LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSE OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 JAMES E. AGATE
 
 s^arurNau iLii 
 
 A No \ 
 
 
 J A Ml S E 
 
 IK 
 
 i 
 
 i NEW ^lST K 
 
 GEOR< ffl \1PANY
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES E. AGATE 
 
 NEW ^SW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 PI 
 
 63 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 TO 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 IN 
 DISCIPLINED ADMIRATION 
 
 LtTS LA CEODC HAUTE 
 PRANCE 
 
 Midsummer, 19 1 8
 
 Au grand jour du Seigneur sera-ce un grand refuge 
 D'avoir eonnu de tout et la cause et l'effet? 
 Et ce qu'on aura eu flechira-t-il un juge 
 Qui ne regardera que ce qu'on aura fait? . . 
 
 L' Imitation de Jesus-Christ. 
 
 We sang to-night in Church, " But when I know Thee 
 as Thou art, I'll praise Thee as I ought." Exactly I 
 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. Barbellion. 
 
 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 the 
 heart rather than elevation to the head." Forsooth I 
 
 W. N. P. Barbellion.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY
 
 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 EN toute chose il faut consider er 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 dis- 
 tressed — should go hand-in-hand with discernment. 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, therefore, 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, 
 my "bit" accomplished. The doctors have decided 
 
 11
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that I am to be sent home "for discharge." Then 
 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 
 of the world whatever entertainment or what further 
 bitterness it yet may hold. My chief feeling is that I 
 must 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 inno- 
 cent flesh is heir, the unmerited Bufferings 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 hitter 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 beween 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 the promise 
 that were you granted life again you would live differ-
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 ently. Oh last poltroonery! I understand a vow to 
 greater prudence and a more careful closing of shut- 
 ters, 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 differ- 
 ently. 
 
 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; ''Xo 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. 
 Xo grief so poignant that one cannot take up Macbeth: 
 no reason why we should not bury our dead and deso- 
 lately turn to Hamlet. To lock the piano till the crepe 
 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 faisande with the flavour of the divorce court. It 
 does not end conclusively as a well-thought-out sym- 
 phony of life should end. It does not go down in 
 gloom like the pathetical Russian's. Its final chord 
 has neither the stained-glass quality of Tod und Yerk- 
 larung nor the last din and crow of Reldenleben. Still 
 less do I find it paralleled by the tinkle of the slip- 
 pered, inconsiderable Farewell. If you urge me to 
 a comparison I would say an apotheosis of Don Quixote 
 i — heavens ! how high we fly — with a hint of Til Eulemr
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 spiegel. I may have missed my way in life, but at least 
 I know my visionaries and my rogues. 
 
 Illegitimacy's my theme, the slur of illegitimacy — 
 oh, not the slur on the child, that old stumbling-block 
 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 purpose 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 satis- 
 fied curiosity and desire and no obvious punishment 
 has attended the evil I have done. ''What have we 
 to do with genus aud species, the dry notions of logi- 
 cians? 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 
 locical 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. Common-sense was against it; worldly 
 wisdom has always opposed such marriages. And to 
 preach an earlier renunciation were for fools and chil- 
 dren. So that we come to the weighing of the injury
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 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 
 chemhvee. 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 
 reconstructed 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, 
 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 con- 
 ceive of a thing? — whose light, though travelling at
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 confined 
 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 corpuscle in the blood of an undetected organism. 
 Where, is all 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 
 presuming to call ourselves The Earth instead of Vul- 
 can 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 calling herself La, 
 Terref 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, nebu- 
 lous, elusive, non-committal. Nor are they even di- 
 mensionally precise, these others; to hear them it may 
 be our destiny to become flatter than plaice, or, like 
 wraiths, elongable at will. In the meantime we have 
 earth and the minute, bon souper, bon glte . . . 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
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 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 undistinguished score 
 of us, rough and reverential in our ill-fitting blue, sun- 
 light 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, conveyance to the mouth 
 effected tipplingly with a jaunty turn of the wrist. All 
 soldiers smoke so, a detail which documentors 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 
 efficiency 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, the march of victory 
 or that wringer of hearts from Saul, all verse a paean 
 or a dirge, all sculpture a triumphant battle-piece or 
 broken column, all architecture the reassembling of 
 the bricks of Belgium. Hard for those who care little
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 for elementary things, for those now to be put on the 
 shelf, encumbrance, wreckage, broken even for dilettant- 
 ism. Not for me the heroic end, the contented sub- 
 sidence, that readiness which is all. Nenni. Bather 
 the slow continuance, the looking back on a life not to 
 be resumed, the contemplation of dead passion and 
 the belated adventuring af + er better things. Most un- 
 thinkable 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 puisquil nest qu'un del, pourquoi tant de pa- 
 tries? 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 Germanv is still. 
 
 The war, they tell us, is the final struggle between the 
 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 civil- 
 isations, that admission does not throw out of draw- 
 ing The Last Judgment of Michael Angelo nor cause 
 the Sonnets of Shakespeare to limp.
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 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 to- 
 gether ; there is tragedy in the present conflict and end- 
 less 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 gal- 
 lant buffoonery. I hold war to be unworthy of a mo- 
 ment's thought in the sense that the mob which guillo- 
 tined the flower of France was unworthy of an ex- 
 quisite'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 !" 
 
 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
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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, unmoved by 
 those splendours of Proportional Representation which 
 were the stuff of your Radical journalist's thoughts by 
 night and his dreams by day, unthrilled by any Socialist 
 cry 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. Hous- 
 ing reform, town planning, the spread of education, 
 the combating of disease, the abolition of the condi- 
 tions 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 genera- 
 tion, all this is the work 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. 
 
 Now I would ask the reader to believe that all those 
 cosmic speculations hurled at him at the beginning 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 reasonable- 
 ness. 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 pre- 
 serve his soul. For his garden is his own affair, to grow
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 in it what lie will, without word of command or need 
 of justification. 
 
 • • • 
 
 in 
 
 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 rest- 
 ing 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 we 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 or- 
 dinary. 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 Meister singer, Max's parody to Meredith's page, 
 any Jingo journal to The National Conscience. And 
 yet, this is not the whole gospel. There are follies 
 for which I would go to the stake. I prefer the ex- 
 pression of the world to the world itself. I would 
 rather have been Thackeray than Wellington, have de- 
 scribed Becky's flight 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,
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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, un grand homme de pierre 
 Se tenait a la barre et coupait le flot noir; 
 Mais le calme heros, courbe sur sa rapiere, 
 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; 
 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 liea 
 between Hogarth and Trollope; the placidity which 
 is content with Rydal Water and the glory of Words- 
 worth; the eaves and thatches of Hertfordshire; Sur- 
 rey'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
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 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 gen- 
 eral as not to he worth the setting down, were it not 
 that strong affection loses nothing by being shared with 
 the whole world. Sealing-wax and sailing-ships fas- 
 cinate me none the less for having appealed to an- 
 other. 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 Mother 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 re- 
 member the tone of ivory keys deepening through saffron 
 to rich brown, the nubbly, polished ebonies, the puck- 
 ered rose-coloured silk lining, the fretted walnut front, 
 the fantastic scroll-work of the maker's name. Collard 
 and Collard — how many hours did my childish soul 
 ponder over all the 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 be- 
 lieve I should know it again by its fragrance, the frag- 
 rance 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
 
 24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 hypnotic effect of the one hun- 
 dred and sixty-three stags and two thousand, two hun- 
 dred 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 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 I 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 consciousness is unaffected. 
 A new planet is of less moment to me than a new read-
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 ing 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," "nar- 
 cissus," "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. I 
 have never seen a trumpet-orchid, yet I know that 
 when I read : 
 
 Fly forward, 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-orchid3 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 "ala- 
 baster" 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 Desormais! 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 tumble of its wrap- 
 pings glorious as any goddess from the sea, yet do I
 
 26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 pur- 
 pose the infinite common-sense of his latter-day suc- 
 cessor; 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 tex- 
 ture 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 Piccadilly 
 as it must have been in those early days which saw 
 me newed 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 confesses 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 Kudyard 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 dis- 
 likes. I mislike — to put it no more strongly — a great 
 many women and nearly all men, with a special aver- 
 sion for the type of man adored by women, mincing-
 
 INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 mouthed, luxuriant-polled, genre coiffeur. I misliko 
 the purist who claims that one language should be 
 enough for any writer and secretly begrudges Csesar 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 a succession and the pliant inheritor ; 
 the 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 ani- 
 madverts against the black. I have a horror of the 
 Freemason in his cups ; of the players of solo-whist ; of 
 the actor with pretensions towards edification claiming 
 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 successful man and 
 the swelling paunch of the Justice. I am out of pa- 
 tience with that sentimental midwifery which regards 
 marriage as an infallible inoculation against light de- 
 sire. 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 re- 
 served for the unknowledgeable fool who savs 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.
 
 28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 nndeniability 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 rus- 
 ticity 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 Eliza- 
 beth 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 bookmaker'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; why 
 dissent is unfashionable; the relation of academies to
 
 INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 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 
 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 unre- 
 markable 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 bon- 
 homie. ... But all in good time and everything in its 
 place; I have not yet emptied my sack of inquisitive- 
 ness. 
 
 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
 
 30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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, 
 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 Physiologie du 
 Mariage; whether in Flaubert's L'Education Sentir 
 mentale Madame Arnoux would have yielded at the 
 last ; why Trench writers are incapable of quoting Eng- 
 lish correctly; why it is impossible to procure in any 
 French bookshop Monnier's portrait of the delectable 
 PrudJiomme ; why our allies offer whisky as an aperitif 
 with sugared water and a teaspoon; when Frenchmen 
 will cease to pose for their beards. Then again, I in- 
 tend to have it out with the brilliant author of The 
 Old Wives' Tale; to ask him why to the impeccable 
 first, second and fourth parts he must needs add that 
 improbable third. What would you imagine a French- 
 man to be like? is the poser set to the benighted 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.
 
 INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 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 
 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 your 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 
 humiliating 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 condition. 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 super- 
 fluous hair, tuberculosis, hemorrhoids, 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 fa- 
 vour has been the lateness of the world's discovery 
 of electricity, X-rays, Swedish drill and physical exer- 
 cises. A Musset the picture of rude health, a Chopin 
 who should dedicate a nocturne to Mr Sandow, a Shel- 
 ley pere de famille, a Baudelaire who should be an 
 inside right to be reckoned with — these were unthink-
 
 32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 able. 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 Melisande. 
 
 What I am driving at is that life is never as exquisite 
 nor as tragic as it appears on the surface. I am plagued 
 with a keen appreciation of the tendency of things to 
 find their own level, and I see the world through com- 
 mon-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 detraque. One 
 laughs them out of existence, poor souls. Life is rea- 
 sonable 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 some- 
 times lest the Ultimate Cause be made after that au- 
 thor's image. And yet the most modern writers have 
 their cowardices. Which of them dares portray a murd- 
 erer bored with the imbecile chunnerings, the senile ir- 
 relevancies of his judge ? Which of them will attribute 
 the clear eye and healthy appetite of the released con- 
 vict 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 dis-
 
 INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 charge ? From me is expected relief from the intermit- 
 tent 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 has its limits. Soldiers 
 have told of the power at the long last to put fear he- 
 hind, 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 an- 
 other! 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 his 
 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
 
 34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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, Welling- 
 ton, Napier, Nicholson, Havelock, Gordon — the shining 
 list 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 um- 
 pires, 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 :
 
 INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 Dear Mum, and Dad, and loving sistees 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 hoys are in the pink. 
 Not arf! Dear loving sisters, Rose, Mabel and our 
 Gladys, keep merry and bright. Not arf ! 
 
 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. 
 
 vii 
 
 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 pur- 
 pose 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 par- 
 donable, 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, five in my own "name that were books in- 
 deed, 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 wonder- 
 ful Mr Pig-Pig! was the creation of Edward Marston. 
 
 It saddens me to take down my five volumes from
 
 36 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 
 page mellows with human contact. I am tired of the 
 pride of print, the bricklayer's content in the hundred 
 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 
 Tt'uth 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 out- 
 lived 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 out- 
 right, 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 com- 
 petitors 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
 
 INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 the chilliness of which I was prepared, but the com- 
 pensating letters from unknown readers. Perhaps I 
 did want to be noticed by the big men. That it is 
 better playing with a lion'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 irrefutable. 
 Another bright sprig claimed that my book was "col- 
 oured 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 classifica- 
 tions 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 L'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
 
 38 INTRODUCTION 
 
 praised for fastidiousness and blamed for slovenly 
 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 enskicil 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 Murine. 
 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 w r ay 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
 
 INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 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 ar- 
 ranged 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 Plunv-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 tem- 
 perate work of which I am capable. "Betrays a plenti- 
 ful lack of wit," thundered the tremendous initials. 
 "This author, like the crab, goes backward." The 
 book did not even sell. I was an accredited failure.
 
 40 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Now let me be quite clear upon this matter of fail- 
 ure. I am prepared to believe that the books were not 
 masterpieces. 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 careless, 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 
 seaside lodging-houses and on the beach. The circulat- 
 ing 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 charming personality portrayed on the covers of 
 the four volumes, in countless toys, trinkets, charms, 
 on chocolate boxes and on tins of boot polish. He will 
 remember 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 
 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
 
 INTRODUCTION 41 
 
 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 Neme- 
 sis! 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 naturalistic novels 
 the most intimate particularities of the hero's vices, 
 manners, 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 sen-
 
 42 INTRODUCTION 
 
 timents 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. lie will not send a 
 younger son to the Colonics without putting money in 
 his purse, at least to the extent of tin- fare. He will 
 indicate in what way the impending bankrupt is to 
 stave off final disaster, precising exactly where the 
 ready money, that most crucial factor, cornea 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. Tn any strictly non-Gil- 
 bertian country the maintenance of bankrupts under ex- 
 amination would bo a charge upon the State, instead of 
 which we tacitly assume them to kei |» breath going 
 upon the secret stores of which it is a criminal o 
 to have made provision. Let me say that I have never 
 made the acquaintance of the Official Receiver outside 
 the columns of the newspaper. 1 have always enjoyed 
 a fair, even good income. To-day T still p my 
 
 seventeen or eighteen thousand pounds and all that the 
 Pig-Pig! series brought me in. I thank God for my 
 son's sake. 
 
 viii 
 
 Sister is uneasy about my writing. 
 
 "Here, you," she said one day. "you're always scrib- 
 bling. Can't you leave it alone and do a bit of read- 
 ing instead. Here's something for you to look at" 
 Whereupon she put into my hand a copy of a journal 
 which is accustomed to print weekly for the benefit of 
 such classes as acknowledge themselves as "lower" six-
 
 INTRODUCTION 43 
 
 teen pages of the wit and tales of our grandfathers. 
 All for the war-time price of three-halfpence. How 
 do they manage it one asks wearily, and as wearily 
 makes a guess at the advertisements. Let me repro- 
 duce 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 inanity 
 be appraised too carelessly by the taster in these trifles ? 
 I am sure of my bouquet, but would bo 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 . . . mes- 
 meric rhythm . . . Milton's masterpiece. ... 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.
 
 CHAPTER 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 wsfs 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 pre- 
 vented me from hurling it at the reader at the outset. 
 Peacocking in alien feathers is always displeasing, par- 
 donable 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 
 word cocasse. It is a word of breeding. Says Beranger : 
 
 44
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 45 
 
 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 office and spun 
 a web which included Stockport, Oldham, Blackburn, 
 Bury, and other minor towns of the county. His ma- 
 chinations were concerned with nothing more sinister 
 than cotton piece goods. Ackroyd and Marston' s Craw- 
 ley Shirting is still a name to conjure with in Calcutta, 
 to impress the rasta 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 shirting, 
 Ackroyd and Marston manufactured velveteens in 
 which there was no velvet, sateens devoid of satin, and 
 flannelettes innocent of wool. But since all these de- 
 ceptions were "patent to the meanest intelligence" — 
 a favourite phrase with my uncle — the trade may be 
 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
 
 46 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 night over the phrase 1 — 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 gaunt, 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 occasions ; in the cravat an 
 enormous single diamond of the first water, symbolical 
 of the purity of its wearer's intentions. The sober coat 
 was a compromise between the dignity of the cere- 
 monial garment and the workman's 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 47 
 
 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 abundance of 
 the little fellow in the plate illustrative of the Croco- 
 dile 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 would 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 Purpose is not, 
 advanced by Unseemliness in Dress. We are not go- 
 ing 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 hang- 
 ing 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 contrivance 
 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 upon any em- 
 ployee who had been refused a rise of wages. We bring 
 proof, the red and yellow blooms implied, of our mas- 
 ter'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 petitioners no ill-
 
 48 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 cus- 
 tomers ; 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 
 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 49 
 
 of speaking out of the left half of his mouth, the under- 
 lip drooping to let forth such speech as might he con- 
 sidered non-committal and then going hack with a snap. 
 
