldiers that 
 we are, there is an atmosphere about " Sister." The 
 better-bred " Nurse " had potency but not magic. 
 " Sister " will safeguard a woman through the dark 
 passages of a man's mind as " Doctor " will avail in 
 the dark alley. I sit and watch the untiring Sisters 
 as they patch the bodies and minds of an undis- 
 tinguished score of us, rough and reverential in our 
 ill-fitting blue, sunlight resting like a benediction on 
 our hands pale as any woman's. Save for the yellow 
 between first and second finger. You cannot escape 
 the tell-tale stains and hold cigarettes with the lighted 
 end towards the palm, the thumb in readiness to flick, 
 convej'ance to the mouth effected tipplingly with a 
 jaunty turn of the wrist. All soldiers smoke so, a 
 detail which docimientors of the social epoch would 
 do well to note. 
 
 I gaze listlessly at my brothers-in-arms, happy, go 
 the luck with them or against, cheerful, uncomplaining, 
 uncritical. Maimed even, they have life before them, 
 whilst I have only expiation. I have " got my ticket " ; 
 to-morrow I am to be " evacuated." Curious char- 
 acteristic of war that it should discover gold in much 
 of humanity which one had carelessly thought dross and 
 at the same time unashamedly debase the currency 
 of intercourse. " England expects that every tank this 
 day will do its damnedest " is at once the herald of 
 proud deed and a blot on the scutcheon of speech. We 
 are to realise that all beauty which is not that of
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I'ffic'iency is to hide her face for a hundred years to 
 come. Or is it only that pedantry and preciosity are 
 banished ? Certain we may be that for a generation 
 all music is to be in common time, tlie march of victory 
 or that wringer of iiearts from Saul, all verse a p?ean 
 or a dirge, all scidpture a triumphant battle-piece or 
 broken column, all architecture the reassembling of 
 the bricks of Belgium. Hard for those who care little 
 for elementary things, for those now to be put on 
 the shelf, encumbrance, wreckage, broken even for 
 dilettantism. Not ior me the heroic end, the contented 
 subsidence, that readiness which is all. Nenni. Rather 
 the slow continuance, the looking back on a life not to 
 be resumed, the contemplation of dead passion and 
 the belated adventuring after better things. Most 
 unthinkable of all, not even now to be immune from 
 fret and fitfulness. Is it not grotesque that I who 
 have my son to content me should fear renewed 
 fever ? 
 
 With the Incomprehensible facing him, man calmly 
 contemplates the killing of his fellow- man. Astounding 
 to the sober-minded has been the refusal of some of us 
 to give more than our lives for the country in which 
 we happen to have been born. 
 
 Et puisquHl n'est quun del, pourquoi tant de patries ? 
 is good poetry but poor patriotism. I have loved the 
 world too well to love my country best. When 
 England's intentions are worthy of her I shout for 
 England, but that is all. Calm yourself, good reader, 
 I am no pacifist. So long as there lives one hound of 
 hell who tortured brave lads at their mercy my voice 
 for Germany is still. 
 
 The war, they tell us, is the final struggle between the
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 forces of Light and Darkness. . . . Shall Civilisation 
 Go Under ? ... If Germany Wins Will the World Be 
 Worth Living In ? . . . See any platform speech or 
 newspaper article during the last four years. Agreed, 
 agreed passionately if you will, but are there no other 
 things left remarkable beneath the visiting moon ? 
 Agreed that this war pigmies the clash of earlier 
 civilisations, that admission does not throw out of 
 drawing The Last Judgment of Michael Angelo nor 
 cause the Sonnets of Shakespeare to limp. 
 
 There is a breed despised by soldiers who will do all 
 a passionate patriotism enjoins upon it except think 
 about the war. The last enemy, we hold, is Death, and 
 He should have no allies save Want, Disease and Crime. 
 There may have been tragedy and nobility in the idea 
 of war when the nations were children together ; there 
 is tragedy in the present conflict and endless nobility in 
 its wagers, but these will not avail to prevent the notion 
 of war amongst Earth's civilised peoples from striking, 
 say, her neighbour planets as gallant buffoonery. I 
 hold war to be unworthy of a moment's thought in 
 the sense that the mob which guillotined the flower 
 of France was unworthy of an exquisite's contempt, 
 in the sense that the Teuton, though he may maim and 
 kill our bodies, has no claim upon our minds. But 
 this is the personal wrangle. It is the abstract state 
 of war which, draining our life-blood, straining hearts 
 to bursting, is without interest. Bear with me, reader ; 
 I am no pacifist. The war has killed my best friend and 
 mutilated my son. I am no peacemonger, though I 
 declare war to be folly. Hail the moderate man who 
 said : " All war is damnable. We shall be scoundrels 
 if we keep out of this ! "
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Take courage, you unwarlike men of war who have 
 stood the supreme test. Be of good cheer, you men 
 of peace who have kept flying the flag of the ideals 
 of peace. Be not downcast, you reasonable civilians. 
 Conservatives with the workers' interests at heart, if 
 any such exist ; broad-minded Liberals, or such of you 
 as fly so astonishing a banner ; order-loving Socialists, 
 if the qualification does not eliminate you, lift up your 
 hearts and be comforted ! As you are statesmen and 
 not mere politicians, be assured that whatever your 
 hands found mightily to do in days of peace will not be 
 superseded by a mentality born of war. 
 
 I hold no brief for any political faith. I am in- 
 different to the measures for the eradication of grouse- 
 disease which engrossed the minds of the Conservative 
 landowner in the months before the war, urmioved by 
 those splendom's of Proportional Representation which 
 were the stuff of your Radical journalist's thoughts by 
 night and his dreams by day, unthrilled by any Socialist 
 ciy of " Every Man his own Landlord." And yet I 
 declare with the utmost fury of which the moderate 
 man is capable, that the dreams of plutocrat, small- 
 holder and agitator are in no way relegated by the War. 
 Housing reform, town planning, the spread of educa- 
 tion, the combating of disease, the abolition of the con- 
 ditions leading to prostitution and crime — oh ! I am 
 alive to the born wanton and the wilful cut-throat — 
 the smoothing of the path for the succeeding generation, 
 all this is the Avork of grown-up men. Take heart, 
 therefore, you unremarkable town planners and con- 
 structors of garden cities, heroic on your own plane, 
 the peace to come will restore you to that work which 
 equally with war is worth your doing.
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 Now I would ask the reader to believe that all those 
 cosmic speculations hurled at him at the begimiing of 
 this chapter and all the declamatory nonsense which 
 I have a good mind to turn back and erase, are not more 
 than an attempt to prove sanity and reasonableness. 
 Are we, at this point of suspension in Time and Space, 
 to take our warlike squabbles to heart, or are we to 
 continue to cultivate our gardens ? Only by such 
 cultivation, or so it seems to me, can a man preserve 
 his soul. For his garden is his own affair, to grow in 
 it what he will, without word of command or need of 
 justification. 
 
 ni 
 
 But, good Lord ! what have we crawlers between 
 earth and heaven to do with justification ? Poised 
 uncertainly in Time, hardly more sure of Earth, terra 
 firma as we preposterously dub her, than the bird 
 resting in mid-ocean, are we to adopt the Bench's 
 attitude towards our frail selves ? Will not the 
 historian's do, extenuating little, accentuating nothing ? 
 Certain it is that since we cannot control our desires 
 it is foolish to be ashamed of them. Though Ave may 
 denounce crime it is idle getting into a pet with the 
 criminal. " You have adduced no reason why sentence 
 of death should not be pronounced against you, but 
 till you are hanged I shall be glad if you will dine 
 with me " would be a judicial pronouncement saner 
 than the ordinary. The other to accept with dignity. 
 
 It is not crime nor the criminal instinct we should be 
 ashamed of, but folly. I should be ashamed to prefer 
 Leader to Constable, La Fille de Madame Angot to Die
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Meisier singer, Max's parody to Meredith's page, any 
 Jingo journal to The National Conscience. And yet, 
 tliis is not the whole gospel. There are follies for which 
 I would go to the stake. I prefer the expression of the 
 world to the world itself. I would rather have been 
 Thackeray than Wellington, have described Becky's 
 fliglit from Brussels than have won the battle. I would 
 rather have written three of the four parts of The Old 
 Wives' Tale than have been mayor of each of the Five 
 Towns. 
 
 The idea of 
 
 Tame and shabby tigers, 
 
 dusty prisoners of the travelling menagerie, pleases me 
 more than the salving of whole companies of martyrs. 
 I would rather have invented the infamous boots of the 
 apache, the degenerate uppers, the equivocal toe-piece, 
 the effeminate sole, than have been responsible for the 
 Code Napoleon. I would rather have found the 
 majestic close : 
 
 Tout droit dans son armure, nn grand homme de pierre 
 Se tenait a la barre et coupait le flot noir ; 
 Mais le calme heros, courbe sur sa rapi^re, 
 Regardait le sillage et ne daignait rien voir. 
 
 than have run the gamut of the Don's escapades. 
 
 I scribble a line or two on the small scraps of paper 
 doled out grudgingly by the Sister, " so that you can't 
 worrit yourself even if you want to," and while away 
 the time compiling lists of past delights. Catalogues 
 of Whitmanesque sincerity, in no way a pose. 
 
 An old park in our middle England, dripping trees, 
 undergrowth, decay, a lady many years disconsolate ;
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 bleak, pinched moors and winding roads ; old inns, 
 coffee-rooms and faded prints ; high noon in market- 
 squares, the roguery of dealers, Hodge's reverence to 
 parson and bank manager ; all that England which lies 
 between Hogarth and Trollope ; the placidity which 
 is content with Rydal Water and the glory of Words- 
 worth ; the eaves and thatches of Hertfordshire ; 
 Surrey's imitation of Corot ; the apple-sense of 
 Somerset ; the mothy coombes of Devon. And then 
 the reflex sentimentality of these direct emotions and 
 the play Stevenson would have made of them ; the 
 Wardour Street glamour of such words as sun-dial and 
 curfew, the Victorian lilt and cadence of that perfect 
 raseur King Arthur ; the saturated melancholy of 
 headstones. The sentimentality of parchments ; old 
 brocades, fans that have not fluttered and lace that 
 has not stirred for a generation ; the mouches and 
 petulance of petites marquises ; the painter's sense of 
 great ladies. 
 
 I could tease myself that these emotions are so 
 general as not to be worth the setting down, were it 
 not that strong affection loses nothing by being shared 
 with the whole world. Sealing-wax and sailing-ships 
 fascinate me none the less for having appealed to 
 another. Yet there are certain intimate appreciations, 
 discoveries of one's own, to be hugged exultingly. 
 Such the homely lilt of ballads, the crinolined grace of 
 She Wore a Wreath of Roses, the faded propriety of My 
 Motlter Bids Me Bind my Hair. I sometimes think 
 they have missed the better half of life who do not 
 know Claribel, stern mistress of our tender youth, 
 inexorable guide to wayward fingers. Well do I 
 remember the tone of ivory keys deepening through
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 saffron to rich brown, the nubbly, pohshed ebonies, 
 the puckered rose-coloured silk lining, the fretted walnut 
 front, the fantastic scroll-work of the maker's name. 
 CoUard and Collard — how many hours did my childish 
 soul ponder over all tlic possible combinations of father 
 and son, uncle and nephew, brothers it may be. I 
 often find myself wondering what has become of the 
 old piano over which half my childhood was wept away. 
 I believe I should know it again by its fragrance, 
 the fragrance of my mother's fingers. As I write the 
 perfume steals across me. 
 
 I adore all acting, all masks and subterfuges, all 
 cloaks and garbs of respectability, the obsequiousness 
 of head waiters and the civility of underlings, all rogues 
 and vagabonds soever, the leer of the pavement and 
 the wit of the gutter. I love Bond Street at eleven 
 in the morning, Scott's at noon, some matinee at which 
 there shall be question of faded emotion — say, the old 
 retainer's. And then sunset red as a guardsman's 
 tunic gilding the front of the westward-going 'bus, 
 a music-hall, enough money in my pocket to pay the 
 small-hours' supper-bill, the lights extinguished and by 
 the butt of a glowing cigar, a last florin for its fellow, 
 a last sixpence for human debris insistent with pitiful 
 whine. I love the mystery and peril of the streets. I 
 love to lie lazily in London, to loop my curtains and 
 surrender myself to the hyj^notic effect of the one 
 hundred and sixty-three stags and two thousand, 
 two hundred and eighty-two hounds in full cry which 
 I must presume to have been my landlord's taste in 
 wall-paper some lustres ago. I like to gaze at framed 
 elevens and fifteens, at the jumble of racquets and 
 clubs, the jowl of a prize-fighter, Vardon at the top
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 of his swing, Miss Letty Lind ineffably graceful in some 
 Chinese fantasy. I like to look down on Regent Street 
 —my rooms are at the top of a nest of actors' clubs, 
 registry offices, shady money-lenders and still shadier 
 solicitors — and watch the late last loiterer. I love 
 to lie and think of the world as my own, my very own, 
 in which, though I earn a living by rule and in tune 
 with the common whim, I may by the grace of God 
 think what I like and choose the friends who shall 
 make me laugh and the books which shall make me cry. 
 Every man leads a double life in this most precious of 
 senses. In this world of my own 1 am supreme lord 
 and master and may shatter and rebuild according to 
 my proper desire. Events in the tangible universe 
 do not as events interest me at all. Kings may die 
 and Empires fade away, but until these happenings 
 are presented in some saturated phrase my conscious- 
 ness is unaffected. A new planet is of less moment 
 to me than a new reading of an old line. It 
 needed the Shakespearean echo of some journalist's 
 " Now is England to be tested to her very marrow " 
 to move me to the full responsibility of our pledge 
 to Belgium. 
 
 I love the vanity of artists stretching their sad 
 fastidiousness on . the rack till perfection be found ; 
 the martyr's egotism which will sacrifice health and 
 life itself, not that we may read but that he may 
 write. So the pride of the soldier caring less for the 
 cause than that he shall die worthily. I love words 
 for their own sake. I love the words " hyacinth," 
 " narcissus," " daffodil," " dog-rose " ; their very look 
 on the page enchants me ; they smell more sweetly 
 in the writer's garden than in Nature's rank parterre.
 
 24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I have never seen a trumpet-orchid, yet I know that 
 when I read : 
 
 Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start— 
 
 We're steaming all too slow, 
 And it's twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle 
 
 Where the trumpet-orchids blow. 
 
 the word conjures up the nostalgia of far-off seas. I 
 love the tinkle of " onyx," " chalcedony," " beryl," 
 more than the trumpery gauds themselves. I love the 
 word " must-stained " without desire to gaze upon the 
 feet of the treader of grapes ; the words " spikenard " 
 and " alabaster " without longing for pot or jar. I 
 am crazy for " jasmine " and for " jade," and were I 
 a French writer you would find jadis on every page. 
 I would give the million I do not possess to flaunt a 
 scutcheon with the device DSsormais ! But if I am in 
 love with words, it must not be supposed that I have 
 no affection for the idea also. Though I would insist 
 that the idea shall emerge from the foam and tmuble 
 of its wrappings glorious as any goddess from the sea, 
 yet do I not disdain to disentangle the writer from his 
 own emmeshings, to lie in wait for him, to detect him 
 in his style. I like to hear in the slipshod cadence of 
 Dickens the beating of his great untidy heart ; to 
 trace in the lowering of beautiful words to unromantic 
 purpose the infinite common-sense of his latter-day 
 successor ; to nose the corruption of the decadent in the 
 paint and powder of his prose. Words for me are not 
 the grace-notes of existence but the very stuff and 
 texture of life. This may be madness, but it is an 
 honest frenzy, and remember that in your own kingdom 
 you have the right to be mad. I like to think of
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 Piccadilly as it must have been in those early days 
 which saw me mewed up in our provinces of sterling 
 worth. Of the coudoiement of notabilities. Of the 
 days when Ellen Terry brought a new morning to the 
 jaded world and Irving sent us shuddering to bed ; 
 when, touchingly, at eleven-thirty, Mr and Mrs Kendal 
 would make it up again. When Mr Beerbohm Tree 
 was a rising young actor and Mr George Moore con- 
 fesses he was young. When those tremendous initials, 
 G.B.S., first growled and thundered in the pages of The 
 Saturday Review, Wilde had not tired of confounding 
 peacockery with prose, and the giant Wells was stirring 
 in his sleep. When Rudyard Kipling was a power in 
 the land. Lord Rosebery a Liberal-Imperialist hope, and 
 it seemed as though the Prince would never be King. 
 
 IV 
 
 I am a good lover, but an even better hater. I have 
 an unparalleled zest for the most moderate of dislikes. 
 I mishke — to put it no more strongly — a great many 
 women and nearly all men, with a special aversion for 
 the type of man adored by women, mincing-mouthed, 
 luxuriant-polled, genre coiffeur. I mislike the purist 
 who claims that one language should be enough for any 
 writer and secretly begrudges Caesar his dying Latinism ; 
 and I mislike all those honest folk who insist upon taking 
 you at the foot of the letter instead of at the top, or 
 at least half-way down. I dislike all aldermen, mayors, 
 beadles, janitors, pew-openers, the whole bag of 
 officialdom ; all sham repentances and most sincere 
 ones ; all those to whom the night brings counsel ; 
 the oncle d succession and the pliant inheritor ; the
 
 26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 little ninny who insists that the Moonlight Sonata is 
 by Mendelssohn. I have a contempt for the Christian 
 who looks down upon the Jew, the white man who 
 animadverts ajjainst the blaek. I have a horror of the 
 Freemason in his eups ; of the players of solo-whist ■; 
 of the actor with pretensions towards edification claim- 
 ing to raddle his face that ultimately fewer women 
 may raddle theirs, who " asks a blessing " on his 
 Hamlet. I hate the commonplaces of the train, the 
 street and the market. I abhor the belly of the success- 
 ful man and the swelling paunch of the Justice. I am 
 out of patience with that sentimental midwifery which 
 regards marriage as an infallible inoculation against 
 light desire. I detest Shakespeare's Isabella, all 
 maids who place too high a value on their chastity 
 and all harlots who sell theirs. But my particular 
 loathing is reserved for the unknowledgeable fool who 
 says in his heart : " These things are not within my 
 experience ; therefore they cannot be true." 
 
 Lying between like and dislike is the fascinating 
 region of reconciliation. There are many things in life 
 that I want to reconcile. 
 
 The tragedies of doting fathers and renegade sons, 
 of mothers who live for their children and children 
 who live for themselves ; the wisdom of elders and 
 the banality of their phrase ; the undeniability and 
 tediousness of old fools ; the wrong-headedness of the 
 grocer's view of art and his well-placed distrust of the 
 artist ; the amusingness of people and their harmful- 
 ness ; the vigour and beauty of the Bible and the
 
 INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 rusticity of its writers ; the philosophic acceptance of 
 a First Cause as inconscient as the telephone and the 
 strong inclination to say one's prayers ; the faculty 
 to cope with Kant and the childlike aptitude for 
 faith ; the sheepishness of the Shakespearean mask 
 and the sublimity of the poet ; the greatness of Queen 
 Elizabeth and the pretentiousness of her virginity ; 
 the grace of Charles the Martyr and his unending folly ; 
 the greasy corpulence of Gautier and the perfection 
 of his verse ; the divine murmur of Verlaine and the 
 cretin's mentality. 
 
 I want to reconcile the generosity and the greed of 
 harlots ; my own rare moments of appreciation, when 
 words are too gross to serve, and the physical peace- 
 time habit, half sporting-tipster, half bookinaker's tout, 
 bluff, Homburg-hatted, Edwardian ; all envelopes with 
 their contents, all wrappings with their spirit. 
 
 Then come the things I want to know, millions of 
 them. 
 
 I want to know which is the more pitiful, a calculat- 
 ing head on young shoulders or an old man wearing 
 gravewards with spirit undimmed ; why priests are 
 snuffy in habit, and the established clergy apt to con- 
 found the Oxford manner with the Christian ; whv 
 dissent is unfashionable ; the relation of academies to 
 their parent arts ; whether your middle-class hostess 
 would not prefer at her dinner-table a financier batten- 
 ing upon widows and orphans to a woman " without 
 her lines." 
 
 But more than all these and last of all, at least 
 last in the categorical vein, I want to know why 
 mediocre self-seeking, indifferent cowardice and half- 
 hearted meanness should be the pillars of provincial
 
 28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 society. In the Metropolis blackguardism is at least 
 downright and frank. Cloak these tempered and pro- 
 vincial vices with a moderate standing, a tolerable 
 income, a sufficiently old-fashioned brougham — a livery 
 of discretion in a word — and you have the provincial 
 backbone. Your tatterdemalion and arch-scoundrel 
 are equally insecure ; it is your petty prosperer who 
 creeps through life immune, crawls at the last to his 
 unremarkable grave. I speak here of the small 
 employer, the good easy man who cracks a tolerable 
 joke at his club and is facetious in the train. I speak 
 of my uncle. My intention is to portray him as he was, 
 to set him forth with scrupulous fairness, to display 
 in the best of lights his ostentatious goodness and 
 egregious bonhomie. . . . But all in good time and every- 
 thing in its place ; I have not yet emptied my sack 
 of inquisitiveness. 
 
 There are so many other things knowledge of which 
 I most urgently desire, things not to be found in tables 
 of velocities and masses. I have never been able to 
 grasp the scientific side of learning and am ignorant 
 of the simplest natural phenomena, the way it pleases 
 the moon to shine and the tides to ebb and flow. Do 
 I desire to go a-courting I can, by looking in the 
 almanack, find out moonshine. Do I want to play 
 cricket on the sands^ — sole occasion on which the tides 
 concern me — is there not always a little wooden shrine 
 with a clock-face and the legend " High Water at " ? 
 I have never met the schoolmaster who could explain 
 a logarithm in its quiddity or define the relations of 
 sine and cosine. I take it on trust that two and two 
 make four, and am content in the knowledge that when 
 I happen to have money lying in a bank the clerk,
 
 INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 with the help of King's Interest Tables, will be able to 
 tell me how much I may draw. All these things are to 
 me part of the knowledge which is no knowledge. But 
 I do very desperately want to know the meaning of the 
 two-page cipher in Balzac's La Physiologic du Mariage ; 
 whether in Flaubert's ^Education Sentimentale 
 IMadame Arnoux would have yielded at the last ; why 
 French writers are incapable of quoting English 
 correctly ; why it is impossible to procure in any 
 French bookshop Monnier's portrait of the delectable 
 Priidhomme ; why our allies offer whisky as an 
 apirifif with sugared water and a teaspoon ; when 
 Frenchmen will cease to pose for their beards. Then 
 again, I intend to have it out with the brilliant author 
 of The Old Wives'' Tale ; to ask him why to the im- 
 peccable first, second and fourth parts he must needs 
 add that improbable third. What would you imagine 
 a Frenchman to be like ? is the poser set to the be- 
 nighted Five-Townsman, and pat comes the answer : 
 Chirac, dapper, courtly, Leechified ! Seen through the 
 Povey spectacles Paris looks pale ! This, if I mistake 
 not, is my third reference to a wonderful book, and I 
 hold out no promise that it shall be my last. I do not 
 see why I should debar myself from paying tribute as 
 often as the fancy takes me. 
 
 VI 
 
 What a plague is ennui ! To have been everywhere, 
 seen everything, done everything, to have used up the 
 senses and let slip the supreme boon is of all moral 
 diseases the last incurable. To be tired of oneself and 
 one's proficiencies, of the feel of a cue, the whip of a
 
 30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 club, the way the racquet comes up in the hand, the 
 touch of reins, the "handle" of your favourite book, 
 all this is indeed to find the world flat and unprofit- 
 able. Nothing remains says youi- quack but to take 
 his pills. Nothing remains but to follow my system 
 of exercises, declares some frock-coated Hercules. 
 
 There is, we have often been told, valour and to spare 
 in the spirit's triumph over the flesh. But there is 
 ignominy, I take it, in a romantic spleen giving way to 
 massage, in a fine frenzy of melancholy yielding before 
 a system of exercises. I know nothing more humiliat- 
 ing than this o'ercrowing of the spirit by the body. 
 Hamlet himself had done less girding at the world if 
 he had not been, as Gertrude remarks, in poor con- 
 dition. That the world is out of joint is an old cry. 
 It belongs to our day to advertise all that loss of figure 
 and excess of flesh, baldness and superfluous hair, 
 tuberculosis, haemorrhoids, impotence, vices du sang, 
 maladies secretes, which are our inheritance. I have 
 never been able to fathom the delicate arts' survival 
 of these natural shocks. Greatly in their favour has 
 been the lateness of the world's discovery of electricity, 
 X-rays, Swedish drill and physical exercises. A 
 Musset the picture of rude healtji, a Chopin who should 
 dedicate a nocturne to Mr Sandow, a Shelley pere de 
 famille, a Baudelaire who should be an inside right to be 
 reckoned with— these were unthinkable. But it is no 
 part of the story-teller's business to argue, especially 
 when he is not too sure of his case, and you could shatter 
 mine by citing the admirable boxer who is responsible 
 for Pelleas and Milisande. 
 
 What I am driving at is that life is never as exquisite 
 nor as tragic as it appears on the surface. I am plagued
 
 INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 with a keen appreciation of the tendency of things to 
 find their own level, and I see the world through common- 
 sense spectacles. With me the exquisite moment is 
 of short duration ; subsidence is always at hand. 
 Grief is tragic, but its expression, except in the hands 
 of the trained actor, grotesque. A woman in tears is 
 the most monstrous of spectacles, birth as lamentable 
 as death, the terror of many an honest execution marred 
 by the vulgarity of the hangman and our vision of the 
 glass which is to refresh him. What, we ask, remains 
 for the fellow in the evening of his days save the 
 decline to some bar-parlour ? Life is always taking 
 the edge off things, and it is become the fashion to 
 scoff at the monster and the grand detraquS. One 
 laughs them out of existence, poor souls. Life is 
 reasonable and sane ; your true realist will have nothing 
 to do with bravura. Life is exactly like a common- 
 sensical novel by — never mind whom — and I fear 
 sometimes lest the Ultimate Cause be made after 
 that author's image. And yet the most modern writers 
 have their cowardices. Which of them dares portray 
 a murderer bored with the imbecile chunnerings, the 
 senile irrelevancies of his judge ? Which of them will 
 attribute the clear eye and healthy appetite of the 
 released convict less to the joy of freedom than to a 
 regime of regular hours and enforced abstinences ? 
 They are afraid of their readers, and rightly. What 
 reader would tolerate that I should set down my real 
 feelings on nearing discharge ? From me is expected 
 relief from the intermittent panic, the perpetual dread, 
 the nameless horror, whereas all I have to tell is of 
 escape from an ecstasy of boredom. The truth is that 
 even fear cannot endure for ever ; the human mechanism
 
 32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 has its limits. Soldiers have told of the power at the 
 long last to put fear behind, not that desperate fear 
 which is the moment of valour's catch in the throat, 
 but the more serious dread, the dull foreboding of 
 inaction. Man cannot keep his mind for ever on 
 the rack ; God is to be thanked that we have not 
 complete control of our mentality. I have to reason 
 myself to consciousness of the great deeds which are 
 afoot ; I have come to feel intuitively that death is 
 cheapening and that it has become a little thing to die. 
 A little thing in one sense, how tremendous in 
 another ! My reverence for the common soldier exceeds 
 all bounds. Even more vital than the compulsion to 
 mete out to hellish torturers the measure they meted 
 out to their helpless victims is the obligation of this 
 country to see that no common soldier who has served 
 in France shall ever know the meaning of want. It is 
 for the nation to adopt its cripples and its maimed, 
 to exact from the poor man his contribution of work 
 and from the rich man even to one hundred per cent, 
 of that which he hath, rather than that a single one of 
 these unmurmuring brave should starve. Yesterday 
 a man died in my ward, a man whom in ordinary times 
 one would have dismissed as a drunkard and a lecherer. 
 I am not content with these old classifications ; I am 
 not content with a future life for this soldier which 
 shall be all Michael Angelo and Sebastian Bach. There 
 must be a paradise for the simpletons as for picked 
 spirits. I am not content with a roll-call of the illustri- 
 ous dead who shall arise to greet the coming of our 
 latter-day heroes — great Edward and great Harry, 
 the swingeing Elizabethan blade, business-like Round- 
 head and inefficient Cavalier. Marlborough, Wellington,
 
 INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 Napier, Nicholson, Havelock, Gordon — the shining Hst 
 does not suffice. I am not content though Nelson 
 return a millionfold the kiss he received from Hardy. 
 I want a Valhalla which shall not be a palace but a 
 home. I think I could trust Lamb to make a sufficient 
 welcome, though it is to Falstaff I should look to dis- 
 course of honour in a strain bearable to soldier ears. 
 Nectar and ambrosia may be good taking but there 
 must be familiar grog and laughter and good-fellowship. 
 I want a heaven in which horses shall be run, and the 
 laying of odds allowed a sinless occupation. I want to 
 see Sayers and Heenan fight it out again, to roar at 
 Dan Leno, to watch old Grace till the shadows grow long. 
 
 The most bizarre conceptions assail me, I do not 
 despair of finding a good terrier, a sufficiency of rats 
 and an unoccupied corner of the marble floor. I want 
 not only the best the celestial architects may contrive 
 in the way of saloons but I want the atmosphere of bar 
 parlours ; I want pipes of clay and pint-pots of jasper, 
 common briars and spittoons of jade. Out of doors, 
 playing-fields with well-matched teams, keen-eyed 
 mnpires, hysterical supporters and tapering goal-posts 
 — chrysoprase if you insist, but common deal will do — 
 and a feeling that once a week it will be Saturday 
 afternoon. 
 
 I remember reading in some exquisite diary of the 
 war this letter of a soldier : 
 
 Dear Mum, and Dad, and lovdjg sisters Rose, 
 Mabel and our Gladys,— I am very pleased to write 
 you another welcome letter as this leaves me at present. 
 Dear Mum and Dad and loving sisters, keep the home- 
 fires burning. Not arf ! The boys are in the pink.
 
 34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Not arf ! Dear loving sisters, Rose, Mabel and our 
 Gladys, keep meriy and bright. Not arf I 
 
 I place this amongst the most pathetic and most 
 beautiful of the world's letters. It brings tears, and 
 the refrain " Rose, Mabel and our Gladys " has the 
 plaintiveness of a litany. 
 
 I want a heaven for this writer that shall please him. 
 
 Vll 
 
 It is not often that writers avow even to themselves 
 the extent to which their own souls enter into their 
 projections. Whereas we have in this migration the 
 key to all that matters, to all that is intent and purpose 
 apart from the mere bricks and mortar of the story. 
 That wit was perfectly right who said that authors do 
 not hire steam engines to write their books for them. 
 Autobiographical fiction is the more pardonable, it 
 seems to me, the firm decision taken that it shall be 
 the author's last essay. I am determined that this 
 shall be so in the present case. One cannot go on 
 adding postscripts for ever. I have written nine books 
 in all, live in my own name that were books indeed, the 
 other four the world-famous Pig-Pig ! series, of which 
 the authorship stands here first revealed. I challenge 
 any reader of this page to declare a previous inkling 
 that the great, glorious and altogether wondei-ful Mr 
 Pig-Pig ! was the creation of Edward Marston. 
 
 It saddens me to take down my five volumes from 
 their melancholy shelf. I had long ago ceased to 
 handle them were it not that type and paper, nay the 
 very matter itself, are the better for an airing. The
 
 INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 page mellows with human contact. 1 am tired oi the 
 pride of prmt, the bricklayer's content in the hmidred 
 thousand words piled one upon another. I have out- 
 lived even the artist's pride of craftsmanship, the con- 
 jurer's delight in manipulation and the perfect illusion. 
 There was a time when I would turn to any page in 
 Truth and Untruth, and say : " Yes, I meant that, not 
 a hair's-breadth more, not a shade less, just that." 
 Perhaps I have mastered this pride rather than outlived 
 it. It is not well to hug one's talent — I use the word 
 for want of a humbler — entirely to oneself. And none 
 of my five books enabled me to share mine with more 
 than eight hundred readers apiece, to judge from the 
 returns punctually rendered by my four publishers, 
 of whom one only braved the maxim as to the pre- 
 cautions to be taken being once bitten. They absorbed 
 nine precious years, did these strenuous five, and my 
 net " takings " amounted to less than one hundred 
 pounds. I have dealt on all possible bases, royalty, 
 sale outright, percentage of profit, with risk and even 
 with certainty of loss. Strange to say, it was my co- 
 partners in this last adventure, a high-class, historic, 
 chivalrous house, " tainted with literature " as their 
 pushing competitors dubbed them, who consented to 
 look at me a second time. " Remember," said the 
 senior partner with old-fashioned courtesy, " remember 
 that we have a tradition. We bought tooth-powder 
 for Byron ! We don't drop a man because he doesn't 
 pay in the first five minutes." 
 
 What I wanted was not income but appreciation 
 for my books ; not so much the reviewer's stuff, for 
 the chilliness of which I was prepared, but the com- 
 pensating letters from unknown readers. Perhaps I
 
 36 INTRODUCTION 
 
 did want to be noticed by the big men. That it is 
 better playing with a hon's whelp than with an old one 
 dying is not true of the young writer. Better to be 
 fretfully roared out of existence than indifferently 
 patronised by the jackal. Twice only have I figured 
 over the coveted, tremendous initials ; for the young 
 writer has first to win his spurs, and it would seem that 
 these are in the bestowal of the critical apprentice. 
 Truth and Untruth was pronounced by one young 
 gentleman to bear a marked resemblance to Butler's 
 The Way of All Flesh. True that I had never cast eyes 
 upon that work ; the proofs of pilfering were irrefut- 
 able. Another bright sprig claimed that my book was 
 " coloured with Neoplatonism," of which wild-fowl I 
 knew less than nothing. Followed a disquisition upon 
 schools, to my mind the least profitable form of raking 
 among old bones. I know nothing about such classi- 
 fications and care less. To me Zola is a romantic for 
 the reason that his story of the old wife keeping her 
 weather-eye open against a husband's attempts to 
 poison her gives me as authentic a thrill as any tale of 
 treasure. I call Stevenson a great realist, since he 
 makes me feel nearer to the unutterable Huish than I 
 do to the hero of V Assommoir . I have always found 
 that the assorters and classifiers, the pedants and the 
 schoolmasters, the entire professorial brood in a word, 
 are as ignorant of the spirit as they are apt with the 
 letter, I belong to no school. When I am in the 
 mood Hugo is superb ; according as the wind blows 
 Mr Henry James is our greatest writer or the sheer 
 unreadable. I own no master and am not vain enough 
 to dream of disciples. In the same breath I have been 
 praised for fastidiousness and blamed for slovenly
 
 INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 workmanship and skimped design, God ! when I think 
 that I built my books as reverently as a cathedral and 
 laid their foundations with as monumental a care. 
 I would not have the reader imagine that this is the 
 mere fretfulness of failure. I can suffer failure. And 
 yet it rankles when I see praise bestowed on the slip- 
 shod journeyman unintrigued by his art. 
 
 In cold blood I am inclined to think my books not 
 so very remarkable. At times I fear lest they wear 
 too closely the air of the masterpieces ... of others ! 
 There are moods in which The Porcelain Dome seems to 
 be Mademoiselle de Maupin all over again without, 
 shamefaced islander that I am, the preoccupation of 
 sex. It has the enamelled sky, the Berlin-wool sunsets, 
 the swansdown clouds. White Wings is a rhapsody 
 of the enskied and sainted, but isn't there in the title 
 a hint, the smallest possible hint, of Miss Charlotte M. 
 Yonge ? Agnes is a sympathetic study of the pros- 
 titute, owing something to La Fille Elisa and to Ma? the. 
 This, the first book of mine to be reviewed over for- 
 midable initials, I had named without reckoning on 
 the reviewer's cruel wit and the music-hall's foremost 
 roysterer. Never shall I forget that Saturday after- 
 noon when, opening with trembling fingers the historic 
 journal, I saw my book bleeding under the headline : 
 " I'm ashamed of you, Ag-er-ness ! " 
 
 For my fifth work I determined to leave no stone un- 
 turned to draw the public attention. For excuse let 
 me say that I am naturally impatient and that posterity 
 is a long way off. I made things easy for the reader. 
 I divided the story into books with distinctive titles 
 not hard to remember, and each book into chapters 
 with enticing headings. Each page bore at the top an
 
 38 INTRODUCTION 
 
 infantile indication of its contents in words of one syl- 
 lable. The volume was prefaced with a key-quotation 
 in English. I chose a firm of publishers renowned for 
 their lack of squeamishness, and took advantage of a 
 momentary lull in their flood of unsavoury memoirs. 
 I connived at the suggestion that the MS. had come 
 mysteriously into their hands. I let it be understood 
 that the characters were fashioned " like Pharaoh's 
 soldiers in the reechy painting." For a month I 
 arranged for paragraphs in the leading society journals 
 beginning : "A little bird tells us . . ." and "It is 
 whispered that ..." And then the authorship of the 
 impending publication, which those who had been 
 "privileged to see in manuscript" pronounced to be 
 ' ' startling, ' ' was allowed to leak out. I was interviewed 
 by camera, " Getting into the Mercedes," " Taking 
 Bully for his Walk " — two guineas the hire of the brute 
 cost me — " Chuckling over Punch'' s Review of his Last 
 Novel," " Subscribing to the Children's Sea-Side Fund." 
 I regretted my celibacy, the non-existence of a wife 
 who might also be photographed " Getting into the 
 Napier," " Teaching Fido to Beg," " Tell me, Nurse, 
 how is Baby ? " "As Cleopatra at the Albert Hall." 
 There was no baseness to which I did not descend. I 
 altered the title from The Middling Venture, which the 
 publishers thought smacked too dangerously of Henry 
 James, to Plum-Tree and Amber, or The Satirical 
 Rogue, the one hint of quality in all the welter of 
 paragraphing. And in this guise I gave to the 
 world the most careful, the most sincere and the most 
 temperate work of which I am capable. " Betrays 
 a plentiful lack of wit," thundered the tremendous 
 initials. " This author, like the crab, goes backward."
 
 INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 The book did not even sell. I was an accredited 
 failure. 
 
 Now let me be quite clear upon this matter of failure. 
 I am prepared to believe that the books were not master- 
 pieces. In the long run work of genius is never allowed 
 to die, and that my books are dead proves that they 
 had no claim to the supreme category. That they had 
 more labour spent on them than genius, so often care- 
 less, demands ; that they were conceived in agony and 
 brought forth after bloody travail is beside the point. 
 They are a part of my life which I have left definitely 
 behind ; I can laugh at old bitterness, and besides, have 
 I not Pig-Pig ! to console me ? 
 
 The reader will remember him well ; he came a year 
 or two after Trilby had exhausted her vogue. The 
 hoardings were alive with him ; he crowded all other 
 literature off the railway bookstalls. He was to be met 
 with in 'buses and in trains, in drawing-rooms, in sea- 
 side lodging-houses and on the beach. The circulating 
 library displayed cards : Mr Pig-Pig is OUT, by which 
 they implied the feverish wetting of a hundred thumbs. 
 A witty judge began his summing up in a cause celebre 
 with the words : " Gentlemen of the Jury, this case 
 is not unique, but it possesses what Mr Pig-Pig would 
 call uniquosity . ' ' The reader will remember the charm- 
 ing personality portrayed on the covers of the four 
 volumes, in countless toys, trinkets, charms, on choco- 
 late boxes and on tins of boot polish. He will re- 
 member the white-toppered, morning-coated, monocled 
 little porker, with a huge " Flor de Pig-Pig " cigar at 
 the corner of his gentlemanly mouth. Four shillings 
 and sixpence to the public, the little man brought me 
 in twenty thousand pounds. And then there were the
 
 40 INTRODUCTION 
 
 cheap editions. Twopence a copy is not much, but it 
 mounts up, dear reader, it mounts up. I have never 
 been able to account for the book's popularity. It was 
 Swift without the savagery and Sterne without the wit. 
 It represented the youth of this country growing through 
 stuttering nonage to the maturity of silent strength, 
 silent because it has nothing to say. Plain Mr Pig-Pig ! 
 was the title of the first volume. Pig-Pig Goes One 
 Better! — I had artfully dropped the "Mr" — was the 
 second. Then Pig-Pig en Voyage !- — the French tickled 
 'em immensely — and finally Pig-Pig Settles Up and 
 Down ! And of course there were the subdivisions. 
 Pig-Pig and the Tender Passion ! Pig-Pig and Nemesis ! 
 Pig-Pig Counts the Cost ! I tell you I let myself go. 
 
 I have often pondered over the possibility of genius 
 writing masterpieces with one hand and pot-boilers 
 with the other. But the degradation is too abject. 
 Far better to write your rubbish before you are thirty- 
 five and retire on your dishonest competence. God 
 grant you the power to keep your genius unsullied and 
 a reasonable stretch of life for the work you were born 
 to do. Or you may address envelopes from six to six, 
 keeping the night for the masterpiece, though I am 
 told this is bad for the health. Yet another way is to 
 carry coals, or lay drains, till the week's pittance is 
 assured. In my own case I reversed the process and 
 did my good work first, but it is true that I had a capital 
 of between seventeen and eighteen thousand pounds. 
 I have written of the sovereign influence of health ; I 
 was wrong. Health is important, but you can manage 
 with a modicum of it. Wealth is all that matters. 
 I am amused to read in naturahstic novels the most 
 intimate particularities of the hero's vices, manners.
 
 INTRODUCTION 41 
 
 ways of eating, drinking and loving, but no mention 
 of his income. Your true realist is he who will give 
 you not only the grandest and the meanest sentiments 
 of which his characters are capable, but also the exact 
 fortune and how secured which will permit them the 
 leisure for their philosophic airings. He will keep 
 accounts for his personages. He will not send a younger 
 son to the Colonies without putting money in his purse, 
 at least to the extent of the fare. He will indicate in 
 what way the impending banknipt is to stave off final 
 disaster, precising exactly where the ready money, that 
 most crucial factor, comes from. He will instruct the 
 novice in the ticklish game as to how, having divested 
 himself of all his worldly goods even to the classic gold 
 hunter and Albert chain, he may expect to live through 
 the interminable days of the law's firking and ferreting. 
 In any strictly non-Gilbertian country the mainten- 
 ance of bankrupts under examination would be a charge 
 upon the State, instead of which we tacitly assume them 
 to keep breath going upon the secret stores of which it 
 is a criminal offence to have made provision. Let me 
 say that I have never made the acquaintance of the 
 Official Receiver outside the columns of the newspaper. 
 I have always enjoyed a fair, even good income. 
 To-day I still possess my seventeen or eighteen thousand 
 pounds and all that the Pig-Pig ! series brought me in. 
 I thank God for my son's sake. 
 
 vm 
 
 Sister is uneasy about my writing. 
 " Here, you," she said one day, " you're always 
 scribbling. Can't you leave it alone and do a bit of
 
 42 INTRODUCTION 
 
 reading instead. Here's something for you to look at." 
 Whereupon she put into my hand a copy of a journal 
 whieh is accustomed to print weekly for the benefit of 
 such classes as acknowledge themselves as "" lower " 
 sixteen pages of the wit and tales of our grandfathers; 
 All for the war-time price of three-h'alfpence. How do 
 they manage it one asks wearily, and as wearily makes 
 a guess at the advertisements. Let me reproduce one 
 which has given me the genuine thrill, the thrill that 
 none but your true enormity affords. 
 
 Here faintness overtakes me. What if this treasur'd 
 splendour and holy grail, this collector's jimp in- 
 anity be appraised too carelessly by the taster in 
 these trifles ? I am sure of my bouquet, but would be 
 sure of the critical nose. Ineffably " the goods," the 
 thing since Sister put it into my hands haunts me, is 
 become an obsession. Choice and fascinating excerpt 
 . . . mesmeric rhythm . . . Milton's ma&terpiece. 
 ... I have not been so thrilled since the day I 
 saw in an undertaker's window the promise — Pinking 
 Done. I will be faint no longer. Roses have thorns 
 and silver fountains mud, says the poet, but I say that 
 canker is undiscoverable in the sweet bud of this my 
 beauty's rose. Let loveliness speak for herself.
 
 ASK YOUR MUSIC-DEALER TO RESERVE YOU A COPY 
 OF THE ENCHANTING WALTZ 
 
 ** Dreams Dp tbe fire** 
 
 A STORY WITHOUT WORDS TOLD ON THE PIANO BY 
 
 FREDERICK CHUGGS 
 
 Composer of " Fireflies," " With You and Night," " Love's Champagne," etc., etc. 
 
 Tni orer this clioice excerpt for yourself — but bearing in mind the fact that, fascinating as the 
 
 excerpt is, it can no more give ijoti an adequate idea of the mesmeric rhythm of the piece 
 
 than a page frmn " Paradise Lost" could give you of Milton's masterpiece. 
 
 Val.ie lente. 
 
 ■-mM 
 
 NOW you can visualize the story; a young gfirl dreams by the fireside— dreams of her 
 soldier-boy at the front— dreams of their last hours together, of the haunting air of the last 
 waltz, and awakens at the sound of church bells softly pealing in the distance. " Dreams by 
 the Fire" is a masterly conception and worthy of the priceless reputation of its scholarly, yet 
 nevertheless popular composer. 
 
 To be had of all music-sellers. Price 2/-, post free 2/1J
 
 44 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Who was the exorbitant fellow who looked to crimson 
 velvet to outweigh the miseries of existence ? Or was 
 it yellow plush ? In either case he asked too much. 
 There is that in my simple advertisement which fills the 
 cup of joy to overflowing. Henceforth I am content 
 to absent me I'rom felicity. 
 
 Try it on your piano.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 §i 
 
 AND now at length I am come to my 
 uncle. 
 The reader would have been afforded earlier 
 acquaintance with this personage had it not been for 
 the pains I have been at to find the word that shall 
 fit him. I wanted something at once grotesque and 
 sinister, something that would bring to the mind 
 Pantagruel and our modern buffoon. Loon, pantaloon 
 — the termination was found but not the body. That 
 was to be dwarfish, having to do with bottle-imps, 
 djinns and leprechauns in so far as these little people 
 are malevolent. Enormity, in the social sense, had to 
 be implied. The word existed in the French and 
 only my natural objection to sponging on the foreigner 
 prevented me from hurling it at the reader at the 
 outset. Peacocking in alien feathers is always dis- 
 pleasing, pardonable only when native plumes are 
 inadequate — to taste the full measure of offensiveness 
 you have only to read any Frenchman presuming to 
 borrow from us. I hope I shall never use a foreign 
 word where there is an English equivalent ; but 
 that equivalent lacking I account myself entitled 
 to ransack the Chinese, the Tartar, the Caribbean 
 and whatever tongues are spoken on Roast Beef and 
 Plum Pudding Islands. I should think nothing of 
 inventing a language for the sole purpose of quoting 
 from it. 
 
 And now, reader, let me present to you the little 
 
 45
 
 46 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 word cocasse. It is a word of breeding. Says 
 Beranger : 
 
 Pierrots et paillasses 
 Beaux esprits cocasses 
 Charment sur les places 
 Le peuple ebahi. 
 
 It is an accommodating word and well describes my 
 - last chapter. Confess that you did not quite grasp the 
 appositeness of that musical interlude. 'Twas a stroke 
 of cunning to prepare you for my uncle and for the 
 word which should describe him. 
 
 It is time for me to be a little more precise. Reuben 
 Ackroyd, my mother's brother, was for fifty years the 
 leading citizen of Crawley Bridge. His cotton mill 
 it was which had built up the prosperity of the little 
 town on the borders of Lancashire and Cheshire. Head 
 of the firm of Ackroyd and Marston of Crawley Bridge 
 Mill — " Ackroyd's " was the name it went by in the 
 town, which in turn was always called " The Bridge " 
 — the old spider sat in his Manchester ojffice and spun 
 a web which included Stockport, Oldham, Blackburn, 
 Bury, and other minor towns of the county. His 
 machinations were concerned with nothing more sinister 
 than cotton piece goods. Ackroyd and Marston 's 
 Crawley Shirting is still a name to conjure with in 
 Calcutta, to impress the rcista of Buenos Ayres, to stir 
 China from her sleep of ages. It was an honest cloth. 
 But it is to be admitted that besides the Crawley shirt- 
 ing, Ackroyd and Marston manufactured velveteens in 
 which there was no velvet, sateens devoid of satin, 
 and flannelettes innocent of wool. But since all these 
 deceptions were " patent to the meanest intelligence " 
 — a favourite phrase with my uncle — the trade may be
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 47 
 
 considered susceptible of a normal commercial honesty. 
 I have in my possession a copy of the pamphlet in which 
 Reuben warned the mothers of England of the highly 
 inflammable nature of cotton flannelettes and the 
 danger to which were exposed such of their darlings 
 as were " knickered and nightied " — he sat up a whole 
 nioht over the phrase — in the treacherous stuff. The 
 final paragraph contained a warranty that all Ackroyd 
 and Marston's flannelettes were subjected to a process 
 rendering them fireproof to a superlative degree. The 
 whole rounded off with a clever drawing, showing a six- 
 year-old innocent applying a match to her frock, with 
 the text : it won't light. 
 
 A gaimt, twisted man my uncle must have been, 
 stripped for the last voyage. But it is not decent to 
 spy upon people so, and the world is right to take us 
 at the more charitable estimate of our chosen wrappings. 
 Let me describe him in his normal garb, that outward 
 husk which for a generation imposed upon the whole 
 world with the exception of half-a-dozen confidential 
 employees. My uncle affected a hard hat with a 
 square top bulging slightly at the crown as though in 
 sympathy with the dome beneath. This bulge held 
 the faintest suggestion of the Established Church, 
 which was quickly corrected by the brim, puritan and 
 friendly in the technical sense. The wings of the 
 collar were spread wide as charity. Beneath them a 
 cravat broad as the wearer's convictions but tied as 
 tightly as his purse-strings on anonymous occasion ; 
 in the cravat an enormous single diamond of the first 
 water, symbolical of the purity of its wearer's inten- 
 tions. The sober coat was a compromise between the 
 dignity of the ceremonial garment and the workman's
 
 48 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 blouse ; I am worn, it seemed to say, by a labourer 
 worthy of his hire. The waistcoat was unremarkable 
 save that it was tight-stretched over protuberance, a 
 paunch lacking to the discerning the generosity of true 
 ventripotence. He had no joy in his stomach. Never 
 could it have grown from the joyous little skinful, tight 
 as a drum, in which young Tom Brown stowed away 
 kidneys and coffee, nor yet from the rice-stuffed abund- 
 ance of the little fellow in the plate illustrative of the 
 Crocodile in Cuvier's Natural History. Rather did my 
 uncle seem to view it as an inculpatory index to greed. 
 To me it was always a hard, round nodule of rapacity. 
 Brother merchants, his contemporaries, were wont in 
 summer-time to array themselves in waistcoats of light 
 hue and texture. Not so Reuben. He Avould not 
 " bedizen " himself nor allow his employees to be so 
 bedizened. " We are here for a Purpose," he would 
 say, speaking in capitals, " and that Puipose is not 
 advanced by Unseemliness in Dress. We are not 
 going BOATING," he would explode. "Business is 
 Business and Boating is Boating. We have to guide 
 our Bark down the Stream of Commerce till we reach 
 the Shore of Independence, and then we may Guy 
 ourselves each according to his Taste and Fancy," 
 My uncle's trousers were shapeless, cylindrical affairs 
 hanging in multiple folds over stout, well-made boots. 
 Never did I see him — here, reader, is the note of the 
 cocasse — without a flower carried as soon as the con- 
 trivance was invented in a little tin water-bottle 
 fitting into the buttonhole. He would bestow these 
 roses of his own growing with a lavish hand ; in the 
 first instance upon the hospital where was the Ackroyd 
 ward, next upon his workpeople, more particularly
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 49 
 
 upon any employee who had been refused a -rise of wages. 
 We bring proof, the red and yellow blooms implied, of 
 our master's regret in not being able to see his way — ■ 
 oh classic formula ! — to grant your moderate request ; 
 are we not evidence that, frankly, he bears his peti- 
 tioners no ill-will. Fine Saturdays would see old 
 Reuben at the county cricket ground, surmounted by 
 an incredible circlet of straw, a jovial old dog glad to 
 let others have their day. From May to October he 
 was effulgent, genial, and on occasion lenient with 
 slow-paying customers ; with the first chill the whole 
 man retired within the folds of his tight-buttoned 
 ulster, and something crab like crept into his walk. 
 
 I find that I have described the clothes rather than 
 the man, and this largely because clothes are unchang- 
 ing whereas man cannot defy Time for ever. And yet, 
 except that my uncle's hair grew whiter and his figure 
 more bent, and that he wore a deeper air of intimacy 
 with the ultimate purpose of Almighty God, I cannot 
 recall that his aspect ever underwent any real change. 
 He was slightly over the middle height and possessed 
 a brow which, on public platforms and with top-lighting, 
 veered to nobility. He always seemed to me — I am no 
 politician — the typical free trader, 'cute, canny and 
 close-fisted. His glowing periods were those Cobden 
 could make impressive, and he was never tired of 
 reiterating the old tag about riches consisting not in 
 the multitude of man's possessions but in the fewness 
 of his wants. When giving vent to a well-chosen senti- 
 ment he was exactly like any one of the fifty or sixty 
 benevolent old buffers who appear to have mitigated 
 the rigours of the cotton famine by sitting for their 
 portraits round an oak table. Yet there were times
 
 50 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 when his features in repose assumed an expression 
 veritably hang-dog. His nose, broad enough at the 
 base to support gold spectacles, sharpened to meanness 
 at the end ; the mouth one instinctively felt to be cruel 
 and the chin weak, although both were screened by a 
 straggling, undecided beard. He had a curious trick 
 of speaking out of the left half of his mouth, the under- 
 lip drooping to let forth such speech as might be con- 
 sidered non-committal and then going back with a snap. 
 His word was as good as his bond, but it was his in- 
 variable practice after having given a verbal undertaking 
 to reduce that undertaking to writing, and many people 
 were surprised at the astonishing wealth of contin- 
 gencies, forfeits and alternative interpretations a simple 
 yea or nay may be presumed to give rise to. These 
 written engagements, drawn up in his neat, precise 
 handwriting, were to him aesthetic achievements and 
 matter for artistic pride. He would safeguard the 
 interests of the second party to the treaty with great 
 elaboration, setting out innumerable pains and penalties 
 to which in no case could that unfortunate person have 
 been exposed ; and when trouble arose it was in- 
 variably found to hang upon the interpretation of 
 some trifling accident of phrasing, a misplaced " and " 
 or ill-considered " but." I have marvelled for hours 
 together over the skill and cunning of these booby- 
 traps. To this day I am not sure how far they were 
 deliberate schemes to involve less subtle intelligences, 
 or how far they may have been the expression of an 
 idea of truth as tortured and intricate as the late 
 Mr Gladstone's oratorical expositions of that virtue. 
 My uncle looked well on the Bench and carried many a 
 Company Meeting by his impressive silences.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 51 
 
 You are to hear of him at considerable length in the 
 following pages, for although my story has no hero it is 
 not without a villain. And yet I am not sure that 
 villain's the word. He was a devoted husband and an 
 admirable father, though I do not know to what viola- 
 tions a dividend warrant might not have tempted him. 
 Though I have seen him play at ride-a-cock-horse with 
 his children I swear that for a director's fee he would 
 have fumbled in the breasts of virgins. Meet it is I set 
 it down that a man may be an excellent father and yet 
 a villain. At least I'm sure it was so at Crawley 
 Bridge. He was an admirable host and could sing a 
 good song. Many's the New Year's Eve I have sat with 
 him and his family munching chestnuts round the fire. 
 Then, holding up a glass of port, would he set us 
 singing A Boat, a Boat, and to the Ferry, or London 
 Budge is Falling Down, and as midnight drew near 
 lead off John Brown'' s Body with immense gusto and 
 hilarity. To behold his cheerful countenance and to 
 hear his strong, steady voice you would swear him in- 
 capable of making a poor wretch bankrupt, whereas 
 this was a thing he always did with a chuckle. He 
 seemed to derive a moral satisfaction almost amount- 
 ing to physical well-being from the misfortunes of others. 
 He was a problem of which I could never quite fit the 
 pieces together, a problem in terms of the cocasse. 
 
 Cocasse, cocasse — how well you look in your 
 English dress and how splendidly you fit the English 
 temperament. I expect henceforth to see you in daily 
 use. 
 
 The ambitious cleric who " receives a call " to a 
 wealthier cure and offers up sham prayers for guidance 
 is cocasse.
 
 52 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 A brewer who should vote in favour of a pro- 
 hibitionist bill is cocasse. 
 
 A brewer who should vote against the bill /row con- 
 viction is cocasse. 
 
 The supposition of the United Kingdom Alliance and 
 a few doddering bishops that the soldiers will be content 
 to come home to a " dry " England is cocasse. 
 
 Cocasse ! Cocasse ! 
 
 My own life has not been lacking in the quality. Did 
 not my best labours, the books into which I put heart 
 and brain, peter out in mere vexation ? It was not so 
 much fame that I wanted — fame being largely a matter 
 of luck, of one's name being easily pronounceable, of 
 titles catching on over the tea- cups of the upper ten, of 
 a hundred incalculable little ignominies. It was not 
 fame I wanted, but appreciation by the few picked 
 spirits. Well, I failed. But I had only to put my 
 tongue in my cheek and ladle out ribaldry to be lapped 
 up greedily and besought for more. 
 
 All my life I have had more than bowing acquaint- 
 ance with the cocasse. 
 
 §ii 
 
 Let me begin at the beginning. 
 
 All that remains to me of my childhood is the sharp- 
 est recollection of the feel and taste and smell of things ; 
 very little as to whether people were kind to me or 
 whether I liked them or not. I remember the japanned 
 blue of my cot-sides cut out in constellations the way 
 I would fit my fmgers into the stars, the feel of the im- 
 print on the tips. I remember the noise the side would 
 make when I bulged it out with my knee and released it
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 53 
 
 sharply, the taste of the brass knobs at the corners, the 
 number of turns it took to unscrew them. Famihar 
 still the scent of the shelves in my mother's store- 
 cupboard, the leathery atmosphere of the piled box- 
 room. I have all the old distaste for certain little pairs 
 of cream socks and the new-washed discomfort of them, 
 and for tying the black silk scarves of sailor suits. I 
 know exactl}?^ how paving-stones smell when one is 
 less than three feet tall, and can feel again the knee- 
 deep thresh and churn of leaves in a hollow. The rain 
 spinning pennies in the street still invites me to flatten 
 a snub nose against the pane, and I can feel on each cheek 
 the press of the window's safety bars. I know that 
 when there is a great lowing of cattle in the early hours 
 it must be Wednesday morning and market-day. I 
 still find it a terrible thing to be left alone in a garden 
 after dusk ; romantic and thrilling to light the gas at 
 nine in the morning on days of fog ; and there is no tale 
 written which can vie with the glamour of falling snow. 
 I still find heaven in the scent of farm-house sheets and 
 the glimmer of a lattice, whilst to come back after 
 summer holidays to new carpets and new paint is to 
 explore paradise anew. There is a grown-up theory 
 which would derive the sensation of falling in sleep 
 from the insecurity of legendary ancestors dwelling in 
 tree-tops. In my maturer sleep I never fall ; I am 
 being carried out of a steaming bathroom up flights of 
 stairs with my head wrapped in a Paisley shawl and 
 Dame Margery's voice declaring that I get heavier 
 everj^ day. Her real name was Margaret, but " Dame 
 Margery " was, of course, inevitable. 
 
