2 I TOXO-BUXGAY BY THE SAME AUTHOR SHORT STORIES Thirty Strange Stories. Tales of Space and Time. Twelve Stories and a Dream. ROMANCES Tlie Time Machine. The Island of Dr. Moreau. The War of the Worlds. The Wonderful Visit. The Invisible Man. The First Men in the Moon. The Food of the Gods. The Sea Lady. When the Sleeper Wakes. In the Days of the Comet. The War in the Air. NOVELS Anticipations. Mankind in the Making. A Modern Utopia. The Future in America. First and Last Things. TONO-BUNGAY A NOVEL H. G. WELLS TORONTO THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, Ltd. Copyright, 1908, by STREET & SMITH Copyright, 1908, by DUFFIELD & CO. CONTENTS BOOK THE FIRST The Davs BEronE Tono-Bunoay was Invented FAOB Chnptcr the First: Of Bladcsovcr House, and My Mother; and the Constitution of Society . 3 Chapter the Second: Of My Launch Iirto the World and the Last I Saw of Bladcsovcr . 45 Chapter the Third: The Winibkhurst Appren- ticeship 78 BOOK THE SECOND The Rise of Tono-Bunoay Chapter the First: How I Became a London Student and Went Astray Ill Chapter the Second: The Dawn Comes, and My I'ncle Appears in a New Silk Hat . . . 115 Chapter the Third: How We Made Tono-Bungay Hum 168 Chapter the Fourth: Marion 186 972 CONTENTS BOOK THE THIRD The Great Days of Tono-Bungat PAoa Chapter the First: The Hardingham Hotel, and How We Became Big People . . . . 24S Chapter the Second: Our Progress from Camdeir Town to Crest Hill 270 Chapter the Third: Soaring 322 Chapter the Fourth: How I Stqle the Heaps of Quap from Mordet Island . >. . . . S6l BOOK THE FOURTH The Aftermath of Tono-Bunoay Chapter the First: The Stick of the Rocket . 401 Chapter the Second: Love Among the Wreckage . 435 Chapter the Third: Night and the Open Sea . 450 BOOK THE FIRST THE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED TONO-BUNGAY CIIArXER THE FIRST OF BLADESOVER HOUSE, AND MY MOTHER; AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY Most people in this world seem to live "in character"; they have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with anofrrel- and true to the rules of their type. You cm spenk of them as being oT this sort of people or tliat. They are, as tlicatrical people say, no more (and no less) than " character actors." They have a class, they have a place, they know what is becoming in them and what is due to them, and their proper size of tombstone tells at last how properly they have played the part. But there is also another kind of life that is not so much living as a miscellaneous tasting of life. One gets hit by some unusual transverse force, one is jerked out of one's stratum and lives crosswise for the rest of the time, and, as it were, in a succession of samples. That has been my lot, and that is what has set me at last writing something in the nature of a novel. I have got an unusual scries of impressions that I want very urgently to tell. I have seen life at very different levels, and at all these levels I have seen it with a sort of intimacy and in good faith. I have been a native in many social countries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, my cousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten illegal snacks • — the unjustifiable gifts of footmen — in pantries, and 4 TONO-BUNGAY been despised for my want of style (and subsequently married and divorced) by the daughter of a gasworks clerk; and — to go to my other extreme — I was once — oh, glittering days! — an item in the house-party of a countess. She was, I admit, a countess with a financial aspect, but still, you know, a countess. I've seen these people at various angles. At the dinner-table I've met not simply the titled but the great. On one occasion ■ — it is my brightest memory — I upset my champagne over the trousers of the greatest statesman in the em- pire — Heaven forbid I should be so invidious as to name him! — in the warmth of our mutual admiration, r And once (though it is the most incidental thing in / my life) I murdered a man. ... \ I Yes, I've seen a curious variety of people and ways of living altogether. Odd people they all are, great and small, very much alike at bottom and curiously different on their surfaces. I wish I had ranged just a little further both up and down, seeing I have ranged so far. Royalty must be worth knowing and very great fun. But my contacts with princes have been limited to quite public occasions, nor at the other end of the scale have I had what I should call an inside acquaintance with that dusty but attractive class of people who go about on the high-roads drunk but en famille (so redeeming the minor lapse), in the summer- time, with a perambulator, lavender to sell, sun-brown children, a smell, and ambiguous bundles that fire the imagination. NavTies, farm-labourers, sailormen and stokers, all such as sit in 1834 beer-houses, are beyond me also, and I suppose must remain so now for ever. My intercourse with the ducal rank too has been negligible; I once went shooting with a duke, and in an outburst of what was no doubt snobbishness, did my best to get him in the legs. But that failed. I'm sorry I haven't done the whole lot though. . . , BLADESOVER 5 You will ask by what merit I achieved this remark- able social range, tliis extensive cross-section of the British social organism. It was tlie Accident of Birth. It always is in England. Indeed, if I may make the remark so cosmic, everything is. But that is by the way. I was my uncle's nephew, and my uncle was no less a person than Edward Ponderevo, whose comet-like transit of the financial heavens happened — it is now ten years ago ! Do you remember tlie days of Ponde- revo, the great days, I mean, of Ponderevo? Perhaps you had a trifle in some world-shaking enterprise ! Then you know him only too well. Astraddle on Tono- Bungay, he flashed athwart the empty heavens — like a comet — rather, like a stupendous rocket! — and overawed investors spoke of his star. At his zenith lie burst into a cloud of the most magnificent promotions. What a time that was! The Napoleon of domestic con- veniences! . . . I was his nephew, his peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on to his coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the chemist's shop at Wimble- hurst before he began. I was, you might say, the stick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of tlic modern world, I fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two and twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this Thames- side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel — to think it all over in my leisure and jot down the notes and inconsecutive observations tliat make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel in the Lord Roberts /?.... I warn you this book is going to be something of an 6 TOXO-BUXGAY agglomeration. I want to trace my social trajectory (and my uncle's) as the main line of my story, but as this is my first novel and almost certainly my last, I want to get in, too, all sorts of things that struck me, things that amused me and impressions I got — even although they don't minister directly to my narrative at all. I want to set out my own queer love experiences too, such as they are, for they troubled and distressed and swayed me hugely, and they still seem to me to contain all sorts of irrational and debatable elements that I shall be the clearer-headed for getting on paper. And possibly I may even flow into descriptions of people who are really no more than people seen in transit, just because it amuses me to recall what they said and did to us, and more particularly how they behaved in the brief but splendid glare of Tono-Bungay and its stiU more glaring offspring. It lit some of them up, I can assure you ! bideed, I want to get in all sorts of things. My ideas of a novel all through are comprehensive rather than austere. . . Tono-Bungay still figures on the hoardings, it stands in rows in every chemist's storeroom, it stiU assuages the coughs of age and brightens the elderly eye and loosens the elderly tongue ; but its , social glory, its finaacial illumination, have fqded from the world for ever. And I, sole scorched survivor from the blaze, sit writing of it here in an air that is never stQl for the clang and thunder of machines, on a table littered with working drawings, and amid fragments of models and notes about velocities and air and water pressures and trajectories — of an altogether different sort from that of Tono-Bungay. II I write that much and look at it, and wonder whether, after all, this is any fair statement of what I am W BLADESOVER 7 attempting in this book. I've given, I sec, an impression that I want to make simply a hotch-potch of anecdotes and experiences with my uncle swimming in the middle as the largest lump of victual. I'll own that here, with tlie pen already started, I realise what a fermenting mass of things learnt and einotions" experienced and tlicorics formed I've got to deal with, and how, in a sense, hopeless my book must be from the very outset. I suppose what I'm really trying to render is nothing more nor less than7ttfp"-^ns one man has found it. I want to tell — mysetf, and my impressions of the thing as a whole, to say things I have come to feel intensely of the laws, traditions, usages, and ideas we call society, and how we poor individuals get driven and lured and stranded among these windy, perplexing shoals and channels. I've got, I suppose, to a time of life when things begin to take on shapes that have an air of reality, and become no longer material for dreaming, but intertsting in themselves. I've reached the criticis- ing, novel-writing age, and here I am writing mine — my one novel — without having any of the discipline to refrain and omit that I suppose the regular novel-writer acquires. I've read an average share of novels and made some starts before this beginning, and I've found the re- straints and rules of the art (as I made them out) impossible for me. I like to write, I am keenly inter- ested in writing, but it is not m_v technique. I'm an engineer with a patent or two and a set of ideas ; most of whatever artist there is in mc has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the jjroblem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a con- structed talc I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. 8 TONO-BUXGAYi My love-story — and if only I can keep up the spirit of truth-telling all through as strongly as I have now, you shall have it all — falls into no sort of neat scheme of telling. It involves three separate feminine persons. It's all mixed up with the other things. . . . But I've said enough, I hope, to excuse myself for the method or want of method in what follows, and I think I had better tell without further delay of my boyhood and my early impressions in the shadow of Bladesover House. Ill There came a time when I realised that Bladesover House was not all it seemed, but when I was a little boy I took the place with the entirest faith as a com- plete authentic microcosm. I believed that the Blades- over system was a little working-model — and not so very little either — of the whole world. Let me try and give you the effect of it. Bladesover lies up on the Kentish Downs, eight miles perhaps from Ashborough; and its old pavilion, a little wooden parody of the temple of Vesta at Tibur, upon the hill crest behind the house, commands in theory at least a view of either sea, of the Channel southward and the Thames to the northeast. The park is the second largest in Kent, finely wooded with well-placed beeches, many elms and some sweet chestnuts, abound- ing in little valleys and hollows of bracken, with springs and a stream and three fine ponds and multitudes of fallow deer. The house was built in the eighteenth century, it is of pale red brick in the style of a French chateau, and save for one pass among the crests which opens to blue distances, to minute, remote, oast-set farm- houses and copses and wheat fields and the occasional gleam of water, its hundred and seventeen windows look on nothing but its own wide and handsome terri- BLADESOVER 9 tories. A semi-circular screen of great beeches masks the church and village, which cluster picturesquely about the high road along the skirts of the great park. North- ward, at the remotest corner of that enclosure, is a second dependent village, Ropedean, less fortunate in its greater distance and also on account of a rector. This divine was indeed rich, but he was vindictively economical because of some shrinkage of his tithes; and by reason of his use of the word Eucharist for the Lord's Supper he had become altogether estranged from the great ladies of Bladesovcr. So that Ropedean was in tlie shadows through all tliat youthful time. Now the unavoidable suggestion of that wid*^paxk and that fair large house, dominating churcli, village" "aiid the country side7*was that they represented the thing that mattered supremely in the world, and that all other things had significance only in relation to tluui. The}- represented the Gentry, the Quality, by and througli~nTKr Tor WTfom^tlic rTsl'of the world, the farming folk and tlie labouring folk, the trades-people of Asliborougli, and the upper servants and the lower servants and the servants of tlie estate, breatlied and lived and were permitted. And the Quality did it so quietly and thoroughly, the great house mingled so solidly and effectually with earth and sky, the contrast of its spacious hall and saloon and galleries, its airy housekeeper's room and warren of offices witli tlie meagre dignities of the vicar, and tlie pinched and stuffy rooms of even the post-office people and tlie grocer, so enforced these suggestions, that it was only when I was a lioy of thirteen or fourteen and some queer inherited strain of scepticism had set me doubt- ing whether Mr. Bartlett, the vicar, did really know with certainty all about God, that as a further and deeper step in doubting I began to question the final rightncss of the gentlefolks, their primary necestity in 10 TONO-BUNGAY the scheme of things. But once that scepticism had awakened it took me fast and far. By fourteen I had achieved terrible blasphemies and sacrilege; I had re- solved to marry a viscount's daughter, and I had blacked the left eye — I think it was the left— of her half- brother, in open and declared rebellion. But of that in its place. The great house, the church, the village, and the labourers and the servants in their stations and degrees, seemed to me, I say, to be a closed and complete social system. About us were other villages and great estates, and from house to house, interlacing, correlated, the Gentry, the fine Olympians, came and went. The countr}' towns seemed mere collections of shops, market- ing places for the tenantry, centres for such education as they needed, as entirely dependent on the gentry as the village and scarcely less directly so. I thought this was the order of the whole world. I thought Lon- don was only a greater country town where the gentle- folk kept town-houses and did their greater shopping under the magnificent shadow of the greatest of all fine gentlewomen, the Queen. It seemed to be in the divine order. That all this fine appearance was already sapped, that there were forces at work that might presently carry all this elaborate social system in which my mother instructed me so carefully that I might understand my " place," to Limbo, had scarcely dawned upon me even bj' the time that Tono-Bungay was fairly launched upon the world. There are many people in England to-day upon whom it has not yet dawned. There are times when I doubt whether any but a very inconsiderable minority of English people realise how extensively this ostensible order has even now passed away. The great houses stand in the parks still, the cottages cluster respectfully on their borders^ touching their eaves with their BLADESOVER 11 creepers, the English countryside — yon can range through Kent from Bladcsover northward and see — persists obstinately in looking what it was. It is like an early day in a fine October. The hand of change rcsta on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for awhile, as it were half reluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing for ever. One frost and the whole face of things will be bare, links snap, patience end, our fine foliage of pretences lie glowing in the mire. For that we have still to wait a little while. The new order may have gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the " Dissolving Views," the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to rej)lace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new PLngland of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of deniocrac}', of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity have certainly never really entered into the English mind. But what is coming into it.*" All this book, I hope, will bear a little on that. Our people never formulates; it keeps words for jests and ironies. In the meanwhile the old shapes, the old attitudes remain, subtly changed and changing still, sheltering strange tenants. Bladcsover House is now let furnished to Sir Reuben Lichtcnstein, and has been since old Lady Drew died ; it was my odd experience to visit there, in the house of which my mother had been housekeeper, when my uncle was at the climax of Toiio- Bungay. It was curious to notice then the little differ- ences that had come to things with this substitution. To borrow an image from my minernlogical days, these Jews were not so much a new British gentry as " pseudomorphous " after the gentry. They are a very clever people, the Jews, but not clever enough to sup- 12 TONO-BUNGAY press their cleverness. I wished I could have gone downstairs to savour the tone of the pant^J^ It would have been very different I know. Hawksnest, over beyondj I noted, had its pseudomorph too; a newspaper proprietor of the type that hustles along with stolen ideas from one loud sink-or-swim enterprise to another, had bought the place outright; Redgrave was in the hands of brewers. But the people in the villages, so far as I could detect, saw no difference in their world. Two little gills bobbed and an old labourer touched his hat con- vulsively as I walked through the village. He still thought he knew his place — and mine. I did not know him, but I would have liked dearly to have asked him if he remembered my mother, if either my uncle or old Lichtenstein had been man enough to stand being given away like that. In that English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a " place." It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of your eyes, it was inex- tricably your destiny. Above you were your betters, below you were your inferiors, and there were even an unstable questionable few, cases so disputable that you might for the rough purposes of every day at least, regard them as your equals. Head and centre of our system was Lady Drew, her " leddyship," shrivelled, garrulous, with a wonderful memorj' for genealogies and very, very old, and beside her and nearly as old. Miss Somerville, her cousin and companion. These two old souls lived like dried-up kernels in the great shell of Bladesover House, the shell that had once been gaily full of fops, of fine ladies in powder and patches and courtly gentlemen with swords; and when there was no company they spent whole days in the corner parlour just over the housekeeper's room, between reading and slumber and caressing their two pet dogs. When I BLADE so VER 13 was a boy I used always to think of these two poor old creatures as superior beings living, like God, somewhere through the eeiling. Occasionally they bumped about a bit and one even heard them overhead, which gave them a greater effect of reality without mitigating their vertical predominance. Sometimes too I saw them. Of course if I came upon them in the park or in the shrub- bery (where I was a trespasser) I hid or fled in pious horror, but I was upon due occasion taken into the Presence by request. I remember her " loddyship " then as a thing of black silks and a golden chain, a quavering injunction to me to be a good boy, a very shrunken loose-skinned face and neck, and a ropy hand that trembled a halfcrown into mine. Miss Somerville hovered behind, a paler thing of broken lavender and white and black, with screwed up, sandy-lashed eyes. Her hair was yellow and her colour briglit, and when we sat in the housekeeper's room of a winter's night wanning our toes and sipping elder wine, her maid would tell us the simple secrets of that belated flusli. . . . After my fight with young Garvell I was of course banished, and I never saw those poor old painted goddesses again. Then there came and went on these floors over our respectful heads, the Company; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated and dis- cussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper's room and