 His word was as good as his bond, hut it was his 
 invariahle practice after having given a verhal under- 
 taking to reduce that undertaking to writing, and many 
 people were surprised at the astonishing wealth of con- 
 tingencies, forfeits and alternative interpretations a 
 simple yea or nay may he presumed to give rise to. 
 These written engagements, drawn up in his neat, pre- 
 cise 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 invariably 
 found to hang upon the interpretation of some trifling 
 accident of phrasing, a misplaced "and" or ill-consid- 
 ered "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 ex- 
 positions of that virtue. My uncle looked well on the 
 Bench and carried many a Company Meeting by his 
 impressive silences. 
 
 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
 
 50 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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, llany'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 
 Bridge is Falling Down, and as midnight drew near 
 lead off John Browns 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 tempera- 
 ment. 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. 
 
 A brewer who should vote in favour of a prohibi- 
 tionist bill is cocasse. 
 
 A brewer who should vote against the bill from con- 
 viction is cocasse. 
 
 The supposition of the United Kingdom Alliance and 
 a few doddering bishops that the soldiers will be con- 
 tent to come home to a "dry" England is cocasse. 
 
 Cocasse ! Cocasse !
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 51 
 
 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 pronounce- 
 able, 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 fingers into the stars, the feel of 
 the imprint on the tips. I remember the noise the 
 side would make when I bulged it out with my knee 
 and released it sharply, the taste of the brass knobs 
 at the corners, the number of turn3 it took to unscrew 
 them. Familiar 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 exactly 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
 
 52 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 Lars. 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 glim- 
 mer of a lattice, whilst to come back after summer 
 holidays to new carpets and new paint is to explore para- 
 dise anew. There is a grown-up theory which would 
 derive the sensation of falling in sleep from the insecur- 
 ity 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 Mar- 
 gery's voice declaring that I get heavier every 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 
 used to call her "your pretty mother," and I suppose 
 that she must have been beautiful. But I took her 
 beauty 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 ad- 
 mirable snap, the other with less severity. On her 
 handkerchief I was allowed to pour a few drops — oh
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 53 
 
 very, very few — of a scent called White Rose. The 
 other 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 crv 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 
 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.
 
 54 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 Lillians 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 
 ever modelled in china. 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." 
 
 Whereupon the girl burst into tears and made stam- 
 mering confession. She had, it seemed, been turned 
 away from home and was without shelter. My grand- 
 mother, 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 55 
 
 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 if she shan't, and a fine child too !" 
 
 And so young Margery stayed and became old Mar- 
 gery, and wore a wedding ring and was called Mrs 
 Bent-ham, 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 , presume 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. 
 
 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 de- 
 fined by gold braid. Roses cluster about her hat, and 
 her shoulders have the pretty droop I know so well. 
 She looks so very like the picture of a fashionable 
 beauty of the period strolling elegantly about some 
 royal lawn.
 
 56 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 m 
 
 I have a curious faculty amounting almost to the 
 hypnotic for remembering people by their hands. One 
 of my 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. 
 and Mrs Steepleton, he sheepishly null but of good 
 intent, she a fussy, unpretending little body. They 
 supported life and four ailing children 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 fel- 
 low should exact respect from such of his flock as 
 possessed less of the world's goods than he, and show
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 57 
 
 proper recognition of those social gulfs which separated 
 him from the wealthier of his congregation. I remem- 
 ber 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 
 lady. Behind them the master-plumber 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 in- 
 sisting 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
 
 58 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 the 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 pos- 
 sible 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 truth and I spoke the truth. I 
 like Uncle Reuben, but I don't like his hands. They're 
 cruel." 
 
 "It's sometimes better not to tell the whole truth, as
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 59 
 
 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. 
 
 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, Daz- 
 zling Spectacles, Stupendous Success. At one theatre 
 you are to elect for Exquisite Scenery and Brilliant
 
 60 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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-! 1 p 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 heart- 
 ache when the curtain fell on the most spanking prince 
 and most entrancing girl who ever danced through tribu- 
 lation 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 rollick- 
 ing spirits, her plumed three-cornered hats, her cock- 
 ades 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 Shakespear- 
 ean play I beheld some actress of repute as the wood- 
 land 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 purely 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-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 61 
 
 wheeled cab, the luggage gone before in a responsible, 
 more slowly moving vehicle. 
 
 "Suppose, my dear," my mother would say, "sup- 
 pose 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-seats, the counting of sta- 
 tions, 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 sta- 
 tion-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 Williams, the tea with real shrimps. Last, a Satur- 
 day evening, and then a Sunday of sheer anti-climax. 
 My father tired, my mother busy unpacking and Sun- 
 day 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
 
 62 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 confuse 
 the glory of sea and sky with the taste of milk and 
 gingerbread? Do they and their little 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 Moun-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 63 
 
 tain, 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: 
 
 Oh, 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! 
 
 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. 
 
 §v 
 
 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 earth-
 
 64 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ly things dates from the recognition that Mr Tindall, 
 surrounded by a class of small boys, was a very differ- 
 ent person from the persuasive individual I had seen 
 in my mother's drawing-room. On that occasion speech 
 had been with the lady, 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 im- 
 pressive 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 a3 
 I know now that the school did not pay, that the school- 
 master's slender capital was shrinking fast, that he 
 was insufficiently fed, that his wife was a shade too 
 pretty, and that on the very day of my arrival he had 
 contracted an obligation to thrash before 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 Little Arthur herself. (In spite of 
 proof to the contrary I should always insist on feminine 
 responsibility for that delightful tale.) I am still con- 
 vinced that the smear of red ink on the page which re- 
 counts the execution of Charles the First is a drop of 
 the actual blood of that martyr. I knew my dates per- 
 fectly, and you could not have tripped me up by asking
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 65 
 
 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 Cre§y, and how the English 
 fell into the trap at Bannockbum. 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 Messrs Cranmer, Latimer and Rid- 
 ley. I knew what rivers take their rise "in the back- 
 bone of England," and how to tell a right bank from a 
 left. I could enumerate the counties of Scotland and 
 half those of Ireland, and was pat with the products 
 of South America and Greece. I knew the multiplica- 
 tion table up to fourteen times and could write a toler- 
 able essay in fair round hand. And so before the first 
 week was out it was conveyed to me that I was a beastly 
 little "swat." I will not deny that I made some tactical 
 mistakes such as cleverly answering a poser six places 
 before my turn, crying out that Fish minor was "copy- 
 ing," and informing the mild gentleman who took us 
 in French that the correct pronunciation 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-righteous- 
 ness 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
 
 66 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 with- 
 out hesitation. But when I had arrived at the four- 
 teenth 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 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 morn- 
 ing the miracle had happened ; I knew my lines perfect- 
 ly and could recite them at top speed without the possi- 
 bility 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 substi- 
 tuted for A, B and C. To prove that I had not entire- 
 ly 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 ex* 
 plain that Euclid was "not poetry but sense." It wa3 
 the second master who instructed us in English Litera- 
 ture, 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 67 
 
 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, moneo and venio. Behold me, then, after 
 a fortnight's grounding, plunged, not into the middle 
 of Gallic wars, but into the wanderings of iEneas. 
 
 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 would you tell them at home?'* 
 Before I was fourteen I had a very considerable know- 
 ledge of that sweet poet and had done, and done appre- 
 ciatively, Voltaire's Francis I., 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 my 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 ac- 
 quaintance 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- 
 times he would take down from the Keighley book- 
 shelf a ponderous arithmetic of an out-of-dateness posi- 
 tively 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
 
 68 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 father before him were born at 
 Keighley, and among the latter's boyish treasures were 
 Miss Martineau's The Crofton Boys, and Miss Edge- 
 worth's Frank; Harry and Lucy, Sand ford and Merton, 
 Captain Cook's Voyages, a few volumes of 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 sur- 
 rounded by a lot of angry barons on a damp island 
 called Eunnymede. I used to imagine the poor mon- 
 arch, perpetually crowned and sceptred, chased all over 
 his kingdom and finally cornered as in our game of
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 69 
 
 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 spectacular 
 monarchs seemed to spend their time tramping up and 
 down France, all very heroically no doubt, and 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 glori- 
 ously gained. On this point the history books were al- 
 ways silent. After the perfunctory termination to these 
 the most Shakespearean of our wars the English kings 
 appear to have had nothing better to do than 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 examination purposes and Pont©- 
 fract (pronounced Pomfret) another. These civil wars 
 concluded, prancing about upon cloths of gold and cir- 
 cumventing the marriage laws appear to have been the 
 favourite occupations, giving place, in their turn, to 
 the fright about the Armada, although like every self- 
 respecting English 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 priva- 
 tions, 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 pro- 
 fited from the folly of a king claiming very beautifully
 
 70 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and pathetically Divine Right and Prerogative. Noth- 
 ing in my boyish perusal of history made stronger im- 
 pression 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 
 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 ac- 
 cident 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 Peo- 
 ple without mention of the People. 
 
 What a jumble the foreign relationships of the pa3t 
 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 

 
 RESPONSIBILITY 71 
 
 or joustingly to meet them. I never heard of Charle- 
 magne, 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 must correct myself. 
 I was told of an Emperor, or he may have been a Pope, 
 who thought Angles were Angels. But of Greek, Per- 
 sian, 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 Pha- 
 raohs stand in relation to the Ptolemies, or Boadicea 
 to Attila and Nebuchadnezzar. 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 Ed- 
 wards 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 mean- 
 ing of Bolshevism to the suppression of the exact num- 
 ber 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 poli-
 
 72 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 tician to tell our children of the true economic condi- 
 tion 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 
 historian and not the politician to make declaration 
 of the comparative rate of wages, the cost and scale of 
 living in Free Trade England and in Tariff-controlled 
 — I won't say blessed or burdened — France or Ger- 
 many. I don't want any waving of 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 de- 
 ductions. I want facts as seen through the spectacles 
 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 ad- 
 vantages 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 adventures, did not rise up in its 
 wrath and rid the country of theso hindersome pests. . . .
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 73 
 
 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 im- 
 mense reserves and a quite abnormal shyness. As a char- 
 acteristic 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 was a small boy, Charles 
 Eeade and Dickens as soon as I bocran to c;o 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 jour- 
 nal. When old Tindall inflicted on us as a holiday task 
 that tiresome 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. 
 
 My father had broad sympathies and strong political
 
 74 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 the canvasser and political 
 ao-ent. 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 
 Eev. Stephen Gadgett, late rector of St Euphorbius's. 
 Insect-minded and intolerant, hung about with preju- 
 dices, it was this lady's habit to go shrouded in crepe, 
 smelling heavily of tuberoses, her bust a tinkling bat- 
 tery 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." 
 
 And he flung the door open. 
 
 Then did the good Gadgett, assiduous pillar of an
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 75 
 
 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 ven- 
 ture 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 afterwards. I suppose I was as simple a lad as 
 ever breathed, and there seemed to me to be nothing 
 extraordinary 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 times. When we got home she was dead; 
 the child lived for a few hours.
 
 76 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 In the time which followed I found my father entire- 
 ly 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 re- 
 sumed 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 
 Quixote 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 me 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 dav and vou may as well be^in now." 
 
 On the morning of my departure, a morning of wet 
 fog, Dame Margery put round my shoulders an enor- 
 mous muffler at which she had been knitting 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 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 77 
 
 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 man- 
 aged on what. I give you now and the Saturday six- 
 pence." Here he handed me the two sovereigns. "I'll 
 send you a parcel of grub, or tuck, or whatever you fel- 
 lows call it, once a month, or as often as may be allowed. 
 In my time we called it 'jollyboy.' 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?" 
 
 "No," I answered truthfully. 
 
 "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."
 
 78 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Before the train stopped I had time to make a hur- 
 ried examination of the watch. It bore that day's date 
 and the inscription : "From Father and Mother to their 
 dear son." 
 
 Vll 
 
 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 cu- 
 rious. At a distance of three miles you can see tlio 
 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 tho 
 size of a lawn-tennis court. Allowing for the shrinkage 
 of years, suppose we say four times. The school domi- 
 nates the town and is the town, it being inconceivable 
 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 call- 
 ing of birds in the high wood and 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 historv book, is still used for 
 a carpenter's shop, and the churchyard's old graves, too 
 old even to be cared for, are the only indication of the 
 passing of time. Exquisites lorgnetting the devastating
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 79 
 
 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, show- 
 ing 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 ab- 
 solute necessity of practice before the match with Sed- 
 leigh. 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 king- 
 doms. Presently Eastwood gave the pads to Westrom, 
 who proceeded to smite the captain's innocent slows 
 all over the ground. Once he sent me a tremendous 
 skier. I had to run a good way, but I judged it per- 
 fectly, waited without 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
 
 80 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 added, motioning his fag to long-off 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 
 thump, and I begged leave to be allowed to go. Westrom 
 heard me out and said coolly: "It's too late, kid, any- 
 how. 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 pray- 
 ers — 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 Wes- 
 trom's deep bass : "I am responsible, sir. Marston was 
 bowling to me" — bowling, not fagging, and this before 
 the whole school — "and I overlooked the time. It was 
 entirely my fault, sir." 
 
 The matter was apologetic, the manner uncompro- 
 mising. 
 
 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."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 81 
 
 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 sim- 
 plicity. 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 TJpthorne that I had a 
 considerable amount of Virgil and no Caesar, nor that 
 I could be fairly advanced in French and German and 
 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 quality, 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 ex- 
 travagance and gormandising, to humour a creditor and 
 to keep a still tongue ? Such, slightly modernised, were
 
 82 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the limits of my attainment at TJpthorne. 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 with themselves. Do they more 
 urgently desire to beat their 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 TJpthorne 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 quietly. 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 
 commencing 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- 
 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 Illing- 
 worth ma., the head of the school, commonly known a3 
 "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 holi- 
 day in honour of the event, and proposing a match 
 Masters versus Boys, went in first himself and absent-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 83 
 
 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 aston- 
 ishment 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 dur- 
 ing an epidemic of fever. 
 
 § viii 
 
 For three years I stayed at TJpthorne, 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 can- 
 not 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 re- 
 veals himself to be other than his friend had thought 
 him. Of such speciousness Monica was supremely in- 
 capable : she was your friend to the prison gate if need 
 be. 
 
 It was Monica who first gave 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 yes- 
 terday, but he is very thin. He pinched my cheek and 
 called me his mouse, his brown velvet mouse. I was 
 wearing the frock you like so much. Then he looked 
 out of the window for quite a long time. 'Mind you
 
 84 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 win- 
 dow 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 mo- 
 ment. 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 
 of school is an adventure. Is this ghastly, inhuman? 
 I hope it is a trick of the brain. I have no doubt that 
 at prayers that night I looked self-conscious enough. 
 With the following morning came my uncle, and I was 
 at once sent for. Reuben gave 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 am glad to see you, Uncle Reuben, though I must 
 suppose you bring bad news." 
 
 I had found myself debating the alternative values
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 85 
 
 of "must suppose" and "cannot but suppose." The read- 
 er will probably put me down as an unconscionable 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 handsome five 
 shillings on the boy who drove us. 
 
 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 um- 
 brella. 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 deliberately shy 
 of the treacherous indication. I insist on this as evi- 
 dence 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
 
 86 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ad- 
 mirable perspective of something that looked like a fac- 
 tory chimney in marble. Then a crowd of other papers, 
 among which I detected the annual reports of half-a- 
 dozen industrial schools and penitentiary establish- 
 ments, 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 Natural 
 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 ap- 
 pertaining to the Tolerated Houses of Calcutta with 
 some notes on the Overcrowding of 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 liked to frame himself in it, to litter railway car- 
 riages 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 
 lie saw that he was wasting a good phrase. He coughed 
 and went on :
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 87 
 
 "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 
 with your father and me, or the survivor of us, of his 
 son and mine, so soon as you shall both have attained 
 the age of twenty-five years." 
 
 I do not propose to give a verbatim account of the 
 Deed. It was conceived in Reuben's best vein, and to 
 it he had devoted the most flowing of his copper-plate. 
 I believe that if he had not been afraid of my father's 
 mockery he would have fastened little red seals all over 
 it. The provisions were made mutatis mutandis, it be- 
 ing 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 broth- 
 ers-in-law died first. Can't you see him expatiating 
 to the dying man on the obvious fairness of such an ar- 
 rangement ? In case of my father dying my uncle was 
 to act as my guardian until such time as I should attain
 
 88 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred 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 partner- 
 ship 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 Eeuben's. His to safeguard and fore- 
 stall, to make provision against the possibility of latter- 
 day floods and the eventuality of second comings. The 
 present document was verbose, in adominable English, 
 tiresome and meandering, but it never wandered far 
 from the main point, which was the ease and security 
 of the Surviving Partner. And Keuben 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 ren- 
 dered 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 89 
 
 the surviving partner be detrimental to the best interests 
 of the concern." 
 
 "Of course," I answered vaguely. 
 
 "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, 
 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 cry- 
 ing. 
 
 The outward show of grief is the affair of the ner- 
 vous 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.
 