 Of my mother I recall little save the texture, colour 
 and pattern of her dresses. I remember the visitors
 
 54 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 used to call her " your pretty mother," and I suppose 
 that she must have been beautiful. But I took her 
 })cauty for granted in the same way that I accepted 
 the grandeur of an enormous gown of maroon silk 
 flounced with ivory lace in which she went to parties. 
 On these occasions she would wear white flowers in 
 her beautiful hair, gold chain and locket, and on each 
 arm a thick gold bracelet, one fastening with an 
 achnirable snap, the other with less severity. On her 
 handkerchief I was allowed to pour a few drops — oh 
 very, very few — of a scent called White Rose. The 
 otlier perfumes of the period — Opoponax, Ylang- Ylang, 
 Ess Bouquet, dear, delightful names — I saw only in 
 shop windows. They were, my mother used to declare, 
 " actressy." I dare not imagine what she would have 
 thought of our latter-day lures — Pluie d'Or, Hantise, 
 Infinite. Would she have marched with the times ? 
 I think not ; I hope not. I was admitted into all 
 the secrets of her dressing-table, innocent, obvious, 
 motherly secrets having no greater matter for disclosure 
 than two long tresses of hair slightly lighter in colour 
 which Dame Margery, who had once been her nurse 
 and was now mine, used to fasten to the drawer-knob 
 and plait and replait. My mother's cheeks had all 
 the glow of happiness. 
 
 " There's no recipe for a clear skin like a clear con- 
 science," the old woman would cry with privileged 
 freedom. 
 
 Then my mother would ask : " Will I do, Nurse ? " 
 and Margery would give a touch here and a pat there 
 and send her downstairs with a blessing and a hundred 
 recommendations as to shawls and wrappings, and I 
 to trot after her in charge of fan and gloves to which
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 55 
 
 clung the delicate odour of the cedar- wood box in which 
 she stored them, and to usher her and my father into a 
 yellow, plush-lined cab. Respectfully the driver would 
 touch his hat and say : 
 
 " Grows a 'and bigger every time I sees 'im, does 
 Mas'r Edward." 
 
 The closing of the door would fill the house with un- 
 utterable loneliness ; I can describe it in no other way. 
 My mother in her party clothes was the proudest and 
 most beautiful sight my childish eyes had ever beheld, 
 and time has not effaced the radiant vision. 
 
 Then with many promises of secrecy would Margery 
 make coffee and crisply toast and richly butter a tea- 
 cake of her own baking, and I would sit up until past 
 ten o'clock and turn over the pictures in David Copper- 
 field, which even at that early age I decided was the 
 most beautiful book ever written. Or Dame Margery 
 would read aloud from Queechy and The Lamplighter 
 and make my childish heart knock at the ribs with 
 that page from Lillian's Golden Hours in which the 
 skeleton is found in the dungeon. I had a liking too 
 for a story called Won by Gentleness, which opened 
 with a baronet called Sir Gervase — what better name 
 for a hero ? — dragged at his horse's stirrup. All 
 that is nearly forty years ago, but there are times 
 when I can still feel the bump of Sir Gervase's head 
 upon the stones. 
 
 I may perhaps be allowed to tell here of how old 
 Margery entered into the service of my family. My 
 maternal grandparents had been, to look upon, as ill- 
 assorted a pair as you would find in a day's march ; 
 he a bluff, cattle-dealing, northern farmer, she the 
 primmest, littlest and most exquisite old lady that was
 
 56 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ever modelled in ehina. A poor country girl proposed 
 herself as maid and was accepted. 
 
 " You may bring your box, girl," said my grand- 
 mother, adding : "Of course, you understand that no 
 followers are allowed." 
 
 "WTiereupon the girl burst into tears and made 
 stammering confession. She had, it seemed, been 
 turned away from home and was without shelter. My 
 grandmother, who had never known discomfiture and 
 who never went back on a decision, rapped out tartly : 
 
 " Dry your eyes, girl. If you must have a baby, you 
 may as well have it here. That sort of thing can't go 
 on in the streets." 
 
 The news broken to my grandfather, the old gentle- 
 man slapped his thigh and roared : 
 
 " Good for you, old lady ! The wench shall have her 
 child, damned it she shan't, and a fine child too ! " 
 
 And so young Margery stayed and became old 
 Margery, and wore a wedding ring and was called Mrs 
 Bentham, and lived and died in the service of my family 
 universally loved and respected. Her child is now a 
 prosperous furniture dealer in Bristol. I give the story 
 as illustrative of the stuff of which my mother's family 
 was made. I must presiune this to include my Uncle 
 Reuben, though for the life of me I have never been 
 able to see how he and my mother came to be brother 
 and sister. I do not deny that my uncle would have 
 acted in the same way ; I think he was always piqued 
 that no such opportunity for gratuitous display of 
 generosity ever befell him. In his heart he cared little 
 or nothing for the proprieties, and the incident would 
 have enabled him to lay up a prodigious capital in the 
 way of a reputation for broad-mindedness.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 57 
 
 Other recollections I have of my mother, but they are 
 chiefly bound up with her dresses. I seem to see her at 
 a garden-party at which she prettily holds a lawn- tennis 
 racquet of old-fashioned shape. She wears a fawn- 
 coloured frock with a short train and plum-coloured 
 panels made out of little squares of velvet defined by 
 gold braid. Roses cluster about her hat, and her 
 shoulders have the pretty droop I Icnow so well. She 
 looks so very like the picture of a fashionable beauty of 
 the period strolling elegantly about some royal lawn. 
 
 §111 
 
 I have a cmious faculty amounting almost to the 
 hypnotic for remembering people by their hands. One 
 of mv earliest recollections is that of walking behind a 
 labourer on our way from chapel — we are a Dissenting 
 family — on an Easter Sunday morning. I know it was 
 Easter Sunday because the working man of those days 
 was wont to celebrate that festival and the advent of 
 spring with new creaking boots and trousers of bright 
 puce. My mother held that new clothes should blazen 
 forth on any other Sunday, but that though we might 
 not dress more magnificently we might be allowed to 
 eat more expensively. Lamb and a dish of asparagus 
 were de rigueur on that day, afterwards to be banished 
 from our table until Whit-Sunday when they re- 
 appeared at my uncle's board with the addition of new 
 potatoes and green peas. Our guests at Easter were 
 always the same — my uncle and his family, the minister 
 and his wife, and whoever happened to be the chairman 
 of the chapel committee with his lady. A singular 
 procession we must have made. Consider the Rev.
 
 58 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and Mrs Steepleton, he sheepishly null but of good 
 intent, she a fussy, unpretending little body. They 
 supported life and four ailing ehildren on a stipend 
 — I forget at this distance of time the canting word 
 with which we cloaked the beggarliness of the sum — 
 of one hundred and ten pounds a year. It was an 
 understood thing that for this wage the parson should 
 edify his congregation twice every Sunday throughout 
 the year with three weeks' holiday in August ; and it 
 was an equally understood thing that the middling fellow 
 should exact respect from such of his flock as possessed 
 less of the world's goods than he, and show proper 
 recognition of those social gulfs which separated him 
 from the wealthier of his congregation. I remember 
 conceiving the impression that the Steepletons must 
 be always hungry and that when they dined with us 
 true politeness consisted in pressing quantities of food 
 upon them. As the eldest of their four children was 
 under seven years of age and as they obviously could 
 not afford the meanest maid that chares, I often 
 wondered how, on the occasions when they came straight 
 to us from chapel, the little ones fared for dinner, I 
 think now that probably they did not dine. Damnable 
 are the straits to which the poor Dissenting minister 
 is driven ; damnable that he should be expected to 
 give out the breath of life when he has all the 
 trouble in the world to keep it in. Trollope's poor 
 curate is no figment of the imagination ; Hogglestock's 
 pathetic page is sufficient title to enduring fame. But 
 to go back to our stragglesome procession. 
 
 We paired as follows : — My uncle with the parson's 
 wife, my father with my aunt. Next the Rev. Steeple- 
 ton with the wife of the chairman- -a master-plumber's
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 59 
 
 lady. Behind them the master-pkimber with my 
 mother, and finally my two cousins and myself. I 
 remember holding Monica's shy little fist, my gaze 
 fixed on the master-plumber's hands clasped behind 
 his back, the palms yellow, horny, ineradicably lined 
 and exuding a natural grease. 
 
 I trace my uncle's long-standing animosity towards 
 me to that Sunday and a boy's tactless knack of insist- 
 ing upon truth. At dessert he pulled out of his pocket 
 and held at arm's-length one of those fascinating objects, 
 a newly minted crown piece. 
 
 " Tell Uncle Reuben what you think of him," he 
 said. " Speak the truth, lad, and we'll see whether it 
 is worth five shillings." 
 
 " I like you, Uncle," I replied, " all but your hands," 
 which were indeed shapely and well kept, but cruel 
 like the claws of a bird, 
 
 I can see again the shining forehead grow red and the 
 pendent and amiably disposed underlip go back with 
 a snap. I can see my mother's beautiful hand go up 
 to her bosom — she was always afraid of her brother — 
 and hear my father's flurried apology, the chairman's 
 hearty " That's one for Mr Reuben ! " and his wife's 
 " The boy didn't mean no 'arm, did you, luv ? " My 
 uncle's brow was now as black as thunder and he put 
 tlie five-shilling piece back into his pocket. Little 
 Monica gave my hand a squeeze under the table and 
 on the other side of me her uncouth brother, whom 
 I already instinctively disliked, began to whistle. I 
 remember the Rev. Steepleton striving for something 
 tactful to say, and how the table, unable to wait until 
 inspiration should descend, broke up in disorder. 
 Shortly afterwards my uncle, still in the highest possible
 
 60 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 dudgeon, withdrew his family and that year's Easter 
 Sunday came to an end, 
 
 " You shouldn't have said that, Neddy," was my 
 father's gentle reproof. " It was very rude. You 
 must always be careful what you say to Uncle Reuben. 
 He never forgets when little boys are not polite." 
 
 " Reuben never forgives," said my mother. " I 
 wish we had made Neddy apologise." 
 
 " I wouldn't have apologised," I replied hotly. " He 
 told me to speak the ti-uth and I spoke the truth. T 
 like Uncle Reuben, but I don't like his hands. They're 
 cruel." 
 
 " It's sometimes better not to tell the whole truth, 
 as you'll find out when you are a bit older," said my 
 father. " Of course, you must never tell a lie," 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't put such ideas into the boy's 
 head," said my mother. 
 
 This little thing it was which, I verily believe, in- 
 spired my uncle's lifelong enmity. 
 
 I remember the broken, bitten nails of my first school- 
 master, the way my hands were bruised by the school 
 bully — some very creditable torture can be accomplished 
 by passing a lead-pencil over the middle finger and 
 under the first and third and pressing hard — the marks 
 my watch-chain made on the wrists of young Peters 
 when I got big enough to bully in my turn, the grimy 
 thumb of the tram-guard when he gave me my ticket 
 on the way to school. I remember Monica's hot, 
 grubby little paw. and clearest of all the stain of oil 
 from the loom on the forefinger of little Amy Dewhurst, 
 my first love.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 61 
 
 §iv 
 
 There are only two fetes in the year for the right- 
 thinking child, Christmas and the summer holiday. 
 The first brings parents into touch with the mystical 
 world which is the child's normal abiding-place. It 
 is the elders who, when the time draws near the birth 
 of Christ, are brought to a proper sense of the shadows 
 that they are — pagan shadows too with their holly 
 and mistletoe, their jewelled crackers and Christmas 
 numbers, their thousands of slaughtered animals. 
 And then the hoardings gay for mature consumption 
 with their burning legends of Gorgeous Pantomimes, 
 Dazzling Spectacles, Stupendous Successes. At one 
 theatre you are to elect for Exquisite Scenery and 
 Brilliant Costumes, at another for Fun Faster and 
 Furiouser than Ever Before. 
 
 And if your father is awfully rich 
 
 He will take you to both, or else he will not, 
 
 I cannot be positive which, , 
 
 as Mr Belloc might have said. For me as a child there 
 was no torment so exquisite as the choice between two 
 pantomimes, it being in those days an unheard-of 
 thing for a properly brought-up child to be taken to 
 more than one. What stabs of agony when you had 
 made your choice and were finally there, and first a 
 quarter of the wonderful night and then half began 
 to slip all too relentlessly away. And the last hour 
 of that earthly paradise when, like a wise man nearing 
 his last days of spending, you threw away the minutes 
 with both hands and lived only for the second ! And 
 the heartache when the curtain fell on the most spank- 
 ing prince and most entrancing girl who ever danced
 
 62 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 through tribulation in satin shoes ! I forget what 
 golden harridan it was who peopled my dreams between 
 the ages of seven and twelve with her dashing presence, 
 her rollicking spirits, her plumed three-cornered hats, 
 her cockades and her diadems, her riding-whips and her 
 jewelled garters. I forget what little lady in doublet 
 of sage-green held my heart against all comers during 
 the same period. I only know that when at my first 
 Shakespearean play I beheld some actress of repute as 
 the woodland Rosalind she seemed but the poorest 
 patch upon my little green lady of the pantomime. 
 
 Summer holidays bring the bitter-sweet of the year, 
 not the sea, which is a purel^r grown-up affair, but the 
 seaside. I go once again through all the many stages 
 that lead up to the delirious departure in the four- 
 wheeled cab, the luggage gone before in a responsible, 
 more slowly moving vehicle. 
 
 " Suppose, my dear," my mother would say, " suppose 
 we try somewhere else this year. Wales is getting 
 so crowded." 
 
 And my father would agree. 
 
 Then would follow the making out of lists of things 
 to be taken, my father suggesting that it might be 
 shorter to tabulate the things to be left 'behind ; the 
 cold fear that one might fall ill, or my father be called 
 abroad, or Uncle Reuben tumble down in a fit. Then 
 the last fever of packing, the farewells of old Margery 
 left in charge of the summer cleaning, the terror that 
 the luggage might be lost, that we should be late for 
 the train, the crowd at the station, the frenzied hunt 
 for the reserved compartment. All this would take 
 place on the Saturday preceding August Bank Holiday. 
 Then the choice of window-scats, the counting of
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 63 
 
 stations, the cold chicken and sip of claret in the train, 
 the first glimpse of the sea at Mold, is it, or Prestatyn ? 
 For of course we were bound for Wales after all. And 
 now the getting out of the luggage, the welcoming 
 station-master, the drive to the better-class lodgings 
 in the village — the sea-front was thought by my mother 
 to be " fast " — the familiar welcome by Mrs Griffiths, 
 Hughes or \^'illiams, the tea with real shrimps. Last, 
 a Saturday evening, and then a Sunday of sheer 
 anti-climax. My father tired, my mother busy un- 
 packing and Sunday at the seaside the usual dies non, 
 for thirty-six hours would I hang miserably about. 
 What urgency of desire baulked, the most one could 
 do being to eye possible playmates and wonder whether 
 this year one would be considered old enough to join 
 in the cricket matches on the sands ! A last place 
 perhaps, Jack and long-stop for both sides. 
 
 Oh, little, little town, I wonder whether you are 
 changed to-day ? Does the road to the beach still go 
 under the railway bridge, turn sharply to the right past 
 the shop with the open door and magic litter of spades 
 and buckets, pinnaces and sloops, cricket-bats and 
 fishing-nets ? Does the treacherous little inshore 
 stream still come in in advance of the tide and cut off 
 all but old and experienced visitors ? I wonder 
 whether it has become proper for little boys to take the 
 quick cut to the beach — the hurry is tremendous — 
 through the garden and down the entry, instead of the 
 more formal road by the big hotel ; and whether a new 
 generation of high-couraged, white-flannelled young 
 men, sparks rather, has arisen to play lawn-tennis 
 and walk with pretty ladies. Do little boys still con- 
 fuse the glory of sea and sky with the taste of milk
 
 64 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and gingerbread ? Do they and their Httle girl cousins 
 still look for star-fish together ? Does the lighthouse 
 on the island still revolve, and by " revolve " I mean 
 turn on a central axis, light, windows, masonry and all ; 
 and can you count up to sixty waggons and more in the 
 goods trains creeping along the embankment at night 
 like gigantic caterpillars with eyes of fire ? Does the 
 water still come over the falls and do they talk of Mr 
 Gladstone at the cottage by the bridge ? Does the 
 thatch on the little house where you turn off from the 
 main road still grow flaming weeds ? Is the mysterious 
 lake undiscoverable as ever in the bosom of the hills, 
 and do adventurous souls still make the journey over 
 the Carnedds ? Do right-minded children call the hill 
 behind the town by its proper name of Tiger Mountain, 
 and do the stars come out as little tired boys begin to 
 think of supper ? 
 
 I know that even now on summer nights a phantom 
 singer will hoarsely bawl : 
 
 Come to me, sweet Marie, 
 
 Sweet Marie, come to me. 
 
 Not because your face is fair, love, to see. 
 
 But your soul, so pure and sweet. 
 
 Makes my happiness complete. 
 
 Makes me falter at your feet, sweet Marie. 
 
 A few brave chords on a ghostly harp, and then : 
 
 Ohi Tommy, Tommy Atkins, 
 You're a good 'un, heart and hand. 
 You're a credit to your country 
 And to all your native land. 
 May your luck be never failing. 
 May your love be ever true, 
 God bless you. Tommy Atkins, 
 Here's your country's health to you !
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 65 
 
 You may not hear the quavering voice and the un- 
 certain plucking of the strings, but what is that to me ? 
 For me the years have not stilled them. For me the 
 years have not dimmed the glory of the sunset gilding 
 the Straits at the spot where you know the bridge must 
 be, nor silenced the ripple of the waves, nor effaced 
 the memory of the communion between the grave man 
 of middle age and the boy trotting silently by his side. 
 Oh little, little town, however soberly your heart beats 
 in these sad, grown-up days, the heart of a boy beats 
 to your time and measure now and for ever. 
 
 On the day after my ninth birthday I was sent to a 
 boys' school known as " Mr Tindall's." 
 
 My first apprehension of the deceptiveness of earthly 
 things dates from the recognition that Mr Tindall, 
 surrounded by a class of small boys, was a very different 
 person from the persuasive individual I had seen in 
 my mother's drawing-room. On that occasion speech 
 had been with the ladv, and the schoolmaster did not 
 find opportunity to say more than that he had never 
 heard Mrs Hemans' Oh, call my Brother back to me 
 recited with greater feeling. He then patted me on the 
 head and said that I should not be lonely and was sure 
 to make plenty of little friends. Now as I sate — I have 
 always longed to make use of Dean Farrar's impressive 
 version of that past tense — as I sate trembling on my 
 lonely form I seemed to view Mr Tindall with different 
 eyes. It was not given to me to know then as I know 
 now that the school did not pay, that the school- 
 master's slender capital was shrinking fast, that he was
 
 66 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 insufficiently fed, that his wife was a shade too pretty, 
 and that on the very day of my arrival he had con- 
 tracted an obligation to thrash betbre the whole school 
 a hulking, overgrown youth towards whom he stood at 
 a physical disadvantage. 
 
 In the matter of the little friends I can truthfully 
 say that I made plenty of little enemies. I suppose I 
 must have been a more detestable prig than is usually 
 the case even with only sons. To begin with, I had 
 been too well educated at home. I had as perfect a 
 knowledge of the anecdotal side of English History as 
 the compiler of Litlle Arthur herself. (In spite of 
 proof to the contrary I should always insist on feminine 
 responsibility for that delightful tale,) I am still 
 convinced that the smear of red ink on the page which 
 recounts the execution of Charles the First is a drop of 
 the actual blood of that martyr. I knew my dates 
 perfectly, and you could not have tripped me up by 
 asking for the Edwards and the Henrys in their wrong 
 order. I knew which monarchs had been " wise and 
 good " and which " weak-minded and dissolute." 
 I could describe the strategy which won us Cre9y, and 
 how the English fell into the trap at Bamiockburn. 
 I may not have been very clear about whom or what 
 the Reformation was intended to reform, but I could 
 reel off the candle-lighting epigrams of Messj's Cranmer, 
 Latimer and Ridley. I knew what rivers take their 
 rise " in the backbone of England," and how to tell a 
 right bank from a left. I could enmnerate the counties 
 of Scotland and half those of Ireland, and was pat with 
 the products of South America and Greece. I knew the 
 multiplication table up to fourteen times and could 
 write a tolerable essay in fair round hand. And so
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 67 
 
 before the first week was ovit it was conveyed to me 
 that I was a beastly Httle " swat." I will not deny 
 that I made some taetical mistakes such as cleverly 
 answering a poser six places before my turn, crying 
 out that Fish minor was " copying," and informing the 
 mild gentleman who took us in French that the correct 
 prommciation of pays is pay-ee and not pie. On the 
 eve of an important match I had thrown a stone across 
 the playground and bruised the shin of the football 
 captain. I had explained to a loutish youth that I 
 did not want to understand the meaning of beastly 
 words, which piece of self-righteousness resulted in a 
 hiding and the glueing of my eye to a hole in the wall 
 in the pretence of an interest in a neighbour's hen-run. 
 Other troubles I had, not of my own making. My 
 first home-task consisted in learning by rote twenty 
 lines of a poem beginning " The stag at eve had drunk 
 his fill." Now I had learnt my Hemans and Laetitia 
 Barbauld literally at my mother's knee, repeating the 
 lines as she said them and mastering them after as many 
 repetitions as were necessary. But twenty lines at a 
 sitting ! I got the first couplet perfect and then the 
 second, but by the time I had mastered the third and 
 fourth I had lost all knowledge of the first. I re- 
 mastered these and could at last repeat eight lines 
 without hesitation. But when I had arrived at the 
 fourteenth I found I had forgotten all the preceding 
 ones. I dug my fingers into my ears and started all 
 over again. It was nearly nine o'clock and past 
 bed-time. At half-past nine I was fretting badly, but 
 my mother coming up to the schoolroom and hearing 
 the words over calmly restored me. At ten o'clock 
 my father demanded to know the meaning of all this
 
 68 RESPONSTBTLTTY 
 
 nonsense and packed me off to bed. I went to sleep 
 with the tears still wet on my face. Remember that 
 I was only nine. In the morning the miracle had 
 happened ; I knew my lines perfectly and could recite 
 them at top speed without the possibility of a mistake. 
 I remembered them for ten years and then forgot them 
 for ever. 
 
 I had the same experience with my first proposition 
 in Euclid, which I learnt by heart without reference to 
 the figure. My plight may be imagined when on the 
 black-board X, Y and Z were most unfairly sub- 
 stituted for A, B and C. To prove that I had not 
 entirely neglected my task, I offered to recite the whole 
 proposition with the original letters, there and then 
 shutting my eyes and reeling it off. The third master, 
 who " took "us in " Maths.," at once set himself to 
 explain that Euclid was " not poetry but sense." It 
 was the second master who instructed us in English 
 Literature, and there was no love lost between them. 
 
 It was a small school and the teaching, according to 
 modern views, muddled and haphazard, but it was 
 there that I received my only education. My general 
 equipment qualified me for a place fairly high up in 
 the school, but alas ! I had no Latin. Tindall was not 
 to be denied, and took me privately in the mysterious 
 ways of amo, nioneo and venio. Behold me, then, after 
 a fortnight's grounding, plunged, not into the middle 
 of Gallic wars, but into the wanderings of ^neas. 
 
 And with what gusto did old Tindall translate his 
 Virgil ! " Never mind the dictionary, boy ; put it in 
 your own words. If anything extraordinary were to 
 happen to you, how ivould you tell them at home ? " 
 Before I was fourteen I had a very considerable know-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 69 
 
 ledge of that sweet poet and had done, and done 
 appreciatively, Voltaire's Francis /., a good half of 
 Moliere and the whole of Schiller's Der dreiszigjdhrige 
 Krieg. These I had learnt to read as though they were 
 written in mj' own tongue and by a writer of yesterday. 
 In addition, I knew and revelled in Coriolanus, 
 Richard II. and the two parts of Henry IV. I must 
 confess that I could take no liking to Henry V., of 
 which the hero struck me as being the biggest prig 
 in Shakespeare. On this eminence he remained 
 until later years brought acquaintance with Isabella. 
 The more grown-up tragedies we were not allowed to 
 touch, the old boy holding that they should remain 
 unspoiled for later life. 
 
 Often my father would help me with my home work, 
 never failing to put his evening paper on one side when 
 I was in real difficulties, but resolutely refusing to 
 regard himself as a simple labour-saving device. Some- 
 tunes he would take down from the Keighley book- 
 shelf a ponderous arithmetic of an out-of-dateness 
 positively disconcerting, and a Walker's Dictionary 
 which jibbed at nearly all the words in common use. 
 I am not sure that at times I was not guilty of looking 
 down upon his schooling. Fathers who fear to be 
 scorned by your children, let me beg of you to realise 
 that there is one thing even more important than 
 keeping abreast of their slang, and that is to avoid 
 taking down from your Keighley book-shelf some 
 weighty tome by the help of which you will still be 
 millions of decimal places out of modern reckoning ! 
 But perhaps you belong to the new, unsentimental 
 order of parents, and do not know what a Keighley 
 book-shelf is. Let me explain. My father and his
 
 70 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 father before him were born at Keighley, and among 
 the latter's boyish treasures were Miss Martineau's 
 The Crofion Boys, and Miss Edgeworth's Frank ; Harry 
 and [jucy, Sandfonl and 3Ierton, Captain Cook's Voyages, 
 a few vohimcs ol" Peter Parley and an antiquated treatise 
 on Sun and Moon,. My mother kept these faded books 
 on a shelf apart, gave them their collective name and 
 bade me handle them tenderly. " They belonged to 
 your father's father," she said, " and some day I hope 
 they will belong to my son's son." 
 
 I soon realised that at school — and I have made the 
 same discovery in later life — the essence of success is 
 to supply not what people ought to want, but what 
 they actually do want. Apart from his outlook on 
 the poets, Tindall was like all other schoolmasters in 
 this : that he demanded from his pupils not knowledge, 
 but answers. A correct string of dynasties and battles 
 earned from him more marks than the profoundest 
 grasp of the trend of events. The tip for Magna 
 Charta was that it was signed by a very evil-tempered 
 king surrounded by a lot of angry barons on a damp 
 island called Runnymede. I used to imagine the poor 
 monarch, perpetually crowned and sceptred, chased all 
 over his kingdom and finally cornered as in our game 
 of blackthorn. Incidentally it was as well to remember 
 that the object of the Charter was to free the barons 
 from oppression by the king, and I used to wonder who 
 or what it was that served to protect the people from 
 the tyranny of the barons. As far as I am concerned 
 sociological history is then silent for some three or 
 four hundred years. Generations of warlike and spec- 
 tacular monarchs seemed to spend their time tramping 
 up and down France, all very heroically no doubt, and
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 71 
 
 in the ratio of one volunteer to fifteen " foreign 
 mercenaries." Their success was unbroken, and I can 
 never quite understand how we came to lose what we 
 had so gloriously gained. On this point the history 
 books were always silent. After the perfunctory ter- 
 mination to these the most Shakespearean of our wars 
 the English kings appear to have had nothing better 
 to do tlian to quarrel among themselves. My own 
 view of the Houses of York and Lancaster is that they 
 reigned simultaneously in different parts of England. 
 Note that Tewkesbury is one good name for examina- 
 tion purposes and Pontefract (pronounced Pomfret) 
 another. These civil wars concluded, prancing about 
 ui)on cloths of gold and circimi venting the marriage 
 laNvs appear to have been the favourite occupations, 
 giving place, in their turn, to the fright about the 
 Armada, although like every self-respecting EngUsh 
 boy I always felt that even if the Dons had landed they 
 would have made little of our stubborn islanders and 
 would sooner or later have been bundled into the sea. 
 But of the sufferings and privations, of the belly needs 
 and the spiritual wants of the people, not a word. 
 Then suddenly John's barons come to life again in the 
 persons of Pym and Hampden ; only this time it is 
 the Commons who are to be protected from the folly 
 of a king claiming very beautifully and pathetically 
 Divine Right and Prerogative. Nothing in my boyish 
 perusal of history made stronger impression on me 
 than the difference in class, as we should now say, 
 between Charles's well-bred courtesy and the unadorned 
 rudeness of his persecutors. The Roundhead had a 
 cause to vote for ; the Royalist died for his. 
 
 And this was about the extent of my historical
 
 72 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 studies. The Restoration is not a popular period with 
 schools, and I have never been in a class that has got 
 beyond William and Mary. To sum up, all that I 
 gathered of the great English past was one long 
 series of highly-coloured lantern-slides portraying some 
 accident to the individual. Monarchs stabbed while 
 drinking, unhorsed by hot cinders and buried at Caen, 
 slain by glancing arrows, crammed to distressful death 
 with potted lampreys. Princes drowning in malmsey- 
 butts. Bluff gormandisers. Pale ladies going limply 
 to the block. In a word, a History of the English 
 People without mention of the People. 
 
 What a jumble the foreign relationships of the past 
 appear to have been ! I am still as ignorant as Little 
 Peterkin as to what possible business Marlborough can 
 have had at Blenheim, and why the Dutch should have 
 wanted to come up our Medway. I do not believe that 
 I should ever have heard of the discovery of America 
 had it not been for the chance it has always given the 
 historian of being amusing on the subject of eggs. Nor 
 has it ever been explained to me what we are doing in 
 India. Is it possible that trade and not altruism may 
 have something to do with it ? 
 
 Hand-in-hand with this scrap-book notion of the 
 march of English events went a complete ignorance 
 of world history. One came across foreign monarchs 
 only when it pleased our English sovereigns to go 
 inimically or joustingly to meet them. I never heard 
 of Charlemagne, Henri Quatre, Charles of Sweden, 
 Peter the Great ; and only casually of the French 
 Revolution. I was left completely in the dark as to all 
 Roman history except that part of it which concerns 
 55 B.C. No, this is an injustice to my teachers and I
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 73 
 
 must correct myself. I was told of an Emperor, or he 
 may have been a Pope, who thought Angles were Angels. 
 But of Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Assyrian records, 
 not a word. I learnt of the Trojan Wars from the 
 pages of a child's paper called Chatterbox ; of Scipio 
 from an old copy of Plutarch's Lives. I had turned 
 twenty before I had ever heard of the battle of Salamis, 
 of the crossings of the Rubicon and the Alps, of the 
 sack of Carthage. I am still entirely ignorant as to 
 which of the Herods, if any, was contemporary with 
 Cleopatra, and how the Pharaohs stand in relation to 
 the Ptolemies, or Boadicea to Attila and Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. Surely it should be possible to synchronise 
 history, to give the child a map of the world's events 
 as of its mountains and its rivers. Surely there should 
 be some way of suggesting to the next generation that 
 the tomfoolery of the German William is only the 
 bravery and swagger of our Edwards and Henrys 
 half-a-dozen centuries out of date. History will have 
 changed indeed if, a hundred years hence, she tells 
 children something of the inner meaning of Bolshevism 
 to the suppression of the exact number of troops 
 engaged on the Vimy Ridge. 
 
 But I want history to do more than this. I want a 
 drab declaration of the state of common existence 
 side by side with the unfolding of the gorgeous pageant. 
 I want every boy and girl to know who first imposed 
 the Corn Laws and why, and who repealed them and 
 for what reason. I want the historian and not the 
 politician to tell our children of the true economic 
 condition of the country — how much bread a child had 
 to eat per day and on how many days a week it had 
 meat — in the time of Bright and Cobden. I want the
 
 74 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 historian and not the politician to make declaration 
 of the comparative rate of wages, the cost and scale of 
 living in Free Trade JOngland and in Tariff-controlled — 
 I won't say blessed or burdened — France or Germany. 
 I don't want any waving ol" loaves, or rhetoric to the 
 effect that The Foreigner Pays, A Tax on Leather 
 means Cheaper Boots, Dearer Bread brings Higher 
 Wages. I don't want war-cries and I hardly want 
 deductions. I want facts as seen through the spec- 
 tacles of unbiassed recorders. I would ask that history 
 should be written by our judges, were not their long 
 training in advocacy against them. I have no political 
 views. Until I see Conservatives setting out the strong 
 points of Free Trade and Liberals confessing to possible 
 advantages in a system of Tariff Reform, I shall decline 
 to believe that either side is trying to get at the root 
 of the matter. I want history to explain the use we 
 made of the passionate fire and zeal of Parnell, of the 
 great abilities of Charles Dilke ; to enumerate exactly, 
 item by item, the grievances of which the Irish Question 
 was composed, and to explain how it came about that 
 two great English parties, composed presumably of 
 honest statesmen striving to help each other to find 
 a cure for common ill, failed for three-quarters of a 
 century to achieve anything beyond bitterness and 
 hatred. And I shall want history to explain why the' 
 English nation, if it ever for a moment realised that its 
 statesmen were mere carpet-bagging adventurers, did 
 not rise up in its wrath and rid the country of these 
 hindersome pests. . , .
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 75 
 
 § vi 
 
 I have refrained from giving any account of my 
 father for the reason that a description of externals 
 would tell the reader little, and then I am not sure 
 that I ever quite understood him. He was a man of 
 immense reserves and a quite abnormal shyness. As 
 a characteristic detail let me record that, although he 
 was curiously unable to whistle, yet when my mother 
 was ill he would frame his lips to the ghost of a pipe 
 until the arrival of the doctor put a term to his anxiety. 
 He was a man of simple tastes. He never made any 
 attempt to interfere with mine, or perhaps it would be 
 better to say that I was unaware of any such attempt. 
 He would leave books in my way, Marryat, Kingston 
 and Fenimore Cooper when I Avas a small boy, Charles 
 Reade and Dickens as soon as I began to go to school. 
 At the week-end he would invite me to read aloud such 
 of the political notes in The Saturday Review as seemed 
 to me to be of interest, and the whole of the literary, 
 musical and dramatic criticism of that journal. When 
 old Tindall inflicted on us as a holiday task that tire- 
 some masterpiece. Old Mortality, my father proposed 
 that we should read aloud in turns, his idea of reading 
 in turns being that I should wade through the Scott 
 whilst he revelled, with certain unimportant deletions 
 respectful to my mother's ears, in such stirring works 
 as Humphry Clinker or Tristram Shandy. My mother 
 always sat with her work at my father's elbow, and he 
 would constantly interrupt the reading to adjust her 
 shawl, pick up her wool, or any other of a hundred little 
 offices. And my mother would smile and nod and 
 wave to us to continue.
 
 76 RESPONSTBTTJTY 
 
 My fatlier had broad sympathies and strong pohtical 
 views which he had the greatest difficulty in confining 
 within the bounds of any particular party. It is true 
 that he never made the attempt, that he voted as he 
 liked, and was the despair of tJie canvasser and political 
 agent. He had immense tolerance in the matter of 
 religious opinion, and would attend indifferently at all 
 places of worship. My mother and he were married 
 at a Unitarian chapel by a Unitarian minister, and it 
 was in this connection that I saw him indulge in one 
 of his rare accesses of rage. It was brought about by 
 the tactlessness of one Horatia Gadgett, widow of 
 the Rev. Stephen Gadgett, late rector of St Euphor- 
 bius's. Insect-minded and intolerant, hung about 
 with prejudices, it was this lady's habit to go shrouded 
 in crepe, smelling heavily of tuberoses, her bust a 
 tinkling battery of woe. This walking catafalque, as 
 my father would call her, had the unhappiness to say 
 to my mother over our best tea-cups and with two 
 streams of yellow butter trickling down her chin : 
 
 " My dear, the least we can do in the way of grateful 
 return for a marriage made in heaven is to take care 
 . that it is properly solemnised on earth. I need hardly 
 say that I allude to our beautiful Church Service. I 
 have never considered that you and your dear husband 
 were properly married." 
 
 Whereupon my father, each particular hair on end 
 and the fervour of an interrupted page of Smollett 
 strong upon him, rushed to the door, and in a voice 
 half-way between roar and bellow, exclaimed : 
 
 " My son, ma'am, is too old to be called a bastard. 
 He is no fool and understands the implication. I give 
 you good-day."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 77 
 
 And he flung the door open. 
 
 Then did the good Gadgett, assiduous pillar of an 
 Established Church, but now quite, quite shaken, her 
 kitchen battery jangled and out of tune, move to an 
 exit, a quivering and inky jelly, an undertaker's venture 
 in distress. At the door she broke down. 
 
 " I don't mean to say the boy's not born in wedlock," 
 she sobbed. 
 
 " How can you, James ! " cried my mother, and 
 fell to comforting the wretch. My father blew his nose, 
 put on his hat, bade me fetch my cap, and walked me 
 five miles within the hour without a word. 
 
 But it was to this narrow, limited soul that my father 
 turned in the sad event which was to happen soon 
 after%vards. I suppose I was as simple a lad as ever 
 breathed, and there seemed to me to be nothing extra- 
 ordinary in my father saying one evening shortly before 
 Christmas : 
 
 " Your mother is a little run down and wants rest, so 
 you are going to spend a few days at Mrs Gadgett's. I 
 am sure you will be a good boy and give her no trouble." 
 
 There had been a prolonged frost and I spent most of 
 the time skating with the Gadgett girls. Then one day 
 my father called and remained for a long time in what 
 seemed to be consultation with Horatia. I could hear 
 them in the next room and I was conscious that he 
 walked about a good deal. After a time they both came 
 in, and my father looked very grave. He said little to 
 me beyond bidding me continue to be a good boy, and 
 promising that he would give my love to my mother. 
 Soon afterwards he went away. Early next morning 
 old Margery came to fetch me, saying that my mother 
 was very ill and calling me " poor lamb " a great many
 
 78 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 times. When we got home she was dead ; the child 
 lived lor a few hours. 
 
 In the time which followed I found my father entirely 
 inconsolable and strangely lacking in any power to 
 comfort me. 
 
 " Your mother would not have liked us to make 
 any difference in our daily round," he said, and so we 
 resumed all our old habits. But I noticed that he 
 never settled himself to read without first placing my 
 mother's chair in its old position and resting his arm 
 on the worn leather. 
 
 One night when we were half-way through Don 
 Qiiixote he closed the book and said : 
 
 " I shall have news for you, Edward, as soon as we've 
 finished with the Don." 
 
 The news was that I was to go to a boarding-school 
 for three years. My father had taken it into his head 
 that by keeping me at home he was sacrificing mc to 
 his need for companionship. He gave me a fortnight 
 in which to prepare for the change, and putting thirty 
 pounds into my hands and a printed list of the things 
 which the school governors recommended as a proper 
 outfit, told me to spend the money sensibly, and to 
 buy only the best quality. 
 
 " I don't want to know how you lay out the money," 
 he said. " You will have to make your own decisions 
 some day and you may as well begin now." 
 
 On the morning of my departure, a morning of 
 wet fog, Dame Margery put round my shoulders an 
 enormous muffler at which she had been knittinir for 
 weeks and of which I was secretly rather ashamed. 
 She then pressed into my hand a half-sovereign, of 
 which I was not ashamed at all. I kissed her, I hope
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 79 
 
 heartily. When we were nearly at our destination 
 my father cleared his throat, looked out of the carriage 
 window and said : 
 
 " Edward, listen to me. I want you to promise to 
 change your boots and socks whenever you get wet, and 
 to write once a week." He paused a moment and then 
 went on : "I want you to promise me never to do any- 
 thing which you would be ashamed that your dear 
 mother should see. I do not say that she is looking 
 down upon you, but I do ask you to behave as though 
 your conduct could give her joy or pain." 
 
 I promised solemnly. 
 
 He then resumed : " When you go to church you will 
 take with you the Prayer Book which your mother 
 used when she was a girl. You will not lose it, or mark 
 it, or let any boy scribble in it." 
 
 And he handed me a tiny packet. He then took out 
 of his pocket a little cardboard box such as jewellers 
 use. Removal of cotton wool and tissue paper revealed 
 a gold watch and chain. 
 
 " It ought to keep good time," he said. Then, 
 diving into his pocket and producing a couple of 
 sovereigns : " Your form-master will give you sixpence 
 a week pocket-money, and you can have more whenever 
 you need it by writing to me. But I would rather you 
 managed on what I give you now and the Saturday 
 sixpence." Here he handed me the two sovereigns. 
 " I'll send you a parcel of grub, or tuck, or whatever 
 you fellows call it, once a month, or as often as may be 
 allowed. In my time we called it ' joUyboy.' I don't 
 suppose you will be allowed to brew. And don't smoke. 
 But if you do, go slow at first, or it will make you 
 horribly sick. Or have you smoked already ? "
 
 80 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " No," I answered tnith fully. 
 
 " And when you're caught, don't deny it. It's 
 never any use lying unless you are going to be believed. 
 And above all, don't say another fellow persuaded you 
 to. We're nearly there ; I think the next station's 
 
 ours." 
 
 Before the train stopped 1 had time to make a hurried 
 examination of the watch. It bore that day's date 
 and the inscription : " From Father and Mother to their 
 dear son." 
 
 § vii 
 
 Upthorne is one of the oldest of our Public Schools, 
 its coat-of-arms a long-robed figure with a child which 
 I always used to take for the Virgin Mary and Infant 
 Jesus ; its motto undecipherable, the aim of black 
 letter being to baffle the diligent equally with the 
 curious. At a distance of three miles you can see the 
 school's noble and imposing piles, white against grey 
 scree, divided by the Flat, a level, asphalted area which 
 seemed to me in my young days about ten times the 
 size of a lawn-tennis court. Allowing for the shrinkage 
 of vears, suppose we say four times. The school 
 dominates the town and is the town, it being incon- 
 ceivable that there should be afoot energies other than 
 scholastic. You can imagine Trollope writing in a 
 window of the straggling High Street and Jane Austen 
 looking about her from a pony-chaise. An old-time 
 doctor with a faith in simples, a rustic parson and a 
 weather-beaten vendor of honeydew and bull's eyes, 
 needles and string, were all our notabilities. The town 
 is silent save for the babble of the beck — we are in 
 Yorkshire— the calling of birds in the high wood and
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 81 
 
 the remote stir from the cricket field. The place has 
 a fine incapacity for change. The original fifteenth- 
 century building, so like the woodcuts in the history 
 book, is still used for a carpenter's shop, and the church- 
 yard's old graves, too old even to be cared for, are the 
 only indication of the passing of time. Exquisites 
 lorgnetting the devastating inscription were out of 
 place here ; this is the haunt of honest boyhood, let 
 the jaded keep their distance. 
 
 My father with his usual tact refrained from showing 
 himself too much with me. He deposited me at the 
 porter's lodge, shook hands with the Headmaster as 
 man to man, and vanished. It was not until later that 
 I discovered that he must have kicked his heels about 
 the sleepy village for five or six hours. 
 
 " New boys will assemble in the Headmaster's 
 study at half -past five," announced the porter. 
 
 The hour was well turned and I was still in the cricket 
 field watching a swarthy youth, Westrom, the fast 
 bowler, sending down corkers to a modest young giant 
 who was none other than Eastwood, the captain of the 
 first eleven. There were not many boys " up," the 
 presence of the two cracks determined by the absolute 
 necessity of practice before the match with Scdleigh. 
 I was ordered to fag out, to keep my eyes skinned, and 
 to send 'em up sharp. Another youngster similarly 
 occupied was Eastwood's fag, who had been ordered 
 by his master to present himself a day before his time, 
 and who had cheerfully obeyed. At eleven years of 
 age it is indeed better to be fag to the captain of the 
 first eleven than to be ruler over many kingdoms. 
 Presently Eastwood gave the pads to Westrom, who 
 proceeded to smite the captain's innocent slows all over
 
 82 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the ground. Once he sent mc a tremendous skier. 
 I had to run a good way, but I judged it perfectly, 
 waited witliout fluster, and having held the catch 
 chucked the ball up with studied calm. 
 
 "Not bad for a young 'un," said Eastwood conde- 
 scendingly. " Let's see if you can bowl. Mind you 
 don't send any to leg, or you'll have to fetch 'em," 
 he added, motioning his fag to long-oi'f and going behind 
 the stumps to talk to his friend. 
 
 As I took my jacket off to bowl six o'clock boomed 
 out on the schoolhouse clock, and I remembered the 
 call to the Headmaster's study. My heart gave a 
 great thuni]), and 1 begged leave to be allowed to go. 
 Westrom heard me out and said coolly : " It's too 
 late, kid, anyhow. So trundle 'em up and look slippy." 
 
 There was nothing for it but to obey. I didn't bowl 
 badly and Westrom declared I had him out twice, once 
 in the slips and once at cover. 
 
 " I want a left-hand bowler for the second eleven," 
 said Eastwood, " and if you can lick this kid into shape 
 I'll give him a trial." This as though I had no free-will 
 in the matter. 
 
 At Big School next morning, immediately after 
 prayers — at which we were arranged in order of juniority, 
 new boys in front, then the little boys, and so on ac- 
 cording to forms to the seniors at the back — I heard the 
 Head call out my name in thunderous accents. 
 
 " Stand up ! " the awful voice continued, " and tell 
 me why you did not come to my study yesterday 
 evening." 
 
 Before I had time to collect my senses I heard 
 Westrom's deep bass : "I am responsible, sir. Marston 
 was bowling to me "—bowling, not fagging, and this
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 83 
 
 before the whole school — " and I overlooked the time. 
 It was entirely my fault, sir." 
 
 The matter was apologetic, the manner uncom- 
 promising. 
 
 To which the Head : " Very good, Westrom. I 
 accept the explanation. Let us hope that we shall 
 manage to work as diligently as we play. Marston, 
 you may sit down." 
 
 I had entered the room a new boy, and I came out a 
 personality. I had bowled to Westrom. Next day I 
 found I was to be his fag. 
 
 But I am not writing a school story, still less a scenario 
 for the romantic stage. Nothing could have been less 
 like the sentimentalising of a Raffles and his Bunny than 
 my relations with Westrom. The fellow hated the idea 
 of fagging, and his principal use for me was to swathe 
 me in pads and gloves, batter out of recognition my 
 remainder body, and send my stumps flying. Every 
 time I kept them intact for half-a-dozen overs he gave 
 me sixpence, with the result that after a time I became 
 a tolerable bat. At the end of term he left without 
 telling me where his home was or exhibiting the faintest 
 desire to continue the acquaintance. I thought him 
 a moody, violent fellow. He had no knick-knacks in 
 his study, where he lived with monkish simplicity. 
 At school I learned nothing of him, and when I met 
 him again it was as though I had never known him. 
 He certainly gave no promise of the gentle, affectionate 
 creature he was to become. 
 
 The change of school put me back a full two years. 
 They could not understand at Upthorne that I had a 
 considerable amount of Virgil and no Cyesar, nor that 
 1 could be fairlv advanced in French and German and
 
 84 RKSPONSIBITJTY 
 
 possess not a ha'porth of Greek . So back I had to go 
 to the Lower Third, and I had the sense to say nothing 
 about having decorated an Upper Fifth. Learning, it 
 seems, is of variable qiiahty, and that which is gold 
 at one school is not necessarily currency at another. 
 What were the things the old poet confesses to having 
 learned during his three years at Rome — to avoid 
 extravagance and gormandising, to humour a creditor 
 and to keep a still tongue ? Such, slightly modernised, 
 were the limits of my attainment at Upthorne. I 
 learned to please junior masters and to go in no fear 
 of the Head, to work desperately at games and with 
 studied moderation at lessons, to smoke a pipe with an 
 air of liking it, to swear as becomes a young gentleman 
 of parts, to steer clear of sentiment. 
 
 I have never been able to decide how far our school- 
 masters are honest Avith themselves. Do they more 
 urgently desire to beat tlieir sister- foundations at cricket 
 and football or to fit their charges for the battle of 
 existence ? I have never met a Public School boy who 
 knew his commercial right hand from his left, or the 
 different sides of an account-book. I learned nothing 
 at Upthorne which would have enabled me to keep a 
 grocery store. What I did learn was the charm of 
 evening service in a crowded chapel, the lights lowered 
 and the Headmaster talking quieth'. I came to realise 
 that the Public School boy turned master may not be 
 half so good a teacher as the bright Board School youth 
 conuncncing usher, but that if he be the right sort he 
 will have something to say worth listening to when he 
 asks you to cocoa after prayers. More cynical things 
 I learned too. I learned to acquiesce in the giving of 
 the good conduct prize to an anaemic, consumptive-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 85 
 
 looking youth without energy for vice, who looked as 
 though he could never survive the term but always did, 
 and is now a highly successful manipulator of rubber 
 shares. I learned the meaning of irony when Illin^- 
 worth ma., the head of the school, conmionly known as 
 "Pi," a fellow of stupendous intellect and microscopic 
 appetite, asked for a second helping of pudding. 
 With ironic gusto the Headmaster gave the school a 
 half holiday in honour of the event, and proposing 
 a match Masters versus Boys, went in first himself 
 and absent-mindedly stayed at the wicket the whole 
 afternoon. They put Illingworth ma. at extra-slip, 
 where he never handled a ball, and the boys did not 
 bat. I knew astonishment when, after the accident 
 to Tuffnel ma., Tuffnel mi. came into prayers with a 
 Bible ; and the meaning of loss when Caulfield, the butt 
 of the school, died during an epidemic of fever. 
 
 § viii 
 
 For three years I stayed at Upthorne, and then my 
 father died. In the sad time which followed my main 
 support was my cousin, Monica, Have I described 
 her ? If I were indifferent to the reader's good opinion 
 I had long ago attempted a portrait. But I want you 
 to take to her, oh, to take to her immensely, and I 
 cannot afford a failure. Monica possessed a passion for 
 sturdy loyalty ; she could question, doubt, condemn, 
 but she understood the meaning of friendship in the 
 schoolboy, thick-and-thin interpretation of the term. 
 Most of us are incapable of anything finer than that 
 poor passion which will go back on the man who 
 reveals himself to be other than his friend had thou(/ht
 
 86 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 liim. Of such speciousness Monica was supremely 
 incapable ; she was your friend to the prison gate if 
 need be. 
 
 It was Monica who first oave me news of the serious 
 state of my father's health. Her letter was not in the 
 croaking vein, though the warning was undeniable. 
 
 " I thought Uncle James looked a little better 
 yesterday, but he is very thin. He pinched my cheek 
 and called me his mouse, his brown velvet mouse. I 
 was wearing the frock vou like so much. Then he 
 looked out of the window for quite a long time. ' Mind 
 you tell Ned how much stronger I am getting,' he said. 
 It really tires him to walk at all, but he pretends to be 
 active. Dad says that no man can count on living for 
 ever, and that the Almighty can't be expected to make 
 exceptions. I 'can't always understand Dad. . . ." 
 
 One morning I was sent for to the Headmaster's 
 study, where I found the old man standing by the 
 window with an open letter in his hand. He looked at 
 me kindly and spoke gravely. 
 
 " I have to tell you that your father is ill," he said. 
 " Very ill. In fact I judge from your uncle's letter 
 that it may be necessary for you to return home at 
 any moment. You had better get your box packed 
 in readiness. You can have the rest of the day to 
 yourself. I will send the school porter to Mr Williams 
 to say that you will be absent for the remainder of the 
 lesson." 
 
 I do not remember that I said a word. 
 
 I left the room, a little dazed if you will, but entirely 
 without the sense of apprehension. It all seemed un- 
 real, and besides any event which breaks the monotony
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 87 
 
 of school is an adventure. Is this ghastly, inhuman ? 
 I hope it is a trick of the brain. I have no doul)t that 
 at prayers that night I looked self-conscious enough. 
 With the follo^ving morning came my uncle, and I 
 was at once sent for. Reuben ijave me a glance of 
 civil commiseration, and tendered a fish-like projection 
 of black glove. As he was always a little formal and 
 prone to ceremony at any launching of himself into 
 speech, I had time to choose my ground. I said, and 
 the words sounded stilted even in my own ears : 
 
 " I nm glad to see you, Uncle Reuben, though I must 
 suppose you bring bad news." 
 
 I had found myself debating the alternative values 
 of " must suppose " and " cannot but suppose." The 
 reader will probably put me down as an imconscionable 
 prig. Maybe. To be bereft of speech is one thing, to 
 talk like a sloven is another. Even the wretch turned 
 off the gallows may be forgiven for using English until 
 speech is choked out of him. 
 
 I added almost immediately : "If my father is dead, 
 please say so." 
 
 With a good deal of well-simulated emotion and some 
 lengthy circumlocution my uncle brought himself to 
 the simple admission. Reuben was at all times a rich 
 spectacle, but he excelled himself that morning. I do 
 not think that alone with me he would have been at more 
 than perfunctory pains ; at lunch in the additional 
 presence of the Headmaster's wife and daughters his 
 windy suspirations were those of the mummer on grand 
 occasion. I suppose the meal may be said to have 
 passed off well. We were driven to the station in the 
 doctor's pony-carriage, my uncle bestowing a hand- 
 some five shillings on the boy who drove us.
 
 88 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Comfortably settled in a corner seat with his back 
 to the engine, the window adjusted to his liking and a 
 cigar well alight, Reuben proceeded to open the little 
 black bag from which he was never separated. It is 
 here to be remarked that if the old fox was never to be 
 seen without the bag he was never to be seen with an 
 umbrella. He was clever enough and sufficiently well 
 read in his Dickens to know an umbrella to be the 
 classical property of the humbug, and he fought de- 
 liberately shy of the treacherous indication. I insist 
 on this as evidence that my uncle was worth crossing 
 swords with ; he was no puny whipster in deceit. 
 
 Reuben then drew out of the bag a heterogeneous 
 assortment of papers. First a number of reports of 
 directors' meetings which he had not attended but for 
 which he had drawn the fees. Then a cheerful docu- 
 ment setting forth the advantages of cremation and 
 ornamented with tasteful compartmental drawings on 
 the lines of safe-deposits. The compiler of the brochure, 
 a genius if ever there was one, had contrived to bring 
 together the phrase " God's Acre " and a design in 
 admirable perspective of something that looked like 
 a factory chimney in marble. Then a crowd of other 
 papers, among which I detected the annual reports 
 of half-a-dozen industrial schools and penitentiary 
 establishments, the rota of the County Police Court 
 with my uncle's turn of service marked in red ink, 
 subscription lists of the Society for the Dissemination 
 of the Nr.tural Virtues of which he was chairman, and 
 the British and Foreign Parable Elucidation Society 
 of which he was president. A lecture on banking, a 
 memorandum appertaining to the Tolerated Houses 
 of Calcutta with some notes on the Overcrowding of
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 89 
 
 Bazaars (India) by the Bishop of St Eurasia's, Stepney. 
 I am not going to pretend that my uncle ever read 
 any of this nonsense ; he hked to frame himself in it, 
 to litter railway carriages with it. He travelled it as 
 salesmen travel their samples. 
 
 " I think, my boy," he began, " that it would take 
 your mind off the sad event if we were to have a little 
 Serious Talk. Yesterday you were a boy in years ; 
 to-day you are a man in responsibility. I have here 
 an Agreement which your father and I drew up some 
 months ago. I think that even then he must have 
 been conscious that Death's fell hand " 
 
 Here he brought himself to a sudden stop. I suppose 
 he saw that he was wasting a good phrase. He coughed 
 and went on : 
 
 " The arrangement is more or less informal. No 
 one had greater confidence in me than your father ; 
 no one has ever known me better than your father. He 
 knew that my Word was better than my Bond. But 
 we had several long and rather involved talks together, 
 which I suggested might be conveniently reduced to 
 writing. Your father concurred. Not that a Written 
 Agreement is more binding than a Verbal. On the 
 Contrary." 
 
 I must apologise for the use of capital letters, but 
 I can find no other means of expressing the shade of 
 unction my uncle threw into his voice. When he talked 
 so you felt that he preached at you, that his arms 
 emerged from lawn sleeves, that he was in the pulpit. 
 - " This Agreement," he went on, tapping the docu- 
 ment with a gold pencil and the loving pride of an 
 artist considering his handicraft, "is an agreement for 
 partnership. It provides for the entry into partnership
 
 90 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 with your father and me, or the survivor of us, of his 
 son and mine, so soon as you sliall both liave attained 
 the a^e of twenty-five years." 
 
 I do not propose to give a verbatim aecount of the 
 Deed. It was eonceived in Reuben's best vein, and to 
 it he had devoted the most flowing of liis eopper-plate. 
 I lieheve that if he liad not lljeen afraid of my father's 
 mockery he woidd have fastened httle red seals all 
 over it. The provisions were made mutatis mutandis^ 
 it being one of Reuben's foibles to garnish his speech 
 with technical tags of uncertain application. In other 
 words the agreement was to hold good whichever of 
 the brothers-in-law died first. Can't you see him 
 expatiating to the dying man on the obvious fairness 
 of such an arrangement ? In case of my father dying 
 my uncle was to act as my guardian until such time 
 as I should attain the age of twenty-five. Until this 
 date my father's capital was to remain in the firm for 
 the firm's use and advantage, my uncle to be paid for 
 my keep two hundred pounds a year out of the interest, 
 which was to be at the rate of five per cent., the balance 
 to accrue for my benefit. As soon as I left school I 
 was to work for the firm at a salary of one hundred 
 pounds a year with yearly increases of fifty pounds. 
 At the age of twenty-five, my capital, which now stood 
 at some twelve thousand pounds, was to be paid out to 
 me, and I was then to have the option of entering the 
 firm in partnership with my uncle and cousin at a 
 fourth share. 
 
 I suppose the agreement was as fair as most legal 
 agreements, although I hold that partnerships between 
 honest men need be verbal only. Not so any partner- 
 ship of Uncle Reuben's. His to safeguard and forestall,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 91 
 
 to make provision against the possibility of latter-day 
 floods and the eventuality of second comings. The 
 present docmiient was verbose, in abominable English, 
 tiresome and meandering, but it never wandered far 
 from the main point, which was the ease and security of 
 the Surviving Partner, And Reuben intended to be 
 that Surviving Partner. One of the clauses provided 
 that whichever should survive should have the right, 
 as soon as both young men had got properly into 
 harness, to squat him down on his hams in idleness, and 
 for the rest of his life draw half the profits of the 
 concern. 
 
 "■ Of course," said my uncle lightly and without 
 stress, "it is understood that these presents may be 
 rendered null and void " — how lovingly did he lick 
 his villainous old chops over the legal-sounding phrase 
 — " by misconduct, moral lapse and so forth, on the 
 part of the younger parties, which might in the opinion 
 of the surviving partner be detrimental to the best 
 interests of the concern." 
 
 " Of course," I answered vagueh^ 
 
 " A copy of the agreement will be supplied to you in 
 due course." 
 
 I learnt that I was to go to my uncle's until after the 
 funeral. On the way home we called at the office that 
 Reuben might accomplish the solemn function known 
 as signing the letters. 
 
 I followed him through the crowd of clerks, salesmen, 
 porters and errand-boys, all shabbily dressed and with 
 that unmistakable expression which comes from too 
 much striving to make ends meet. To fail may lead 
 to a fine despair ; barely to succeed and to keep on 
 barely succeeding is a dull business. The old cashier.
 
 92 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 too typical of old cashiers to need describing, took my 
 hand in both of his and, again in character, said : 
 
 " Man and boy I've served your father for forty 
 years. I'm terribly grieved and upset, Mr Edward ; 
 so are we all. The staff and self feel deeply for you, 
 sir, deeply. We hear you are to be in Mr Reuben's 
 care." 
 
 I turned away and it seemed to me that he was crying. 
 
 The outward show of grief is the affair of the nervous 
 organism and has nothing to do with grief itself. 
 How many tears have I shed over Margery's nursery 
 tales, how easily do I weep now over some sentimental 
 page ! And yet it needed this old retainer's emotion 
 to give the cue to mine. I had not till that moment 
 shed a tear. 
 
 § ix 
 
 After the reading of the will I returned to the old 
 home which I had not seen since the previous holidays. 
 I found the house swept and garnished, a cheerful fire 
 burning in the study, and old Margery waiting to receive 
 me in sober black though with an air of being steeled 
 to a reasonable mournfulness. 
 
 " It's good to see you, Mr Edward," she said with 
 calm, and refraining from lamentation. Yes, she had 
 been admirably drilled, I doubted not by whom. 
 