the steward's room — so that I had them through a medium at second hand. I gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew's equals, they were greater and lesser — after the manner of all things in our world. Once I remember there was a Prince, witli a real live gentleman in attendance, and that was a little above our customary levels and excited us all, and perhaps raised our expectations unduly. Afterwards, Rabbits, the butler, came into my mother's 14 TONO-BUNGAY room downstairs, red witli indignation and with tears in his ej'es. " Look at that! " gasped Rabbits. My mother was speechless with horror. That was a sover- eign, a mere sovereign, such as you might get from any commoner ! After Company, I remember, came anxious days, for the poor old women upstairs were left tired and cross and vindictive, and in a state of physical and emotional indigestion after their social efforts. . . . On the lowest fringe of these real Olympians hung the vicarage people, and next to them came those am- biguous beings who are neither quality nor subjects. The vicarage people certainly hold a place by them- selves in the typical English scheme; nothing is more remarkable than the progress the Church has made — socially — in the last two hundred years. In the early eighteenth century the vicar was rather under than over the house-steward, and was deemed a fitting match for the housekeeper or any not too morally discredited discard. The eighteenth century literature is full of his complaints that he might not remain at table to share the pie. He rose above these indignities because of the abundance of younger sons. When I meet the large assumptions of the contemporary cleric, I am apt to think of these things. It is curious to note that to-day that down-trodden, organ-plaj'ing creature, the Church of England village Schoolmaster, holds much the same position as the seventeenth century parson. The doctor in Bladesover ranked below the vicar but above the " vet," artists and summer visitors squeezed in above or below this point according to their appear- ance and expenditure, and then in a carefully arranged scale came the tenantry, the butler and housekeeper, the village shopkeeper, the head keeper, the cook, the publican, the second keeper, the blacksmith (whose status was complicated by his daughter keeping the BLADESOVER 15 post-office — and a fine hash she used to make of tele- grams too !) the village shopkeeper's eldest son, the first footman, younger sons of the village shopkeeper, his first assistant, and so forth. . . . All tliese conceptions and applications of a universal precedence and much else I drank in at Blndcsover, as I listened to the talk of valets, ladies'-maids, Rabbits the butler and my mother in the mueh-cupboardcd, white-painted, chintz-brightened housekeeper's room where the upper servants assembled, or of footmen and Rabbits and estate men of all sorts among the green baize and Windsor chairs of the pantry — where Rabbits, being above the law, sold beer without a license or any compunction — or of housemaids and still-room maids in the bleak, matting-carpeted still-room, or of the cook and her kitchen maids and casual friends among tlie bright copper and hot glow of tlie kitchens. Of course their own ranks and places came by im- plication to these people, and it was with tlie ranks and places of tlie Olympians that the talk mainly con- ci rni'd itself. There was an old peerage and a Crock- ford together with the books of recipes, the Whitakcr's Almanack, the Old Moore's Almanack, and the elgliteenth century dictionarj% on the little dresser that broke the cupboards on one side of my motlicr's room; there was another peerage, with the covers off, in the pantry; tlicre was a new peerage in the billiard-room, and I seem to remeiiilier another in the anomalous apart- ment that held the upper servants' bagatelle board, and in which, after the Hall dinner, they partook of the luxury of sweets. And if you had a.sked any of those upper servants how such and such a Prince of Batten- berg was related to, let us say, Mr. Cunningliamc Graham or the Duke of Argjle, you would have been told upon the nail. As a boy, I heard a great deal of that sort of thing, and if to this day I am still a little 16 TONO-BUNGAY vague about courtesy titles and the exact application of honorilics, it is, I can assure you, because I hardened my heart, and not from any lack of adequate oppor- tunity of mastering these succulent particulars. Dominating all these memories is the figure of my mother — my mother who did not love me because I grew liker my father every day — and who knew with inflexible decision her place and the place of every one in the world — except the place that concealed my father — and in some details mine. Subtle points were put to her. I can see and hear her saying now, " No, Miss Fison, peers of England go in before peers of the United Kingdom, and he is merely a peer of the United Kingdom." She had much exercise in placing people's servants about her tea-table, where the eti- quette was very strict. I wonder sometimes if the eti- quette of housekeepers' rooms is as strict to-day, and what my mother would have made of a chauffeur. . . . On the whole I am glad that I saw so much as I did of Bladesover — if for no other reason than be- cause seeing it when I did, quite naively, believing in it thorouglily, and then coming to analyse it, has enabled me to understand much that would be absolutely in- comprehensible in the structure of English society. Bladesover is, I am convinced, the clue to almost all that is distinctively British and perplexing to the foreign inquirer in England and the English-speaking peoples. Grasp firmly that England was all Bladesover two hundred years ago; that it has had Reform Acts indeed, and such-like changes of formula, but no essential revolution since then; that all that is modern and differ- ent has come in as a thing intruded or as a gloss upon this predominant formula, either impertinently or apologetically; and you will perceive at once the rea- sonableness, the necessity, of that snobbishness which is the distinctive quality of English thought. Every- bladp:sover 17 body who is not actually in the shadow of a Bladesover is as it were perpetually seeking after lost orientations. We have never broken with our tradition, never even symbolically hcwrtl it to pieces, as the French did in quivcrinp fact in the Terror. But all the organizing ideas have slackened, the old habitual bonds have re- laxed or altogether come undone. And America too, is, as it were, a detached, outlying part of that estate which has expanded in queer ways. George Washing ton, Ksquire, was of the gentlefolk, and he came near l>eing a King. It was Plutarch, you know, and nothing intrinsically American that prevented George Wash- ington being a King. . . . IV I hated tcatime in the housekeeper's room more than anything else at Bladesover. And more particularly I hated it wlien Mrs. Mackridge and Mrs. Booch and Mrs. Latudc-Fcrnay were staying in the house. They were, all three of them, pensioned-ofT servants. Old friends of Lady Drew's had rewarded them posthu- mously for a prolonged devotion to their minor com- forts, and Mrs. Booch was also trustee for .a favourite Skye terrier. Kvery year Lady Drew gave them an invitation — a reward and encouragement of virtue with especial reference to my motlier and Miss Fison, the maid. They sat about in black and shiny and flouncey clothing adorned with gimp and beads, eating great quantities of cake, drinking much tea in a stately man- ner and reverberating remarks. I remember these women ns immense. No doubt they were of negotiable size, but I was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare proportions in my mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended. Mrs. Mackridge was large and dark ; there was a marvel 18 TONO-BUNGAY about her head, inasmuch as she was bald. She wore a dignified cap, and in front of that upon her brow, hair was painted. I have never seen the like since. She had been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick Blenderhasset Impey, some sort of governor or such-like portent in the East Indies, and from her remains — in !Mrs. Mack- ridge — I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the old satins and trimmings of the great lady. \Vlien she told you it was a fine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a low fool to boot; when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging your poor tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful " Haw ! " that made you want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying " Indade ! " with a droop of the eyelids. Mrs. Booch was a smaller woman, brown haired, with queer little curls on either side of her face, large blue eyes and a small set of stereotyped remarks that constituted her entire mental range. Mrs. Latude- Fernay has left, oddly enough, no memory at all except her name and the effect of a green-grey silk dress, all set with gold and blue buttons. I fancy she was a large blonde. Then there was Miss Fison, the maid who served both Lady Drew and Miss Somerville, and at the end of the table opposite my mother, sat Rabbits the butler. Rabbits, for a butler, was an unassuming man, and at tea he was not as you know butlers, but in a morning coat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with side whiskers, even if his clean- shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat am^ong these people on a higli, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my BLADESOVER 10 mother snt with an eye upon mc, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation of vitility. It was hard on nie, but pcriiaps it was also hard upon tlicse rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among their dignities. Tea lasted for nearly tlirec-quartcrs of an hour, and I sat it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same. " Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge? " my mother used to ask. "Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay? " The word sugar wculd stir the mind of Mrs. Mack- ridgc. " They say," she would begin, issuing licr proclamation — at least half her sentences began " they say " — " sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." " Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits, intelligently. " Not with anaything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing repartee, and drank. " What won't they say next? " said Miss Fison. " They do s.iy such things! " said Mrs. Booch. " They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, " the doctors arc not reeomm-an-ding it now." My Motiieb: "No, ma'am.*" Mhs. Mackridge: " No, ma'am." Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he died, consumed great quan-ta-tics of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick. "George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" Then, perhaps, Jlrs. Boofli would produce a favourite piece from her repertoire. " Tlie evenings arc drawing out nicely," she would say, or if the season was decadent, 20 TONO-BUNGAY " How the evenings draw in ! " It was an invaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along without it. jNIy mother, wlio sat with her back to the window, would always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, whichCT-er phase it might be. A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. Mrs. ^Nlackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits ; among others she read the paper — The Morning Post. The other ladies would at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births, marriages, and deaths on the front page. It was, of course, the old Morning Post that cost threepence, not the brisk coruscating young thing of to-day. " They say," she would open, " that Lord Tweedums is to go to Canada." "Ah!" said Mr. Rabbits; "dew they?" " Isn't he," said my mother, " the Earl of Slumgold's cousin ? " She knew he was ; it was an entirely irrele- vant and unnecessary remark, but still, something to say. " The same, ma'am," said Mrs. Mackridge. " They say he was extremelay popular in New South Wales. They looked up to him greatlay. I knew him, ma'am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant young feUa." Interlude of respect. " 'Is predecessor," said Rabbits, who had acquired from some clerical model a precise emphatic articulation without acquiring at the same time the aspirates that would have graced it, " got into trouble at Sydney." " Haw ! " said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, " so I am tawled." " 'E came to Templemorton after 'e came back, and BLADESOVER 21 I remrniber them talking 'im over after 'e'd gone again." "Haw?" said Mrs. Mackridge, interrogatively. " 7* fuss was quotin' poetry, ma'am. 'E said — what was it 'e said — ' They Icf their country for tlicir country's good/ which in some way was took to remind them of Ihiir being originally eonvic's, though now reformed. Every one I 'card speak, agreed it was takless of 'im." " Sir Roderick used to say," said Mrs. Maekridge, " that the First Thing," — here Mrs. Maekridge paused and looked drendfuUj- at me — " and the Second Thing " — here she fixed me again — " and the Tliird Thing " — now I was released — " needed in a colonial governor is Tact." She became aware of my doubts again, and added predominantly, " It has always struck me that that was a Singularly True Remark." I resolved tliat if ever I found this polypus of Tact growing up in my soul, I would tear it out by the roots, throw it forth and stamp on it. " They're queer people — colonials," said Rabbits, " very queer. When I was at Templemorton I see something of 'cm. Queer fellows, some of 'em. Very respectful of course, free with their money in a spasammy sort of way, but Some of 'em, I must confess, make me nervous. They have an ejc on you. They watch you — as j-ou wait. They let themselves appear to be lookin' at you . . ." My mother said nothing in that discussion. The word colonies always upset her. She was afraid, I tliink, that if she turned her mind in that direction my errant father might suddenly and shockingly be discovered, no doubt conspicuously bigamic and alto- gether offensive and rcvolutionarj'. She did not want to rtiliscover my father at all. It is carious that when I was a little listening boy I 22 TONO-BUNGAY j had such an idea of our colonies that I jeered in my J heart at Mrs. jMacki-idge's colonial ascendency. These j brave emancipated sunburnt English of the open, I j thought, suiFer these aristocratic invaders as a quaint '^ anachronism, but as for being gratified ! i I don't jeer now. I'm not so sure. J It is a little difficult to explain -why I did not come ^ to do what was the natural thing for any one in my circumstances to do, and take my world for granted. ] A certain innate scepticism, I tliink, explains it — and ' a certain inaptitude for sympathetic assimilation. My i father, I believe, was a sceptic; my mother was certainly j a hard woman. i I was an only child, and to this day I do not know whether my father is living or dead. He fled my ' mother's virtues before my distincter memories began. ] He left no traces in his flight, and she, in her indig- ( nation, destroyed every vestige that she could of him. Never a pliotcgraph nor a scrap of his handwriting j have I seen; and it was, I know, only the accepted ? code of virtue and discretion that prevented her de- I stroying her marriage certificate and me, and so making a clean sweep of her matrimonial humiliation. I sup- pose I must inlierit something of the moral stupidity that could enable her to make a holocaust of every little personal thing she had of him. There must have been presents made by him as a lover, for exam.ple — books with kindly inscriptions, letters perhaps, a flat- tened flower, a ring, or such-like gage. She kept her v.-edding-ring, of course, but all the others she de»tro3'ed. She never told me his christian name or indeed spoke a word to mc of hiui, tliougli at tiuics I cajnc near daring to ask her; and what I have of him — it ian't BLADESOVER 28 mucli — I got from liis brother, mj* hero, my Uncle Pondcrcvo. She wore her ring; her marriage certil'icate she kept in a sealed envelope in the very bottom of her largest trunk, and me she sustained at a private school among the Kentish bills. You must not think I was alwavs at Bladesover — even in my holidays. If at the time these came round. Lady Drew was vexed by recent Company, or for any other reason wished to take it out of my mother, then she used to ignore the customary reminder my mother gave her, and I " stayed on " at the school. But such occasions were rare, and I suppose that between ten and fourteen I averaged fifty days a year at Bladesover. Don't imagine I deny that was a fine thing for me. Bl. Then she gave herself up to cake with an appearance of entire forgetfulness of me that filled me with hate and a passionate desire to compel her to admire me. . . And the next day before tea, I did for the first time in my life, freely, without command or any compulsion, wash my hands. So our acquaintance began, and presently was deep- ened by a wliim of hers. She had a cold and was kept indoors, and confronted Nannie suddenly with tlie alternative of being hopelessly nauglitv, which in her case involved a generous amount of screaming unsuitable for the ears of an elderly, shaky, rich auirt, or having me up to the nursery to play with her all the afternoon. Nannie came downstairs and borrowed me in a careworn manner; and I was handed over to the little creature as if I was some large variety of kitten. I had never had anything to do with a little girl before, I thought she was more beautiful and wonderful and bright than anything else could possibly be in life, and she found me the gentlest of slaves — though at the same time, as I made evident, fairly strong. And Nannie was amazed to find the afternoon slip cheerfully and rapidly away. She praised my manners to Lady Drew and to my mother, who said she was glad to liear well of me, and after that I played with Beatrice several times. The toys she had remain in ni)- memory still as great splendid things, gigantic to all my previous experience of toys, and we even went to the great doll's house on the 34 TONO-BUNGAY nursery landing to play discreetly with that, the great doll's house that the Prince Regent had given Sir Harry Drew's first-born (who died at five), that was a not ineffectual model of Bladesover itself, and contained eighty-five dolls and had cost hundreds of pounds. I pla3'ed under imperious direction with that toy of glory. I went back to school when that holiday was over, dreaming of beautiful things, and got Ewart to talk to me of love; and I made a great story out of the doll's house, a story that, taken over into Ewart's hands, speedily grew to an island doll's city all our own. One of the dolls, I privately decided, was like Beatrice. One other holiday there was whai I saw something of her — oddly enough my memory of that second holiday in which she played a part is vague — and then came a gap of a year, and then my disgrace. VIII Now I sit down to write my story and tell over again things in their order, I find for the first time how in- consecutive and irrational a thing the memory can be. One recalls acts and cannot recall motives; one recalls quite vividly moments that stand out inexplicably — things adrift, joining on to nothing, leading nowhere. I think I must have seen Beatrice and her half-brother quite a number of times in my last holiday at Blades- over, but I really cannot recall more than a little of the quality of the circumstances. That great crisis of my boyhood stands out very vividly as an effect, as a sort of cardinal thing for me, but when I look for details — particularly details that led up to the crisis — I cannot find them in any developing order at all. This half- brother, Arcliie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember him clearly as a fair-haired, supercilious- BLADE so VER 85 looking, wecdily-lank boy, much taller than I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that we hated each other by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and vet I cannot remember my first meeting with him at ali. Looking back into these past things — it is like rum- maging in a neglected attic that has experienced the attentions of some whimsical robber — I cannot even ac- count for the presence of these children at Bladesover. They were, I know, among the innumerable cousins of Lady Drew, and according to the theories of downstairs, candidates for tlie ultimate possession of Bladesover. If they were, their candidature was unsuccessful. But that great place, with all its faded splendour, its fine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at the old lady's disposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that she used this fact