 90 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 I found the house swept and garnished, a cheerful fire 
 burning in the study, and old Margery waiting to re- 
 ceive 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 hesita- 
 tion : 
 
 "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- 
 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 study, 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. 
 
 My dear Edward, — When you read this 
 
 Je seray sous la terre, et, fantosme sans os, 
 Par lea ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 91 
 
 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 myr- 
 teux. 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 your- 
 self to yourself, as the servants say. Or if you cannot 
 lock up your heart entirely, choose a friend — it had bet- 
 ter be a man — and give it into his keeping. But don't 
 at your peril wear it on your sleeve. Remember that 
 your intimate joys and sorrows are necessarily a bore 
 to the rest of the world. You lose your dog and a 
 hundred amateurs will condole with you, your loss af- 
 fording them occasion to show off their dog-lore. 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 club hesitate to crack 
 jokes in your presence; they wonder whether they 
 have accomplished the rigmarole proper to the occa- 
 casion. 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 
 much more intelligent. Note, by the way, that the
 
 92 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 only tolerable Germans are Hamburg Jews. If only 
 they could forget Bismarck what a delightful race they 
 
 would be! 
 
 In all that you really live for, then, you live alone. 
 We are a shamefaced people and our deepest 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 we mean party politics . . . 
 Faugh ! I advise you to learn some conversational tags, 
 shooting, horses, women. Remember that "trade fol- 
 lows the flag," on condition that it doesn't precede it 
 You will be dining principally in Manchester. 
 
 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, there- 
 by liberating enough capital to secure us a controlling 
 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 rather 
 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 inade- 
 quate ! 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. Re-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 93 
 
 member 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 cus- 
 tomer of ours called at the office saying that he was 
 about to take a trip to his native land and begging to 
 introduce the fellow who was to represent him during 
 his absence. After I had bowed them out the old Cru- 
 sader 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. 
 
 And now, my dear boy, I have to talk to you of an- 
 other 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 an- 
 noyed 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
 
 94 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ter- 
 rors 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," 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 
 delight 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 destiny, 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 af- 
 ford 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 view that I might have lived 
 too long; lived to see you unhappy. 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 95 
 
 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 dray went past on which was sitting an old, old 
 man, who fell off into the road. I remember that the 
 whirling of the storm was such that it obliterated the 
 human bundle. I have often thought that the whole of 
 our world may be some such unconsidered bundle hur- 
 rying to obliteration. The Church does not seem to be 
 aware that we are moving through space at some con- 
 siderable speed. !Nor has it ever proved that the Su- 
 preme Force which is responsible for human compunc- 
 tion has 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 trust 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 wor- 
 ship. 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 worship — 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 
 anything 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, al- 
 though it has meant relinquishing the faculty of rea-
 
 96 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 soning. I sometimes fear that prayer is not more than 
 a cowardly desire to be on the right side, Primus in orbe 
 Deos fecit timor, you know. 
 
 In my reasoning mood, when my nerves are steadier, 
 I repeat that my great hope is in you. You are my 
 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 be- 
 lieved in the possibility of getting something for noth- 
 ing. 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 Micawber pris au serieux. 
 
 He too has a roll in his voice and it makes me shud- 
 der. He would weep black tears and he could. I have
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 97 
 
 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 head- 
 stones, appraised caskets. I have heard him hold forth 
 on the superior advantages of four horses. "Not that 
 a pair of our blacks is not up to the job. Quite the 
 reverse. But there are families 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 Kemble, who 
 would be rich and loam-y, and Neville, who would give 
 him the grand air of one of his own cavalcades. Port- 
 wood's an exquisite, you know. But then I've seen him 
 off duty, one with his kind. It was at a railway sta- 
 tion. Incredibly he proposed a "nip," and I accepted 
 out of sheer nervousness. ~No, I will not have Port- 
 wood. 
 
 A father who cracks jokes from the other side ! "En 
 voila du comique! Allans, il faut savoir se tenir tran- 
 quille dans sa tombe." 
 
 A very gentle essayist whom I have heard you dis- 
 parage — 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 you, my 
 boy, 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 say. 
 
 Your affectionate father, 
 
 James Makston.
 
 98 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 By his will my father left my mother's watch and a 
 thousand pounds to Monica, a hundred a year to old 
 Margery, and all his other personal effects, which were 
 few, to me, 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 Childish Things. 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 
 
 Si 
 
 MUCH has been written about the difficulty of 
 the dramatic form, not enough of its con- 
 venience. The dramatist is free to bring the 
 curtain down on the most desperate of plights from 
 which 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 voila! C'est simple comme bon 
 jour! I would not begrudge the playwright his arbi- 
 trary slashings were he to confine them to knots strictly 
 Gordian ; it is the frivolous, unnecessary curtains 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 discon- 
 certing 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 
 
 99
 
 100 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the moral. He was boorish in manner and hesitant 
 of speech, combining a singular dullness of apprehen- 
 sion with an extreme degree of contempt for the in- 
 telligence of others. He bit his nails. His allowance 
 of dress money 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 Marion 
 Lescaut he would recommend Miss Yonge's A Dove in 
 the Eagle's 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, rhythm, or tune. 
 
 "Bird seed!" I overheard a half-starved clerk mut- 
 ter. "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 was 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 101 
 
 Two incidents come into my mind. The first at a 
 Christmas party when a handsome piece of jewellery 
 stolen from a cracker was found in a pocket of my 
 overcoat. Geoffrey, taxed with the theft, had thought 
 to halve his guilt by implicating me as instigator and 
 receiver. 
 
 "JSTed said that if I could get it he would take care 
 of it." 
 
 When 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 laugh- 
 ingly that if ever the Queen came to see her "when 
 Reuben is a knighted mayor 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 
 are now so hopelessly out of date : not to open the news- 
 paper 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; books
 
 102 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 occa- 
 sions our clothes and boots were also subjected to a re- 
 view 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 entrusted 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 dis- 
 tress. 
 
 "Never, never," she deplored from the tip of her 
 tongue, "can one get adequate service from female do- 
 mestics. 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!" 
 
 To my immense surprise the ex-dancer burst into
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 103 
 
 tears; whereupon my aunt, genuinely softened, went 
 over to her and patted her hand. 
 
 "I am a plain old woman," she said, "and you are 
 a very 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 reconcilia- 
 tion, the ex-dancer becoming 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 tiniest 
 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 bov 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 ineffi- 
 cient ninny, as it happened — letting a poultice get cold 
 while she prinked and scalloped it with a fork to make
 
 104 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 it look pretty; which led to my aunt boxing her ears 
 soundly and never so much as answering the ensuing 
 protests and lawyers' threats. 
 
 In his own home my uncle had altogether bon carac- 
 tere. 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 
 constructing 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 jug- 
 gling 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, Ed- 
 ward," he said. 
 
 "Does that mean sweeping out the office?" I an- 
 swered, cheekily enough, my head full of inculcatory 
 nonsense of the Log Cabin to ~\Yh lie House order. 
 
 "No, my boy, it does not. You are not a fool and 
 I am not a fool, and neither of us believes that fortunes 
 are made by picking up pins and bits of string. The 
 whole art of business lies in the knowledge of men.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 105 
 
 Your job in life is to sell calico, but you had better 
 realise once and for all that it is not a knowledge of 
 calico 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 con- 
 sists first in finding out what your customer thinks he 
 wants and then in persuading him that he wants it bad- 
 ly and from you. The best salesman I ever met was a 
 German Jew who knew nothing at all about cotton 
 goods but everything about South Americans. We 
 were young apprentices in a London warehouse. Strum- 
 bach was the fellow's name. To-day he's the richest 
 merchant in Manchester. He was a better man of 
 business than Shvlock. He was not content to talk 
 with you, walk with you, and so forth; he would eat 
 with you, drink with you and pray with you, and never 
 leave you from your getting up to your lying down. 
 Whenever we had rich rastas 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, you sleep,' he would 
 say. '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 that 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 would be 
 gravely accepted. I do not think he ever cheated the 
 old man." 
 
 "Honour among Jews," I said. 
 
 "Exactly. They are the most honourable race in
 
 106 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 foreign 
 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 noth- 
 ing at all for. You will have to take tickets for pre- 
 posterous 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," ho 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 ?" 
 
 "When they are not fools, they do ; and then, if you 
 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 107 
 
 isn't that assuming that your own self will be persona 
 grata with Tom, Dick and Harr j % 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 of- 
 fer three hundred ; he's worth five. I've put an adver- 
 tisement 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 ac- 
 cording 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 
 when you've spotted your man it is as well to adver- 
 tise; 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 thrown away
 
 108 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 through spacing your interviews. Have 'em all to- 
 gether, keep 'em waiting, and go through the batch as 
 slow as you like. And if there is a man you want keep 
 him 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 Lan- 
 cashire men of business. They seemed to me hard- 
 headed; they were certainly hard-hatted, ill-dressed, 
 undersized, common little fellows. They had the cour- 
 age of their ready-made bows. One or two wore cor- 
 duroy 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, rough ish-mado man 
 dressed in neat black replied without trace of nervous- 
 ness 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 ingratia- 
 tion rather than their qualifications for the post. My 
 uncle put them through a regular cross-examination, 
 and under the friendliest and most confidential guise 
 proceeded to extract from them the maximum amount 
 of information as to his competitors' businesses. "We 
 had dispatched three when an office boy came in bear- 
 ing a card which my uncle read and throw over to me. 
 It ran: 
 
 "I shall wait another five minutes. — John Temple."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 109 
 
 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 knew 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 
 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 vou 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-
 
 110 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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, certain- 
 ly. 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 
 pounds a year, paid weekly, and fifty pounds every 
 Christmas morning good years and bad. And that's 
 mv 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY. Ill 
 
 my difficulty. I have no safeguard as to what you 
 might not demand in the case of an abnormally pros- 
 perous year." 
 
 "I reckon any man ought to be glad to pay for ab- 
 normal 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 en<ra<rements and vou don't need no safe- 
 
 CO t/ 
 
 guards, as you call 'em. Xot 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 
 mv fevther 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. 
 
 "Tou will not, Mr Reuben," replied Temple, with- 
 out rudeness. "Is it to be vea or nav about the iob ?" 
 
 "TThv do vou want to leave Buckler's ?" mv uncle 
 asked sharply. "I hear they've not been doing any 
 too well lately." 
 
 "TeVe heard nowt o' t' sort," replied the other. 
 "Bucklers' stink o' brass, and the onlv reason thev sro 
 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 s:ot he's drinking awav fast." 
 
 "Deplorable," said my uncle. 
 
 "Xow vou're different, Mr Reuben. You're rich, but 
 
 %! 7 7 
 
 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
 
 112 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 pounds then, and I suppose I must trust you 
 for the rest," said Keuben as genially as he could. 
 
 "Them as has trusted me haven't had much to grum- 
 ble 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, IsTed, dirt-cheap, and some day we'll give him 
 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 al- 
 ways 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 113 
 
 God helping, entertaining on the subject of the cotton 
 trade. A pious hope as to which I cherish few illu- 
 sions. Since even the great Frenchman could fail to 
 make amusing the inner mysteries of poor Cesar's Pate 
 des Sultanes and Eau carminative, and since we are 
 little entranced with Chardon's efforts to replace rag- 
 paper with a vegetable product (voir Les Illusions Per- 
 dues) 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 
 under his loin-cloth and demands a warmer quality, 
 he is supplied with a plastery make-weight which wo 
 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 commercial 
 acumen. She it is who is your true accommodator, ar- 
 ranging that thread spun from pure cotton shall be so 
 brittle as to need in the honestest case wrapping in a 
 sheath of fermented flour, in the viler instance in a coat- 
 ing of baked earth which, far from having sailed the 
 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
 
 114 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ex- 
 claim ; 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, 
 which complicated operation took place in the mill at 
 Crawley Bridge. (You will find Crawley Bridge on 
 any map. It nestles close under the lee of the Cheshire 
 hills and has Ashton-under-Lyne for near neighbour.) 
 The conduct of this business was 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 Man- 
 chester end" in those of my uncle. ISTow 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 write there were in these towns a number 
 of small sheds run on family lines. Whilst the big mill
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 115 
 
 at Crawley Bridge contained over two thousand loom3, 
 the small sheds to which I allude would contain less than 
 a hundred. Each would he held on a rent, together with 
 the power by which the looms were turned, by some for- 
 mer 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 approaching 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. 
 
 In his many letters to me Reuben would lay it down 
 that the rule 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 al- 
 ways 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
 
 116 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 shilling 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. 
 
 "A few general considerations, my 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 mat- 
 "ters 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 therefore the 
 "agent must be careful to maintain a strict neutrality, 
 "to be content with representing the manufacturer's 
 "views to the merchant and the merchant's views to the 
 "manufacturer. It is not the agent who makes bad
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 117 
 
 'cloth ; it is the manufacturer. It i3 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 merchant fulfilling his pur- 
 'chase. 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 suc- 
 'ceed in a simliar action against C, who holds the stick 
 'at the other end. And vice versa. Note that the second 
 'action must always include the costs of the first. !N"ow 
 'in neither of these actions would the verdict be gained 
 'on the 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 rela- 
 tions to C. in reference to these protests, complaints, 
 '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."
 
 118 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 
 ISTo man goes into business "for the "benefit of hia 
 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. 
 
 in 
 
 "The buyer hath need of a thousand eyes." It is 
 probable that he will use them all and borrow the seller's 
 single one into the bargain. 
 
 rv 
 
 It is good tactics 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 119 
 
 misguided fellow Lad shorn himself of all other con- 
 nections and supports and was under the tightest ob- 
 ligation 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 encouragement, and hop- 
 ing 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 busi- 
 ness would fall into his mouth. Oh, he was magnani- 
 mous,, was my uncle, and it was not unusual for him 
 to employ his broken bankrupt as manager in what had 
 been his own concern at considerably 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 Drey 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 ques- 
 tionings 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.
 
 120 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 I agree with you, madam. A dull chapter. 
 
 IV 
 
 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 
 done my best, to preserve the same attitude towards 
 those who 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 buyer 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 121 
 
 •be recorded that the ripost marked the beginning of 
 a lifelong "connection." 
 
 Perseverance was one of my uncle's pet themes. 
 On summer 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 boy, depends less upon ability than 
 upon persistence and steady plodding." 
 
 "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
 
 122 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 man's brains, whether that produce be sonatas or cali- 
 coes, is a dishonorable calling. 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 aristo- 
 crat. Hear, therefore, two aphorisms of my own : 
 
 TK 
 
 The aristocrat is nearly always useless and often 
 dangerous. But 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 level- 
 lers, it follows that the only trades proper to the 
 nobilitv are the undertakers 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 
 Noncomformists. 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 
 written columns. You can imagine the disturbance 
 created in the social atmosphere when some adventur- 
 ous 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 distressful 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 128 
 
 this honest "book. The mothers of our race, hearing the 
 new generation in their womh, would ask each other not 
 whether the book was true or beautiful, nor yet what 
 might conceivably be clone to remedy the state of affairs 
 exposed. They said flatly that if such things were, they, 
 "for one," did not want to hear about them ; and that if 
 they could help it, neither should anyone else hear 
 about them. 
 
 "I'm surprised 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 de- 
 bate at a Mutual Improvement Society of which my 
 Cousin Geoffrey was an ardent and whistling sup- 
 porter. 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?" I 
 risked. 
 
 "And as a compensation vouchsafed to the inhabit- 
 ants of that misguided country," she went on undis- 
 turbed.
 
 124 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "I should say that it is not the country that mat- 
 ters, but the principle," squeaked a Miss Lirnpkin, 
 an indefatigable 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 know that the Index generalis scriptorum inter- 
 dictorum, 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 Georges 
 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 Wycliffe and even Paradise Lost?" 
 
 "It was certainly a foolish thing to do," said Miss 
 Lirnpkin. "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 al- 
 low each country to decide what is best for itself. We 
 must be broad-minded." 
 
 "We must, indeed," sighed the Lirnpkin. 
 
 "If ever I thought that one of my girls was to grow
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 125 
 
 up a Liz of the Liza-Lu's, or whatever you call them, 
 I would rather see her dead in her coffin." 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 
 that herself. Grave-clothes are so unbecoming. I sim- 
 ply can't see Dorothy in a shroud." 
 
 "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." 
 
 "Very 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 Mem- 
 ber of Parliament knew about life. I doubted whether
 
 126 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 often chairman of the committee, and when not chair- 
 man the power behind the chair. It was suggested 
 by Minchin the 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 but- 
 toned 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 difficulty 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 abounded 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 127 
 
 breakfast, would devour bam 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- 
 bourhood than a pillar-box. It is true that we instituted 
 a society for 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 with- 
 out 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 stop 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 "re- 
 ceived a call elsewhere" the committee would invite
 
 128 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 tenders and offer a guinea and third-class return fare 
 for a couple of trial sermons. And by these sermons, 
 together with the impression produced on the influen- 
 tial members of the flock at whose houses the candidate 
 had dined and supped, was the choice of shepherd 
 decided. I look back upon my share in these negotia- 
 tions 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 def- 
 erence 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 artless 
 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."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 129 
 
 The morality of this proceeding depends upon the 
 fishermen having no business engagements. 
 