 " Your father told me to give you this," holding out 
 a bulky envelope. " There's a good fire in the study 
 and I'll send tea in shortly." 
 
 She lingered a minute, and then with some hesitation : 
 
 " I'm glad you take it so quietly. Master Ned. You're 
 very like your father." 
 
 " Why don't you say ' your poor father ' like every-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 93 
 
 body else ? " I couldn't help asking. I felt I must 
 know why she abandoned the traditional formula. 
 
 " I was left particular instructions," she replied. 
 " ' You are to speak of me to Master Edward as I 
 have taught you to speak of your mistress. As little 
 black as possible and no fuss.' " And with that she 
 retired into her pantry. 
 
 I went into the stud}^ sat down at my father's desk 
 and examined the packet which was addressed "To 
 my son, Edward Marston. To be opened after my 
 death," Taking up the big ivory paper-knife, I slit 
 the envelope open and found inside a lengthy docu- 
 ment of which the remarkableness were lost unless my 
 father's simplicity and incapacity for pose be given 
 full value. It was dated some four months earlier. 
 
 I\Iy dear Edward, — ^When you read this 
 
 Je seray sous la terre, et, fantosme sans os, 
 Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos. 
 
 I use the French to arouse your literary instinct and 
 so counterbalance any excess of emotion you may have 
 in opening my letter. By the way " myrtled shades " 
 would not be a really good translation of ombres 
 myrteux. It is too literal and perhaps too poetic. It 
 is a sound rule in poetry to avoid the poetic. Ronsard 
 is the author ; it is not a rare quotation. 
 
 But my object in writing is not to give you a lecture 
 on French poetry, but a hint or two about life, and 
 what is even more important, about your uncle. Life, 
 my dear boy, has only two aspects worth considering. 
 One is the life you lead to yourself, the other is the part 
 played by money. Remember always to keep yourself
 
 94 UESPOXSIBILITY 
 
 In yourself, as the servants say. Or if you eannot lock 
 up your heart entirely, choose a Iriend — it had better 
 be a man — and <,Mve it into his keeping. But don't at 
 \()ur ])eril wear it on your sleeve. Remember that 
 xonr intimate joys and sorrows are necessarily a bore 
 It) tlic rest ol" the Avorld. You lose vour dog and a 
 Inmdred amateurs will condole with you, your loss 
 affordinii them occasion to show off their doo-Iore. 
 Do not confound. The world is honest enough to 
 refrain from selling dogs ; it is too vain not to talk dog. 
 You suffer bereavement in a graver sense and you 
 become a nuisance. The men at your clul) hesitate 
 to crack jokes in your presence ; they wonder Avhether 
 they have accomplished the rigmarole proper to the 
 occasion. Did I ever tell you of the old German Jew's 
 recipe for condolence ? You put on a hang-dog air 
 and recite the letters of the alphabet under your breath 
 as fast as you can. It is very impressive, it seems. 
 You will nearly always find a Jew to be more amusing 
 than a Christian. For one thing he is generally so 
 very nuieh more intelligent. Note, by the way, that 
 the only tolerable Germans are Hamburg Jews. If 
 onlv thev could forfjet Bismarck what a delightful 
 race they would be ! 
 
 In all that you reallv live for, then, vou live alone. 
 We are a shamefaced people and our deejicst interests 
 are matter for silence. To discuss religion is to behave 
 as a boor. To talk music or literature is unprofitable- 
 ness. Politics, by which ^ve mean party politics . . . 
 Faugh ! I advise you to learn some conversational 
 tags, shooting, horses, women. Remember that 
 " trade follow^s the flag," on condition that it doesn't 
 precede it. You will be dining principally in Manchester.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 95 
 
 Apart from your inner life the only other thing that 
 matters is money. This is not cynicism, but intellectual 
 honesty. Your uncle, despite his rapacity, has always 
 had enough money to keep him out of gaol. To a poor 
 man genius such as his would have been an immense 
 danger. He has never forgiven me for not consenting 
 to invest Aunt Windsor's money in the business, 
 thereby liberating enough capital to secure us a con- 
 trolling interest in old Buckley's Mill. You know 
 they paid forty per cent, for over ten years and are 
 still doing well. We should have made a fortune, 
 and in view of your uncle's wonderful flair for a good 
 thing there was little or no risk. In this matter of 
 money I shall leave you moderately well off, and 
 ultimately ratiier more than a quarter share in a good 
 business. I trust I have done wisely in tying up your 
 money and binding you to your uncle till you are 
 twenty-five. If ever you want to marry, what I shall 
 leave you will be enough. If you don't, you will find 
 the amount handsomely inadequate ! The world is a 
 big place to have the bachelor run of. As an honest 
 man you will always have plenty ; as a ne'er-do-weel 
 you will always be in difficulties. Remember that 
 whatever the men you meet may be talking, they are 
 always thinking money. It is their lodestar, their 
 mainspring, what you will. My advice to you is to 
 stick to honesty ; it is the only way by which you can 
 circumvent your uncle. His whole life is devoted to 
 setting snares for others and in countering the cunning 
 schemes which he imagines the whole world to have 
 on foot against him. Some years ago, an Assyrian 
 customer of ours called at the office saying that lie was 
 about to take a trip to his native land and begging to
 
 96 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 introduce the fellow who was to represent him during 
 his absence. After I had bowed them out the old 
 Crusader came back alone, half opened the door, 
 insinuated his head and putting one finger to his nose 
 whispered confidentially: " He is my partner. Do not 
 trust him ! " Some day your Uncle Reuben will be 
 your partner. 
 
 Anil no^v, my dear boy, I have to talk to you of 
 another matter, not in a more serious strain, perhaps, 
 but in a different one. I will not agree that the end 
 of my life is a more serious matter than the beginning 
 of yours. It is a different one, that is all. 
 
 Not to beat about the bush, the doctors do not give 
 me long. I am grieved for your sake ; I am more 
 annoyed than frightened for my own. I have found 
 the world an intensely interesting place and I cannot 
 say that I possess anything that can be technically 
 termed faith. ... It would be the normal and proper 
 thing for me to tell you that I am going to join your 
 mother ; I do not know ; I feel no certainty. Suppose 
 I had been married twice ? I can say in complete 
 honesty that she is my bulwark against fear. What 
 she has suffered I can suffer. I hope I am not afraid. 
 ... I am conscious that this is nonsense. Of course 
 I am afraid. I have the most preposterous fears, fear 
 of an infinity of lonely wakefulness in the dark of our 
 smallest prison. The idea of oppression frightens me, 
 the tight lid and the vile, sinister shape. I fight for 
 air. And then with an effort I force myself to remember 
 that whatever terrors may be in store they cannot be 
 the terrors of the earth. I am not afraid of viewless 
 winds or thick-ribbed ice. I am afraid of negation, 
 of not being. " What most I prize, it ne'er was mine,"
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 97 
 
 runs the hymn. I cannot bring myself to Christian 
 resignation. What father would endow his child with 
 all that delicate machinery of appreciation only to 
 take it away when deUght was at its fullest ? But I 
 forget that philosophy has decided that the First Cause 
 may very well be ignorant of the humaner feelings, that 
 the whole may be less charitable than its part. 
 
 I think perhaps the Shakespearean " inevitable " 
 view is the best. I will copy the passage for you : 
 
 " By my troth, I care not ; a man can die but once ; 
 we owe God a death. I'll ne'er bear a base mind; 
 an't be my destin^r, so ; an't be not, so. No man's 
 too good to serve's prince ; and let it go which way 
 it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next." 
 
 Note that Shakespeare was so rich that he could 
 afford to squander this jewel on a woman's tailor. Like 
 Feeble I'll ne'er bear a base mind. And then there 
 is the other view ; the vicAv that I might have lived 
 too long ; lived to see you unliappy. You will realise 
 that I have made provision of all the comfortable tags. 
 
 I am convinced that if anybody is in the right about 
 heaven, since it cannot be the parsons it must be 
 the poets. I would allow no parson to preach unless 
 he could first scrape through a simple examination in 
 Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer. A loose- 
 living clergyman is unfrocked ; why not a loose- 
 thinking one ? I remember many years ago being 
 in a crowded street when a thunderstorm of great 
 fury broke over us. A brewer's dra}^ v/ent past on 
 which was sitting an old, old man, who fell off into 
 the road. I remember that the whirling of the
 
 98 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 storm Avas sucli that it obliterated the human bundle. 
 1 have f)lten thought that tlie whole of our world may 
 be some such imconsidered bundle hurrying to oblitera- 
 tion. The Chinch docs not seem to be aware that 
 we are moving through space at some considerable 
 speed. Nor has it ever proved that the Supreme 
 Force which is responsible for human compimction 
 lias consciousness of that quality. 
 
 There is a kindly belief that as the body wears out 
 the spirit wears out also. Do not believe this. I shall 
 die with my spirit awake and my eyes open. 
 
 My great hope, my boy, is in you. I ti*ust you will 
 not hear in these simple words that cant which is to me 
 of all sounds the most distressful. I cannot under- 
 stand the dissenting chapel. I realise that there may be 
 good in the habit of Sunday debate with a chairman to 
 keep order, but do not let us confuse that with worship. 
 You cannot worship a being and argue about his 
 existence and conditioning at the same time. I have, 
 as you know, attended churches of all denominations 
 and found the proper atmosphere of w^orshij) — pagan 
 in the sense of adulation without understanding — 
 in the Roman Church alone. I have overcome my 
 dislike to the flummery of untidy priests, obviously 
 thinking of an^-thing except their devotions. I have 
 forced myself to see a symbol of the sublime in the 
 tinsel and putty of an image. There I have been able 
 to worship, although it has meant relinquishing the 
 faculty of reasoning. I sometimes fear that prayer 
 is not more than a cowardly desire to be on the right 
 side. Primus in orbe Deos fecit timur, you know. 
 
 In my reasoning mood, when my nerves are steadier, 
 I repeat that my great hope is in you. You are my
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 99 
 
 immortality. There is much in the universe that 
 is arguable, but there is, fortunately, much also which 
 is undeniable. And the least deniable of all things is 
 the great thrust of Nature towards life, towards ever 
 more and more life. This may not be more than com- 
 pensation for the death and decay going on around us, 
 but whatever the reason, the desire and thrust are 
 there. Now I am a man of business and have never 
 believed in the possibility of getting something for 
 nothing. The price of life is the obligation to confer 
 life in our turn. Remember that I am part of you for 
 ever, and that when you too are a father, you will be 
 part of your son for ever. The obligation to live 
 decently is obvious. 
 
 [There was a slight break in the letter and then, in 
 firmer writing : ] 
 
 I am in altogether better spirits to-day and ready 
 to stare the old bogey out of countenance. What I 
 chiefly feel is the regret that so fine and complex a piece 
 of machinery as the human body should be capable of 
 wearing out. I have felt the same about old looms. 
 
 But I will not have Portwood. Anybody else, but 
 not that unctuous ruffian. I detest Portwood. I 
 detest his walk, his Stygian cheerfulness, his mourning 
 rings, his double chins. He is MicoMher pris au serieux. 
 
 He too has a roll in his voice and it makes me shudder. 
 He would weep black tears an he could. I have seen 
 too much of Portwood. In my capacity of executor 
 I have had acquaintance of him in his sanctum. We 
 have turned over catalogues together, compared 
 headstones, appraised caskets. I have heard him hold
 
 100 RESPONSTBTTJTY 
 
 I'ortli oil tlic superior advantages of four horses. " Not 
 that a pair of oin- blacks is not up to tlic job. Quite the 
 reverse. But there are faniiHes in which four horses 
 have always run, and four horses are four horses after 
 all. They give the ceremony an air." Had I the knack 
 I would put him into a comedy ; I have no objection 
 to comic undertakers. There's a precedent, and it 
 isn't as though we hadn't the actors. There's Kcmble, 
 who would be rich and loam-y, and Neville, who would 
 give him the grand air of one of his own cavalcades. 
 Portwood's an exquisite, you know. But then I've 
 seen him off duty, one with his kind. It was at a 
 railway station. Incredibly he proposed a " nip," 
 and I accepted out of sheer nervousness. No, I will 
 not have Portwood. 
 
 A father who cracks jokes from the other side ! 
 " En voild du comique ! Allans, il faut savoir se tenir 
 iranquille dans sa tomhe.^'' 
 
 A very gentle essayist whom I have heard you 
 disparage — but you will live to repent — asks whether 
 irony itself can be one of the things that go out with 
 life. " Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, 
 when you are pleasant with him ? " I like to think 
 that vou, my bov, and I may still laugh together. 
 
 I have little to say to you of last things. I prefer to 
 think that all that matters has been implied while we 
 were together. 
 
 It is finished. Barka ! as the Arabs sav- 
 
 Your affectionate father, 
 
 James Maeston. 
 
 By his will my father left my mother's watch and a 
 thousand pounds to JMonica, a hundred a year to old
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 101 
 
 Margery, and all his other personal effects, which were 
 few, to nie, with a recommendation to sell the house 
 and furniture and so avoid sentimental embarrassments. 
 I carried out his wishes strictly, keeping nothing except 
 the Keighley books. 
 
 " I suppose I shall not go back to school till after 
 the holidays ? " I said to my uncle a day or two later. 
 
 " You are not going back to school at all," he replied 
 gravely. " The age comes to all of us when we must 
 put away Childisli Tilings. You are no longer a child 
 and there is work awaiting you. We must all of us 
 Work, Work while it is yet Day."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 § i 
 
 MVCll has been written about tlic difficulty of 
 tlic dramatic form, not enough of its con- 
 venience. The dramatist is free to bring the 
 curtain down on the most desperate of phghts from 
 Nvliich no issue is humanly conceivable, to raise it again 
 upon the most careless of triumphs. He is not to con- 
 cern himself with ways and means, with that trifling 
 matter of ocean fares. The bankrupt sets sail, the 
 millionaire returns, Et voild ! C'est simple comme 
 bon jour ! I would not begrudge the playwright his 
 arbitraiy slashings were he to confine them to knots 
 strictly Gordian ; it is the frivolous, unnecessary cur- 
 tains I am jealous of, bringing to violent ends scenes 
 untieable by a simple stroke of common-sense. 
 
 I am going to take a leaf out of the dramatist's book. 
 
 I am going to pass over the few weeks of grace which 
 preceded my plunge into the whirlpool of business. 
 They were weeks in which nothing happened except 
 that I acquired a wider experience of the characters 
 of my newly adopted family. One of the most dis- 
 concerting of discoveries is that the more you know of 
 people the less easy it is to go on disliking them. My 
 cousin Geoffrey always excepted. 
 
 Geoffrey Torkington Ackroyd — my aunt was a Miss 
 Torkington — was short-sighted and red-haired to the 
 extent in which these physical defects encroach upon 
 the moral. He was boorish in manner and hesitant 
 of speech, combining a singular duUiiess of apprehen- 
 
 I03
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 103 
 
 sion with an extreme degree of contempt for the in- 
 telligence of others. He bit his nails. His allowance 
 of dress monejr being less than mine and the two of 
 us about the same size, he would make offers to me 
 for my part- worn suits of clothes. Or he would haggle 
 for tailors' misfits, with a preference for trousers several 
 inches too long, preaching that when the bottoms were 
 frayed the extra length enabled you to cut off an inch 
 and neatly cobble. He wore reversible cuffs and 
 dickies, and low collars of which the smallness of the 
 area of visibility decreased the need for washing. He 
 was addicted to fretwork and did a profitable trade 
 among his intimates in watch-stands, bookcases, knife- 
 and-fork rests ; and I seldom knew him to cut into a 
 fresh piece of wood without a definite commission. He 
 stuffed birds. He attended lads' clubs and was anxious 
 in a dull, unimaginative way that the world around him 
 should improve its mind. When I was deep in Mmion 
 Lescaut he would recommend Miss Yonge's A Dove in 
 the Eaglets Nest. One vice I have never forgiven him : 
 that of whistling on all possible and impossible occa- 
 sions ; an aggravating, insistent, hour-long improvisa- 
 tion without sequence, rhytlim, or tune. 
 
 " Bird seed ! " I overheard a half -starved clerk 
 mutter. " Give 'im bird seed, and 'e'll sing for hours like 
 a blarsted canary ! " The fellow had a consumptive 
 wife and two unhealthy children, and I had not until 
 then suspected him of being a wit. My cousin wr.s in 
 great demand at dances, and indeed such intelligence 
 as he had was in his legs. At home my uncle cherished 
 his son as the apple of his eye ; in business he knew 
 him for a fool. 
 
 Two incidents come into my mind. The first at a
 
 101 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Cliristmas party when a handsome piece of jewellery 
 stolon ironi a cracker was ioiind in a pocket of my 
 overcoat. (Jcoi'frcy, taxed with the theft, had thought 
 to halve his guilt by implicating me as instigator and 
 receiver. 
 
 " Ned said that if I could get it he would take care 
 of it." 
 
 ^Vhen some years later we were both caught smoking 
 it is to be noted that he had in no way modified his 
 defence, 
 
 '' It was Edward who wanted to smoke," he said, 
 " and he asked me to as well. So that we should both 
 smell alike." 
 
 I had not lived many weeks at Oakwood before I 
 began to conceive an immense esteem for my Aunt 
 Sarah. She was a large woman of great force of char- 
 acter and in no way given to idolatry in the matter of 
 her husband. She had the Yorkshire woman's uncom- 
 promising directness, and stands out in my recollection 
 as a model of manner. She abhorred all affectation 
 and could have received a queen. She used to say 
 laughingly that if ever the Queen came to see her 
 " when Reuben is a knighted major and a cubit or so 
 taller," she hoped she should not forget in her confusion 
 as subject her dignity as hostess. It was from my 
 aunt that I learned all those insignificant courtesies 
 which arc now so hopelessly out of date : not to open 
 the newspaper until my uncle had seen it, not to talk 
 across tram-cars, to give the wall to old ladies, to be 
 polite to beggars, to take off my hat to the maids when 
 I met them in the street. It was she who taught me 
 the respect due to music and to books. Music was to 
 be bound and sewn and taped and kept together ;
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 105 
 
 books were to be covered in brown paper with the titles 
 neatly written on the back. My cousins and I were 
 obliged to make inventories of our small libraries and 
 account for every book at a half-yearly stocktaking. 
 On these occasions our clothes and boots were also 
 subjected to a review of dragonsome severity, a kit 
 inspection, if you like. Aunt Sarah would have jibbed 
 at the word, but she insisted upon the thing. 
 
 I shall never forget going to call with her on a retired 
 dancer who had married a rich tallow-chandler. This 
 lady had graciously let it be known that she might not 
 be disinclined, at a strictly moderate subscription, to 
 open a bazaar at the chapel where we worshipped. 
 After the negotiations with which my aunt was en- 
 trusted had been simperingly settled, tea was brought 
 in, and with tea the thinnest possible slices of bread 
 and butter. Whereupon the ex-charmer of multitudes, 
 whose newly gilt manners had provoked my aunt to a 
 state bordering on exasperation, began to exhibit signs 
 of acute distress. 
 
 " Never, never," she deplored from the tip of her 
 tongue, " can one get adequate service from female 
 domestics. The sluts ! " she added, with full-throated 
 vigour and a nearer approach to sincerity than we had 
 yet seen. 
 
 " What is the matter, my dear ? " inquired my 
 aunt soothingly. 
 
 " Where are the bread-and-butter tongs ? " said the 
 ex-tight-rope-dancer. 
 
 " Bread-and-butter fiddlesticks ! " exclaimed my 
 aunt, her sense of sanity and proportion up in arms. 
 " The Queen herself doesn't use 'em, and you, my girl, 
 will never learn how ! "
 
 lOG RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 To my immense surprise the ex-dancer burst into 
 teai'S ; whereupon my aunt, genuinely softened, went 
 over CO her and patted licr hand. 
 
 " I am a plain old woman," she said, " and you are 
 a verj' pretty young one, and I am afraid I have ex- 
 ceeded even a plain old woman's privilege. Forgive 
 me, my dear." 
 
 The tongs being then brought in, my aunt said they 
 were a very handsome set and quite a capital idea for 
 a wedding present, there being small risk of duplica- 
 tion ; which little tactfulness led to a happy recon- 
 ciliation, the ex-dancer becommg less mannered and 
 almost natural. She told us about her Tobias and how 
 he had worshipped her at a respectful distance — the 
 first row of stalls, to be exact — for many anxious weeks 
 before he had asked to be allowed to pay his addresses. 
 
 " My legs just danced their way into his heart," she 
 sighed, dabbing gingerly at her cheeks with the liniest 
 of handkerchiefs. " And there they've remained ever 
 since." 
 
 My aunt was certain that they had. 
 
 Other callers arriving, she plunged for the tongs and 
 made a bold and creditable show with them. 
 
 " That woman is a fool," my aunt said when we were 
 safely outside, " but a good-hearted fool." 
 
 She had sympathy with every creature that breathes, 
 with the exception of trained nurses. 
 
 " I don't believe in 'em," she urged vigorously on the 
 occasion of one of Geoffrey's illnesses. " How can the 
 woman turn the boy in bed with those stiff cuffs on, or 
 give him his medicine with that new-fangled bow of hers 
 tickling her chin. It's not decent." 
 
 I remember that once she found a nurse — an in-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 107 
 
 efficient ninny, as it happened — letting a poultice get 
 cold while she prinked and scalloped it with a fork to 
 make it look pretty ; which led to my aunt boxing her 
 ears soundly and never so much as answering the en- 
 suing protests and lawyers' threats. 
 
 In his own home my uncle had altogether bon earac- 
 the. Sunday was guest-day at Oakwood and there 
 was generally a large party for midday dinner, at which 
 we youngsters were not allowed to speak until my 
 aunt had given the signal upon a little silver bell. 
 The ringing of the bell was also the sign for my uncle 
 to play the fool, which he did most agreeably, cracking 
 jokes and constmcting towers of Babel with the 
 decanters and fruit dishes. He had a nice architectural 
 sense and catastrophes were rare. But his principal 
 feat consisted in balancing a cup of custard on his 
 forehead and juggling simultaneously with two Jaffa 
 oranges and a tangerine. Finally he would propound 
 some ancient, infantile riddle of which it was traditional 
 that Monica should supply the answer. 
 
 As for that little person, she has always been perfect 
 in my eyes. 
 
 §ii 
 
 Late in the evening of my seventeenth birthday my 
 uncle called me into his study. 
 
 " You are going to start business to-morrow, 
 Edward," he said. 
 
 " Does that mean sweeping out the office ? " I 
 answered, cheekily enough, my head full of inculcatory 
 nonsense of the Log Cabin to While House order. 
 
 " No, my boy, it does not. You are not a fool and
 
 108 RESPONSIBITJTY 
 
 T am not n fool, and neither of ns believes that fortunes 
 are made l)y jiieking iij) pins and bits of string. The 
 ■whole art of business lies in the knowledge of men. 
 Your job in life is to sell calico, but you had better 
 realise once and for all Umt it is not a knowledge of 
 ealieo that matters but knowledge of the people who 
 are going to buy it. There is an enormous amount of 
 cant talked about trade. No man can sell something 
 his customer is sure he doesn't want ; the whole art 
 consists first in finding out what your customer thinks 
 he wants and then in ])crsuading him that he wants it 
 badly and from you. The best salesman I ever met 
 was a German Jew who knew nothing at all about cotton 
 goods but ever>d:hing about South Americans. We 
 were young apprentices in a London warehouse. 
 Strumbach was the fellow's name. To-day he's the 
 richest merchant in Manchester. He was a better man 
 of business than Shylock. He was not content to talk 
 with you, walk with you, and so forth ; he would eat 
 with you, drink wath you and pray with you, and never 
 leave you from your getting up to your lying down. 
 Whenever we had rich raslas from Rio or Buenos Ayres 
 old Salomon, our employer, would give Strumbach a 
 handful of sovereigns and carte blanche. ' Where they 
 dine you dine ; where they sleep, j''ou sleep,' he would 
 sav. ' Mind I want no account, and I don't care what 
 the price of the champagne, but I look to you to bring 
 them to my office and to see Ihat no other house gets 
 so much as a smell at 'em.' With the knowledge that 
 Strumbach had his men under lock and key old Salomon 
 could sleep soundly. Sometimes the young Jew would 
 ask for an additional pound or two ; more often he 
 would hand old Salomon some small change, which
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 109 
 
 would be gravely accepted. I do not think lie ever 
 cheated the old man." 
 
 " Honour among Jews," I said. 
 
 " Exactly. They are the most honourable race in 
 the world. There will be no need for you to pursue the 
 same tactics in the way of treating." 
 
 " I hope not," I said priggishly. 
 
 " For the reason that we do not deal with the foreio-n 
 customer direct. Strumbach does that, and we sell 
 to him." 
 
 " But is all business a matter of treating ? " I asked. 
 
 " All business, no," replied my uncle gravely, " only 
 the most profitable. You will have enough to do to 
 study your English customers. Some like you to shake 
 hands with 'em, others loathe it. Some enjoy being 
 toadied to, others despise it. You will have to learn 
 when to offer a cigar and when to accept one, to be 
 ready to drink and tell stupid stories, to be slick and 
 smart or ponderous and reliable. You must be ready 
 to go to the stake for somebody else's political persua- 
 sions and to be enthusiastic about things you care 
 nothing at all for. You will have to take tickets for 
 preposterous charities, and it is well now and again to 
 ask a man you know to be purse-proud to subscribe to 
 some pet scheme of your own." 
 
 " But doesn't all this amount to prostitution ? " I 
 said in horror. In any lesser state of amazement I had 
 boggled at the word. 
 
 " You can call it what you like," he replied. " Of 
 course it is deplorable. Very, very deplorable." He 
 shook his head. " But you've got to sell calico, and 
 I'm telling you the way to sell it." 
 
 " But don't they see through you ? "
 
 1 1 RESPONSIRTTJTY 
 
 " When they are not fools, they do ; and then, if 
 yon are not a fool you drop it." 
 
 " ' To thine own self be true . . .' " I began. 
 
 " And you won't be false to the other fellow," con- 
 cluded my uncle approvingly. " But, my dear nephew, 
 isn't that assuming that your own self will be persona 
 grata with Tom, Dick and Harry ? Also that they care 
 two pins whether you are false to them or not ? I don't 
 quite know what you are talking about maybe, but it 
 is certainly not salesmanship. If you think you can 
 dominate the market all well and good ; my advice 
 was for a beginner who has to elbow his way through. 
 However, all that is merely the general consideration ; 
 to-morrow we'll make a start. I'm going to engage a 
 new manager to replace your father at the mill. I want 
 Buckley's manager— Absalom Buckley is our chief 
 rival — and I want him badly. I've made up my mind 
 to offer three hundred ; he's worth five. I've put an 
 advertisement in the paper and taken care that Temple 
 knows who it is that's advertising : ' Wanted by a 
 well-known firm of manufacturers ' and ' Remuneration 
 according to results.' That fetches 'em. There'll be a 
 dozen applicants for the place and Temple among 'em." 
 
 " How do you know Temple will be among them, 
 uncle ? " 
 
 " Because I know my man. Good-night, my boy, 
 and pleasant dreams." 
 
 And so, disturbed, to bed. 
 
 On the way to the office my uncle expounded to me 
 the whole art of engaging servants, even highly paid 
 ones. 
 
 " You advertise," he said, " not because you can't 
 find what you want but to widen your choice. Even
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 111 
 
 when you've spotted your man it is as well to advertise ; 
 it puts the fear of competition into him. Then you 
 arrange for him to come up for interview at the same 
 time as the others. That puts the individual fear into 
 him. I have known hundreds a year tin-own away 
 through spacing your interviews. Have 'em all to- 
 gethei-, keep 'em waiting, and go through the batch as 
 slow as you like. And if there is a man you want keep 
 liim till the end." 
 
 " Isn't that rather cruel ? " I ventured. 
 " All business is cruel. The official receiver isn't any 
 easier with you because you've paid higher wages than 
 your competitors." 
 
 In the ante-room were gathered a dozen typical 
 Lancashire men of business. They seemed to me hard- 
 headed ; they were certainly hard-hatted, ill-dressed, 
 undersized, common little fellows. They had the 
 courage of their ready-made bows. One or two wore 
 corduroy trousers. Both their hair and their manners 
 seemed to have been newly oiled and there hung about 
 them an atmosphere of common soap and honesty. 
 
 " Good-morning, gentlemen," said my uncle. " Ah, 
 Mr Temple, how do you do ? " 
 
 Temple, a tall, broad-shouldered, roughish-made 
 man dressed in neat black replied without trace of 
 nervousness that he did well. 
 
 And then the interviews began. To me it seemed a 
 humiliating process. The applicants cringed and fawned 
 as though they relied upon a success of ingratiation 
 rather than their qualifications for the post. My uncle 
 put them through a regular cross-examination, and 
 under the friendhest and most confidential guise pro- 
 ceeded to extract from them the maximum amount of
 
 1 1 2 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 information as to his competitors' businesses. We had 
 chspatchcd three when an office boy came in bearing 
 a card which my uncle read and threw over to me. It 
 ran : 
 
 "I shall wait another five minutes. — John 
 Temple." 
 
 My uncle gave orders for him to be admitted. 
 
 As soon as the door was closed behind him the big 
 man said : "I think we can do without t'others, Mr 
 Reuben." 
 
 " Perhaps," said my uncle, smiling. " Well, Temple, 
 I don't believe in beating about the bush. How much 
 less than three hundred ? " 
 
 " I'm getting four where I am," said Temple slowly, 
 " what with bonuses and one thing and another, and I 
 shanna tak' four." 
 
 " No ? " said my uncle affably. " And I'm sure I 
 shan't offer it," 
 
 " Now, Mr Reuben," said the other, " let's talk fair. 
 You don't like beating about t' bush and I don't know 
 as it pleases me noather. I want five pun' a week and 
 I'm baan t' hev it." 
 
 " But that's only two hundred and fifty," said my 
 uncle, " and I'm willing to stretch a bit. Say three 
 hundred for a good man." 
 
 " You'll have to stretch a lot more than that, I'm 
 thinking ! " said the other. " You know as well as 
 me whether I'm your man or not. Five pun' a week 
 and fix my own bonus, is my price." 
 
 "What!" cried my uncle. " Fix your own bonus ! 
 What in heaven's name do you mean ? " 
 
 " What I say, and no more and no less. Fix my own
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 113 
 
 bonus. That's what I want and what I'm going to get, 
 or John Temple doesn't take over. I shall know how 
 much you make, and how much on it is due to me, and 
 how much you can afford. I shallna cheat thee. 
 John Temple has never rogued a boss yet and he's not 
 going to start now." 
 
 " But it's preposterous," said my uncle. " How can 
 I enter into a written undertaking to give you an un- 
 known sum ? I do not say," he went on reflectively, 
 "that certain fixed emoluments and a system of per- 
 centages might not " 
 
 He tailed off lamentably under the other's steady eye. 
 
 " I never trust anything as is written," said Temple 
 slowly. " A man's word with me, boss or no boss, has 
 to be as good as his bond." 
 
 My uncle nodded approvingly. " Certainly, cer- 
 tainly. A very proper view." 
 
 " I want no engagement and no undertakings. And 
 I'll have nowt to do with emoluments and systems as 
 you call 'em. I want plain wages and a bonus. My 
 wages weekly and my bonus reg'lar, good years and 
 bad. Though I don't say as I shan't want more in 
 good years than in t'others." 
 
 " But the idea of fixing it yourself ! " objected my 
 uncle, pale at the lack of precedent and the danger he 
 saw of creating one. 
 
 " Fix 'em myself. Yes," Temple nodded slowly and 
 ruminatively. " But I'll be fair and give you an idea 
 in advance. I reckon that all told I shall want five 
 hundred in bad years and six hundred in good, and I 
 reckon too as they'll all be good." 
 
 "It's too much," said my uncle firmly. " Now I'll 
 tell you what I'll do with you. Temple. Four hundred 
 
 H
 
 114 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 pounds a year, paid weekly, and fifty pounds every 
 Christmas morning good years and bad. And that's 
 my very last word." 
 
 " And I've said mine, Mr Reuben. Ye can be going 
 on with your interviews. I wish ye good morning." 
 
 He turned to the door. 
 
 " There's not all that hurry," said my uncle, " I 
 might consider the matter again and you might like 
 to think it over. As a fair man, Temple, you must 
 surely see my difficulty. I have no safeguard as to 
 what you might not demand in the case of an abnor- 
 mally prosperous year." 
 
 " 1 reckon any man ought to be glad to pay for 
 abnormal prosperity," replied the other. "I've done 
 my considering and that's all that matters to me. 
 When I leave this room I don't come back again. I 
 don't ask for no engagements and you don't need no 
 safeguards, as you call 'em. Not the way I see it, you 
 don't. If, come Christmas, you don't want me the 
 next year you're under no compulsion to pay me my 
 bonus. I've got a bit o' brass as I've saved, besides 
 that what my feyther left me. I'm none married 
 and it all goes into t' stocking. I've got between 
 six and seven thousand and I shallna miss an odd 
 hundred. I'll lend you some o' my brass if you 
 want," he concluded, 
 
 "I'll take five thousand at four and a half," said my 
 uncle. 
 
 " You will not, Mr Reuben," replied Temple, without 
 rudeness. " Is it to be yea or nay about the job ? " 
 
 " Why do you want to leave Buckley's ? " my uncle 
 asked sharply. " I hear they've not been doing any 
 too well lately."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 115 
 
 " YeVe heard nowt o' t' sort," replied the other. 
 " Buckleys' stink o' brass, and the only reason they go 
 on is to keep their cottages filled and to find a living for 
 their workfolk. When the old man dies they'll stop. 
 Young Buckley never had much brains, and what brains 
 he's got he's drinking away fast." 
 
 " Deplorable," said my uncle. 
 
 " Now you're different, Mr Reuben. You're rich, but 
 you're not as rich as you'd like to be. You want to 
 make a lot more brass, and I'm the best chap to make 
 it for thee. You know truth when you hear it. You're 
 a hard man, Mr Reuben, but I never heard tell as you 
 were a fool." 
 
 " When can you start ? " said my uncle. 
 
 " Monday week," replied Temple. 
 
 " Five pomids then, and I suppose I must trust you 
 for the rest," said Reuben as genially as he could. 
 
 " Them as has trusted me haven't had much to 
 grumble about, and I hope as they never will," declared 
 the other. "I'll run that place as it should be run." 
 Then turning to me he added with rough courtesy : 
 " Not any better than your poor father did, but happen 
 as honestly. Good-morning, Mr Reuben. Morning, 
 Master Ned." 
 
 And he was gone. 
 
 But my uncle continued to interview and to cross- 
 examine, to nose and to ferret, for the sheer love and 
 advantage of nosing and ferreting. 
 
 When the last applicant had been dismissed he stroked 
 his nose thoughtfully and scratched his thin beard. 
 
 " It's a good rule," he began, " when you find a man 
 as clever as you are to get him on your side. He's 
 cheap, Ned, dirt-cheap, and some day we'll give him
 
 116 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 an interest in the concern. That is," he added, after 
 a pause, " if he forces us to." 
 
 §iii 
 
 But, I hear you exclaim, what is there so very terrible 
 about Reuben Ackroyd ? Where the proof of hideous 
 and viperish malignity ? Business, after all, was always 
 known to be business. 
 
 I see that I am in for a dull chapter and that I shall 
 not be able to avoid a more exact account of the spider's 
 web ; that there is need for me to be explanatory and, 
 God helping, entertaining on the subject of the cotton 
 trade. A pious hope as to which I cherish few illusions. 
 Since even the great Frenchman could fail to make 
 amusing the inner mysteries of poor Cesar's Pdte des 
 Sultanes and Emi carmdnative, and since we are little 
 entranced with Chardoii's efforts to replace rag-paper 
 ■with a vegetable product (voir Les lUicsions Perdues) 
 what prospect have I, who have no more absorbing 
 matter for intrigue than the threads in a piece of 
 calico ? But I was never a coward, and the plunge is 
 the thing ! 
 
 Know then, reader, that cotton cloth is made from 
 cotton. Admitted that when the poor Indian shivers 
 imder his loin-cloth and demands a warmer quality, 
 he is supplied with a plastery make-weight which we 
 in England know as China clay. But this, alas ! is not 
 your cotton manufacturer's only chinoiserie. Nature 
 has always been the aider and abettor of conmiercial 
 acumen. She it is who is your true accommodator, 
 arranging that thread spun from pure cotton shall be 
 so brittle as to need in the honestest case wrapping in
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 117 
 
 a sheath of fermented flour, in the viler instance in a 
 coating of baked earth which, far from having sailed che 
 China seas, has always remained comfortably at home 
 in Cornwall, Know further, reader, that the number 
 of threads criss-crossing in your shirt so lovingly as to be 
 disentangleable are yet countable. Not to the naked 
 eye, perhaps, but to the warehouseman's. There is no 
 salesman living who will not swear that fifteen threads 
 of Ackroyd and Marston's best shirting are not fifteen 
 but fifteen and a half. And have you never seen some 
 frayed counter-jumper measuring with a piece of calico 
 the distance between thumb and nose-end ? A little 
 reflection tells us that it is the calico which he measures 
 and not a fraction of space known to the world even 
 in the days when the Venus of Melos had arms ; the 
 human frame was expressly designed to establish the 
 measure of the yard. What idle talk is this ! you 
 exclaim ; a yard is a yard all the world over. Not 
 in the cotton trade. I am too weary of it all, and you, 
 dear lady, now stifling an elegant yawn will not insist 
 that I should precise how many inches there may be in 
 a cotton manufacturer's three feet. Sufficient for you 
 to know that in this little space may be contained an 
 infinity of pettifogging fraud. What it is important 
 for you to realise is that my uncle never descended to 
 obvious chicane. He was to be hated, not despised ; 
 a rogue but no cheat. His fingers were round throats 
 rather than in pockets ; whatever there was to be said 
 of his conscience, in the pilfering sense his hands were 
 clean. 
 
 And here I must explain that the business of Ackroyd 
 and Marston was divided into two parts. There was 
 first the actual turning of raw cotton into piece goods.
 
 118 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 which complicated operation took place in the mill at 
 Crawley Bridge. (You will find Crawley Bridge on any 
 map. It nestles close imder the lee of the Cheshire 
 hills and has Ashton-under-Lyne for near neighbour.) 
 The conduct of this business Avas irreproachable, and 
 it was under cover of his Crawley Bridge reputation 
 for honesty that my uncle built up the shadier half of 
 his fortune. The management of the mill had always 
 been in my father's hands ; what we called " the 
 Manchester end " in those of my uncle. Now the 
 Manchester end was nothing more nor less than an 
 agency for the sale of cloth manufactured by the small 
 concerns of Stockport, Oldham, Blackburn and Bury. 
 At the time of which I Avrite there were in these towns 
 a number of small sheds run on family lines. Whilst 
 the big mill at Crawley Bridge contained over two 
 thousand looms, the small sheds to which I allude 
 would contain less than a hundred. Each would be 
 held on a rent, together with the power by which the 
 looms were turned, by some former overlooker who had 
 managed to put by some small savings. He would be 
 his own manager, foreman and warehouseman, and find 
 his weavers among his children and near relatives. It 
 was no unusual thing for the owner's wife to work loom 
 to loom with her mother and with his. It was the 
 custom of such small owners to place themselves in the 
 hands of a Manchester agent with a confidence approach- 
 ing that of young blood in its sympathetic money-lender. 
 He was their stay and prop in all time of financial 
 trouble. Upon the agent ! Let us our lives, our souls, 
 our debts, our careful wives, our children and our 
 liabilities lay on the agent, was the nightly prayer of the 
 small manufacturers. My uncle exploited them royally.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 119 
 
 In his many lectures to me Reuben would lav it 
 down that the r61e of agent demanded the extremes of 
 tact and diplomacy. My own shorter view was that 
 it was one of monstrous duplicity. Mark that my uncle 
 was always at pains to explain to his small manufacturer 
 that he was acting solely as his go-between and not as 
 a profiteering middleman. ' ' I am a Commission Agent, " 
 he would say, " and live by my commission. I take 
 no profits. ' Is not the labourer,' " etc. It was this 
 attitude which enabled him to offer the manufacturer 
 nineteen shillings for a piece of calico which he, my 
 uncle, had already sold for twenty. The rough fellow 
 offering feeble protest, Reuben would take a turn 
 round the Exchange and come back with a long face 
 and the regret that his customer would not budge. 
 Did the wretch insist that he was being shorn a trifle 
 too close and that the weather was really very cold, 
 my uncle might, if he had lunched well, come back from 
 his apocryphal tour with an extra threepence. Note 
 that in either case he made ninepence or a shiUing 
 above his lawful commission. 
 
 I still possess a letter in which he laid down the laws 
 governing the whole duty and responsibility of the 
 agent in the case in which the agency is genuine. I 
 think that at one time he contemplated a monograph 
 on the subject. It is a thousand pities that he never 
 carried the project to completion ; he had the master- 
 mind. The particular letter which I am about to quote 
 was written at the seaside, and shows how the man of 
 genius may rise superior to his environment. It is 
 admirably precise and shows no trace of preparation, 
 neither is there in it a single correction. I give it as 
 indicating the natural simmerings of that active brain.
 
 1 20 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "A few general eonsiderations, mj'^ dear boy, which 
 '■ may be useful to you, and which occurred to me this 
 " morning whilst listening to the band. 
 
 " The interest of an agent lies in keeping friends 
 " with the manufacturer whom he represents and the 
 " merchant to whom he sells. He may be said to hold 
 " the balance between two contending forces ; he is 
 " the common ambassador at two rival courts. When 
 *' matters go well his role is easy ; when they go ill he 
 "needs all the resourcefulness of the diplomat. Few 
 " people can have friendly feelings towards those who 
 " say to them : ' You are in the wrong.' It is not in 
 " human nature to like that sort of thing, and there- 
 " fore the agent must be careful to maintain a strict 
 " neutrality, to be content with representing the manu- 
 "factiu'cr's views to the merchant and the merchant's 
 " views to the manufacturer. It is not the agent who 
 "makes bad cloth ; it is the manufacturer. It is not 
 " the agent who refuses to take delivery of the bad 
 ' ' cloth ; it is the merchant. The agent, protesting to 
 " the merchant against his action, transmits to the 
 " manufacturer the merchant's refusal to accept the 
 " cloth. The agent, protesting to the manufacturer 
 " against the badness of his cloth, insists on the mer- 
 " chant fulfilling his purchase. And the reason for 
 " this is plain. If A., who holds one end of the stick, 
 "succeeds in an action at law in recovering damages 
 " from B., the agent, who stands in the middle, so, 
 " too, must B. be able to succeed in a similar action 
 " against C, who holds the stick at the other end. 
 "And vice veisa. Note that the second action must 
 " always include the costs of the first. Now in neither 
 "of these actions would the verdict be gained on the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 121 
 
 ' ' bare contract alone, but also on consideration of the 
 " protests, complaints, objections and acknowledg- 
 " ments which had passed throughout the whole of 
 "the negotiations and transactions. And unless B.'s 
 "relations to C. in reference to these protests, com- 
 " plaints, etc., were the same as A.'s relations to him, 
 "he, B,, might not be able to recover from C. what 
 " he had lost to A. And vice versa. 
 
 " Therefore, my dear nephew, it is imperative that 
 " you should do no more than represent with absolute 
 " clarity the views of each end of the stick to the 
 " other, keeping accurate record of all statements, 
 " proposals, etc. Otherwise your stick-ends are likely 
 " to turn into upper and nether mill-stones and you 
 "one day to find yourself horribly bruised. 
 
 ' ' Your aunt is well, and I am about to take her for 
 "a walk along the sea-front. The breeze is westerly 
 " and the evening should be pleasant." 
 
 Plain as a pikestaff, isn't it, and eloquent of all that 
 dodging and paltering which is commerce ? . . . Faugh ! 
 
 Let me now proceed to the reconstruction of certain 
 commercial aphorisms which my uncle was never tired 
 of delivering. 
 
 I 
 
 No man goes into business " for the benefit of his 
 health," nor yet to safeguard the health of others. 
 
 II 
 
 The agent is the master of ceremonies at a bout of 
 wits. On his right the Producer. On his left the 
 Consumer. Seconds out of the ring and himself to 
 slip under the ropes at his nimblest.
 
 1 22 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 III 
 
 " Tlie buyer liatli need of a thousand eyes." It is 
 probable tliat he Avill use theni all and borrow the 
 seller's single one into the bargain. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is good taetics to give half-an-ounce over measure. 
 But always exact the full ounce in your turn. 
 
 Most Machiavellian of all, my uncle's flair for in- 
 herently weak and shaky concerns, and his method of 
 absorbing and appropriating them. He would begin 
 by weaving round the tottering structure a web of 
 blandest prosperity. He would provide, whatever the 
 state of trade and out of his own pocket, a run of 
 profitable orders until such time as he had succeeded 
 in getting himself appointed sole agent — an easy thing 
 when the agent is pouring money into the pockets 
 of a principal who is also a simpleton. Then when 
 the misguided fellow had shorn himself of all other 
 connections and supports and was under the tightest 
 obligation to seek none, he would find his trade 
 suddenly disappear. My uncle would be able to find 
 none but unprofitable orders, unprofitable to his 
 principal that is ; would hold out hope and encourage- 
 ment, and hoping and encouraging would bleed and 
 bleed and bleed. Next the constitution of himself 
 as chief creditor, and then, like a ripe plum, the bright 
 little, tight little business would fall into his mouth. 
 Oh, he was magnanimous, was my uncle, and it was 
 not unusual for him to employ his broken bankrupt as
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 123 
 
 manager in what had been his own concern at con- 
 siderably less than he was worth. 
 
 It may be asked why the small manufacturers of 
 Lancashire did not fight shy of this voracious and all- 
 devouring altruist. The following maxims apply : 
 
 The kite has no need of an infinity of prey. The 
 essential thing is that the prey should not all inhabit 
 the same field. 
 
 VI 
 
 The world is small, but Lancashire is big. 
 
 I had been learning the business of a cotton manu- 
 facturer at small places under my uncle's thumb — 
 weaver at one, " slasher " at another, overlooker at a 
 third, in the office at a fourth — for some considerable 
 time before I realised that all Reuben's kindly question- 
 ings as to the prosperity of the friendly folk who 
 sheltered me were so many evilly disposed soundings, 
 that he was using me as the most ingenuous of spies. 
 
 I agree with you, madam. A dull chapter. 
 
 But I am getting on too fast. I was not put to my 
 apprenticeship in the little towns of Lancashire until 
 I had made myself master of the haggling and huxter- 
 ing which constitute the essence of trade. My notion 
 of the man of business was, and is still, that of the 
 tapster turned bagman, I did my best, I have always
 
 124 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 done my best, to preserve the same attitude towards 
 those -svlio would sell to me as towards those to whom 
 I seek to sell. But the thing's impossible ; or at least 
 it is certainly not normal. The l)uyer blusters and 
 bullies, the seller fawns and cringes. There are riotous 
 exceptions and inversions, of course. I have known 
 buyers apt to abasement, and sellers who could lash 
 themselves to fury ; I have witnessed humiliating 
 encounters between two of the cringing fraternity, 
 mutually fair speaking, Greek meeting Greek, and both 
 giving shameful ground ; and I have been an amused 
 spectator at battles royal, German running full tilt 
 against a kindred stomach. I have no views upon alien 
 and peaceful invasion and merely record the fact that 
 three-quarters of the Manchester shipping trade is done 
 in broken English. My uncle was never tired of a 
 yarn concerning Strumbach's one defeat. Invaded in 
 his sanctum by a salesman upright on his forks — con- 
 sciousness in Whose image he is made gives even the 
 poorest of these creatures a certain temerity — the 
 great Jew, with many guttural garnishings, demanded 
 to know whom the wretch represented. To which the 
 timorous fellow, mastering his terror as best he might 
 and tendering his employers' card, stutteringly replied : 
 " These b-b-bastards ! " To Strumbach's credit let it 
 be recorded that the ripost marked the beginning of 
 a lifelong " connection." 
 
 Perseverance was one of my uncle's pet themes. 
 On smnmcr evenings after dinner he would be inspired 
 by the fragrance of the garden and the beauty of 
 descending night to some such phrase as : 
 
 " Success, my boj^ depends less upon ability than 
 upon persistence and steady plodding."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 125 
 
 " Patience is a weary mare," I would reply. 
 
 "Well put, nephew; well put. Many a brilliant 
 advocate owes his first success to being found in his 
 chamber killing flies with a ruler when better men 
 than he have gone to the Grand National. The office 
 stool's the thing." 
 
 From which I deduce : 
 
 VII 
 
 Success to be a matter of glue rather than gumption, 
 of buttocks rather than brains. 
 
 But, contrariwise 
 
 VIII 
 
 Orders not to be valued by the amount of shoe- 
 leather expended to obtain them. 
 
 Some day I shall write a treatise on the exaggerated 
 idea of the nobility of trade. I find little force in the 
 objection that the world would get on ill without it. 
 Equally the world would get on ill without scavengers 
 and drains, yet few look for beauty in a sewer. To 
 deal is not noble in itself. To fabricate where the 
 beauty of material is considered and utilised is an 
 honourable calling ; to trade in the produce of another 
 man's brains, whether that produce be sonatas or 
 caUcoes, is a dishonourable calhng. At its highest 
 trade can never be more than the science of distribution. 
 To look down upon the shopkeeper as shopkeeper 
 betrays the snob ; to despise him for his bated breath 
 and whispering humbleness is the mark of the true 
 aristocrat. Hear, therefore, two aphorisms of my own :
 
 126 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 IX 
 
 The aristocrat is nearly always useless and often 
 dangerous. ]3ut at least he has a feeling for dignity. 
 
 The aristocrat meets the whole world on his own plane. 
 Since death and the horse are your only levellers, it 
 follows that the only trades proper to the nobility are 
 the undertaker's and the horse-dealer's. 
 
 There was an understanding at Oakwood that if 
 business only was talkable at the dinner-table, the 
 proper matter for the drawing-room was the novels of 
 eminent Nonconformists. In -our immediate circle 
 English literature was confined to the genius of a lady 
 to whose least outpouring the high minded National 
 Conscience found itself unable to do justice under two 
 closely MT-itten columns. You can imagine the dis- 
 turbance created in the social atmosphere when some 
 adventurous hen, fluttering from tea-table to tea- 
 table, first brought news of a London writer's realistic 
 and non-romantical treatment of the seduction of a 
 servant girl. Now, I have listened to as much dis- 
 tressful cackle as any other youngster brought up in 
 the provinces, but I search my memory in vain for any 
 parallel to the avalanche of inept and futile criticism 
 occasioned by this honest book. The mothers of our 
 race, bearing the new generation in their womb, 
 would ask each other not whether the book was true 
 or beautiful, nor yet what might conceivably be done 
 to remedy the state of affairs exposed. They said 
 flatly that if such things were, they, " for one," did
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 127 
 
 not want to hear about them ; and that if they could 
 help it, neither should anyone else hear about them. 
 
 " I'm sui-prised at the libraries," — it is my old friend 
 the Gadgett speaking, the while she strains at her 
 cerements and nods a woeful plume. "They should 
 know better than to allow such books to cross their 
 counters. Nowadays I have to forbid my girls to 
 look at so much as a fly-leaf until I have perused the 
 book myself. If it isn't servant girls it's farming 
 maids. I'm sure it's a miracle our daughters remain 
 pure. It is enough to make one ask what the world is 
 coming to." 
 
 " Its senses perhaps ? " I ventured. 
 
 Horatia bridled. 
 
 " Or would you suggest some form of index ? " I 
 went on, having made some study of the subject for a 
 debate at a Mutual Improvement Society of which my 
 Cousin Geoffrey was an ardent and whistling supporter. 
 I said no more and lay in wait for the good soul. 
 
 "The Index Expurgatorius," began the catafalque, 
 " has, I hear, done good work in France. I look upon 
 it as atoning for their most unfortunate Revolution." 
 
 " It was a Spanish idea, surely — not French ? " 1 
 risked. 
 
 " And as a compensation vouchsafed to the inhabit- 
 ants of that misguided country," she went on un- 
 disturbed. 
 
 " I should say that it is not the country that matters, 
 but the principle," squeaked a Miss Limpldn, an in- 
 defatigable though ineffectual trimmer of her lamp. 
 
 " Very well, ladies," I began in my best debating 
 manner, " I will take you in any country you like. 
 Do you Imow that the Index generalis scdptorwn
 
 128 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 interdidorinn, first published in the sixteenth century 
 and continued almost to the present day, proscribed 
 the whole of Balzac, the most famous work of Victor 
 Hugo, both the Dumas, and even that poor old thing 
 Cieorgcs Sand." At twenty one can be very severe. 
 
 " Novelists ! " said Horatia, with infinite scorn. 
 
 " And Montaigne and Pascal and the Fables of La 
 Fontaine," I went on. " Do you know that the diet of 
 London proscribed Wyclifle and even Paradise Lost ? " 
 
 " It was certainly a foolish thing to do," said Miss 
 Limpkin. " The author might have been annoyed and 
 then we should never have known how paradise was to 
 be regained." 
 
 " Perhaps you are not aware, ma'am," I continued, 
 " that the cardinal in charge of the Index made a good 
 thing out of releasing books at so much a time ? " 
 
 " Nothing that a Papist could do would surprise me," 
 said the Gadgett. 
 
 " Or that until recently Copernicus and Galileo were 
 considered mischievous ? Or that in Catholic countries 
 to this day the Bible itself is prohibited." 
 
 " I really think," interrupted my aunt who disliked 
 any " dragging-in " of the Bible, " that we should 
 allow each country to decide what is best for itself. We 
 must be broad-minded." 
 
 " We must, indeed," sighed the Limpkin. 
 
 " If ever I thought that one of my girls was to grow 
 up a Liz of the Liza-Lu's, or whatever you call them, 
 I would rather see her dead in her cofiin." And the 
 widow of the Rector of St Euphorbius's looked as 
 though she meant it. 
 
 " Surely," said Monica, who was beginning to grow 
 up, " Mary or Dorothy might be allowed to judge of
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 129 
 
 that herself. Grave-clothes are so unbecoming. I 
 simply can't see Dorothy in a sliroud." 
 
 " Monica," said my aunt with apparent severity, 
 " there are subjects for levity and subjects in which 
 Mrs Gadgett is good enough to take a great interest. 
 I desire that you should not confuse the two." 
 
 " Verj^ well, mamma," replied Monica, with a highly 
 impertinent simulation of meekness. She understood 
 her mother admirably. 
 
 " Don't say ' Very well, mamma,' to me," retorted 
 my aunt. " Go to the piano and play Mrs Gadgett 
 and Miss Limpkin your Gipsy Rondo. ^^ 
 
 " Certainly, mamma," said Monica, and dashed off 
 into the " Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle dum, dum 
 dee ! " of that detestable piece. 
 
 My first intimations of sex, then, came to me as an 
 ugly, leering mystery. Often I would walk about the 
 streets at night fascinated by those shawled, silent 
 shadows creeping along the walls of our great ware- 
 houses. Once I found a poor drab weeping in her apron, 
 and I spoke to her. She told me that her little brother 
 had died that afternoon and that she was relying upon 
 the next two evenings to bury him. I gave the girl 
 what few shillings I had and walked away, asking 
 myself how much the Gadgetts and the Limpkins and 
 probably the Bishop of the Diocese and the local 
 Member of Parliament knew about life. I doubted 
 whether my aunt's remedy in like case would have 
 gone beyond a " sound " talking -to, 
 
 I found a similar absence of understanding of the 
 realities in the ministrations at the little chapel which 
 my uncle ran as systematically as he did his business. 
 As the wealthiest member of the congregation he was
 
 130 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 often chairman of the committee, and when not chair- 
 man the power behind the chair. It was suggested 
 by IMinehin tlie bootmaker that I should act as secre- 
 tary, " to give the young gentleman a wider outlook in 
 affairs. " ' ' Affairs ' ' was indeed the right word, our very 
 creed wearing the air of a prospectus. " One God, no 
 devil, and twenty shillings in the pound," it ran. The 
 building contained an altar, but it was an altar " with- 
 out trappings," and the minister wore a tightly buttoned 
 frock-coat with a waiter's white bow. There was no 
 authorised form of service and I had to sit — we did not 
 kneel — through improvisations which had no distin- 
 guishable beginning or middle and which drew with the 
 greatest difiicidty to an end. I learnt to measure time 
 by the length of diffuse sermons indifferently phrased 
 and of meagre momentum, in which thanks would be 
 returned for philosophers the preacher had never read 
 and for poets who could only have mystified him. Ex- 
 hortation aboimded to avoid things which were not 
 within the experience of the preacher, and it was rare 
 that a sermon drew to a close without a reference to 
 the advisability of marching breast-forward never 
 doubting clouds would break. The literary touch. 
 
 The whole atmosphere of the chapel was chill and 
 unbeautiful. There was no colour in the windows save 
 the stains of fog and dirt ; the choir was composed of 
 giggling young ladies from the millinery stores ; the 
 Sunday school superintendent, hungry after an early 
 breakfast, would devour ham sandwiches during the 
 lessons and eject offending gristle into the aisle. The 
 chapel was situated in a district of mean and dingy 
 squalor, and I do not recollect that we ever attracted 
 a stranger or that we had more influence on the neigh-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 131 
 
 boiirhood than a pillar-box. it is true that we instituted 
 a society lor the reclaiming of the irreclaimable, but the 
 only fish that came into our net were half-a-dozen 
 guileless souls whose only failings were consumption 
 and underfeeding. We prayed for the blackguard 
 without ever getting into touch with him, and even had 
 we done so I firmly believe that we should have taken 
 him by the shoulders and put him outside. 
 
 Monica was active but sceptical. " I don't quite 
 see," she would say, with a touch of her father's intona- 
 tion, " that we are doing Any Good. I come home from 
 meetings very tired, but the only benefit to anybody 
 seems to be that I sleep well afterwards. Dealing with 
 the poorer classes isn't easy. You know the Higgins 
 woman and how dirty her babies always are. The only 
 way I could get to their heads to wash them to-day 
 was by giving Mrs Higgins half-a-crown and sending 
 her to the public- house. And there she'll scop all day. 
 I don't for a minute suppose she'll come home sober. 
 And so to-night her husband will thrash her, and then 
 the poor babies will catch it. By the way, Ned, I 
 want an old pair of trousers. Higgins has drunk 
 his." 
 
 That was Monica all over. She would have left me 
 without a shirt. 
 
 The chapel was never in touch with the life that 
 surrounded it ; we might just as well have met together 
 in the middle of the Sahara. When the minister 
 " received a call elsewhere " the committee would invite 
 tenders and offer a guinea and third-class return fai-e 
 for a couple of trial sermons. And by these sermons, 
 together with the impression produced on the in- 
 fluential members of the flock at whose houses the
 
 1 32 RESrONSIBILITY 
 
 candidate had dined and supped, was the choice of 
 shepherd decided. I look back upon my share in these 
 negotiations with infinite disgust. To think that I 
 have been instrumental in beating down some poor 
 devil from a hundred and twenty a year to a hundred 
 and ten ! To think that some half-starved fisher of 
 men should have been constrained to bait his hook for 
 me with deference and servility ! 
 
 Three Sundays in the year were accorded to the 
 minister in which to make holiday, I have never 
 doubted that he took advantage of them to earn three 
 extra guineas as " relief." In the absence of the parson 
 the services were conducted by — my uncle ! What 
 charivari then of commercial astuteness and art- 
 less blasphemy ! I cull : 
 
 XI 
 
 Since we are without information as to the Good 
 Samaritan's means we cannot judge of his degree of 
 generosity. 
 
 Since we are not told whether the widow's rent 
 was paid we cannot be sure that the mite was hers 
 to give. 
 
 No man has the right to be generous at the expense 
 of his creditors. Even the disciple must cut his coat 
 according to his cloth. 
 