to torment and dominate a num- ber of eligible people. Lord Osprey was among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to his motherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, be- cause he was poor, but quite as much, I nowadays imagine, in tlie dim hope of finding some affectionate or imaginative outcome of contact with them. Nannie had dropped out of the world this second time, and Beatrice was in tlie charge of an extremely amiable and ineffectual poor army-class young woman whose name I never knew. They were, I think, two remarkably ill- managed and enterprising children. I seem to remember too, that it was understood that I was not a fit compan- ion for them, and that our meetings had to be as un- ostentatious as possible. It was Beatrice who insisted upon our meeting. I am certain I knew quite a lot about love at fourteen, and that I was quite as much in love with Beatrice then as any impassioned adult could be, and that Beatrice was, in her way, in love with me. It is part of the 36 TONO-BUNGAY decent and useful pretences of our world that children of the age at which we were, think nothing, feel nothing, know nothing of love. It is wonderful what people the English are for keeping up pretences. But indeed I cannot avoid telling that Beatrice and I talked of love and kissed and embraced one another. I recall something of one talk under the overhang- ing bushes of the shrubbery — I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my worship a little inele- gantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say.'' You should have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the wall comes suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various branches of the bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane, and far away and high bshind her, dim and stately, the cornice of the great fa9ade of Bladesovcr rose against the dappled sky. Our talk must have been serious and business-like, for we were discussing my social position. " I don't love Archie," she had said, apropos of nothing; and then in a whisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, "I love you!" But she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and could not be a servant. " You'll never be a servant — ever ! " I swore that very readily, and it is a vow I have kerpt by nature. " What will you be ? " said she. I ran my mind hastily over the professions. " Will you be a soldier ? " she asked. "And be bawled at by duffers? No fear!" said I. " Leave that to the plough-boys." "But an officer?" " I don't know," I said, evading a shameful difficulty. " I'd rather go into the navy." " Wouldn't you like to fight ? " " I'd like to fight," I said. " But a common soldier BLADESOVER 37 — it's no honour to have to be told to fight and to be looked down upon while you do it, and how could I be an officer? " "Couldn't you be?" she said, and looked at mc doubtfully; and the spaces of the social system opened between us. Then, as became a male of spirit, I took upon myself to brag and lie my way through this trouble. I said I was a poor man, and poor men went into the nav)'; that I " knew " mathematics, which no army officer did; and I claimed Nelson for an exemplar, and spoke very highly of my outlook upon blue water. " He loved Lady Hamilton," I said, " although she was a lady — and I will love you." We were somewhere near that when the egregious governess became audible, calling " Beeec-atrice ! Becee- e-e-atrice ! " " Snifty beast!" said my lady, and tried to get on with the conversation; but that governess made things impossible. " Come here ! " said my lady suddenly, holding out a grubby liand; and I went very close to her, and she put her little head down upon the wall until her black fog of hair tickled my cheek. " You are my humble, faithful lover," she demanded in a whisper, her warm fluslinl face near touching mine, and her eyes very dark and lustrous. " I am your humble, faithful lover," I whispered back. And she put her arm about my head and put out her lips, and we kissed, and boy though I w.is, I was all atremblc. So we two kissed for the first time. " Beeee-e-e-a-lricc ! " fearfully close. My lady had vanished, with one wild kick of her black-stockinged leg. A moment after, I heard her sustaining the reproaches of her governess, and explain- 88 TONO-BUNGAY ing her failure to answer with an admirable lucidity and disingenuousness. I felt it was unnecessary for me to be seen just thenj and I vanished guiltily round the corner into the West Wood, and so to love-dreams and single-handed play, wandering along one of those meandering bracken val- leys that varied Bladesover park. And that day and for many days that kiss upon my lips was a seal, and by night the seed of dreams. Then I remember an expedition we made — she, I, and her half-brother — into those West Woods — they two were supposed to be playing in the shrubbery — and how we were Indians there, and made a wigwam out of a pile of beech logs, and how we stalked deer, crept near and watched rabbits feeding in a glade, and almost got a squirrel. It was play seasoned with plentiful disputing between me and young Garvell, for each iirmly insisted upon the leading roles, and only my wider reading — I had read ten stories to his one^gave me the ascendency over him. Also I scored over him by knowing how to find the eagle in a bracken stem. And somehow — I don't remember what led to it at all — I and Beatrice, two hot and ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken and hid from him. The great fronds rose above us, five feet or more, and as I had learnt how to wriggle through that undergrowth with the minimum of betrayal by tossing greenery above, I led the way. The ground under bracken is beautifully clear and faintly scented in warm weather; the stems come up black and then green; if you crawl flat, it is a tropical forest in miniature. I led the way and Beatrice crawled behind, and then as the green of the further glade opened before us, stopped. She crawled up to me, her hot little face came close to mine; once more she looked and breathed close to me, and suddenly she flung her arm about my neck and dragged me to BLADESOVER 39 earth beside her, and kissed me and kissed me again. We kissed, we embraced and kissed again, all without a word; we desisted, we stared and hesitated — then in a suddenly damped mood and a little perplexed at our- selves, crawled out, to be presently run down and caught in the tamest way by Archie. That comes back very clearly to me, and other vague memories — I know old Hall and his gun, out shooting at jackdaws, enme into our common experiences, but I don't remember how; and then at last, abruptly, our fight in the Warren stands out. The Warren, like most places in England that have that name, was not par- ticularly a warren, it was a long slope of thorns and beeches through which a path ran, and made an al- ternative route to the downhill carriage road between Bladesover and Ropedean. I don't know how we three got there, but I have an uncertain fancy it was connected with a visit paid by the governess to the Ropcde.nn vicarage jn-ople. But suddenly Archie and I, in dis- cussing a game, fell into a dispute for Beatrice. I had made him the fairest offer: I was to be a Spanish noble- man, she was to be my wife, and he was to be a tribe of Indians trving to carry her off. It seems to me a fairly attractive offer to a boy to be a whole tribe of Indians with a chance of such a booty. But Archie suddenly took offence. " No," he said ; " we can't have that ! " " Can't have what? " " You can't be a gentleman, because you aren't. And you can't play Beatrice is your wife. It's — it's im- pertinent" " But " I said, and looked at her. Some earlier grudge in the day's affairs must have been in Archie's mind. " We let you play with us," said Archie; "but we can't have tilings like that." "What rot!" said Beatrice. "He can if he likes." 40 TOXO-BUXGAY Bnt he carried his point I let him carrj it, and oeIv began to grow angnr three or fotrr minctes later. Then we were still discussing plar and disputing abont another game. Xothing seemed right for all of us. " We don't want tou to plav with us at all," said Archie. " Yes, we do," said Beatrice. " He drops his aitches like anrthing." " No, 'e doesn't," said I, in the heat of the moment. " There you go I " he cried- " E, he says. E I E! El- He pointed a finger at me. He had struck to the heart of my shame. I made the only possible reply by a rush at him. " Hello I " he cried, at my blactarised attack. He dropped back into an attitude that had some style in it, parried my blow, got back at my cheek, and laughed with surprise and relief at his own success. Whereupon I became a thing of murderous rage. He could box as well or better than I — he had yet to realise I knew anything of that at all — but I had fought once or twice to a finish with bare fists, I was used to in- flicting and enduring sarage hurting, and I doubt if he had ever fought. 1 hadn't fought ten seconds before I felt this softness in him, realised all that quality of modem upper-class England that never gees to the quick, that hedges about rules and those petty points of honour that are the ultimate comminution of honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half done. He seemed to think that first hit of his and one or two others were going to matter, that I ought to give in when presently my lip bled and dripped blood upon my clothes. So before we had been at it a minute he had ceased to be aggressive except in momentary spurts, and I was knocking him about almost as I wanted to do, and desnanding breathlessly and fiercely, after our school uuumex, whether he had had enaagh, not knowing that BLADESOVER 41 by his high code and his soft training it was equally impossible for him to cither buck-up and beat me, or give in. I have a very distinct impression of Beatrice dancing about us during the affair in a state of unladylike ap- preciation, but I was too preoccupied to hear much of what she was saying. But she certainly backed us both, and I am inclined to think now — it may be the dis- illusionment of my ripened years — whichever she thought was winning. Then young Garvell, giving way before my slogging, stumbled and fell over a big flint, and I, still following the tradition of my class and school, promptly flung myself on him to finish him. We were busy with each other on the ground when we became aware of a dreadful interruption. " Shut up, you fool! " said Archie. " Oh, Lady Drew ! " I heard Beatrice cry. " They're fighting ! They're fighting something awful ! " I looked over my shoulder. Archie's wish to get up became irresistible, and my resolve to go on with him vanished altogether. I became aware of the two old ladies, presences of black and purple silk and fur and shining dark things; they had walked up through the Warren, while the horses took the hill easily, and so had come upon us. Beatrice had gone to them at once with an air of t.aking refuge, and stood beside and a little behind them. We both rose dejectedly. The two old ladies were evi- dently quite dreadfully shocked, and peering at us with their poor old eyes ; and never had I seen such a tremble- ment in Lady Drew's lorgnettes. "You've never been fighting?" said Lady Drew. " Yon have been fighting." " It wasn't proper fighting," snapped Archie, with accusing eyes on me. 42 TONO-BUNGAY " It's Mrs. Ponderevo's George ! " said Miss Somer- ville, so adding a conviction for ingratitude to my evi- dent sacrilege. " How could he dare? " cried Lady Drew, becoming very awful. " He broke the rules," said Archie, sobbing for breath. " I slipped, and — he hit me while I was down. He knelt on me." " How could you dare? " said Lady Drew. I produced an experienced handkerchief rolled up into a tight ball, and wiped the blood from my chin, but I offered no explanation of my daring. Among other things that prevented that, I was too short of breath. " He didn't fight fair," sobbed Archie. . . o Beatrice, from behind the old ladies, regarded me intently and without hostility. I am inclined to think the modification of my face through the damage to my lip interested her. It became dimly apparent to my confused intelligence that I must not say these two had been playing with me. That would not be after the rules of their game. I resolved in this difficult situation upon a sulky silence, and to take whatever consequences might follow. XIV The powers of justice in Bladesover made an extraor- dinary mess of my case. I have regretfully to admit that the Honourable Beatrice Normandy did, at the age of ten, betray me, abandon me, and lie most abominably about me. She was, as a matter of fact, panic-stricken about me, con- science-stricken too; she bolted from the very thought of my being her affianced lover and so forth, from the faintest memory of kissing; she was indeed altogether BLADESOVER 43 dispraccful nnd huraan in her betrayal. She and her half-brother lied in perfect eoncord, and I was presented as a wanton assailant of my social betters. They were waiting about in the Warren, when I came up and spoke to tlieui, etc. On the whole, I now perceive Lady Drew's decisions were, in tlie light of the evidence, reasonable and merciful. Tliey were conveyed to me by my mother, who was, I really believe, even more shocked by the grossness of my social insubordination than Lady Drew. She dilated on her ladyship's kindnesses to me, on the eff'rontery and wickedness of my procedure, and so came at last to the terms of my penance. " You must go up to young Mr. Garvell, and beg his pardon." " I won't beg his pardon," I said, speaking for the first time. My mother paused, incredulous. I folded my arms on her table-cloth, and delivered my wicked little ultimatum. " I won't beg his pardon nohow," I said. "See?" " Then you will have to go off to your uncle Frapp at Chatham." " I don't care where I have to go or what I have to do, I won't beg his pardon," I said. And I didn't After that I was one against the world. Perhaps in my mother's heart there lurked some pity for me, but she did not show it. She took the side of the young gentleman; she tried hard, she tried very hard, to make mc say I was sorry I had struck him. Sorry! I couldn't explain. So I went Into exile in the dog-cart to Redwood station, with Jukes the coachman, coldly silent, driving me, and all my personal belongings in a small American- doth portmanteau behind. 44 TONO-BUNGAY I felt I had much to embitter me; the game had not the beginnings of fairness by any standards I knew. . . . But the thing that embittered me most was that the Honourable Beatrice Normandy should have repudi- ated and fled from me as though I was some sort of leper, and not even have taken a chance or so, to give me a good-bye. She might have done that anyhow ! Supposing I had told on her ! But the son of a servant counts as a servant. She had forgotten and now re- membered. . , . I solaced myself with some extraordinary dream of coming back to Bladesover, stern, powerful, after the fashion of Coriolanus. I do not recall the details, but I have no doubt I displayed great magnanimity. . . . Well, anyhow I never said I was sorry for pounding young Garvell, and I am not sorry to this day. CHAPTER THE SECOND OF MY LAUNCH INTO THE WORLD AND THE LAST I SAW OE BLADESOVER When I was thus banished from Bladesover House, as it was then thought for good and all, I was sent by my mother in a vindictive spirit, first to her cousin Nicode- mus Frapp, and then, as a fully indentured apprentice, to my uncle Ponderevo. I ran away from the care of my cousin Nicodcmus back to Bladesover House. My cousin Nieoderaus F'rapp was a baker in a back street — a slum rather — just off that miserable narrow mean high road that threads those exquisite beads, Roclicster and Chatham. He was, I must admit, a shock to me, much dominated by a young, plump, proline, malingering wife; a bent, slow-moving, unwilling dark man, with flour in his hair and eyelashes, in the lines of his face and the seams of his coat. I've never had a chance to correct my early impression of him, and he still remains an almost dreadful memory, a sort of caricature of incompetent simplicity. As I remember him, indeed, he presented the servile tradition perfected. He had no pride in his person; fine clothes and dressing up wasn't " for the likes of " him, so that he got his wife, who was no artist at it, to cut his black hair at irregular intervals, and let his nails become disagreeable to the fastidious eye; he had no pride in his business nor any initiative ; his only virtues were nut doing certain things and Lard work. " Your uncle," said my mother — 46 TONO-BUNGAY all grown-up cousins were uncles by courtesy among the Victorian middle-class — " isn't much to look at or talk to, but he's a Good Hard-Working Man." There was a sort of base honourableness about toil, however needless, in that system of inversion. Another point of honour was to rise at or before dawn, and then laboriously muddle about. It was very distinctly im- pressed on my mind that the Good Hard-Working Y.an would have thought it " fal-lallish " to own a pocket- handkerchief. Poor old Frapp — dirty and crushed by, product of, Bladesover's magnificence ! He made no fight against the world at all, he was floundering in small debts that were not so small but that finally they overwhelmed him, whenever there was occasion for any exertion his wife fell back upon pains and her " con- dition," and God sent them many children, most of whom died, and so, by their coming and going, gave a double exercise in the virtues of submission. Resignation to God's will was the common device of these people in the face of every duty and every emergency. There were no books in the house; I doubt if either of them had retained the capacity for reading consecutively for more than a minute or so, and it was with amazement that day after day, over and above stale bread, one beheld food and again more food amidst the litter that held permanent session on the living-room table. One might have doubted if either of them felt dis- comfort in this dusty darkness of existence, if it was not that they did visibly seek consolation. They sought this and found it of a Sunday, not in strong drink and raving, but in imaginary draughts of blood. They met with twenty or thirty other darkened and unclean people, all dressed in dingy colours that would not show the dirt, in a little brick-built chapel equipped with a spavined roarer of a harmonium, and there solaced their I AM LAUNCHED 47 minds on the thought tliat all that was fair and free in life, all that struggled, nil that planned and made, all l)ride and beauty and honour, all fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting torments. They were the self-aj)j)oiiited confidants of God's mockery of his own creation. So at any rate they stick in my mind. V'aguer, and yet hardly less agreeable than this cosmic jest, this coming "Yah, clever!" and general serving out and " showing up " of the lucky, the bold, and the cheerful, was their own predestination to Glory. "There is a Fountain, filled with Blood Drama from Emmanuers Veins," SO they sang. I hear the drone and wheeze of that hymn now. I hated them with the bitter uncharitable condemnation of boyhood, and a twinge of that hate comes back to me. As 1 write the words, the sounds and then the scene return, these obscure, undignified people, a fat woman with asthma, an old Welsh milk-seller with a tumour on his bald head, who was the intellectual leader of the sect, a huge-voiced haberdasher with a big black beard, a while-faced, extraordinarily preg- nant woman, his wife, a spectacled rate collector with a bent back. ... I hear the talk about souls, the strange battered old phrases that were coined ages ago in the seaports of the sun-dry Levant, of balm of Gilcad and manna in the desert, of gourds that give shade and water in a thirsty land; I recall again the way in which at the conclusion of the service the talk remained pious in form but became medical in sub- stance, and how the women got together for obstetric wliisperings. I, as a boy, did not matter, and might overhear. . . . If Bladesovcr is my key for the explanation of England, I think my invincible persuasion that I under- 48 TONO-BUNGAY stand Russia was engendered by the circle of Uncle Frapp. I slept in a dingy sheeted bed with the two elder survivors of Frapp fecundity^ and spent my week days in helping in the laborious disorder of the shop and bakehouse, in incidental deliveries of bread and so forth, and in parrying the probings of my uncle into my rela- tions with the Blood, and his confidential explanations that ten shillings a week — which was what my mother paid him — was not enough to cover my accommodation. He was very anxious to keep that, but also he wanted more. There were neither books nor any seat nor corner in that house where reading was possible, no newspaper ever brought the clash of worldly things into its heavenward seclusion; horror of it all grew in me daily, and whenever I could I escaped into the streets and tramped about Chatham. The news shops appealed to me particularl}'. One saw there smudgy illustrated sheets, the Police News in particular, in which vilely drawn pictures brought home to the dullest intelligence an interminable succession of squalid crimes, women murdered and put into boxes, buried under floors, old men bludgeoned at midnight by robbers, people thrust suddenly out of trains, happy lovers shot, vitrioled and so forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse of the life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of " police raids " on this and that. Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and re- appeared, visiting this, opening that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but anything, a wonderful, good-meaning, impenetrable race apart. . . . I have never revisited Chatham; the impression it h&a left on my mind is one of squalid compression, I AM LAUNCHED 49 unlit by any gleam of a mnturcr charity. All its effects arranged themselves as antithetical to tlie Bladcsover effects. They confirmed and intensified all that Blades- over suggested. Bladesover declared itself to be tlie land, to be essentially England ; I have already told how its airy spaciousness, its wide dignity, seemed to thrust village, church, and vicarage into corners, into a sec- ondary and conditional significance. Here one gath- ered the corollary of that. Since the whole wide coun- try of Kent was made up of contiguous Bladcsovers and for the gentlefolk, the surplus of population, all who were not good tenants nor good labourers, Church of England, submissive and respectful, were necessarily thrust together, jostled out of sight, to fester as they might in this place that had the colours and even the smells of a well-packed dustbin. They should be grate- ful even for that; that, one felt, was the theory of it all. And I loafed about this wilderness of crowded dingi- ncss, with young, receptive, wide-open eyes, and through the blessing (or curse) of some fairy godmother of mine, asking and asking again: "But after all, why ?" I wandered up through Rochester once, and had a glimpse of the Stour valley above the town, all horrible with cement works and foully smoking chimneys and rows of workmen's cottages, minute, ugly, uncomfort- able, and grimy. So I had my first intimation of how industrialism must live in a landlord's land. I spent some hours, too, in the streets that give upon the river, drawn by the spell of the sea. But I saw barges and ships stripped of magic and mostly demoted to cement, ice, timber, and coal. The sailors looked to nie gross and slovenly men, and the shipping struck me as clumsy, ugly, old, and dirty. I discovered that most sails don't fit the ships that hoist them, and that tlurc may be as pitiful and squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as 50 TOXO-BUNGAY with a man. When I saw colliers unloading, watched the workers in the hold filling up silly little sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran to and fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and mud, I was first seized with admira- tion of their courage and toughness and then, " But after all, ivhy — ?" and the stupid ugliness of all this waste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it obviously wasted and deterio- rated the coal. . . . And I had imagined great things of the sea ! . . , ^^'ell, anyhow, for a time that vocation was stilled. But such impressions came into my leisure, and of that I had no excess. Most of my time was spent doing things for Uncle Frapp, and my evenings and niglits perforce in the company of the two eldest of my cousins. One was errand boy at an oil shop and fervently pious, and of him I saw nothing until the evening except at meals; the other was enjoying the midsummer holidays without any great elation; a sin- gularly thin and abject, stunted creature he was, whose chief liveliness was to pretend to be a monkey, and who I am now convinced had some secret disease that drained his vitalitj' away. If I met him now I should think him a pitiful little creature and be extremely sorry for him. Then I felt only a wondering aversion. He sniffed horribly, he was tired out by a couple of miles of loafing, he never started any conversation, and he seemed to prefer his own company to mine. His mother, poor woman, said be was the " thoughtful one." Serious trouble came suddenly out of a conversation we held in bed one night. Some particularly pious phrase of my elder cousin's irritated me extremely, and I avowed outright my entire disbelief in the whole scheme of revealed religion. I had never said a word I A3I LAUNCHED 51 about my doubts to any one before, except to Ewart, who had first evolved them. I had never settled my doubts until at tliis moment when I spoke. But it came to me then that the wliole scheme of salvation of the Frapps was not simply doubtful, but impossible. I fired tills discovery out into the darkness with the greatest promptitude. My abrupt denials certainly scared my cousins amazingly. At first they could not understand what I was saying, and when they did I fully believe they expected an instant answer in thunderbolts and flames. They gave me more room in tlie bed forthwith, and then the elder sat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay what I had said, what could I do but confirm my repudiation.' " Tlierc"s no hell," I said, " and no eternal punish- ment. No God would be such a fool as that." My cider cousin cried aloud in horror, and the younger lay scared, but listening. " Then you mean," said my elder cousin, when at last he could bring himself to argue, " you might do just as j-ou liked.' " "If you were cad enough," said I. Our little voices went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got out of bed and made his brother do likewise, and knelt in the night dimness and prayed at me. That I found trying, but I held out valiantly. " Forgive him," said my cousin, " he knows not what he saycth." " Vou can pray if you like," I said, " but if you're going to check me in j-our prayers I draw the line." The last I remember of that great discussion was my cousin diploriiif; the fact that he " should ever sleep in the sumc bed with uu Infidel!" 52 TONO-BUNGAY The next day he astonished me by telling the whole business to his father. This was quite outside all my codes. Uncle Nicodemus sprang it upon me at the midday meal. " You been sayin' queer things, George," he said abruptly. " You better mind what you're saying." "What did he say, father?" said Mrs. Frapp. " Things I couldn' repeat," said he. " What things ? " I asked hotly, " Ask 'im" said my uncle, pointing with his knife to his informant, and making me realise the nature of my offence. My aunt looked at the witness. " Not ?" she framed a question. " Wuss," said my uncle. " Blarsphemy." My aunt couldn't touch another mouthful. I was already a little troubled in my conscience by my daring, and now I began to feel the black enormity of the course upon which I had embarked. " I was only talking sense," I said. I had a still more dreadful moment when presently I met my cousin in the brick alley behind the yard, that led back to his grocer's shop. " You sneak ! " I said, and smacked his face hard forthwitli. " Now then," said I. He started back, astonished and alarmed. His eyes met mine, and I saw a sudden gleam of resolution. He turned his other cheek to me. " 'It it," he said. " 'It it. I'll forgive you." I felt I liad never encountered a more detestable v/ay of evading a licking. I shoved him against the wall and left him there, forgiving me, and went back into the house. " You better not speak to your cousins, George," said my aunt, " till you're in a better state of mind." I became an outcast forthwith. At supper that pight a gloomy silence was broken by vaj cousin saying. I AM LAUNCHED 53 " 'E 'it me for telling j-ou, nnd I turned the other check, mimer." " "E's got the e\i\ one bc'ind 'im now, a ridin' on 'is back," said my aunt, to the grave discomfort of the ;ldest girl, wlio sat beside me. After supper my uncle, in a few ill-cliosen words, prayed me to repent before I slept. " Suppose you was took in your sleep, George," he 5uid; " where 'd you be then? You jest think of that, mc boy." By this time I was thoroughly miserable and frightened, and this suggestion unnerved me dreadfully, but I kept u]) an impenitent front. " To wake in 'ell," said Uncle Nicodcmus, in gentle torres. " You don't want to w.ike in 'ell. George, biirnin' and screamln' for 5ver, do you.' You wouldn't like that? " He tried very hard to get me to " jest 'ave a look it the bake'ousc fire " before I retired. " It might move you," he said. I was awnke longest that night. My cousins slept the sleep of faith on either side of me. I decided I wrould whisper my prayers, and stopped midway be- :ausc I was ashamed, and perhaps also because I had »n idea one didn't square God like that. " No," I said, with a sudden confidence, " damn me if you're coward enough. . . . But you're not. . . . No! You couldn't be! " I woke my cousins up with emphatic digs, and told them as much, triumphantly, and went very peacefully to sleep with my act of faith accomplished. I slept not only through that niglit, but for all my nights since then. So far as any fear of Divine in- justice goes, I sleep soundly, and shall, I know, to the end of things. That declaration was an epoch in my spiritual life. 54 TONO-BUNGAY II But I didn't expect to have the whole meeting on Sunday turned on to me. It was. It all comes back to me, that convergence of attention, even the faint leathery smell of its atmos- phere returns, and the coarse feel of my aunt's black dress beside me in contact with my hand. I see again the old Welsh milkman " wrestling " with me — they all wrestled with me, by prayer or exhortation. And I was holding out stoutly, though convinced now by the con- tagion of their universal conviction that by doing so I was certainly and hopelessly damned. I felt that they were right, that God was probably like them, and that on the whole it didn't matter. And to simplify the business thoroughly I had declared I didn't believe any- thing at all. They confuted me by tests from Scripture which I now perceive was an illegitimate method of reply. When I got home, still impenitent and eternally lost and secretly very lonely and miserable and alarmed. Uncle Nicodemus docked my Sunday pudding. One person only spoke to me like a human being on that day of wrath, and that was the younger Frapp. He came up to me in the afternoon while I was confined upstairs with a Bible and my own thoughts. " 'Ello," he said, and fretted about. " D'you mean to say there isn't — no one," he said, funking the word. " No one .'' " " No one watching yer — always." " \\Tiy should there be?" I asked. " You can't 'elp thoughts," said my cousin, " any'ow. . . . You mean " He stopped hovering. " I s'pose I oughtn't to be talking to you." He hesitated and flitted away with a guilty back glance over his shoulder. . . . I AM LAUNCHED 55 The following week mnde life quitr intolerable for roe; these people forced me at last into an Atheism that terrified nie. When I learnt that next Sunday the wrcstlinnf was to be resumed, my courage failed me altogither. I happened upon a map of Knit in a stationer's window on Saturday, and that set me thinking of one form of release. I studied it intently for half an hour pcrhnjis, on Saturday night, got a route list of villages well fixed in my memory, and got up and started for Bladesovcr about five on Sunday morning while my two bed mates were still fast asleep. Ill I remember something, but not so much of it as I should like to recall, of my long tramp to Bladesovet House. The distance from Chatham is almost exactly seventeen miles, and it took me until nearly one. It was vtry interesting and I do not think I was over- fatigued, though I got rather pinclied by one boot. The morning must have been very elcnr, because I remember that near Itehinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since played so large a part in my life. But at the time I did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which I had never yet seen nearly. And out upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a steamer or so, going up to London or down out into the great seas of the world. I stood for a long time watching these and thinking whether after all 1 should not have done better to have run away to sea. The nearer I drew to Bladesovcr, the more doubtfnl I grew of the quality of my reception, and the more I regretted that alternative. I suppose it was the dirty 56 TONO-BUNGAY clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly, that put me out of mind of that. I took a short cut through the Warren across the corner of the main park to intercqst the people from the church. I wanted to avoid meeting any one before I met my mother, and so I went to a place where the path passed between banks, and without exactly hiding, stood up among the bushes. This place among other advantages eliminated any chance of seeing Lady Drew, who would drive round by the carriage road. Standing up to waylay in this fashion I had a queer feeling of brigandage, as though I was some intrusive sort of bandit among these orderly things. It is the first time I remember having that outlaw feeling dis- tinctly, a feeling that has played a large part in my subsequent life. I felt there existed no place for me — that I had to drive myself in. Presently, down the hill, the servants apjjeared, straggling by twos and threes, first some of the garden people and the butler's wife with them, then the two laundry maids, odd inseparable old creatures, then the first footman talking to the butler's little girl, and at last, walking grave and breathless beside old Ann and Miss Fison, the black figure of my mother. My boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance. " Coo-ee, mother! " said I, coming out against the sky, " Coo-ee ! " My mother looked up, went very white, and put her hand to her bosom. . . . I suppose there was a fearful fuss about me. And of course I was quite unable to explain my reappear- ance. But I held out stoutly, " I won't go back to Chatham; I'll drown myself first." The next day my mother carried me off to Wimblehurst, took me fiercely and aggressively to an uncle I had never heard of be- fore, near though the place was to us. She gave me no I AM LAUNCHED 57 word ns to what was to happen, and I was too subdued by her manifest vrrntli and humiliation at my last mis- dcuieanour to demand information. I don't for ono moment think Lady Drew was " nice " about mc. The finality of my banishment was endorsed and underlined and stamped home. I wished very much now that I had run away to sea, in spite of the coally dust and squalour Rochester had revealed to me. Perhaps over- seas one came to different lands. IV I do not remember much of my journey to Wimble- hurst with my mother except the image of her as sitting bolt upright, as rather disdaining the third-class car- riage in which we travelled, and how she looked away from me out of the window when she spoke of my uncle. " I have not seen your uncle," she said, " since he was a boy. . . ." She added grudgingly, " Then he was supposed to be clever." She took little interest in such qualities as cleverness. " He married about three years ago, and set up for himself in Wimblehurst. ... So I suppose she had some mone)*." She mused on scenes she had long dismissed from her mind. " Teddy," she said at last in the tone of one who has been feeling in the dark and finds. " He was called Teddy . . . about your age. . . . Now he must be twenty-six or seven." I thouglit of my uncle as Teddy directly I saw him; there was something in his personal api)caranee that in the light of that memory ])lirnsrd itself at once as Teddincss — a certain Teddidity. To describe it in any other terms is more diflieult It is nimblencss without grace, an" and that was — to borrow a phrase from m_v schoolboy language — "Is it keeps?" She looked at my mother and nie, and back to her husband again. " You know," he said. " George." " Well," she said to my mother, descending the last three steps of the staircase and holding out her hand! " you're welcome. Though it's a surprise. ... I can't ask you to have anything, I'm afraid, for there isn't anything in the house." She smiled, and looked at her husband banteringly. " Unless he makes up something with his old chemicals, which he's quite equal to doing." 62 TONO-BUNGAY My mother shook hands stiffly, and told me to kiss my aunt. , . . " Well, let's aU sit down," said my uncle, suddenly whistling through his clenched teeth, and briskly rub- bing his hands together. He put up a chair for my mother, raised the blind of the little window, lowered it again, and returned to his hearthrug. " I'm sure," he said, as one who decides, " I'm very glad to see you." As they talked I gave my attention pretty exclusively to my uncle. I noted him in great detail. I remember now his partially unbuttoned waistcoat, as though something had occurred to distract him as he did it up, and a little cut upon his chin. I liked a certain humour in his eyes. I watched, too, with the fascination these things have for an observant boy, the play of his lips — they were a. little oblique, and there was something " slip- shod," if one may strain a word so far, about his mouth, so that he lisped and sibilated ever and again — and the coming and going of a curious expression, triumphant in quality it was, upon his face as he talked. He fingered his glasses, which did not seem to fit his nose, fretted with things in his waistcoat pockets or put his hands behind him, looked over our heads, and ever and again rose to his toes and dropped back on his heels. He had a way of drawing air in at times through his teeth that gave a vdiispering zest to his speech. It's a sound I can only represent as a soft Zzzz. He did most of the talking. M3' mother repeated what she had already said in the shop, " I have brought George over to you," and then desisted for a time from the real business in hand. " You find this a comfort- able house?" she askcdj and this being affirmed: "It I AM LAUNCHED G3 looks — very convenient. . . . Not too big to be a trouble — no. You like Wiuiblehurst, I suppose?" My uncle retorted with some inquiries about the great i>eoi)le of Bladcsover, and my mother answered in the cliaracter of a personal friend of Lady Drew's. Tlie talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked upon a dissertation upon Winiblchurst. " This place," he began, " isn't of course quite the place I ought to be in." My mother nodded as though she had expected that. " It gives me no Scope," he went on. " It's dead- and-alive. Nothing happens." " He's always wanting something to happen," said my aunt Susan. " Sonic day he'll get a shower of things and they'll be too much for him." " Not they," said my uncle, buoyantly. " Do you find business — slack.* " asked my mother. " Oh ! one rubs along. But there's no Development — no Grou-th. They just conic along here and buy pills when they want 'em — and a horseball or such. They've got to be ill before there's a prescription. That sort they are. You can't get 'em to launch out, you can't get 'em to take up anything new. F'rinstance, I've been trying lately — induce them to buy their medicines in advance, and in larger quantities. But they won't look at it ! Then I tried to float a little notion of mine, sort of an insurance scheme for colds ; j'ou pay so much a week, and when you've got a cold you get a bottle of Cough IJnctus so long as you can produce a substantial sniff. See.