 §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 wa3 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 highly 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 Gompany ?" And the secre- 
 tary had beamed. That night Otto slept ill, his astute- 
 ness always most awake in the small hours. The fol- 
 lowing 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 will 
 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
 
 130 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 holiday accorded to ailing clerks, with seaside expenses 
 paid and an allowance for wife and family. Like all 
 great men, Otto was single-minded and ruthless in his 
 single-mindedness. His purpose achieved he could 
 afford to be human. He paid enormous salaries but 
 insisted upon complete devotion. "Zay shall haf no 
 ozzer gods but Otto," he proclaimed openly. He kept 
 an inventory of his employees' families with tables of 
 their salaries and probable 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 ex- 
 quisite. 
 
 "Voollen vuns, my boy, voollen vuns !" 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 viciousness was pardonable, a persistent hobby put 
 you beyond the commercial pale. 
 
 "Youth most haf his fling," he would say, "und he 
 vorks all ze better afterwards. But my clerks must haf 
 no interest vich gompetes mit me." 
 
 Otto's normal expression was one of childlike sim- 
 plicity, 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 out- 
 side 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 mistrust
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 131 
 
 was largely due, my uncle considered, to their having 
 been clerks together 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. 
 
 "Otto will be sure to buy something from you to give
 
 132 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 you a start," lie said. "I know he is open for anot.li or 
 lino 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 whatr 
 ever price yon agree upon, he will want it dividing. 
 That is to say, if you fix the price at tw< hillings 
 
 he will want half the order hooking at nineteen and 
 half at twenty-one." 
 
 "Why?" tasked, 
 
 "So that he can show our competitors the cheaper 
 of the two contracts. 'Aokroyd's price is nineteen shill- 
 ,' he will then toll them. We establish the price 
 and that forces the others to sell at it." 
 
 "But suppose he did the same thing with other 
 manuf; rs, 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 Keuben. "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 Been 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 
 cabinet of the banker JSTucingen. But never have I 
 seen energy and passion raised to Otto's dfemonio
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 133 
 
 power. He had the fervour of the disciple, the ob- 
 stinacy of the fanatic, the ecstasy of the martyr. His 
 whole soul was on fire. lie 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 towards 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 seven- 
 pence 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-vwYirzat-is-hetter-zafirzis. Zo," he said slowly and 
 with intention to a youth standing at his side and who 
 appeared to bo 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 cus- 
 tomer, "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 six- 
 pence or vun shilling. Ve dine all ze same. So!" 
 
 And he rubbed his hands. 
 
 Mr Ransom reappeared. I had an impression that 
 he came through the floor ; he certainly looked much 
 too scared to have propelled himself all the way from
 
 134 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 dree-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 tremblirg 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. 
 
 "Ton fool," he shouted, "you damned English fool. 
 Ven I tell you slowly, like zat" — 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 and 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. I 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 whom 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 
 the salary 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 135 
 
 "Three," said Reuben, without shrinking. 
 
 "Zat 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. 
 Yen 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 anything 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 remem- 
 ber zis. Venever you want to sell, you gome to me. 
 You do not go to Klein or Hoffman or Strumpf : you 
 gome to me. Bromise !" 
 
 And of course I promised. 
 
 "Five at twenty, and five at twenty-one," he said 
 to Reuben. 
 
 Reuben nodded. We were bowed out. 
 
 At the door Otto called my uncle back for a moment 
 and whispered to him. I overheard what he said;
 
 136 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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. He called on me yesterday and 
 talked to me of bees. I vill not be talked to of beea 
 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 
 himself that she was unlikely 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 mer- 
 chant in Manchester." 
 
 I made a movement. 
 
 "Don't interrupt me, Edward ; I know what you are
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 137 
 
 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. Ho 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 hur- 
 ricane and putting an end to this vindication of a 
 prince of commerce. "I've a notion that there's such 
 a thing as spontaneous generation of nonsense. And 
 if Mrs Chalkley's husband drinks any more I'm certain 
 he will spontaneously combust. I really don't think 
 Chalkley 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.
 
 138 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "So of course I let him," continued Monica lightly. 
 "I may not be the Duchess of Devonshire but Chalkley 
 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 for some time longer to expound 
 the whole duty and conscience of the trader. I epito- 
 mise. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Many a mickle makes a muckle. A reputation for 
 honesty in the mickle will help you to pass the doubtful 
 muckle. 
 
 xrv 
 
 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. 
 
 § 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 
 pretending to prefer that I should serve apprenticeship 
 where I should not presume upon the advantages in- 
 cidental to being the master's nephew. From the first 
 shy advances 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 139 
 
 shed's dusty roof — a friendship and a passion which 
 have lasted all my life. I am a Socialist whose Social- 
 ism 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 interpretation the phrase is meaningless — 
 I cannot see how He can avoid judging man except 
 according to man's treatment of his kind. Not accord- 
 ing 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 in- 
 finite 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 nega- 
 tion there must be energy, and amongst the manifesta- 
 tions of energy there must be inequality. I expect I 
 have got the technicalities all wrong; I had never 
 the patience for jargon. The point is that men are 
 not equal in the 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, first 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 possibly require to keep his 
 body and soul together and the bodies and souls of his
 
 140 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 cannot 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 was at all friendly until 
 I met Kodd. 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 mis- 
 tresses. Other families in the district, notably the 
 Runnels, the Starchleys and the Rossiters had 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 cus- 
 tomers 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 imperfectly self-possessed every 
 evening at the hour of seven. Also it must be said 
 that when old Absalom objected to anything, he ob- 
 jected with that complete thoroughness on which the 
 Lancashire man has always prided himself (see Kindle
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 141 
 
 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 enor- 
 mous fortune out of waste and cop-bottoms. (What these 
 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 beginning : 
 
 Old Joe Runnel 
 
 Haa a belly like a tunnel, 
 
 So run and get a funnel 
 
 And pour the whisky in; 
 He conies home late at night 
 So very, very tight 
 And don't he get a fright 
 
 When his Missus lets him in!
 
 142 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 originally 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 ad- 
 vantage 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 : 
 
 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 
 syllable. She let it be known that she desired to be 
 called Mrs Joseph Runnel. 
 
 For years I had cherished a grudge against this 
 mountain of vulgarity, dating from the time when I,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 143 
 
 had first been taken by my aunt and uncle to a Sunday 
 evening's supper at "Glen Chamois." The name in 
 itself is a revenue, 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-a-mains — 
 a piece of goldsmith's ware 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- 
 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 had 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 Runne/£, that my 
 aunt and uncle have not had the pleasure of a visit 
 from you since old Joe . . . since poor Mr Bunnell 
 died." 
 
 "And why should you regret it, young gentleman, 
 may I ask V 
 
 "Because, dear lady, I should so much have en- 
 joyed showing you round the stahells and kennels!" 
 
 It was unpardonable, I admit. 
 
 Wally burst into a loud guffaw, and his mother,
 
 144 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 outbursts. He too held the pompous in horror, and 
 w T hat's bred in the bone 
 
 Poor Wally. His was an entirely dreadful exist- 
 ence. 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 tenor of his father and of life 
 in general. He was the typical industrial cretin, which 
 is quite a different thing from the cretin 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. 
 
 Irving had appeared in Manchester in a travesty, 
 probably by Sardou, of the life 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 mas- 
 terfulness 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 Buck- 
 ley's lady.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 145 
 
 "The piece forma part of a suite, sir, and I am afraid 
 cannot be sold separately," said the obsequious at- 
 tendant. 
 
 "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 particu- 
 lar. 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 lite- 
 rary 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 
 landlady's little brats; Wally would bring them toys 
 and sit up with them when they were ill. There are 
 contradictions in life which defy resolution.
 
 CHAPTEK 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 he 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 pas- 
 sions 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 concession 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 
 Shakespeare 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 
 protective 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 de- 
 vout lover will lay them all at what the poor fool takes 
 to be the feet of his beloved, whereas he is but sub- 
 
 146
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 147 
 
 xnitting them to the trampling of his own desire. Pas- 
 sion is never so dangerous as when it takes the form 
 of 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 actress in a scabrous play. 
 She portrayed, she was the vicious depravee 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 
 luxury. 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 apprehensively beneath them. 
 The answer was to be found in the sharp iron plates on
 
 148 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the wooden clog3 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 my uncle. Reuben had decided 
 that 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 recognized as belonging to Joe Blackley, a 
 burly savage slightly lame in one foot. He could carry 
 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 hi9 
 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 149 
 
 His fist was enormous; his whole 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 belong to yo. That's t'law o' labour. 
 Ah pay this wench and she belongs to me. That's 
 also t'law 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, deliber- 
 ately. Then he put his great tattoo'd hand on her 
 wrist and gave the delicate arm a turn which drove 
 the blood from her face and all mine into my brain. 
 
 And I struck him. It sounds incredible, but I act- 
 ually struck Joe Blackley. After which, and for ap- 
 parently 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 yo're in t' reet 
 and ah'm in t' wrong." 
 
 His shooting out of his fist had been an offer to
 
 150 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 shake 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 extraordinary 
 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 "tender" on a pair of looms where, 
 across the alley, I could catch the glint of her brown 
 hair and the flash of her dimpled arms. I would gaze 
 at her by the hour together, and she would smile shyly,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 151 
 
 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 during the scolding, which would be elab- 
 orate 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 remem- 
 ber 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 Vac- 
 cination — I think I must have been against that prac- 
 tice, 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 
 and portents and with many circumlocutions, I was 
 invited to supper. 
 
 I love that simplicity which translates good will
 
 152 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 into terms of tinned and blushing salmon, 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 not ill 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 gen- 
 erous scale. And in sincerity and hospitality Chris- 
 topher 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 — the 
 ladies' department. Her talk was so preponderantly of 
 fronts and fringes and "transformations," or whatever 
 they were called in that day, that during supper I bog- 
 gled at 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 153 
 
 "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 nicely 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 we Part, a sentimental- 
 ity 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 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
 
 154 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ges- 
 tures 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 pres- 
 ence and personality of Amy. In her is bound 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 
 decently cover them, and Amy alone remained cool. 
 Even now the slanting rays of an August sun bring 
 back an old day's accumulated odours, the rancid smell 
 of loom oil, the sour stench of decomposing flour, the 
 staleness of human sweat. Oh, that nostalgia and phys- 
 ical memory of the senses, bringing back the first in- 
 stinctive sympathy with the factory hand aaad, by anal-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 155 
 
 ogy, 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, con- 
 tempt 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 non- 
 sense 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 weav- 
 ing and nothing about machinery. I still fail to un- 
 derstand why, when a piston has once been ejected, it 
 should take the trouble to turn the other cheek as it 
 were, and submit itself for re-expulsion. There are 
 people who allege this sort of thing to be comprehen- 
 sible; good luck to them, say I. Equally little did I 
 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 

 
 156 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the spur and invention of the moment. Then Eeuben 
 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," Eeuben 
 replied. And then he informed me that he considered 
 me proficient in weaving 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 warp- 
 ins; 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 con- 
 scious 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 her hand, 
 which amazing feat I accomplished once, tremblingly. 
 
 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 known his son to be a fool, whilst the underpaid 
 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-quart- 
 ers. I cannot record any change in his manner to me 
 except, perhaps, a more persistent recommendation of
 
 RESPOXSIBILITY 157 
 
 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 mathe- 
 maticians and which goes by the high-sounding name of 
 the Non-increasibility of Xothing. 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; per- 
 haps 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-Lvne was the 
 centre of the universe, 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, 
 and beyond London Paris, and that even Paris is not 
 the end of the world. And I suppose that when ulti- 
 mately 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 citizenlv bricks very much like 
 another. Only they who have trudged the streets of 
 the Bridge on wet Saturday nights, or patrolled, Sun- 
 days, the desolation of the Oxford Road, only those 
 driven by sheer desperation of ennui to debauch without 
 charm, only those who have suffered from a Manchester 
 at rest can realise that spirit which has made England 
 what she is. It is many years since I was in my
 
 158 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 native city ; reports as recent as the year before the war 
 relate that her greybeards still held classical concerts 
 on Sunday evenings to be subversive of morality. Elo- 
 quence 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 bowing 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 cheer- 
 fulness of the commercial traveller! I have never 
 been able to make out whether it is supervaliance or 
 mere anaesthesia. Certain I am that no depression in 
 trade, no loss of wife, no new disgrace of prodigal 
 son or wanton daughter could have occasioned a diminu- 
 tion in the gallantry of little Briggs, whose line was 
 ladies' ware. 
 
 "ISTo need to ask how you do, Mrs Bowkett" — Mrs 
 Bowkett, nee Ramsden, was the proprietress. "Pork 
 to-day, is it? And cabbage? And do I spy apple 
 sauce? '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 whicE 
 the table roared for such time as I remained at the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 159 
 
 Bridge. Then whom one day should I find seated 
 in the midst of these little 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 di- 
 rection 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 
 on the recommendation of a bishop, and then they 
 treat me like a pickpocket descended from a line of 
 gaol-birds. Upon my head they place a fruitless 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 own 
 bat." He was, he told me, the youngest branch man- 
 ager 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 was married — astonishing 
 thing to have happened to a man with whom one has 
 been at school. 
 
 "Come and have tea with my wife," he said. "You'll 
 meet a queer chap called Bodd. A capital fellow." 
 
 Claud Bodd was one of the personalities of the
 
 160 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Bridge. There was something Mephistophelian about 
 the cadaverous figure to he seen from nine in the morn- 
 ing 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 Shufflebottom'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 library, whose customers took what Fate 
 in the person of out-at-elbows Mr Rodd chose to give 
 them. 
 
 "Trickett's have such nice, suitable 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 161 
 
 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 they 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 threatening 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. 
 
 "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 writers 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
 
 162 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 shop and stuffy little town 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. ISTobody at the Bridge in those days was 
 ever known 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 Gran- 
 det, but he wrote it for his nieces, and that's a draw- 
 back. And then there's La Cousine Bette. Hulot's fine, 
 and if you can relish him you've got the proper stomach. 
 But, really, I think you couldn't do better than 
 Le Pere Goriot. 'Madame Vauquer, nee 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 163 
 
 Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes. 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 translation 
 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 sure worth. Call it an initia- 
 tion 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 with a 
 superb gesture flung on the counter the outraged 
 Twinney's replv. It ran: 
 
 "Mrs Twinney regrets that Mr Marston should have 
 left in her house, and where the Vicar might have seen 
 it, the book alluded to. Mrs Twinney will not e^ve 
 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, nee de Conflans. 
 
 § iii 
 
 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
 
 164 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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; con- 
 sider 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 pithead, the flare of lights 
 in the darkness, the fussiness of officials, the agonising 
 waits, the rumours and counter-rumours, 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 together. And most extraordinary of 
 all, a recollection of Rodd in the funeral crowd, weep- 
 ing 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, fright-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 165 
 
 ened 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 bo as much to the fore in the 
 event as anybody else, the Dewhursts gave out' that 
 ~Na.t 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 up- 
 set" that since the tragedy she had neither bitten nor 
 supped. In reality Leonora was busy upstairs compos- 
 ing 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 
 epistolary 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, 
 29th December 1893. 
 
 My deae 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-
 
 166 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 por- 
 tion 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 junior partner or partners. I have, through what is 
 now a long life, 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 application of your principle that 
 "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 thi9 
 depend upon the area affected or the number of lives 
 imperilled? lSTor 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 167 
 
 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 affec- 
 tionate uncle, Keuben Ackeoyd. 
 
 It is only fair to add that in the list of 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 ex- 
 pected an ecstasy of fuss from the mother, purposeless 
 rushings up and down stairs and futile scurryings 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 after- 
 noon I brought her one of those new-fangled trinklets 
 then springing into vogue — a watch hanging from a 
 lover's knot in metal. The bow was worn on the breast,
 
 168 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and save for the fact that the wearer whilst advertising 
 the time to all the world was unahle to catch a glimpse 
 of it herself, the device was ideal. As I hent over the 
 child to fasten the watch on her little gown she put 
 her arms round my neck and whispered: "I'm not going 
 to die, Mr Ned, am I?" 
 
 "Of course not, Amy," I answered. "How can you 
 think of it, with all of us making 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! 
 If yer die an old maid you'll 'ave only yerself to blame! 
 