 XII 
 
 " And they straightway left their nets, and followed 
 him." 
 
 The morality of this proceeding depends upon the 
 fishermen having no business engagements.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 133 
 
 §v 
 
 After a short apprenticeship to the trade of sub- 
 servience I was allowed to make my bow to Strumbach. 
 This huge German would have been a leading figure in 
 any English city. He was at the centre of our many 
 activities ; he presided over the Goethe Society, and 
 largely guaranteed that series of classical concerts 
 which has helped to make the Englishman's reputation 
 for musical taste ; there was no charity he did not 
 handsomely support, and no public subscription list 
 that he did not head. But many were the stories told 
 of highty placed employees dismissed at a moment's 
 notice. It was said that during a dinner-party at the 
 house of his confidential secretary to whom he paid the 
 princely salary of two thousand a year he had waved 
 a fat, amiable hand, and exclaimed : "I am Otto 
 Strumbach und I haf no bartner. Vy should ze firm 
 not begom Strumbach and Company ? " And the 
 secretary had beamed. That night Otto slept ill, his 
 astuteness always most awake in the small hours. 
 The following morning he sent for his second. 
 
 " I haf been zinking, Mr Scholtz," he said, " zat nod 
 even mit ze two zousand a year of salary vat I gif you, 
 haf you been able to buy all zose vonderful pictures 
 zat you haf in your house, und to zend zose so fine 
 boys of yours to Oxford. I myself haf my son Rupert 
 zere, und vat he costs, alone his father knows. Ve 
 vill not make a bartnership if you blease ; but ve vill 
 dissolve mit one anozzer. At ze end of ze year for ze 
 salary ; bot you leaf mine house zis very day." 
 
 Other stories there were of six, nine months', a year's 
 holiday accorded to ailing clerks, with seaside expenses
 
 ] 34 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 paid and an allowance for wife and familj\ Like all 
 great nien. Otto was single-minded and ruthless in his 
 single-niindedness. His purpose achieved he could 
 afford to be human. He paid enormous salaries but 
 insisted upon eomi)lete devotion. " Zay shall haf no 
 ozzer gods but Otto," he proclaimed openly. He kept 
 an inventory of his employees' families with tables of 
 tluir salaries and probaole expenses. Of a dashing 
 young clerk disporting himself in kid gloves of a 
 cabriolet yellow he asked simply : 
 
 " Vy ? '" 
 
 " To keep my hands warm, sir," answered the 
 exquisite. 
 
 " Voollen \T^ms, my boy, voollen vims ! " the old 
 man purred. 
 
 He had an elaborate system of espionage and knew 
 the haunts and habits of his men. An occasional orgy 
 or debauch he would forgive, but not a steady addiction 
 to music, the theatre, or any art soever. An outbreak 
 of vieiousness was pardonable, a persistent hobby put 
 you beyond the commercial pale. 
 
 " Youth most haf his fling," he would say, " vmd he 
 vorks all ze better afterwards. But mj^ clerks nmst haf 
 no interest vich gompetes mit me." 
 
 Otto's normal expression was one of childlike 
 simplicity, and there was something burly about the 
 whole man which reminded you of a good-tempered 
 bear. He was always perfectly tailored, and in matters 
 outside his business you could call him a gentleman. 
 As we walked across to Otto's office my uncle spoke 
 with pride of having been kicked down his stairs for 
 three consecutive years of three hundred morning visits 
 each before getting his first order. This excessive
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 135 
 
 mistrust was largely due, my uncle considered, to their 
 having been clerks toofcther in London. Otto was 
 thought to be getting on towards his second million. 
 
 " Does he never intend to spend any of it ? " I asked. 
 " He must be getting old." 
 
 " He adds to it," said Reuben, " and he likes adding." 
 
 I enlarged on what was, at that time, a pet theory 
 of mine ; a theory to the effect that a man is morally 
 entitled to do only so much money-grubbing as will 
 afford him a competence. 
 
 " And then ? " queried Reuben. 
 
 " Give the world back something of what it has given 
 him," I spouted. 
 
 " Meaning what, exactly ? " 
 
 " Beautiful books, beautiful pictures." 
 
 " But suppose a man has no capacity for repaying 
 the world in those high-flown ways ? Mind, I do not 
 agree as to the necessity for repayment." 
 
 " Give to the poor," I answered, and I confess that 
 the remark did not sound as convincing as I should have 
 liked. I continued to enlarge on the theme. I laid 
 down the principle that money should be the spur and 
 not the collar and the trace. 
 
 " There's ambition as well as money, you know," 
 said Reuben. 
 
 " Who wants to sell more calico than ever he has 
 sold before ? " I asked superbly. 
 
 " Otto does," replied my uncle. 
 
 "He's an artist then ? " 
 
 Reuben shrugged his shoulders. At the door of 
 the magnificent, palatial-looking warehouse, for there 
 was nothing mean about the German, he stopped a 
 moment.
 
 136 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " Otto will be sure to buy something from you to give 
 you a start," he said. " I know he is open for another 
 line of our Crawley Shirting. The price is twenty 
 shillings, delivery as he likes, but I shall leave the 
 bargaining to you ; get more if you can. But what- 
 ever price 3'ou agree upon, he will want it dividing. 
 That is to say, if you fix the price at twenty shillings 
 he will want half the order booking at nineteen and 
 half at twenty -one." 
 
 " Why ? " I asked. 
 
 " So that he can show our competitors the cheaper 
 of the two contracts. ' Ackroyd's price is nineteen 
 shillings,' he will then tell them. We establish the 
 price and that forces the others to sell at it." 
 
 " But suppose he did the same thing with other 
 manufacturers, and showed you their contracts ? 
 You wouldn't believe him." 
 
 " He doesn't do it with anybody else. We lead, 
 you know." 
 ' " But that's dishonest," I urged. 
 
 " We're here anyhow," said Reuben. " We can talk 
 about that another time." 
 
 We passed the inky watch-dogs and the scribbling 
 sentinels without difficulty. Arrived at the private 
 office Reuben tapped familiarly at the door, opened it 
 a few inches, and with a curious sidling motion inserted 
 head and one shoulder. 
 
 " Come in," roared a voice. 
 
 We went in. 
 
 I have seen conscientious actors under the influence 
 of a fine-felt frenzy, and great ones in the throes of a 
 well-simulated one. I have seen Irving as Shylock 
 and Salvini as Othello. I have been with Balzac in the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 137 
 
 cabinet of the banker Nucingen. But never have I 
 seen energy and passion raised to Otto's daemonic power. 
 He had the fervour of the disciple, the obstinacy of the 
 fanatic, the ecstasy of the martyr. His whole soul was 
 on fire. He was selling. Caught in the terrible Jewish 
 toils the customer by his side quaked and quivered, 
 submitting with as good grace as he might to the 
 pawing of his cheeks and the pulling of his beard by the 
 big man's well-cared-for, fleshy hand. 
 
 " Come in," roared Otto. " There are no secrets 
 in mine house," and he turned again to the client, 
 
 " That is because this particular customer doesn't 
 buy our goods," whispered my uncle, with a jerk of the 
 thumb toM^ards Otto's victim. 
 
 " Sevenpence a yard," shouted Otto, " und I haf 
 no more time mit you zis day. Zese gentlemen— — " 
 And he turned to us. 
 
 But the customer had still a kick left in him. He 
 pulled Otto by the coat- sleeve. He whined that 
 sevenpence was a price which in theory he was 
 prepared to pay, but that he wanted better value for 
 the money. 
 
 " Bring me ze next quality, blease, Mr Ransom, 
 ze-vun-zat-is-better-zan-zis. Zo," he said slowly and 
 with intention to a youth standing at his side and who 
 appeared to be in the grip of some unholy fascination. 
 The young man retreated to the door, his eyes fixed on 
 Otto's as though in hypnotic trance. 
 
 " To-morrow," said Otto, again turning to his 
 customer, " I zend flowers for your lady. To-night 
 ve dine togezzer, you und madame und your loffly little 
 girl. Vat matters vezzer you gif sevenpence or sixpence 
 or vun shilling. Ve dine all ze same. So ! 
 
 5>
 
 138 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 And lie rii])becl his liands. 
 
 Mr liansDiii i{'a]>])caro(l. I Fiad an impression that 
 he came through the floor ; lie eertainly looked much 
 too scared to have propelled himself all the way from 
 the door in the normal manner. He sagged at the 
 knees. 
 
 " We have no better quality, sir," he said. 
 
 Otto turned to his customer and said quietly : " Zen 
 I take your sixpence drce-farthings. Bot I gif you 
 von dish und von bottle less mit your dinner 
 to-night." The bargain was clinched and the 
 customer departed. 
 
 And now a complete change came over Strumbach 
 as he turned to the trembling youth at his side. Devils 
 leaped from his beady eyes and snakes in the form of 
 words came hissing from his mouth and fell writhing 
 on the floor at our feet. An old fakir's trick, but then 
 Otto was a fakir with something to sell. 
 
 " You fool," he shouted, " you damned English fool. 
 Ven I tell ^^ou slowly, like zal "^ — he spaced his words — 
 " to bring me a better quality, zen vat you haf to do is 
 to bring anozzer piece of ze same quality und zay it 
 is better. Gott in Himmel, but vill zay never learn 
 business, zese English swine ? I am not angry, my 
 boy ; I am not blaming you. 1 am just saying you 
 are a damned fool. Vat your salary, eh ? " 
 
 " Three hundred, sir," stammered the poor fellow. 
 
 " Zen I make it dree-fifty. At dree hundred I must 
 egspect a fool. Now out mit you." 
 
 Poor Ransom, in Avhom I felt a kindred spirit, gave 
 me a glance and I tried to tell him with my eyes that 
 if he had his Otto, I had my Reuben. There was this 
 difference, however, that Reuben would have reduced
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 1 39 
 
 the salai*}' by fifty pounds a year, and counted it a 
 good morning's work. 
 
 " So zis is ze young man," Strumbach said pleasantly 
 enough and holding out his hand. " Veil, my boy, 
 I make you velcome. How many years did I kick 
 you down zose stairs ? " He looked at my uncle. 
 
 " Three," said Reuben, without shrinking. 
 
 " Za.t makes friendship," said the other. " Two is 
 noddings ; dree is kolossal. Und yet ve had worked 
 togezzer as boys. Vonderful ! Veil, Mr Edward, your 
 uncle vill tell you zat I am now his best friend. Ven 
 he vants to sell I buy, and ven I want to buy he must 
 sell. You follow his example und you begom rich. 
 Ven your uncle sell to me cheaper I buy more still, 
 und he begomes richer zan he is. Bot he does very 
 veil already. So ! " 
 
 " Edward will sell you an^'thing you want," said 
 Reuben. 
 
 " At nineteen shillings I buy," said Otto, 
 
 " And at twenty shillings and sixpence I sell," I 
 replied, with a courage which amazed me. 
 
 " Vat your uncle tell you he sell at ? " asked Otto 
 quickly. 
 
 I hesitated. 
 
 " He tell you his price twenty shillings ; get more 
 if you can. Old fox, I know him." 
 
 " My uncle has left the price to me," I said, with an 
 assumption of dignity. " My price is twenty shillings 
 and sixpence." 
 
 "Zen I take ten zousand," said Otto. "Bot 
 remember zis. Venever you want to sell, you gome 
 to me. You do not go to Klein or Hoffman or Strumpf ; 
 }'ou gome to me. Bromise ! "
 
 140 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 And of course I promised. 
 
 " Five at twenty, and five at twenty-one," he said 
 to Reuben. 
 
 Reuben nodded. We were bowed out. 
 
 At tiie door Otto called my uncle back for a moment 
 and whispered to him. I overheard what he said ; 
 everything about the man was so big that a whisper 
 was a physical impossibility. 
 
 " You are not so young as you were, and must make 
 zings easy for yourself. Ven you vant to sell cloth 
 zend me zat boy. I like him ; he is no fool. Bot do 
 not send your son. lie called on me yesterday and 
 talked to me of bees. I vill not be talked to of bees 
 by anybody. Gut- morning." 
 
 That night as we sat after dinner, my aunt sewing, 
 Geoffrey biting his nails — an occupation which at least 
 had the advantage of preventing him from whistling — 
 my uncle looked up from his book and said suddenly : 
 " Where's Little Dorrit ? " 
 
 " What day is it ? " asked my aunt. 
 
 "Thursday." 
 
 " Then she's down at Mrs Chalkley's. Friday's her 
 day for Mrs Higgins. To-night's her night with that 
 horrible butcher's family." 
 
 " She's a good girl, old lady." 
 
 " Monica's the sort of stuff bricks are made of," I 
 said enthusiastically. " You can impress her mind 
 as she makes it up, and then it just sets and she goes 
 about the world being of use." 
 
 "She's a poor hand at ferreting," said Geoffrey; 
 " sides with the rabbits too much." 
 
 Amongst my uncle's good points was his refusal to 
 talk business before his daughter. Having assured
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 141 
 
 himself that she was unhkely to be in until later, he 
 mixed a glass of weak whisky and water and began to 
 hold forth. 
 
 " Otto Strumbach," he said, " is the most honest 
 merchant in Manchester," 
 
 I made a movement. 
 
 " Don't interrupt me, Edward ; I loiow what you are 
 going to say. All honesty is relative and Otto is honest 
 with himself. He has his code and he keeps to it." 
 
 " But the double prices, uncle." 
 
 " A merchant is not on oath, my boy. You're not 
 compelled to believe him any more than you are com- 
 pelled to believe the advocate who protects the inno- 
 cence of the murderous-looking ruffian in the dock. He's 
 a cunning fellow. He gave you a higher price than he 
 knew he could have bought at to encourage you to give 
 him preference over other buyers when you are really 
 hard up for orders." 
 
 " And then squeeze me ? " 
 
 " Precisely." 
 
 ■'Just as we squeeze the little manufacturers," I 
 said. 
 
 " I don't think ' squeeze ' is a nice word, dear," said 
 my aunt. " Nor do I think your tone to your uncle 
 is quite respectful. I wonder, Reuben, that you allow 
 Edward to cross-examine you." 
 
 " I don't see any harm in it, my dear," said Reuben. 
 " Nonsense can't both stick in the lad's head and come 
 out of it at the same time. At least let's hope not." 
 
 "That depends upon one's capacity for nonsense," 
 said Monica, bursting in upon us like a cheerful hurricane 
 and putting an end to this vindication of a prince of 
 commerce. " I've a notion that there's such a thing
 
 142 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 as spontaneous generation of nonsense. And if Mrs 
 Chaiklcy's husband drinks any more I'm certain he 
 Avill spontaneously combust. I really don't think 
 Chalklcy is a nice man. He was awfully . . . com- 
 bustible . . . to-night. Swore that if I did not let 
 him kiss me he would thrash his old woman black and 
 blue." 
 
 Her mother looked up quickly. 
 
 " So of course I let him," continued Monica lightly. 
 " I may not be the Duchess of Devonshire but Chalklcy 
 is certainly a butcher." 
 
 " You talk a great deal too much nonsense, my dear," 
 said her father. " Give your mother a kiss and be off 
 to bed." 
 
 My uncle continued foi' some time longer to expound 
 the whole duty and conscience of the trader. I 
 epitomise. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Many a mickle makes a muckle. A reputation for 
 honesty in the mickle will help you to pass the doubtful 
 muckle. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Take care that your pigeons have plenty of feathers 
 and that your sheep are not short of wool. In other 
 words, never trade with a man who has nothing to lose. 
 
 XV 
 
 A reputation for honesty is the measure of the 
 merchant's holding in that quality. Theft is not theft 
 until it is found out.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 143 
 
 §vi 
 
 And now to Ashton-under-Lyne, where my uncle had 
 control over several concerns. Ashton is, as all the world 
 knows, next door to Crawley Bridge, my uncle pretend- 
 ing to prefer that I should serve apprenticeship where 
 I should not presume upon the advantages incidental 
 to Ijeing the master's nephew. From the first shy ad- 
 vances to the four-loomed weaver who was to be my 
 master until such time as I was fitted to be his, I was 
 the passionate friend of every worker under the shed's 
 dust}^ roof — a friendship and a passion which have lasted 
 all my life. I am a Socialist whose Socialism has never 
 obscured the fact that all men are not equal in the sight 
 of man whatever they may be in the sight of God. A fine 
 phrase, ' the sight of God ' — though I doubt whether it 
 will stand examination and whether its first user had 
 the philosophic sense. If God's vision includes the 
 perception of human values — and with any other inter- 
 pretation the phrase is meaningless — I cannot see how 
 He can avoid judging man except according to man's 
 treatment of his kind. Not according to his degree 
 of usefulness, which is a matter of talent, but according 
 to the underlying intention. ' All men start fair in the 
 perception of God,' I would prefer that the phrase 
 should read. And then, only with infinite individual 
 reservations and considerations. I take this to be 
 profound ; it may very well be childish. What I 
 am driving at is that where there is not negation there 
 must be energy, and amongst the manifestations of 
 energy there must be inequality. I expect I have got 
 the technicalities all wrong ; 1 had never the patience 
 for jargon. The point is that men are not equal in the
 
 144 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 sight of man, and that it is the merest cant to pretend 
 that they ever will be. 
 
 Socialist though I am, with a practical policy to which 
 I have never been able to get anybody to listen^ — to 
 wit, hrst that no man who is willing to work shall 
 be denied the opportunity, and at a wage which will 
 enable him to keep body and soul together, and the 
 bodies and souls of his wife and children together and 
 a little bit over ; and second that no man however hard 
 he may have worked shall be allowed to retain more 
 than ten times what he can possibl}'' require to keep his 
 body and soul together and the bodies and souls of his 
 wife and children together and a little bit over for him 
 too, all in strict proportion and degree — Socialist 
 though I am, I like people in their class and according 
 to their class, and I like them to remain in their class. 
 I have infinite respect for the grit and perseverance of 
 the self-made man, but I caimot see that respect is due 
 to his offspring unless it exhibits these qualities in its 
 turn. Thickness of hide as a single qualification I 
 find it difficult to venerate. 
 
 Take, for instance, young Walter Buckley — " Wally " 
 he was called by intimates and workpeople, though 
 to tell the truth the line of demarcation was vague — 
 only son of old Absalom Buckley and his inefficient 
 heir. He comes particularly to mind as the only 
 one of the natives with whom I w^as at all friendly 
 until I met Rodd. The Buckleys were carriage folk 
 by this time, and in addition to their son had daughters, 
 and the daughters had highly paid maids and less 
 highly paid language, music, drawing and deportment 
 mistresses. Other families in the district, notably 
 the Runnels, the Starchleys and the Rossiters had
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 145 
 
 equally expensive maids and equally half-starved 
 governesses ; together they formed a " set " which 
 was " at home " to one another on specified days, and 
 at the tea-tables of which young Wally would turn up 
 not quite sober. Now old Absalom liked to bring 
 Nonconformist customers from Manchester to dinner, 
 and as he belonged to the old school which made a 
 principle of not getting drunk until after that meal, 
 he naturally objected to finding his son very imper- 
 fectly self-possessed every evening at the hour of seven. 
 Also it must be said that when old Absalom objected 
 to anything, he objected with that complete thorough- 
 ness on which the Lancashire man has always prided 
 himself (see Hindle Wakes). With the result that 
 Master Wally had to leave his parents' " roof." He 
 took rooms in the house of the good lady with whom I 
 lodged. 
 
 I dined at the Buckleys' once, partly because I 
 could not go on refusing Wally, partly because I was 
 often hungry, and partly because the display of vulgar 
 wealth has always amused me. These dinners would 
 top up with coloured ices in the shape of little 
 pigs, giving rise to the most amiable pleasantries. 
 It would be absurd to deny that the manners 
 of Lancashire at this date had a charm peculiarly 
 their own. But there was a very good reason why 
 I should have ceased to dine at this hospitable 
 house. 
 
 You must know that there lived in the town — I 
 have already mentioned the family — a rich and over- 
 bearing old woman of the name of Runnel. She was the 
 widow of the old Joe Runnel who made an enormous 
 fortune out of waste and cop-bottoms. (What these 
 
 K
 
 146 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 are I cannot stop to explain. Their particularity is 
 unimportant ; sufficient to know that they were never 
 yet dealt in without laying the foundation of a fortune.) 
 Old Joe was a popular and prominent figure ; he 
 was more, he was a " character." The little boys in 
 the streets would go about singing rhymes in which 
 free comment was given to his eccentricities. Any 
 old inhabitant of the Bridge will remember those 
 interminable verses begimiing : 
 
 Old Joe Runnel 
 
 Has a belly like a tunnel, 
 
 So run and get a funnel 
 
 And pour the whisky in ; 
 He comes home late at night 
 So very, very tight 
 And don't he get a fright 
 
 When his Missus lets him in ! 
 
 Joe was never known to take exception to his popu- 
 larity, although it may be imagined to what extent 
 ribaldry such as this grated on his wife, who had origin- 
 ally been a weaver but now saw herself raised by her 
 husband's wealth to the level of the Starchleys and the 
 Rossiters. These ladies had never seen a loom and 
 their mothers only had been weavers. Old Joe cared 
 nothing at all for social distinction. He was a celebrity ; 
 he had made his pile and was quite ready to " let the 
 young varmints mix it as they've a mind." He even 
 had the wit to turn the familiar jingle to advantage 
 in the municipal election in which he contested North 
 Ward in the electric light interest against the Gas 
 Works' stick-in-the-mud. His election address was 
 profoundly simple. It ran :
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 147 
 
 Old Joe Runnel 
 
 With his brass could fill a tunnel. 
 
 So think of all the fun'll 
 
 Come from spending all that tin, 
 He'll chuck it left and right 
 The Coal-y boys to fight 
 The Bridge's way to light. 
 
 So, electors, send him in ! 
 
 And Reuben romped home, largely on the strength 
 of this amiable doggerel. From all of which you will 
 realise that the pronunciation of Old Joe's name was 
 fairly well established. When in the fullness of time 
 the old fellow was gathered to his fathers, his widow 
 conceived the preposterous idea of doubling the last 
 letter of her name and throwing the accent on the last 
 sellable. She let it be known that she desired to be 
 called Mrs Joseph liurmell. 
 
 For years I had cherished a grudge against this 
 mountain of vulgarity, dating from the time when I 
 had first been taken by my aunt and uncle to a Sunday 
 evening's supper at " Glen Chamois." The name in 
 itself is a revenge, but I thirsted for more. The old 
 woman had deeply offended my dawning Socialist sense. 
 All the world knows that a Sunday supper consists of 
 cold beef and a jacket potato. How otherwise are the 
 poor maids to go to church or talk with their policemen 
 and under-gardeners ? To my horror Mrs Joe, as she 
 was then generally called, put up her face-d-mains — 
 a piece of goldsmith's Avare in the Byzantine mode — 
 and consulted a white marble slab or miniature tomb- 
 stone, a menu (pronounced may-new), I suppose I 
 should call it. 
 
 " What, I wonder " — and her air was of one accus-
 
 148 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 tomed to Royal obsequies — " is the housekeeper giving 
 us to-night ? " And an elaborate hot dinner appeared 
 for which, at the time of the Buckleys' dinner-party, 
 I hatl not forgiven her. 
 
 Here fortune aided me by placing me on Mrs Joe's 
 "other" side. During the general pause which fore- 
 shadows the end of dinner I turned to the portly dame 
 visibly preening her feathers prior to withdrawal and 
 in a voice which could be heard all down the table I 
 said : "I regret so much, dear Mrs RunneZZ, that my 
 aunt and uncle have not had the pleasure of a visit 
 from you since old Joe . . . sincepoor Mr Bunnell died." 
 
 " And why should you regret it, young gentleman, 
 mav I ask ? " 
 
 " Because, dear lady, I should so much have enjoyed 
 showing you round the stahells and hennells ! " 
 
 It was unpardonable, I admit. 
 
 Wally burst into a loud guffaw, and his mother, 
 picking up the women with her eyes, led the way to the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 I do not know that looking back on the incident I 
 am ashamed. I remember some of my father's savage 
 outbvu'sts. He too held the pompous in horror, and 
 what's bred in the bone 
 
 Poor Wally. His was an entirely dreadful existence. 
 At twenty-seven he was completely bald, and to this day 
 I can see the way his glistening scalp would move up 
 and down in terror of his father and of life in general. 
 He was the typical industrial cretin, which is quite 
 a different thing from the critin noble of high society. 
 Fun there was to be got out of him, but it was the fun 
 of teasing an idiot boy. Let me instance his account 
 of a visit to the play.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 149 
 
 Irving had appeared in Manchester in a travesty, 
 probably by Sardou, of the hfe of Dante, and the 
 occasion was one for a general sallying forth on the 
 part of the Buckley family, the girls in diamonds 
 and Wally in a clean collar. The male part of the 
 Lancashire back-bone does not dress for the theatre. 
 
 " I don't think much to that there Dant," he said, 
 sheering the poet's name of a syllable. 
 
 " To what ? " said I. 
 
 "D-a-n-t," he replied, "that what's being played 
 at the Theatre Royal. But then I haven't read the 
 novel ! " 
 
 There was nothing in Wally of the angry satisfaction 
 of the self-made man savaging a world which has not 
 always been subservient to him. He had none of that 
 fine masterfulness which marked old Absalom, the 
 masterfulness of the incident of the sofa. This was 
 a piece of furniture in the window of a fashionable 
 shop in King Street, which had taken the eye of old 
 Buckley's lady. 
 
 '' The piece forms part of a suite, sir, and I am afraid 
 cannot be sold separately," said the obsequious 
 attendant. 
 
 " I don't want the suite, young man ; I want that 
 di-van ! " 
 
 " I am sorry, sir, but I am afraid we cannot separate 
 them." 
 
 " Who the hell's asking you to separate 'em ? " 
 roared old Buckley. "Do as you're bid, young man, 
 and pack up that bloody di-van. I suppose I can pay 
 for the whole spindle-shanked lot if I want. You can 
 sell the rest of the sticks where you like and credit me 
 with aught as they fetch, seeing as you're that particular.
 
 1 50 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 My missus wants that di-van and by the Holy Moses 
 she shall have it." 
 
 Wally would spend his whole day in the office making 
 out wage calculations, which were nearly always wrong. 
 His evenings he spent at the " Loom and Shuttle," 
 emptying pot after pot of rifty ale. At ten o'clock he 
 would be quarrelsome ; at eleven, maudlin. At a quarter 
 past I would hear him come into the lodgings ; and at 
 half-past he would be sick. There is a famous passage 
 in one of Zola's novels in which a drunken beast falls 
 asleep in his own vomit. There are few moods in 
 which the queasy Englishman has stomach for literary 
 truth as the Frenchmen present it ; I confess that for 
 me the moods were rare indeed in which I found the 
 actual spectacle less than discouraging. . . . On the 
 other hand it must be admitted that Wally was kind 
 to children. I could never be bothered with the land- 
 lady's little brats ; Wally would bring them toys and 
 sit up with them when they were ill. There are con- 
 tradictions in life which defy resolution.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 §i 
 
 AND then I fell in love. A theme only for the 
 writer who is teased with a liking for the 
 prettier side of truth. Why, I wonder, should 
 it be necessary to weave tasteful little veils for that 
 great illusion which Nature has invented to serve her 
 purpose ? All men are alike in this, that their passions 
 are for the most part transient, secondary affairs, and 
 that they refuse to admit it. Shakespeare is our most 
 tremendous dealer in this trifle, and mark how clearly 
 he scorns it. Hamlet's passion for Ophelia — a con- 
 cession to the groundlings. Macbeth 's for his lady — 
 she should have died hereafter. Lear with some ancient 
 crone to keep him within doors — think not on't. 
 Othello — a big baby. There are no lovers in Shake- 
 speare other than elegants teased by an interlude and 
 gormandisers fooled to the top of a strumpet's bent. 
 Romeo is perhaps the lover after my own heart, agog 
 for Rosaline and dying for her successor out of sheer 
 youthfulness. Above all I dislike the trick love has 
 of putting on a mask of devotion, and I fear the pro- 
 tective colouring of passion even more than its satiety. 
 All real passion is surrender ; by the woman of her 
 body, by the man of every other thing he holds dear. 
 Honour, reputation, work, friendship, your devout 
 lover will lay them all at what the poor fool takes to 
 be the feet of his beloved, whereas he is but submitting 
 them to the trampling of his own desire. Passion is 
 never so dangerous as when it takes the form of 
 
 151
 
 152 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 abnegation. This achieved, then indeed is Nature 
 armed at all points and invincible. 
 
 Since I have been in hospital on this southern coast 
 I have seen a great French Wtress in a scabrous play. 
 She portrayed, she was the vicious dipravSe for whom 
 every fine-looking man is the coup de foudre, as our 
 neighbours say, thunderbolt in plain English. She 
 wore Babylonish head-gear and had the allure of a 
 horse. Her wide and sensitive nostrils quivered with 
 passion, and yet she had a way of looking sidelong 
 down that queer nose of hers like the Madonnas of the 
 early Italians. And, consummate artist that she is, 
 she managed a note of self-pity among the unbridled 
 luxuiy. To think, then, that this witty passion of 
 Rejane, the strict fidelity of the ladies Gadgett and 
 Bunnell, the mutual devotion of the Steepleton pair 
 and my ardent friendship for little Amy Dewhurst 
 are all part of the same natural lure ! 
 
 My first glimpse of Amy was of a woebegone little 
 figure crying bitterly and rubbing its shins in the 
 drawing-in room at Christopher Dewhurst's. I am 
 not going to explain in detail what is meant by the 
 complicated operation known as drawing-in. Sufficient 
 to say that a drawer-in was an operative with some 
 physical" defect disabling him'^ from harder work and 
 who sat| on a low stool and poked about with a 
 hook through a screen of miniature bullrushes for 
 the threads tendered to him by an unseen parcel of 
 humanity seated on the other side. Strangers to a 
 cotton mill might have asked why the children on 
 their stools sat with their legs drawn up appre- 
 hensively beneath them. The answer was to be 
 found in the sharp iron plates on the wooden clogs
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 153 
 
 of the drawer-in — the best of spurs for jaded little 
 slaves. 
 
 The shed was a small one, rented by one Christopher 
 Dewhurst, more familiarly known as " Kester " or 
 " Kit," who had begun life as a weaver, had risen to 
 overlooker, and had finally managed to scrape together 
 sufficient money to buy a few second-hand looms and 
 to be of interest to mv uncle. Reuben had decided 
 tliat it was to him that I was to be first apprenticed. 
 Kit had been financed by Ackroyd and Marston for 
 some years, and the bleeding process was nearing its 
 end. The little girl was Kester's younger daughter. 
 
 I divined what was the child's trouble and I put my 
 arm round her. I was an instant victim to that phase 
 of desire in which the very youthful wish that they 
 could die for the object of their adoration. 
 
 And immediately the chance offered. 
 
 " Come back, ye little b ," said a coarse voice, 
 
 which I recognised as belonging to Joe Blackley, a 
 burly savage slightly lame in one foot. He could carr^^^ 
 a beam weighing twice his own weight the length 
 of the shed and down to the loom and deposit it as 
 lightly as a feather. His employer, who was also his 
 uncle, was half afraid of him, and indeed he had an 
 ugly reputation for violence. 
 
 " She's not coming back," I said, in a voice I tried to 
 make steady. Joe Blackley emerged from behind his 
 frame. 
 
 " What's that yo say ? " 
 
 " She's not coming back," I repeated. 
 
 The fellow laughed and spat a stream of brown 
 tobacco juice. His shirt was open at the neck and I 
 could see that he was, after his kind, magnificent.
 
 1 54 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 His fist was enormous ; his Avhole body despite the 
 lameness the splendid animal. 
 
 " Now look yo here, my fine gentleman," he began, 
 " let's unerstan' one another. It's noan yo as pays 
 t'lass, and it's noan t'lass's feyther noather. It's me. 
 Yo pay me and ah Ijelong to yo. That's flaw o' 
 labour. Ah pay this wench and she belongs to me. 
 That's also flaw o' labour. If yo dunno like it, get into 
 Parliament and make some bloody law as yo dun like. 
 But leave me and this lass alone till it is made, willta," 
 
 " She's not going to sit on that stool again," I said 
 as impressively as I could. 
 
 The fellow did not answer but spat again, deliberately. 
 Then he put his great tattoo'd hand on her wrist and 
 gave the delicate ami a turn which drove the blood 
 from her face and all mine into my brain. 
 
 And I struck him. It sounds incredible, but I 
 actually struck Joe Blackley. After which, and for 
 apparently infinite time, I stood blinking and wondering 
 what power there was to protect me from being ground 
 to pulp. Joe put his hand to his mouth and seemed 
 to wonder at the little smear of blood. I think it was 
 the first time in his life that he had been hit. His was 
 a slow-moving rage and I had time to be terribly 
 frightened. 
 
 "Joe dear," said the girl, and to this day I cannot 
 make out what made her add that fine " dear " to her 
 cry of entreaty. 
 
 The big fellow shot out a great arm and fist and Amy 
 covered her face with her hands. And then I found 
 myself unhurt. 
 
 "Ah think, mester," said Joe, "as jo're in f 
 reet and ali'm in t' wrong."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 1 55 
 
 His shooting out of his fist had been an offer to sliake 
 hands, and it occurred to me that he had never shaken 
 hands before. 
 
 " Come on, lass," he said, " ah willna hurt thee." 
 
 And Amy went back to her place again and took up 
 her work without so much as giving me a glance. 
 
 In spite of my terrible desire to see more of her I 
 avoided the room as much as possible so as not to have 
 the air of spying upon Joe. One afternoon in the 
 following week as I was sitting on the long warehouse 
 counter dangling my legs and chatting with the cloth- 
 looker, who should appear at the crazy door but Joe. 
 I saw at once what was amiss from the extraordinaiy 
 look of compunction on his handsome, villainous 
 face. 
 
 " Ah've punnsed t' lass again," he said, and then in 
 reply to my gesture, " No, yo canna see her. Ah've sent 
 her whoam. Ah'm reet sorry, but ah conna help it. It's 
 my feet thinks afore my yed. There's nobbud one thing 
 for it. Speak to Kester and get her into t' shed. She's 
 old enough and ah shanna be able to punse her theer." 
 
 That night I told Kester that it would be better for 
 his daughter that she should go to work at the loom. 
 I need hardly say that Amy had made no complaint 
 to him and that I could not be disloyal to Joe. 
 
 " They all want to weyve afore they've strength," 
 said Kit, " but happen you're reet, mester. I'se start 
 her on Monday." 
 
 And now began my first experience as a lover. I 
 do not know that I contemplated any scope for my 
 passion. I committed all the pretty follies. Amy 
 was taken on as " tenter " on a pair of looms where, 
 across the alley, I could catch the glint of her brown
 
 1 56 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 hair and the flash of her dimpled arms. I would gaze 
 at her by the hour together, and she would smile shyly, 
 once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I 
 avoided making her ridiculous by too much attention ; 
 I forbore to fetch her weft-tin or to carry the heavy 
 pieces of woven cloth from loom to warehouse. Only 
 I would arrange to be in the cloth-room when her " cuts" 
 were brought in, and stand by her side while the cloth- 
 looker, who was in the secret, scolded her for imaginary 
 faults. And dia-ing the scolding, which would be 
 elaborate and prolonged. Amy would blush prettily 
 and pretend to listen. And I by her side had never 
 the courage of a word. I remember the pattern of her 
 two print dresses, one pink the other blue. I remember 
 their texture and their clean, homely smell. I remember 
 her beautiful little hands, delicate and flower-like, with 
 the brown trade mark of oil from the loom on thumb 
 and forefinger. My way of courting her was to make 
 friends with her brother, also a weaver, with whom I 
 would walk home, amazed to find how little store he 
 set on his jewelled sister. I went so far as to join the 
 Mutual Improvement Society, at which Bob Dewhurst 
 was a shining light. I read papers on Vaccination — I 
 think I must have been against that practice, as I 
 managed to drag in a quotation from Shelley on Liberty 
 — on Capital Punishment, on the Position of Women in 
 the State, and, of course, on Tennyson. I managed to 
 become really friendly with Kester, and would sit with 
 him in his little front garden after tea whilst he smoked 
 his pipe and talked about my uncle. But I saw 
 surprisingly little of Amy. She was not more than a 
 fragrance about the house. 
 
 Then one fine day, after many mysterious signs
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 157 
 
 and portents and with many circumlocutions, I was 
 invited to supper. 
 
 I love that simplicity which translates good will into 
 terms of tinned and blushing sahnon, of fowls covered 
 with a whitey-grey English sauce. I love the complicated 
 ceremoniousness that goes to the carving of a lordly 
 ham and that nice etiquette without which crumpets 
 cannot properly be handed round. I like good-hearted 
 people who press me to eat ten times more than mortal 
 man has ever eaten. What in the circumstances can 
 be nobler than bottled beer, and who may better adorn 
 a table's head than the florid, buxom woman of forty- 
 five who looks as though she had spent the afternoon 
 inside her oven instead of before it ? The good soul 
 embraced me at every conceivable and inconceivable 
 opportunity ; whenever, for instance, she got up to 
 change plates or to lay additional knives or to set 
 entirely supererogatory crumpets before the fire. She 
 had the motherliness of Mrs Crupp less the nankeen 
 bosom, though she was notill furnished in that particular. 
 In fact I found myself wondering what chance there 
 might be that so tender a little slip as Amy might 
 grow up into so monstrous a blossom. But the woman 
 pleased me enormously, as everything always has 
 pleased me which is conceived on the generous scale. 
 And in sincerity and hospitality Christopher Dewhurst's 
 wife was bigger than life-size. There was also an elder 
 daughter, one Leonora, a romantic personage of delicate 
 health, who had found the mill too " common " and 
 had drifted into hairdressing — tlie ladies' depart- 
 ment. Her talk was so preponderantly of fronts and 
 fringes and " transformations," or whatever they were 
 called in that day, that during supper I boggled at
 
 1 58 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 imaginary hairs in the sauce and for the rest of the 
 evening felt a curious tickling sensation at the back 
 of my throat. 
 
 Bob's nose was entirely in his plate. 
 
 " And is this all the family ? " I asked, clumsily 
 enough. 
 
 Mrs Dewhurst looked at her husband and put her 
 hand to her bosom : "If tha hasna told him about our 
 Alice, tha's no need to start on t' subject now. She's 
 ill chosen, poor lass, but she's none the only lamb astray 
 i' Manchester. I conna bide them folks as pretends 
 to see their own in a coffin " — the Gadgetts and the 
 Dewhursts are sisters all the world over. " Happen 
 she's noan waur off wheer she is than in one o' them 
 ugly contraptions." 
 
 Kester opened his mouth and shut it again dis- 
 creetly. His wife mopped one eye with the corner of 
 her apron ; it appeared to me that she held tears in 
 reserve, an enormous flood of them I felt sure. Sud- 
 denly she asked me to give them a tune on a piece of 
 furniture which, after the albums and the flower vases 
 and the plush cover had been removed, discovered 
 itself as a piano. 
 
 I soon found that Amy had a pretty, piping little 
 voice and could struggle quite niceljr through simple 
 ditties of her own choosing. Her singing gave me the 
 chance as I accompanied her of hanging upon her 
 quavering little notes with all the tenderness of the 
 ardent lover. Then Leonora sang with tragic fervour 
 As Friends we Met, as Friends zve Part, a sentimentality 
 of the period. I can see her now in her dress of green 
 cotton velvet and her air half Mrs Siddons, half some 
 painter's Lady of Shallott. My contribution to the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 159 
 
 evening's entertainment was the performance with 
 immoderate brilliance of that even then outmoded 
 piece of musical fireworks, the lamented Ascher's Alice 
 Where Art Thou ? Not, I think, a very tactful choice 
 under the circumstances, but the best of pianists is 
 limited to his repertoire and this happens to be the 
 only piece I have ever been able to learn by heart. 
 
 But folk who get up at five in the morning have to go 
 to bed betimes, so at an early hour I said good-bye. 
 Amy put her hand into mine for a moment and I held 
 it gentlier than a captive bird. Leonora flung out a 
 magnificent arm ; throughout the evening her gestures 
 had been superb. 
 
 " As friends we met ..." she said archly. 
 
 " As friends we part," I gallantly replied. 
 
 Brother Bob had gone to bed immediately after 
 supper. 
 
 Mrs Dewhurst embraced me in a manner that I can 
 only describe as voluminous. She then kissed her 
 daughters, who pecked back in return. 
 
 " Oh, pa," exclaimed Leonora, as she chose for the 
 bestowal of her chaste caress a spot on the parental 
 crown, " oh, pa, your scalp is awful ! " 
 
 This was the first of many similar evenings. 
 
 Dear, delightful people. 
 
 § ii 
 
 All this part of my life is fused into the tiny presence 
 and personality of Amy. In her is l^ound up the 
 recollection of long summer days under the low glass 
 roof when men and women sweated and swore and 
 thirsted and discarded all but such clothes as would
 
 1 60 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 decently cover them, and Amy alone remained cool. 
 Even now the slanting rays of an August sun bring 
 back an old day's accimiulated odours, the rancid 
 smell of loom oil, the sour stench of decomposing flour, 
 the staleness of human sweat. Oh, that nostalgia 
 and physical memory of the senses, bringing back 
 the first instinctive sympathy with the factory hand 
 and, by analogy, with all toilers ! I remember my 
 curious attitude on the first return home after contact 
 with the mill hands- shame that I had descended to 
 their level, contempt for those who held themselves 
 above it. I was an earnest reader of Tennyson at that 
 time and knew better than any critical big-wig how 
 infinitely apposite to the emptying of a skip of bobbins 
 is " the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by 
 the wave." 
 
 And, of course, my senses could not have escaped 
 the unusual stir. I should like to say that even to-day 
 I cannot hear the whir of machinery or the sudden 
 crescendo of an opening door without a vision of a 
 pretty childlike face. . . . But what insincere nonsense 
 this would be ! I have forgotten her and there is not 
 an ache left in me. I am really putting down what 
 in that remote time I would have sworn to be my 
 feelings now. I suppose Amy must have been pretty. 
 Looking backwards and with the aid of a cheap photo- 
 graph, I see only a fringe, a loose mouth and a pleasant 
 commonness. 
 
 It goes without saying that during all this period 
 I learned nothing about spinning, nothing about 
 weaving and nothing about machinery. I still fail 
 to understand why, when a piston has once been 
 ejected, it should take the trouble to turn the other
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 161 
 
 cheek as it were, and submit itself for rc-expulsion. 
 There are people who allege this sort of thing to be 
 comprehensible ; good luck to them, say I. Equally 
 little did 1 gather of what my uncle called the " general 
 trend of business." Reuben would insist upon long 
 talks every Sunday evening, asking casually after 
 Kester's relations with his bank manager, whether his 
 accounts for yarn were paid regularly and a hundred 
 other significant questions to which I confess I answered 
 according to the spur and invention of the moment. 
 Then Reuben suggested that I might do worse than 
 make a chum of Wally Buckley. 
 
 " But he's always drunk," I objected. 
 
 "Drunk or sober, he's the son of his father," 
 Reuben replied. And then he informed me that he 
 considered me proficient in Aveaving and that I was 
 shortly to go to Greenwood and Birtwistle's to learn 
 overlooking, and then on to Longshaw's, where I was to 
 study warping and " slashing." 
 
 " And mind you," he added, " it isn't the working 
 folk as I want you to hob-nob with ; it's the bosses. 
 Capital's your friend, not Labour." 
 
 The change to Greenwood's was a real grief to me, 
 but a grief assuaged by the thick tea I was by this time 
 expected to make at Kester's every Friday night. I 
 have often wondered as to the attitude towards me of 
 these good people. I imagine that they were conscious 
 of none and accepted me in simple friendliness. They 
 felt, I believe, that they could trust me, and besides. 
 Amy was now sixteen, an age in Lancashire at which 
 a girl is expected to be able to look after herself. 
 As for the two of us, we were children together, 
 and the utmost of my ardour was the kissing of
 
 1 62 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 her hand, wliich amazing feat I accompUshcd once, 
 tremblingl} . 
 
 It was about this time that Geoffrey was admitted 
 to partnership in the firm, an event which caused 
 singularly little stir in our small world. Reuben had 
 long Iviiown his son to be a fool, whilst the undeipaid 
 and underfed clerks were indifferent. Geoffrey himself 
 signalised his accession to dignity by whistling for two 
 whole hours instead of the usual hour and three-quarters. 
 I cannot record any change in his manner to me except, 
 perhaps, a more persistent recommendation of the works 
 of Sir John Lubbock But the considerable knowledge 
 of my cousin to which I had now attained had led me 
 to formulate a principle unknown to mathematicians 
 and which goes by the high-sounding name of the Non- 
 increasibility of Nothing, More simply, add something 
 to nothing and nothing remains. Geoffrey was the 
 nullest creature imaginable ; no dignity exists which 
 could have increased him. I do not know why he 
 should figure so persistently in this history ; perhaps 
 it is because I cannot rid myself of the old spleen 
 of having been chained to him for the greater part 
 of my youth. I imagine that the wretch who has 
 known fetters for twenty years can never quite forget 
 them. 
 
 And then I ran across an old friend and made 
 acquaintance with a new one who was to show me that 
 neither the Bridge nor Ashton-under-Lyne was the 
 centre of the imiverse, nor yet Manchester its hub. 
 I do not believe that there was, with the exception of 
 Westrom and my new friend, Claud Rodd, a single 
 human being drawing breath at Crawley Bridge capable 
 of grasping that beyond Manchester there is London,
 
 RESPONSIBIIJTY 163 
 
 aiid beyond London Paris, and that even Paris is not 
 the end of the world. And I suppose that when 
 ultimately I turned my back upon Manchester it was 
 largely because of that city's astonishing conviction 
 that there is no other place better worth living in, 
 one conglomeration of citizenly bricks very much like 
 another. Only they who have trudged the streets of 
 the Bridge on wet Saturday nights, or patrolled, 
 Sundays, the desolation of the Oxford Road, only those 
 driven by sheer desperation of ennui to debauch with- 
 out charm, only those who have suffered from a Man- 
 chester at rest can realise that spirit which has made 
 England what she is. It is many years since I was in 
 my native city ; reports as recent as the year before 
 the war relate that her greybeards still held classical 
 concerts on Simday evenings to be subversive of 
 morality. Eloquence and to spare as to classical 
 music destructive of the sanctity of the home. ... It 
 would seem that still, even as in my time, must city 
 fathers mow and gibber. Cocasse ! Cocasse ! 
 
 I ran across Westrom in the back room of the little 
 confectioner's shop where the elite of the Bridge took 
 lunch. Entering by the side door to avoid congestion 
 in the front of the shop, one squeezed past whoever 
 happened to be washing his hands at a little tap and 
 font cut in the right wall of the passage and lifted 
 the latch of the door on the left. You followed 
 the old established custom of bo^v-ing to the dozen 
 pairs of jaws fulfilling their destiny and hard at it. 
 You said " Good-morning, gentlemen," and followed 
 up that salutation with an expression of opinion as to 
 whether the rain would hold off or continue. Oh, 
 the cheerfulness of the commercial traveller ! I have
 
 164 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 never been able to make out whether it is super- 
 valiance or mere anaesthesia. Certain I am that no 
 depression in trade, no loss of wife, no new disgrace of 
 prodigal son or wanton daughter eould have occasioned 
 a diminution in the gallantry of little Briggs, whose 
 line was ladies' ware. 
 
 " No need to ask how vou do, Mrs Bowkett " — Mrs 
 Bowkett, nee Ramsdcn, was the proprietress. " Pork 
 to-day, is it ? And cabbage ? And do I spy apple 
 sauc^ ? 'Pon my soul, ma'am, if there weren't no 
 Bowkett and there weren't no Mrs Briggs, there's no 
 saying what might happen." 
 
 Custom was not supposed to stale this sally, at which 
 the table roared for such time as I remained at the 
 Bridge. Then whom one day should I find seated 
 in the midst of these lit:le people, gravely courteous 
 and even affable, but Westrom, whose fag I had been 
 at school. He had been appointed manager of the 
 Crawley Bridge branch of the great banking concern 
 known as the Kinder Bank, and was now a grown man 
 with what it is proper to call immense responsibilities. 
 These, he explained to me, consisted in transacting 
 business on lines laid down by directors in their dotage, 
 with never the swerve of a hair's-breadth in the 
 direction of progress or common-sense permitted until 
 such had been duly approved by higher authority. 
 It is in my mind that bigger institutions than the 
 Kinder Bank have been run on similar lines. Was the 
 ration of coal for the manager's office exceeded by a 
 single scuttle, then must Derby be placated. Did a 
 gale of wind blow the roof off the bank, then must Derby 
 be consulted before tacking it on again. " They chose 
 me," said Westrom, " out of eight hundred candidates
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 165 
 
 on the recommendation of a bishop, and then they 
 treat me Hke a pickpocket descended from a hne 
 of gaol-birds. Upon my head they place a fruit- 
 less crown and put a barren sceptre in my gripe, 
 I forget how many millions a year pass through my 
 hands ; I know that I may not spend tuppence- 
 ha'penny off my ovm bat." He w^as, he told me, the 
 youngest branch manager in the bank, a position to 
 which he had attained through a talent for suffering 
 his chiefs gladly. And then I found out that he w^as 
 married— astonishing thing to have happened to a man 
 with whom one has been at school. 
 
 ' ' Come and have tea wdth my wife, ' ' he said . ' ' You'll 
 meet a queer chap called Rodd. A capital fellow." 
 
 Claud Rodd was one of the personalities of the Bridge. 
 There was something Mephistophelian about the 
 cadaverous figure to be seen from nine in the morning 
 until nine at night on the other side of the plate-glass 
 window of the little music shop situated in that part of 
 the town known as Shuffiebottom's Cross. His long, lean 
 nose would be buried and his whole being engrossed for 
 hours together in green, paper-backed volumes from 
 which he would rouse himself to attend to customers 
 with a gesture very like that of despair. He would 
 offer you your roll of music with the tip of his shrinking 
 finger and disdain to pick up your money until you had 
 left the shop. It was rare that he gave you more than 
 one-eighth of his attention. For thirty shillings a week 
 he dispensed E strings, resin, seventeen-and-sixpenny 
 fiddles, mouth-organs, Methods by Easy Stages, Songs 
 Without Words (Mendelssohn) and English songs, 
 alas ! with words. The shop was also a circulating 
 librarj% whose customers took what Eate in the
 
 166 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 person of out-at-elbows Mr Redd chose to give 
 them. 
 
 " Trickett's liave such nice, suiiable books ; you can't 
 go wrong," was the verdict of Mrs Twinney, the Vicar's 
 wife, imposing upon the Bridge in the same way that 
 Horatia Gadgett imposed upon our home parish. 
 
 " How do you manage to fit them all so exactly ? " 
 I asked Rodd some time after I got to know him. 
 
 " Same as boots," he replied. " You measure 'em. 
 Some of the poorer class need a bit of handling, say 
 a diagnosis ; it matters to them what they read. But 
 the rich, churchy people are all alike. They think 
 they believe in the Bible ; I know they believe in the 
 Parish Magazine. Rum thing, provincial taste. It's 
 the one stable thing in an unstable universe. Or let's 
 say stationary. I don't believe it can deteriorate, and 
 I know it doesn't improve." 
 
 My first encounter with Claud, after the common- 
 places over Mrs Westrom's tea-cups, had not opened 
 too auspiciously. I had gone into the shop casually 
 and asked if thej^ had anything to read. 
 
 "We've books," said Rodd, looking savagely at me 
 across the counter and with his head lowered as though 
 for a charge. " Printed matter. Words, sentences, 
 chapters. Leaves and a binding." 
 
 And he waved a tlireatening arm. 
 
 " Can you let me have a look at one of those little 
 green volumes you're always buried in ? " I hazarded 
 nervously. 
 
 " That depends. Can you read French ? " 
 
 " I can get along." 
 
 He put down the paper-back he had in his hand 
 and looked me up and down slowly and deliberately.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 167 
 
 " I can't let you have a look, as you put it. These 
 little green chaps are my Bible. I mean they are to me 
 what the Bible is to the priest, and probably a great 
 deal more. They are my Balzac. And you want to 
 have what you call a look at them. Well, you can't. 
 I suppose you've been turning over the Droll Stories 
 at the tobacconist's. I can see you've been » prying 
 through his window. Why, man, your nose is still 
 flat from the pane." 
 
 I was considerably startled. 
 
 " That's the worst of the hypocritical English. You 
 are afraid of great waiters until you come across some 
 little bit which is supposed to be filthy, and then you 
 hug that little bit of so-called filth and revel over it in 
 secret. You don't know what a big man is. Do you 
 suppose I could breathe the air of this stuffy little 
 shop and stuffy little toAvn and mix with your smug, 
 stuffy little people if I hadn't something here ? " 
 And he hit the book a tremendous blow. " There are 
 forty-odd volumes, nearly fifty, and I've read twenty- 
 three. When I've finished the lot I'm off." 
 
 "Where to ? " I asked, moved by such a whirlwind 
 of sincerity. Nobody at the Bridge in those days was 
 ever knowTi to show sign of emotion except in con- 
 nection with beer and football. 
 
 " London or hell, anywhere out of this." He waved 
 an arm to include the shop, me, Mrs Trickett, Shuffle- 
 bottom's Cross, Crawley Bridge. 
 
 "I'm not really insane," he went on, "but I've 
 no one to talk to, and sometimes I think I must talk 
 or go mad. But if you really do want to read Balzac 
 and to read him seriously I could put you up to him. 
 Let me see now. You could begin with Eugenie
 
 168 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Gravdii, but he wrote it for his nieces, and that's 
 a drawback. And then there's La Cousine Beite. 
 Hnlot's fine, and if you can rcHsh him you've got the 
 pro])er stomach. But, really, I think you couldn't 
 do better than Le Pere Gorioi. ' INIadame Vauquer, 
 nie de Con flans . . .' What's her maiden name to 
 do with it ? you may say. Well, if you can't get 
 hold of the significance of that, Balzac is not for 
 you." 
 
 I said humbly that I would do my best to struggle 
 with the mysterious significance. 
 
 " Very well, then," he said. " Now I'll put you to 
 the test. Do you know the Twinney woman ? " 
 
 " The Vicar's wife ? Yes," I answered. 
 
 " Call on her ? " 
 
 "When I have to." 
 
 "Then take this book. It's the first volume of 
 Splendews et Miseres des Cotirlisanes. I suppose you 
 know what that means." 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Next time you call, leave it on her drawing-room 
 table. Then write and ask her whether you did not 
 leave a book by mistake. Put the title in full and 
 write it big, so that she can't pretend it's a transla- 
 tion of Adam Bede. If you are up to this, you are 
 a Balzacian." 
 
 I demurred a little. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not bothering about the good taste of 
 it. I want to know what you are worth. Call it an 
 initiation if you like." 
 
 I left the shop under engagement and with the first 
 volume of Splendeurs in my hand. 
 
 Ten days later I walked into Trickett's and wdth a
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 1 69 
 
 superb gesture flung on the counter the outraged 
 Twinne^r's reply. It ran : 
 
 " Mrs Twinney regrets that ]\Ir Marston should have 
 left in her house, and where the Vicar might have seen 
 it, the book alluded to. Mrs Twinney will not give 
 Mr Marston the trouble of calling in person as she is 
 sending the volume, under cover, by her maid." 
 
 And that evening found me absorbed in the furniture 
 and inmates of a French boarding-house kept by a 
 certain Madame Vauquer, n6e de Co7ifians. 
 
 The last days of 1893 were marked by the great 
 Crawley Bridge Pit Disaster. I have no wish to sadden 
 these pages with a highly-wrought account of the catas- 
 trophe and computations of the numbers of maimed 
 and killed. Numbers by themselves mean little. In 
 one of our recent excursions from hospital — we take 
 the air, you know — I discovered in a tiny Roman 
 Catholic church a form of intercession for the one 
 hundred and forty thousand souls who must each day 
 pass into another state. Is this the world's death-rate 
 or the mortality amongst the faithful ? Are the millions 
 of India and China included ? One hundred and forty 
 thousand death-beds ! The thing is unthinkable ; 
 consider the stir of a single woe. 
 
 The disaster at the Crawley Bridge pit found me an 
 interested and absorbed spectator. The scene was 
 classical in its fidelity to tradition— the beshawled 
 and ill-kempt rush to the pit-head, the flare of lights
 
 170 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 in the darkness, the fussiness of officials, the agonising 
 waits, the rumours and coiinter-i-umours, the haphazard 
 heroism, the frantic joy, the huddled woe. I went 
 through it as a spectator, hardly conscious of that 
 dread aspect of the affair in which one hundred and 
 forty souls were hurled into eternity with, as the 
 phrase goes, oaths and jests on their lips. The menace 
 is idle. No man were the worse for dying in laughter 
 and ribaldry who has so lived. Man is to be judged 
 by his fashion on a lusty day when health and nerve 
 are good and death is a long way off. ... I remember 
 later the huge common grave, the plain white coffins 
 hastily tacked togethei-. And most extraordinary of 
 all. a recollection of Rodd in the funeral crowd, weeping 
 and half distraught. 
 
 " My poor brave lads," was all he could say, " my 
 poor brave lads." 
 
 Westrom was there looking stern and ill at ease, in 
 a group with the colliery proprietors among whom 
 I noted old Absalom Buckley and his son Wally, 
 frightened to soberness. Among the miners killed was 
 a humble youth who had been disdainfully rejected 
 by Amy's sister, the proud and mannered Leonora. 
 In life the pretensions of the lad had been ignored ; 
 in death they gave importance to Leonora's family. 
 With a natural desire to be as much to the fore in the 
 event as anybody else, the Dewhursts gave out that 
 Nat had never, after all, been forbidden to hope, and 
 that there was no knowing but that Leonora might not 
 ultimately have condescended. The family was there- 
 fore apt for much visiting and condoling, and stout, 
 perspiring Mrs Kester sat for three days in the front 
 parlour assuring visitors that Leonora was " that
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 171 
 
 upset " that since the tragedy she had neither bitten- 
 nor supped. In reality Leonara was busy upstairs 
 composing a costume in which on the day of the 
 funeral she should come near to compassing the Tragic 
 Muse. 
 
 The disaster was the occasion for one of my uncle's 
 epistolaiy flights. I had suggested, in that impulsive 
 way so little pleasing to men of business, that it would 
 be a graceful thing for the firm as a firm to send a 
 subscription to the fund in aid of the bereaved families. 
 I had begged to be allowed to contribute out of my 
 capital an amount equal to Geoffrey's share in any 
 such contribution. Here is my uncle's reply — concise 
 and damnable. 
 
 Oakwood, 
 
 29lh December 1893. 
 
 My dear Nephew, — I have your letter in which 
 you suggest that the firm as a firm should subscribe 
 to the Crawley Bridge Colliery Explosion Relief Fund. 
 I cannot agree to this. Ackroyd and Marston is a 
 business firm having partners of different ages, con- 
 nections and ideals, who can neither legally nor practi- 
 cally dispose of any of the firm's money except for 
 the prosecution of the business of the firm. It would 
 not be fair to my junior partner or partners that I 
 should give subscriptions in the name of the firm, a 
 portion of which they would be obliged to contribute, 
 and I certainly object to their giving donations a major 
 portion of which will come out of my pocket. My 
 personal subscription list amounts to over £500 a 
 year, but I have no reason to believe that any of the 
 objects of my charity would arouse the sympathy of my
 
 172 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 - j unior partner or partners. I have, tlirough what is now 
 a long hie, learnt that money dispensed through certain 
 charitable agencies is well disposed. But my partner or 
 partners have not had the same experience and might 
 reasonably object were I to give in the name of the 
 firm and at their expense. I claim for myself the same 
 freedom which I am willing to accord to them. 
 