* But Lord! tliey've no capacity for ideas, they don't catch on; no Jump about the place, no Life! Live! — they trickle, and what one has to do here is to trickle too — Zzzz." " Ah ! " said my mother. " It doesn't suit me," said my uncle. " I'm tlic cas- cading sort." 64 TONO-BUNGAY " George was that," said my mother after a ponder- ing moment. My amit Susan took up the parable with an affection- ate glance at her husband. "He's always trying to make his old business jump," she said. " Alwa_vs putting fresh cards in the window, or getting up to something. You'd hardly believe. It makes me jump sometimes." " But it does no good," said my uncle. " It does no good," said his wife. " It's not his miloo. . . ." Presently they came upon a wide pause. From the beginning of their conversation there had been the promise of this pause, and I pricked my ears. I knew perfectly what was bound to come; they were going to talk of my father. I was enormously strength- ened in my persuasion when I found my mother's eyes resting thoughtfully upon me in the silence, and then my uncle looked at me and then my aunt. I struggled unavailingly to produce an expression of meek stupidity. " I think," said my uncle, " that George will find it more amusing to have a turn in the market-place than to sit here talking with us. There's a pair of stocks there, George — very interesting. Old-fashioned stocks." " I don't mind sitting here," I said. My uncle rose and in the most friendly way led me through the shop. He stood on his doorstep and jerked amiable directions to me. "Ain't it sleepy, George, eh? There's the butcher's dog over there, asleep in the road — half an hour from midday! If the last Trump sounded I don't believe it would wake. Nobody would wake! The chaps up there in the churchyard — they'd just turn over and say: ' Naar — you don't catch us, you don't! See?' . . . Well, you'll find the stocks just round that corner." I AU LAUNCHED 05 He watched me out of sight. So 1 never heard what they said about my father iftiT all. When I returned, my uncle had in some remarkable way become larger and central. " Tha'chu, George ? " he cried, when tlie shop-door bell sounded. " Come right through"; and I found him, as it were, in the chairman's place before the draped grate. The three of them regarded me. " \Vc have bem t^ilking of making you a chemist, George," said my uncle. My mother looked at me. " I had hoped," she said, " that Ijidy Drew would have done something for him " She stopped. "In what way?" said my uncle. " She might have spoken to some one, got him into somctliing perhaps. . . ." She had the servant's in- vincible persuasion that all good things are done by patronage. " He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done," she added, dismissing tliesc dreams. " He doesn't accommodate himself. When he thinks Lady Drew wishes a tiling, he seems not to wish it Towards Mr. Redgrave, loo, he has been — disrespectful — he is like his father." "Who's Mr. Redgrave?" " The Vicar." " A bit independent ? " said my uncle, briskly. " Disol)edicnt," said my mother. " He has no idea of his place. He seems to think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He'll lenrn perhaps Ik- fore it is too late." My uncle stroked his cut chin and regarded me« " Have you learnt any Latin ? " he asked abruptly. 66 TONO-BUNGAY I said I had not. " He'll have to learn a little Latin," he explained to my mother, " to qualify. H'm. He could go down to the chap at the grammar school here — it's just been routed into existence again by the Charity Commis- sioners — and have lessons." " What, me learn Latin ! " I cried, with emotion. " A little," he said. "I've always wanted " I said and; "Latin!" I had long been obsessed by the idea that having no Latin was a disadvantage in the world, and Archie Garvell had driven the point of this pretty earnestly home. The literature I had read at Bladesover had all tended that way. Latin had had a quality of emanci- pation for me that I find it difficult to convey. And suddenly, when I had supposed all learning was at an end for me, I heard this ! " It's no good to you, of course," said my uncle, " except to pass exams with, but there you are ! " " You'll have to learn Latin because you have to learn Latin," said my mother, " not because you want to. And afterwards you will have to learn all sorts of other things. . . ." The idea that I was to go on lea ning, that to read and master the contents of books was still to be justi- fiable as a duty, overwhelmed all other fai .s. I had had it rather clear in my mind for some wet ':s that all that kind of opportunity might close to me 1 r ever. I began to take a lively interest in this new project. "Then shall I live here?" I asked, "with you, and study ... as well as work in the shop ? " " That's the way of it," said my uncle. I parted from my mother that day in a dream, so sudden and important was this new aspect of things to me. I was to learn Latin! Now that the humiliation of my failure at Bladesover was past for her, now that I AM LAUNCHED 67 she hnd n little ^ot over her first intense repugnance at this resort to uiy uncle and contrived something that seemed like a possible provision for my future, tlie tenderness natural to a parting far more significant than any of our previous partings crept into her man- ner. She sat in the train to return, I remember, and I stood at the open door of her compartment, and neither of us knew how soon we should cease for ever to be a trouble to one another. " You must be a good boy, George," she said. " You must learn. . . . And 3'ou mustn't set yourself up against those wlio are above you and better than you. . . . Or envy them." " No, mother," I said. I promised carelessly. Her eyes were fixed upon me. I was wondering whether I could by any means begin Latin that night. Something touched her heart then, some thought, some memory; perhaps some premonition. . . . The solitary porter began slamming carriage doors. " George," she said hastily, almost shamefully, " kiss mc ! " I stepped up into her compartment as she bent for- ward. She caught me in her arm* quite eagerly, she pressed me to her — a strange thing for her to do. I perceived her eyes were extraordinarily bright, and tlien this brightness burst along the lower lids and rolled down her cheeks. I'or the first and last time in my life I saw my mother's tears. Then she had gone, leaving uie dis- comforted and perplexed, forgetting for a time even that I was to learn l.atin, thinking of my mother as of something new and strange. The tiling recurred though I sought to dismiss it, it stuck itself into my memory against the day of fuller 68 TONO-BUNGAY understanding. Poor, proud, habitual, sternly narrow soul! poor difficult and misunderstanding son! it was the first time that ever it dawned upon me that my mother also might perhaps feel. VII My mother died suddenly and, it was thought by Lady Drew, inconsiderately, the following spring. Her ladyship instantly fled to Folkestone with Miss Somer- ville and Fison, until the funeral should be over and my mother's successor installed. My uncle took me over to the funeral. I remember there was a sort of prolonged crisis in the days preced- ing tliis because, directlj' he heard of my loss, he had sent a pair of check trousers to the Judkins people in London to be dyed black, and they did not come back in time. He became very excited on the third day, and sent a number of increasingly fiery telegrams without any result whatever, and succumbed next morning with a very ill grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon tha resources of his dress-suit. In my memo y those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth — for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days-.— straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a deep mourning band. I remember, but rather indistinctly, my mother's white panelled housekeeper's room and the touch of oddness about it that she was not there, and the various familiar faces made strange by black, and I seem to recall the exaggerated self-consciousness that arose out of their focussed attention. No doubt the sense of the new silk hat came and went and came again in my 1 AM LAUNCHED 69 emotional chaos. Then something comes out clear and sorrowful, rises out clear and sheer from among all these rather base and inconsequent things, and once again I walk before nil the other mourners close behind her coffin as it is carried along the churchyard patli to her grave, with the old vicar's slow voice saving regret- fully and unconvincingly above me, triumphant solemn things. " i am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Never die ! The day was a high and glorious morning in spring, and all the trws were budding and bursting into green. Everywhere there were blossoms and flowers; the pear trees and clicrr_v trees in the sexton's garden were sunlit snow, there were nodding daffodils and early tulips in the gravej-ard beds, great multitudes of daisies, and everywhere the birds seemed singing. And in the middle was the brown coffin end, tilting on men's shoulders and half occluded by the vicar's Ox- ford hood. And so we came to my mother's waiting grave. . . . For a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered, hearing the words of the ritual. It seemed a rery curious business altogether. Suddenly as the service drew to its end, I felt some- thing had still to be said which had not been said, realised tliat she had withdrawn in silence, neither for- giving me nor hearing from me — those now lost assur- ances. Suddenly I knew I had not understood. Sud- denly I saw her tenderly; remembered not so much tender or kindly things of her as her crossed wishes and the ways in which I had tliwarted her. Surpris- ingly I realised tliat behind all her hardness and sevn-ity •he had loved mc, that I was the only thing she had 70 TONO-BUNGAY ever loved and that until this moment I had never loved her. And now she was there and deaf and blind to me, pitifully defeated in her designs for me, covered from me so that she could not know. . . . I dug my nails into the palms of my hands, I set my teeth, but tears blinded me, sobs would have choked me had speech been required of me. The old vicar read on, there came a mumbled response — and so on to the end. I wept as it were internally, and only when we had come out of the churchyard could I think and speak calmly again. Stamped across this memory are the little black | figures of my uncle and Rabbits, telling Avebury, the ' sexton and undertaker, that " it had all passed off very ^ well — very well indeed." \ I VIII I That is the last I shall tell of Bladesover. The drop- j scene falls on that, and it comes no more as an actual ^ presence into this novel. I did indeed go back there 'j once again, but under circumstances quite immaterial to < my story. But in a sense Bladesover has never left me ; j it is, as I said at the outset, one of those dominant ex- ! planatory impressions that make the framework of my ] mind. Bladesover illuminates England; it has become \ all that is spacious, dignified, pretentious, and truly con- i servative in English life. It is my social datum. That i is why I have drawn it here on so large a scale. j When I came back at last to the real Bladesover on j an inconsequent visit, everything was far smaller than i I could have supposed possible. It was as though j everything had shivered and shrivelled a little at the ; Lichtenstein touch. The harp was still in the saloon, ' but there was a different grand piano with a painted Jid and a metrostyle pianola, and an extraordinarj' ! I AM LAUNCHED 71 quantity of artistic litter and bric-a-brac scattered about. There was the trail of the Bond Street showroom over it all. The furniture was still under chintz, but it wasn't the same sort of chintz although it pretended to be, and tin- lustre-dangling chandeliers had passed away. Lady Lichtcnstein's books replaced the brown volumes I had browsed among — they were mostly presentation copies of contemporary novels and the National lieview and the Empire Review, and the yineleenth Century and After jostled current books on the tables — English new books in gaudy catchpenny " artistic " covers, French and Italian novels in yellow, German art hand- books of almost incredible ugliness. There were abundant evidences tliat her ladvship was playing with the Keltic renascence, and a great number of ugly cats made of china — she " collected " china and stoneware cats — stood about everywhere — in all colours, in all kinds of deliberately comic, highly glazed dis- tortion. . . . It is nonsense to pretend that finance makes any better aristocrats than rent. " Nothing can make an aristocrat but pride, knowledge, training, and the sword. These people were no improvement on the Drews, none whatever. There was no effect of a beneficial replace- ment of passive unintelligent people by active intelli- gent ones. One felt that a smaller but more enter- prising and intensely undignified variety of stupidity had replaced the large dulness of the old gentr}', and that was all. Bladesover, I thought, had undergone just the same change between the seventies and tlie new century that had overtaken the dear old Timex, and heaven knows how much more of the decorous British fabric. These I.ichfensteins and their like seem to liave no promise in them at all of any fresli vitality for tlic kingdom. I do not believe in their inti-lligcncc or tlieir power — they have nothing new about them at all, noth- 72 TONO-BUNGAY ing creative nor rejuvenescent, no more than a disorderly instinct of acquisition; and the prevalence of them and their kind is but a phase in the broad slow decaj' of tlie great social organism of England. They could not have made Bladesoverj they cannot replace it; they just happen to break out over it — saprophytically. Well, — that was my last impression of Bladesover. CHAPTER THE THIRD THE WIMBLEIIURST APPRENTICESHIP So far as I can remember now, except for that one emotional pli.ise by the graveside, I passed through all these experiences rather callously. I had already, with the facility of youth, changed my world, ceased to think at all of the old school routine and put Bladcsover aside for digestion at a hitter stage. I took up my new world in Wimblehurst with the chemist's shop as its hub, set to work at Latin and materia mcdica, and con- centrated upon the present with all my heart. Wimble- hurst is an exceptionally quiet and grey Sussex town, rare among south of England towns in being largely built of stone. I found something very agreeable and picturesque in its clean cobbled streets, its odd turnings and abrupt corners, and in the pleasant park that crowds up one side of the town. The whole place is under the Eastry dominion, and it was the Eastry in- fluence and dignity that kejit its railway station a mile and three-quarters away. Eastry House is so close that it dominates the whole; one goes across the market- place (with its old lock-up and stocks), past the great pre-reformation church, a fine grey shell, like some empty skull from which the life has fled, and there at once are the huge wrought-iron gates, and one peeps through them to see the facade of this place, very white and large and fine, doH-n a long avenue of yews. 73 74 TONO-BUNGAY Eastry was far greater than Bladesover and an alto- gether completer example of the eighteenth century system. It ruled not two villages, but a borough, that had sent its sons and cousins to parliament almost as a matter of right so long as its franchise endured. Every one was in the system, every one — except my uncle. He stood out and complained. My uncle was the first real breach I found in the great front of Bladesovery the world had presented me, for Chatham was not so much a breach as a confirma- tion. But my uncle had no respect for Bladesover and Eastry — none whatever. He did not believe in them. He was blind even to what they were. He propounded strange phrases about them, he exfoliated and wagged about novel and incredible ideas. " This place," said my uncle, surveying it from his open doorway in the dignified stillness of a summer afternoon, " wants Waking Up ! " I was sorting up patent medicines in the corner. " I'd like to let a dozen young Americans loose into it," said my uncle. " Then we'd see." I made a tick against Mother Shipton's Sleeping Syrup. We had cleared our forward stock. " Things must be happening somewhere, George," he broke out in a querulously rising note as he came back into the little shop. He fiddled with the piled dummy boxes of fancy soap and scent and so forth that adorned the end of the counter, then turned about petulantly, stuck his hands deeply into his pockets and withdrew one to scratch his head. " I must do something," he said. " I can't stand it. " I must invent something. And shove it. ... I could. " Or a play. There's a deal of money in a play, George. What v.ould you think of me writing a play — ■ eh? . . . There's all sorts of things to be done. AT WIMBLEHURST 75 " Or the stog-igschangc." He fell into that meditative whistling of his. " Sac-ramental wine!" he swore, "this isn't tlie world— it's Cold Mutton Fat! That's what Wimble- hurst is! Cold Mutton Fat!— dead and stiff! And I'm buried in it up to the arm pits. Nothing ever hap- pens, nobody wants tilings to happen 'secpt nic ! Up in London, George, things happen. Ameriea ! I wish to Heaven, George, I'd been born American — where things hum. " What can one do here? How can one grow? While we're sleqiin' here with our Capital oozing away — into Lord Eastry's pockets for rent — men are up there. . . ." He indicated London as remotely over the top of the dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. " What sort of things do they do? " I asked. "Rush about," he said. "Do things! Somethin' glorious. There's cover gambling. Ever heard of that, George? " He drew the air in tlirough his teeth. " You put down a hundred say, and buy ten thousand pounds worth. See? That's a cover of one per cent. Things go up one, you sell, realise cent per emt; down, whiff, it's gone! Try again! Cent per cent, George, every day. Men are made or done for in an hour. And the ahoutin'! Zzzr. . . . Well, that's one way, George. Then another way — there's Corners ! " "They're rather big things, aren't they?" I ven- tured. " Oh, if you go in for wheat or steel — yes. But suppose yon tackled a little thing, George. Just some Icctlc thing that only needed a few thousands. Drugs, for example. Shoved all you had into it — staked your liver on it, so to speak. Take a drug — take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. Take all there is! 76 TOXO-BUXGAY See? There you are! There aren't unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha — can't be ! — and it's a thing people must have. Then quinine again ! You watch your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's say, and collar all the quinine. Where are they? Must have quinine, you know. Eh? Zzzz. " Lord ! there's no end of things — no end of little things. Dill-water — all the sufF'ring babes yowling for it. Eucalyptus again — cascara — witch hazel — menthol — all the toothache things. Then there's antiseptics, and curare, cocaine. . . ." " Rather a nuisance to the doctors," I reflected. " They got to look out for themselves. By Jove, yes. They'll do you if they can, and you do them. Like brigands. That makes it romantic. That's the Romance of Commerce, George. You're in the moun- tains there ! Think of having all the quinine in the world, and some millionaire's pampud wife gone ill with malaria, eh? That's a squeeze, George, eh? Eh? Millionaire on his motor car outside, offering you any price you liked. That 'ud wake up Wimbleliurst. . . . Lord! You haven't an Idea down here. Not an idea. Zzzz." He passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such fragments as: "Fifty per cent, advance- sir; security — to-morrow. Zzzz." The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in reality. It was the sort of nonsense one would talk to make Ewart laugh and set him going on to still odder possibilities. I thought it was part of my uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land upon AT WIMBLEIIURST 77 which proplc will presently want to build houses, you stcure rights that will bar vitally important develop- ments, and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intel- ligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler develop- ments of human inadequacy. He begins life with a dis|)osilion to believe in the wisdom of grown-up pexiplc, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power as irresistible as a head master's to check mischievous and foolish enterprises of every sort. I will confess that when my uncle talked of corneriirg quinine, I had a clear im- pression that any one who contrived to do that would pretty certainly go to jail. Now I know that any one who could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the House of Lords! My uncle ranged over the gilt labels of his bottles and drawers for a while, dreaming of corners in this and that. But at last he reverted to Wimblehurst again. " You got to be in London when these things are in hand. Down here ! " Jee-rusalem ! " he cried. " Why did I plant my- self here? Everything's done. The game's over. Here's Lord Eastry, and he's got everything, except what his lawyers get, and before you get any more change this way you'll have to dyn.imite him — and them. lie doesn't want anything more to happen. Why should he.' .\ny change 'ud be a loss to him. He wants everything to burble along and burble along and go on as it's going for the next ten thousand years, Eastry after Eastry, one parson down another come, one grocer dead, get another! Any one with any ideas better go away. They hare gone away! Look at all these blessed people in this place! Look at "em! All fast asleep, doing tlieir business out of habit — in a sort of dream. 