 D'y 'ear Lizer? Dear Lizer! 
 'Ow d'yer 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' 7
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 169 
 
 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 
 Death was in an angrier mood and came near to getting 
 the better of devotion. And I to losing my reason. 
 It is a humiliating 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 deabest Neddie, — So you have found her, and 
 I am not going to say any of the things you are ex- 
 pecting 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 
 things 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 vourself. 
 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
 
 170 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 innocent little thing happy. You write of a "sacred 
 trust," which is a very pretty phrase, but you will 
 have to take care that the sacred trust does not degener- 
 ate into a burden. And then vou use the word "cheru- 
 
 *J 
 
 bim." Here I can't follow you. All I know about 
 these little people is that like the seraphim they "con- 
 tinually 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 poor 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, want 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 affairs — and emerge for a moment into 
 the sunlight, with glimpses of ragged blue, a village 
 among trees, thatched roofs, roses and golden-haired 
 children — these are their love affairs. And then they 
 plunge 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 you leave your love 
 the room grows cold and lonely. This is really non- 
 sense. The room has its chairs and tables; it is she 
 who is lonelv.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 171 
 
 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 wrong 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 pos- 
 sible 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 port 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 and appraised the colour and bouquet of the 
 syrupy stuff. Then, when the other customers had
 
 172 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 departed: "Tell me about it," be commanded, as tbougb 
 I bad still been bis fag. 
 
 So I told bim. 
 
 "Can you do it?" he asked. "To bo quite candid, I 
 don't know whether you've the grit." 
 
 I sketched a protesl which he waved i 
 
 "Ob, I know you've a year or twi re of fine 
 
 impulse. Now you are thoroughly and terribly in earn- 
 est. Now you are transfigured and translated and 
 you moan it beautifully, every bit. But it is a very 
 big ventura Remember thai you d 11 alone. 
 
 You can't come down from idealising to a mean per- 
 formance without hurting the little thing." 
 
 "But I'm not going to hurt her," I interrupted. 
 
 "My dear chap, of course yon are not going to hurt 
 her now. But the beginning ry; all plunges, all 
 
 exaltations are easy. We won't talk of failure; the 
 middling success would be bad enough. Pve nol much 
 lilrfng for compromise. B <u fellowship to fall 
 
 back upon :" 
 
 I thought we had. 
 
 "For, yon know, to abandon f< ihip because die 
 edge is off the romance La alt gether unforgivable, 
 and the edge is off before you know where you i 
 It isn't any good fretting and filing the onivi 
 witness that you've done nothing to d< ■• it, [tfi 
 the price, you know." 
 
 We were both silent for a few momenta Even tl 
 ^1 had an inkling that I was only playing with .V 
 Ono may play at love and do harm, and yet without 
 bad intent I am glad to think that I did DO harm. 
 
 '•Then it puts a definite end I irk 
 
 went on. "That you may t. n't mean 
 
 that, you are at liberty to go on tasting it in different
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 173 
 
 directions. You've chosen your life partner and must 
 6tick 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 alono 
 know whether yen can carry it through. You can try 
 to deceive yourself or you can be honest with yourself. 
 If you have any doubt at all, Letter he humble and 
 turn back. Who is it talks about 'the habit of middling 
 actions which men call common-sense'? Of course 
 there's rials 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 tire-irons to choose; 
 it's Tim end of a lark, 1 can tell VOU." 
 
 Tho matter-of-fact "fire-irons" fell on my conscious- 
 ness like a knell. T knew then that marriage was not 
 within tho zone of the possibilities, that I had never 
 contemplated it. 
 
 I had little sleep that night and for many nights. In 
 addition to tho worry <>f Amy's illness I began to have 
 doubts about the fairness of my lack of serious inten- 
 tion and the ugliest certainty as to my uncle'a disposi- 
 tions in the matter of her father. The child was once 
 more out of danger when, one evening, Kester unbur- 
 dened himself to me. I will condense. The story was 
 that a year or two previously he had borrowed a couple 
 of thousand pounds from Ackroyd and ^Tarston under 
 agreement to sell all his cloth through them. That tho 
 instalments by which he was to repay were considerably 
 in arrear, that the prices offered and enforced by my
 
 174 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 uncle had for a long time been little short of disastrous, 
 and that his spinners had declined to furnish him with 
 more yarn 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 Bake, 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 corrigible, his 
 head bowed. Kit had never Icen a fighter. There was 
 little in the scene to record, no grand disillusion, no 
 wild-ey'd despair, no clutching at the breast, no broken 
 enunciation of the petition for bread. 
 
 A simple silence, Kester gazing at the lire. 
 
 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 175 
 
 lad. I've worked before and I'se work again. We're 
 sure of three hundred pound 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 Man- 
 chester next day with the express purpose of persuading 
 my uncle to modify the harshness of his terms. But 
 my tackling of Reuben was about as effective as an at- 
 tempt by a Parliamentary novice to man-handle Mr 
 Gladstone. Now that I come to think of it, my pre- 
 sentation of Kester's case consisted largely in a charge 
 against Reuben of lying, treachery and commercial dis- 
 honesty. My uncle 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
 
 176 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 two great factors of commercial life, supply and de- 
 mand, and which necessarily underlie the business of 
 buying and selling. I have for several years under- 
 taken to provide Christopher Dewhurst with an un- 
 interrupted 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 uncle, "that you are 
 blinded by, shall I say, an irrelevant interest. And 
 now that this little matter has been touched upon, may 
 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 refutation.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 177 
 
 I was horribly ashamed, not for myself but for 
 Reuben. 
 
 "Are you engaged to marry her ?" 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 "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-shallying. The day you lead this young woman 
 into harlotry" — Keuben'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; otherwise 
 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 family 
 and mine, and I give you fair warning that if you decide 
 for Dewhurst you and he and his brat may go to the 
 devil together." 
 
 I prefer not to linger. Three summers later Amy 
 married a young traveller in healds and reeds who had 
 once 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 
 
 ENGLAND in the middle nineties! 
 I have often been struck with the immunity 
 from time and environment with which novel- 
 ists endow their characters. I do not mean that Dickens 
 failed to convey Mr Pickwick about in stage-coaches 
 and Miss Bolo in sedan-chairs, or that Mr Wells is not 
 very proud of his latest aeroplane. These are the ex- 
 ceptions. Your average novelist will record the minut- 
 est development in his hero's sentimental dispositions 
 and none at all in the growth of the world about him. 
 Life is short, but its grasp is immense, and there are 
 surely other phenomena to mark a man's passage be- 
 sides 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 remem- 
 ber the childish opposition which these new-fangled no- 
 tions encountered on the part of the gas companies, 
 the Postmaster-General and the Manchester Chamber 
 of Commerce. The gas companies saw their light ex- 
 tinguished for ever by their more brilliant and con- 
 venient sister. The Postmaster-General saw in the 
 telephone a dangerous competitor to his beloved tele- 
 graph system. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce 
 saw in the increased facilities for payment by post a 
 diminution in the profits of the cheque bank. There 
 does not seem to have existed at this date, even in the 
 
 178
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 179 
 
 minds of the most intelligent, the shadow of an idea 
 of communal interest. Jealousy of the improving print- 
 ing press, animosity of the hand-loom weaver towards 
 his more mechanical brother, hostility of the Church to- 
 wards Science, that lady's jealousy of Philosophy, 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 in- 
 creasing resentment would but copy life, instead of 
 which he is content to represent him as untouched by 
 the march of events. I hesitate to believe that the fash- 
 ion 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 commencing 
 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 half- 
 penny; 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 contemplated appearance be- 
 tween performing fowl and smirking, scented contor- 
 tionists. Music halls had not arrived at the ridiculous 
 pretence of providing shows for the young miss and
 
 180 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 abomi- 
 nation. 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 fla£. The race-horse Ladas had won the 
 Derby for the Prince of Wales, and a foal was now be- 
 ing 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 ty or ninety 
 
 centuries to his credit, the Indian prince had not taken 
 up his studies at Cambridge, and the professional bats- 
 man 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, Florodnra and 
 San Toy were as yet unborn. So too were Trilby and 
 Mr Pig-Pig! whilst the womb of time -till held in re- 
 serve faith in Mr Bernard Shaw's play- as a commer- 
 cial speculation. 
 
 The years immediately preceding *94 had seen the 
 Maybrick trial and tl carat 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 n> say- 
 ing one thing and meaning another. To the fact of his 
 premiership I attach little importance, so long have I 
 been accustomed to hold it immaterial whether we be
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 181 
 
 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 
 Kandolph Churchill were waning forces ; Robert Louia 
 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 Mac- 
 laren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush had left the coun- 
 try 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 throw- 
 ing herself away as ever upon clowning Nance Oldfields 
 when all the world was on fire for Beatrice, Viola, Imo- 
 gen. 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 page- 
 ant or peril, as you will — I am not a policeman. Yel- 
 low asters vied with green carnations; Dodo, Paula 
 Tanqueray and Esther Waters jostled each other for the 
 greatest shares of attention. There were amusing con- 
 trasts between new and old schools. At one theatre 
 could be heard the old-fashioned "Last time, Clemmy
 
 182 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 my boy," of Mr Edward Terry ; over the way Mrs Pat- 
 rick Campbell would be demonstrating how evenings at 
 country houses inevitably 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 mas- 
 culine circles golf had not yet become popular, and the 
 middle-aged roue 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, pur- 
 poseful 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 Ab- 
 salom may have known little about the elegancies of 
 life, but at least he was frank, sturdy and staunch. His 
 son inherited none of his father's quality. To while 
 away such time as he had to wait for his inheritance, 
 he ''followed" drink. The phrase, in the mouths of 
 its Crawley-Bridge users, does not amount to a re- 
 proach ; it is a simple statement of fact, as who should 
 say a taste for whippets. That I consider "Wally as 
 typical of much of the youth of Lancashire of my day 
 is not a reproach except in the sense that a plain state- 
 ment may be a reproach. 
 
 Absurd then to attempt to describe the Lancashire
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 183 
 
 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 ob- 
 jecting that the lover's old relations with Paula con- 
 stitute no bar to marriage with her step-daughter, ex- 
 cept within the walls of a theatre. An advance in Vic- 
 torian play-writing certainly, 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 turning round of the whole encumbrance. The 
 directorate of the private company to which the vehicles 
 belonged appeared to spend most of its time in devising 
 means for detecting dishonesty in its employees. — they 
 had the prettiest collection imaginable of man- and 
 booby-traps, bags, boxes, tickets punchable in the pres- 
 ence 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
 
 184 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 tops of the said trains, 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 evenings, in 
 going nowhere, in hanging about the streets dejectedly 
 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, con- 
 tenting 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 amount- 
 ing 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 instance, for the large mill- 
 owner tacitly to condone a system of sanitary conven- 
 iences for his work-people little better than those of a 
 Russian prison. Whereas openly to discuss the ques- 
 tion 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, Strumbach's shy young man, Arthur Ransom, 
 whose soul died every morning when he entered the 
 warehouse at nine and came to life again at the six 
 o'clock hour of release, Westrom, Curt Reinecke, Reg- 
 gie Bissett and myself.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 185 
 
 It occurs to me here that I have attempted little de- 
 scription of the physical attributes of the more amiable 
 personages of my tale. And that principally because 
 mere physical good looks are as little interesting 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 comparison. 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 preposterous in manners and an im- 
 mense distaste for the 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 forgiv- 
 ing a criminal everything but his crime. He could say 
 surprising 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 ruggedness 
 but the mould was gentlier. He was a Jew from Ham- 
 burg, tall, loose-limbed, of good family. He was em- 
 ployed by Strumbach as a Volontar, 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
 
 186 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 which there was nothing ser- 
 vile. Add to this a charming naivete, a passionate 
 modesty and a rapturous enthusiasm for everything 
 English in which there was no suspicion of toadyism, 
 and vou have the man. 
 
 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 187 
 
 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 win- 
 ter 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 elo- 
 quence, and I have heard him improvise over a mare 
 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 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 pil- 
 lar. We used to meet formally once a month and in- 
 formally once a week in a little cafe-restaurant which 
 boasted a back room to be dignified at a pinch with the 
 courtesy title of cabvnet particulier. On informal oc- 
 casions we would content ourselves with chops and beer 
 in pint-pots; at the grand monthly meetings the pro- 
 prietor would put up an eight-course dinner for seven 
 shillings and sixpence, and we would consider which 
 of the Californian Burgundies might most fittingly pre- 
 cede 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
 
 188 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment. 
 
 \ 
 
 o • • • 
 
 § in 
 
 "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 our- 
 selves 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 Bis- 
 sett. 
 
 "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 limita- 
 tion. 'Do the good that's nearest,' you know." 
 
 "A sort of general interference with the best of mo- 
 tives," 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," re- 
 turned 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 consumptive dress- 
 makers. His Latin Quarter is a colossal blague/' 
 
 "The worst of serious fellows like Claud," said Wes- 
 trom, patting Rodd affectionately on the shoulder, "is 
 that they will raise the moral issue. Now there's no
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 189 
 
 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," re- 
 torted 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 thinks 
 he can draw, Curt has got a symphony in his 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 Bo- 
 hemians. 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 sub- 
 jects most worthy of the strong light of our single- 
 mindedness. I think we were all of us eaeer to co- 
 quette 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 un- 
 til 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
 
 190 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 latest attitude of the scientists and philosophers to- 
 wards 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 re- 
 port to Reinecke, who will pool the lot. Put me down 
 for some one pretty easy, you chaps." And we allotted 
 him Samuel Butler. The following is the compendium 
 of philosophic principle to which the society was for- 
 mally to subscribe : — 
 
 There is no evidence that anything exists which is 
 without attributes. Every existing thing to be ma- 
 terial and resolvable into primary energy which is not, 
 so far as we know, resolvable into any more naked sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 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. 
 
 i 
 
 The universe was probably created by the lucky or 
 unlucky assemblage in the proper place and at the 
 proper time of forms o^ energy coming together in 
 such proportions as were necessary to create matter. 
 
 The Pirst 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 191 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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. 
 
 There is nothing mysterious about life except our 
 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 anything it will happen; if 
 not, not. But "arranges for" must not be held to bear 
 any mystical meaning.
 
 192 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 specu- 
 lation or religious faith it may please man to entertain. 
 From Primordial Energy downwards there is no evi- 
 dence 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 necessary 
 pinch of salt. 
 
 "Not much of a look-out!" said Bissett, when the 
 bilan 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 some- 
 body or it would not exist." 
 
 "Why by Somebody ?" 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 193 
 
 there must be Something already, but that isn't neces- 
 sarily 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 hon- 
 ourable 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 al- 
 ways made the mistake of postulating the universe as a 
 kind of sublime conjuring trick." 
 
 "Whereas" — it was Rodd who spoke — "we are to 
 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 Wes- 
 trom. "It is quite easy to understand how in the dark 
 ages the priests found it necessary to bamboozle the 
 people for their own benefit. You can't expect a savage 
 to embrace an intellectual conception for the simple rea-
 
 194 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 son that he has no intellect to conceive with ; and there- 
 fore 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 
 fulfilment is totally denied. Plants which demand the 
 sun would not have been created in the absence of the 
 sun. Human 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 
 presumes 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 195 
 
 to follow, that tlie 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 af- 
 ter death of the desire to live — in finding the tomb a 
 bore, in other words. Whereas I take it that with death 
 the desire for life dies too." 
 
 "I am satisfied," began Westrom, "that whatever 
 there may 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 intelli- 
 gence. The instrument's not good enough, that's all. 
 So far as I can see we've the choice of two impossible 
 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, in- 
 cluding the Coal Sack and the Milky Way, Rodd's wit 
 and the sole of a fly's foot, or for some form of Primi- 
 tive Energy which, although unconscious itself in the 
 human sense, has evolved so great a miracle as human 
 consciousness. Which seems to me uncommonly 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 Eodd. 
 
 "Let me go on a bit. I think it's a waste of time to 
 argue about the inconceivable. All we know for cer- 
 tain 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
 
 196 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 he very largely insep- 
 arable. 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 ob- 
 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 comforted 
 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 ani- 
 mals 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 rea- 
 sonably amused, to supply them with drink in whole- 
 some and adequate quantity, to teach and educate them, 
 to convey them whithersoever they desire to go, to pro- 
 vide 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 embellishment of life that of private enterprise. We 
 contemplated with horror illegitimacy and prostitution,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 197 
 
 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 to 
 us the only legitimate question. We even drew up an 
 elaborate scheme of toleration which did not include the 
 maison toleree 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 commit suicide." 
 
 "What I am principally anxious about," Westrom 
 urged, "is that wo 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 be- 
 hind 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 Marston 
 battening on his uncle, Ransom licking Strumbach'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
 
 198 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 won't turn out and risk it. I verily think those seedy 
 individuals who show you round Port Said and black- 
 mail you for the rest of your life are worthier of re- 
 spect than I am. At least they are doing the 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, which 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 which 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 country will be 
 greatest in Europe which is all socialist inside but 
 which wants to be the greatest outside also. You have
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 199 
 
 too many Liberals in England and not enough Socialists. 
 This is perhaps not English sense I am talking, but it 
 is certainly German sense. I trust honourable members 
 will excuse my so rotten speech." 
 
 Ho clicked his heels and sat down. We applauded 
 and drank his health boisterously. 
 
 In the matter of sex we looked very largely to Wes- 
 trom, 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 after- 
 wards, than with your habitual blackguard. In either 
 case he should be man enough to shoulder his respon- 
 sibilities. 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 frittering 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 virtue on occasion. 
 Passionate love comes to an end. We've got to change,
 
 200 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ad- 
 mit that the great artist is not without his terrible mo- 
 ments of exhaustion and lack of confidence. And yet 
 he plods. I admit I am a Puritan." 
 