 I cannot see the ap})lication of your principle thai; 
 " great national calamities should be a charge on the 
 State." What is a " national calamity " and by what 
 are we to distinguish it from a local one ? Does this 
 depend upon the area affected or the number of lives 
 imperilled ? Nor do I see how subscription by firms 
 " approaches an ideal of alleviation by the State which 
 might sow the seeds of national insurance." Any 
 scheme of national insurance must involve contribution 
 by every member of the community, including the 
 recipient of the benefaction. Contribution by firms 
 would simply mean voluntary donation by a small 
 portion of the community. I am myself no Socialist. 
 I regard the exercise of voluntary charity as an im- 
 portant part of the discipline of life, and I can never 
 agree to divest myself of the responsibility of dealing 
 with the means which God has granted me according 
 to the conscience which He has put into me. 
 
 I alone am responsible that the amount of capital 
 standing to your credit in the books of the firm shall 
 remain intact until you attain to twenty-five years of 
 age. I cannot listen to the suggestion that you should 
 be allowed to fritter away any portion of it. 
 
 Wishing you all seasonable things, I am, your 
 affectionate uncle, 
 
 Reuben Ackroyd.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 173 
 
 It is only fair to add that in the list ol" subscriptions 
 a sum of one hundred pounds figured against my 
 uncle's name. 
 
 And then Amy fell ill. 
 
 The doctor bade us be of good cheer and not too 
 hopeful. She lay in her darkened room day in and 
 day out, week after week, her beautiful hair cut short, 
 her little face wasted and drawn, her hands once 
 so cool and flower-like now hot and fretful. Every 
 afternoon I would steal away from the mill and spend 
 half-an-hour at her bedside, returning at night to 
 watch Kester smoke his anxious pipe by the corner of 
 the fire. The two women were splendid. I had 
 expected an ecstasy of fuss from the mother, pur- 
 poseless iTishings up and down stairs and futile scurry- 
 ings to and fro. I had looked for a whole gallery 
 of tragic airs from Leonora. I was certainly not 
 prepared for the fortitude and quiet confidence which 
 they exhibited and inspired. The whole house was 
 heavy with creosote, of which the scent to-day 
 brings back Amy more clearly than any amount of 
 careful retrospection. One afternoon I brought her 
 one of those new-fangled trinkets then springing into 
 vogue — a watch hanging from a lover's knot in metal. 
 The bow was worn on the breast, and save for the fact 
 that the wearer whilst advertising the time to all the 
 world was unable to catch a glimpse of it herself, 
 the device was ideal. As I bent over the child to 
 fasten the watch on her little gown she put her arms 
 round mv neck and whispered : " I'm not going to die, 
 MrNed,amI?" 
 
 " Of course not, Amy," I answered. " How can you
 
 174 RESPONSIRTTJTY 
 
 think oi" it, with ail of us mailing poultices and shaking 
 medicine bottles and buying beautiful watches." 
 
 " Very well then, I won't," she said brightly ; " that 
 settles it." 
 
 By the first warm, sunny days of May I was able to 
 take her as far as the prim park with the rustic benches, 
 old Buckley's gift to Crawley Bridge. There we would 
 sit facing that gentleman's image in white marble 
 with whiskers like grace-notes. There we would sit 
 in the sun and listen to the barrel organ grinding out : 
 
 Oh ! Lizer ! Sweet Lizer I 
 If yer die an old maid you'll 'ave only yerself to blame I 
 
 D'y 'ear Lizer ? Dear Lizer i 
 'Ow d'5^er fancy 'Awkins for yer other name ? 
 
 And then would come the crooning body of the song, 
 and I would murmur in Amy's ear : 
 
 She wears an artful bonnet. 
 Feathers stuck upon it, 
 Coverin' a fringe all curled ; 
 She's just about the sweetest. 
 Prettiest and neatest 
 Doner in the wide, wide world. 
 
 And I suppose that is as far as ever I got towards 
 love-making. Our relations were undefined and I was 
 glad to have them so. " You'll never marry my lass," 
 said Kester, " but I can trust you, Mr Ned, noan from 
 here to the park but to the end of the world if need be." 
 
 And then Amy had a relapse. She caught a chill 
 through prolonging a golden afternoon till the shadow 
 of old Buckley grew positively alarming. This time
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 175 
 
 Death was in an angrier mood and came near to 
 getting the better of devotion. And I to losing my 
 reason. It is a humihating thing to reflect that a 
 few short years should completely efface a passion of 
 which the keynote has been eternity. In my trouble 
 I sought the confidence of Monica, who was holidaying 
 in the Lake District with her brother. This is what 
 she wrote : 
 
 My dearest Neddie, — So you have foimd her, and 
 I am not going to say any of the things you are expect- 
 ing me to say. You are certainly in the mood to hate 
 anybody who would dissuade you from doing a noble 
 thing. I do not gather exactly what noble thing it is 
 that you contemplate, but I am sure that you will be 
 fine and generous. All that I can make out from your 
 letter is that the little lady is " possessed of great 
 beautie," that she is ill and that you are afraid of losing 
 her. Let me say at once that she will recover, which 
 is all the more reason why I should add her name, 
 which you have not told me, to my little list of people 
 to be prayed for. 
 
 At heart you are a very nice boy, though like every- 
 body who wants to be an artist it is in the nature of 
 tilings that you must be intensely selfish. But I don't 
 see why, in time and with practice, you should not get 
 to care for this little lady better than for yourself. 
 At present what you are in love with is the image of her 
 which you make to yourself for your devotion. Now 
 this is really indulging in the extremest form of selfish- 
 ness, but it is a form so beautiful that it deceives even 
 Shakespeare's lovers. I believe you can make the 
 innocent little thing happy. You write of a " sacred
 
 176 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 trust," which is a very pretty phrase, but you will 
 have to take care that the sacred trust does not de- 
 generate into a burden. And then you use the word 
 " cherubim." Here I can't follow you. All I know 
 about these little people is that like the seraphim 
 they " continually do cry." 
 
 For goodness sake don't let's have any nonsense 
 about educating her. Can't you see that she is educat- 
 ing you ? Whilst you are ransacking your great brain 
 for some abstruse reference the })Oor child is probably 
 expressing some simple thought which has just occurred 
 to her, and by putting it naturally is also putting it 
 beautifully. Don't worry about the social status. We 
 shall, of course, w'ant to see a lot of her, and I will 
 take mother by the hand and point out the charming 
 little ideas the child's mind is stored with. 
 
 I hope this will not be just a mood, Ned. Remember 
 that your coming into her life means more to her 
 than her coming into yours means to you. Men are 
 like railway trains. They journey through miles of 
 squalid towns and noisy, smoky tunnels — these are 
 their business afl'airs — and emerge for a moment into 
 the sunlight, with glimpses of ragged blue, ^ village 
 among trees, thatched roofs, roses and golden-haired 
 children — these are their love affairs. And then they 
 ])lunge once more among factory chimneys and gloom 
 and dirt, emerging once again into the sunlight. But 
 this time it is the sunlight of a different valley. The 
 journey is gay for them, but the villages feel being left 
 behind. Remember that when yovi leave your love 
 the room grows cold and lonely. This is really nonsense. 
 The room has its chairs and tables ; it is she who is 
 lonely.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 177 
 
 Don't think me flippant. I will do all I can to help 
 you and more, only you mustn't ask me to take you 
 too seriously. You yourself are fond of preaching 
 that there are a thousand ways of taking life and only 
 one ^v^ong way, and that the serious one. I simply 
 can't be serious on a fine day in Borrowdale. The Lakes 
 always make me feel that a star danced for me as well 
 as for Beatrice. I have been out on Cat Bells all the 
 afternoon with Geoffrey and a Shakespeare. Geoffrey 
 had his ferrets and I spent the afternoon dangling 
 a dead rabbit outside a hole that one of the nasty 
 things had got lost in. So I whiled away the time with 
 Measure for Measure till I got bored with Isabella, 
 and then read bits of Much Ado. Hence the elegance 
 of these presents. 
 
 I have no news except that Dorothy Greenhill, whom 
 you have never met, is to be married on Thursday next 
 to someone you have never seen, in a coat and skirt 
 and other trivialities. 
 
 All sunshine, comfort and peace to you, and a kiss 
 to be bestowed as you shall think fit. 
 
 Monica. 
 
 My thoughts on reading this were that of all 
 possible cousins Monica was the toppingest. I 
 forget what word it was that I must have used. 
 It is all so long ago, but " toppingest " gives the 
 sense of it. 
 
 One day about this time Westrom suggested a glass 
 of })ort after lunch— unusual debauch for him — and 
 said he supposed they could get on without him at the 
 bank for an odd half-hour or so. I saw that he wanted 
 to talk. We held our glasses of sixpenny up to the light
 
 178 RESPONSIBITJTY 
 
 and appraised the colour and bouquet of the syrupy 
 stuff. Then, when the other customers had departed : 
 " Tell me about it,'* he commanded, as though I had 
 still been his fag. 
 
 So I told him. 
 
 " Can you do it ? " he asked. " To be quite candid, 
 I don't know whether you've the grit." 
 
 I sketched a protest which he waved aside. 
 
 " Oh, I know you've a year or two's store of fine 
 impulse. Now you are thoroughly and terribly in 
 earnest. Now you are transfigured and translated and 
 you mean it beautifully, every bit. But it is a very big 
 venture. Remember that you don't fall alone. You 
 can't come down from idealising to a mean performance 
 without hurting the little thing." 
 
 " But I'm not going to hurt her," I interrupted. 
 
 " My dear chap, of course you are not going to hurt 
 her now. But the beginning is easy ; all plunges, all 
 exaltations are easy. We won't talk of failure ; the 
 middling success would be bad enough. I've not much 
 liking for compromise. Have you fellowship to fall 
 back upon ? " 
 
 I thought we had. 
 
 " For, you know, to abandon fellowship because the 
 edge is off the romance is altogether unforgivable, 
 and the edge is off before you loiow where you are. 
 It isn't anj^ good fretting and calling the universe to 
 witness that you've done nothing to deserve it. It's 
 the price, you know." 
 
 We were both silent for a few moments. Even then 
 I had an inkling that I was only plaj^ing with Amy. 
 One may play at love and do harm, and yet without 
 bad intent. I am glad to think that I did no harm.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 179 
 
 " Then it puts a definite end to razzling," Mark 
 went on. " That you may taste satiety doesn't mean 
 that you are at liberty to go on tasting it in different 
 directions. You've chosen your life partner and must 
 stick to her. Now can you ? I don't want to be dis- 
 couraging, but there's her education and upbringing 
 and traditions to think of. Will she suffice you, say 
 in ten years ? Will your superiority content her ? 
 It's a fine thing you are attempting, and you alone 
 know whether you can carry it through. You can try 
 to deceive yourself or you can be honest with yourself. 
 If you have any doubt at ail, better be humble and 
 turn back. Who is it talks about ' the habit of middling 
 actions which men call common-sense ' ? Of course 
 there's risk in any great adventure, but remember 
 that responsibility doesn't end with failure. Forgive 
 me." 
 
 I remained silent. 
 
 " You'll find it tremendously jolly and exciting in 
 the beginning," he went on more lightly. " I've been 
 through it. You'll have carpets and fire-irons to 
 choose ; it's no end of a lark, I can tell you." 
 
 The matter-of-fact " fire-irons " fell on my conscious- 
 ness like a knell. I knew then that marriage was not 
 within the zone of the possibilities, that I had never 
 contemplated it. 
 
 I had little sleep that night and for many nights. In 
 addition to the worry of Amy's illness I began to have 
 doubts about the fairness of my lack of serious intention 
 and the ugliest certainty as to my uncle's dispositions 
 in the matter of her father. The child was once more 
 out of danger when, one evening, Kester unburdened 
 himself to me I will condense. The story was that
 
 1 80 T^ ESPONSIBTLTTY 
 
 a year or two previously lie had borrowed a couple 
 of thousand pounds from Ackroyd and Marston under 
 agreement to sell all his cloth through them. That the 
 instalments by which he was to repay were consider- 
 ably in arrear, that the prices offered and enforced by 
 my uncle had for a long time been little short of dis- 
 astrous, and that his spinners had declined to furnish 
 him with more yam or the bank with any further 
 facilities. On the previous Friday he had had the 
 greatest difficulty in getting the money together to 
 pay his workpeople, whilst he foresaw that on the 
 Friday to come it would be absolutely impossible 
 for him to pay out. Black ruin staring him in the 
 face, he had gone down to Manchester to see my 
 uncle. 
 
 Kester sat gazing into the fire and I thought of 
 all the stories I had ever read of fallen greatness. 
 However small the height, the fall and the tragedy 
 are there. 
 
 I gathered that he had been received with infinite 
 affability. Reuben had made him a proposal which 
 was neither more nor less than that he should take over 
 all Kester's looms and plant and stocks of cotton and 
 cloth on the one hand and his debts on the other. 
 There was also an offer to install him as manager at 
 what was to become Ackroyd and Marston's new mill, 
 at a salary of fifty shillings a week with, for his family's 
 sake, a sum of three hundred pounds down. My uncle 
 had given him two days in which to accept, and 
 Kester's arms were already pleach 'd, his neck cor- 
 rigible, his head bowed. Kit had never been a fighter. 
 There was little in the scene to record, no grand 
 disillusion, no wild-ey'd despair, no clutching at the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 181 
 
 breast, no broken enunciation of the petition for 
 bread. 
 
 A simple silence, Kester gazing at the fire. 
 
 And then his wife, who during the recital had sat 
 by her husband's elbow, her mouth pursed, her whole 
 being taut, put her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " Thou wert alius a fool, Kit, a big soft-hearted fool, 
 but we shanna starve. Doan't thee take it to heart, 
 lad. I've worked before and I'se work again. We're 
 sure of three hundred poiuid and the children can fend 
 for themselves, thank God ! What does it matter 
 whether we've fifty shillings a week or five hundred 
 so long as my man can sleep ? " And she patted him. 
 
 Kester showed no signs of rising to the eloquence of 
 the broken bankrupt ; or perhaps it was that his recital 
 had exhausted him. He exhibited a singular detach- 
 ment. 
 
 " I was born a working man and I'se die one," he 
 said. " There's worse," he added after a pause. 
 
 As may be imagined, I was feeling extremely un- 
 comfortable. How much of an uncle's treachery may 
 not run in one's own blood ? 
 
 " I'll talk to Mr Reuben," I said, though I must 
 confess with but a poor stomach behind the words. 
 
 " You'll waste your breath, I'm thinking, Mr Ned. 
 He's a hard, crooked man and I took him for straight." 
 
 And never again did I hear either of the honest pair 
 open their lips on the subject of the rich Manchester 
 merchant who had betrayed them. 
 
 I was as good as my word and went down to 
 Manchester next day with the express purpose of 
 persuading my uncle to modify the harsliness of his 
 terms. But my tackling of Reuben was about as
 
 1 82 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 effective as an attempt by a Parliamentary novice 
 to man-handle Mr Gladstone. Now that I come to 
 think of it, my presentation of Kester's case consisted 
 largely in a charge against Reuben of lying, treachery 
 and commercial dishonesty. My micle heard me out 
 with perfect patience, then lit a cigar, and leaning back 
 in his chair launched forth into what sounded like a 
 public address : 
 
 " I am afraid, my dear nephew," he began, " that 
 you do not quite grasp the principles involved in 
 those two great factors of commercial life, supply 
 and demand, and which necessarily underlie the 
 business of buying and selling. I have for several 
 years undertaken to provide Christopher Dewhurst 
 with an uninterrupted succession of orders at prices 
 which should be approved by him and which I am 
 therefore bound to presume to be acceptable to him. 
 This although I may not have had a single yard of 
 orders for his cloth on my books. The obligation 
 justified me in placing my orders at the time I judged 
 most suitable and at the lowest prices which I could 
 persuade him to accept. I stood to be shot at. I 
 might have lost ; I may have gained. You seem to 
 forget that I am in business, that I and my partner " — 
 here he looked at Geoffrey — " are in business with the 
 primary object of making money and not of preventing 
 your friends from losing it." 
 
 " Edward seems to think ' Successors to Don Quixote 
 and Company ' should be our style," put in Geoffrey, 
 with an insane giggle. 
 
 " I think, too," continued my micle, " that you are 
 blinded by, shall 1 say, an irrelevant interest. And 
 now that this little matter has been touched upon, may
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 183 
 
 I ask what are your intentions with regard to Miss 
 Amy ? " 
 
 I was considerably taken aback. Nevertheless I 
 answered boldly : 
 
 "I'm very fond of her." 
 
 " So, probably, is her father. So, too, should I 
 probably be, were I honoured with her acquaintance. 
 But I am not content with the general statement. 
 My duty as your guardian demands that I should ask 
 you whether this young woman is your mistress." 
 
 " Certainly not," I replied, unable on the spur of 
 the moment to find more burning words of refuta- 
 tion. I was horribly ashamed, not for myself but 
 for Reuben. 
 
 " Are vou engaged to marry her ? " 
 
 "Not Vet." 
 
 " Is it your intention to marry her ? " 
 
 I did not answer. 
 
 " Marriage, though foolish, I can understand, and 
 an illicit relation I can conceive. But I will not have 
 any shilly-shaUying. The day you lead tliis young 
 woman into harlotry " — Reuben's anger was of the 
 patriarchal turn — " sees the end of your connection 
 with Ackroyd's. Do you understand, boy ? " 
 
 I remained mute. 
 
 " And let me have no further nonsense either about 
 my business or your women. Dewhurst will accept my 
 terms ; he licks my hand already. I have given him 
 three hundred pounds to cover his decency ; other- 
 wise he hasn't a rag. Anybody else would have stripped 
 him to the bone. I give you until to morrow morning 
 to decide between Dewhurst and me, between his 
 fan)ily and mine, and I give you fair warning that if
 
 184 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 you decide for Dcwhurst you and he and his brat may 
 go to the devil together." 
 
 I prefer not to hnger. Three summers later Amy 
 married a young traveller in healds and reeds Avho had 
 onoc been wont to kick little girls on the shins. Life is 
 like that. For some years Christmas time brought with 
 it the best wishes of Mr and Mrs Joe Blackley. And 
 then the cards ceased and I do not in the least know 
 what has become of my old friends. I heard in a 
 roundabout way that the brother went to Australia 
 and that Leonora drifted to the stage. The parents 
 have long been dead.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 § i 
 
 ENGLAND in the middle nineties ! 
 I have often been struck with the immunity 
 from time and environment with which 
 novehsts endow their characters. I do not mean that 
 Dickens failed to convey Mr Pickwick about in stage- 
 coaches and INIiss Bolo in sedan-chairs, or that Mr Wells 
 is not verj' proud of his latest aeroplane. These are 
 the exceptions. Your average novelist will record the 
 minutest development in his hero's sentimental dis- 
 positions and none at all in the growth of the world 
 about him. Life is short, l^ut its grasp is immense, 
 and there are surely other phenomena to mark a man's 
 passage besides the number of his intrigues and the 
 fluctuations of his bank balance. I hold myself to be 
 a youngish man still, and yet can recall the time when 
 electric light, the telephone and the postal order were 
 not. I remember the childish opposition which these 
 new-fangled notions encountered on the part of the 
 gas companies, the Postmaster-General and the Man- 
 chester Chamber of Commerce. The gas companies 
 saw their light extinguished for ever by their more 
 brilliant and convenient sister. The Postmaster- General 
 saw in the telephone a dangerous competitor to his 
 beloved telegraph system. The Manchester Chamber 
 of Commerce saw in the increased facilities for payment 
 by post a diminution in the profits of the cheque l)ank. 
 There does not seem to have existed at this date, even 
 in the minds of the most mtelligent, the shadow of an 
 
 185
 
 186 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 idea of communal interest. Jealousy of the improving 
 printing press, animosity of the hand-loom weaver 
 towards his more mechanical brother, hostility of the 
 Church towards Science, that lady's jealousy of Philos- 
 ophy, all make up a catalogue to prove that the dearest 
 enmity of man is reserved for him who seeks to make 
 two grains of knowledge sprout in the time of one. 
 The novelist who should endow his hero with the base 
 attitude of increasing resentment would but copy life, 
 instead of which he is content to represent him as un- 
 touched by the march of events. I hesitate to believe 
 that the fashion of a man's mind changes less than the 
 cut of his clothes. 
 
 Where were we then in '94 ? 
 
 The year 1894 was woefully, though as a com- 
 mencing fogy I am inclined to think fascinatingly, 
 behind the times. The Poles, North and South, had 
 still a few lustres of virginity before them and the 
 Regalia of St Patrick at Dublin Castle thirteen more 
 years of non-molestation. Civilisation had four years 
 to wait for the Jameson raid ; Omdurman was not 
 yet ; and the Mahdi's head had not become a bee in 
 childish bonnets. The world was not clamouring for 
 its news at a halfpenny ; it had not occurred to private 
 citizens to parade the streets shrieking that they 
 wanted eight and wouldn't wait ; it was feasible to 
 grow sweet peas in a non-competitive spirit and to eat 
 in quietude the bread of one's fancy. It was possible 
 to enter a music hall at half-past eight and not be 
 ejected at nine ; famous French actresses had not con- 
 templated appearance between performing fowl and 
 smirking, scented contortionists. Music lialls had not 
 arrived at the ridiculous pretence of providing shows
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 187 
 
 for the young miss and moralists did not go about 
 asking whether if writers had been better men they 
 would have written better books. The country-side 
 smelt of hawthorn and of honeysuckle, and the stink 
 of petrol was held an abomination. The handling of 
 reins could still be counted among the pleasures of life, 
 and for two luxurious years the speed of motor cars 
 was to be regulated by a man carrying a flag. The 
 race-horse Ladas had won the Derby for the Prince 
 of Wales, and a foal was now being dropped to prove 
 the existence of the type of human to whom that which 
 is permissible in an heir apparent is deplorable in a 
 Prime Minister. W. G. Grace had not more than a paltry 
 eighty or ninety centuries to his credit, the Indian 
 prince had not taken up his studies at Cambridge, 
 and the professional batsman after achieving his 
 two or three hundred runs still slunk off the field 
 by a humbler exit than that which received the 
 contribution-less amateur. The jolly and tuneful 
 Geisha, The Belle of New York, Florodora and San 
 Toy were as yet unborn. So too were Trilby and 
 Mr Pig-Pig ! whilst the womb of time still held in 
 reserve faith in Mr Bernard Shaw's plays as^:^a 
 commercial speculation. 
 
 The years immediately preceding '94 had seen the 
 Maybrick trial and the Baccarat scandal, the death of 
 Tennyson and General Booth's contention that darkest 
 England was altogether gloomier and dingier than 
 darkest Africa. 
 
 The year itself saw Mr Gladstone in power and draw- 
 ing distinctions so subtle that no one else could perceive 
 them, which is perhaps not quite the same. thing as 
 saying one thing and meaning another. To the fact
 
 1 88 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 of his premiership I attach little importance, so long 
 have I been accustomed to hold it immaterial whether 
 we be governed by any particular set of party politicians 
 or by the elephant Jumbo. The famous Death Duties 
 and the Two Power Standard were under discussion and 
 the country was still basking in the sun or languishing 
 in the night of Free Trade. Whichever view be held, 
 there is no doubt that the country was in for an era 
 of unexampled prosperity. Queen Victoria and Lord 
 Randolph Churchill were waning forces ; Robert Louis 
 Stevenson was dying. The cotton trade had just 
 arrived at the famous Brooklands agreement, that 
 agreement which provides that changes of rate of wages 
 to cotton operatives should not take place oftener than 
 once a year, and that no single change should exceed 
 five per cent, of the wage. It goes without saying that 
 this simple and immoral treaty has been of more 
 value to the cotton employer than all the law- 
 mongering since the time of Noah. Mr Barrie's 
 Auld Licht Idylls and Mr Ian Maclaren's Beside 
 the Bonnie Brier Bush had left the country not 
 even its eyes to weep with, and Miss Marie Corelli 
 was at the height of her fame. Henry Irving 
 was busy proving that greatness in the actor may 
 make the tawdriest material acceptable ; Ellen 
 Terry throwing herself away as ever upon clowning 
 Nance Oldfields when all the world was on fire 
 for Beatrice, Viola, Imogen. But not even that 
 dateless and imperishable beauty which was hers 
 gives the particular note of '94. That note was struck 
 by the aesthetes then at the height of their delightful 
 folly. The world was one yellow pageant or peril, 
 as you will — I am not a policeman. Yellow asters
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 189 
 
 vied with green carnations ; Dodo, Paula Tanqueray 
 and Esther Waters jostled each other for the greatest 
 shares of attention. There were amusing contrasts 
 between new and old schools. At one theatre could be 
 heard the old-fashioned " Last time, Clemmy my 
 boy," of Mr Edward Terry ; over the way Mrs Patrick 
 Campbell would be demonstrating how evenings at 
 countn' houses inevitablv lead to suicide. In the 
 provinces a sporting actress on being asked what 
 she hoped to find among the villain's papers could 
 be heard to reply : " The winner of the Manchester 
 Cup." And the Manchester gallery to applaud with 
 hands and feet. On the lighter stage little ladies 
 with knickers artlessly turned up babbled of Alabama 
 coons. In purely masculine circles golf had not yet 
 become popular, and the middle-aged rouS sought 
 amusement in flirting between the sets of a game of 
 pat-ball filched from royal tennis. In more serious 
 matters Herbert Spencer was nearing the last pages 
 of his Synthetic Philosophy, and the young bloods 
 complained that the champagne of '84 was still a 
 trifle new. 
 
 §ii 
 
 But it must not be imagined that the slow-going, 
 purposeful provincial reacts to his time in the same 
 degree as his sparrow-like, metropolitan brother. 
 I take Wally Buckley as the type of coming-on 
 industrial. Old Absalom may have known little 
 about the elegancies of life, but at least he was frank, 
 sturdv and staunch. His son inherited none of his 
 father's quality. To while away such time as he had
 
 1 90 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 to wait for his inheritance, he " followed " drink. 
 The phrase, in the mouths of its Crawley Bridge users, 
 does not amount to a reproach ; it is a simple state- 
 ment of fact, as who should say a taste for whippets. 
 That I consider Wally as typical of much of the 
 youth of liancashire of my day is not a reproach 
 except in the sense that a plain statement may be a 
 reproach. 
 
 Absurd then to attempt to describe the Lancashire 
 year in terms of the Yellow Book and Beardsley, 
 Paula Tanqueray and Wilde, In Manchester itself 
 there was a skin-deep pretence of moving with the times. 
 Oh, but reluctantly and with what infinities of protest. 
 The Limpkin's attitude to Paula may be taken as 
 typical. " Unnecessary " was her adjective for the 
 play, but then I've heard her use that word to 
 describe the kiss of Judas. Many a tea-table did one 
 set by the ears in objecting that the lover's old 
 relations with Paula constitute no bar to marriage 
 with her step-daughter, except within the walls of a 
 theatre. An advance in Victorian play-writing cer- 
 tainly, in the sense that a change from nakedness to 
 woad is an advance. But it were fantastic to use the 
 theatre as a measure of progress in Crawley Bridge. 
 One gauge there was, and one only. Trams ! In '94 
 the miserable single horse had already given place 
 to the more dashing and encouraging pair, which, it 
 was even beginning to be seen, might with equal 
 convenience be attached to either end of the tram and 
 so save the holding up of the traffic necessitated by 
 the turnino- round of the whole encumbrance. The 
 directorate of the private company to which the veliicles 
 belonged appeared to spend most of its time in devising
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 191 
 
 means for detecting dishonesty in its employees — 
 they had the prettiest collection imaginable of 
 man- and booby-traps, bags, boxes, tickets punchable 
 in the presence of the passenger, perforable to 
 the tinkle of little bells — whereas on any question 
 of improved comfort they were adamant. Street- 
 lighting remaining constant, the passing of time was 
 unrecorded at Crawley save in the matter of its 
 traction. 
 
 Morality was in those days and in that tiny corner 
 of the world an amazing, rigid jumble. It consisted, if 
 you belonged to the upper classes, in not riding on the 
 tops of the said trams, in not smoking pipes in the 
 street, in not playing games on Sundays, in not fre- 
 quenting race-meetings, in having no intercourse with 
 the lower orders. It consisted, if you belonged to 
 these lower, in having nothing to do on Sunday even- 
 ings, in going nowhere, in hanging about the streets de- 
 jectedly spitting. In foulness. To people of my uncle's 
 class it consisted in knowing who were the other really 
 nice people, in recognising the proper class to travel by 
 and the right seats to occupy at the theatre. Reuben 
 held that sellers of cloth should leave to buyers the 
 first-class railway carriage and the more expensive 
 stalls, contenting themselves also with the return 
 rather than the inauguration of salutes. To travel in 
 any conveyance which was not closed and on four 
 wheels was improper, to take in a London newspaper 
 an aberration amounting to a vice. Morality at Crawley 
 Bridge — and I have noticed the same thing in other 
 parts of the world — was a matter of what you might 
 not do, never of what you should ; an affair of repression 
 rather than expansion. It was perfectly moral for
 
 192 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 instance, for the large mill-owner tacitly to condone a 
 system of sanitary' conveniences for his work-people 
 little better than those of a Russian prison. Whereas 
 openly to discuss the question of sanitation was in 
 the worst possible taste. 
 
 It was largely to combat this state of things that a 
 few of the more hopeful among us formed ourselves 
 into a society of chosen spirits. The members were not 
 many. They consisted of the shop assistant Claud 
 Rodd, Stn.iml:>ach's shy young man, Arthur Ransom, 
 whose soul died everj m'orning when he entered the 
 warehouse at nine and came to life again at the 
 six o'clock hour of release, Westroin, Curt Reinecke, 
 Reggie Bissett and myself. 
 
 It occurs to me here that I have attempted little 
 description of the physical attributes of the more 
 amiable personages of my tale. And that principally 
 because mere physical good looks are as little interest- 
 ing as the morality which consists in avoidance. 
 Both Westrom and Reinecke were, Heaven be thanked, 
 as ugly as sin. There was a cut about Westrom which 
 always moved me to the grotesque in point of com- 
 parison. Great Gable, I used to think, remembering 
 that he was born within a morning's walk of that 
 tremendous pile and in view of his large nose, square 
 jaw and granite pugnacity. A hint, too, of frowning 
 perplexity. His mind was craggy and spacious and one 
 felt that contrariwise to Charles Lamb he would have 
 given all the pits of all the world's theatres for a sight 
 of Great End. Or he could be secluded and cloistral, 
 wrapping his mind about with the sombre banners of 
 some monkish faith. He had a fine sense of the pre- 
 posterous in manners and an immense distaste for the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 193 
 
 unusual in conduct. With the true Liberal genius 
 for making allowances where he had no sympathy 
 he was your Good Samaritan turned Grand Inquisitor ; 
 a merciful judge, capable of forgiving a criminal 
 everything but his crime. He could say sui-prising 
 things. " I like goodness," I once heard him declare. 
 " Even the Supreme Cause has got to behave itself or 
 it doesn't have my vote." 
 
 Curt Reinecke had much of Westrom's ruaffedness 
 but the mould was gentlier. He was a Jew from 
 Hamburg, tall, loose-limbed, of good family. He was 
 employed by Stmmbach as a Volontdr, which means that 
 he devilled for that amiable giant in return for a pound 
 a week and the opportunity of learning English ways 
 of business. It was his intention after completing his 
 military service to take up a partnership with his 
 wealthy brothers in Hamburg, probably remaining in 
 Manchester as the head of their Manchester branch. 
 This is the German form of colonisation, made possible 
 by the fact that the young German will live on less and 
 work harder than the young Englishman. There is 
 no cure for what is really an insidious form of conquest 
 other than an amendment in the immigration laws. 
 But this is tedious and matter for the politician. 
 You could have ransacked the whole of the German 
 Empire and the whole of the United Kingdom without 
 finding a more agreeable fellow than Reinecke. He 
 radiated affability, he was incandescent with good- 
 humour, he shone with a humility in wliich there was 
 nothing servile. Add to this a charming ndivetd, a 
 passionate modesty and a rapturous enthusiasm for 
 everything English in which there was no suspicion 
 of toadyism, and you have the man. 
 
 N
 
 1 94 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Of Reggie Bissett I hardly know what to say except 
 that he had an admirable taste in claret and a passion 
 for what he would call a " monstrously well-prepared 
 pheasant." He would spend hours concocting little 
 notes of invitation ending : " As I am no orator, both 
 the champagne and myself propose to be Mumm ! " 
 His worst fault was the delivery of mountainous common- 
 places such as "It is extraordinary how much trash one 
 can read if one gives one's mind to it." Or he would 
 impart as a confidence the news that on the previous 
 evening he had considered the advisability of smoking 
 a second cigar, but had finally abandoned the idea. 
 And yet he was not completely null. That is to say, 
 his nullity was not that of the cretin, was not Geoffrey's 
 sort, nor yet that of the toss-pot, Wally Buckley. He 
 was the healthy, cold- tubbing Englishman of our un- 
 readable novelists. He had a passion which absorbed 
 him and yet of which he seldom spoke, a passion for 
 horses. He had the mind of the perfect stable-boy ; 
 he was his horses. I have known him spend long 
 winter afternoons tramping desolate fields for a glimpse 
 of shaggy brutes herding under the lee of stone walls. 
 Or he would spend hours in that ecstasy of contempla- 
 tion which a loose-box affords, in mysterious confab 
 with his groom, a striped and chequered notable. Horses 
 were the only subject on which Bissett possessed 
 eloquence, and I have heard him improvise over a marc 
 of courage a tirade outrivalling Charlotte Bronte's 
 on the genius of Rachel. For his horses he would 
 have sacrificed wife, child, fortune, hope of the world 
 to come. You will tell me that this is mania. To 
 which I reply that the passion which is less than 
 mania is not passion at all. Give me your veritable
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 195 
 
 passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart of 
 hearts. 
 
 Bissett was welcomed by us not for the sake of his 
 particular mania but because he was known to possess 
 one. He was as rich as Westrom was respectable, and 
 our little society found both qualities a convenient 
 pillar. We used to meet formally once a month and 
 informally once a week in a little cafe-restaurant which 
 boasted a back room to be dignified at a pinch witl.i 
 the courtesy title of cabinet particulier. On informal 
 occasions we would content ourselves with chops and 
 beer in pint-pots ; at the grand monthly meetings the 
 proprietor would put up an eight course dinner for seven 
 shillings and sixpence, and we would consider which 
 of the Californian Burgundies might most fittingly 
 precede the pale, dry, creaming Perrier-Jouet which 
 ran away with our weekly pittances at the rate of ten 
 shillings a bottle. Westrom was the only member of 
 the band to whom expense mattered ; Bissett was too 
 rich and the rest of us too poor to care. 
 
 It was de rigueur that discussion at these dinners 
 should be reserved for matters of great pith and 
 moment. 
 
 §' iii 
 
 " We must have a motto and we must have a pro- 
 gramme," said Ransom at our second meeting. 
 
 " So long as we don't propagate anything or call 
 ourselves a band or a brotherhood, I'm agreeable," said 
 Rodd. " Why not a Society for the Abolition of Self- 
 satisfaction among the Clergy ? " 
 
 " Why not ' The Philosophic Epicures ' ? " asked 
 Bissett.
 
 196 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " Or ' The Reasonable Men ' ? from Curt. 
 
 " I don't think we need define what we are here for," 
 said Westrom. ' ' All definitions are forms of limitation. 
 ' Do the good that's nearest,' you know." 
 
 " A sort of general interference with the best of 
 motives," replied Rodd querulously, " helping lame 
 dogs, and all that sort of thing. Not for me, thank 
 you." 
 
 " What about ' The New Bohemians' ? " I put in. 
 
 " None of the old ones were artists in our sense," 
 returned Rodd. " Miirger could write a pretty story, 
 but neither he nor his precious painters were ' serious.' 
 As far as I can make out they cared for nothing 
 except wearing absurd trousers and silly hats and 
 throwing away what little money they had on con- 
 sumptive dressmakers. His Latin Quarter is a colossal 
 blague.''' 
 
 " The worst of serious fellows like Claud," said 
 Westrom, patting Rodd affectionately on the shoulder, 
 " is that they will raise the moral issue. Now there's 
 no moral issue about a Musette and a Mimi. The 
 thing's just a joke." 
 
 " Well, we're not jokes," Rodd answered, with a 
 fine defiance. " We're going to be great men, all 
 of us. At least we intend to try," he tailed off more 
 humbly. 
 
 " I will do such things, what they are, yet I know 
 not ; but they shall be the terrors of the earth," 
 retorted Westrom. 
 
 " Lear was an old man. We are all of us out to do 
 something, or what's our youth for ? " retorted Claud. 
 " There's Ned here wants to write books. Ransom 
 tliinks he can draw, Curt has got a symphony in his
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 197 
 
 head and I — well, I've a notion how to pull things 
 to pieces. That's the poorer half of criticism, but 
 it's a beginning. Building up comes after. You've 
 got to clear the ground first. In any case I take 
 it we're here to work and not to play about with 
 women." 
 
 A long and lively debate followed, of which the 
 upshot was that we were to call ourselves the New 
 Bohemians. It was all very young and very ardent 
 and perhaps not too foolish. It was determined that 
 our society should be governed by one principle and one 
 principle only, the strict intolerance of mental dis- 
 honesty either among ourselves or in the world at large. 
 This settled, we next proceeded to cast about for 
 subjects most worthy of the strong light of our single- 
 mindedness. I think we were all of us eager to coquette 
 with Socialism, and perhaps we thought that the arts 
 stood in need of a leg-up. 
 
 " But we can't discuss what is most worth doing 
 until we know what the whole world's for," said Curt 
 logically. So with a praiseworthy idea of beginning 
 at the beginning we decided upon an inquiry as to 
 the latest attitude of the scientists and philosophers 
 towards the origin and purpose of life. 
 
 " We don't want to be philosophers," said Bissett. 
 " But we may as well know what philosophy is after 
 and where she stands." 
 
 " In other words, we want as much of it as becomes 
 persons of taste," said Ransom. 
 
 " I propose," went on Bissett, " that each of us 
 takes a philosophic bloke and mugs him up. We'll all 
 report to Reinecke, who will pool the lot. Put me 
 down for someone pretty easy, you chaps." And we
 
 198 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 allotted him Samuel Butler. The following is the com- 
 pendium of philosophic principle to which the society 
 was formally to subscribe : — 
 
 There is no evidence that anything exists which is 
 without attributes. Every existing thing to be material 
 and resolvable into primary energy which is not, so 
 far as we know, resolvable into any more naked 
 simplicity. 
 
 Nothing has ever occurred for which there is not a 
 natural and material explanation, although we may not 
 yet be advanced enough to hit upon the explanation. 
 
 The universe was probably created by the lucky or 
 unlucky assemblage in the proper place and at the 
 proper time of forms of energy coming together in 
 such proportions as were necessary to create matter. 
 
 The First Cause may be devoid of the human 
 sense of responsibility and may be unconscious of 
 humanity. It may be unaware of itself and entirely 
 devoid of consciousness. 
 
 There is no evidence that the emotions and im- 
 pulses of man — love, hatred, kindness, self-sacrifice — 
 are other than the reactions of matter. 
 
 There is no evidence of any essential difference 
 between the life of man and that of a cabbage. 
 
 Man is not the centre of the universe except in 
 the sense in which every blade of grass is the centre 
 of the universe. 
 
 Man is neither higher nor lower than the animals, 
 only more complex.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 199 
 
 There is nothing mysterious about life except oiu' 
 ignorance of it. If by any chance all those material 
 components contained in the body of man were to be 
 assembled correctly energised in the correct proportions 
 and under the correct conditions, then human life 
 would be spontaneously created. 
 
 Nature is not benevolent but natural, and she 
 makes no mistakes because to her there is no difference 
 between right and wrong. To Nature disease and 
 decay are as natural as health and growth. The ivy 
 hurts the tree but does itself a lot of good in the process, 
 A thistle is the result of Nature's arrangements for a 
 thistle and she would be the last to expect to gather 
 figs from it. 
 
 If Nature arranges for an^^hing it will happen ; 
 if not, not. But " arranges for " must not be held to 
 bear any mystical meaning. 
 
 It is mistaken philosophy which places man at the 
 centre of the universe and discusses all that happens 
 therein as it may be supposed to affect the present 
 and future happiness of its spoilt child. The scientist 
 must confine his questionings to the "why" and the 
 "how" and not bother his head \ with subliminal 
 " wherefores." 
 
 It is permissible to conceive a gap between Primordial 
 Energy and the Prime Cause which we with our finite 
 minds are bound to assume to be behind even that 
 Energy. Within that gap or zone of the incompre- 
 hensible there is room for whatever philosophic 
 speculation or religious faitli it may please man to
 
 200 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 entei-tain. From Primordial Energy downwards there 
 is no evidence of Special Interference. 
 
 In finite matters only can there be any laying down 
 of last words. 
 
 The discovery of even one more dimension would 
 throw the whole of modern philosophy out of gear. 
 Man to be prepared to accept the findings of only 
 such philosophy as makes reservation of this very 
 necessaiy pinch of salt. 
 
 " Not much of a look-out ! " said Bissett, when the 
 bilmi was formally presented and accepted. 
 
 " Of course," said I, " all that this means is that the 
 incomprehensible cannot exist in its own right, and 
 that it must be capable of being comprehended by 
 somebody or it would not exist." 
 
 "Why by Somebody V asked Curt. "If a thing 
 is, so it is, and further explanation is unnecessary. 
 Besides I take it that ' Somebody ' must not exist. 
 There may, there must be Something already, but 
 that isn't necessarily Somebody. To present the First 
 Cause with consciousness is to give to it Personality, 
 which is to pretend to knowledge of the unknowable. 
 I trust honourable members will pardon any rotten 
 German." 
 
 " In other words," said Ransom, " what is called 
 the inscrutable is merely evidence of lack of capacity 
 in the scrutineers." 
 
 " Exactly," Westrom agreed. " The Church has 
 always made the mistake of postulating the universe 
 as a kind of sublime conjuring trick." 
 
 "Whereas " — it was Rodd who spoke — "we are to
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 201 
 
 take it that when once the Prime Cause had created 
 Primordial Energy it was content to leave it at that 
 and not go about behind Energy's back sending a flood 
 when it could not possibly have rained and arresting 
 the movements of suns to please some toadying savage. 
 And yet I suppose that it is perfectly legitimate for an 
 honest philosopher to believe in God and a future life 
 provided he does not insist upon other people accepting 
 his views as to particular numbers and arbitrary forms 
 of dogma." 
 
 " But," interposed Ransom, " the moment you have 
 evidence for faith it surely ceases to be faith ? Person- 
 ally I agree with Mark that while we are here we may 
 as well behave ourselves. You can invent a hundred 
 extra dimensions as you call them, but you can't upset 
 that." 
 
 " No minister or clergyman professing anything so 
 simple could keep his berth for a week," declared 
 Westrom. "It is quite easy to understand how in 
 the dark ages the priests found it necessary to bam- 
 boozle the people for their own benefit. You can't 
 expect a savage to embrace an intellectual conception 
 for the simple reason that he has no intellect to con- 
 ceive with ; and therefore the priests had to invent 
 a mystic something which the simple mind could hold 
 in awe, to which something they tacked on a very 
 useful code of ethical rule to suit the moral, physical 
 and hygienic needs of the time. You certainly couldn't 
 expect them to do this and tip the philosophers the 
 wink." 
 
 " There's one shred of hope, surely," said Ransom. 
 " There is not in the whole of nature, so far as I have 
 been able to make out, any general craving of which
 
 202 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 fulfilment is totally denied. Plants which demand the 
 sun would not have been created in the absence of the 
 sun. Hmuan nature cries for something after death, 
 and did not that something exist I doubt whether 
 we should have been tormented by a useless craving. 
 That animals should not demand a future existence — 
 and one presmnes they don't — seems to me an excellent 
 reason why they should not have one. That we 
 should demand one is an excellent reason why we 
 should." 
 
 " Rubbish ! " interjected Rodd. " Rubbish, my dear 
 fellow. Nature is made up of cravings which are 
 permanently denied and of which the satisfaction would 
 be the end of the universe as we know it. Unsatisfied 
 desire is the motive of all life and of all change. Every 
 single atom is in a continued state of stress, the appease- 
 ment of which would lead to complete equilibrium, 
 which in its turn would involve the cessation of all life 
 and change. If the universe had its own way it would 
 rush together in one nasty, indigestible, coagulated 
 lump. As for the desire for a future life, why, that's 
 just mental fogginess. There is no doubt that there 
 are a great many sentimental people who find that a 
 belief in a second existence helps to make the present 
 one easier, and that the certainty that there is nothing 
 to follow, that the whole scheme of things is, from a 
 purely human standpoint, purposeless and nonsensical, 
 might lead to race suicide. Taking these two things 
 together, and remembering nature's infinite wiliness 
 for propagation, you begin to see where the belief 
 in a future state comes from. As for the bitterness 
 of death, it seems to me that it can only lie in the 
 persistence after death of the desire to live — in finding
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 203 
 
 the tomb a bore, in other words. Whereas I take it 
 that with death the desire for hfe dies too." 
 
 " I am satisfied," began Westrom, " that whatever 
 there mav be afterwards will have more of effort in it 
 than of stagnation. But almost as soon as you start 
 arguing you come up against the blank wall of trying 
 to comprehend the infinite by means of a finite in- 
 telligence. The instrument's not good enough, that's 
 all. So far as I can see we've the choice of two im- 
 possible conceptions. Either you have to decide for a 
 First Cause which has been the conscious ordainer 
 of every minute and stupendous wonder of the created 
 world, including the Coal Sack and the Milky Way, 
 Rodd's wit and the sole of a fly's foot, or for some form 
 of Primitive Energy which, although unconscious itself 
 in the human sense, has evolved so great a miracle as 
 human consciousness. Which seems to me uncoinmonly 
 like the whole being smaller than its part." 
 
 " Say that the Original Cause was less complicated 
 than what it has given rise to, and I'll agree with you," 
 proffered Rodd. 
 
 " Let me go on a bit. I think it's a waste of time to 
 argue about the inconceivable. All we know for certain 
 is that no creature wills its own existence and that the 
 world's creatures are continually multiplying. Which 
 means that as we have been begotten so are we in duty 
 bound not to waste our energies unlawfully but to 
 carry on nature's purpose and the world's work in a 
 legitimate, honourable way. I'm a family man myself," 
 he concluded, with a gleam of fun. And this closed the 
 discussion. 
 
 Two other subjects there were which intrigued 
 us greatly and which we found to be very largely
 
 204 RESPONSIBTLTTY 
 
 inseparable. I mean Socialism and the Woman 
 Question. 
 
 We decided that all men are not equal but that all 
 have rights to which they are entitled with scrupulous 
 equality. The right to go hand in hand with the 
 ol)ligation. Every man to give to the world his 
 work, in return for which he is entitled to be adequately 
 housed and nourished, to be kept in health, to be com- 
 forted and cared for in sickness, to be protected from 
 evil-doers. Hospitals to be the concern of the State 
 as much as the Army and the Navy. We decided that 
 it was the State's duty to keep people from drowning, 
 free, gratis and for nothing, and to protect children 
 and animals from cruelty. Lifeboat Saturdays and 
 Societies for the Prevention of This, That and the 
 Other appeared to us to be reflections upon the 
 State. If it be desirable that an evil be restrained, 
 restraint to be the business of the State and not of 
 private enterprise. We held it to be the duty of the 
 community to keep its members reasonably amused, 
 to supply them with drink in wholesome and adequate 
 quantity, to teach and educate them, to convey them 
 whithersoever they desire to go, to provide them with 
 opportunities for holiday-making on the largest possible 
 scale, the whole at moderate prices. We held the 
 provision of the essentials of existence at a reasonable 
 charge to be the affair of the commonwealth, the em- 
 bellishment of life that of private enterprise. We 
 contemplated with horror illegitimacy and prostitution, 
 and with pity the fate of the children and the women. 
 I think we were entirely free from heat or moral in- 
 dignation and, I hope, from priggishness. " This thing 
 is so ; what is the country to do about it ? " seemed
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 205 
 
 to us the only legitimate question. We even drew up 
 an elaborate scheme of toleration which did not include 
 the maison tolirSe but which did provide some measure 
 of alleviation and an asylum against the too wretched 
 end. 
 
 Oh, we had an eye on practicability and safeguards. 
 Westrom had expressed a fear lest we should be en- 
 couraging vice, 
 
 " That's the old parrot-cry," exclaimed Rodd. 
 " Let's do nothing to mitigate the consequences, lest 
 we be thought to encourage the evil. You might just 
 as well say that State orphanages are an inducement 
 to parents to conunit suicide." 
 
 " What I am principally anxious about," Westrom 
 urged, " is that we shouldn't go too fast. All progress 
 that is to be permanent has got to take the people 
 with it and must necessarily be slow. As good 
 Socialists we ought to want the people to make 
 their own laws. Consequently all law-giving can 
 only keep pace with what the people want and 
 want so badly that they insist upon it. We must 
 be lenient if the law lags behind a little so as to 
 be on the safe side," 
 
 " Safe side ! " cried Rodd bitterly. " Oh, God, as 
 if all failure isn't made up of leaning to the safe side ! 
 What are we all here except safe-siders ? Look at 
 ]\Iarston battening on his uncle, Ransom licking Strum- 
 bach's boots when he ought to be telling the old man 
 to go to hell. Look at me selling E strings and Won't 
 you Buy my Pretty Flowers, and ' selecting ' tawdry 
 rubbish for half-starved music-teachers because I 
 haven't got the pluck of the match-seller and the cab- 
 tout. Because I won't turn out and risk it. I verily
 
 206 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 think those seedy individuals who show you round 
 Port Said and blackmail you for the rest of your life 
 are worthier of respect than I am. At least they arc 
 doing tlie best that is in them and I certainly am not 
 doing the best that is in me." 
 
 There was a note of rhetoric about this which pre- 
 vented it from being really moving, though later events 
 proved there was more of sincerity about Rodd than 
 we gave him credit for at the time. Nobody spoke for 
 a few moments and then Westrom again took up the 
 thread. 
 
 " Under the old individualist regime the tip was to 
 educate the men at the top, whicli is an almost im- 
 possible feat. They come down from the Universities 
 with a veneer on them. I prefer to call it a crust. It 
 is certainly a coating wiiich lasts their time and which 
 can never be penetrated. I believe the only thing to 
 do is to educate the men at the bottom. Get them to 
 want and to insist upon good laws and we'll get good 
 laws passed." 
 
 "All reasonable Socialists," said Curt, standing up 
 and blushing very red, " would not talk so much about 
 their so rotten laws. They would choose one big 
 man and say to him ' Govern us.' So. I am only any 
 rotten German but we Germans have progressed in 
 spite of our Socialists. Strumbach is not a wicked 
 man, but he is a very powerful one. You say Might 
 is not Right. I say he is, and that Right is a fool if 
 he does not get Might on his side also. So long as your 
 Socialist wants his country to be weaker than any other 
 country, so long does the boot go on his neck. That 
 counti-y will be greatest in Europe which is all socialist 
 inside but which wants to be the greatest outside also.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 207 
 
 You have too many liiberals in England and not enough 
 SociaHsts. This is perhaps not EngUsh sense I am 
 talking, but it is certainly German sense. I trust 
 honourable members will excuse my so rotten speech. " 
 
 He clicked his heels and sat down. We applauded 
 and drank his health boisterously. 
 
 In the matter of sex we looked very largely to 
 Westrom, who was married, and to Rodd, who had come 
 across it in Balzac ; the experiences of the rest of us 
 having been, I suppose, largely of the furtive order. 
 Claud was full of theories about the peril and the 
 glamour of the woman of thirty. 
 
 " In other words," remarked Westrom, " you want 
 a brave excuse for abandoning a woman as soon as 
 you are tired of her. I admit it must be tremendous 
 fun to be a rake ; but I haven't any doubt that marriage 
 with companionship and children is finer. I submit 
 that the pursuit of women is not good enough if it is 
 to be a lark and no more ; tolerable only on condition 
 that the women can be hurt. I have more sympathy 
 with the fellow who seduces a village maiden in natural 
 fashion, provided he behaves with any sort of humanity 
 afterwards, than with your habitual blackguard. In 
 either case he should be man enough to shoulder his 
 responsibilities. I fancy that the thoughts of Don 
 Juan in the poem must have been blacker than his 
 mantle. I don't mean that he was worrying about the 
 moral issue, but that he must have had a feeling of 
 emptiness, of smallness, a friitering sense like that of 
 the gambler who has lost his all in petty stakes and 
 has never had the thrill of the really big throw. I agree 
 that chastity in itself is no better than silence or 
 motionlessness or any other negation that may be a
 
 208 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 virtue on occasion. Passionate love comes to an end. 
 We've got to change, to mellow into something with 
 passion in its bones. All life that is worth living, and 
 love is a part of life, is a matter of plodding, of keeping 
 on when you are tired and long after you are tired. 
 Even Claud will admit that the great artist is not 
 without his terrible moments of exhaustion and lack 
 of confidence. And yet he plods. I admit I am a 
 Puritan." 
 
 " Es fallt kein Meister von Hinimel," said Curt. 
 
 " Exactly. And neither do lovers fall from heaven," 
 Westrom replied with an air of finality. " Being a 
 good lover is thundering hard work." 
 
 But Rodd was not to be put off. 
 
 " I'm not sure that we mean the same thing," he 
 said. " What Westrom is talking about sounds to 
 me uncomfortably like a German life force. All this 
 toughening and bracing is a dull job. I want a woman 
 to turn to when I've done my work, and I don't want 
 to talk to her about my work. I want distraction. 
 The role of husband seems to me to be rather ridi- 
 culous." 
 
 " You got that from Vronsky in Anna Karenina,'' 
 said Curt. 
 
 " But what of the women ? " Westrom insisted. 
 " Are they content to be looked upon as distractions ? 
 Suppose they were to use us for their amusement ? " 
 
 " They do," said Rodd, " only you won't see it and 
 daren't admit it. There's a magnificent passage in one 
 of Balzac's letters to Madame Hanska in which he 
 criticises his own Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan. 
 He says that the story is the greatest comedy of morals 
 — morals, mind you, not manners — in existence ;
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 209 
 
 that the subject of a woman of thirty-seven lying Hke 
 a Trojan to convince her fourteenth lover of her virtue 
 belongs to all countries and all times. The crux of 
 the thing, he says, was to justify the lies by the force 
 of the woman's passion, and I don't think that either 
 Balzac or Diana bothered their heads about 'companion- 
 ship with children.' He calls the story a mastei-piece 
 and one of the diamonds of his crown." 
 
 " I won't deny that Balzac is a good witness for 
 you," said Westrom. " He's the sort of ton weight 
 which shows the way the wind was blowing in his 
 time. Now I have admitted I am a Puritan, but 
 I don't want you fellows to take me for a lean and 
 desiccated St Anthony. As Bunthorne says, ' there's 
 more innocent fun in me than a casual spectator 
 might imagine.' " 
 
 Most of our discussions resolved themselves into a 
 set duel between Westrom and Rodd, and the fore- 
 going is typical. As far as our Socialism went the 
 mould in which we formed ourselves was more or less 
 permanent. We were young then and liked nothing 
 better than to burn our boats. I have two letters 
 which show that Rodd at least never wavered in his 
 belief in the communal spirit and the supreme fitness 
 of the people for self-government : 
 
 " Let me call your attention to two leaders in our 
 "precious party journals. The Thunderer denounces 
 "the Prime Minister's dilatoriness and points out that 
 " nothing has been done this session. The Morning 
 " Warrior calls fiercely for a dissolution and says that 
 " further activity under the Prime Minister means 
 "disaster to the Conservative Party for some time to
 
 210 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " come. What are the Tories coming to when their 
 " faithful watchdogs bark Hke this ? 
 
 " Did you read the Prime Minister's amusing speech 
 " last night ? I always thought, and I find from Dicey 
 " that I am correct, that the Septennial Act was an 
 " act to prevent a Government from stopping in power 
 " for a longer period than seven years, not to enable 
 " it to stop in vmtil seven years have expired. The 
 " Prime Minister's speech shows either an inveterate 
 ' ' disinclination or a hopeless inability to interpret his 
 "authorities correctly. It is difficult to suppose that 
 " he does not understand the difference between an 
 " ' enabling ' and a ' disabling ' statute. He has only 
 " to ask his law officers. His other precedents are 
 " entirely misleading and remind one of Chamberlain. 
 " I suppose it is impossible in English politics for a 
 " man to attain to the highest office under the Crown 
 " without considerable force of character, and that 
 " every Prime Minister we have had for a hundred 
 "years has firmly believed his remaining in office to 
 " be essential to the safety and welfare of the country. 
 
 Mr Gladstone appears to have held this view with 
 
 greater persistence than anybody else, but no matter. 
 
 Presumably, therefore, there is no little astuteness 
 " or trick of debate, self-deception or hoodwinking of 
 "the enemy to which a highly principled minister will 
 " not descend and feel justified in descending to keep 
 "his country from the abyss. This granted, what a 
 ' ' game party politics become ! 
 
 " The Prime Minister's reference to Gladstone's re- 
 " fusal to resign after a defeat on a snaj) division is 
 " quite in point or would be, did he not oniil the point, 
 " which is that Gladstone offered to resign if the 
 
 (I 
 
 ((
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 211 
 
 *' Tories were prepared to come in. This they 
 " refused. Gladstone then said : ' Very well, if you 
 " don't come in why should I go out ? ' and refused 
 " to go to the country. But even then he afterwards 
 "said he was wrong in not going to the country. 
 
 "The Prime Minister quotes as a precedent the 
 " very case most favourable to his opponents ! Does 
 "he really need to be told that the true test as to 
 " whether a Prime Minister should stay in power is 
 "not whether he can, by beating up his forces and 
 " muzzling the newspapers, command a majority, but 
 "whether he honestly believes that he has the con- 
 "fidence of the country ? It is the people who choose 
 " the Government and not the House of Commons. 
 
 " If after a defeat in the House a Government can 
 " still maintain a majority, and if the leader honestly 
 " believes he has the confidence of the country then 
 " he may be justified in stopping in. If either essential 
 "is absent then he is not justified. As to the old 
 "argument about endangering the peace of Europe 
 "by a change of Government and the certainty of 
 *' the Liberals giving away the Empire to Germany in 
 " handfuls, what utter nonsense it is ! And dangerous 
 "nonsense too. If the Tories can put forward such a 
 " plea, so could the Liberals in like circumstance. Im- 
 " agine a Liberal Government engaged in a European 
 "war and making the usual mess of things. Defeated 
 "in the House they could calmly point to the Tory 
 " precedent and say : ' We refuse to go out because 
 " of the precarious condition of foreign politics.' 
 
 " I take it that no politician is entitled to use an 
 "argument which in the mouth of an opponent would 
 " honestly seem to him to be a menace to his country's
 
 212 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 (( 
 
 welfare. It may be that under such ruling as this the 
 " game of party politics would come to an end. I do 
 " not think that this would be a grave matter. . . ." 
 
 The second letter was written some three days before 
 his death, during the great Gemian offensive of 
 March. 1918. It runs : 
 
 " Some starveling, some dried neat's-tongue, some 
 tailor's yard, some sheath, some bow-case, some vile 
 standing-tuck — what the devil is this ? — of a political 
 ass has been getting on to his hind legs and braying. 
 He says with reference to the demands of appellants 
 under the Military Service Act to be legally repre- 
 sented before the tribunals, that ' the question is one 
 of human life J' I read further that the statement 
 was received with general cheering. Neither the 
 fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more 
 riotous appetite than our public fools to their folly. 
 You will gather that I am in something of a fury. 
 Of course it is a question of human life, in the sense 
 that every issue before a nation at war is ultimately a 
 question of human life. In any civilised community 
 all lives belong to the State always ; it is only during 
 a war that our sodden wits are able to apprehend 
 this. To-day the life of every man, called up or not, 
 belongs to the State — even the Germans know that 
 — and the determining factor before the tribunals is 
 not human life but communal usefulness. 
 