78 TONO-BUNGAY Stuffed men would do just as well — just. They've all shock down into their places. They don't want any- thing to happen either. They're all broken in. There you are! Only what are they all alive for? . . . "Why can't they get a clockwork chemist?" He concluded as he often concluded these talks. " I must invent something, — that's about what I must do. Zzzz. Some convenience. Something people want. . . . Strike out. . . . You can't think, George, of anything efverybody wants and hasn't got? I mean something you could turn out retail under a shilling, say? Well, you think, whenever you haven't got anything better to do. See? " II So I remember my uncle in that first phase, young, but already a little fat, restless, fretful, garrulouSj putting in my fermenting head all sorts of discrepant ideas. Certainly he was educational. . . . For me the years at Wimblehurst were years of pretty active growth. Host of my leisure and much of my time in the shop I spent in study. I speedily mastered the modicum of Latin necessary for my quali- fying examinations, and — a little assisted by the Gov- ernment Science and Art Department classes that were held in the Grammar School — went on with my mathe- matics. There were classes in physics, in chemistry, in mathematics and machine drawing, and I took up all these subjects with considerable avidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the form of walks. There was some cricket in the summer and football in the winter sustained by young men's clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail on the big people and the sitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I didn't find any very close companions among the youths of Wimblehurst. They struck me, after my cockney schoolmates, as loutish and AT WIMBLEIIURST 79 slow, servile and furtive, spiteful and mean. We used to swagger, but these eountrymen dragged their feet and hated an equal who didn't; we talked loud, but you only got the real thoughts of Winiblehurst in a knowing undertone behind its hand. And even then they weren't mneh in the way of thoughts. No, I didn't like those young countrymen, and I'm no bcliCTer in the English countryside under the Blades- over system as a breeding ground for honourable men. One hears a frightful lot of nonsense about the Rural Exodus and the degeneration wrought by town life upon our population. To my mind, the English townsman, cxen in the slums, is infinitely better spiritually, more courageous, more imaginative and cleaner, than his agri- cultural cousin. I've seen them both when they didn't think they were being observed, and I know. There was something about my Wimblchurst companions that disgusted me. It's hard to define. Heaven knows that at that cockney boarding-school at Goudhurst we were coarse enough ; the Wimbleluirst youngsters had neither words nor courage for the sort of thing we used to do — for our bad language, for example ; but, on the other hand, they displayed a sort of sluggish, real lewdness, — lewdness is the word — a baseness of attitude. Whatever we exiled urbans did at Goudhurst was touched with something, however coarse, of ronnntie imagination. Wc had read the I>oi/* of England, and told each other stories In the English countryside there are no books at all, no songs, no dram.n, no valiant sin e\-en; all these things have never come or they were taken away and hidden generations ago, and the imagination aborts and bcstinlises. That, I think, is where the real difference against the English rural man lies. It is because I know this that I do not share in the common repinings be- cause our countryside is being depopulated, because our population is passing through the furnace of the towns. 80 TONO-BUNGAY They starve, they suffer, no doubt, but they come out of it hardened, they come out of it with souls. . . . Of an evening the Wimblehurst blade, shiny-faced from a wash and with some loud finery, a coloured waistcoat or a vivid tie, would betake himself to the Eastry Arms billiard-room, or to the bar parlour of some minor pub where nap could be played. One soon sickened of his slow knowingness, the cunning observa- tion of his deadened eyes, his idea of a " good story," always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm ! his shrewd, elaborate manoeuvres for some petty advan- tage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog pipe, his riding breeches — he had no horse — and his gaiters, as he used to sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the brim of his artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases consti- tuted his conversation: "Hard lines!" he used to say, and " Good baazness," in a bass bleat. Moreover, he had a long slow whistle that was esteemed the very cream of humorous comment. Night after night he was there. . . . Also you knew he would not understand that I could play billiards, and regarded every stroke I made as a fluke. For a beginner I didn't play so badly, I thought. I'm not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time. But young Dodd's scepticism and the " good baazness " finally cured me of my disposition to frequent the Eas- try Arms, and so these noises had their value in my world. I made no friends among the young men of the place at all, and though I was entering upon adolescence I have no love-affair to tell of here. Not that I was not jvaking up to that aspect of life in my middle teens. AT WIMBLEIIURST 81 I did, indeed, in various slifflitly informal wnys scrape acquaintance with casual Wimblcliurst girls; with a little dressninktT's apprentice I got upon siiyly speaking terms, and a pupil teacher in tlic National School went further and was " talked about " in connection with me; but I was not by any means touched by any reality of passion for cither of these young people; love — love as yet came to me only in my dreams. I only kissed these girls once or twice. They rather disconcerted than dcf- veloped those dreams. Tlicy were so clearly not " it." I shall have much to say of love in this story, but I may break it to tlie reader now that it is my role to be a rather iitctreetual lover. Desire I knew well enough — indeed, too well; but love I have been shy of. In all my early enterprises in the war of tlic sexes, I was torn between the urgency of the body and a habit of romantic fantasy that wanted every phase of the ad- venture to be generous and beautiful. And I had a curiously haunting memory of Beatrice, of her kisses in the bracken and her kiss u))on the wall, that somehow pitched the standard too high for Wimblehurst's oppor- tunities. I will not deny I did in a boj-ish way attempt a shy, rude adventure or so in love-making at Wlniblc- hurst; but through these various influences, I didn't bring things off to any extent at all. I left behind me no devastating memories, no splendid reputation. X came away at last, still inexperienced and a little thwarted, with only a natural growth of interest and desire in sexual things. If I fell in love with any one in Wirablehurst it was with my aunt. She treated me with a kindliness that was only half maternal — she pelted my books, she knew about my certificates, she made fun of me in a way that stirred my heart to her. Quite unconsciously I grew fond of her. . . . My adolescent years at Wimbltliurst were on the 82 TONO-BUNGAY, whole laborious^ uneventful years that began in short jackets and left me in many ways nearly a man, years so une%'entful that the Calculus of Variations is asso- ciated with one winter, and an examination in Physics for Science and Art Department Honours marks an epoch. Many divergent impulses stirred within me, but the master impulse was a grave young disposition to work and learn and thereby in some not very clearly defined way get out of the Wimblehurst world into which I had fallen. I wrote with some frequency to Ewart, self-conscious, but, as I remember them, not unintelligent letters, dated in Latin and with lapses into Latin quotation that roused Ewart to jDarody. There was something about me in those days more than a little priggish. But it was, to do myself justice, some- thing more than the petty pride of learning. I had a very grave sense of discijDline and preparation that I am not ashamed at all to remember. I was serious. More serious than I am at the present time. More serious, indeed, than any adult seems to be. I was capable then of efforts — of nobilities. . . . They are beyond me now. I don't see why, at forty, I shouldn't confess I respect my own youth. I had dropped being a boy quite abruptly. I thought I was presently to go out into a larger and quite important world and do significant things there. I thought I was destined to do something definite to a world that had a definite purpose. I did not understand then, as I do now, that life was to consist largely in the world's doing things to me. Young peo2:>le never do seem to under- stand that aspect of things. And, as I say, among my educational influences my uncle, all unsuspected, played a leading part, and perhaps among other things gave my discontent with Wimblehurst, my desire to get away from that clean and picturesque emptiness, a form and expression that helped to emphasise it. In a way AT WIMBLEIIURST 83 tlint definition made me patient. " Prcscnllj' I shall gi-t to London," I said, echoing him. I remember him now as talking, always talking, in those days. He talked to me of theology, he talked of politics, of the wonders of science and the marvels of art, of tlie passions nnd the affections, of the immortality of the soul and the peculiar actions of drugs; but predominantly and constantly he talked of getting on, of enterprises, of inventions and great fortunes, of Rothschilds, silver kings, Vanderbilts, Goulds, flotations, realisations and the marvellous ways of Chance with men — in all localities, that is to say, that are not absolutely sunken to the level of Cold ^Mutton Fat. When I think of those early talks, I figure him always in one of three positions. Either we were in the dispensing lair behind a high barrier, he pounding up things in a mortar perhaps, and I rolling pill-stuff into long rolls and cutting it up with a sort of broad, fluted knife, or he stood loo?-.ing out of the shop door against the case of sponges and spray-diffusers, while I sur\-eyed him fron\ behind the counter, or he leant against the little drawers behind the counter, and I hovered dusting in front Tiic thought of those early days brings back to my nostrils the faint smell of scent that was always in tlie air, marbled now with streaks of this drug and now of that, and to my eyes the rows of jejune glass bottles with gold labels, mirror-reflected, that stood bt-liiiid him. My aunt, I remember, used sometimes to come into the shop in a state of aggres- sive sprightliness, a sort of connnbial ragging expedi- tion, and get much fun over the abbreviated Latinity of those gilt in.scriptions. " Ol Amjig, George," she would rend derisively, " and he pretends it's almond oil! Snap! — and that's mustard. Did you ever. Gc«rge } " Look at him, George, looking dignified. I'd like 84. TONO-BUNGAY to put an old label on to him round the middle like his bottles are, with 01 Pondo on it. That's Latin for Impostor, George — 7nust be. He'd look lovely with a stopper." " You want a stopper," said my uncle, projecting his face. . • . My aunt, dear soul, was in those days quite thin and slender, with a delicate rosebud complexion and a disposition to connubial badinage, to a sort of gentle skylarking. There was a silvery ghost of lisping in her speech. She was a great humourist, and as the constraint of my presence at meals wore off, I became more and more aware of a filmy but extensive net of nonsense she had woven about her domestic relations until it had become the reality of her life. She affected a derisive attitude to the world at large and applied the epithet " old " to more things than I have ever heard linked to it before or since. " Here's the old news- paper," she used to say to my uncle. " Now don't go and get it in the butter, you silly old Sardine ! " " What's the day of the week, Susan ? " my uncle would ask. " Old Monday, Sossidge," she would say, and add, " I got all my Old AVashing to do. Don't I know it!" . . . She had evidently been the wit and joy of a large circle of schoolfellows, and this style had become a second nature with her. It made her very delightful to me in that quiet place. Her customary walk even had a sort of hello! in it. Her chief preoccupation in life was, I believe, to make my uncle laugh, and when by some new nickname, some new quaintness or absurdity, she achieved that end, she was, behind a mask of sober amazement, the happiest woman on earth. My uncle's laugh when it did come, I must admit was, as Baedeker says, " rewarding." It began with gusty blowings and \T WIMBLEHURST 85 snorliiifts, and opened into a clear " Ha lia ! " but in its fulltst development it included, in those youthful days, falling about anyhow and doubling up tightly, and whackings of tlic stomach, and tears and cries of anguish. I nc^cr in my life lirard my unelc laugh to his maximum except at her; lie was commonly too much in earnest for tliat, and he didn't laugh much at all, to my knowledge, after those early years. Also she tlircw tilings at him to an enormous extent in her resolve to keep things lively in spite of Wimblchurst ; sponges out of stock she tlirew, cushions, balls of paper, clean wash- ing, bread ; and once up the yard when they tliouglit that I and the errand boy and the diminutive maid of all work were safely out of the way, she smashed a boxful of eight-ounce bottles I had left to drain, as- saulting my uncle with a new soft broom. Sometimes she would shy things at nie — but not often. There seemed always laughter round . nd about her — all three of us would share hysterics at times — and on one oc- casion tlie two of them came home from church shock- ingly ashamed of themselves, because of a storm of mirth during the senno.i. The vicar, it seems, had tried to blow his nose with a black glove as well as the cus- tomary pocket-handkerchief. And afterwards slie had picked up her own glove by the finger, and looking inno- cently but intently sideways, had suddenly by this simple expedient exploded my uncle altogether. We had it all over again at dinner. " But it shows you," cried my uncle, suddenly be- coming grave, " what Wimblchurst is, to have us all laughing at a little thing like tliat ! We weren't the only ones that giggled. Not by any means! And, Lord ! it ffai funny ! " Socially, my uncle and aunt were almost completely isolated. In places like Wimblchurst the tradesmen's wives always ore isolated socially, all of them, unless 86 TONO-BUNGAY they have a sister or a bosom friend among the other wivesj but the husbands met in various bar-parlours or in the billiard-room of the Eastry Arms. But my uncle, for the most part, spent his evenings at home. When first he arrived in Wimblehurst I think he had spread his effect of abounding ideas and enterprise rather too aggressively; and Wimblehurst, after a temporary subju- gation, had rebelled and done its best to make a butt of him. His appearance in a public-house led to a pause in any conversation that was going on. " Come CO tell us about everything, Mr. Pond'revo.'' " some one would say politely. " You wait," my uncle used to answer, disconcerted, and sulk for the rest of his visit. Or some one with an immense air of innocence would remark to the world generally, " They're talkin' of re- buildin' Wimblehurst all over again, I'm told. Anybody heard anything of it? Going to make it a reg'lar smart- goin', enterprisin' place— kind of Crystal Pallas." " Earthquake and a pestilence before you get that," my uncle would mutter, to the infinite delight of every one, and add something inaudible about " Cold Mutton Fat." . . . Ill We were torn apart by a financial accident to my uncle of which I did not at first grasp the full bearings. He had developed what I regarded as an innocent intellectual recreation which he called stock-market meteorology. I think he got the idea from the use of curves in the graphic presentation of associated varia- tions that he saw me plotting. He secured some of my squared paper and, having cast about for a time, de- cided to trace the rise and fall of certain mines and railways. " There's something in this, George," he said, and I little dreamt that among other things that were AT WIMBLEHURST 87 in it, was llic whole of his si)arc ruoiicy and most of what my mother liad left to him in trust for mc. " It's as plain as can be," he said. " See, here's one system of waves and here's another! These arc priecs for Union Pacifies — extending over a month. Now next week, mark mj' words, they'll be down one whole point. We're getting near the steep part of the curve again. Sec? It's absolutely scientiHe. It's veriliible. Well, and apply it! You buy in the hollow and sell on the crest, and — there j-ou are ! " I was so convinced of the triviality of this amuse- ment that to find at last that he had taken it in the most disastrous earnest overwhelmed me. He took me for a long walk to break it to me, over the hills towards Yare and across the great gorse com- mons by Hazelbrow. " There are ups and downs in life, George," he said — halfway across that great open space, and paused against the sky. ..." I left out one factor in the Union Pacific analysis." " Did you ? " I said, struck by the sudden change in his voice. " But you don't mean }" 1 stopped and turned on him in the narrow sandy rut of pathway and he stopped likewise. "I do, George. I do mean. It's bust me! I'm a bankrupt here and now." "Then .?" " The shop's bust too. I shall hr.ve to get out of tliat." " -Vnd me.' " "Oh, you! — you're all right. Y'ou can transfer your apprenticeship, and^-er — well, I'm not the sort of man to be CTrelfss with trust funds, you can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. There's some of it left, George — trust mc ! — quite a decent little sum." " But vou and aunt.' " 88 TONO-BUN^GAY " It isn't quite the way we meant to leave Wimble- hurst, George; but we shall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and ticketed — lot a hundred and one. Ugh! . . . It's been a larky little house in some ways. The first we had. Furnishing — a spree in its way. . . . Very happy . . ." His face winced at some memory. " Let's go on, George," he said shortly, near choking, I could see. I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little while. " That's how it is, you see, George," I heard him after a time. When we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a time we walked in silence. " Don't say anj'thing home yet," he said presently. " Fortunes of War. I got to pick the proper time with Susan — else she'll get depressed. Not that she isn't a first-rate brick whatever comes along." "All right," I said, " I'll be careful"; and it seemed to me for the time altogether too selfish to bother him with any further inquiries about his responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his plans. . . . But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and went suddenly. " Those others ! " he said, as though the thought had stung him for the first time. " What others ? " I asked. " Damn them ! " said he. " But what others ? " " All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck, the butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape ! Gcrd ! George, how they'll grin ! " . . . I thought him over in the next few weeks, and I remember now in great detail the last talk we had together before he handed over the shop and me to his AT WIMBLEHURST 89 successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business, "lock, stock, and barrel " — in which expression I found myself and my indentures included. The horrors of a sale by auction of the furniture evcii were avoided. I remember that cither coming or going on that occasion, Ruck, the butcher, stood in his doorway and regarded us with a grin that showed his long teetli. " You lialf-witfcd hog! " said my uncle. " You grin- ning hyaena "; and then, " Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck." " Goin' to make your fortun" in London, then? " said Mr. Ruck, with slow enjoyment. That last excursion took us along the causeway to Beeching, and so up the downs and round almost as far as Sleadhurst, home. My moods, as we went, made a mingled web. By this time I had really grasped the fact that ni}' uncle had, in plain English, robbed me; the little accumulations of my mother, six hundred pounds and more, that would have educated me and started me in business, had been eaten into and was mostly gone into the unexpected hollow that ought to have been a crest of the Union Pacific curve, and of the remainder he still gave no account. I was too young and inexperienced to insist on this or know how to get it, but the thought of it all made streaks of de- cidedly black anger in that scheme of interwoven feel- ings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry for him — almost as sorry as I was for my aunt Susan. Even then I had quite found him out. I knew him to be weaker than myself; his incurable, irresponsible child- ishness was as clear to me then as it was on his death- bed, his redeeming and excusing imaginative silliness. Through some odd mental twist perhaps I was disposed to exonerate him even at the cost of blaming my poor old mother who had left things in his untrustworthy hands. I should have forgiven him altogether, I believe, if 90 TONO-BUNGAY ae had been in any manner apologetic to me; but he wasn't that. He kept reassuring me in a way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt! Susan and himself. " It's these Crises, George," he said, " try Character. Your aunt's come out well, my boy." He made meditative noises for a space. " Had her cry of course," — the thing had been only ' too painfully evident to me in her eyes and swollen face — "who wouldn't? But now — buoyant again! . . .f She's a Corker. ] " We'll be sorry to leave the little house of course,) It's a bit like Adam and Eve, you know. Lord! what! a chap old Milton was! ; " ' The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.' It Eounds, George. . , . Providence their guide !,^ . . . Well — thank goodness there's no imeedgitj prospect of either Cain or Abel! \ " After all, it won't be so bad up there. Not the| scenery, perhaps, or the air we get here, but — Life! We've got very comfortable little rooms, very comfort-; able considering, and I shall rise. We're not done yet,'; we're not beaten; don't think that, George. I shalli pay twenty shillings in the pound before I've done — ' you mark my words, George, — twenty-five to yon.! . . . I got this situation within twenty-four hours — •; others oiFered. It's an important firm— one of the best^ in London. I looked to that. I might have got fouri; or five shillings a week more — elsewhere. Quarters !