 "Es fallt kein Meister von Himmel," 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 
 uncomfortablv 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 mv work. I want distraction. 
 The role of husband seems to me to be rather ridicu- 
 lous." 
 
 "You got that from Vronsky in Anna Kcurenina," 
 said Curt. 
 
 "But what of the women ?" Westrom insisted. "Are 
 they content to be looked upon as distractions ? Sup- 
 pose 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; that 
 the subject of a woman of thirty-seven lying like a 
 Trojan to convince her fourteenth lover of her virtue 
 belongs to all countries and all times. The crux of the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 201 
 
 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 'companionship 
 with children.' He calls the story a masterpiece 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 savs, '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 
 "come. What are the Tories coming to when their 
 "faithful watchdogs bark like 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
 
 202 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "act to prevent a Government from stopping in power 
 "for a longer period than seven years, not to enable 
 "it to stop in until 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 en- 
 tirely 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 Glad- 
 stone appears to have held this view with greater per- 
 sistence than anybody else, but no matter. Presum- 
 ably, 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 snap division is 
 "quite in point or would be, did he not omit the point, 
 "which is that Gladstone offered to resign if the Tories 
 "were prepared to come in. This they refused. Glad- 
 Stone 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 203 
 
 "case most favourable to his opponents ! Does lie 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 confidence 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 Lib- 
 erals in like circumstance. Imagine a Liberal Gov- 
 ernment 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 ar- 
 "gument which in the mouth of an opponent would hon- 
 "estly seem to him to be a menace to his country's wel- 
 "fare. 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 German offensive of March, 
 1918. It runs:
 
 204 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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.' 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 ap- 
 "petite 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 deter- 
 mining 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 
 "whether a man is likely 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 
 "embusque, or traitor if you like it better. Of course, 
 "a statement that the question is one of communal use- 
 fulness 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 205 
 
 last twenty years in their attitude of indifference to 
 the communal question. Politicians go on with 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 animalcule in a pond. God must 
 use an enormous miscroscope 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 cenacle 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 mat- 
 ters 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 bourgeois enormities de- 
 tected 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 mean- 
 ing of a word partly Jewish partly Hamburg slang, 
 which stands for all errors of taste and tact, all preten- 
 tiousnesses, stupidities, fussinesses, effusivenesses, vul- 
 garities, the whole caboodle of German emphasis soever 
 — the word Jcemach. Nearly all Germans, explained 
 Reinecke, are Jcemach; their mental furniture, like that 
 of the boarding-house mantelshelf, is one colossal
 
 206 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 kemach. The luggage with which our friend had set 
 out from Germany had included a dress-shirt embroid- 
 ered 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 bo 
 affected with the mysterious taint. An album was in- 
 stituted for the recording of all authenticated instances 
 of the kemach, and we found in the daily press our 
 happiest hunting-ground. 
 
 On the night of the Strumbach dinner Curt led off. 
 
 A young music-hall star Beeing an alleged photograph 
 of herself "in diaphanous attire" displayed for sale 
 had written: 
 
 "Other actresses hein? equally injured with myself, 
 I feel it urgent that 1 Bhould take action. That wo 
 
 should have the g 1 fortune to Btand well with the 
 
 public is no reason why we should l>e 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, thev separated, bowed low 
 
 and withdrew. The safety curtain then took the place 
 of his ornate bid more caprieious sister."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 207 
 
 To this also were accorded the honours of perpetuity. 
 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 hemach since 
 — he hesitated for a worthy comparison — since our 
 great Queen was scandalised at the presentation of 
 'Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt et son fils. y " 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 C !" His voice 
 dropped to the hush of awe as he read, after the manner 
 of one reciting a miracle: 
 
 "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-
 
 208 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 men, charge your glasses. I give you Chopin's ton- 
 nage!" 
 
 We drank the toast in silence and then Claud with a 
 little hysterical laugh hurled his glass into the fire- 
 place. 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 enioy 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 orches- 
 tra 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. 
 
 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 wraekful siege of battering days. . . . 
 
 "There's no moral issue there, anyhow," he said, 
 I fancied a trifle wistfully. 
 I wanted the familiar: 
 
 Wfrite loyal cantoons of contemned love. 
 
 and 
 
 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 209 
 
 but they were ruled out on account of the intervening 
 line. Other suggestions I forget, just as I forget which 
 way 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 essen- 
 tial qualification 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." 
 
 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. It 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 them? 
 
 2. All life is, au fond, at once sensual and moral. 
 Discuss this. 
 
 3. Madame Vauquer was nee — what ? 
 
 4. What English monarch was the most unconscion- 
 able time living ? 
 
 5. The bot-fly lays her eggs on the hairs of horses'
 
 210 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ar- 
 rangements with the ingenuity of the human marriage 
 settlement. 
 
 6. Have trees a future life? 
 
 7. He that will not work neither shall he eat. Con- 
 nect 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 
 would you dispose of the body ? 
 
 9. What in your opinion has a man to live for who 
 has made as much money as he wants and who has 
 seen his sons established 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 211 
 
 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. 
 Eveiy 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 be- 
 hind 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 when I'm all alono 
 except for these fellows copying, ugly little spirits 
 come out from behind the piles, and leer and gibber at 
 me. ISTo 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 sevenpenee 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 fas- 
 cinating about his small, astute eyes; they're like the 
 eyes of a. rogue elephant. I think he hypnotises me
 
 212 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 dan- 
 ger 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 
 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 nawying. 
 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 Ran-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 213 
 
 som. "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 re- 
 duced 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 boat containing our last shipment met with an ac- 
 cident and has had to put back 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 chance 
 of a lifetime. It means the sack for me, of course." 
 
 "You can't have it both ways," said Bissett. "You 
 can't both want to get free and be frightened of the 
 sack at the same time." 
 
 y "Oh, can't you ?" threw in Eodd. "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 occa- 
 sion. 
 
 "It's not getting the sack that worries me. Of course 
 I must go to Liverpool. So long as I am Strumbach's 
 servant I must obey orders." 
 
 Westrom nodded. 
 
 "I'm thinking of plucking up enough courage to
 
 214 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 Westrom. 
 
 "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 
 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 unhappiness. 
 We don't all suffer misery, perhaps, but most of us 
 have to put up with a very middling kind of bliss. 
 Now Ransom has no need to put up with anything. He 
 is at perfect liberty to develop in+o a great artist, a 
 magnificent criminal or any one of the stupendous 
 things that bring wretchedness in their train. Ran- 
 som wants to be an artist; he is sure of the zeal and 
 the ardour but hesitates as to the ability. He's fright- 
 ened 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 glo- 
 rious 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. 
 
 Strumbach made no difficulty at all about Ransom's 
 leaving, insisting only that he should go at once. He
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 215 
 
 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 
 bortrait. TJnd 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 re- 
 calling 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.
 
 216 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 It is the "weakling refiner who insists on the trick of 
 spirituality. I could ransack the poets to prove that 
 the monstruosity in love, as Trolius has it, is indeed 
 that the will is infinite and the performance limited, hut 
 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 
 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 
 demanding 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 begin 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 217 
 
 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 name — was decreed the first evening I 
 met her coming from work in one of Manchester's 
 dingiest suburbs. Think you that heroines should all 
 be dressed in silks and satins ? I declare that my mis- 
 tress 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 that hat ? "Item, two lips, indifferent red ; Item, 
 two grey eyes with 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 with- 
 out a detailed map of countenance. If red hair de- 
 lights me then shall Manon Lescaut 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 sim- 
 ply. She was in no way startled at the direct address, 
 and yet I had the feeling that it was the first time that
 
 218 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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." 
 
 We shook hands and she went lightly away. 
 
 The following evening was wet beyond lovers' pos-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 219 
 
 sibilities, 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 
 have been run over in the interval or attacked by some 
 disease? And I pictured her in a workshop entan- 
 gled 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 anything 
 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 counter- 
 feit, which is commonness. 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 com- 
 plete and could be disconcerting. 
 
 I cannot help thinking it curious that I, with my 
 considerable knowledge of the most wide-awake au- 
 thors, should have been so much less aware of life than 
 this clear-eyed, illiterate girl. Thanks to Rodd's coach-
 
 220 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ing I was supremely versed in the resentment of the 
 abandoned mistress ; I could have told you how Gabriel- 
 Jean - Anne - Victor - Benjamin - Georges - Ferdinand - 
 Charles - Edouard - Kusticoli de la Palferine wiped his 
 razors on some dancer's love letters; I could have 
 reckoned to a hundred thousand francs the cost to Nu- 
 cingen of his passion for Esther; could have made it 
 clear how Lucian hanged himself, but not for love. 
 I suppose there was not an intrigue in the Human 
 Comedy 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 scoun- 
 drel Maxiine 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 starv- 
 ing 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 melodrama 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 dan-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 221 
 
 gerous streets. Those who live in the comfortable se- 
 curity 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, 
 rough 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 inno- 
 cence and starve. Luckily the stalwart's stumbling- 
 block of a wife died of consumption in the fifth act as 
 a consequence of having been unfaithful in the first, 
 which considerably eased the dramatists's path. But I 
 have never forgotten the line. 
 
 With the approach of winter I noticed that Clare be- 
 gan 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 to 
 time I would slip small sums of money into the pocket
 
 222 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 of her little jacket. One evening Clare faced me sud- 
 denly 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 some one to talk to about 
 Clare. I avoided Westrom as one instinctively avoids 
 those good, unswerving natures whose warnings are re- 
 pressive and uncongenial. Equally I avoided Rodd as 
 being too brilliant a fellow to cany 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 culture 
 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. 
 
 "Then let Nature arrange that until you meet the 
 so wonderful woman with whom this miracle is pos-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 223 
 
 sible 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 engagement 
 to make more money with. She was too honourable to 
 run about the streets and so she waited for le bon 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 misfor- 
 tune. I sent her back to Paris with her fare paid and 
 some money in the pocket. ISTow this would be a beauti- 
 ful story if Curt Keinecke had asked nothing in re- 
 turn. 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 un- 
 spoiled. 
 
 § 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. 
 
 My present mood is very Balzacian. Le vieux mon- 
 sieur has me in his toils ; it is an awful thought that 
 there is nobody of the young generation who knows 
 anything about him except me. Your ignorance is still
 
 224 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 pitiful; you might almost be a Frenchman! Do you 
 think you could tell me what ultimately became of 
 Madame de Bauseant and by whom her house was in- 
 habited after her betrayal % Do you know whom Maxiine 
 de Trailles or Rastignac or Ajuda-Pinto married ? I'm 
 in the middle of Le Depute d'Arcis. 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 l'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-roue Maxime de Trailles plays an immense part. 
 He marries a young girl with a dowry of over a mil- 
 lion, which seems likely to be his last achievement ; and 
 we are told that on the news of his marriage "son car- 
 rossier, son tailleur, enfin tous ses creanciers firent des 
 illuminations !" 
 
 I am, I think, more Balzacian now than at any for- 
 mer 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 without achieving the graceful, and good 
 honest fun is at all times beyond 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 225 
 
 the lovable absurdities of the old maid Rose Cormon. 
 "Mais, ma chere, cest, si naturel d'avoir des enfants." 
 I should 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 ma- 
 chine than an artist. In fact, Balzac is not an artist at 
 all in the sense that art is selective. He is comprehen- 
 sive, God in a world of his own creating. He writes 
 down 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 be- 
 wildered 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 L'Education. Sentimeiv- 
 tale. And yet despite my increasing admiration for this 
 book I am more than ever convinced that Flaubert-could 
 not fill a large canvas. Just as I can never write se- 
 riously upon any subject without submerging myself 
 fathoms below any possible meaning, so Flaubert can- 
 not leave a situation without so thoroughly 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. But he has pages which 
 never cloy, from which the last drops of beauty will 
 never be wrung. Read the passage beginning "Des 
 femmes nonchalamment 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 sen- 
 tence as "Madame Vatnaz mangea a elle seule le buisson
 
 226 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 d'ecrevisses, et les carapaces sonnaient sous ses longues 
 
 dents." 
 
 I suppose the book is what stupid people would call 
 a sermon. Certainly I do not know how any man is 
 going to take to himself a mistress other than cynically 
 after reading the account of Frederic's waning passion 
 for Kosanette. Ses paroles, sa voix, son sourire, tout 
 vint a lui deplaire, ses regards surtout, cet ceil de femme 
 etemellment limpide et inepte, mais un gout des sens 
 dpre et bestial V entrainaii vers elle, illusions d'une 
 minute qui se resolvaient en haine. It's as discourag- 
 ing as the major prophets ! Neither Balzac nor Flau- 
 bert are "good for people to read." The one excites 
 to madness, the other drugs to indifference. I some- 
 times wonder whether other people besides ourselves 
 make more account of books than of life. Are we ab- 
 normal ? I swear that Balzac has destroyed every ves- 
 tige 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 anything that can happen to me at Shuffle- 
 bottom'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 en- 
 ceinte. 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 Le boulevard Croix de Shufflebottom avec ses lu- 
 mieres, ses splendeurs, le va-et-vient de ses riches equi- 
 pages, ses femmes etincelantes nonchalamment assises 
 dans les caleches, ses lions (ah, voila Monsieur le Vir 
 comte Wally de Buckley dans le four-wheeler de Ma- 
 dame la Marquise de Runelles, nee Runnel tout court) . 
 C'est la, mon cher, la vie telle que nous Vavons revee. 
 Cet hotel-la, le numero vingt, entoure de toutes ces
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 227 
 
 richesses, rnerite d'etre connu. La les diners superbes, 
 le mutton-chop ou le rump-steak suivi d'une bribe de 
 fromage dit Cheshire, le Bass a perdre la raison, les 
 cigares a quatre sous. La rien de vulgaire, rien de 
 bourgeois, rien de commun. Les conversations sur la 
 Utterature, la peinture, la musique; les reunions d' ar- 
 tistes, les causeries spirituelles et les fines debauches — 
 un salon, quoif Mais sur le boulevard, c'est autre 
 chose. La, la joule vomie des usines, des workshops, 
 des mille endroits oil Von gagne ce qu'on appellc le 
 spending-brass, la foide infecte parade dans les rues 
 puantes. La, on sent le fried-fish et les chips. La, on 
 entend les Chase-me! des gens a shawl. Quand vient 
 la nuit on frole Vamour impudique, derme de 
 poesie. . . . 
 
 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 art- 
 less reaching out after the French. The thing began 
 with a Bal-musque (sic) of which the principal figure 
 was one calling herself "La Pipotte — a loose woman." 
 Aspasia herself reminded me of nothing so much as a 
 fifth-rate Polly Eccles. She was enormous. She ap- 
 peared at the top of a rickety staircase crowned with 
 a wreath of red paper roses with the device "Vive 
 l'Amoor!" (sic). She wore red tights and a leopard 
 skin with lace insertions, 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 lend-
 
 228 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ing additional charm to the tourbillon de la da/nse. 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 for 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?" 
 
 Whereat Shuffiebottom's Cross whole-heartedly to ap- 
 plaud. 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 Dramaturgic 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 
 done triste" ! 
 
 La piece terminee, on descend la rue a present desert e. 
 Uivrogne se hate dialler prodiguer chez sa chere epouse 
 les tendresses provoquees par le bottled stout. Deux 
 chats, un bobby et des amour eux tardifs, voila tout ce 
 qui reste debout. Les one-up-and-one-down, les villas, 
 les semi-detached enferment la population honnete et 
 abrutie. Allons, mon cher, montons le boulevard Croix 
 de Shufflebottom. On a beau chercher les equipages, les 
 belles, les dandys. Jje Vicomte Wally de Buckley 
 est depuis longtemps couche. II a son bellyful du Pale 
 Ale. II pousse des hoquets, sans doute. Que Voir de 
 sa chambre doit etre lourd et sa tete glabre sur Voreiller
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 229 
 
 horrible a voir. . . . On cherche son latch-key, et on 
 entre chez sot. Dieu! que la vie de province est done 
 triste. . . . 
 
 §vii 
 
 Letters such as this were unsettling. Insensibly 
 I be^an to take less interest in things which were not 
 between the covers of books. I drifted further and 
 further from my familv 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, wholly ignorant fu- 
 ture 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 thev 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 
 destiny in the world, the destiny of the human being 
 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 Oakwood. 
 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 pro-
 
 230 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 claimed 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 par- 
 ticulars about Strumbach's affairs. When Monica'3 
 education or what passed for it was finished she de- 
 voted herself with that quiet determination which she 
 inherited from her father to beautiful and unostenta- 
 tious work among 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 
 would be quite sure that it was going to be a great 
 deal better than the previous year's. After a reason- 
 able amount of badgering my uncle would consent to 
 the principle of a visit and my aunt would stipulate 
 for stalls, fourth row and near the door, in case she 
 should feel faint. After the return from the theatre 
 there would be supper with a glass of champagne to 
 mark the occasion, and my uncle would descant on
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 231 
 
 the merits of the principal boy, 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 bantering exchanges between 
 a gentlemanly devil of uncertain temper and a grand- 
 motherly 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. 
 "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;
 
 232 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 decollete 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 waywardness 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 
 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 diffi- 
 culties valiantly overcome I succeeded in persuading 
 Clare to make a little excursion to the sea. "For the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 233 
 
 day," was straightforwardly stipulated and conceded. 
 It was a gorgeous morning. Leader-writers who are 
 accustomed to put a bright face on their readers' 
 poverty 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 sun- 
 shine. 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 iEneas, 
 Antony and Cleopatra 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 
 she looked up at me: "Do you think I dance well, 
 Ned?" 
 