 " The lawyer should be called in, not by the appellant 
 and for the usual purpose of confusing the issue, but 
 
 by the State and the appellant acting together, and 
 in cases where there is genuine difficulty in deciding
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 213 
 
 'whether a man is hkely to serve his country better 
 ' as a soldier or as a 'bus-conductor. To suggest that 
 ' legal aid should be employed on behalf of an appellant 
 ' as against the State is to assume the worst type of 
 ' embusquS, or traitor if you like it better. Of course, 
 ' a statement that the question is one of communal 
 ' usefulness would not have roused a single cheer, even 
 'in the House of Commons. Neither the public nor 
 'its representatives have budged an inch during the 
 ' last twenty years in their attitude of indifference to 
 ' the communal question. Politicians go on v>ith their 
 ' individualist prattle, and audiences to use about one 
 ' fiftieth of the intelligence with which it is polite to 
 ' credit them. I doubt whether we humans have as 
 ' many brains as the animalculge in a pond. God must 
 ' use an enormous microscope to perceive us ! " 
 
 § iv 
 
 But all our meetings were not cast in sombre mood. 
 More cheerful was the one at which it was decided 
 that Ransom should leave Strumbach's. We had by 
 this time established a code of procedure. Each 
 monthly meeting was convened with a definite object 
 and the " Strumbach " dinner was called to decide : 
 first, which were the two best lines of English poetry ; 
 second, whether we would admit to the cinacle young 
 Oscar Krauss, son of the mayor and a wealthy youngster 
 with some intellectual pretensions ; and third, what 
 to do about Ransom and his employer. I shall take 
 these matters in their proper order. But first you 
 must know that at each meeting members were 
 expected to bring to the notice of the society the
 
 214 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 bourgeois enormities detected by them since the 
 previous meeting. It will be noted that we managed 
 to combine with our Socialism a very fine brand of 
 aristocratic scorn. 
 
 Reinecke had been at pains to explain to us the 
 meaning of a word partly Jewish partly Hamburg 
 slang, which stands for all errors of taste and tact, all 
 pretentiousnesses, stupidities, fussinesses, effusivenesses, 
 vulgarities, the whole caboodle of German emphasis 
 soever — the word kemach. Nearly all Germans, ex- 
 plained Reinecke, are kemach ; their mental furniture, 
 like that of the boarding-house mantelshelf, is one 
 colossal kemach. The luggage with which our friend 
 had set out from Germany had included a dress- 
 shirt embroidered with forget-me-nots and a motto. 
 This atrocity worn at our first meeting was then and 
 there torn off its owner's back and cremated. The 
 whole Victorian era was one huge kemach, we had 
 agreed. The word eluded Westrom, whereas the rest of 
 us shivered at the mere thought that we might in the 
 remotest way be affected with the mysterious taint. 
 An album was instituted for the recording of all 
 authenticated instances of the kemach, and w^e found 
 in the daily press our happiest hunting-ground. 
 
 On the night of the Strumbach dinner Curt led 
 off. 
 
 A yoimg music-hall star seeing an alleged photograph 
 of herself " in diaphanous attire " displayed for sale 
 had written : 
 
 " Other actresses being equally injured with myself, 
 I feel it urgent that I should take action. That we 
 sliould have the good fortune to stand well with the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 215 
 
 public is no reason why we should be represented as 
 having posed before the camera in nightdresses or 
 other indecorous garb.''' 
 
 This was solemnly accorded a place in the register. 
 Ransom then rose, crimson with pleasure. He had 
 bagged the following : — 
 
 " It was at the conclusion of the play, when the hero 
 and heroine were locked in a tender embrace, that the 
 act-drop refused to work. Long the lovers stood. At 
 last, realising the situation, they separated, bowed low 
 and withdrew. The safety curtain then took the place 
 of his ornate hut more capricious sister.''' 
 
 To this also were accorded the honours of per- 
 petuity. 
 
 I followed with an account of a duchess who had 
 eloped 
 
 ''''without impedimenta save a few serviceable jewels.'' 
 
 This was the best I had been able to find and I was 
 grieved that it was turned down. 
 
 " I've got you all stiff," said Rodd, jumping to his 
 feet. " I've discovered the most colossal kemach since 
 — he hesitated for a worthy comparison— since our 
 great Queen was scandalised at the presentation of 
 ' Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt et son fits.' " He 
 pulled out of his pocket what appeared to be a copy 
 of a musical paper. 
 
 " Look at this," he shouted, waving the thing in the 
 air, " it's this week's copy of The High CI" His voice 
 dropped to the hush of awe as he read, after the 
 manner of one reciting a miracle ;
 
 21 C RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " A composer's tonnage varies with the music. For 
 instance Chopin's Polonaise in A flat has a passage 
 which takes two minutes to play. During these two 
 minutes the total pressure brought to bear on the keys 
 is equal to three tons. It would not, however, be safe 
 to base a general estimate on these figures as Chopin has 
 many passages which require the greatest delicacy of 
 execution. The weight of an hour's playing of this 
 composer varies from twelve to as much as eighty-four 
 tons." 
 
 And he sat down with a beatific smile. 
 
 Bissett rose, bowed gravely to Claud, and called for 
 a magnum of champagne. 
 
 " It shall be suitably honoured," he said. " Gentle- 
 men, charge your glasses. I give you Chopin's 
 tonnage ! " 
 
 We drank the toast in silence and then Claud with a 
 little hj'sterical laugh hurled his glass into the fireplace. 
 We all followed suit except of course Westrom, and 
 then Reinecke, weeping on Claud's shoulder, led him 
 round the room in a slow, bear-like waltz. 
 
 " Himmel," he said, " it is enough to run about the 
 trees. The man who wrote that is no ordinary kemach. 
 I enjoy him famously." 
 
 Comparative quiet being restored, a discussion was 
 then entered upon as to whether you could wear away 
 a rose by smelling it, a tree by looking at it, or an 
 orchestra by listening to it with millions of ears. For 
 half-an-hour brilliant if false analogies were adduced 
 in sufficient quantity to have carpeted a field. Next 
 we fell to decision of the boyish question as to the two 
 finest lines in English poetry.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 217 
 
 Ransom led off with 
 
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 
 
 from Ulysses. 
 
 Westrom was urgent on behalf of : 
 
 O ! how shall summer's honey breath hold out 
 Against the wrackful siege of battering days. . . . 
 
 " There's no moral issue there, anyhow," he said, 
 I fancied a trifle wistfully. 
 I wanted the familiar : 
 
 Write loyal cantons of contemned love. 
 and 
 
 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills, 
 
 but thej^ were ruled out on account of the intervening 
 line. Other suggestions I forget, just as I forget which 
 wav the verdict went. 
 
 Young Krauss's application to be admitted as a 
 chosen spirit caused us some heart-searching. 
 
 " What's he done to be admitted ? " asked Rodd. 
 
 " What's he done to be refused ? " countered Westrom. 
 
 Bissett recalled the incident of a cousin of his who had 
 been elected to the Oriel Club, for which the essential 
 quahfication was literary or artistic eminence, on the 
 ground that he had played half-back for Scotland. 
 
 " Why not set him a test-paper ? " asked Ransom. 
 " Not the ordinary stuff that crammers want, but a 
 paper to find out what his type of mind is — whether 
 he's our sort, in fact. It won't matter if he answers 
 all wrong ; the point is how he shapes."
 
 218 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 We joyfully agreed and proceeded then and there 
 to draw up the paper. Fortunately I still have the 
 menu card on the back of which I made notes of the 
 twelve questions. Tt would take too long to set forth 
 the intricate arguments for and against each poser, and 
 it is perhaps unnecessary to specify their individual 
 sponsors. I will content myself with the list : 
 
 1. Are rabbits granted an extraordinary number of 
 young as compensation for being an easy prey, or is 
 their destruction in large numbers a direct consequence 
 of there being so many of theiiGi ? 
 
 2. All life is, au fond, at once sensual and moral. 
 Discuss this. 
 
 3. Madame Vauquer was nie—vfhaX ? 
 
 4. What English monarch was the most unconscion- 
 able time living ? 
 
 5. The bot-fly lays her eggs on the hairs of horses' 
 legs. The horse licks its legs and swallows the eggs, 
 which next appear in the form of grubs in the animal's 
 hide, whence they hatch out. Flowers are fertilised 
 by the pollen which clings to the feet of the bee in 
 search of food. Compare the felicity of these arrange- 
 ments with the ingenuity of the human marriage 
 settlement. 
 
 6. Have trees a future life ? 
 
 7. He that will not work neither shall he eat. 
 Connect this with the House of Lords. 
 
 8. You are walking along a lonely road in India 
 with a native servant. The boy picks up an object 
 which you take to be a diamond of greater value than 
 the Koh-i-noor, and which he refuses to sell. How 
 w ould you dispose of the body ?
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 219 
 
 9. What in your opinion has a man to Hve for who 
 has made as much money as he wants and who lias 
 seen his sons estabhshed and his daughters married ? 
 
 10. What would you do with a million pounds ? 
 
 11. How would you propose to spend eternity ? 
 
 12. Write a short essay justifying your existence. 
 
 Young Krauss made the mistake of not taking the 
 paper seriously. He returned flippant answers and 
 was cast back into the outer darkness. 
 
 The main business of the session was heralded when 
 Bissett, rapping for silence, said : " Now then, Arthur, 
 tell us all about it." 
 
 Ransom hesitated, then began : " Well, you fellows, 
 it's like this. I can't stand Strumbach any longer. 
 I don't mind his lying and thieving, his little red eyes, 
 his vulgar generosity. He's a successful man and 
 they're his trade-marks. But he's getting hold of me, 
 he's making his life mine, and I can't bear it." He 
 paused for a moment and went on : "I feel that I'm 
 being caught in the wheels of some terrible machine, 
 the machine called greed. Greed is the one ice-cold 
 thing in hell and it's numbing me. It's terrible to 
 have to live with it. It freezes up everything that 
 makes your soul your own. Then there are times 
 when I feel that I am being devoured by some giant 
 spider. Every time I go down to that awful warehouse 
 I feel the darkness closing over me, literally. I'm 
 always last in my room ; I brood so during the day 
 that I get behind with my work. To-night when I 
 left the office I was the last except for a lot of pale-faced 
 boys copying letters when they ought to have been 
 playing cricket. They will be there till ten. Often
 
 220 RESPONSIBIIJTY 
 
 when I'm all alone except for these fellows copying, 
 ugly little spirits come out from behind the piles, and 
 leer and gibber at me. No one sees them, but they're 
 there. And then I think of Strumbach and I can't 
 see his face. I only know that it looks at me from his 
 desk in the dark and that his mouth is restless and 
 wet and slavers at me. Or he will creep up behind me 
 with that stealthy tread of his and put his soft hand on 
 my shoulder. And I can feel his polished nails dig into 
 my flesh and I turn round and there's no one there." 
 
 " Steady," said Westrom. 
 
 " It's my job to devil for Strumbach, to tell lies 
 for him, to bear false witness to order. When he has a 
 customer it's to me that he turns for corroboration. 
 ' Didn't ve pay sevenpence for zis ? ' he will say, and 
 I shall stammer and blush and try to forget it cost 
 fivepence. It is always on these occasions that I feel 
 the old man's power over me. There's something 
 fascinating about his small, astute eyes ; they're like 
 the eyes of a rogue elephant. I think he hypnotises 
 me and his customers too. At least they never notice 
 my hesitation, and perhaps I don't hesitate. The old 
 man will stand there, venerable, patriarchal, with one 
 hand round his customer's neck and the other pawing 
 the poor fool's face, until I give an answer. He has a 
 little red devil^ — nobody sees it but me — which stands at 
 his elbow and jogs it whenever his patron is in danger 
 of forgetting something. He's wonderful, I tell you. 
 When he's in the full passion of selling, a blue flame 
 encircles him, comes up from between the floor-boards 
 and casts a glare over him. Strumbach is evil but 
 great. There's not a merchant in Manchester who 
 wouldn't be Strumbach if he could. He's so real, so
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 221 
 
 earnest, so devoid of affectation, like all the men of his 
 race ! You can see his ancestors on the temple steps. 
 Put Strumbach among them with a little table and a 
 few shekels and he wouldn't waste time thinking about 
 the Eastern sky and the incongruity of it all. He'd be 
 selling. I don't believe Christ would have dared to 
 overturn his table." 
 
 And the outburst over, Ransom put his head down 
 and we saw his shoulders shake. 
 
 " But what do you want us to do ? " Westrom asked 
 after a pause. 
 
 The boy lifted his head. 
 
 " I want you to help me to pluck up courage and to 
 tell no more lies. I want not to be a coward, to recover 
 my self-respect, to do honourable work and be paid 
 for honourable work." 
 
 " The rate's low," said Rodd, " Better go navvying. 
 What exactly is it that has brought you to this pitch ? 
 Haven't you known for years that you can't serve both 
 God and Strumbach ? " 
 
 " Nothing in particular has happened," replied 
 Ransom. " It's the drop of water and the wearing 
 away of the stone, I suppose. I've been selling all 
 the afternoon to a loud-voiced, ill-mannered German 
 — the worst sort. Strumbach was behind me and his 
 mere presence reduced me to such a state of terror that 
 at last I sold a lot of cloth which we haven't got and 
 can't possibly buy. Sooner or later I shall have to 
 make a clean breast of it to the old man. But that 
 isn't all. We've been putting Hegner and Brandt's 
 registered stamp on our goods and trusting to luck not 
 to be found out. The l^oat containing our last ship- 
 ment met with an accident and has had to put back
 
 222 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 to Liverpool. The whole cargo is damaged and the 
 insurance people are selling the stuff for what it'll 
 fetch. I've got to go down to the docks to-morrow 
 and buy up all the piece-goods. The old man daren't 
 risk any of them coming back on the market, even to 
 the fent-dealers." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Well, I just want the stuff to come back, and I want 
 the old man to get hit and hard hit. It's the chaince 
 of a lifetime. It means the sack for me, of course." 
 
 *' You can't have it both ways," said Bissctt. " You 
 can't both want to get free and be frightened of the 
 sack at the same time." 
 
 " Oh, can't you ? " threw in Rodd. " I knew a man 
 who went out to buy a pistol to shoot himself with 
 and was so upset on finding that he had walked 
 under a ladder that he put it off to a more auspicious 
 occasion." 
 
 " It's not getting the sack that worries me. Of 
 course I must go to Liverpool. So long as I am 
 Strmiibach's servant I must obey orders." 
 
 Westrom nodded. 
 
 " I'm thinking of plucking up enough courage to 
 give him notice as soon as I get back. I want you 
 fellows to advise." 
 
 So we went into committee. 
 
 We elicited from Ransom that he had no ties of any 
 sort and a hundred and seventy pounds in the bank. 
 
 " Enough to live on for two years," said AVestrom. 
 
 " Three," said Rodd ; ' I've done it." 
 
 We looked to Westrom. 
 
 " Well," he said slowly, " it comes to this. Here is a 
 fellow getting three hundred and fifty a year, has what
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 223 
 
 you'd call good prospects and is profoundly unhappy. 
 If he had old parents or a wife and family I do not 
 say that it would not be his duty to bear with un- 
 happiness. We don't all suffer misery, perhaps, but 
 most of us have to put up with a verj'- middling kind 
 of bliss. Now Ransom has no need to put up with 
 an} thing. He is at perfect liberty to develop into a 
 great artist, a magnificent criminal or any one of the 
 stupendous things that bring wretchedness in their 
 train. Ransom wants to be an artist ; he is sure of the 
 zeal and the ardour but hesitates as to the ability. 
 He's frightened for his bread and butter. Am I 
 right ? " 
 
 Ransom nodded. 
 
 " Very well, then. He has as many years or months 
 as a hundred and seventy pounds will go into to find 
 out whether he has ability and persistence. If he fails 
 he'll be miserable, but then he is going to be miserable 
 anyhow. I give it as my opinion that no man ever 
 made a throw with so little risk. In fact, it isn't 
 glorious enough. It's nearly sane, and I expect that 
 will take some of the edge off for you high- flyers." 
 
 And so it was settled. 
 
 Sti-umbach made no difficulty at all about Ransom's 
 leaving, insisting only that he should go at once. He 
 would have no half-servants, as he called them, their 
 minds elsewhere, their bodies still drawing his pay. 
 The boy told us that the old man put his arm round 
 his neck and led him gently down the stairs. 
 
 " Business, he was never cut out for you. I saw that 
 long ago, bot I never discharge anybody even though 
 I haf made a mistake. My boy, I vish you all successes. 
 Ven you are a big man already, you shall baint my
 
 224 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 bortrait. Und if you haf need of Strumbach till then 
 is he not always here ? So ! " 
 
 And with that he gently pushed his clerk through the 
 big door and into the sunlit street. 
 
 When Ransom came to himself he found that he was 
 holding in his hand a fifty-pound note. 
 
 §v 
 
 And now I must tell about Clare at the price of 
 recalling old humiliations. I know nothing more tragic 
 than for the cloud-capped towers and solemn temples 
 which are youth's passion to fade into thin and less 
 than thin remembrance. I will not have it that the 
 first meetings of lovers are only the senses' stir. I 
 will not have it, most passionately will I not have it, 
 that my ardour for Clare Tremblow was not in the 
 beginning a fine thing. I was content to touch the 
 hem of her dress, her hand ; I was prepared for the 
 lover's abasements and humilities. Once more I must 
 suppose this to be a part of Nature's cunning. For 
 those whom passion does not affright she lays her 
 lustiest snare ; for those who would refine life to an 
 abstraction she weaves a more delicate lure. It is the 
 normal commonplace that love must take its stand on 
 the eternal, your mistress's hand smell of immortality. 
 It is the weaklincf refiner who insists on the trick of 
 spirituality. I could ransack the poets to prove that 
 the monstruositv in love, as Troilus has it, is indeed 
 that the will is infinite and the performance limited, but 
 in a more ethereal sense than that rude hero's. Agreed 
 that " love is not love which alters when it alteration 
 finds." Agreed, passionately, since the change is in
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 225 
 
 the beloved alone. Your true needle is constant to the 
 pole howsoever the pole change ; it is the lover who 
 should beware his proper flaw. I could descant at 
 length upon the now stale and little remarkable theme, 
 the descent through rapture to habit. Let us lighten 
 the misery of that grey decline with the recognition 
 that at least they were heights from which we fell. 
 I am not disposed to pour scorn on those eager victims 
 of the constant tumble, for ever picking themselves up 
 and for ever falling. Some there are who have the very 
 devil's knack of falling out of love, and the measure 
 of their disillusion is the measure of their renewed hope. 
 Every true lover knows that pressure of living which is 
 higher than the normal. The air he breathes is rarer, 
 the blood is wine in his veins. He is a martyr demand- 
 ing a slower fire, a fanatic insisting that the sun be 
 brought nearer his lidless eyes. He is in ecstasy, 
 and it is this ecstasy and not the baser satisfactions 
 which are passion's real stir. What I am driving at is 
 that there was beauty in my relationship to Clare. 
 
 To beffin with she was called not Clare but Clara — 
 a name for which I have nearly as great a detestation 
 as for Cora. Cora belongs essentially to a Red Indian's 
 squaw, though I know not to what jumble of childish 
 reading I may attribute this. Clara is the middle- 
 aged Englishwoman, with sharp inquisitorial eye and 
 hair strained to a knot. The Gadgetts, Twinneys and 
 Limpkins of this world are called Clara. This is not an 
 insanity ; there is a philosophy of names. Who could 
 conceive a Rosalind that was not straight as a peeled 
 wand, a Viola whose nose was less than tip-tilted, a Portia 
 who should use features other than those of Ellen Terry ? 
 The change from Clara to Clare — which is a beautiful
 
 226 RESPONSIBTLITY 
 
 name — was decreed the first evening I met her coming 
 from work in one of Manchester's dingiest suburbs. 
 Tliink you that heroines should all be dressed in silks 
 and satins ? I declare that my mistress shall be of the 
 class and wear the dress I say she shall. I remember 
 that she wore a straw hat none too trim and that she , 
 wore it a little to one side. The face under the hat ? 
 " Item, two lips, indifferent red ; Item, two grey eyes 
 M'ith lids to them." Oh, simple romancers who have 
 not learnt from your master and think you may befool 
 your readers into taking your woman at catalogue 
 value. I know whether I am pleased without a 
 detailed map of countenance. If red hair delights 
 me then shall Manon Leseaut be flame- coloured and 
 Emma Bovary too. Elizabeth Bennet and Lorna Doone, 
 insignificant La Valliere and most sad Tess. I am not 
 concerned with the particular prettiness of Clare, nor 
 even whether she would have pleased other eyes than 
 mine. To me she was beautiful, with a beauty of 
 the sombre, sullen order ; her hair raven-black and 
 rebellious. Her countenance showed a capacity for 
 immense resentment. 
 
 "Why don't you put your hat on straight?" I 
 asked, stopping dead in front of her and without any 
 of the common manoeuvring. 
 
 "Because I was too tired to bother," she replied 
 simply. She was in no way startled at the direct 
 address, and yet I had the feeling that it was the first 
 time that this had happened to her. I proposed that 
 we should stroll in a little park near by and listen to the 
 band. 
 
 " I haven't had my tea," she objected. 
 
 I took her to a pastrycook's and we made some
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 227 
 
 extraordinaiy meal. Then we walked slowly to the 
 park and sat down on an empty form and listened to a 
 police band — what the devil have the police to do with 
 music ? — and watched the dying sun set a last display 
 for our especial benefit. Slowly the fronts of the mean 
 houses surrounding the park turned to amber, and their 
 broken roofs to turquoise. You would have said the 
 sheen of pigeons' breasts. The cracked and dingy win- 
 dows, blind eyes in commonplace countenances, shone 
 with that glory of molten gold which is so rare a spec- 
 tacle of the town and the commonest property of 
 the sea. I have only to behold this ordinary miracle 
 in the westward-facing windows of preposterous 
 esplanades to bring back the memory of Clare, We 
 sat, and I held her hand unaffectedly and without 
 embarrassment. We watched the shadows lengthen 
 and the night grow violet. A hansom jingled past and 
 its bell was of purest silver. Lamps were lit for the 
 players in the bandstand and the world took on a 
 fairy quality. We said little ; there seemed so little 
 that need be said. The musicians were a trifle noisy, 
 but apart from them the world was very still . Suddenly 
 Clare shivered and stood up. 
 
 " I must be going," she said. 
 
 I did not delay her and she would not let me accom- 
 pany her beyond the gates. Then in answer to my 
 entreaty : " Yes, to-morrow if you like. At the same 
 time. But I shall have had my tea." 
 
 W' e shook hands and she went lightly away. 
 
 The following evening was wet beyond lovers' 
 possibilities, and also the next day. The third evening 
 saw me approaching the park gate with all a lover's 
 trepidations. Would she be there ? Might she not
 
 228 responstbit;ity 
 
 have been run over in the interval or attacked by 
 some disease ? And I pictured her in a workshop en- 
 tangled among wheels, and a thousand other tragedies. 
 So all young lovers. But none of these terrible things 
 had happened. 
 
 " That's two nights I've been wet through," she said 
 petulantly, and I had to make for my lesser courage 
 what apologies were possible. 
 
 We sat there till the stars came lazily out and long 
 after. There was no band — the police may not be 
 musical more than once a week — and we talked. I 
 do not remember that in three hours we said anytliing 
 of importance. I did not kiss her. After a time I 
 noticed that her hands were work-stained and her shoes 
 not too defiant of weather. She refused all word as 
 to where she worked and the nature of her work, 
 as to where she lived and what her family. She was 
 as silent about herself as a star or a flower. I was sure 
 that she was not a servant ; she lacked the pert coquetry 
 which is the badge of that sad tribe. She knew nothing 
 of manners but I swear she was not common. Just 
 as in this world you cannot have money without the 
 spurious coin, so you cannot have manners without 
 their counterfeit, which is conmionness. Clare was a 
 young savage and it was impossible for her to feign 
 a sentiment or to be other than her natural self. Her 
 frankness was complete and could be disconcerting. 
 
 I cannot help thinking it curious that I, with 
 my considerable knowledge of the most wide-awake 
 authors, should have been so much less aware of hfe 
 than this clear-eyed, iUiterate girl. Thanks to Rodd's 
 coaching I was supremely versed in the resent- 
 ment of the abandoned mistress ; I could have told
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 229 
 
 you how Gabriel-Jean-Anne-Victor-Benjamin- Georges- 
 Ferdinand- Charles-Edouard-Rusticoli de la Palferine 
 wiped his razors on some dancer's love letters ; I could 
 have reckoned to a hundred thousand francs the cost 
 to Nucingen of his passion for Esther ; could have made 
 it clear how Lucien hanged himself, but not for love. 
 I suppose there was not an intrigue in the Human 
 Corned V of which I was not aware down to the most 
 subtle of its ramifications. The brilliant Rastignac, 
 the super-dandy de Marsay and that magnificent 
 scoundrel Maxime de Trailles were never out of my 
 thoughts. And yet it was Clare and not I who had 
 an accurate understanding of the implications in which 
 we were soon to be involved. 
 
 Towards the end of September we discovered that 
 that particular summer's breath was not more likely 
 than any other to hold out against the siege of autumn. 
 More plainly, evenings began to fall chill and the police 
 to give themselves up wholly to policing. We took to 
 meeting at the humbler theatres of the town where I 
 gleaned what conviction in an actor may be, provided 
 his hearers be sufficiently simple. I learned that the 
 matter of these shocking plays — the shivering flower- 
 girl wrapped in her virtue and meagre shawl, the 
 starving urchin with the cut and bleeding feet, the 
 comic, kindly policeman — may be the very stuff of 
 life in the slums. I learned to see realism and not melo- 
 drama in that virtue whose choice is between chastity 
 and a meal. My passion for seeing life honestly dates 
 from this time, Clare was not afraid of the realism 
 of the slums and I was possessed with an immense 
 curiosity. We would walk hand in hand through the 
 lowest and most dangerous streets. Those who live in
 
 280 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the comfortable security of parlours know not what 
 life is. 
 
 It was in one of these tawdry, tenth-rate booths that I 
 heard the most remarkable of lines, a line never to be 
 bettered in the finest playhouses of the world. It was a 
 drama of Lancashire life. A stalwart stone-mason, 
 rousfh and honest in his corduroys, addressing a bundle 
 of poverty-stricken rags threw at her a ' My lass, 
 I've four pun' a week, and the missus thinks I'm getting 
 three. I doan't know as I want to have owt to do 
 wi' thee, but tha can have the odd 'un till summat 
 turns up." Whereupon the pretty wretch, sturdily : 
 " But I can't take it, John. I'm an honest lass. 
 I can't take it for nothing." 
 
 And I felt Clare tremble. 
 
 Surely the problem was magnificently stated. Alas 
 that the author had not the courage of his promise 
 and that the play petered out in evasion and shunning. 
 Since no melodramatic hero may keep pace with his first 
 fine careless quixotism nor villainously clinch a bargain, 
 so it seemed that the girl must hug her innocence and 
 starve. Luckily the stalwart's stumbling-block of a 
 wife died of consumption in the fifth act as a con- 
 sequence of having been unfaithful in the first, which 
 considerably eased the dramatist's path. But I have 
 never foro-otten the line. 
 
 With the approach of winter I noticed that Clare 
 began to look pinched and thin, that she did not wear 
 many changes of dress, and that if her cloak got wet 
 through one night it would still be wet the next. 
 She had, it seemed, no other. And I began to insist 
 upon a visit to the confectioner's every evening whether 
 she pretended to having had tea or not, and from time
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 231 
 
 to time I would slip small sums of money into the 
 pocket of her little jacket. One evening Clare faced me 
 suddenly and said : " This must stop, Ned ; I can't 
 go on taking your money. I'm as straight as the girl 
 in the play." 
 
 I do not remember that I made any answer. 
 
 It was difficult to find someone to talk to about Clare. 
 I avoided Westrom as one instinctively avoids those 
 good, unswerving natures whose warnings are repressive 
 and uncongenial. Equally I avoided Rodd as being too 
 brilliant a fellow to carry any serious moral ballast. 
 Bissett was too much the man of the world and Ransom 
 had gone. I had no other friends and so turned to 
 Reinecke. 
 
 " It is a so rotten thing to harm a girl," said Curt, 
 " and the Englishman is very much afraid of it. But 
 I am a German and Germans have an all-roundness 
 in their way of looking at things. It is bad to be 
 a girl's lover ; that makes miserable for her. It is 
 bad to marry her ; that makes foolish for us. Once 
 in Paris I dined with a Frenchman who had married 
 his mistress. He wanted to eat (Eufs a la Cocotte but 
 did not dare to order. No, you cannot marry her. 
 You must not see her any more. If Nature makes 
 the so stupid mistake of letting people fall in love out 
 of their class that is no reason why civilisation and cul- 
 ture should make mistakes also. There are countries 
 in which a man may have many wives and when he 
 has ennui he gives them food and money and puts 
 them on one side. Civilisation says that is wrong." 
 
 " A great poet has declared that we must love one 
 woman only and worship her through years of noble 
 deeds," I said fatuously.
 
 232 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " Then let Nature arrange that until you meet the 
 so wonderful woman with whom this miracle is possible 
 you meet no other pleasant and agreeable girl. I 
 knew once in Buenos Ayres a little French actress who 
 had been deserted by her manager. The swine had 
 run away with her money and she had now no engage- 
 ment to make more money with. She was too honour- 
 able to run about the streets and so she waited for le 
 hon Dieu to help her. I acted this person and paid 
 four hundred pesas to rescue the poor girl from the 
 hands of people who make much money out of this 
 kind of misfortune. I sent her back to Paris with her 
 fare paid and some money in the pocket. Now this 
 woidd be a beautiful story if Curt Reineckc had asked 
 nothing in return. I suppose if I had left her to 
 starve that would have been considered virtue," 
 
 " You would be kicked by any self-respecting man 
 for talking like this," I said. 
 
 " Any self-respecting man would kick himself for 
 speaking what he really thinks," retorted Curt. 
 
 The conversation did not make matters much clearer. 
 In the meantime my relations with Clare remained 
 unspoiled. 
 
 § vi 
 A letter from Claud Rodd : 
 
 20 Shufflebottom's Cross, 
 Crawley Bridge. 
 It is only the intellectually lost, my dear Ned, who 
 write letters because they have news. I have nothing 
 to say and am therefore full of matter.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 233 
 
 My present mood is veiy Balzacian. Le vieux 
 monsieur has me in his toils ; it is an awful thought 
 that there is nobody of the young generation who 
 knows am^hing about him except me. Your ignorance 
 is still pitiful ; you might almost be a Frenchman ! 
 Do vou think you could tell me what ultimately became 
 of Madame de Bau scant and by whom her house was 
 inhabited after her betrayal ? Do you know whom 
 Maxime de Trailles or Rastignac or Ajuda-Pinto 
 married ? I'm in the middle of Le DSputS cVArcis, 
 Charles Rabon's continuation is marvellous and there's 
 hardly a line to which one can point and say " That's 
 not Balzac ! " He has had the tact to fill up with some 
 of the lesser-known characters, le Comte et la Comtesse 
 de I'Estorade, Madame de Camps, MM, de Rhetore, 
 de Ronquerolles and others, which rounds off the 
 Comedy splendidly. And he resuscitates Vautrin out 
 of sheer daring. That arch-rou6 Maxime de Trailles 
 plays an immense part. He marries a young girl with 
 a dowry of over a million, which seems likely to be his 
 last achievement ; and we are told that on the news 
 of his marriage " son carrossier, son tailleur, enfin tous 
 ses crSanciers firent des illuminations ! " 
 
 I am, I think, more Balzacian now than at any former 
 time ; I do not remember ever to have been so Balzacian. 
 Your knowledge of him is superficial, mine fundamental. 
 You have an inkling of the general plan and the big 
 junctions of the Human Comedy ; what you don't 
 know is the inner workings, the small roadside stations, 
 and where Balzac's engine stopped to take up water. 
 If I fault him at all it is that he can never be less than 
 stupendous. He ranges the whole world but does not 
 move easily on the lower slopes. He can be sublime
 
 234 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 without acliieving tlio (graceful, and good honest fun 
 is at all times l)eyond him. But where he is unrivalled 
 is in his dissection of human folly. Take the divine 
 simplicity of Cesar Birotteau, the cunning imbecility 
 of Crevel, the crass stupidity of Bargeton and the 
 lovable absurdities of the old maid Rose Cormon. 
 '"'Mais, ma chere, c'est si naturel d' avoir des enfants.'''' 
 I shoidd sometimes be tempted to think that Balzac 
 despises, were it not that this is the one thing a great 
 mind may not do. I feel that he often lacks sympathy 
 and that in this respect he is more of a transcribing 
 machine than an artist. In fact, Balzac is not an artist 
 at all in the sense that art is selective. He is com- 
 prehensive, God in a world of his own creating. He 
 writes dowTi in the simplest way possible and with no 
 time for fine phrases the entire human animal, complete 
 in all it does and says down to the last shadow of a 
 thought that trembles for a moment at the back of the 
 creature's brain. He turns his subject completely 
 inside out, shows you its mental and moral intestines 
 and then packs him neatly up again, dismissing the 
 poor bewildered thing with a contemptuous pat on the 
 head. By the way I have been unfaithful to him lately 
 to the extent of re-reading Flaubert's VEducation 
 Senlimeniale. And yet despite my increasing admira- 
 tion for this book I am more than ever convinced that 
 Flaubert could not fill a large canvas. Just as I can 
 never write seriously upon any subject without sub- 
 merging ntyself fathoms below any possible meaning, 
 so Flaubert cannot leave a situation without so thor- 
 oughly engrossing you in the handling of it that you 
 forget the scene on which it is dependent and are 
 without curiosity as to the scene which is to come.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 235 
 
 But he has pages which never cloy, from which the last 
 drops of beauty will never be wrung. Read the 
 passage beginning '"'' Des femmes nonclialamment assises 
 dans les caleches.'"' Isn't this our Paris, our very own 
 Paris, Paris in our moods, never mind hers ? Balzac 
 had no time for such a sentence as " Madame Vatnaz 
 inangea a elle seiile le buisson d'ecrevisses, el les carapaces 
 sonnaienl sous ses longues dents.^' 
 
 I suppose the book is what stupid people would call a 
 sermon. Certainly I do not laiow how any man is 
 going to take to himself a mistress other than cynic- 
 ally after reading the account of Frederic's waning 
 passion for Rosanette. Ses paroles, sa voix, son sour ire, 
 tout vint d lui deplaire, ses regards surtout, cet ceil de 
 femme Hernelhnent limpide et ineple, mais tin gout 
 des sens dpre el bestial Ventrainail vers elle, illusions d'une 
 minute qui se resolvaient en haine. It's as discouraging 
 as the major prophets ! Neither Balzac nor Flaubert 
 are "good for people to read." The one excites to 
 madness, the other drugs to indifference. I sometimes 
 wonder whether other people besides ourselves make 
 more account of books than of life. Are we abnormal ? 
 I SAvear that Balzac has destroyed every vestige of any 
 moral sense I ever possessed. This is not the same 
 thing as saying that he is immoral, but rather that he 
 unfits you for the humdrum of life. What do I care 
 for anj^hing that can happen to me at Shufflebottom's 
 Cross so long as I have the surge and surf of the great 
 Pandemonium in my ears ? Enough for to-night. 
 Je te laisse pour la Marechale. Elle est enceinte. 
 
 Le boulevard Croix de Shufflebottoni avec ses lumihres^ 
 ses splendeurs, le va-et-vient de ses riches equipages, ses
 
 236 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 fenmies Stincelantes nonchalamment assises dans les 
 caleches, ses lions {ah, voild Monsieur le Vicomte Wall}' 
 de Buckley dans le four-wheeler de Madame la Marquise 
 de Runelles, nee Runnel tout court). C^est Id, mon cher, 
 la vie telle que nous Vavons rivee. Cet hotel-Id, le numero 
 vingt, entoure de toules ces richesses, merite d'itre connu. 
 La les diners superbes, le mutton-chop ou le rump- 
 steak suivi d^une bribe de fromage dit Cheshire, le Bass 
 d perdre la raison, les cigares a quatre sous. Ld rien 
 de vulgaire, rien de bourgeois, rien de comniun. Les 
 conversations sur la litterature, la peinture, la musique ; 
 les reunions d'aHistes, les causeries spirituelles et les 
 fines debauches — un salon, quoi ? Mais sur le boulevard, 
 c'est autre chose. Ld, la foule vomie des usines, des 
 workshops, des niille endroits otl Von gagne ce qu^on 
 appellc le spendin^-brass, la foule infecte parade dans 
 les rues puantes, Ld, on sent le fried-fish et les chips. 
 Ld, on entend les Chase-me ! des gens d shawl. 
 Quand vient la nuit on frole V amour impudique, denue 
 de poisie. . . . 
 
 Last night I had the temerity to draw my weary bones 
 to the theatre, unable to resist the promise of Aspasia, 
 Adapted from the famous French Novel of that name. 
 The hoardings foretold A Picture of Night Life in Paris. 
 It would have been indecent if it had not been farcical. 
 Never have I seen the Lancashire atmosphere so well 
 put on the stage as in this artless reaching out after 
 the French. The thing began with a Bal-masque (sic) 
 of which the principal figure was one calling herself 
 " La Pipotte — a loose woman." Aspasia herself re- 
 minded me of nothing so much as a fifth-rate Polly 
 Eccles. She was enormous. She appeared at the 
 top of a rickety staircase crowned with a wreath of
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 237 
 
 red paper roses with the device " Vive I'Amoor ! " {sic). 
 She wore red tights and a leopard skin with lace in- 
 sertions, the whole surmounted by a feather " boa." 
 Hoisted on to a wooden stool she recited a poem in 
 praise of love, after which the orgy began, the scent of 
 the crowd's Wild Woodbines lending additional charm 
 to the tourhillon de la danse. To use the word "crude " 
 in connection with the spoken lines is to expose the 
 poverty of the English language. I cite a gem or two. 
 
 " Ah, Aspasia, there's a woman for you ! What 
 arms, what legs, what a chest ! " 
 
 " Frailty thy name is Aspasia. What man has 
 ever possessed thee/or more than a fortnight at a stretch ! ' ' 
 
 And then the lover breaking out in allusion to the 
 infant mewling and puking in the earlier scenes. 
 
 " Is that bastard brat, fruit of your sold body, to 
 stick for ever in my gills ? " 
 
 ^^'llereat Shufflebottom's Cross whole-heartedly to 
 applaud. More life-force, you see. 
 
 There were other incredible things in connection 
 with the performance. My neighbour in the eighteen- 
 penny stalls spent the intervals and part of the play 
 itself in reading Lessing's DramatUrgie in German. 
 The pianist, tiring of trumpery waltz-tunes, struck into 
 a Brahm's Intermezzo, and once the monstrous Aspasia 
 said in tolerable French " Que la vie de province est 
 donctriste " ! 
 
 La piece terminee, on desce^id la rue d. present deserte. 
 Vivrogne se hate d'aller pirodiguer chez sa cherc epouse 
 les tendresses provoquees par le bottled stout. Deux chats, 
 un bobby et des amoureux tardifs, voild tout ce qui reste 
 debout. Les one-up-and-one-down, les villas, les semi- 
 detached enferment la population honnSte et abrutie.
 
 238 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 • 
 
 Allans, mon cher, montons le boulevard Croix de ShiifTle- 
 bottom. Oil a beau chercher les equipages, les holies, 
 les dandys. Le Vicomte Wally de Buckley est dejmis 
 longtemps coucM. II a son bellyful du Pale Ale. // 
 pousse des hoqueis, sans doule. Que Vair de sa chambre 
 doit etre lourd et sa tele glabre sur Voreiller horrible a 
 voir. . . . On cherche son latch-key, et on entre chez 
 soi. Dieu! que la vie de province est done irisie. . . . 
 
 § vii 
 
 Letters such as this were unsettling. Insensibly 
 I began to take less interest in thii.gs which were not 
 between the covers of books. I drifted further and 
 further from my family and Monica. I think now 
 that I must have neglected her shamefully, although 
 I did from time to time make an effort to keep in 
 touch with her. But in any case my neglect was not 
 worse than her parents'. I have often wondered what 
 fathers and mothers thought about their daughters in 
 those days, and I am reduced to the belief that they 
 did not think about them at all. A little music, a 
 little needlework, a little painting in water colour — 
 " a little " was the measure of the period. At nineteen 
 or thereabouts the half-educated, whollv ignorant 
 future mothers of the race put up their hair and " came 
 out." That is to say they attended some scores of 
 dances and informed some hundreds of young men 
 that they were fond of " a little " music and " liked " 
 concerts. And every year a certain number of them 
 took to themselves indifferently a houseful of furniture, 
 a husband and some eleventh-hour intimations. Those 
 who did not marry ? For them the most pathetic
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 239 
 
 destiny in the world, the destiny of the human beincf 
 which has not fulfilled its purpose. But Monica did 
 not bother her pretty head about destiny and it is 
 true that very few young men came to Oak wood. 
 Geoffrey had no friends and Claud on his one and only 
 visit quarrelled violently with my uncle on the subject 
 of English Opera, indulgence in which Claud proclaimed 
 to be a vice. Of Ransom, who had been an occasional 
 visitor, we still heard nothing, and the only others who 
 came near us were Westrom and Reinecke. Westrom 
 was tolerated because he was married. Curt because 
 my uncle hoped to glean from him some particulars 
 aboift Strmnbach's affairs. When Monica's education 
 or what passed for it was finished she devoted herself 
 with that quiet determination which she inherited from 
 her father to beautiful and unostentatious work amons 
 the poor of the parish, with such quiet effect that even 
 her proteges thought well of her. 
 
 In the early part of December Clare told me that she 
 had found evening work — she would not specify its 
 nature — and that henceforth we should only be able 
 to meet on Sundays. Anyone who knows the nature 
 of Sunday evening in the bosom of a provincial family 
 will realise that this meant for me embarkation upon a 
 mean and dexterous campaign of petty lying. I must 
 admit that I managed the hateful business with fair 
 success . Now one of the most formal of family festivals 
 in those days was the annual visit to the Christmas 
 pantomime, and in my uncle's family the rite was well 
 established. A few days before Christmas my aunt 
 at breakfast would call for the morning paper and 
 wonder audibly what the pantomime was going to be 
 like. Geoffrey and I would wonder too, and Monica
 
 240 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 would be quite sure that it was going to be a great 
 deal better than the previous year's. After a reasonable 
 amount of badgering my uncle would eonsent to the 
 principle of a visit and my aimt would stipulate for 
 stalls, fourth row and near the door, in case she should 
 feel faint. After the return from the theatre there wou Id 
 be supper with a glass of champagne to mark the occa- 
 sion, and my uncle would descant on the merits of the 
 principal l:)oy, my aunt on those of the dresses, and the 
 rest of us on the low comedians. On this year's occasion 
 I sat between my aunt and Monica. After the first 
 ])antering exchanges between a gentlemanly devil of 
 uncertain temper and a grandmotherly benefactress- 
 in-chief the drop went up for the first big set — the 
 market-place at Baghdad. And there, in the foremost 
 corner of the scene, with her hair in a pig-tail, her eyes 
 artificially lengthened and her little feet thrust into 
 tiny satin slippers stood my Clare in the likeness of a 
 Chinese boy. I asked my aunt for the glasses and my 
 hand trembled so violently that I could hardly hold 
 them. Monica dropped her glove and as we both 
 bent down she whispered : " Take care, Ned ; mother's 
 noticing." 
 
 So this was Clare's evening work ! As I watched her 
 little figure bend and sway to the common lilt of the 
 music, as I thrilled to her succeeding incarnations, 
 daintiest of horn-pipers, Riviera rose, white pearl of 
 the Pacific, I knew that I was insanely jealous of the 
 coarse contacts of the stage. It was kind of Fate that 
 it should be a Saturday evening and that I had there- 
 fore only one sleepless night before my impassioned 
 protest. 
 
 "But I can't give it up, Ned dear," she replied.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 241 
 
 " It's thirty shillings a week regular, more than ever 
 I've earned before. And I want the money." 
 
 Her eyes had the stubborn look in them which I 
 knew well, 
 
 " You shall have two pounds for every week it 
 lasts," I said bluntly 
 
 " I can't take it, Ned, I can't indeed, and it's no use 
 talking." 
 
 I do not contemplate a long account of that winter ; 
 I imagine that there is little that is new in the theme 
 men call infatuation. Enough that the dingy block 
 of stone with its insufficient foyer, its meagre staircase, 
 its photographs of Wilson Barrett as a dScollete Hamlet, 
 its faded reminiscences of simpering beauties long in 
 their graves became for me a palace of delight. I 
 learned to bribe doorkeepers and was initiated into 
 many tawdry mysteries. I became involved in trivial 
 rivalries and preposterous jealousies, discovered the 
 infinite niceties of theatrical grading. I will say this 
 for Clare — but what good thing might not I always 
 have said of her ? — that she indulged in none of those 
 calculated waywardnesses and artificial comings- on 
 which are the bane of that insincere world. I used to 
 lift her face to the wan light of the door-lamp and never 
 did I see on it trace of the hateful stage-paint. She 
 would scrub her cheek with her handkerchief for proof, 
 and always she put up her mouth as innocently as a 
 child. How pretty I found the little phrases she 
 learnt from the other girls, how quaintly, and how 
 trippingly they came from her lips. Did I insist upon 
 accompanying her beyond the prescribed street-end, 
 " Want will have to be your master," she would say. 
 Or when I gave her some little thing, " Your kindness
 
 242 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 exceeds your beauty." Or if I doubted her affection : 
 " I don't love you, do I ? Not till I start ! " These 
 little commonnesses, the staple of the chorus girl's wit, 
 did not jar on me then. I used to turn each phrase over 
 lingeringly and find evidence of a dainty, personal wit. 
 
 Shortly before Easter the run of the pantomime 
 finished, and on Easter Monday after a thousand 
 difficulties valiantly overcome I succeeded in persuading 
 Clare to make a little excursion to the sea. " For the 
 day," was straightforwardly stipulated and conceded. 
 It was a gorgeous morning. Leader-writers who are 
 accustomed to put a bright face on their readers' 
 poveity could honestly console such of them as had 
 been unable to afford to leave their homes with riotous 
 stories of daffodils coming before the swallow dares, 
 of crocuses blossoming on the window-ledge, with the 
 whole philosophy of inexpensive content. Clare and I 
 sat on the beach with the wind in our faces and the 
 salt on our lips. I suppose there is no simple common- 
 place to which we did not give expression, though I swear 
 I did not make use of any of the customary and time- 
 honoured wiles. I told her that she was part of the 
 salt wind, the dancing waves, the light-footed sunshine. 
 I remember catching myself up at the hackneyed word 
 and substituting something rarer. I rang the changes 
 on the well-worn theme of Jessica and Lorenzo, and 
 told her of Troilus and Cressida, Dido and ^neas, 
 Antony and Cleoj^atra and half a score of royal lovers 
 whose meagre passions I compared unfavourably with 
 our own. 
 
 " It's a pity about them, isn't it? " said Clare, and 
 for the first time I noticed that the phrase was one 
 which she had used on a hundred occasions. Suddenly
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 243 
 
 she looked up at me : "Do you think I dance well, 
 Ned ? " 
 
 " I never thought about your dancing, dear." 
 
 " Spender, the agent, wants me to join the troupe for 
 Brussels this summer." 
 
 " You're not going, sweetheart." 
 
 "It's two-ten a week." 
 
 " I don't care if it's twelve-ten," I declared, " you're 
 not going." 
 
 " It's a pity about Spender, isn't it ? " she rejoined, 
 and then nestled more closely to me. " Remember, 
 Ned, I shall be a responsibility." 
 
 I think we both knew that the farce of pre- 
 tending not to care passionately for each other was 
 at an end. We made a pretence of going to the 
 station. As we watched the train go slowly out : 
 "They'll wonder what has become of you," I 
 said. 
 
 "Wonder will have to be their master," she 
 laughed. 
 
 Again the summer and again a season of pure delight. 
 Together we endeavoured to keep up the fine strain. 
 Together we sought the simple delights and interests 
 of the provincial town — a poor catalogue indeed. 
 Trim parks, valetudinarians, beds of formal geraniums, 
 children at play in city gardens, little friendships that 
 endure for a summer. Rides on the tops of golden 
 tramcars leading straight into the sunset. Long 
 Saturday afternoons in the Art Gallery. Here I 
 would try to explain why a picture of a tramp with 
 bleeding feet and a mother giving suck under a 
 hedge is not necessarily great art, and failing signally.
 
 244 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 I would be unable to tear Clare away from the 
 picture of a grave and bearded doctor who watches 
 the ebbing of a little life. The sad, pale face of an 
 emigrant with his gaze on receding England would 
 set my girl weeping, and the tiny hand of the 
 babe under the mother's shawl move her to a storm. 
 And again I would try to inculcate the principle 
 that pictures must not tell stories. And again I 
 would fail. 
 
 " I don't understand a l)it," she would say. " You 
 want a thing to look beautiful and I want it to he 
 beautiful. You want it to look true and I want it to be 
 true. It must be a terrible thing to lose a child even 
 though you can't afford to keep it, and a terrible thing 
 to have no boots and to be cold and hungry. But I 
 suppose you have never been cold and hungrj/." 
 
 And yet she had a fine sense of what I should like 
 to call the tall in order of emotion. There used to 
 hang in the gallery^ — I do not know whether it 
 hangs there still — the picture of an opulent-bosomed 
 woman watching with filling eyes the drowning of her 
 lover. 
 
 " It's a pity about her," Clare would remark and 
 pass contemptuously on. 
 
 The truth of the matter was that she was a perfectly 
 honest little savage who had never heard of art- 
 criticism and had no belief in its jurisdiction. She 
 would argue that the painter had no belief in his dis- 
 consolate 3^oung woman with the eyes like saucers. 
 Hers was a limited expeiience of life, but it had been 
 a very definite one. She would not go beyond her 
 experience, and she would not take less than experience. 
 In addition to being a savage she was a relentless and
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 245 
 
 inveterate realist. In vain I tried to explain to her 
 that an exquisite Madonna and Child might be thrown 
 off by an irreligious painter, and the most heart-rending 
 portrayal of poverty emanate fi'om a dilettante who 
 would cut a beggar across the face. 
 
 "The pictures would be lies," said Clare. 
 
 " All art is a lie, or at least a fiction," I was con- 
 strained to answer. 
 
 " What's the difference ? " she asked. 
 
 In the theatre we did not venture much farther 
 afield than the distressful heroes and heroines of melo- 
 drama, the tender unrealities of Sweet Lavender and 
 the Berlin-wool tragedies of the Kendals. But whereas 
 picture galleries are the recognised meeting-place for 
 clandestine lovers the better theatres are l>y no means 
 safe. There even Strumbach did not disdain to air his 
 importance, nor his hook-nosed wife her diamonds. 
 I was never sure of not being recognised by some of my 
 uncle's customers and often Clare and I found ourselves 
 condemned to sit in different parts of the house and 
 exchange signals of intelligence. But there came a 
 never-to-be-forgotten evening when we took our courage 
 in both hands and cowered together in the pit. I had 
 badly wanted my girl to see a great French actress in 
 one of her famous bundles of emotion. The play had 
 fragrance twenty years ago, has fragrance still — the 
 faint, sweet pestilence of the embalmed. The actress 
 was old, and the casket enshrining imperishable art — 
 to put it brutally, her body — was lacquered and gilded 
 to the semblance of life. You could have taken her 
 gowns for cerements. 
 
 " Oh, she's old ! " cried Clare in a burst of disappoint- 
 ment.
 
 246 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 And then both play and player took hold of her, as 
 they have taken hold of generations of playgoers. 
 1 had coached her in every line of every scene and every 
 word of every line so that she was at least sense-perfect. 
 The uncomplicated psychology of the play was still 
 too complicated for this fiercely honest little sovil. 
 The poor troll in the street she could understand, but 
 not the luxurious courtesan with enough to eat. Come 
 to think of it, the sentimental harlot is not easily within 
 the scope of the single-minded. But the minor successes, 
 the clever little tricks with which the play bristles, 
 came easily and triumphantly off. The unrewarded 
 lover sitting all night at the bedside and replenishing 
 the empty coffers, Nichette, that pious little goose, 
 Marguerite's M'istful fingering of the bridal veil, her 
 pitiful attempts to walk, the child in her calling to the 
 child at play in the street, all this outmoded sentiment 
 uprooted Clare and dashed her about as in a storm. 
 Even her familiar phrases failed her. That night we 
 walked slowly towards the little slum which was Clare's 
 home. After infinite hesitations and diffidences and 
 plain flat refusals I had made good my right to 
 accompany her as far as the end of the street in which 
 she lived. There I was allowed to watch her as she 
 went up two stone steps that led to a doorway. 
 She would stand framed for a second and wave her 
 hand. As we stood together that night she said : 
 " I wonder, Ned, whether you would sit the fire out for 
 me ? That is if I had any fire to sit out." 
 
 " Of course, dear," I answered, thinking of the 
 glamour we had left and wondering why life is never as 
 exquisite as its portrayal. 
 
 " I wish you meant it," she said, and was gone.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 247 
 
 § viii 
 
 And then Geoffrey got married. 
 
 The bride was a Miss Pratt, one of the Pratts 
 of Dukinfield, a mild and colourless person peering 
 adoringly at her lover through gold-rimmed glasses. 
 I spent the day trying to reconcile pince-nez with 
 orange-])lossom and Geoffrey's puce-coloured trousers 
 and lavender waistcoat with his mauve tie and violet 
 gloves. There was an air of pluming and preen- 
 ing about him which displeased me, and do what I 
 would I could not get out of my head some simile of a 
 burnished goose. I had been pressed into service as 
 best man and my greatest difficulty was to subdue the 
 familiar whistle whilst we waited for the bride. I think 
 the fellow would have piped to execution. At the 
 church I met Rodd and snatched a moment's talk. 
 
 " Didn't think you knew 'em," I hazarded. 
 
 " I don't, but I get a guinea for ' doing ' 'em for a 
 local rag. I'm coming on to the house. Do you think 
 if I'm jolly with the servants they'll give me a glass 
 of champagne ? " 
 
 My recollection of the day is of a jumble of well- 
 intentioned heartinesses, of chatter about fish-slices 
 and serviette-rings. I have visions of my aunt, digni- 
 fied ; of Monica patient and cheerful in the hullabaloo ; 
 of my uncle benevolent, patriarchal and slightly satirical. 
 He was polite to Ruth, the chaste object of his son's 
 choice, and I fancied faintly goguenard towards her 
 parents. The pair departed with bicycles on the 
 carriage roof ; the bride wearing a toque confectioned 
 in foreign parts, modish and out of place above that 
 startled countenance; the bridegroom swathed in an
 
 248 • RESPONSTBTTJTY 
 
 Inverness cape and surmounted by a plaid contrivance 
 with ear-flaps. 
 
 Tliey were for Paris and were to cycle from Boulogne. 
 
 Aiter a considerable amount of eating and drinking 
 a huge party was made up to witness some dull, out- 
 rageous farce. On the way back I drove alone with 
 Monica. 
 
 "Ned, dear," she said, "there's something I've 
 wanted to tell you for a long time. I haven't liked to 
 write and you see you are hardly ever at home." 
 
 " Yes, Monica ? ''' 
 
 " It's about Clare, I think she's called. I want to 
 tell you that father knows about her. I think he has 
 found letters or made inquiries." 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 " If there's an^'thing I can do to help you, you'll 
 tell me. ... I hope she's a good girl. I mean I 
 hope she loves you, and that you are not throwing 
 yourself away. ... Of course I'm just a wee bit 
 disappointed, Ned ; you see you haveii't confided in 
 me this time. Love is a very wonderful thing and it 
 seems to happen to you too easily. I am sometimes 
 afraid you are not going to be a happy man." 
 
 § ix 
 A few days later I received the following from Claud : — 
 
 I've been and gone and done it ! 
 Hoo-ray ! 
 In this manner. 
 
 I have not concealed from you, my dear Ned, 
 that all those delectaljle morsels of tinned-tongue,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 249 
 
 finnan-haddock, Yarmouth bloater and food-stuffs in 
 which there is no waste — vital consideration for the 
 pauper — and which have hitherto kept this body 
 and soul together, have been the reward of the vilest 
 occupation except one to which man can put his hand. 
 That utterly vilest is to give lessons on the piano. 
 Had I been counsel for the Marquis de Sade I would 
 have alleged that his victims were the confirmed 
 little murderers and murderesses of — whatever beastly 
 sonatas were then in vogue. 
 
 Once more I've been and gone and done it. 
 
 I stood out for as long as was humanly possible 
 against this basest of metiers, but one cannot go on 
 owing fourteen weeks' rent for ever. So yesterday I 
 capitulated. " Shall we fall foul for toys ? " 
 
 During the morning there came in unto me a person 
 of fashion, Crawley Bridge's latest, or what Paris 
 wore in '70 during the bombardment. 
 
 " I understand, young man, that you give music 
 lessons," said this personage. 
 
 Oh, she spoke deferentially enough ; it's her class 
 which is offensive. After their manner she began to 
 stare at me through eyeglasses fastened on the end of 
 a stick, an insolence which always makes me furious. 
 Whereupon your servant, in the devil's mood that 
 morning, whipped out a magnifying glass about a foot 
 across and spied at her in return. 
 
 " That depends, ma'am ! " I answered. 
 
 " On what, young man ? " 
 
 " My pleasure at the moment, principally. But 
 also," I added, "on your references, and the degree 
 to which your daughter pleases me, and whether your 
 piano is a good one."
 
 250 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ""Our piano," replied the astonishing female, "is a 
 grand." 
 
 " What make, madam ? " 
 
 " The make is immaterial. My husband gave two 
 hundred guineas for it." 
 
 " Then," I replied, " I will teach your offspring to 
 draw such tones from it as will make you wish she had 
 never been born. Three guineas the course, my good 
 woman, counting thirteen lessons as twelve." 
 
 I assure you, Ned, I was not drunk, merely a little 
 above myself. The artist has this revenge over the 
 bourgeois, that he is possessed of an extra dimension, 
 the dimension of impertinence. The bourgeois do not 
 perceive that you are being rude to them any more than 
 people who can be conceived as living on a perfectly 
 flat plane can be conscious of men and trees walking. 
 That woman, for instance, has exactly the same percep- 
 tion of me as a paving-stone has of the sole of my foot. 
 I turned up in the evening at Acacia or Azalea or 
 Auricaria Villas, or whatever its beastly name is. There 
 I was presented to an ill-mannered little brat with 
 two plaits sitting on a stool with her back to what I 
 took to be "the grand," although it looked more like 
 a bier which had been covered with a velvet pall and 
 a few thousand portraits of the deceased. Slowly the 
 child swung round to the piano and slowly licked from 
 the ends of her fingers the remains of a sticky tea. 
 I asked her what studies she had used. 
 
 " Them in the green cover," she replied. 
 
 And here, Ned, comes the horror of it. In my rage 
 I knocked the little beast headlong into her mother's 
 lap and the stool through the French window. 
 
 Of course it means the end of Claud Rodd so far as
 
 RESPONSTBTLITY 251 
 
 Crawley Bridge is concerned. Farewell the Boulevard 
 Croix de Shufflebottom, Num^ro Vingt, or any other 
 number. 
 
 I'm off to London town. 
 
 " Into the dark to fight a giant." 
 