■ could name. But I said to them plainly, wages to go* on with, but opportunity's my game — development. We! understood each other." j He threw out his chest, and the little round eyesj AT WIMBLEIIUllST 91 behind his glasses rested valianlly on imnginary employers. \Vc would go on in silence for n spnee while he re- vised and restated that encounter. Then he would break out abruptly with some banal plirase. " The Battle of Life, George, my boy," he would cry, or " Ups and Downs ! " He ignored or waived the poor little attcmi)ts I made to ascertain my cwn position. " That's all right," he would say ; or, " Leave all that to me. I'll look after them." And he would drift away towards the philosophy and moral of the situation. What was I to do? " Never put all your resources into one chance, George; that's the lesson I draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a hundred to one, Ge«rge, that I was right — a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards. And here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I'd have only kept back a little, I'd have had it on U. P. next day, like a shot, and come out on the rise. There you are ! " His thoughts took a graver turn. " It's when you bump up against Chance like this, George, that you feel the need of religion. Your hard- and-fast scientific men — your Spencers and Huxlcys — they don't understand that. I do. I've thought of it a lot latily — in bed and about. I was tliinking of it this morning while I shaved. It's not irreverent for mc to say it, I hope — but God comes in on the off-chance, George. See.* Don't j'ou be too cocksure of anything, good or bad. That's what I make out of it. I could have sworn. Well, do you think I — particular as I am — would have touched tliose Union Pacifies with trust- money at all, if I hadn't thought it a thoroughly good thing — good without spot or blemish? . . . And it was bad! " Its a lesson to mc. You start in to get a hundred 92 TONO-BUNGAY per cent, and you come out with that. It means, in a way, a reproof for Pride I've thought of that, George — in the Night Watches. I was thinking this morning when I was shaving, that that's where the good of it all comes in. At the bottom I'm a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you're going to do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all what he's doing? When you most think you're doing things, they're being done right over your head. You're being done — in a sense. Take a hundred-to-one chance, or one to a hundred — what does it matter? You're being Led." It's odd that I heard this at the time with unutter- able contempt, and now that I recall it — well, I ask myself, what have I got better? " I wish," said I, becoming for a moment outrageous, "you were being Led to give me some account of my money, uncle." " Not without a bit of paper to figure on, George, I can't. But you trust me about that, never fear. You trust me." And in the end I had to. I think the bankruptcy hit my aunt pretty hard. There was, so far as I can remember now, a complete cessation of all those cheerful outbreaks of elasticity — no more skylarking in the shop nor scampering about the house. But there was no fuss that I saw, and only little signs in her complexion of the fits of weeping that must have taken her. She didn't cry at the end, though to me her face with its strain of self-possession was more pathetic than any weeping. " Well," she said to me as she came through the shop to the cab, " Here's old orf , George ! Orf to Mome number two ! Good-bye ! " And she took me in her arms and kissed me and pressed me to her. Then she dived straight for the cab before I could answer her. My uncle followed, and he seemed to me a trifle too AT WIMBLEHURST 93 paliant nnd confident in his bearing for reality. He was uiiiisimlly white in the face. He spoke to his successor at the counter. " Here we go ! " he said. " One down, the other up. You'll find it a quiet little business so long as you run it on quiet lines — a nice, [juiet little business. There's nothing more? No? SV'ell, if you want to know anything write to me. I'll always cx])lain fully. Anything — business, place, or people. You'll find Pil Antibil. a little ovcrstockedj by-the-by. I found it soothed my mind tlie day before yesterday making 'em, and I made 'em all day. Thousands! And whcre's George? Ah! there you are! I'll write to vou, George, fully, about all that affair. Fully ! " It became clear to me, as if for the first time, that I was really parting from my aunt Susan. I went out on to the pavement and saw her head craned forward, her wide-opin blue eyes and her little face intent on the shop that Iiad combined for her all the charms of a big doll's house and a little home of her very own. " Good-bye I " she said to it and to me. Our eyes met for a moment — perplexed. My uncle bustled out and gave a few totally unnecessary directions to the cabman rind got in beside her. "All right?" asked the driver. " Right," s.nid I ; and he woke up the horse with a flick of his whip. My aunt's eyes surveyed me again. " Stick to your old science and things, George, and write and tell me when they moke you a Professor," she said cheerfully. She stired at me for a second longer with eyes grow- ing wider and brighter and a smile that had become fixed, glanced again at the bright little shop still saying " Ponderevo " with all the emphasis of its fascia, and then flopped back hastily out of sight of mc into the recesses of the cab. Then it had gone from before me, uid I beheld Mr. Snapc, the hairdresser, inside his shop 94 TONO-BUNGAY regarding its departure with a quiet satisfaction and exchanging smiles and significant headshakes with Mr. Marbel. IV I was left, I say, as part of the lock, stock, and barrel, at Wimblehurst with my new master, a Mr. Mantell ; who plays no part in the progress of this story except in so far as he effaced my uncle's traces. So soon as the freshness of this new personality faded, I began to find Wimblehurst not only a dull but a lonely place, and to miss my aunt Susan immensely. The advertisements of the summer terms for Cough Linctus were removed; the bottles of coloured water — red, green, and yellow — restored to their places ; the horse announcing veterinary medicine, which my uncle, siz- zling all the while, had coloured in careful portraiture of a Goodwood favourite, rewhitened; and I turned my- self even more resolutely than before to Latin (until the passing of my preliminary examination enabled me to drop that), and then to mathematics and science. There were classes in Electricity and Magnetism at the Grammar School. I took a little " elementary " prize in that in my first year and a medal in my third; and in Chemistry and Human Physiology and Sound, Light and Heat, I did well. There was also a lighter, more discursive subject called Physiography, in which one ranged among the sciences and encountered Geology as a process of evolution from Eozoon to Eastry House, and Astronomy as a record of celestial movements of the most austere and invariable integrity. I learnt out of badly-written, condensed little text-books, and with the minimum of experiment, but still I learnt. Only thirty years ago it was, and I remember I learnt of the electric light as an expensive, impracticable toy, the telephone as a curiosity, electric traction as a practical AT WIMBLEHUKST 95 absurdity. There was no argon, no radium, no phago- cytes — at least to my knowledge, and aluminium was a dear, infrequent metal. The fastest ships in the world went then at nineteen knots, and no one but a lunatic here and there ever thought it possible that men might fly. Many things have happened since then, but the last glance I had of Wimbleliurst two years ago rcranrked no change whatever in its pleasant tranquillity. They had not even built any fresh houses — at least not ac- tually in the town, though about the station there had been some building. But it was a good place to do work in, for all its quiescence. I was soon beyond the small requirements of the Pharmaceutical Society's ex- amination, and as they do not permit candidates to sit for that until one and twenty, I was presently filling up my time and preventing my studies becoming too desultory by making an attack upon the London Uni- versity degree of Bachelor of Science, which impressed me then as a very splendid but almost impossible achievement. The degree in mathematics and chemistry appealed to me as particularly congenial — albeit giddily inaccessible. I set to work. I had presently to arrange a holiday and go to London to matriculate, and so it was I came upon my aunt and uncle again. In many ways that visit marked an epoch. It was my first impression of London at all. I was then nineteen, and by a conspiracy of chances my nearest approach to that human wilderness had been my brief visit to Chatham. Chatham too had been my largest town. So that I got London at last with an exceptional fresliness of effect, as the sudden revelation of a whole unsuspected other side to life. i came to it on a dull and smoky day by the South Eastern Railway, and our train was half an hour late, :>toppuig and going on and stopping again. I marked 96 TONO-BUNGAY beyond Chiselliurst the growing multitude of villas, and so came stage by stage through mutiplying houses and diminishing interspaces of market garden and dingy grass to regions of interlacing railway lines, big fac- tories, gasometers and wide reeking swamps of dingy little homes, more of them and more and more. The number of these and their dinginess and poverty in- creased, and here rose a great public house and here a Board School and here a gaunt factory ; and away to the east there loomed for a time a queer, incongruous forest of masts and spars. The congestion of houses intensi- fied and piled up presently into tenements ; I marvelled more and more at this boundless world of dingy people; whiffs of industrial smell, of leather, of brewing, drifted into the carriage; the sky darkened, I rumbled thunder- ously over bridges, van-crowded streets, peered down on and crossed the Thames with an abrupt eclat of sound. I got an elfect of tall warehouses, of grey water, barge crowded, of broad banks of indescribable mud, and then I was in Cannon Street Station — a monstrous dirty cavern with trains packed across its vast floor and more porters standing along the platform than I had ever seen in my life before. I alighted with my portmanteau and struggled along, realising for the first time just how small and weak I could still upon occasion feel. In this world, I felt, an Honours medal in Electricity and Magnetism counted for nothing at all. Afterwards I drove in a cab down a cailon of rushing street between high warehouses, and peeped up as- tonished at the blackened greys of Saint Paul's. The traffic of Cheapside — it was mostly in horse omnibuses in those days — seemed stupendous, its roar was stu- pendous; I wondered where the money came from to employ so many cabs, what industry could support the endless jostling stream of silk-hatted, frock-coated, hurrying men. Down a turning I found the Temper- AT WIMBLEHURST 97 ancc Hotel Mr. Mantell had recommended to me. The porter in a green uniform who took over my port- manteau, seemed, I thought, to despise me a good deal. Matriculation kept mc for four full days and then came an afternoon to spare, and I sought out Totten- ham Court Road through a perplexing network of various and crowded streets. But this London was vast ! it was endless ! it seemed the wliolc world had changed into packed frontages and hoardings and street spaces. I got there at last and made inquiries, and I found my uncle behind the counter of the pharmacy he managed, an establishment that did not impress me as doing a particularly high-class trade. " Lord ! " he said at the sight of me, " I was wanting something to happen! " He greeted me warmly. I had grown taller, and he, I thouglit, had grown shorter and smaller and rounder, but otherwise he was unchanged. He struck me as being rather shabby, and the silk hat he produced and put on, when, after mysterious negotiations in the back premises he achieved his freedom to accompany me, was past its first youth; but he was as buoyant and confident as ever. "Come to ask mc about all that?" he cried. "I've never written yet." "Oh! among other things," said I, with a sudden regrettable politeness, and waived the topic of his trus- teeship to ask after my aunt Susan. "We'll have her out of it," he said suddenly; "we'll go somewhere. We don't get you in London every day." " It's my first visit," I said, " I've never seen London before "; and tliat made him ask me what I thought of 98 TOXO-BUNGAY it, and the rest of the talk was London, London, to the exclusion of all smaller topics. He took me up the HamiJstead Road almost to the Cobden statue, plunged into some back streets to the left, and came at last to a blistered front door that responded to his latch-key, one of a long series of blistered front doors with fan- lights and apartment cards above. We found ourselves in a drab-coloured passage that was not only narrow and dirty but desolatingly empty, and then he opened a door and revealed my aunt sitting at the window with a little sewing-machine on a bamboo occasional table before her, and " work " — a plum-coloured walking dress I judged at its most analytical stage — scattered over the rest of the apartment. At the first glance I judged my aunt was plumper than she had been, but her complexion was just as fresh and her China blue eye as bright as in the old days. " London," she said, didn't " get blacks " on her. She still " cheeked " my uncle, I was pleased to find. " What are you old Poking in for at this time, — Gubbitt? " she said when he appeared, and she still looked with a practised eye for the facetious side of things. When she saw me behind him, she gave a little cry and stood up radiant. Then she became grave. I was surprised at my own emotion in seeing her. She held me at arm's length for a moment, a hand on each shoulder, and looked at me with a sort of glad scrutiny. She seemed to hesitate, and then pecked a little kiss off my cheek. " You're a man, George," she said, as she released me, and continued to look at me for a while. Their menage was one of a very common type in London. They occuisied what is called the dining-room floor of a small house, and they had the use of a little inconvenient kitchen in the basement that had once been a scullery. The two rooms, bedroom behind and living- AT WIMBLEHURST 99 room in front, were separated by folding-doors that were never now thrown back, and indeed, in the presence of a visitor, not used at all. There was of course no bathroom or anything of that sort available, and there was no water supjJy except to the kitchen below. My aunt did .nil the domestic work, though she could have afforded to pay for liclp if the build of the place had not rendered that inconvenient to the pitch of impossi- bility. Tlierc was no sort of help available except th.nt of indoor servants, for whom she had no accommoda- tion. The furniture was their own ; it was partly second- hand, but on the whole it seemed cheerful to my eye, and my aunt's bias for cheap, gay-figured muslin had found ample score. In many ways I should think it must have bcrn an extremely inconvenient and cramped sort of home, but at the time I took it, as I was taking everything, as being there and in the nature of things. I did not see the oddncss of solvent decemt people living in a habitation so clearly neither designed nor adapted for their needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of beauty as this was, and it is only now as I describe this that I find myself thinking of the essential absurdity of an intelligent community living in such makeshift homes. It strikes me now as the next thing to wearing second-hand clothes. You see it was a natural growth, part of that system to which Bladesovcr, I hold, is the key. There are wide regions of Ix)ndon, miles of streets of houses, that ap- pear to have been originally designed for prosperous middle-class homes of the early Victorian type. There must have been a perfect fury of such building in the thirties, forties, and fifties. Street after street must have been rushed into being, Campden Town way, Pen- tonville way, Brom))ton way. West Kensington way in the Victoria region and all over the minor suburbs of the south side. I am doubtful if many of these houses 100 TONO-BUNGAY had any long use as the residences of single families, if from the very first almost their tenants did not malieshift and take lodgers and sublet. They were built with basements, in which their servants worked and lived — servants of a more submissive and troglodytic generation who did not mind stairs. The dining-room (with folding doors) was a little above the ground level, and in that the wholesome boiled and roast with damp boiled potatoes and then pie to follow, was con- sumed, and the numerous family read and worked in the evening, and above was the drawing-room (also with folding doors), where the infrequent callers were re- ceived. That was the vision at which those industrious builders aimed. Even while these houses were being run up, the threads upon the loom of fate were shaping to abolish altogether the type of household that would have fitted them. Means of transit were developing to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out of London, education and factory employment were whittling away at the supply of rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand the subterranean drudg- ery of these places, new classes of hard-up middle-class people such as my uncle, employees of various types, were coming into existence, for whom no homes were provided. None of these classes have ideas of what they ought to be, or fit in any legitimate way into the Bladesover theory tliat dominates our minds. It was nobody's concern to see them housed under civilised conditions, and the beautiful laws of supply and de- mand had free play. They had to squeeze in. The landlords came out financially intact from their blun- dering enterprise. More and more these houses fell into the hands of married artisans, or struggling widows or old servants with savings, who became responsible for the quarterly rent and tried to sweat a living by sub-letting furnished or unfurnished apartments. AT WIMBLEHURST 101 I remember now that a poor grey-haired old woman who had an air of having been roused from a nap in the dust bin, came out into the area and hioked up at as as we tJiree went out from the front door to " see London " under my unelc's direetion. She was the sub- letting occupier; she squeezed out a precarious living by taking the house whole and sub-letting it in detail, and she made her food and got tlie shelter of an altic above and a basement below bj- the transaction. And if she didn't chance to " let " steadily, out she went to pauperdora and some other poor, sordid old adventurer tried in Iier place. . . . It is a foolish community that can house whole classes, useful and helpful, honest and loyal classes, in such squalidly unsuitable dwellings. It is by no means the social economy it seems, to use up old women's savings and inexperience in order to meet the landlord's demands. But any one who doubts this tiling is going on right up to to-day need only spend an afternoon in hunting for lodgings in any of the regions of London I have named. But where has my story got to? My uncle, I say, decided I must be shown London, and out we three Mcnt ns soon as my aunt had got her hat on^ to catch all that was left of the day. VI It pleased my uncle extremely to find I had never seen London before. He took possession of the me- tropolis forthwith. " London, George," he said, " takes a lot of understanding. It's a great place. Immense. The richest town in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town, the Imperial city — tlie centre of civilisation, the heart of the world ! Sec those sandwich men down there! That third one's hat! Fair 102 TONO-BUNGAY treat! You don't see poverty like that in Wimblehurst, George! And many of them high Oxford honour men too. Brought down by drink! It's a wonderful place, George — a whirlpool, a maelstrom! whirls you up and whirls you down." I have a very confused memory of that afternoon's inspection of London. My uncle took us to and fro showing us over his London, talking erratically, follow- ing a route of his own. Sometimes we were walking, sometimes we were on the tops of great staggering horse omnibuses in a heaving jumble of traffic, and at one point we had tea in an Aerated Bread Shop. But I remember very distinctly how we passed down Park Lane under an overcast sky, and how my uncle pointed out the house of this child of good fortune and that with succulent appreciation. I remember, too, that as he talked I would find my aunt watching my face as if to cheek the soundness of his talk by my expression. "Been in love yet, George.