 "I never thought about your dancing, dear." 
 
 "Splender, 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 Splender, isn't it?" she rejoined,
 
 234 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 and then nestled more closely to me. "Kemember, 
 Ned, I shall be a responsibility." 
 
 I think we both knew that the farce of pretending 
 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, chil- 
 dren 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 Satur- 
 day 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 neces- 
 sarily great art, and failing signally. I would be un- 
 able 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 bit," 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 235 
 
 thing to have no boots and to be cold and hungry. But 
 I suppose you have never been cold and hungry." 
 
 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 disconsolate young 
 woman with the eyes like saucers. Hers was a limited 
 experience 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 inveterate 
 realist. In vain I tried to explain to her that an ex- 
 quisite Madonna and Child might be thrown off by an 
 irreligious painter, and the most heart-rending portrayal 
 of poverty emanate from 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 by no means 
 safe. There even Strumbach did not disdain to air his
 
 236 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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. 
 
 And then both play and player took hold of her, as 
 they have taken hold of generations of playgoers. I 
 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 soul. 
 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 suc- 
 cesses, the clever little tricks with which the play 
 bristles, came easily and triumphantly off. The unre- 
 warded lover sitting all night at the bedside and replen- 
 ishing the empty coffers, Bichette, that pious little 
 goose, Marguerite's wistful 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 senti-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 237 
 
 ment uprooted Clare and dashed her ahout 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 diffi- 
 dences 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. 
 
 § viii 
 
 And then Geoffrey got married. 
 
 The hride was a Miss Pratt, one of the Pratts of 
 Dukinfield, a mild and colourless person peering ador- 
 ingly at her lover through gold-rimmed glasses. I spent 
 the day trying to reconcile pince-nez with orange- 
 blossom and Geoffrey's puce-coloured trousers and 
 lavender waistcoat with his mauve tie and violet cloves. 
 There was an air of pluming and preening ahout 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 Eodd and snatched a moment's talk. 
 
 "Didn't think you knew 'em," I hazarded.
 
 238 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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, dignified; 
 of Monica patient and cheerful in the hullabaloo; 
 of my uncle benevolent, partriarchal 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 con- 
 fectioned in foreign parts, modish and out of place 
 above that startled countenance; the bridegroom 
 swathed in an Inverness cape and surmounted by a 
 plaid contrivance with ear-flaps. 
 
 They were for Paris and were to cycle from Bou- 
 logne. 
 
 After a considerable amount of eating and drink- 
 ing a huge party was made up to witness some dull, 
 outrageous farce. On the way back I drove alone with 
 Monica. 
 
 "Ned, dear," she said, "there's something I've wanted 
 to tell vou 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 anything 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 239 
 
 yourself away. ... Of course I'm just a wee bit 
 disappointed, ISTed; you see you haven'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 delectable morsels of tinned-tongue, 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 mur- 
 derers 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.
 
 240 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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 
 star 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 w"hat, 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." 
 
 "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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 241 
 
 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 Trench window. 
 
 Of course it means the end of Claud Eodd so far as 
 Crawley Bridge is concerned. Farewell the Boulevard 
 Croix de Skufflebottom, Numero Vingt, or any other 
 number. 
 
 I'm off to London town. 
 
 "Into the dark to fight a giant." 
 
 And now, my illustrious de Marsay, toi qui entretiens 
 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 
 pawned — all those innumerable statues, pictures, snuff- 
 boxes, ivories, rare editions which were our common 
 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 
 Marquis Wally de Buckley — en voila un qui fera son
 
 242 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 
 Votre pauvre Rodd. 
 
 The waning of my affection for Clare dates from the 
 time when I conceived my first book. I have never 
 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 per- 
 functory — 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 pos- 
 sible 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 in- 
 carnation 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 243 
 
 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 
 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 
 you 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 
 must not imagine that I am a fool either. Please do 
 not confound me with my circumstances. Everything 
 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
 
 244 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 
 tradition, and I have no doubt you would always be- 
 have handsomely. I believe that is the accepted phrase." 
 
 She was silent for a moment and motioned to me to 
 be silent too. I do not know what I could have found 
 to say. After a pause she resumed: 
 
 "We are poor people, which is all the more reason 
 why we should look facts in the face. Clare is run- 
 ning 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 lady. "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 will 
 tire of Clare and then you will want to be 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 alto- 
 gether or at least to lessen the sadness of the day I
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 245 
 
 see in store for Clare. I will not consent to any pro- 
 longation 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 relation- 
 ship. 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. 
 
 "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 knowledge 
 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 you will consider very seriously what I have 
 said to you, and I wish you 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 masterleaver in the 
 play, and here the chance of a way out offered, positively 
 offered. I began to square with my honesty, to feel 
 my loyalty, my chivalry even, falling away. I shall
 
 246 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 reason- 
 able 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 avowable one, for I knew that 
 there is no code which permits 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 muni- 
 cipal politics. I could never guess the motive, can 
 only suppose vanity. My uncle stood for the Shuffle- 
 bottom Cross Ward at Crawley Bridge in the two fold 
 interest of the artisan and the Conservative party, a 
 dexterous combination which gave his prevaricatory
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 247 
 
 genius full scope. Holding in his inmost soul that the 
 working man was unfit to live, he proclaimed that he 
 would do well in his own interest to submit to govern- 
 ment by his betters. Perhaps this is a little hard. 
 Taking a more favourable view, Reuben held that the 
 worker has the right to live, 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 bul- 
 wark 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 him- 
 self to make him "fitter for the battle" — i.e. fitter to 
 make more money for his 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 
 acknowledge his touched forelock with the utmost of 
 his affability. In other words, government by gracious- 
 ness and doles. 
 
 My uncle's opponent, Robert Inskip, was a mild, 
 insignificant little Socialist with a fussy, fretful man- 
 ner, 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 anything 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
 
 248 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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. 
 
 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 CKOSS 
 
 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 vour 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 prohibitionary 
 measures. 
 
 I shall support all efforts to make the amenities of 
 life in our town as healthful and enjoyable as pos- 
 sible. 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 249 
 
 those ideals which have long been the affair of my 
 private prayer and solicitude. Amongst these ideals 
 are 
 
 Cheaper and Better Housing 
 
 Cheaper and Improved Tramway Service 
 
 Cheaper and Improved Lighting 
 
 A Higher Responsibility in Public Affairs 
 
 and 
 Lower Rates. 
 
 May God direct your votes! 
 
 Yours faithfully 
 
 Reuben Ackroyd. 
 
 Little Inskir/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 would vanish on the return of Robert 
 Inskip to the Crawley Bridge Council. It is unneces- 
 sary to record the ebb and flow of the contest, the pa- 
 thetic fallacies of one combatant, the resounding pom- 
 posities 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 Social- 
 ist cartoon "By the sweat of their brow shall Reuben 
 eat bread." 
 
 To me the introduction of politics into a city's do- 
 mestic economy has always been the height of absurdity. 
 So long as streets are well lighted and cleanly swept, 
 sewage unostentatiously removed, traffic controlled, pick- 
 pockets and burglars reasonably restrained ; so long as 
 houses of pubic refreshment are kept open beyond a
 
 250 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 child's bed-time; so long as trams run and letters are 
 delivered, so long do I care nothing at all whether the 
 overseers are Liberal or Conservative, Turk or Mormon, 
 Csesars, Cannibals or Trojan Greeks. 
 
 After a time it seemed possible that the election might 
 go against my uncle. jSTo 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 summoned 
 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 con- 
 clusion 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 251 
 
 of morality. Mr Inskip, I have to notify you that if 
 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." 
 
 My 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 Keuben. "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 whisp- 
 ered. 
 
 "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 un- 
 dermines; 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
 
 252 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 feel justified in renewing at the end of the year those 
 relations which have hitherto existed so pleasantly be- 
 tween us. Should you stand down I think that per- 
 haps we might see our way to' - ' — here he hesitated — 
 "to some not inconsiderable modification of terms which 
 might not be disagreeable 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 be- 
 gan. 
 
 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 your 
 livelihood. Who's going to keep you and them after- 
 wards? "Who's going to take yon on if ever you. 
 leave me? You're past your 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 moun- 
 tain 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 my 
 arms around him. 
 
 "Leave them," I said. "It's man to man."
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 253 
 
 "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 your employ 
 who does not wish you dead a thousand times a day. 
 You are a clog, 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 clung 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 consump- 
 tions, 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 an- 
 swer." 
 
 And with that he flung his clenched fist full into the 
 face of Keuben 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 life was my uncle's whipped dog. It is true 
 that the extra hundred a year was a God-send to him.
 
 254 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 §xii 
 
 On the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday I found 
 a letter in my uncle's handwriting addressed to me at 
 the office. It ran: 
 
 Me Edwakd Makston, — 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 Reuben going 
 through his letters and Geoffrey lounging by the win- 
 dow 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 when I was 
 recalled by a cough from my uncle and the note of 
 unusual circumstances which he threw into a prelimi- 
 nary. 
 
 '-May I beg your attention, Edward?" 
 
 "My dear uncle," I replied, "I am not a public 
 
 meeting. 
 
 » 
 
 "As it is probable," he went on without taking notice 
 of what I am afraid was flippancy, "as it is probable
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 255 
 
 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 money 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 
 myself. 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 have forfeited 
 what would have been your 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
 
 256 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 yourself to 
 the best interests of the firm of Ackroyd and Marston 
 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 con- 
 tract 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 
 every turn; you have abused your position to preju- 
 dice your cousin Geoffrey and myself with our manu- 
 facturers, 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 will not deny that your moral conduct has 
 been and is at the present time such as must prejudice 
 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 257 
 
 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 inform 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 inasmuch 
 as with prudent investment you still possess seven 
 hundred a year. That amount will doubtless permit 
 you to play the Socialist and the blackguard whereso- 
 ever 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 softly. 
 
 "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 contain- 
 ing a cheque for the total amount of my fortune. 
 
 And thus I was never a partner in the firm of Ack- 
 royd and Marston. 
 
 The following morning brought me another letter. 
 It was from Clare and was very short.
 
 258 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 My dear, dear Ned (she wrote), — I know that 
 to-day is the day of your partnership and that you 
 are a rich man. But I know also that you are tired 
 of me and I cannot bear the thought that I shall soon 
 be no more than a drag and encumbrance upon you. 
 I know 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 go 
 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 re- 
 proaches. I daresay I was not clever enough to 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 true 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 259 
 
 like that. I would willingly have laid down my life 
 for you. 
 
 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 know 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 redemptive 
 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 treachery 
 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 
 of responsibility. "You are my immortality," m£ 
 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 confesa 
 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
 
 260 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 of hard toil I 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 nothing of 
 my uncle and little of Monica. My friends were scat- 
 tered, Westrom faithful to Crawley Bridge which I 
 never again visited, Reinecke 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 West- 
 rom 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 re- 
 views 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 Jiis 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 any 
 other balderdash. The worst of it is that you can 
 never be sure what kind of bait the public s 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 thunder- 
 ingly behind the times with what you would call your 
 passionate preoccupations. (I dislike most of your 
 jargon.) I am for an honest betrayal as much as any
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 261 
 
 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 trying. Muscular Christians are not neces- 
 sarily fools, you know. And what shall it avail a writer 
 if he possess all the mots 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 anything for thee," they 
 find it pays to strike an attitude and exclaim "Any- 
 thing?" or "Just repeat that remark, will you?" and 
 then, having tipped the wink to the spectator who 
 was eating chocolates or fiddling with his programme 
 and generally not paying attention, they proceed to 
 the launching of the tremendous line. Kemember that 
 you can't prevent 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 readers 
 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.
 
 262 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Of home news, little. My 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 ts 
 normal. 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 wa3 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 Tcemach, the 
 Emperor's Castle ! The ceilings are painted red, blue 
 and yellow, the carpets are of purple and the uphol- 
 stery of green. The walls are decorated with con- 
 stipated art works by German 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. Eat men and fatter 
 women, all with huge sausages in the mouth and mugs 
 of beer and bottles of Rhine-wine in the hand were 
 acting and wunderschon-ing in the most ludicrous man- 
 ner. To think that if I had not been in England I
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 263 
 
 should make the same noises ! Whilst I was in Ger- 
 many 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 hundred 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 German 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 senti- 
 mentality almost German of this night, when the part- 
 ing 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. Beisebriefe always bore. 
 
 Sometimes I think I will never be worth much in- 
 terest. I do not think now that you will ever see 
 "Curt Eeinecke Op. 100" on the cover of some big 
 symphony or opera. I can think beautiful things but I 
 cannot invent them. They are underneath 50,000
 
 264 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 kilos cardboard ! I do not want to be tbe Strumbach 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. Eecently when I was one day on 
 a ship I was happy. There were a lot of hemach on 
 board, and some mannerless Germans. Also two Eng- 
 lish people, so proud that if they were dying 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 sucking hard. One of the maca- 
 ronis fell on her bosom and she left it there and con- 
 tinued her dinner. I wondered whether she was 
 happy. ... 
 
 Yesterday I went to the opera and heard the Maestri 
 Cantori by Bicardo 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. 
 
 1000 Coeneille Avenue, Chicago. 
 
 You will be surprised, my dear Marston, to hear 
 from me after all this time. But perhaps 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 money 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 staff of 
 the advertising department of a respectable Tory jour-
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 265 
 
 nal. There when I was not occupied in bag-carrying, 
 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 ele- 
 gant mondaines the superiority of gas-fires over elec- 
 tricity, or vice versa. They say Millais or some other 
 English painter was never so happy as w T hen he was 
 putting the high lights on to a pair of patent leathers. 
 I soon tired of it, and went the round of the publishers 
 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 like to see my "idea of a cathedral," where- 
 upon they fired me out. Not one of them would so 
 much as look at the drawings which I had done. 
 
 Fools! 
 
 "High adventure" is all rubbish. 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
 
 266 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 anarchists and had the appropriate unwashed manners, 
 they were in reality mild, oh, so unutterably, incalcul- 
 ably mild ! I did not unearth a talent or a vice among 
 the lot. They followed the pencil of a Belgian pro- 
 fessor 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 tradi- 
 tion. You may rest assured that I made a drawing 
 after my own heart, a sprawling, ill-mannered, ag- 
 gressively 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 tip. 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, 
 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 country 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 rude mechanical 
 fellows to see that the erections don't tumble down ; my 
 job is the facade which I titivate according to the cus- 
 tomer's taste and fancy. I can do you as smart a bit of 
 Gothic or chic Byzantine as you could wish to set eye9
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 267 
 
 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 un- 
 true 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 succes de scandale and a money-maker to boot. 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 
 London production with the most perfect Houndsditch 
 accent — you must always give the Cockney something 
 he can understand. I am fitting out half-a-dozen tour- 
 ing companies for the provinces and shall of course 
 vary the dialect with the coal-seam. There's nothing 
 Swansea likes better than holding up its hands at 
 Barnsley and vice versa. Sticking your 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 afterwards. Once make 
 vour mark and the public will take anything from
 
 268 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 you, even good work. But they're a3 shy as trout; 
 you're 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 soou 
 found that I was no good at the smart and pithy "par." 
 It took me a year to learn that what newspapers 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 auto- 
 mobiles 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 hemach 
 album. 
 