 And noAv, my illustrious de Marsay, toi qui entreiiens 
 des danseuses, I bid you give heed to this my prayer, 
 though it be not writ on the fair vellum of the Jockey 
 Club and the writer bear for all arms a Beggar couchant 
 on dreams silver, never to be realised. I have confided 
 to my uncle's care — let me say frankly that I have 
 pa^^^led — all those innumerable statues, pictures, snuff- 
 boxes, ivories, rare editions which were our coinmon 
 pride. My remainder fortune consists of the green 
 waistcoat with the red and yellow bees. That was 
 ever too extraordinary' a find for the provinces ; it 
 may make my name in London. 
 
 Would ten pounds . . . ? 
 
 Let me lighten your darkness with a last mot. Le 
 INIarquis Wally de Buckley — en voild un qui fera son 
 chemin — having contracted an alliance with an heiress, 
 one Susanne de Pickersgill, was overheard in the foyer 
 of Crawley's theatre to exclaim : " Marriage is aw 
 reet in its way, but it's a poor do for them as thinks 
 life should be all beer and skittles." 
 
 Le mot a courru dans la salle. 
 
 In notes, please. 
 
 Aimez toujours 
 
 Voire pauvre Rodd. 
 
 §x 
 
 The waning of my affection for Clare dates from the 
 time when I conceived my first book. I have never
 
 252 RESPONSTBTLTTY 
 
 been one of those complicated persons who can keep two 
 interests going at once, and with me writing had begun 
 to be the grand passion. Conceal the change as I 
 might — and after a time all concealment becomes 
 perfunctory- I felt sure that Clare noticed it. One 
 day she said suddenly: "Mother wants to see you. 
 She says will you please call on her to-morrow evening. 
 I think you'll have to, Ned." 
 
 Times without number I had tried to forecast this 
 inevitable meeting, to arrive at some idea of any 
 possible mother of Clare's, to devise some formula that 
 should carry me through. Steeped as I was in the 
 world of books, I had arrived at a figure of which 
 Madame Cardinal and Mrs Nickleby were the chief 
 components. Or say some loud-voiced, authoritative 
 keeper of a registry office for domestic servants, some 
 dealer in discarded wardrobes, some preposterous 
 incarnation in widow's weeds, some Gadgett in distress. 
 I had been prepared for the battered charwoman, the 
 faded seamstress, the remnant of better days. But I 
 was not prepared for the entirely self-possessed and 
 dignified figure who to receive me did not move from 
 her chair in the window. By the fading light I could 
 see that she was dressed poorly but with scrupulous 
 neatness, that her hair was grey and her hands small, 
 fine and white. She was very busy with some sewing 
 which, I was quick to note, had no connection with that 
 classic sentimentality, the " little, little things." 
 
 " So you are my daughter's choice," the old lady 
 said slowly, motioning me to a chair. And then com- 
 mandingly : "Sit down, sir, and let me have a look 
 at you." 
 
 It cannot have been a particularly gallant figure
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 253 
 
 that I made in Clare's grey eyes and before her mother's 
 steady gaze. 
 
 " When I say my daughter's choice, Mr Marston, I 
 mean that she chose you to her ultimate unhappiness. 
 You need not be afraid that I shall try to persuade 
 3-0U to do something you have never contemplated. 
 I am not talking about marriage. I do not for one 
 moment imagine that you are a fool or even a senti- 
 mentalist except in the selfish sense. You will not 
 run counter to the prejudices of your class. But you 
 nmst not imagine that I am a fool either. Please do 
 not confoimd me with my circumstances. Eveiything 
 you see about me is faded ; even my hopes in Clare 
 are faded as my mother's were in me. My daughter 
 knows that I was never married and that in all prob- 
 ability neither will she ever be. Both she and I see 
 this clearly ; we are neither of us deceived." 
 
 She paused while her hands moved restlessly one 
 over the other. 
 
 " Mr Marston, I have sat here in this room sewing, 
 sewing, sewing and waiting for Clare evening after 
 evening for many months, and I know what is in my 
 mind to say to you. I am merely repeating a lesson 
 all these long months have taught. I believe you to be 
 an honest, good-natured fellow, well-intentioned and 
 perhaps not altogether weak. You have been good to 
 my girl in your way and after your education and tradi- 
 tion, and I have no doubt you would always behave 
 liandsomely. I believe that is the accepted phrase." 
 
 She was silent for a moment and motioned to me to 
 Ijc silent too. I do not laiow what I could have found 
 to say. After a pause she resumed : 
 
 " We are poor people, which is all the more reason
 
 254 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 why we should look facts in the face. Clare is running 
 a great risk. Are you prepared to face it ? The 
 risk is more serious than the simple one of money, 
 although I do not know what we should do. Neither 
 my daughter nor I would accept money. I do not 
 propose to make a great fuss about your having come 
 into Clare's life ; it is useless to talk of what is past. 
 It is when you go out of it that the harm will be 
 complete." 
 
 I murmured something about never leaving Clare. 
 
 " That is not true," said the old lad}^ " You mean 
 well but you cannot control the future. You cannot 
 forestall irksomeness any more than any other man. 
 You are not the man you will be. Some day you Avill 
 tire of Clare and then you will want to he generous and 
 kind and full of delicacy and tact, and this it will be 
 which will break her heart as mine was broken when 
 her father left me. You men don't understand the 
 harm you do. I would have followed her father on 
 my knees to the end of the earth. That he made a 
 hobby of women was nothing to me ; I would have 
 waited on the others. ... I want to prevent altogether 
 or at least to lessen the sadness of the day I see in store 
 for Clare. I will not consent to any prolongation of 
 a fool's paradise. You must clear the situation, sir. 
 I don't ask you to marry my daughter and you will 
 not ask me to receive you on any other terms. Neither 
 will I consent to anything clandestine and underhand. 
 I ask you to break off your relationship. Think 
 seriously, Mr Marston, you are dealing in a human 
 life." 
 
 I glanced at Clare, who returned my look with that 
 honest, steady gaze of hers.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 255 
 
 " One word more, sir. I think you ought to know 
 that your uncle called on me one day last week and 
 talked about something that he called protection for 
 my daughter. I mistrusted him and denied know- 
 ledge of you. He gave me the impression that he has 
 some hold over you. What I have said to you to-night 
 has nothing to do with his visit ; it has been in my mind 
 to speak to you for some time. I think that is all. I 
 beg that j^^ou will consider very seriously what I have 
 said to you, and I wish 3-011 good-day." 
 
 As I walked home all the stories of witty libertin- 
 age which I had ever read came crowding into 
 my brain. I could not rid my mind of all those 
 letters of polite remonstrance which are the literary 
 stock-in-trade of passion wearing thin, the classic 
 expression of the fatigue one feels for the mistress 
 prolonging her worship beyond the acceptable time. 
 I remembered that the French have a word for 
 the situation, Le collage. I felt that Clare's mother 
 was right, that I was already, to put it bluntly, tiring. 
 " I will seek some way to leave him," says the master- 
 leaver in the play, and here the chance of a way out 
 offered, positively offered. I began to square with my 
 honesty, to feel Tuy loyalty, my chivalry even, falling 
 away. I shall have the Westroms and all decent 
 people against me. I had him against me at the 
 time although I allowed him to see little of the affair. 
 But then the Westroms have never known insanity. 
 They love with a reasonable ardour and to a responsible 
 end. " You'll have to buy fire-irons and it's no end 
 of a lark ! " 
 
 A poor burking of the issue. I felt that I had no 
 case, or at least no avowablc one, for I knew that
 
 256 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 there is no code which pennits a man to desert a girl 
 he has wronged merely because he has outgrown her. 
 I was conscious of having outgrown Clare, of a more 
 engrossing interest in myself and my work, and I was 
 an easy prey to the aesthetic fallacy of the period, the 
 amorality of the artist. This fallacy may be summed 
 up in the statement that the creation of great works 
 of art frees the creator from moral responsibility, that 
 the writer of fine books is immune from the common 
 obligations. It is an amazing theory. Still more 
 amazing the fact that a whole school of 'great writers 
 should have flourished at so damnable an instigation. 
 Cocasse, cocasse ! 
 
 I do not admit that I began consciously to plan the 
 way to leave Clare, but rather that my thoughts took 
 to straying in the direction of a considered possibility. 
 I began to see less of her, less and still less. 
 
 § xi 
 
 Here let me record the most grotesque incident in 
 Reuben Ackroyd's career, his sudden flight into 
 municipal politics. I could never guess the motive, 
 can onl,- suppose vanity. My uncle stood for the 
 Shufflebottom Cross Ward at Crawley Bridge in the 
 twofold interest of the artisan and the Conservative 
 party, a dexterous combination which gave his pre- 
 varicatory genius full scope. Holding in his inmost 
 soul that the working man was unfit to live, he pro- 
 claimed that he would do well in his own interest 
 to submit to government by his betters. Perhaps 
 this is a little hard. Taking a more favourable view, 
 Reuben held that the worker has the right to live,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 257 
 
 but only in the sphere for which he is fitted or to which 
 " it has pleased God " to call him. From which we 
 deduce 
 
 XVI 
 
 The working man's recognition of his sphere and his 
 contentment therein are the foundation and bulwark 
 of society. 
 
 Among my uncle's public promises was one to the 
 effect that if the working man would do his clear duty 
 in the matter of the vote, he, Reuben, engaged himself 
 to make him " fitter for the battle " — i.e. fitter to make 
 more money for liis employer. In return I have no 
 doubt that my uncle promised himself to bury the poor 
 fellow handsomely in the end ; in the interim to ack- 
 nowledge his touched forelock with the utmost of his 
 affability. In other words, government by graciousness 
 and doles. 
 
 My uncle's opponent, Robert Inskip, was a mild, 
 insignificant little Socialist with a fussy, fretful manner, 
 rusty clothes and steel spectacles held together with 
 blobs of sealing-wax. His opinions were of the ex- 
 tremest and most violent order, inclining to the view 
 that if an;y'thing Jack is a trifle better than his master. 
 An inconsiderable opponent, the sting of whose opposi- 
 tion lay in the fact that he was Reuben's chief salesman. 
 Inskip had been the first in the field and had declined 
 to give way on his master's announcing that it was his 
 pleasure to stand. 
 
 " It will be a tough fight and a near thing," had been 
 his way of refusing to withdraw.
 
 258 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 I have before me my uncle's election address, which 
 I take to be a model of suave blasphemy. Here it is. 
 
 To the electors of 
 
 SHUFFLEBOTTOM CROSS 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 On November 1st you will be called upon to 
 elect a representative to the town council. I have been 
 honoured by a request to become a candidate and have 
 pleasure in offering such poor service and ability as a 
 Higher Power has granted me. 
 
 I trust that the confidence which I have long enjoyed 
 as the head of a large industrial concern in your midst 
 may form the basis of a wider trust and a larger faith. 
 
 In the event of my election I shall hope to take my 
 share in the arduous labours and responsibilities of the 
 town's Watch Committee, upon whose deliberations 
 and decisions so much of the safety and comfort of a 
 large community necessarily depends. The constant 
 support which it has been my privilege to accord to our 
 local Vigilance Society should be a sufficient guarantee 
 of the faith which is in me as to the value of prohibi- 
 tionary measures. 
 
 I shall support all efforts to make the amenities 
 of life in our town as healthful and enjoyable as 
 possible. I shall advocate the establishment of a 
 Municipal Bowling Green. 
 
 If you do me the honour to elect me as your repre- 
 sentative I shall strive for the public attainment of 
 those ideals which have long been the affair of my 
 private prayer and solicitude. Amongst these ideals 
 are
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 259 
 
 Cheaper and Better Housing 
 Cheaper and Improved Tramway Service 
 Cheaper and Improved Lighting 
 A Higher Responsibihty in Public Affaii-s 
 
 and 
 Lower Rates. 
 
 May God direct your votes ! 
 
 Yours faithfully 
 
 Reuben Ackroyd. 
 
 Little Inskip's proclamation based on the Equal 
 Rights of Man was a grim and violent effusion largely 
 made up of scolding but ending with the assurance 
 that human woe w-ould vanish on the return of Robert 
 Inskip to the Crawley Bridge Council. It is un- 
 necessary to record the ebb and flow of the contest, 
 the pathetic fallacies of one combatant, the resounding 
 pomposities of the other. If Reuben had said simply 
 " Vote for me. I am the better man," I should have 
 respected him. If Inskip had retaliated " I stand for 
 the better principle," I should have applauded him. 
 By far the most effective contribution to the debate 
 was the Sociahst cartoon " By the sweat of their brow 
 shall Reuben eat bread." 
 
 To me the introduction of politics into a city's 
 domestic economy has always been the height of 
 absurdity. So long as streets are well lighted and 
 cleanly swept, sewage unostentatiously removed, traffic 
 controlled, pickpockets and burglars reasonably re- 
 strained ; so long as houses of public refreshment are 
 kept open beyond a child's bcd-timc ; so long as trams 
 run and letters are dehvered, so long do I care nothing
 
 260 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 at all whether the overseers are I^iberal or Conservative, 
 Turk or Mormon, Caesars, Cannibals or Trojan Greeks. 
 
 After a time it seemed possible that the election might 
 go against my uncle. No man can grind the faces of 
 his workpeople for thirty years without producing an 
 effect on the mind of even so notoriously stupid a 
 person as an elector. And then Reuben committed 
 one of those acts of madness from which no self-willed 
 man is immune. A week before the election he sum- 
 moned Inskip to appear before him in his private office, 
 in the presence of Geoffrey and myself. 
 
 " Mr Inskip," he began pleasantly, " I wish to refresh 
 my memory. What are your emoluments ? " 
 
 " Salary four pounds a week. Commission comes to 
 another four." 
 
 " And that commission is payable when ? " 
 
 " At the end of the year." 
 
 "Mr Inskip," said my uncle, gravely unfolding a 
 legal-looking document, " I have here a copy of our 
 agreement. I see that it stipulates that if at the 
 conclusion of the year you find yourself unable to make 
 a fresh engagement with us on such terms as may be 
 agreeable to both parties you are to forfeit whatever 
 commission is due to you." 
 
 " Does it say that ? " said Inskip, his face growing 
 suddenly white. 
 
 " It does. I will read you the text. " And my uncle, 
 for a space of five minutes by the clock, read in porten- 
 tous tones a mass of legal-sounding jargon. Folding 
 up the paper he went on : " Well, sir, I find that my 
 conscience will not allow me to retain in my employ a 
 man whose beliefs are subversive of the very foundations 
 of morality. Mr Inskip, I have to notify you that if
 
 RESPONSIBIIJTY 261 
 
 you persist in your immoral campaign I have the 
 intention of offering you such terms for your next 
 year's engagement as will probably not suit you." 
 
 " And if I decline them ? " 
 
 " Then obviously, according to our agreement, the 
 commission which would otherwise become due to you 
 at the end of next month is forfeit." 
 
 I\Iy temples began to beat and Geoffrey stopped 
 whistling. 
 
 "So you would blackmail me," said Inskip slowly. 
 " You know I am a poor man," It was obvious that 
 he was trying to grasp the full extent of my uncle's 
 baseness. 
 
 " Listen to me, Mr Inskip," said Reuben. " I am 
 indifferent on the personal count as to which of us wins 
 this election, but I cannot make distinction between 
 public and private morality. I have lived too long to 
 care for personal victories or defeats. I am above petty 
 consideration." 
 
 " It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul ! " I whispered. 
 
 " I regard your views as a menace to public safety. 
 I am myself no Socialist, and view with horror all 
 manifestations of that spirit. Socialism saps and under- 
 mines ; it is the negation of individual effort, of the 
 obligation to deal with one's talent according to the 
 means the Donor of all talents has granted us. That 
 it is immoral to reap where others have sown should be 
 patent to the meanest intelligence. I feel that I am 
 morally bound— and I consult no man's conscience but 
 my own — to take such steps as may be open to me to 
 induce you to relinquish the expression of these views. 
 Should you persist in them I warn you that I shall not 
 feel justified in renewing at the end of the year those
 
 262 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 relations which have hitherto existed so pleasantly 
 between us. Should you stand down I think that 
 perhaps we might see our way to " — here he hesitated 
 — "to some not inconsiderable modification of terms 
 which might not be disagreea.})le to you. This is 
 tentative ; I make no promise." 
 
 In suspense I waited for Inskip's reply. His hands 
 were clenched and his mouth tremulous. 
 
 " Suppose that at the meeting to-night " he 
 
 began. 
 
 Reuben cut him short. 
 
 " You won't repeat a word; and you know you 
 won't. You can stir up a lot of virtuous indignation, 
 of course. But virtuous indignation is poor nourish- 
 ment for a middle-aged man with an ailing wife and 
 half-a-dozen children. It's my windows against jmur 
 livelihood. Who's going to keep you and them after- 
 wards ? Who's going to take you on if ever you leave 
 me ? You're past j^our best and you've no connec- 
 tion that you can remove. Come, Mr Inskip, take a 
 sensible view. I don't threaten, and I don't bribe. I 
 merely propose another hundred a year in recognition 
 of your long and valued services." 
 
 And then little Inskip had the one supreme gesture 
 of his meagre life, and for one moment trod the mountain 
 tops of liberty. For one instant of time master of 
 his soul, never again to be free of his slave's fetters. 
 He strode up to Reuben Ackroyd and with his left 
 hand took him by the beard. My uncle made no effort 
 to fend him off. 
 
 Geoffrey moved towards intervention and I threw 
 mv arms around him. 
 
 " Leave them," I said. " It's man to man. 
 
 ?»
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 263 
 
 " You are a beast," said Inskip slowly, " a bloated, 
 treacherous beast. I have known you for forty years 
 and I have always known you for what you are. 
 There is not a starved man nor half-fed child in vour 
 employ who does not wish j^ou dead a thousand times 
 a day. You are a dog, a treacherous cur, and if I had 
 neither wife nor children I would kill you with my 
 hands." 
 
 " Amen," I said under my breath. 
 
 "Help me, Geoffrey," the old man gasped, clawing 
 at the frail arm which held him. I clunjj the more 
 tightly. 
 
 " Silence, you hound of hell," went on the little man, 
 shaking his victim with all the fury of impotence. " It's 
 you and your kind who make Socialists, It's you and 
 your kind who make a working man's life what it is. 
 It's you who are responsible for fevers and con- 
 sumptions, disease and death. And what good has it 
 done you ? You've thrown away loyalty and affection 
 and respect, and all you've got is hate and every 
 decent man's contempt. But I've got to be quick ; 
 I can't keep this up for long. I'm a broken man. 
 Here's my answer." 
 
 And with that he flung his clenched fist full into the 
 face of Reuben Ackroyd, philanthropist and man of 
 business. I released Geoffrey. My passionate hero, 
 his glory quite departed, had shrunk to his normal 
 significance and stood in the middle of the room, 
 his face buried in his hands. By his shoulders I could 
 see that he was sobbing. 
 
 I have no recollection of how the principal actors 
 managed their exits from the scene. The following day 
 Inskip withdrew his candidature and to the end of his
 
 264 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 life was my uncle's whipped dog. It is true that the 
 extra hundred a year was a God-send to him. 
 
 § xii 
 
 On the morning of my twenty- fifth birthday T found 
 a letter in my imcle's handwriting addressed to me at 
 the office. It ran : 
 
 Mr Edward Marston, — My partner and myself 
 will be obliged if you will attend in the private office 
 at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of to-morrow, Tuesday. 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Reuben Ackroyd. 
 
 My uncle's trick of conveying the simplest com- 
 munication by letter and of alluding to his son as " my 
 partner " used to annoy me intensely. It annoys me 
 still. 
 
 Eleven o'clock on the following day saw me ushered 
 into the holy of holies. There I found Reul^en going 
 through his letters and Geoffrey lounging by the window 
 whistling softly and turning over the pages of an old 
 and tattered manual The Horse, The Friend of Man, 
 which, incredibly, had adorned the window-sill for 
 thirty years. I had never before seen anybody open it 
 and I have never discovered how it came to be part 
 of the properties of a cotton-manufacturer's sanctum. 
 I was wool-gathering in this profitless way Avhen I was 
 recalled by a cough from my uncle and the note of 
 unusual circumstance which he threw into a preliminary 
 
 " May I beg your attention, Edward ? " 
 
 " My dear uncle," I replied, " I am not a public 
 meeting."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 265 
 
 " As it is probable," he went on without taking notice 
 of what I am afraid was flippancy, "as it is probable 
 that this will be the last time on which I shall have the 
 privilege of addressing you on matters of business, I 
 must beg that you will listen to me closely. As you 
 know, your father on his death left a sum of money 
 which was to stand in your name on the books of the 
 firm until such time as you should have completed 
 your twenty-fifth year. ' 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " That sum of monev amounted to twelve thousand 
 eight hundred and some odd pounds. Out of the 
 interest on that amount two hundred pounds a year 
 was to be paid to me for your maintenance, the balance 
 to be added to your capital." 
 
 I nodded again. 
 
 " I am pleased to tell you that the sums I have 
 expended on your behalf have never in any one year 
 exceeded the two hundred pounds and have occasion- 
 ally fallen below that figure. I have endeavoured in 
 my calculations to be both just to you and fair to 
 m^^self . I make out that there is an amount owing to 
 you on maintenance account, including interest, of 
 three hundred and twenty-seven pounds odd. I hold 
 this amount together with your principal at your 
 disposal- — some seventeen thousand four hundred 
 pounds in all." 
 
 " It is very kind of you," I began. 
 
 "It is not a matter of kindness but of common 
 probity. We have few sentiments in common. To- 
 day sees the end of our business relations. I regret 
 that I cannot consent to admit you to partnership 
 with your cousin Geoffrey and myself. That you
 
 266 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 have forfeited what would have been 3^0111* right is due 
 entirely to your own waywardness and folly." 
 
 " To the devil with his prosy oratory," and " At 
 least I shall have my liberty " are all that I remember 
 thinking as I stood staring steadily at my uncle's 
 blandly-beaming spectacles. 
 
 " Your father on his death-bed entered into a com- 
 pact with me whereby you were to devote yoiu'self to 
 the best interests of the firm of Ackroyd and Mars ton 
 until you should attain the age of twenty-five. After 
 which and subject to your having strictly observed 
 certain conditions of that compact you were to be 
 admitted to partnership in that firm." 
 
 He began playing with a legal-looking document. 
 " I have to declare that you have vitiated this 
 contract in its most vital essentials. You have made 
 use of your Socialistic views to oppose the best interests 
 of the firm ; you have thwarted the firm's interests 
 at eveiy turn ; you have abused your position to 
 prejudice your cousin Geoffrey and myself with our 
 manufacturers, our customers, and our employees. 
 He that has not been with us has been against us." 
 
 Astounding old rogue ! Was there no limit to his 
 blasphemy ? 
 
 " There is one other condition to which your right of 
 partnership has always been subject and that is the 
 strict observance of the simple moralities. On your 
 father's death I read over to you the deed to which 
 he and I had put our hands, and of which you were 
 provided with a copy. You must therefore be pre- 
 sumed to have had cognisance of its conditions. I 
 think you wall not deny that your moral conduct has 
 been and is at the present time such as must prejudice
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 267 
 
 in the highest degree the interests of the firm you 
 serve. I presume you will not deny that you have a 
 mistress who is a public dancer and to whose upkeep 
 you contribute. I am advised by my lawyers that I 
 am under no obligation to admit you to partnership, 
 and I will not deny that here my interest and my 
 conscience are one. My partner and I are perfectly 
 well able to dispense with the use of your small capital 
 and we consider your further services to be both useless 
 to the firm and dangerous. I may infomi you that the 
 partnership you have forfeited would have been worth 
 the greater part of two thousand a year — including 
 interest on capital say two thousand five hundred a 
 year. Whether this is too high a price to pay for the 
 course of conduct you have chosen to pursue it is not 
 for me to decide. My partner and I have arranged to 
 admit Mr Temple in your place at a share which is 
 advantageous to him and to ourselves. I have the 
 less compunction at arriving at this decision inas- 
 much as with prudent investment you still possess 
 seven hundred a year. That amount will doubtless 
 permit you to play the Socialist and the blackguard 
 wheresoever you will, but at least not in partnership 
 with me or my son." 
 
 " Shut the door upon him and let him play the fool 
 nowhere but in's own house," I whispered softl3^ 
 
 " I have a cheque at your disposal," said Reuben. 
 
 I have never known what it is to hesitate at a crisis. 
 
 " My dear uncle," I said, " let me compliment you 
 on your style. You have the embezzler's sense of legal 
 nicety. Give me my principal and let me go." 
 
 For all answer he handed me an envelope con- 
 taining a cheque for the total amount of my fortune.
 
 268 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 And thus I was never a partner in the firm of Ackroyd 
 and Marston. 
 
 • •• •• •• • 
 
 The following morning brought me another letter. 
 It was from Clare and was very short. 
 
 My dear, dear Ned (she wrote), — I knoAv that 
 to-day is the day of your partnership and that you are 
 a rich man. Rut I know also that jrou are tired of me 
 and I cannot bear the thoucrht that I shall soon be no 
 more than a drag and encumbrance upon you. I loiow 
 that you would be generous, but I do not want generosity 
 either for myself or for the child you will never know. 
 I had great difficulty in making mother promise not 
 to tell you about that. The day you came to see her 
 was the day when I put you to the touch. I was 
 determined that if I could not keep you out of affection 
 I would never try to hold you out of pity. And as the 
 child grew in me I felt your love diminish . . . and 
 then it became impossible to tell you. 
 
 We have decided that it is best that we should 00 
 away. When you get this we shall have already gone ; 
 we intend to lose ourselves in some small town where 
 you will never find us. For your comfort let me tell 
 you that I have some savings and that we are in no 
 immediate danger of want. I began to put a little 
 aside when first you forgot my birthday, and I have 
 enough to carry us through until my looks come back 
 again. Spender will always find me a place in one of his 
 companies, he says for as long as I can dance, but he 
 means for as long as I remain pretty. 
 
 I am not going to worry you, Ned, with useless 
 reproaches. I daresay I was not clever enough to
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 269 
 
 keep you. God knows that I tried hard enough, but 
 trying is no good. Perhaps nothing is any good when 
 the fancy is past. I thought that if I loved you and 
 was time to you" and had no thought for anybody else 
 but you, you would be satisfied. I know now that men 
 are not like that, or at least that my man was not 
 like that. I would willingly have laid down my life 
 for vou. 
 
 Good-bye, Ned, and God bless you. You were good 
 to me according to your lights. 
 
 I never saw Clare again, nor set eyes upon my son 
 until he was grown to manhood. 
 
 § xiii 
 
 I suppose I shall have the charge of callousness to 
 face. I loiow that it would be pretty and effective 
 if I could here recount a long and hopeless search, a 
 year or two's quest for Clare. Let me be at least fair 
 to myself^I had been suddenly set free from an irk- 
 some business with possession of what was for me 
 a fortune, had newly-found urgency and leisure to 
 write. I think I felt that a charge of baseness would 
 lie, and although I did not plead the books I was to 
 write in mitigation at least they took on some redemp- 
 tive colouring. Not "my work is the excuse," but 
 " my work shall be the amends. " I had some awkward 
 moments when I tried to reconcile with my treacheiy 
 our youthful theoretical stuff, the carrying on of the 
 race, Nature's law, and all the grandiloquent rest of it. 
 I could better have faced a frank, illicit union with 
 open recognition of the consequences than this shirking
 
 270 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 of responsibility. " You are my immortality," my 
 father had written, and " Remember that I am part of 
 you for ever and that when you too are a father you 
 will be part of your son for ever." But I confess that 
 I did not worry very greatly over this. I was too 
 young and too deeply engrossed in creating my own 
 immortality. 
 
 And so I settled down to my writing. In three years 
 of liard toil T produced two novels with the scant 
 success I have already related. I suppose that during 
 this time I ate a certain number of meals, slept a 
 certain number of hours, had certain minor indis- 
 positions, took occasional holidays. I saw notliing 
 of my uncle and little of Monica. My friends were 
 scattered, Westrom faithful to Crawley Bridge which I 
 never again visited, Rcinecke ransacking South America 
 for more plunder for Strumbach, Claud in London, 
 Ransom heaven knows where. I stuck to Manchester 
 for a time through sheer timidity, and can honestly 
 say that the only events which befell me were occasional 
 letters from my friends . Here is the one which Westrom 
 wrote on the appearance of my second novel : 
 
 ... It's a fine attempt, anyhow. Don't worry 
 about sales. I see that the reviews are good, but 
 reviews have no more relation to sales than sales have 
 to merit. It is possible to have "notices" such as 
 Milton might have beamed over and yet sell no copies 
 at all. It depends almost entirely on your publisher's 
 methods being vulgar enough and whether his salesmen 
 have the right sort of boots. If I were to write a 
 novel I should have it given out that the MS. had 
 been found in the coffin of an exhumed Duke, or
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 271 
 
 any other balderdash. The worst of it is that you can 
 never be sure what kind of bait the public is in the 
 mood to swallow, and it is a waste of good vulgarity 
 to be vulgar without succeeding. 
 
 Will you forgive a word of advice ? Beware of the 
 parish of sex. You advanced fellows are so thunderingly 
 behind the times with what you would call your passion- 
 ate preoccupations. (I dislike most of your jargon.) 
 I am for an honest betrayal as much as any man and 
 can cry like a good 'un over Hetty Sorrel and Jeanie 
 Deans. But then I'm a civilised cove and not a satyr. 
 
 It's wiser being good than bad ; 
 
 It's safer being meek than fierce ; 
 
 It's fitter being sane than mad, etc., etc. 
 
 Why not a novel in which goodness is made interest- 
 ing ? You will say that it can't be done ; all the more 
 reason for trjdng. Muscular Christians are not neces- 
 sarily fools, you know. And what shall it avail a writer 
 if he possess all the moU justes and have not charity 
 towards his fellow-creatures ? On a technical point, 
 don't crowd your good things too closely. Give our dull 
 wits elbow-room. When your apparently trivial novelist 
 tells you that the Lady Ethelberta poured herself out 
 another cup of tea and took another piece of toast, he 
 is merely giving the reader time to take in that last 
 fine sally of her lover's. Verbal sword-play must not 
 be so fast that you cannot see the fencing. Have 
 you never noticed that even the best actresses are 
 floored by the suddenness of Beatrice's " Kill Claudio ! " 
 After Benedick's " Come, bid me do anjrthing for thee," 
 they find it pays to strike an attitude and exclaim 
 "Anything?" or "Just repeat that remark, will
 
 272 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 you ? " and then, having tipped the wink to the spectator 
 who was eating chocolates or liddhng with his pro- 
 gramme and generally not paying attention, they 
 proceed to the launching of the tremendous line. Re- 
 member that you can't pi event the reader from putting 
 your book down just in time to miss your best effect 
 and taking it up again a page later. And that whilst 
 most readeis are fools this is not true of all, any more 
 than that all authors are as Godlike as you would 
 make them out to be. 
 
 Of home news, little. Mv wife is in bed with a cold, 
 and the servant is in high dudgeon at not having a cold 
 too. Consequently I am off upstairs to give Rupert 
 his bath and Gerald his pobs. You probably object 
 to the humdrum of this. When will you learn that it is 
 provincial and suburban and parochial, and all three 
 at once, to jeer at the normal merely because it is 
 norma,!. We must all cultivate our back gardens, 
 though to do this it is not essential that we should 
 have sown the front lawn with wild oats. 
 
 Then this from Reinecke. 
 
 I am arrived in Paraguay via Hamburg, which is 
 after all the Fatherland. It is not right that a good 
 German should abandon his mother-expressions. Of 
 course it was necessary for me who have not been in 
 Germany since some years to journey from Coblenz 
 to Bingen on the bosom of our so-beautiful river. The 
 little villages each with four houses and sixteen beer- 
 gardens are too lovely. But how did I feel the benefit 
 of my English training when I accompanied a party 
 of my countrymen to visit that big, ugly kemach, 
 the Emperor's Castle ! The ceilings are painted red,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 273 
 
 blue and yellow, the carpets are of purple and the 
 upholster}^ of green. The walls are decorated with 
 constipated art works by Gemian professors with 
 frames of solid gold. Passing the Lorelei, that side 
 of the boat which was nearest to it was weighed down 
 by the sudden rush of Fatherlanders. Fat men and 
 fatter women, all with huge sausages in the mouth and 
 mugs of beer and bottles of Rhine-mne in the hand 
 were ach-ing and wimderschdn-mg in the most ludicrous 
 manner. To think that if I had not been in England 
 I should make the same noises ! Whilst I was in 
 Germany I noticed that my eyes bulged already and I 
 began to want spectacles. 
 
 I am now the perfect commercial traveller. Is it 
 interesting to you to learn that I have to-day sold 
 50,000 kilos cardboard ? It is so very disagreeable to 
 act as commis-voyageur, to be forced to think all day 
 business, so that you cannot listen any more to the 
 " sweet unheard melodies " of your soul. I am com- 
 pensating for this disagreeable trade with an affection 
 for a charming little South American girl. That is 
 to say I am puzzling how to get rid of her. I am 
 so easily tired of women. May they be as lovely as 
 possible, they never reach the ideal. 
 
 Shall I bore you with my scenery descriptions ? 
 You cannot imagine the beauty of this old river where 
 hundred and himdred years ago lived the Indians in 
 the beautiful forests at his borders. I walk by his 
 side in the evening and read one Spanish book, one 
 very clever GeiTnan book about Goethe — as all must 
 be clever which is connected with Goethe — and some 
 Nietzsche, at times no reasonable stuff. One must 
 see to understand the beauty of this sunset ; the 
 s
 
 274 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 sentimentality almost German of this night, when the 
 parting sun lays his last rays on the trees as a token 
 of the friendship of centuries. Happy is he who can 
 hold aloof from his real life and understand the 
 language of flowers and of nature. But I will not 
 describe further. Reisebricfe always bore. 
 
 Sometimes I think I will never be worth much interest. 
 I do not tliinknow that you will ever see "Curt Reinecke 
 Op. 100 " on the cover of some big s^nnphony or opera. 
 I can think beautiful things but I cannot invent them. 
 They are underneath 50,000 kilos cardboard ! I do 
 not want to be the Stnimbach of Hamburg, but it is 
 very difficult not to succeed in business when one is a 
 Jew. Is this mad ? One has to be mad occasionally. 
 I notice that happiness comes often from no reason. 
 Recently when I was one day on a ship I was happy. 
 There were a lot of kemach on board, and some manner- 
 less Germans. Also two English people, so proud that 
 if they were d}dng no one would dare to speak with 
 them. Then there were a lot of emigrants. One 
 woman with a baby at her breast was eating soup of 
 macaroni, and while she was eating the baby was suck- 
 ing hard. One of the macaronis fell on her bosom and 
 she left it there and continued her dinner. I wondered 
 whether she was happy. . . . 
 
 Yesterday I went to the opera and heard the Maestri 
 Cantori by Ricardo Wagner ! ! That is enough to make 
 happy for a year, both the opera and the way they call 
 it here. 
 
 Do not make a sour face at this long letter. Write 
 soon to my honourable person. 
 
 And at length news came from Ransom.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 275 
 
 1000 CoRNEiLLE Avenue, Chicago. 
 
 You will be surprised, my dear Marston, to hear 
 from me after all this time. But peihaps you have 
 guessed that I was determined not to write until I had 
 achieved some sort of success. And I have achieved 
 it ; at least I have a wife, a flat, and monev in the 
 bank. It has not been easy. 
 
 I got here in three stages. First, London. After 
 infinite difficulty I managed to get on to the slafl' 
 of the advertising department of a respectable Tory 
 journal. There when I was not occupied in bag- 
 carrjang, cab-fetching or running errands for the senior 
 employees I was permitted to tinker up the pictures 
 of dapper little gentlemen in frock-coats demonstrating 
 to elegant mon dairies the superiority of gas-fires over 
 electricity, or vice versa. They say Millais or some 
 other Enghsh painter was never so happy as when he 
 was putting the high lights on to a pair of patent 
 leathers. I soon tired of it, and went the round of the 
 pubHshers in search of illustrative work. You know, I 
 can do that ; if I don't interpret too slavishly, at least 
 I don't get in the author's way. I pestered these 
 gentlemen with all the assiduity of broken-down 
 ladies keeping body and soul together on out-of-date 
 encyclopaedias and discarded atlases. Most publishers 
 refused to see me ; those who did gave me advice. 
 Streidlitz said : " Do me a series of fifty illustrations to — 
 here he hummed and haa'd — Shakespeare, and I'll have 
 a look at 'em." Dobie and Dyson said: "Do us a 
 dozen or so up-to-date sketches for Dickens, something 
 smart and slick, and we'll consider." I asked whether 
 they wouldn't Hke to see my "idea of a cathedral," 
 whereupon they fired me out. Not one of them
 
 276 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 would so much as look at the drawings which I had 
 done. 
 
 Fools ! 
 
 " High adventure " is all rubliish. I wanted work. 
 
 And then I got a job, chair-designing, which took 
 me to Brussels, but it didn't last long. There are 
 only seven shapes of chairs. It was here that I came 
 in for a fine bit of fun. I put in a week's hard drawing 
 at the Academy — from the life — so as to be able to 
 compete for admission. I learned one thing and one 
 thing only during those absurd seven days, which was 
 that whilst the students looked like revolutionaries 
 and anarchists and had the appropriate unwashed 
 manners, they were in reality mild, oh, so unutterably, 
 incalculably mild ! I did not unearth a talent or a 
 vice among the lot. They followed the pencil of a 
 Belgian professor with a Scotch accent — he had been 
 a drawing-master in Glasgow- — with about as much 
 intelligence as performing seals follow the stick. They 
 followed with their noses and the same silly air as a seal. 
 There's something in hypnotism ; the professor called 
 it tradition. You may rest assured that I made a 
 drawing after my own heart, a sprawling, ill-mannered, 
 aggressively anti-academic thing. They slammed the 
 door in my face. ... 
 
 By this time I had, of course, got to the end of my 
 money. A dozen times I wrote to people in England 
 and a dozen times I tore the letter up. I couldn't beg, 
 I had no acquaintances to borrow from, and I wasn't 
 clever enough to steal. 
 
 So I decided to " shake the dust," etc. and turn my 
 back on Europe. 
 
 Ye gentlemen of England that stay at home at ease,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 277 
 
 what a funny lot you are ! Saturday afternoons in the 
 bosom of your families, household wit on the links. 
 I wonder whether I shall ever return to it all again. 
 
 In this broad, simple, Whitmanesque coimtry I 
 can at least breathe. I've been able to get work 
 and I've been well paid for it. What does it matter 
 if it's only designing palaces for millionaires ? I say 
 " designing.'" Of course I'm fantastically ignorant of 
 strains and stresses, thrusts and pulls. They have 
 nide mechanical fellows to see that the erections don't 
 tumble down ; my job is the fa9ade which I titivate 
 according to the customer's taste and fancy. I can do 
 you as smart a bit of Gothic or chic Byzantine as you 
 could wish to set eyes on. The work is not really as 
 bad as it sounds ; and in any case I get immense fun 
 out of the clients. In Manchester I had to choose 
 between Strumbach and honesty, in London between 
 bag-carrying and the streets. The worst of it was that 
 my masters wouldn't even pick my brains. I would 
 have devilled for them loyally and without recognition ; 
 the knowledge that my brains were not quite thrown 
 away would have contented me. But they knew better. 
 You may say my work out here is low. Admitted, but 
 better the store than the gutter. The heroic disposition 
 doesn't suffice ; you must be able to go without meals 
 as well. 
 
 In the meantime I am amused by America and the 
 Americans. They are, by the way, thunderingly untrue 
 to Henry James. 
 
 I have kept this from Rodd till the last. 
 
 Well, my play is launched and it's going fine. It's 
 a succbs de scandale and a money-maker to boot.
 
 278 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 It's all about a young woman who wants to be a 
 mother but can't be bothered with a husband — the 
 milieu, the Yorkshire colliery districts. I've got an 
 actress for the I^ondon production with the most perfect 
 Hovmdsditch accent — you must always give the Cockney 
 sometliing he can understand. I am fitting out half-a- 
 dozen touring companies for the provinces and shall of 
 course vaiy the dialect with the coal-seam. There's 
 nothing Swansea likes better than holding up its hands 
 at Bamsley and vice versa. Sticking yom* nose into 
 other people's dirty linen is an amusing game. ... I 
 badly want the play to be a success for the sake of 
 those I shall be allowed to write afterv^'ards. Once 
 make your mark and the public will take anything 
 from you, even good work. But they're as shy as 
 trout ; you've got to tickle 'em. 
 
 I need hardly tell you that I had a pretty stiff time 
 at the start. There's an old saying that there's plenty 
 of room at the top ; I would add that it is of little use 
 having the upper-story genius unless you have the 
 ground-floor talent as well. When I came up to London 
 I was prepared to turn out a column on Greek tragedy 
 which old Pater would not have jibbed at, but I 
 soon found that I was no good at the smart and pithy 
 " par." It took me a year to learn that what news- 
 papers want is not criticism but paragraphs, and now 
 I'll undertake to be as snappy as the Sermon on the 
 Mount. Did you know it was I who discovered 
 Maeterlinck ? You only knew him as a poet ; I found 
 out he was fond of automobiles and slipped over to 
 Brussels to interview him. " Motorist and Mystic ! " 
 How's that for a headline ? It makes me wonder what 
 has become of our old kemach album.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 279 
 
 I began my apprenticeship to the trade of scril^bling 
 by doing some fifty articles on the theatre for one of 
 those provincial newspapers run in the interests of a 
 stable, a kennel, and the Conservative party. Fifty 
 columns of my best blood and brains, or what was left 
 of them after some three hours of a London first night 
 in a comer where you can't hear and behind a pillar 
 where you can't see. Ten thousand lines I " con- 
 tributed " — at least forty pounds' worth at the rate 
 for murders and street accidents. You'll never guess 
 what they sent me. Seven •pounds, my dear, and 
 said it was more than they originally intended owing 
 to the "superior quality of the stuff." The cheque 
 came on Christmas Eve. Hard up though I was, I 
 gave it to a cabby to buy a new coat and wrote and 
 told 'em so. 
 
 " Quixotic beggar, Rodd," said superb Croesus, when 
 he got my letter, or so his manager told me. And now 
 I've just turned him down at a fiver a column ! 
 
 Then I did a turn at advertising work. " Pillsbury's 
 Pastilles sweeten the Breath and make Conversation 
 a Pleasure " was my find. There is no complaint 
 however monstrous and ludicrous for which I have 
 not invented a rhj^ming remedy. I can tease you 
 to smile with my cure for constipation and charm 
 you to a tear on the subject of superfluous hair. 
 Vendors of patent medicines have come to me boggling 
 at the half-heartedness of their advisers. Give me the 
 daggers, I would reply, and carve them a seller out of 
 atrocity's living rock. 
 
 For a time I earned a living playing the piano at 
 " At Homes." They used to give me a pound a night, 
 guineas when a white tie was de rigueur. I have
 
 280 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 disgaiised myself as a Hungarian and as a Pole, a Kaffir 
 and a Chinaman, even on occasion as a gentleman. 
 I have worn plush and powdered my hair. There is 
 in point of fact no indignity to which I have not sub- 
 mitted. I have learned to look more leniently on those 
 poor drabs who wear tawdiy finciy and dye their hair. 
 (By the way I've got an idea for a story — all about a 
 harlot who keeps her intellectual privacy and talks 
 down to her lovers.) I remember one over-bosomed 
 duchess asking if I could play Venus on the Hill. I was 
 surprised, but said I could and began to kick up the 
 veiy deuce of a shindy with my version of the Venus- 
 berg music i'rom Tcmnhdusei, which really is a version, 
 let me tell you ! After about five minutes the poor 
 beldam said she had had enough of the introduction 
 and could the waltz begin. It turned out that Venus 
 on Ihe Hill is something to dance to. There is extra- 
 ordinarily little difference between Park Lane and 
 Shufflebottom's Cross. 
 
 I have just come from a dress rehearsal at the Greater 
 England Theatre where Lustgarten is giving what he 
 calls "A Christmas Allegory of Good-will." It is 
 not to be called a pantomime although the title, The 
 Wings of a Dove, has given the old boy's scenic genius 
 all the scope it wants. There's a bird in it, a very 
 ordinary pigeon by the way, procured from some 
 villainous cut-throat fancier. The clou of the evening 
 is to be the flight of poor Fan from the stage to its 
 cote in the gallery — ^the bird consenting of course. 
 The deputy-sub-assistant-s cage-manager who has been 
 rehearsing the flight for ten hours a day went down 
 on his knees this afternoon imploring the bird to dis- 
 close its intentions as to to-morrow. To-day it refused
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 281 
 
 to budge an inch. If it sulks " on the night " bang 
 goes three hundred a year or whatever it is the poor 
 rehearser gets. If the flight is achieved then Lustgarten 
 himself, astute old monkey, will come forward and 
 " ^ake the call." He'll kiss the bird of course, and 
 3'ou'll all grovel. 
 
 I'm by way of being in his confidence since I began 
 to " influence taste," as he says. Influence the receipts 
 is what he means. You know it's not safe for even the . 
 best people to make up their minds about a play until 
 they've seen what I've got to say about it. Lustgarten 
 tells me that after "the season of good-will " he's going 
 to do Chopin, or The Story of an Ungrateful Mistress. 
 His idea is to walk about the stage trying to look 
 consumptive and jotting down inspiration in a penny 
 notebook, what time the orchestra plays snatches of 
 that awful Funeral March. Then there are to be some 
 nineteen women— to represent the Nocturnes. I had 
 to look up Grove to satisfy him that there are nineteen 
 and not six or forty-five ; he's a stickler for accuracy, 
 you know. Then these nineteen wenches — always 
 presuming there are nineteen — are to step out of 
 frames and dance round him while he dreams. I 
 believe he intends to have a sleep-walking scene in 
 which he fumbles at the keys whilst that hackneyed 
 old thing in E flat is played " off." Doesn't the old boy 
 know his public ? Ransom's Strumbach all over again. 
 
 The most amusing thing about the theatre is its 
 underworld, and I'm not sure that it isn't insti-uctive 
 as well. I often spend an hour in a low bar opposite 
 the stage-door of the Greater England. There you see 
 the world old Westrom had no inkling of and wanted 
 to make allowances for — the world of stage hands,
 
 282 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 doorkeepers, call-boj^s, seedy out-of-work actors, 
 hangers-on, touts, all the hundred and one extraordin- 
 ary creatures that hover on the edge of the stage. 
 There you hear preposterous stories of old Lustgarten 
 in that wonderful accent which is half East End clothier 
 and half sham Italian voice-producer. There you can 
 surprise some ethereal creature's dresser in search of 
 stout, and young Apollo turned Beau Brocade nibbling 
 a sandwich. Then all that half-world of uncertain 
 definition, unscrupulous and suspect, without function 
 or pui-pose ; that half-world which is all generosity, 
 good-nature, wit and drift, hopeless, helpless drift. 
 
 The other evening I went to supper at old Ravens- 
 court's. I don't suppose you have ever heard of him ; 
 he is reputed to have been a famous juvenile lead in 
 the early fifties. The critics of the period speak of 
 him as a young Adonis of singular beauty and a very 
 promising actor. He is both still ! Do you remember 
 Maupassant's story of the young man of ninety who 
 danced at the public balls ? Ravenscourt is like that. 
 There is an atmosphere about him of nard and aloes, 
 or whatever it is embalmers use. He introduced me to 
 a Miss Smithers — who the deuce is she ?^ — and talked 
 a lot about her performances of Medea and Electra in 
 ancient Greek. Such a mistake not to give these 
 bagatelles in modern French, don't you think ? So I 
 played them what I could remember of Strauss 's 
 Electra. Ravenscourt was terrible to see. Fresh 
 enough at the beginning, he decayed visibly as the 
 evening wore on. He sat on a sofa with one leg drawn 
 up underneath him — rather a creaky performance — and 
 wept and wrung his hands like a girl. " I can't bear 
 it," he cried, " I can't bear it." and the tears ran down
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 283 
 
 his raddled old cheeks. It was one of the most grotesque 
 and pitiful sights imaginable. 
 
 But the most extraordinary thing about London is 
 its fashionable women, whom I abhor almost as much 
 as I do their dogs. Last night I had to listen through- 
 out the whole of dinner to prattle about Cherie's 
 artlessness and Toto's taking ways. It appears that 
 two of these horrid little beasts had had their engage- 
 ment announced in the Society papers and that the 
 wedding had been a veiy smart affair. I had to hear 
 how the bridegroom wore a priceless confection in rose- 
 the, with ruchings of vieil or, and a bracelet round 
 each foot ; how the bride was attired in maidish satin 
 with sprigs of orange-flower. She wore no other 
 ornament, sighed her romantic owner. I asked her 
 whether at the end of the tomfoolery she left them 
 enjin seuls. But these creatures are impervious. . . . 
 
 It was this letter which brought me to London. 
 
 I suppose the years I spent there were sheer waste. 
 At least they gave me nothing better than my last three 
 unsuccessful novels and the great and glorious Mr 
 Pig-Pig ! over the mysterious authorship of wliich all 
 London went crazy for a season. 
 
 I have nothing further to record until the whole of 
 England rises to her great occasion. Sixteen years 
 hke an evening gone, as the old hynm says.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 §i 
 
 ALL the world is in agreement that you cannot 
 indict a nation ; it is perhaps not so obvious 
 that you cannot sympathise with one. Not 
 a year Imt a thousand savages — that is races whose 
 civihsation is not oui-s — conmiit suicide upon the graves 
 of their ancestors — pleasing matter for a page in your 
 traveller's notebook. The Congo native waves his 
 tragic stumps- — ^we debate whether to sell our rubber 
 shares. And there is this matter of Belgium. All that 
 I knew of Belgium towards the beginning of August 
 1914 might have been summed up in a couple of 
 poets, a hearsay cathedral, a well-worn tag as to cock- 
 pits and battle-grounds and the recollection that it was 
 before the walls of Namur that my Uncle Toby received 
 his wound. Was it for this handful of knowledge that 
 I as an Englishman was passionately eager to go to 
 war ? I cannot think so. Statesmen have invented 
 the " idea " of patriotism as a defence against national 
 indifference, the knightly attitude towards little nations 
 as a protection against national selfishness. We are 
 such children that the mere official record of the 
 martyrdom of old men and babes leaves us cold whilst 
 we may be moved to tears with the same recital from 
 the stage, some tawdry troll draped in red, yellow and 
 black sending us cheering to our duty. We are such 
 children that we cannot grasp woe unless we see a picture 
 of it, nor recognise plain obligation without some senti- 
 mental masquerade. Therefore must we visualise a 
 
 284
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 285 
 
 " little " Belgium and seek our patriotism at the music- 
 hall. It is perhaps natural, and we should not be too 
 ready with irony. Let those who would declare this 
 factitious emotion to be confined to the sentimental 
 remember that hard-headed men of business were 
 supposed to look more kindly on an investment when 
 presented in the guise of battered tanks and mud- 
 covered guns. In a word the war w^as too big 
 for us in the beginning and, thank God for our 
 peace of mind, has remained too big for us ever 
 since. 
 
 In the early days little that was not trivial. I have 
 two impressions and two only. The first a procession 
 of larrikins waving flags and blowing trumpets in 
 Piccadilly, the second a glimpse of soldiers in service 
 dress and sailors with bundles under their arms emerg- 
 ing from a Soldiers' and Sailors' Club in the Waterloo 
 Road. " Good luck, Tommy ! " " Good luck, Jack ! " 
 and the war had begun. 
 
 This was the time when all men who wanted to think 
 deeply and wisely, to strike the just mean between the 
 guileless fool of the legend and the honourable man 
 of the world, looked for a lead to the columns of 
 The National Conscience. How blunderingly, pitifully 
 wrong they found its leaders, in mistakenness how 
 nobly and passionately conceived. The writer was the 
 stuff the apostles were made of — so much leaped at you 
 from the printed sheet. He wore his complicated 
 integrity on his sleeve, conducting with Jesuitical 
 artistry an argument of Quakerish simplicity — as who 
 should say the loose-fitting soul of a Don Quixote in 
 supreme possession of his wits. And in the manipula- 
 tion of these wits the very genius of marshaldom. Never
 
 286 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 was argument more Christianly devised nor more 
 ingenuously distorted. 
 
 "It is admitted by the interventionists — ^to coin a 
 word as hateful as the thing — that this country has no 
 direct interest in the quarrel, save the elementary one 
 of seeing fair play between Belgrade and Vienna. But 
 that is not a British interest at all. Our interest is fair 
 play in England, fair play in our coal-fields, in our cotton 
 mills and shipyards, fair play in the slums of English 
 cities and not in the chancelleries of Europe. And why, 
 even granted this hypothetical interest, should the 
 Slav be so much dearer to us than the Teuton that on 
 his behalf we should tax the necessaries of the poor 
 to famine prices and the income of the rich to extinc- 
 tion ? For let us recognise that this is the ultimate 
 meaning of war." 
 
 O noble and purblind soul, seeing no inch beyond 
 the moment's generosity ! Not a word about the safety 
 or the peril of England with Gennany mistress of France 
 and the Channel Ports. 
 
 " Duty and interest demand that this country shall 
 not make itself an accessory in this awful crime against 
 reason and human happiness. The burden of war has 
 always fallen and must always fall on the mass of the 
 community, on the people. War means putting back 
 the clock of progress and human prosperity for a hundred 
 years. War will take away from our people all their 
 statesmen have given them since the days of Pitt ; 
 war must inevitably throw us back to the dark days 
 of crime, suffering and disease. The Government is
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 287 
 
 the trustee of the people. It cannot sacrifice the 
 people's welfare on the altar of a mistaken chivalry." 
 
 Brilliant advocacy that can attribute its own pet 
 weakness to the other side ! 
 
 " Until we actually go to war it would be criminal 
 for any Englishman to maintain silence who believes, 
 as in our opinion the majorit\' still do, that participation 
 in this war would be against the honourable duty that 
 we owe to our own folk." 
 
 O gallant debater, what evil spirit endowed you at 
 birth with that childlike innocency and idealism for 
 ever leading you astray in this real world ? 
 
 Lastly the grand and sober amends : 
 
 " England has declared war, and discussion is over. 
 Our comitry is on the eve of battle and the ranks close 
 up. We are united to win." 
 
 Tears came into the eyes of many as they read this 
 declaration of conscience. Into my own eyes as I 
 thought of old Warden sitting in his midnight den, less 
 like a great editor than a wistful fisher of men, fingering 
 his grey beard in a last effort to save the world. Warden 
 is the last disciple of a disinterested faith ; it is enough 
 that a cause should be unpopular for him to espouse 
 it passionately. He has belief in his fellow-man, the 
 true apostolic fervour and the zest for martyrdom. 
 True that he is seldom in touch with life or with emotion 
 other than the ascetic's, that he lacks companions in
 
 288 RESPONSIBII>ITY 
 
 nobility. He is a brooding eagle inhabiting an 
 eyrie, blinded by the glory of his inward visions. 
 Distraught and wrapped about with virginity, he 
 hears voices. . . . 
 
 But England had another and more mischievous 
 press which for the evil that it would do lacked the 
 sanction of this full-blown ecstasy. How well one could 
 foretell its babble. That the German, as distinct from 
 the Prussian, is at heart a good fellow ; that if it be 
 noble and fitting to die for one's country it is not less 
 noble to die that our good and peace-loving neighbour 
 may rid himself of his Prussian yoke ; that all that 
 downrightness and vigour smacking regrettably of the 
 Nelson touch must, by irritating neutrals, be to our 
 disadvantage and to the ultimate good of the enemy ; 
 that blockades are only successful according to their 
 elasticity ; that a military decision must not be 
 expected ; that the dismemberment of the German 
 Empire would be a calamity to Britain. So the bulk 
 of craven pacifism. 
 
 Nor can I think more favourably of those Conserva- 
 tive news sheets which by pretty pictures and pithy 
 anecdotes, by the " vivid " dispatches of their war 
 correspondents, by all that is silly, vulgar and inept, 
 were yet to force our politicians to the winning of the 
 war. 
 
 " Are the people," wrote Claud Rodd in the starchiest 
 of London journals " never to possess a newspaper 
 written in their proper interests and combining a sense 
 of humanity, a broad Imperial outlook and the fastidi- 
 ous sincerity of The National Conscience ? Labour has 
 no greater failure to show than its inability to enrol the 
 aristocratic brain."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 289 
 
 §ii 
 Aiid then there were practical things to be done. 
 IMaps to be bought, large scale the better to hearten 
 us ; Serbia and Bulgaria to be definitely located ; 
 exact computations of populations and armies ; dis- 
 cussion as to the propriety of throwing our little 
 handful across the Channel or keeping it for protection 
 at home ; theories of defence to be elaborated hardly 
 less naive than the epaulments, ravelins, half-moons, 
 curteins and bastions of Corporal Trim. One had 
 investments to reckon up, and it became matter for 
 congratulation that the Midland Railway really does 
 stick to the centre of England instead of nosing danger- 
 ously round the Eastern Coast. Mentally one cut 
 one's losses in the Diisseldorf People's Palace, the 
 Moonlight-on-the-Alster Soul-Awakening Steamboat 
 Promenade Companjr, and the Nuremberg Up-to-date 
 Mediseval-Restoring and Beer- Gardening Club. And 
 one went to the bank and exchanged gold for little slips 
 of paper. Throughout this queer texture of patriotic 
 ardour and practical calculation there would run ever 
 and anon the anxious thought — what new gun, explosive 
 or monstrous device could Geniiany possess that she 
 dared defy us ? 
 
 And then Liege fell. 
 
 And Namur. 
 
 About this time I received through a round-about 
 source the following letter from Reinecke : — 
 
 Do you remember, Ned, an old letter of yours about 
 the balance of power in Europe, and how England and 
 Germany were strong enough to beat France if she 
 should grow too proud and Russia if she allowed
 
 290 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 herself to growl too loudly. And I replied you not to 
 write any such nonsense, as two intelligent people did 
 not need to bother their honourable heads upon so 
 barbarous a thing as war. And now this bar])arity 
 has come tiiie and we must cut each other's throats like 
 butchers who have lost their honourable senses. It is 
 too grotesque ; I do not know whether to laugh or 
 cry. My relations are very serious about it all. 
 " Curt," they have said to me solemnly, " when you 
 have invaded England already, it will be better that 
 you do not kill your English friends and to torture 
 them only a little. ..." I am not afraid that if the 
 English take me prisoner I shall be tortured very 
 much. You do not understand war. . . . Germans 
 make war thoroughly, like Wagner wrote his operas. . . . 
 What is so terrible is that I do not know who is 
 right and that it does not matter. I am a German 
 now and must think German. Those mad Englishmen 
 who were on the side of the Boers in vour Boer War, 
 do they still exist ? I suppose they must be finding 
 that Germany has a lot of right on her side. We are 
 stronger than you ; a pro-Englander would not be 
 allowed to live. Yet there are things in this question 
 which could make me take an English view of it, only 
 I was a soldier befoie the war and have learned to 
 discipline the mind as well as the arms and legs. And 
 therefore I must be German. There is nothing left 
 for me now except the triumph of the Fatherland. 
 Do not smile at this word ; it stands for a good German 
 thing. And yet though we must beat England, there 
 are a great many things in your country which I must 
 love. There are your beautiful English villages and 
 your gentle English ways. When people are not
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 291 
 
 stupid there is no need to make rules and to order them 
 about. All English people aie like the old men in 
 Maeterlinck ; they have lived a great deal and have 
 learned something. Germans are like the children 
 in Maeterlinck crying in the dark, and so they hold the 
 Emperor's hand. It does not matter that he should 
 be a kemach ; he is the master. , . . 
 
 But there is much in Germany that the English do 
 not understand. We, too, have our beautiful villages 
 and pleasant customs. It is too favourable to judge of 
 Germany by its Jews alone, but even the inferior 
 peoples, when you know them, have to be loved in 
 spite of their arrogant bull -necks. They will die, not 
 because to die is a fine thing, but because they are 
 Germans. ..." 
 
 One evening Rodd heaved into my room. 
 
 " I am not easy about it all," he said. 
 
 " Any news to-night ? " 
 
 " They've sunk some cruisers in the Channel. Old 
 ones. And they're precious nearly through Belgium. 
 But that isn't the point. I can't stand this." And 
 he indicated the wet street along which bedraggled 
 humanity was marching in fours. 
 
 " Their clothes '11 stink when they get in, you know. 
 Can't you see their boots, and their feet ? " He paused 
 and after a time went on savagely : 
 
 " I don't want to join and I've no excuse. I haven't 
 had my whack of fun yet and I don't M^ant to be killed. 
 I'm fit enough, I'm not too old, and I don't think 
 I'm really a coward. But I don't want to leave all 
 this. I've written to Old Morality about it." 
 
 " And what docs Mark say ? "
 
 292 RESPONSIBITJTY 
 
 " Wliat you'd expect. Something about war being 
 a hellish business and every man a blackguard if he 
 doesn't take a hand. lie goes on to say that he has 
 a wife and family, a heart murmur, and nearly fifty 
 years to boot and that he's considering. He's afraid 
 he'll have to be content with ' taking an interest ' 
 in something or other, in making toast in a ward or 
 looking after soldiers' wives." 
 
 I showed him Reinecke's letter. 
 
 "Hope he comes through," he replied after he had 
 glanced at it. " But I've no time for him at the 
 moment. It's Claud Rodd that's worrying me. He'll 
 have to go. Bissett's gone. He'll be a Brigadier 
 in no time — he's the clean-living sort, you know, plays 
 with a straight bat, Public School all over him. That's 
 not a sneer. He'll do well. He's no fool ; the men 
 will like him and he'll freeze on to all the forlorn hopes 
 going. I've just had a letter in which he says he's 
 expecting his commission at an}^ minute. Tells a story 
 about his sergeant-major. It seems he made the 
 mistake of addressing the fellow as ' chum.' ' If it's a 
 blasted chum you want, ' said the swine, carefully spitting 
 on Reggie's boots — you know the polish he'd have on 
 'em — ' get behind them bloody latrines. You'll find 
 a bleeding dawg there and you can chum up with him.' " 
 
 " You can't run an army without discipline," I said. 
 
 " Of course you can't, and that's the exasperating 
 part of it. But who wants to nm an army anyhow, 
 or to be within a thousand miles of one ? Abolish 
 your Liberals and Conservatives and bring in your 
 Socialists, not in this country but all the world over, 
 and there'd be no need for armies. You can't be a 
 soldier and a man. ' I obey, therefore I exist ' is the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 293 
 
 theory. The militaiy mind thinks the whole of life 
 is contained in getting scuttlers and hooligans and you 
 and me to bob and curtsy to it. Morally it's the knout 
 they wield. Why, man, they've the right to search you 
 for lice, inspect your feet, appraise your teeth, to go 
 paddling in your neck with their damned fingers. All 
 under the pretence that war's a great game. There 
 ain't five recruits in a hundred who have any idea of 
 what war is. Or if they have that makes the obligation 
 on us all the greater. They're our dregs and they 
 show us the way." 
 
 I demurred to dregs. 
 
 " Anyhow it's going to be dull. There'll be months 
 of training, of being herded together like cattle, and 
 my publishers will expect me to write a pretty book 
 about it for the drawing-room table. Good-bye." 
 
 " You're not going " I began. 
 
 " Going to think about it a bit longer," he replied. 
 
 § iii 
 
 A few days later Rodd came to see me again and at 
 once returned to the charge. 
 
 " It's not fair to the chaps who've joined up that we 
 should look upon them sentimentally. War is more 
 than an emotion ; it's a big, stupid thing and I can't 
 bring myself to look upon it heroically. All fighting 
 isn't heroism, nor all dying heroic. There's damp huts 
 and pneumonia, the whole inefficient rigmarole. And 
 yet I've got to join. I shall empty latrines and try 
 not to write comic articles about it. I shall hate the 
 whole business, the fuss, the patriotism — oh, above all 
 I shall hate the patriotism, the voicing of it, I mean.
 
 204 T^KSPONSTBTT.TTY 
 
 And I sliall want to loathe all these tramps and louts 
 and I shan't be able to. Then I shall want to get to 
 know them and again I shan't be able to. My tongue 
 won't be theirs ; I shall be outside their lingo." 
 
 He stood by the window drumming on the pane. 
 
 " I wish they'd choose any other street to march 
 down, damn them ! Don't they look cold ? " 
 
 I have a great power of silence and waited to let 
 him have his say out. 
 
 "There's a fellow looking up at your windows," he 
 broke off suddenly. " He's been hanging about for 
 some time. Any enemies, Ned ? " 
 
 " Lots," I answered. " What does he look like ? " 
 
 *' Shabby and wet. Anyhow he's rung." 
 
 After a minute or so my old housekeeper announced 
 that a young man wanted to see Mr Marston and 
 refused to give his name. 
 
 " 'E looks 'arf-starved, poor dear, and that miserable." 
 
 " Show him up, Mrs Lyon, and bring tea." 
 
 The young man came in, blinked a little at the light, 
 and stood by the door twisting the corner of his sodden 
 cap. A hint of the gentleman, the cut of the clerk, a 
 suspicion of defiant misery. I was totally unprepared 
 for what was to come. 
 
 " Which of you is Mr Marston ? " he asked. 
 
 " Wait a bit," said Claud, thrusting in before I could 
 speak. "What's your name, my lad, and what's your 
 business ? " 
 
 " I want to loiow which of you is my father," he 
 replied. 
 
 " By God ! " said Claud rising, " this is up to you, 
 Ned." 
 
 " Sit down, man." And Claud sat down.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 295 
 
 " So you are Mr Marston ? " the boy went on slowly, 
 turning to me. 
 
 " That is my name," I replied. " Come in and let 
 me give you something. You look cold. Pull yourself 
 together. We'll talk aftersvards." 
 
 The truth was that it was I who stood in need of 
 being pulled together. 
 
 The boy came into the room and took a seat by the 
 fire whilst I busied myself with whiskies and soda. 
 
 And now I wonder whether I owe the reader an 
 apology. I believe I owe myself one. For I deter- 
 mined, when I set out, to deal only in essentials, to 
 eliminate all those lightings and re-lightings of cigars, 
 dispositions of hats and gloves, triflings with tea-cups 
 and glasses which take up so much time and are such 
 a bore to recount. I wanted to get at essential truth 
 and now I find that for a while this meeting with my 
 son resolves itself into offers of tea and cigarettes. 
 The tmth is that I felt the need of gaining time. The 
 boy veiy obviously held himself on the defensive, 
 accepting the proffered hospitality out of courtesy. 
 
 After a little while during which I watched him as 
 narrowly as I decently might, looking for Clare whose 
 son alone he must be, I said : 
 
 " Now, my boy, let us clear all this up. Will you 
 tell me your name ? " 
 
 " Tremblow, sir." 
 
 " Never mind about the ' sir.' Edward Tremblow ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " It was Edward. I changed it to Dick. I've never 
 been beholden to anybody." 
 
 I had little doubt about his being Clare's child. The 
 honest grey eyes, the quick turn of the head spoke of
 
 296 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Clare and I felt the blood rush to my faee and my heart 
 to thump and beat like a sledge-hanmier. I began to 
 tremble as on the eve of some happening, I had the 
 sense of peril, of the tension that goes before some 
 desperate leap, of the age-long second that precedes 
 and determines. 
 
 " And your mother ? " I heard myself saying. 
 
 " Dead twelve years ago. I hardly remember her. 
 You've nothing to fear from either of us." 
 
 " Good God, man," I cried, " I fear nothing this side 
 the grave except my own nerves, and nothing at all the 
 other. " An outburst sufficiently silly, but I was excited. 
 
 "Tell us," said Claud in his most level, matter-of- 
 fact tone, "tell Mr Marston why you've come to him 
 now and not before." 
 
 "I want to know who brought me into all this," 
 he replied, waving his arm vag-uely and with a 
 gesture comprehending more than the room and the 
 stt'eet. " I want to know at whose instigation " — 
 I caught Rodd's wondering eye — " I have suffered — 
 and endured and enjoyed. Oh yes, I've enjoyed too." 
 
 He looked at his boots and the knees of his trousers. 
 
 " My mother died when I was about five or six. She 
 was married then and her husband used to thrash us 
 both. Her oftener than me. One evening he put us 
 out into the street and we walked about all night. 
 She took pneumonia a week later. I remember the 
 man crying a lot after she was dead. I don't know 
 his name and I've never seen him since. I was sent to 
 an orphanage near Reading." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " Poor girl," I heard Claud whisper. 
 
 " Go on," I said.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 297 
 
 " On the morning of her death my mother called me 
 to her and said : ' Ned, I'm not long for this world.' " 
 
 •' Did she really say that ? " I asked, the writer and 
 phrasemaker in me damnably agog. 
 
 " I don't remember the exact words," he returned. 
 " She felt she hadn't long to live andsaid so. What's 
 wrong with the words ? " 
 
 " Nothing's wrong," said Claud, " Mr Marston wants 
 to be quite sure of understandmg your mother's 
 meaning." 
 
 " Go on," I urged. 
 
 " She then told me that my father was not the man 
 who lived with us but the Mr Marston who wrote the 
 books. She wrote the name on a piece of paper and 
 told me to come to you if ever I wanted you, but not 
 unless. ' Your father was good to me,' she said, ' good 
 according to his lights, and remember, Ned, I've no 
 complaints to make and have never made any. Don't 
 forget that, Ned.' And I've not forgotten, as you see." 
 
 We sat silent for a moment. 
 
 " Are you rich, either of you ? " lie asked suddenly. 
 
 " Poor as a church mouse," said Rodd promptly. 
 
 " More than I know what to do with," from me. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he returned simply. 
 
 " Don't you " I began, and then I saw the old 
 
 stubborn look which used to be Clare's come into his 
 eyes. He gave a shrug of contempt and my question 
 died away. 
 
 " But, my dear Mr Tremblow, won't you tell us, 
 won't you tell your father "^ — here he looked at me and 
 I nodded—" what it is you do want ? " 
 
 "I want acknowledgment," said the boy, "just 
 that and no more. I don't want sympathy and a
 
 298 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 decent kindness and all the charitable bag of tricks. 
 I've earned my own way up to now. I've picked up a 
 living, not much of a one, but a living, in a shop or two, 
 in offices, in a goods yard, down at the docks. I've 
 been dresser to a fashionable actor and I've sold papers. 
 Sometimes I've sunk, sometimes I've risen, but always 
 I've been master of my soul. I've nothing to be 
 ashamed of and it has been life all the time. But 
 now I want acknowledgment, not before the world, 
 as they say, but to my own face. Oh, I've not come 
 here to make a fuss. I know how men use women. 
 I've seen it from the street, and life's different when 
 you've seen it from the street. It doesn't look at all 
 the same as it does to you people in houses, and yet I'm 
 not satisfied. There's not enough reason for me. The 
 world beats about me as it beats about every lad tliat 
 has parents who want him, and I feel that I have not 
 been wanted. I lie awake at night, and say to myself : 
 ' You are not wanted.' I lie awake and feel that I've 
 stolen my right to a share in all this." 
 
 " All this ? " from Claud. 
 
 " I'm joining vip in a day or two and I made up my 
 mind that before I joined I would try to find my father, 
 in case he wanted me now. Ever so little would do. 
 And then I was curious ; I am curious. There are a 
 hundred things I want to know, that I've puzzled over 
 and can't find an answer to. I want to know whether 
 having no father takes from me the right to a child. 
 I want to know whether marriage matters, whether if 
 I come through this I shall have anything to hand on. 
 Do I begin a new race or end an old one, or do I just 
 not count at all ? For if I don't count then I've less 
 to offer than any other of the lads."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 299 
 
 He made a quick change of ground. 
 
 " Do you know what it is to live on twenty -two 
 shillings a week ? " he asked. " I was getting that 
 when this happened." 
 
 He pulled out of his pocket a bit of paper with 
 some figures on it and put it into our hands. We 
 could see that it was a weekly calculation of ways 
 and means telling of bare lodgings and meagre 
 shovelfuls of coal, of scanty clothing and insufficient 
 meals. 
 
 " Do 3^ou realise what twenty -two shillings a week 
 means ? It means that if you want to buy a book you 
 have to choose between having no fire or no breakfast 
 for a week. It means that you can hardly afford to be 
 clean, that you haven't the money to get drunk when 
 you're wretched. And then there's Saturday and 
 Sunday to be got through. Do you know I've hung 
 about the Park on Sunday nights for hours together 
 listening to the speakers to keep myself from thinking. 
 I'm afraid of my own thoughts ; I'm afraid of loneliness 
 and that's why I've come here." 
 
 " Where are you living ? " I asked. 
 
 "That's my affair," he answered. "It isn't 
 money I want and it isn't meals and it isn't 
 clothes. I just want to feel before I go out 
 there that I'm not alone in the world. Perhaps I 
 shan't come back. There's thousands won't come 
 back." 
 
 " I'm going too," said Rodd. He told me after- 
 wards that it was at that moment that he made up 
 his mind. The other gave a short laugh. 
 
 " You'll go as an officer," he said. " I'll be your 
 servant if you like."
 
 300 RESPONSTT^TT.TTY 
 
 " ^^liat's moving you to join ? " Rodd asked curiously. 
 " What has Enghuid done for you ? " 
 
 " (iood Lord, man, it's not a debt I'm paying. And 
 yet it is in a way. I'm joining for the sake of the 
 beauty in the world that you comfortable folk never 
 see. You don't know how lovely the Park is when you 
 are at dinner and one can be alone with the reddening 
 trees ; you don't even know the feel of a good meal. 
 You've never tightened your belt to listen to music ; 
 you get into fine clothes instead. The whole world is 
 full of beauty for those who are poor enough to see 
 it, though it may be it's onlj^ our dreams. They say 
 all visionaries are half starved. Anyhow whether the 
 beauty is there or whether I only imagine it, it's there 
 for me. I want to do something beautiful in return 
 and there's so little I can do except give my life. I 
 can't write and I can't paint and I'm worth exactly 
 twenty-two shillings a week. What is there in front 
 of me ? Twenty-five shillings, thirty, then perhaps a 
 couple of pounds and a pittance at the end if I strike 
 a generous lot. Well, here's the great chance. It's 
 the great chance, I take it, for all us clerks. At 
 least I shall be free, and by God I've had enough of 
 being hired." 
 
 After that he would not say another word. Suddenly 
 he got up and held out his hand which I grasped 
 awkwardly enough. 
 
 " I'll come again, if I may ? " 
 
 " I want you to come whenever you like," I said and 
 refrained from saying more. I felt that this was to be 
 a great thing in my life and that I must not squander 
 it in effusiveness. 
 
 Besides I wanted more time for thought. Reparation
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 301 
 
 had waited twenty years ; the urgency was not one of 
 minutes. 
 
 The boy turned to Rodd. 
 
 " Are you always here ? "he asked. 
 
 " No," said Claud, " but you can call on me, Praed 
 Street, 47a, over the shop." 
 
 " You're not bound to ask me," said Tremblow, with 
 rude graciousness, " but I'd like you to." 
 
 " To-morrow then, about this time. And we'll 
 come on to you afterwards, Ned." 
 
 The boy nodded and was gone. 
 
 " Had you never thought of all this ? " Claud asked 
 abruptly, as the door closed. 
 
 " Yes. But always in connection with blackmail 
 and that sort of thing." 
 
 " He's a gentleman. I'm not being snobbish." 
 
 "That makes it all the worse. The classic thing is 
 that you're responsible for some wretched creature of 
 the gutter. That has never moved me greatly. Either 
 you don't know, or if you do, money puts it more or 
 less right. But to have brought a fine, sensitive soul 
 into the world M'ith all its possibilities of misery — 
 that's hell. And yet it's fine too. It's a wonderful 
 thing. I don't in the least grasp it." 
 
 " Better you shouldn't. You'll go to extremes, as 
 usual." 
 
 " I want him," I said. 
 
 " He's wanted you any time these twenty years. 
 Better be humble, Ned." 
 
 " And then there's Clare," I began. 
 
 " I don't think she comes in. Suppose, Ned, we 
 use a little of that mental honesty you're so plaguey 
 handy with when there's no need for it. You
 
 302 RESPONSIBIIJTY 
 
 fiiiislicd with Clare ever so long ago. You haven't 
 thought of her these ten years, probably twenty. 
 You've outgrown her. You outgrew her long ago. 
 You're trying to put the clock back. You're senti- 
 mentalising. You wouldn't know what to do with 
 her if you had her now. Confess you don't want 
 her now." 
 
 " I don't," I said after a pause. " And it's 
 humiliating." 
 
 " It's natural and inevitable," declared Rodd, "and 
 humiliation doesn't come in." 
 
 And then we settled down to thrash the matter out. 
 We went over the whole ground, tl.c noble heights and 
 the treacherous fall. We talked of passion brooking 
 no hindrance and seeking no excuse, of "youthful 
 indiscretion, " of base appetite. We recalled Westrom's 
 " It must be tremendous fun to be a rake ; I haven't 
 any doubt that marriage with companionship and 
 children is finer." We recalled our youthful assertion 
 as to the one indisputable thing in heaven and earth : 
 the will for continuance. 
 
 " All ! " said Claud, " but we mustn't confuse father- 
 hood with, indulgence. Civilised man is under an 
 obligation according to the code of his kind, the English- 
 man according to the English code, though it's less 
 amusing than his neighbour's. It isn't fair in the 
 most elementary sense of fairness to keep only such 
 clauses of the civil contract as are convenient. All this 
 doesn't prevent its being better to be the natural son 
 of a great man than heir to the village grocer. It was 
 so in the days of Falconbridge and will be so again. 
 The slur of illegitimacy is a purely Victorian interlude. 
 It is Victorian simply because it is understood in the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 303 
 
 wrong way. Illegitimacy is to be reproved not as a 
 breaking of a mystical law but as a breach of the social 
 contract. Do you remember the Twinney woman, the 
 vicar's wife at Crawley Bridge ? " 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Well, she had in one corner of her drawing-room 
 a statue called Maternity — a mother exhibiting her 
 child and her wedding ring with equal pride. That's 
 Victorianism. WTiat isn't Victorianism is the realisa- 
 tion that the slur is on the father, not on the child ; 
 and, of course, principally on the score of desertion. 
 You weren't technically guilty of desertion but you 
 would have been." 
 
 " Yes," I replied, " I suppose I would, and I can't 
 get the old-fashioned idea of punishment out of my 
 head. It's so monstrously unfair that I should get off 
 scot-free." 
 
 " Oh, but you won't, not by a long chalk," retorted 
 Claud. " I know you, Ned ; you're going to make a 
 great fuss of this fellow and get infernally fond and 
 proud of him and talk about devoting your whole life 
 to him. This may mean as much as half-an-hour a 
 day, but you'll think it's your whole life. And you'll 
 be tremendously happy about it all until you realise 
 that you're just a common thief reaping where you 
 haven't sown. Your fatherhood wasn't utterly base 
 but it wasn't considered. You never gave the boy a 
 ha'porth of care, you had none of the anxiety of him, 
 you hardly knew he existed. You're a tremendous 
 fellow, Ned, and you'll play the father tremendously. 
 But you're a filcher of happiness all the same. Affec- 
 tion and not generosity is the only reparation ; affec- 
 tion is what you'll have to give. And if you can
 
 304 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 manage that you may be able to forgive yourself 
 for having been found with your hand in the sack of 
 common happiness. It's your own responsibility ; 
 nobody else can forgive you, or help you. Nobody 
 in fact cares twopence about it." 
 
 "Thank God," I replied, "that there is a sack of 
 common happiness anyhow. I'm going to lay my 
 hand on every ounce it contains. I've got something 
 better to live for now than I've had for twenty 
 years." 
 
 " It'll be selfishness all the same," returned Rodd, 
 " but perhaps selfishness of a better sort." 
 
 This was the first of many conversations in this 
 strain. 
 
 § IV 
 
 And then we both began to see quite a lot of Dick. 
 The timid bluster of his first visit had given place 
 to a shy confidence. At times he would hardly utter 
 a word and at others would deliver himself of a spate 
 of eager, scurrying ardours. I found in him a Socialist 
 of my own impatient, over-emphatic order. He knew 
 something of music, a little of pictuies and a great 
 deal about birds and butterflies. I did not ask how 
 in a London suburb one acquires natural history. He 
 harped continually upon the string of consideration for 
 others ; there wasn't a generosity he didn't jump to. 
 Claud took to him to an altogether extraordinary 
 degree. 
 
 One day Dick said shyly : " Won't you both come 
 to tea at my place ? " And he gave an address near 
 Victoria Station.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 305 
 
 " I don't know whether he's in or out," said the little 
 drab who opened the door. "We never know when 
 Mr Tremblow is in. A very quiet gentleman is Mr 
 Tremblow. I know he's expecting, 'cos he ordered a 
 second jug o' milk this morning. Fifth floor." 
 
 We mounted the stairs to a little attic on the door 
 of which was pinned a neat injunction to go in and wait. 
 The room was scrupulously clean, the furniture a 
 truckle bed, a dressing-table that might have originally 
 been orange boxes, a simple wash-stand, a small table 
 and two or three chairs. In a corner a pair of dumb- 
 bells and an old cricket-bat. On the mantelpiece 
 one or two photographs, apparently of friends at an 
 office. On the walls several cheap pictures suggesting 
 a reaching out after self-improvement, chiefly prints 
 of Watts in didactic mood. On a tiny shelf an odd 
 dozen of books included Unto this Last, Richard Feverel, 
 Treasure Island, Arthur Morrison's Tales of Mean 
 Streets, Tono-Bungay, Morris's News from Nowhere, 
 two stories by Gissing and a Shakespeare. But what 
 stmck us most of all was a number of lay-texts written 
 out in the same handwriting as that of the piece of paper 
 on the door and fastened to the wall by drawing-pins 
 in places convenient for reading. Under the gas- 
 bracket Henley's familiar verses anent the captaincy 
 of his soul. 
 
 "He quoted that, if you remember," said Claud. 
 
 Next to the shaving mirror Stevenson's Under the 
 Wide and Starry Sky and one of his prayers. We noted 
 also the familiar exhortation to kindliness " Since I 
 shall not pass this way again," and a verse by Miss 
 EUa Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 u
 
 306 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 So many Gods, so many creeds, 
 So many paths that wind and wind. 
 When just the art of being kind 
 Is all the sad world needs. 
 
 And then this sentimentality : 
 
 Go thou thy way and I go mine. 
 
 Apart, yet not afar ; 
 Only a thin veil hangs between 
 
 The pathways where we are. 
 
 " And God keep watch 'tween thee and me "- 
 
 This is my prayer ; 
 He looks thy way, He looketh mine, 
 And keeps us near. 
 
 I sigh sometimes to see thy face. 
 
 But since that may not be 
 I'll leave thee to the care of Him 
 
 Wlio cares for thee and me. 
 
 A tap at the door and Dick came in. After explain- 
 ing that he had been detained at the office he said with 
 a certain dignity : " Now let me make you welcome." 
 And waving his hand at the table : " It's a bit sub- 
 stantial for afternoon tea in your world, but it's my 
 best meal, you know." 
 
 The substantial things were in tins, sardines and a 
 tongue. 
 
 " Where I teas, I dines," said Rodd. " I'm going out 
 for a bottle of whisky." 
 
 It was the first money we had been allowed to spend 
 on the boy and I do not think he would have accepted 
 it from me. He made no sort of difficulties with Rodd 
 however. 
 
 As soon as the door had closed Dick turned and 
 said point-blank : 
 
 " I think you're a good man, although you've been
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 307 
 
 a selfish one. I've got selfish instincts too, but I'm 
 fighting them. I don't want you to bother about being 
 my father. We're just friends. Will that do ? " 
 
 " Nothing would suit me better," I said as simply as 
 possible. 
 
 " Tell me what you think of my pictures." 
 
 And we fell to discussing whether Watts really does 
 lack colour or whether our demands are too gaudy. 
 
 " Of course he's got no colour," said Claud, coming 
 back, " he's just dull. Dull and dingy and drab like 
 life at Crawley Bridge. Do you remember Numero 
 Vingt Boulevard Croix de Shufflebottom, Ned ? I'm 
 not sure that that wasn't the best time of our lives. 
 Youth ! The golden fling, you know." 
 
 " I think the war is the golden fling," said Dick. 
 " In the national sense." 
 
 It was an unforgettable meal. In some way the 
 boy had got to calling Claud " Rodd." Me he invari- 
 ably addressed as "Mr Marston." It seemed a strange, 
 inverted acknowledgment of a tie, and in a way I was 
 glad of it. 
 
 "My time's short now," said Dick, "they're letting 
 me go at the end of next week." 
 
 " I think," said Rodd, " my time's about up too, and 
 that it would be absurd for me not to join your lot, 
 if you'll have me." 
 
 " I expect you to," replied the lad. 
 
 And now I began to realise expiation after the manner 
 which Claud had promised. The absorbing interest 
 which had come into my life along a line of unimagined 
 susceptibility had quickly deepened to affection, and at 
 last I had begun to know the true joy of parentage, the 
 expenditure of self. A fig for stolen happiness ! I
 
 308 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 was immensely happy. Happy until the dread matter 
 of joining up became more than talk. A date had been 
 fixed, a date which loomed ahead, the gateway to 
 suspense. I will not enlarge here ; all our English 
 fathers will know what I mean. And now it was that 
 my fatherhood took on a different shade. I began to 
 realise that less even than my right to happiness was 
 the right to elder sacrifice which at that time stood 
 behind the bright boyish renunciations. 
 
 O greatest of all renunciations, that sombre sacrifice 
 of the fathers of England offering up in their children 
 their proper immortality ! Theirs the sacrifice hallowed 
 by the most august of sanctions ; God so loved the 
 world. . . . But my offering was different. Of 
 anxiety and apprehension I was to know the full share ; 
 of that pride which is the anodyne of grief I was to 
 have no share at all. In the worst case not even the 
 supreme consolation would be mine. I had filched 
 happiness ; the tragic uplift which is bereavement I 
 might have had to steal also. 
 
 §v 
 
 And then thej^ both joined up. From Rodd's first 
 letters I gathered that training in the army is not the 
 semi-serious, wholly facetious business our writers of 
 war books and contributors to Punch would make it 
 out to be. Claud wrote of one long round of boredom 
 and monotony, of petty spite, vindictiveness, and 
 meaningless, petty tyranny. Romantic glamour is the 
 decent cloak we throw over the thing. 
 
 ' ' Write me as one who loathes his fellow-men. It is 
 " Sunday afternoon, the rain rattles on the tin roof
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 309 
 
 " like an artillery of pea-shooters, all around us is a 
 " sea of mud from which the huts rise up like submerged 
 " wrecks at low water. Thirty of us are lying on our 
 " beds talking and spitting, writing and spitting. A 
 " few asleep. A man with a clasp-knife on the left of 
 " me is performing an operation on an ingrowing toe- 
 " nail. I know by heart the shape of his feet, when 
 "he washed them last and when he will wash them 
 " again. The fellow on my right is sleeping off the 
 '■ effects of his Saturday night's debauch. He was sick 
 " in the space between our floorboards. Your boy 
 " Dick held his head and cleaned up for him. ... I 
 " hate the damp, close smell of men's bodies. I hate 
 " all proximities. The swearing annoys me. It is per- 
 '"functory and unimaginative. I transcribe from a 
 " recital of woes in progress as I write. 
 
 '" So I says to the Corp'r'l : " Where the 'ell do you 
 " want the bleeding bucket ? " "In the bloody corner," 
 " says 'e. " Oh," says I. And I puts the thing in the 
 ' ' bloody corner. Then the blarsted Sergeant comes 
 "along. "Wot the 'ell's this bleeding bucket doing 
 "'ere?" 'e says.' And so on. Nobody listens; the 
 "fellow drones on. 'Wot time is it?' sings out a 
 " man three beds away. Somebody tells him the time. 
 "'Another hour, and then for some bloody beer,' and 
 ' ' he gives an anticipatory belch. 
 
 "And yet I know these to be brave fellows. I 
 "know that great deeds are maturing, that it is I and 
 " not they who risk being shot for cowardice. My 
 "point is that fine feelings are no part of war and 
 "that you sentimentalists cannot stomach us unless 
 "we are dressed up like heroes in a schoolboy tale. I 
 " have a great respect for our sergeant-major, the same
 
 310 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 'kind of respect that one has for the fellow in gold 
 ' braid who opens cab doors at the Trocadero. I have 
 ' had a peep into his mind. What an abyss ! 
 
 "Dick is full of the passion for service and it is 
 ' wonderful to watch the things he will do for the most 
 'case-hardened ruffian. There is a quality of ecstasy 
 'about all he does. I've seen him wash the feet of 
 ' a man who was too fagged to do it for himself. No 
 'one else would dream of such a thing nor would it 
 'have been acceptable at any other hands. The 
 ' fellow is a Covent Garden porter, lets Dick do as he 
 'likes and follows him round the camp like a dog. 
 ' And now I must tell you a funny thing. He and I 
 'were both offered jobs as officer's servant. Your 
 'son turned it down at once, whereas I jumped at 
 'it out of sheer boredom. Of course it's amusing. 
 ' The fellow is a dressy little chap out of a bank. I 
 ' model myself on the butler in The Admirable Crichton 
 ' and wash my hands with invisible soap, but ' my 
 'officer' is impervious to irony. It's an immense 
 'lark." 
 
 From which it will be seen that in spite of himself 
 Claud was beginning to fall into the " schoolboy " style. 
 Dick wrote seldom. He was busy doing things, he 
 explained. They always contrived to come up on 
 leave together and we sucked pleasure out of the town 
 as we had never done before. We tasted London ; we 
 smacked our lips over it ; inhaled its blessed air and 
 stared with new-washen eyes at its jewelled streets — 
 Claud, because he was so soon to leave it and had I 
 think some secret foreboding, Richard because of his 
 newly-found friends. We would walk the streets for
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 311 
 
 hours together. We would begin at the little island 
 in Piccadilly Circus where the flower women, the 
 fountain, and the little flighty statue are, cross over to 
 the comer by the Monico and adventure through the 
 absurd beginnings of a colonnade, Dick bestowing some- 
 thing on the old lady with the grey hair falling scantily 
 down sunken cheeks. There was something in the 
 withered grace of this poor creature which set her back 
 in a legendarjr past. Rodd would insist upon stage- 
 triumphs of the seventies and memories fragrant with 
 old-fashioned bouquets and the scent of patchouli. We 
 never heard her voice ; her thanks were conveyed in a 
 delicate, well-bred simper. Then on along the magni- 
 ficent curve of Regent Street above which clouds are 
 always massing as in Pennell's drawing. We would 
 sit for hours in the Cafe Royal and Rodd would talk 
 of Rothenstein and Beardsley and Wilde, and Dick 
 would listen and laugh at what he called our 
 " well-dressed " enthusiasm. Or he would shake 
 those black locks of his, and the nettled look would 
 come into his eyes and he would tell us how waiters 
 live. ... 
 
 Then we would indulge in one of those incredible 
 Soho dinners where the world is again pagan. One 
 wonders whether these little restaurants have survived 
 the war. Strange how their simplicities, the miniature 
 chairs and rickety tables, the half-dozen stunted shrubs 
 in green pots, the too-candid windows and the discreet 
 curtains imbued us all with primitive gaiety, how the 
 certainty of being overheard removed all barriers to 
 free speech. 
 
 " I remember," said Rodd, " taking a millionaire 
 to the Queen's Hall and piloting him through some
 
 312 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Debussy. I charged him a guinea and he dined me 
 at the Majestic aftenvards. It was Hke eating thirty 
 shillings' worth of pile carpets and gilt mirrors." 
 
 It goes without saying that Rodd invented intimate 
 and scandalous history to explain the light-heartedness 
 of the diners. Now and again pale-faced, bespectacled 
 women, " sad " in the pastry sense of sadness, would 
 put in a startled appearance. Dick would have them to 
 be art students or suffragettes, I leaning to the theory of 
 Repertoiy actresses out of work, Rodd maintaining that 
 they must be materialisations of Henry James, whom 
 by the way he adored. Once, wonderfully, we heard a 
 little man with a trick of screwing up his eyes explain 
 in a high-pitched eager voice how much better they do 
 this sort of thing in Bursley. 
 
 Then we would go down to that other of London's 
 magnificent curves, the Embankment, and it would be 
 Dick's turn to talk. He could tell such tales of poverty 
 as are unknown to the doctors of the body politic 
 prescribing with head averted from the disease. He 
 would tell of the hunger that is hunger indeed, and not 
 the reward of a day's tramp among hills. 
 
 Or we would make an excursion to the Zoological 
 Gardens and listen whilst Claud recited the last royal 
 pages of Manette Salomon before some stupendous cage. 
 Or walk up and down before the bars of Wellington 
 Barracks, where the soldiers pace the dull Sunday 
 away. Here Dick had a chum or two, and we would be 
 presented with ceremony and get strange glimpses of a 
 mentality which is not the civilian's. And once we 
 saw the departure of a draft of Grenadiers. Remember 
 that we were not winning then. As the band played 
 the men out of the gates and through the crowd I saw
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 313 
 
 that Rodd was frankly crying. Dick's face was bright 
 and shining, his elation taking the practical turn. 
 
 " Don't let's miss the train back to-night," he said, 
 putting his arm through Rodd's. 
 
 " Rum soldiers, you two," I observed. 
 
 Often they would bring on leave with them the 
 Covent Garden porter, who was a boxer of fame 
 down Lambeth way. The fellow had the most per- 
 fectly gorgeous shock of red hair and an unbounded 
 admiration for Dick ; he had neither parents nor 
 friends, and was I thought a trifle shy of the police. 
 Such manners as he had were not good, but he meant 
 well. Both he and Dick took it as a matter of course 
 that they should not be separated. I hope Claud and I 
 accepted Ernie Crowe with good grace, though he did 
 cut a rum figure on occasion. He spoke seldom, and 
 when he did it was to ring the changes on half-a-dozen 
 catch-words. " It's s'no use ! " " S'marvellous ! " 
 " From the sublime to the gor-blimy ! " " Another 
 spasm, Bert " was his invariable way of asking for a 
 second helping, and when his glass was empty he would 
 rub a wetted finger round the rim and say : "If this 
 glass speaks it wants more." Or he would sing to him- 
 self tunelessly by the hour together ditties reminiscent 
 of the cheaper music-halls. I do not suppose I shall 
 ever forget the crazy words : 
 
 I wore a tunic, 
 
 A smart khaki tunic, 
 
 While you wore your civvy clothes. 
 
 You drank our booze 
 
 While we fought at Loos, 
 
 Ypres, the Aisne and the Marne ; 
 
 You stole our wenches 
 
 While we were in the trenches 
 
 Fighting an angry foe,
 
 314 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 You were a-slacking 
 
 While we were attacking 
 
 The Huns on the Menin Road. 
 
 And these : 
 
 Oh, give three cheers 
 
 Or all that you can spare 
 
 For I 'm one of the stay-at-home Brigade 
 
 Admired by every pretty maid ; 
 
 And if war breaks out 
 
 I'll be the first to go — 
 
 Down to the station to see them off 
 
 But not to fight the foe. 
 
 I never heard him sing any other songs but at these 
 he would drone away for hours without semblance of 
 either animation or interest. 
 
 Once Dick wrote to say that on the following Saturday 
 " Ginger " was to box fifteen rounds at Darcy's, the 
 dingy little booth which as all the world laiows is just 
 over the river. Saturday evening saw us installed in 
 the narrow plush seats below the ropes and immedi- 
 ately behind the referee. 
 
 I am not at all sure that the boxing ring is not the 
 most fascinating of all entertainments. The prin- 
 cipals are so convincingly in earnest and their emotion, 
 unlike the actor's, is unrehearsed. The spectators for 
 the most part have been principals in their turn, and 
 they are the finest critics of their art. You may, an 
 you are malicious, make pathetical compare with the 
 amateurish ecstasies of your actor at a professional 
 matinee. The crowd is fascination unleavened, the 
 over-aware, leering crowd of backers, trainers and their 
 attendant " stables," of evil-smelling mechanicals, 
 roughs of the suspect muffler and dandiacal, too 
 explicit boots, greasy publicans of the gaudy and 
 evil-speaking hands, battered warriors en pleine deca-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 315 
 
 dence, a nigger or two. Fascination in the coarse 
 tobacco, the sawdust, the spittle ; in the reek and 
 squalor, the white glare of the arc lights. In these 
 merciless rays there is no shadow, save under the 
 eyes of the boxers and in the hollows of their throats ; 
 you would say the powdered dancers of some wistful 
 ballet. Fascination in the four-sidedness of the ring, 
 the way it will slew to rhombus and rhomboid, in 
 the whity-grey strands of the twisted, dingy ropes, 
 in the bucket and bottle common to the smaller, in- 
 considerable fry. Fascination in the seconds' economy 
 of time, the precision with which they sling the chair 
 to receive the drooping body. Deft beyond praise 
 the manipulation of tired thighs, the chafing and the 
 kneading, the restoration of the flesh and renewal 
 of the spirit. Admirable in brotherliness the surgery 
 of the corner. The flapping towels are a braver sight 
 to me than any flutter of pennons or waving of stan- 
 dards. In a boxing booth I became conscious of my 
 nationality, of the England of Sayers and Heenan, 
 of Hazlitt's page. 
 
 No theatre in the world to which entry may be as 
 exciting as this pushing, shouldering irruption, the 
 quick passage do-wn the clamorous human lane, the 
 thrust over the boots of East-Enders supporting their 
 chins on the very floor of the ring and drinking with 
 open mouth and nostrils the fleck and spume of 
 battle, the drench and dribble of their heroes. From 
 all parts of the house the raucous cries : 
 
 "Box'im, kid!" 
 
 " 'Ave a fight, yeh barstard ! " 
 
 " Go downstairs to 'im ! Up ter yer elbow ! " 
 
 " Shove 'is bleedin' 'e'd back ! "
 
 816 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " Cure '^.s• bloody adenoids ! " 
 
 Then when the blood flows freely : 
 
 " Jam for tea, muvver ! " 
 
 " Punch the b open ! " 
 
 " 'E's done ; knock 'ell out of 'im ! " 
 
 And at last : 
 
 " (iot 'im, be Christ ! " as the lad goes down and 
 sprawls on his stomach in utter disgrace. Then the 
 count, the rise to the feet, the clumsy touch of the 
 victor's glove, the hawking and spitting, the backward 
 padded wipe of the nose, the tumble through the ropes. 
 
 And the inherent beauty ? Oh, convincingly, im- 
 perishably, the beauty is there. Never have I seen 
 setting sun throw his last rays of burnished copper 
 more handsomely, glintingly, magically than through 
 the open windows in the impretentious dome. Windows 
 are they, or doors ? They fold back shutter-wise to 
 the sweating gallery walls, ostensible outlets for the 
 emanations of humanity, insistently to me the gate- 
 ways of romance. Dusk steals apace and these humble 
 casements take on the blue of the doorways in 
 Scheherazade, the ominous blue of the lovers' portals. 
 The darkness deepens and the trains thundering along 
 the neighbouring railway bridge rock our crazy building 
 but may not stir a fold in the draperies of the violet 
 night. A moth hangs upon this curtain, hovers for a 
 moment over the ring as though in curious inspection 
 of some masterpiece in ivory, some Japanese sculptor's 
 The Boxers, brushes a bare shoulder and is lost in 
 the night, the impenetrable night of Bennondsey and 
 Bethnal Green. Pale they look against the blue, these 
 taut, over-intense figures, their eyes a little weary, the 
 shadows under them deepening with the strain. A
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 317 
 
 slip, a hand knocked down and the boxers touch gloves. 
 As they cross to their corners at the bell the offender 
 gives his opponent a friendly tap on the shoulder, the 
 offender to reply with a flick to the point in token of 
 perfect amity. 
 
 Sometimes I think this little ring at Darcy's a not 
 unfitting symbol of the world. Better the stand-up 
 fight under rules, nay, better the brawl at the street 
 comer, than the queasy counterings of tradesmen. 
 Stunted intelligence and perfect proportions ; " quiffs " 
 of matted hair over low foreheads, shaven necks and 
 perfect courage ; manners of the bully and Avorking 
 sense of fair play ; hands unimaginably decorated with 
 butterflies, anchors, crossed hearts and women's names, 
 exchanging indifferently the bandages of their trade 
 for the copper, brass and silver tokens of their loves ; 
 Greek statues descending with equanimity to the in- 
 famous cut and shoddy of East End wear^ — to me this 
 has always been a world of infinite discovery, a world 
 of which the absorbing interest is the sufficient sanction. 
 
 Of our bout not much to be said. Crowe strips like 
 a model of Titian, burnt head of flame and skin of 
 alabaster ; his opponent swarthiness itself and shaking 
 a black mane over eyes the mirror of the sea. Like 
 most sailors he is grandly tattooed, the chief piece a 
 Crucifixion, the Chinese cast in the countenance indi- 
 cating some far-off Eastern station. 
 
 " You've got to be tattooed in the navy," explains 
 Dick, " or else they think you're a mammy's boy." 
 
 " I remember a Frenchman telling me," says Claud, 
 "that the custom is not popular in France with the 
 exception of Pierre Loti and an occasional apache." 
 
 The sailor turns out to be much too good for
 
 318 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Crowe, who takes tremendous punishment with stohd 
 endurance. " Golden blood lacing his silver skin," 
 quotes Rodd, and the worse the punishment the 
 harder the boy fights. " One, two, three," the 
 gallery counts audibly as Ernie runs into the sailor's 
 straight lefts. "Four," and again "Five." Our lad 
 looks up with a grin. " Six," he shouts, and has his 
 mouth cruelly closed. But no boxing crowd can 
 resist pluck for long, and in the middle of the twelfth 
 round, after the boy has been sent down four times, 
 the gallery raises a sympathetic shout of " Turn it 
 up. Ginger ! " and Crowe drops his hands. Where- 
 upon his opponent puts an arm round him and kisses 
 him sailor- wise. 
 
 At other times there were the music-halls, among 
 whose meaningless folly we discovered a gem which sent 
 Rodd into ecstasies of decadent comparison. Imagine 
 a woman no longer young and whose figure betrays 
 no sign of sex. Lithe as a boy, she has a ramrod's 
 dignity and poise. Her gestures have something of 
 breeding and there is a conscious correctness in the 
 accents of her deep and measured voice. Her tale a 
 mockery of West End pavements, a romance of 
 Piccadilly a rebours. The high-flyer on a broken wing, 
 the roue in disastrous hey-day, the exquisite taking in 
 his belt with a smile. And then the clothes ! Beyond 
 chemical aid, beyond mender's hope, never never to be 
 rejuvenated par les benzines, they adorn their last 
 human wearer. Next a scarecrow and last oblivion. 
 Black, black, not a note of white, the stock staying 
 the jaws as jaws must come to be stayed, ghastly-wise ; 
 this that seems alive is already dead. The matter of 
 the song sheer tragedy, the manner purest music-hall ;
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 319 
 
 pinched belly and moral wrack in terms of the un- 
 surrendering jaunty 
 
 I've had a banana. 
 With Lady Di-an-a. 
 
 and the smile the strained and haggard grin of 
 starvation. 
 
 But I notice that Dick's hands are clenched and 
 his eye bright. " Bravo ! " he cries. 
 
 Lovely, beyond all imagination lovely in sheer in- 
 credibility these palaces of the people, enlivened pre- 
 posterously with a jumble of all the styles. French 
 Louis tumbling over French Louis in a grab at the 
 proscenium or a thrust for the balcony, the hindmost 
 to content himself with architrave and lintel or what- 
 ever the architect's word for tops and sides. No hint 
 of Greek frieze or Byzantine touch in the ceiling, and 
 you may reckon the measure skimped. And then the 
 plush, the ceaseless waves of red, unendurable plush. 
 
 "They remind me," says Rodd, "of that sentence 
 of Daudet's in which he compares the break of waves 
 fco the flapping of wet blankets." 
 
 But there is enchantment in the place, I tell him, 
 in the open mouths, the unashamed clasping of hands, 
 the grotesque, counter-jumping elegance of the swains. 
 Enchantment in the impact of the " artistes " upon the 
 emporium's squires and dames. Enchantment in the 
 quintessential commonness. To it, mediocrity, and 
 pell-mell ! Sentimental obscenity telling the beads 
 of passion flagrantly factitious, you on the stage are an 
 amusing sister to the high-born marketry zealously 
 trumpeting her wares in the halfpenny press. En- 
 chantment everywhere, in vice so decently veiled that 
 we need not pretend to turn our heads, in the stolid
 
 320 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 unobsei-vant policemen, in the doorkeepers into whose 
 soul the pitiful buffoonery has so pitilessly entered. . . . 
 
 And yet, and yet in all this stupid welter there is 
 beauty and emotion to be discovered. After the 
 interval the curtain is raised to disclose a grand piano — 
 bearing the maker's name in letters a foot tall, but they 
 permit that at even the best concerts— an immaculate 
 gentleman in evening dress, a florid lady and a young 
 person in pink. Immaculacy wields a flute, the florid 
 lady, it is obvious, will never desert her piano, the 
 young person faintly chirps. After a time we become 
 conscious of a fourth individual of the fullest possible 
 habit with a wealth of fat overflowing the velvet collar of 
 a purple dinner-jacket. He clasps a violoncello to his 
 stomach. 
 
 " Isn't it time that bloke did summat ? " asks Ernie, 
 spitting and preparing to " put on " a fag. 
 
 And the bloke does summat. He plays the slow 
 movement from Bizet's VArlesienne, that ineffable 
 accompaniment to joy deferred. He plays it ex- 
 quisitely, the house is hushed, and the match goes out 
 in Crowe's unheeding fingers. I tell Dick something of 
 the story of the old shepherd finding happiness on the 
 edge of the grave. 
 
 " I hope this isn't the edge of the grave for me," 
 he says softly. " I mean for your sake, dad." 
 
 This is the only time I have known my son to 
 make the millionth part of a move in the sentimental 
 direction. 
 
 And then my uncle died, and I went north for the 
 funeral. I found little changed in Manchester beyond 
 the erection of a giant hotel and an untidy mess where
 
 RESPONSIBIIJTY 321 
 
 a hospital had been pulled down. There was no change 
 in my old friend, Portwood. In his youth he had 
 composed such a mask for grief as should endure 
 till dissolution, 
 
 " I am thinking of retiring from this world of sad- 
 ness," said the monstrous fellow, waving a plump yet 
 mournful arm. 
 
 " Into your grave, Portwood ? " 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " I see your dear father did not neglect to instil the 
 love of our national dramatist into his son," he said 
 with a pomposity worthy of his many chins. " Let 
 
 me see, had I the pleasure of — er " Again he 
 
 waved his luguljrious arm. 
 
 " No," I said. 
 
 " I myself am attached to the theatre," he went on. 
 " Attached. You might not think it, Mr Marston, 
 but I do a good deal in that line myself. In an amateur 
 way. Purely amateur. Light comedy ; what they 
 call the June Premier. I find it a great relief from 
 business, Mr Marston. A great relief, I hope to retire 
 shortly. My son will follow me, but not, I hope for a 
 while, in the professional sense." 
 
 Geoffrey and I rode in the same carriage. He hardly 
 spoke and relieved himself throughout the journey with 
 a low, melancholy and at times soundless pursing of 
 the lips. 
 
 My uncle's will contained a clause conceived in his 
 best vein of irony. 
 
 " I give and bequeath to my nephew Edward Marston 
 " the sum of one hundred pounds a year free of all tax, 
 "in the conviction that those pursuits which he has 
 X
 
 322 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " preferred above commercial industry will lead to the 
 " squandering of his fortmie and bring him to the gutter 
 " at the last. I leave him this pittance in the hope that 
 " he may never taste of that bitterness which inevitably 
 " attends the neglect of business principles." 
 
 Stem, grim and consistent to the last. For, of 
 course, he never knew the authorship of my infamous 
 mastei-pieces and the fortune they brought me. 
 
 Of Monica I saw little. 
 
 On my return to town the news that Rodd and Dick 
 had left for France. 
 
 § vi 
 
 I have every letter that Claud ever wrote to me in the 
 course of his brilliant career. Or if it is not brilliant 
 I say with decision that brilliance lay ahead. 
 
 " I begin to understand the meaning of discipline [he 
 ' wrote]. By dint of obeying evei-y man's behest, by 
 ' sheer force of habit, I am become a machine. I 
 ' take my officer's shilling and get myself a glass of 
 ' beer. I jump to an order, I am smart on parade. 
 ' According to the papers the army has imbued me with 
 ' self-respect and self-control, has taught me the mean- 
 ' ing of freedom. . . . The truth is that the business 
 ' of war is so intolerable that flesh and blood acting 
 ' under reason and without discipline must inevitably 
 ' give way. It is the knowledge that disobedience is 
 ' death which, personally, makes me obey. And then 
 ' one coimts on the thousand to one chance of getting 
 
 J
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 323 
 
 "through. At least I do. I fail miserably, not in 
 " heroism but in ordinary pluck. The men are splendid, 
 "splendid beyond words. ..." 
 
 It had been to while away the infinite tedium of 
 Salisbury Plain, to beguile the terror which stalks in 
 Flanders that Claud wrote his one and only book. In 
 the begimiing highly worked, overworked even, it 
 becomes towards the middle agitated, towards the 
 end headlong. There the sentences breathe an 
 urgency, an eagerness for dispatch, a desire to have 
 done. Death was so obviously at hand. I hope and 
 believe that Claud would have approved my editing 
 which has been entirely confined to joining up the 
 argument where a letter has gone astray. Where the 
 gaps are simply a matter of Claud's quick wit against 
 the dunderhead I have refrained. Heavens, what 
 trouble I had to find a publisher who was neither hostile 
 nor indifferent. Some of them talked paper shortage 
 whilst others referred humorously ^ — damn these — 
 to the end of the war. At last I found a man who 
 consented not to play the fool. I was not with him 
 for more than two minutes. He said : 
 
 " Let me understand you, Mr Marston. You say 
 the book is a masterpiece and you should know. 
 You fear we shall lose on the book. Well, I've an 
 uncomfortable feeling that we've published too much 
 rubbish lately. In any case we've made a great deal 
 of money and can afford something good. I'll give 
 Mr Rodd's executors " 
 
 " There aren't any," I interrupted. 
 
 " I'll give whoever is entitled to it sevenpence- 
 halfpenny on every copy we sell. We shall run off
 
 824 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 fifteen hundred and publish at seven-and-sixpence. 
 Tlie bookseller's share will be half-a-crown. I am 
 not interested in the ethics of the trade." 
 
 And so it was printed. The binding is of dark 
 green with just the thinnest gold line along the top, 
 and the title a parchmenty slip gummed on the back. 
 Stout paper, black type and not a single printer's 
 ornament. The whole appearance beautiful but not 
 so that the ordinary reader will jib at it. One of 
 Claud's favourite maxims was that a book is im- 
 mensely affected by what it looks like and how it 
 handles. I hope I have made him so clear to you 
 that there is no need to insist on the book's tribute 
 to the obscure and the little-understood. It bore the 
 dedication : To the despised and rejected. 
 
 Last Judgments does not formulate any settled 
 theories ; or rather, such theories as it contains are 
 mostly contradictory. It is essentially the work 
 of a man eager to grasp and record, who can 
 anathematise at forty his adorations of twenty-five. 
 It is a record of frank and gallant enthusiasms, of 
 adventurous discoveries. It may be fairly claimed for 
 its author that he made known to English readers at 
 least one lovely story, Jean de Ferri^re's TJne Ame 
 Obscure, and one exquisite piece of pure fantasy, 
 Laforgue's Pierrot Fumiste. And, of course. Socialism, 
 Socialism everywhere. Socialism even in such a poem 
 as Maurice Magre's La Tristesse du Nain Chinois, that 
 history of the Chinese dwarf who refused to dance for 
 his Western hirers. 
 
 " Are not Westerners the very dregs and lees of 
 civilisation ? Do they not train their children to 
 
 ill
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 325 
 
 devour one another ? Do they not exhale the very 
 odour of corruption ? 
 
 Mais vous, des que vos fils sont sortis de leur mere, 
 lis apprennent la mort et ses arts raf&nes. 
 Vous les faites pourrir dans le charnier des guerres, 
 Vivants, vous les sciez et vous les depecez. 
 
 Je prefere, voyant vos mufles, vos babines. 
 Oil sont inscrits vos sanguinaires appetits 
 Les peuplades sans front de I'ile Saklialine, 
 Les deterreurs de morts du desert de Gobi. 
 
 Votre soleil a I'air d'une lune et me navre. 
 Vous marchez en mangeant vos enfants dans vos bras 
 Et c'est ce qui vous fait cette odeur de cadavre 
 Qui sort de vos habits comme un nuage gras. . . . 
 
 And the dwarf tends to the bastinado his mirth- 
 less feet — should not the dancer's be merry ? — suffers 
 his cheek to be pierced by the hatpin of his infamous 
 proprietress. Still will he not dance. His thoughts 
 are with Buddha, the smiling Buddha of his jade-blue 
 land. 
 
 Le fouet tourbillona sur le nain impassible. 
 Les mirlitons criaient et claquaient les drapeaux. 
 Dans sa face immobile ainsi qu 'en une cible 
 La patronne planta son epingle a chapeau. 
 
 Et le lutteur vint lui donner la bastonnade, 
 Et la foire chanta son plaisir, ses amours. . . . 
 Tou jours le nain voyait parmi le bleu des jades 
 Un Bouddha souriant au fond du demi-jour. ..." 
 
 " I agree," Rodd goes on, " that the ticklish job of 
 the coesura is not always well managed and that Magre's 
 rhyme is by no means millionaire. But he interests 
 in a way that the older French poets with their classic 
 frigidity have never attained to."
 
 326 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Here I am in sympatliy witli Rodd. What's Ileeuba 
 to Dick on twenty -two shillings a week ? Rodd wanted 
 poetry to deal with life as it is, with the life one knows, 
 the life of the suspect saloon and the deserted quay, 
 the questionable lurking shade, the sailor home from 
 that blue, stale prison which is the sea. He wanted 
 poetry to deal with rape and murder and incest in 
 our colliery districts — what's Phedre to him who was 
 born in Lancashire ? with abattoirs, blast furnaces and 
 brothels. 
 
 (( 
 
 M. Magre is apparently young enough in mind to 
 offer himself these things as an ultra-decadent spectacle, 
 whereas he shovild be looking at them as realities. But 
 at least he is honest with himself and with me." 
 
 The book gave rise to most of the critical ineptitudes 
 of which our Press is capable. Majesty rapped Claud 
 over the knuckles with talk of " lapses into the aesthetic 
 fallacy," and of "the questionable utility in these 
 strenuous times of mere aesthetic speculation." And 
 so rigidly held aloof from detailed argument. A critic 
 of approved and authentic dullness hung upon the 
 book a column dealing with " war as a stimulant to 
 literature," but carefully refrained from definitions. 
 Professorial owls desired to know what dallying with 
 the tangles of Nesera's hair had to do with soldiering. 
 " The writer has exchanged the pen for the sword. 
 
 Let him that has put his hand to the sword " etc. 
 
 etc. 
 
 Rodd never saw his book. Shortly before it appeared 
 he was killed, stupidly, unheroically, unnecessarily 
 even, carrying a bucket. He foresaw that it would
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 827 
 
 be like that. Dick's account of his friend's end was 
 precise and unemotional ; Crowe coming home soon 
 afterwards had little to add, ... ! 
 
 The fellow seemed to think it natural that he should 
 spend his leave with me, and he spent it almost in 
 silence. He was vocal on one subject only, that of 
 Dick. 
 
 " I foller 'im abaht like a dawg. And 'e don't pay 
 no 'eed. Not a bone, as yer might say. Well, one 
 day 'e give 'is bloody life fer me, near as a toucher, and 
 I'd give my bloody life fer 'im. See ? " 
 
 Shortly after this a letter from Westrom. He was 
 a voluntary orderly in a Red Cross Hospital, Crawley 
 Bridge way. He wrote : 
 
 " It is not much that I am doing. Once every hour 
 I have to see to a poor fellow shot through the bladder. 
 I have to turn another in bed. I have to be cheerful 
 and reply to their jokes. My difficulty is with myself. 
 I find that in spite of all endeavour I am not one with 
 them, that I don't always understand them. I should 
 certainly be incapable of enduring what they endure, 
 but I am equally incapable of being consoled in all 
 circumstances by a cigarette. A ' fag ' is to these 
 boys a mistress and a drug. It is tine that I am not 
 much of a smoker. I had no idea, until I took this job 
 on, that the body could matter so infinitely. Thank 
 God, we have had no deaths. I find myself taking 
 refuge every now and again in my ' pawky provincial 
 humour,' as you once had the charit}'- to call my 
 fun." 
 
 And so even old Westrom had found something to
 
 328 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 do. Of all our little coterie there was only myself 
 left in England who had done nothing, had talked and 
 had done nothing. Had searched for an anodyne . . . 
 an anodyne. . . . 
 
 I joined up. What has happened to me out here 
 is of little interest ; it has been unheroic and some 
 months ago I took to pottering about Base Hospitals. 
 And now I have received the letter which reveals what 
 there remains in life for me to do. 
 
 " I must tell you, my dear father, of a terrible time 
 "we have both been through. We were asleep about 
 ""two in the morning when it happened. Da vies and 
 " Crossley were killed outright and Outhwaite, a very 
 " decent chap, died leaning up against me. I was 
 "frightened as I have never been frightened before. 
 " It was some time before I could get help. I am 
 " very sorry to say that Emie will never see again. 
 "My left arm is off and I'm not sure whether I shall 
 " be able to walk properly as I got it pretty badly in 
 "the legs as well. Emie threatens to cany me about, 
 "and fortunately I've got eyes for both. Not to be 
 " able to see — I think that must be the worst." 
 And that's the end. 
 
 It had been easy to refrain, to leave unrecorded those 
 early reachings-out after a happiness beyond that of 
 eating, drinking, sleeping, marriage, a round on the 
 links, the ordinary traffic of life ; to keep silence over 
 normal allurement and unheroic defeat. Rapture and 
 disillusion, middling effort and mediocre accomplish- 
 ment, the slackening of the desire for achievement — all 
 these are too recognisably a part of every man's life 
 to have been worth the setting down. The excuse,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 329 
 
 then ? Not justification, though I will justify the 
 theft, in Rodd's meaning of the word, of which such 
 a son as mine was the reward and fulfilment. Still 
 less a warning. I have a contempt for the weakling 
 who would take shelter behind second-hand experience. 
 I have written for my son's sake, that he may know 
 his father to have been capal:)le of emotion. The veiy 
 excess and parody of egotism, you will say. So be it. 
 I am what I am and with God be the rest. 
 
 Some wiseacre has said that the aim of philosophy 
 is to direct thought to the examination and utilisation 
 of the narrow space allotted by an inscrutable power 
 to a finite humanity, and to refrain from speculation. 
 
 My mind is made up. I will speculate no more, 
 neither on first and last things, nor on human right 
 and wrong. My life and all I possess belong to two 
 poor lads. I shall have trouble with Dick, of course, 
 and Crowe is my only lever. If my boy will not accept 
 of his father's abundance then his chum starves too. 
 I thank God that I am rich and that riches are not all 
 I have to give.
 
 i
 
 .
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book Ls DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 DISCHARGE-lIRir 
 ...i^ 121981 
 
 Form L9-50m,-7, '54 (5990)444 
 
 ^^. 
 
 I c/t) ^^ 
 
 LAaAA^
 
 3 1158 00649 2069 
 
 6 
 
 6001 
 A26r 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 373 973 7