 I began my apprenticeship to the trade of scribbling 
 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 corner 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 269 
 
 "Quixotic beggar, Rodd," said superb Crcesus, 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 how- 
 ever monstrous and ludicrous for which I have not in- 
 vented a rhyming 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 while tie was de rigueur. I have 
 disguised 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 lenientlv on those 
 poor drabs who wear tawdry finery 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 very deuce of a shindy with my version of the 
 Venusberg music from Tannliauser, which really is a 
 version, let me tell you ! After about five minutes the 
 poor beldam said she had had enough of the introduc- 
 tion and could the waltz begin. It turned orit that 
 Venus on the Hill is something to dance to. There is
 
 270 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 extraordinarily 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 vil- 
 lainous 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-stage-managor 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 
 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 
 "take the call." He'll kiss the bird of course, and 
 you'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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 271 
 
 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 pre- 
 suming 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 instructive 
 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, 
 doorkeepers, call-boys, seedy out-of-work actors, hangers- 
 on, touts, all the hundred and one extraordinary crea- 
 tures 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 sur- 
 prise 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 defini- 
 tion, unscrupulous and suspect, without function or pur- 
 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
 
 272 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 Electro, in 
 ancient Greek. Such a mistake not to give these baga- 
 telles 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 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 art- 
 lessness and Toto's taking ways. It appears that two 
 of these horrid little beasts had had their engagement 
 announced in the Society papers and that the wedding 
 had been a very smart affair. I had to hear how the 
 bridegroom wore a priceless confection in roscthe, 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 enfin 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 273 
 
 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 which 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 like 
 an evening gone, as the old hymn says.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 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 but a thousand savages — that is races whose 
 civilisation is not ours — commit 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 cockpits and 
 battle-grounds and the recollection that it was before 
 the walls of Xamur 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 a^'inst national indiffer- 
 ence, the knightly attitude towards little nations as a 
 protection against national selfishno— . 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, 
 
 274
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 275 
 
 nor recognise plain obligation without some sentimental 
 masquerade. Therefore must we visualise a "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 was 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 Picca- 
 dilly, the second a glimpse of soldiers in service dress 
 and sailors with bundles under their arms emerging 
 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 artis- 
 try 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
 
 276 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 was argument more Christianly devised nor more in- 
 genuously 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 Germany 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 hun- 
 dred 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 277 
 
 is 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 majority still do, that participa- 
 tion 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 country 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 nobility. He is a brooding eagle in- 
 habiting an eyrie, blinded by the glory of his inward
 
 278 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected ; 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 cor- 
 respondents, by all that is silly, vulgar and inept, were 
 yet to force our politicians to the winning of the war. 
 
 "Are the people," wro+e 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." 
 
 §ii 
 And then there were practical things to be done. 
 Maps to be bought, large scale the better to hearten
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 279 
 
 us; Serbia and Bulgaria to be definitely located; ex- 
 act computations of populations and armies ; discussion 
 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 Eailway really does stick to the centre 
 of England instead of nosing dangerously 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 Company, and 
 the Nuremberg Up-to-date Mediaeval-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 Germany 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 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 bar- 
 barous a thing as war. And now this barbarity has 
 come true and we must cut each other's throats like
 
 280 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 butchers who have lost their honourable senses. It ia 
 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 in- 
 vaded 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 your 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 al- 
 lowed to live. Yet there are things in this question 
 which could make me take an English view of it, only 
 I was a soldier before 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 stupid 
 there is no need to make rules and to order them 
 about. All English people are 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 281 
 
 Emperor's hand. It does not matter that he should 
 bo a kemach ; he is the master. . . . 
 
 But there is much in Germany that the English do 
 not understand. Wo, 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 
 spito 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 
 ho indicated the wet street along which bedraggled 
 humanity was marching in fours. 
 
 "Their clothes'll 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 want 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 does Mark say ?" 
 
 "What you'd expect. Something about war being 
 a hellish business and every man a blackguard if he 
 doesn't take a hand. He 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'
 
 282 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 hat, 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 any minute. Tells a story 
 about his sergeant-major. It seems he made the mis- 
 take of addressing the fellow as 'chum.' 'If it's a 
 blasted chum you want,' said the swine, carefully spit- 
 ting 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 run 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 
 theory. The military 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 283 
 
 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 wav." 
 
 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. 
 
 m 
 
 A few days later Kodd 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. 
 And I shall 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.
 
 284 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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 re- 
 fused 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 know 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. 
 
 "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 your- 
 self together. We'll talk afterwards." 
 
 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 285 
 
 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 
 truth is that I felt the need of gaining time. The boy 
 very 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 1 Clare's child. The 
 honest grey eyes, the quick turn of the head spoke of 
 Clare and I felt the blood rush to my face and my heart 
 to thump and beat like a sledge-hammer. 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 mvself saving. 
 
 "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
 
 286 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 the other." An outburst sufficiently silly, hut I was 
 excited. 
 
 "Tell us," said Claud in his most level, matter-of- 
 fact tone, "tell Mr MarsLon 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 vaguely and with a gesture 
 comprehending more than the room and the street. 
 "I want to know at whose instigation" — I caught Rodd's 
 wondering eye — "I have suffered — and endured and en- 
 joyed. 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 wo walked about all niffht. She 
 took pneumonia a week later. I remember the man 
 crving a lot after Bhe 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," T said. 
 
 "On the morning of her death my mother called me 
 to her and said: 'Xed, I'm not long for this world.' " 
 
 "Did she really say that?" 1 asked, the writer and 
 phrasemaker in me damnably agog. 
 
 "I don't remember the exact word-." he returned. 
 "She felt she hadn't lone to live and said so. What's 
 
 ■ 
 
 wrong with the words ?" 
 
 "Nothing's wrong," said Claud. "Mr Marston wants 
 to bo quite sure of understanding your mother's mean- 
 
 ing" 
 
 "Go on," I urged.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 287 
 
 "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 ?" he 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 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
 
 288 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 that 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 up 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 knew, thai 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 ox 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." 
 
 He make 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 7iir;ms 
 telling of bare lodgings and meagre shovelfuls of coal, 
 of scanty clothing and insufficient meal-. 
 
 "Do you realise what twenty-two shillings a week 
 means? It means that if you want to buy a book yon 
 have to choose between having no fire or no breakfast 
 for a week. It means that you can hardly aiford to be
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 289 
 
 clean, that you haven't the money to get drunk when 
 you're wretched. And then there's Saturday and Sun- 
 day to be got through. Do you know I've hung about 
 the Park on Sunday nights for hours together listen- 
 ing 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 Podd. He told me afterwards 
 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." 
 
 "What's moving you to join ?" Podd asked curiously. 
 "What has England done for you ?" 
 
 "Good 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 only 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
 
 290 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 he 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 
 had waited twenty years; the urgency was not one 
 of minutes. 
 
 The boy turned to TJodd. 
 
 "Are you always hen' \ n he asked. 
 
 "No," said Claud, "but you can call on me, Praed 
 Street, -17a, 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 gentlemen. I'm not being snobbish." 
 
 "That makes it all the worse. The classic thing is
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 291 
 
 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 with 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 finished 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 sentimentalising. You wouldn't 
 know what to do with her if you had her now. Con- 
 fess you don't want her now." 
 
 "I don't," I said after a pause. "And it's humiliat- 
 ing." 
 
 "It's natural and inevitable," declared Eodd, "and 
 humiliation doesn't come in." 
 
 And then we settled down to thrash the matter out. 
 We went over the whole ground, the noble heights and 
 the treacherous fall. We talked of passion brooking 
 no hindrance and seeking no excuse, of "youthful in- 
 discretion," 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 chil- 
 dren is finer." We recalled our youthful assertion as
 
 292 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 to the one indisputable thing in heaven and earth : the 
 will for continuance. 
 
 "Ah!" said Claud, "but we mustn't confuse father- 
 hood with indulgence. Civilised man is under an obli- 
 gation 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 bo 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 
 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 V f 
 
 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. "What isn't Victorianism is the realisa- 
 tion that the slur is on the father, not on the child; 
 and, of course, principally on tin - >re 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 293 
 
 proud of him and talk about devoting your whole lifo 
 to him. This may mean as much as half-an-hour a 
 day, hut 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 
 manage that you may bo able to forgive yourself for 
 having been found with your hand in the sack of 
 common happiness. It's your own responsibility ; no- 
 body 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 bo 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
 
 294. RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 of my own impatient, over-emphatic order. He knew 
 something of music, a little of pictures 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. 
 
 "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 reach- 
 ing out after self-improvement, chiefly prints of Watts 
 in didactic mood. On a tinv shelf an odd dozen of 
 books included Unto this Last, Richard Feverel, Treas- 
 ure Island, Arthur Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets, 
 Tono-Bungay, Morris's Nexus from, Nowhere, two 
 stories by Gissing and a Shakespeare. But what struck 
 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 295 
 
 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 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 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 
 
 Who 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 : "Xow 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, vou 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."
 
 296 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 Iiodd 
 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 
 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." Baid Claud, coming 
 back, "he's just dull. Dull and dingy and drab like 
 life at Crawley Bridge. Do you remember Numero 
 Ving*t Boulevard Croix de Sh Mom, 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. Tn some way the 
 boy had got to calling Claud "Rodd." Me he invari- 
 ably addressed as "Mi- Marston." It ed 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 297 
 
 And now I began to realise expiation after the man- 
 ner 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 
 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 sus- 
 pense. 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 be<ran 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 mv 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. 
 
 And then they 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 mean-
 
 298 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ingless, 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 
 "like an artillery of pea-she 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 hy 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 oB the 
 "effects of his Saturday night's debauch, lit- was si<-k 
 "in the space between our floorboards. Your bey Dick 
 "held his head and cleaned up for him. . . . I hate 
 "the damp, close smell of men's bod T hate all 
 
 "proximities. The swearing annoys me. ft is perfunc- 
 "tory and unimaginative. I transcril e From a recital of 
 "woes in progress as T write 
 
 "'So I says to the CorpVl: "Where the 'ell do you 
 "want the bleeding bucket :" "In the bloody corn 
 "says 'e. "Oh/' I. And I puts the thing in the 
 
 "bloodv con. Then the ! 
 
 "along. ""Wot the 'ell's this bleeding bucket doing 
 "'ere?" 'e says.' And so on. body listens; the 
 
 "fellow drones on. 'Wet time is it '.' out a man 
 
 "three beds away. Somebody tells him the time. 'An- 
 "other hour, and then for some bloody 1 eer,' 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 299 
 
 "sentimentalists cannot stomach us unless we are dressed 
 "up like heroes in a schoolboy tale. I have a great re- 
 spect for our sergeant-major, the same 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 fel- 
 "low 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." 
 
 «i 
 
 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.
 
 300 RESPONSIBILITY, 
 
 We would walk the streets for hours together. We 
 would hegin at the little island in Piccadilly Circus 
 where the flower women, the fountain, and the little 
 flighty statue are, cross over to the corner by the Monico 
 and adventure through the absurd beginnings of a 
 colonnade, Dick bestowing something 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 legendary 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 magnificent 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 
 Debussy. I charged him a guinea and he dined me
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 301 
 
 at the Majestic afterwards. It was like 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 Repertory 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 Welling- 
 ton 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 
 that Rodd was frankly crying. Dick's face was bright 
 and shining, his elation taking the practical turn.
 
 302 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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 Lam- 
 beth way. The fellow had the most perfectly 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 glas3 
 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 himself 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, 
 
 You were a-slacking 
 
 While we were attacking 
 
 The Huns on the Menin Eoad. 
 
 And these :
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 303 
 
 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 Satur- 
 day "Ginger" was to box fifteen rounds at Darcy's, 
 the dingy little booth which as all the world knows 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 principals 
 are so convincingly in earnest and their emotion, un- 
 like 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 decadence, 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
 
 804 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 rhom- 
 bus and rhomboid, in the whity-grey strands of the 
 twisted, dingy ropes, in the bucket and bottle common 
 to the smaller, inconsiderable 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 chaf- 
 ing 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 
 standards. In a boxing booth I became conscious of my 
 nationality, of the England of Sayers and Heenan, 
 of Hazlitt's page. 
 
 ]STo theatre in the world to which entry may be as 
 exciting as this pushing, shouldering irruption, the 
 quick passage down 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!" 
 
 "Cure 'is bloody adenoids !" 
 
 Then when the blood flows freely : 
 
 "Jam for tea, muwer!" 
 
 "Punch the b open!" 
 
 " 'E's done; knock 'ell out of 'im!" 
 
 And at last :
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 305 
 
 "Got '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 unpretentious 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 gateways 
 of romance. Dusk steals apace and these humble case- 
 ments take on the blue of the doorways in Scheherazade, 
 the ominous bine of the lovers' portals. The darkness 
 deepens and the trains thundering along the neigh- 
 bouring 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 Bermondsey 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 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 Darcey's a not 
 unfitting symbol of the world. Better the stand-up
 
 306 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 fight under rules, nay, better the brawl at the street 
 corner, 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 working 
 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 tatooed 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 Crowe, 
 who takes tremendous punishment with stolid endur- 
 ance. "Golden blood lacing his silver skin," quotes 
 Rodd, and the worse the punishment the harder the 
 boy fi<rhts. "One, two, three," the gallery counts au- 
 dibly 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,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 307 
 
 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. Whereupon 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 al- 
 ready dead. The matter of the song sheer tragedy, the 
 manner purest music-hall ; pinched belly and moral 
 wrack in terms of the unsurrendering jaunty. 
 
 I've had a banana, 
 With Lady Di-an-a. 
 
 and the smile the strained and haggard grin of starva- 
 tion. 
 
 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-
 
 308 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 hinmost 
 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 
 to 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. Enchant- 
 ment evervwhere, in vice so decentlv veiled that we 
 need not pretend to turn our beads, in the stolid un- 
 observant 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 in- 
 terval 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 309 
 
 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 L'Arlesierme, that ineffable ac- 
 companiment to joy deferred. He plays it exquisitely, 
 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 direc- 
 tion. 
 
 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 
 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
 
 310 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 me see, had I the pleasure of — er " Again he 
 
 waved his lugubrious 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, 1 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 
 "preferred above commercial industry will lead to the 
 "squandering of his fortune 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." 
 
 Stern, grim and consistent to the last. For, of 
 course, he never knew the authorship of my infamous 
 masterpieces 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.
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 311 
 
 § 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 every 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 counts on the thousand to one chance of getting 
 "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 beginning highly worked, overworked even, it be- 
 comes 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 tnat Claud 
 would have approved my editing which has been en- 
 tirely confined to joining up the argument where a 
 letter has gone astray. Where the gaps are simply a
 
 312 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 re- 
 ferred 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 min- 
 utes. 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 uncom- 
 fortable 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 seven pence-half- 
 penny on every copy we sell. We shall run off fifteen 
 hundred and publish at seven-and-sixpenco. The book- 
 seller's share will bo 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 parehmenty slip gummed on the back. 
 Stout paper, black type and not a single printer's orna- 
 ment. The whole appearance beautiful but not so that 
 the ordinary reader will jib at it. One of Olaud'a 
 favourite maxims was that a book is immensely 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
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 313 
 
 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 dis- 
 coveries. It may he fairly claimed for its author that 
 he made known to English readers at least one lovely 
 story, Jean de Ferriere's Une Ame Obscure, and one 
 exquisite piece of pure fantasy, Laforgue's Pierrot 
 Fumiste. And, of course, Socialism, Socialism every- 
 where. Socialism even in such a poem as Maurice 
 Magro's La Tristesse du Nain Cliinois, 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 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 sea arts raffines. 
 Vous les faites pourrir dans le charnier des guerres, 
 Vivants, vous les sciez et vous les depecez. 
 
 Je prefere, voyant vos mufles, vos babines, 
 Ou sont inscrits vos sanguinaires appetits 
 Les peupladcs sans front de File Sakhaline, 
 Les deterreurs de morts du desert de Gobi. 
 
 Votre soleil a l'air d'une lune et me navre. 
 
 Vous marcbez 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
 
 314 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 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 claquaicnt les drapeaux. 
 Dans sa face immobile ain*i qu'en une cible 
 La patronne planta son epingle a ebapeau. 
 
 Et le lutteur vint lui donner la bastonnade, 
 Et la foire chanta son plaisir, see amours. . . . 
 Toujours le nain voyait pnrmi le bleu des jades 
 Un Bouddha souriaut au fond du demi-jour. . . ." 
 
 "I agree," Rodd goes on, ''that the ticklish job of 
 the caesura is not always well managed and that Macro'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." 
 
 Here I am in sympathey with Rodd. What's Hecuba 
 to Dick on twenty-two shillings a week I Rodd wanted 
 poetry to deal with life as it is. with the life one kim 
 the life of the Buspect 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 Lncesl in 
 our colliery districts — what's Phedre to him who v. 
 born in Lancashire? with abattoirs, blast furnaces and 
 brothels. 
 
 "M. Maine is apparently young enough in mind to 
 offer himself these things as an ultra-decadent spectacle, 
 
 whereas he should 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 

 
 RESPONSIBILITY 315 
 
 over the knuckles with talk of "lapses into the aesthetic 
 fallacy," and of "the questionable utility in these strenu- 
 ous times of mere aesthetic speculation." And so rigidly 
 held aloof from detailed argument. A critic of ap- 
 proved 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 Neaera'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 ap- 
 peared he was killed, stupidly, unheroically, unneces- 
 sarily even, carrying a bucket. He foresaw that it 
 would 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
 
 316 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 "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 'tag' is to th< 
 "boys a mistress and a drug. It is true that I am not 
 "much of a smoker. I had no idea, until I took this job 
 "on, that the bodv could matter so infinitely. Thank 
 "God, we have had no deaths. I find myself taking 
 "refuge every now anil again in my 'pawky provincial 
 "humour/ as you once had the charity to call my 
 "fun." 
 
 And so even old Westrom had found something to 
 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 onheroic 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. Davies and 
 "Crossley were killed outright and Outhwaite, a very 
 "decent chap, died leaning np 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 Bay that Ernie 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. Ernie threatens to carry mo about,
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 317 
 
 "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, 
 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 capable of emotion. The very 
 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.
 
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