^" she asked suddenly, over a bun in the tea-shop. " Too busy, aunt," I told her. She bit her bun extensively, and gesticulated with the remnant to indicate that she had more to say. " How are you going to make your fortune ? " she said so soon as she could speak again. " You haven't told us that." " 'Lectricity," said my uncle, taking breath after a deep draught of tea. " If I make it at all," I said. " For my part I think I shall be satisfied with something less than a fortune." " We're going to make ours — suddenly," she said. "So he old says." She jerked her head at my uncle. " He won't tell me when— so I can't get anything ready. But it's coming. Going to ride in our carriage and have a garden. Garden — like a bishop's," AT WIMBLEHURST 108 She finished her bun and twiddled crumbs from licT fingers. " I shall bo glad of the garden," slic said. " It's going to be a real big one with rosaries and things. Fountains in it. Pampas grass. Hothouses." " You'll get it all right," said my uncle, who had reddened a little. " Grey horses in the carriage, George," she said. " It's nice to think about when one's dull. And dinners in restaurants often and often. And theatres — in the stalls. And money and money and money." " You may joke," said my uncle, and hummed for a moment. " Just as though an old Porpoise like him would ever make money," she said, turning her eyes upon his profile with a sudden lapse to affection. "He'll just porpoise about." "Ill do something," said my uncle, "you bet! Zrzz ! " and rapped with a shilling on the marble table. " When you do you'll have to buy me a new pair of gloves," she said, " anyhow. That finger's past mending. Look ! you Cabbage — you." And she held the split under his nose, and pulled a face of comical fierceness. My uncle smiled at these sallies at the time, but afterwards, when I went back with him to the Pharmacy — the low-class business grew brisker in the evening and they kept open late — he reverted to it in a low expository tone. " Your aunt's a bit impatient, George. She gets at me. It's only natural. ... A woman doesn't understand how long it takes to build up a position. No. ... In certain directions now — I am — quietly — building up a position. Now here. . . . I get this room. I have my three assistants. Zzzz. It's a position that, judged by tlir criterion of im- meedjit income, isn't perhaps so good as I deserve, but 104 TONO-BUNGAY strategically — yes. It's what I want. I make my plans. I rally my attack." "What plans," I said, "are you making?" " Well, George, there's one thing you can rely upon, I'm doing nothing in a hurry. I turn over this idea and that, and I don't talk — indiscreetly. There's No! I don't think I can tell you that. And yet, why not? " He got up and closed the door into the shop. " I've told no one," he remarked, as he sat down again. " I owe you something." His face flushed slightly, he leant forward over the little table towards me. " Listen ! " he said. I listened. " Tono-Bungay," said my uncle very slowly and distinctly. I thought he was asking me to hear some remote, strange noise. " I don't hear anything," I said re- luctantly to his expectant face. He smiled undefeated. " Try again," he said, and repeated, " Tono-Bungay." " Oh, that! " I said. " Eh? " said he. " But what is it? " "Ah!" said my uncle, rejoicing and expanding. "What is it? That's what you got to ask? What ivon't it be ? " He dug me violently in what he supposed to be my ribs. " George," he cried — " George, watch this place ! There's more to follow." And that was all I could get from him. That, I believe, was the very first time that the words Tono-Bungay were heard on eartli — unless my uncle indulged in monologues in his chamber — a highly probable thing. Its utterance certainly did not seem to me at the time to mark any sort of epoch, and h'ad AT WIMBLEHURST 105 I been told this word was the Open Sesame to whatever pride and pleasure the grimy front of London hid from us that evening, I should have laughed aloud. " Coming now to business," I said after a pause, and with a chill sense of effort; and I opened the ques- tion of his trust. My uiicle sighed, and leant back in his chair. " I wish I could make all this business as clear to you as it is to me," he said. " However Go on ! Say what you have to say." VII After I left niy uncle that evening I gave way to a feeling of profound depression. My uncle and aunt seemed to me to be leading — I have already used the word too often, but I must use it again — dingy lives. They seemed to be adrift in a limitless crowd of dingy people, wearing shabby clothes, li\ing uncomfortably in shabby second-hand houses, going to and fro on pavements that had always a thin veneer of greasy, slippery mud, under grey skies that showed no gleam of hope of anything for them but dingincss until they died. It seemed absolutely clear to me that my mother's little savings had been swallowed up and that my own prospect was all too certainly to drop into and be swal- lowed up myself sooner or later by this dingy London ocean. The London that was to be an adventurous escape from the slumber of Wimblehurs":, hid vanished from my dreams. I saw my uncle pointing to the houses in Pork Lane and showing a frayed shirt-cufT as he did so. I heard my aunt: "I'm to ride in my carriage then. So he old says." My feelings towards my ancle were extraordinarily mixed. I was intensely sorry not only for my aunt Susan but for him — for it seemed indisputable that as they were living then so they must go on — and at the 106 TONO-BUNGAY same time I was angry with the garrulous vanity and silliness that had clipped all my chance of independent study, and imprisoned her in those grey apartments. When I got back to Wimblehurst I allowed myself to write him a boyishly sarcastic and sincerely bitter letter. He never replied. Then, believing it to be the only way of escape for me, I set myself far more grimly and resolutely to my studies than I had ever done before. After a time I wrote to him in more moderate terms, and he answered me evasively. And then I tried to dismiss him from my mind and went on working. Yes, that first raid upon London under the moist and chilly depression of January had an immense effect upon me. It was for me an epoch-making disappoint- ment. I had thought of London as a large, free, wel- coming, adventurous place, and I saw it slovenly and harsh and irresponsive. I did not realise at all what human things might be found behind those grey frontages, what weakness that whole forbidding fa9adc might presently confess. It is the constant error of youth to over-estimate the Will in things. I did not see that the dirt, the discourage- ment, the discomfort of London could be due simply to the fact that London was a witless old giantess of a town, too slack and stupid to keep herself clean and maintain a brave face to the world. No! I suffered from the sort of illusion that burnt witches in the seventeenth century. I endued her grubby disorder with a sinister and magnificent quality of intention. And my uncle's gestures and promises filled me with doubt and a sort of fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to AT WIMBLEIIURST 107 follow his erratic fortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises. I was to knrn better. But I worked with tlic terror of the grim underside of London in my soul during all my last year at Wimblehurst. END OF BODK t BOOK THE SECOND THE RISE OF TOXO-BUNGAY, CHAPTER THE FIRST HOW I BECAME A LONDON STUDENT AND WENT ASTRAY I I CAME to live in London, ns I slinll tell you, when I wns nearly twenty-two. Wiinblehurst dwindles in per- spective, is now in this book a little plaee far off, Uladcsover no more than a small jjinkish speck of frontage among the distant Kentish hills; the scene broadens out, becomes multitudinous and limitless, full of the sense of vast irrelevant movement. I do not remember ray second coming to London as I do my first, mir my early im])ressions, save that an October memory of softened amber sunshine stands out, amber sunshine falling on grey house fronts, I know not where. That, and a sctisc of a large tranquillity. . . . I could fill a book, I lliink, with a more or less imaginary account of how I came to apjirehend London, how first in one aspect and then in another it grew in my mind. Each d^y my aceumiiliting impressions were added to and qualified and brought into relationship with new ones; they fused inseparably with others that were purely personal and noeidental. I find myself with a certain comprehensive perception of London, conij)lex indeed, incurably indistinct in places and yet in some "av a whole that began with my first visit and is still ;::g mellowed and enriched. London ! At first, no doubt, it was a chaos of streets and people and buildings and reasonless going to and fro. Ill 112 TONO-BUNGAY I do not remember that I ever struggled very steadily to understand it, or explored it with any but a personal and adventurous intention. Yet in time there has grown up in me a kind of theory of London; I do think I see lines of an ordered structure out of which it has grown, detected a process that is something more than a con- fusion of casual accidents, though indeed it may be no more than a process of disease. I said at the outset of my first book that I find in Bladesover the clue to all England. Well, I certainly imagine it is the clue to the structure of London. There have been no revolutions, no deliberate restatements or abandonments of opinion in England since the days of the fine gentry, since 1688 or thereabouts, the days when Bladesover was built; there have been changes, dissolving forces, replacing forces, if you will ; but then it was that the broad lines of the English system set firmly. And as I have gone to and fro in London, in certain regions constantly the thought has recurred, this is Bladesover House, this answers to Bladesover House. The fine gentry may have gone ; they have indeed largely gone, I think; rich merchants may have replaced them, financial adventurers or what not. That does not matter ; the shape is still Bladesover. I am most reminded of Bladesover and Eastry by all those regions round about the M'est End parks, for example, estate parks, each more or less in relation to a palace or group of great houses. The roads and back ways of Mayfair and all about St. James's again, albeit perhaps of a later growth in point of time, were of the ver}^ spirit and architectural texture of the Bladesover passages and yards; they had the same smells, the space, tlie large cleanness, and always going to and fro there one met unmistakable Olympians, and even more unmistakable valets, butlers, footmen in mufti. There were moments when I seemed to gliuipse down A LONDOX STUDENT 113 areas the white panelling, the very chintz of my mother's room again. I could traec out now on a map what I would call the Great-House region; passing soutli-wc^tward into Belgravia, becoming diffused and sporadic westward, finding its last systematic outbreak round and about Regent's Park. The Duke of Devonshire's place in Piccadilly, in all its insolent ugliness, pleases me par- ticularly; it is the quintessence of the thing; Ajjsley Mouse is all in the manner of my theory. Park Lane has its quite typical mansions, and they run along tlie border of the Green Park and St. James's. And I struck out a truth one day in Cromwell Road quite sud- denly, as I looked over the Natural History Museum: " Hy Jove," said I, " but this is the little assemblage of cases of stuffed birds and animals upon the Blades- over staircase grown enormous, and yonder as the cor- responding thing to the Bladcsover curios and porcelain is the Art Museum, and there in the little observatories in Exhibition Road is old Sir Cuthbert's Gregorian tele- scope that I hunted out in the storeroom and put to- gether." And diving into the Art Museum under this inspiration, I came to a little reading-room and found, as I had inferred, old brown books ! It was really a good piece of social comparative anatomy I did that day; all these museums and libraries that are dotted over London between Piccadilly and West Kensington, and indeed the museum and library movement throughout the world, sprang from the elegant leisure of the gentlemen of taste. Theirs were the first libraries, the first houses of culture; by my rat- like raids into the Bladesovcr saloon I became, as it were, the last dwindled representative of such a man of letters as Swift. But now these things have escaped out of the Great House altogether, and token on a strange indei)endent life of their own. 114 TOXO-BUNGAY It is this idea of escaping parts from the seventeenth century system of Bladesover, of proliferating and over- growing elements from the Estates, that to this day seems to me the best explanation, not simply of London, but of all England. England is a country of great Renascence landed gentlefolk who have been uncon- sciously outgrown and overgrown. The proper shops for Bladesover custom were still to be found in Regent Street and Bond Street in my early London days — in those days they had been but lightly touched by the American's profaning hand — and in Piccadilly. I found the doctor's house of the country village or country town up and down Harley Street, multiplied but not otherwise different, and the family solicitor (by the hundred) further eastward in the abandoned houses of a previous generation of gentlepeople, and down in Westminster, behind Palladian fronts, the public offices sheltered in large Bladesoverish rooms and looked out on St. James's Park. The Parliament Houses of lords and gentlemen, the parliament house that was horrified when merchants and brewers came thrusting into it a hundred years ago, stood out upon its terrace gathering the whole system together into a head. And the more I have parallelled these things with my Bladesover-Eastrj' model, the more evident it has become to me that the balance is not the same, and the more evident is the presence of great new forces, blind forces of invasion, of growth. The railway termini on the north side of London have been kept as remote as Eastry had kept the railway-station from Wimblehurst; they stop on the very outskirts of the estates, but from the south, the South Eastern railway had butted its great stupid rusty iron head of Charing Cross station — that great head that came smashing down in IQO.'i — clean across the river, between Somerset House and Whitehall. The south side bad no protecting estates. A LONDON STUDENT 115 Factory chimneys smoke right over against Westminster with an air of carelessly not having permission, and the whole effect of industrial London and of all London east of Temple Bar and of the huge dingy immensity of London port, is to me of sometliing disproportionately large, something morbidly expanded, without plan or intention, dark and sinistiT toward the clean clear social assurance of the West End. And south of this central London, south-east, south-west, far west, north-west, all round the northern hills, are similar disproportionate growths, endless streets of undistinguished houses, un- distinguished industries, shabby families, second-rate shops, inexplicable people who in a once fashionable phrase do not " exist." All these aspects have suggested to my mind at times, do suggest to tliis day, the un- organised, abundant substance of some tumorous growth-process, a process which indeed bursts all the outlines of the aflVcted carcass and protrudes such masses as ignoble comfortable Croydon, as tragic im- poverished West Ham. To this day I ask myself will those masses ever become structural, will tlirj- indeed shape into anything new whatever, or is that cancerous image their true and ultimate diagnosis.^ . . . Moreover, together with this hypertrophy there is an immigration of elements that have never understood and never will understand the great tradition, wedges of foreign settlement embedded in the heart of this j-easty English expansion. One day I remember wan- dering eastward out of pure curiosity — it must have been in my early student days — and discovering a shabbily bright foreign quarter, shops displaying Hebrew placards and weird, unfamiliar commodities, and a concourse of bright-eyed, eagle-nosed people talk- ing some incomprehensible gibberish between the shops r.nd the barrows. And soon I became quite familiar with the devious, vicious, dirtily-plcoaant exoticism of 116 TONO-BUNGAY Soho. I found those crowded streets a vast relief from the dull grey exterior of Brompton where I lodged and lived my daily life. In Soho^ indeed, I got my first inkling of the factor of replacement that is so important in both the English and the American jDrocess. Even in the West End, in Mayfair and the squares about Pall Mall, Ewart was presently to remind me the face of the old aristocratic dignity was fairer than its substance; here were actors and actresses, here money- lenders and Jews, here bold financial adventurers, and I thought of my uncle's frayed cuff as he pointed out this house in Park Lane and that. That was so and so's who made a corner in borax, and that palace belonged to that hero among modern adrenturers, Barmentrude, who used to be an I.D.B., — an illicit diamond buyer that is to say. A city of Bladesovers, the capital of a kingdom of Bladesovers, all much shaken and many altogether in decay, parasitically occupied, insiduously replaced by alien, unsympathetic and irresponsible ele- ments; — and withal ruling an adventitious and miscel- laneous empire of a quarter of this daedal earth. Com- plex laws, intricate social necessities, disturbing in- satiable suggestions, followed from this. Such was the world into which I had come, into which I had in some way to thrust myself and fit my problem, my temp- tations, my efforts, my patriotic instinct, all my moral instincts, my physical appetites, my dreams and my vanity. London! I came up to it, young and without ad- visers, rather priggish, rather dangerously open-minded and very open-eyed, and with something — it is, I think, the common gift of imaginative youth, and I claim it unblushingly — fine in me, finer than the world and seeking fine responses. I did not want simply to live or simply to live happily or well; I wanted to serve A LOXDOX STUDENT 117 nnd do and make — with some nobility. It was in nic. It is iu half the youth of the world. II f li.id come to London ns a scholar. I had taken \'int'i'nt Urailley scholarship of the Pharmaceutical . - .ity, but 1 threw this up when I found that my work of the Science and Art Department in mathe- matics, physics nnd chcmistrj' had given me one of the minor Technical Board Scholarships at the Con- solidated Technical Schools at South Kensington. This latter was in mechanics and metallurgy; and I hesitated between the two. The Vincent Bradley gave me XTO a year nnd quite the best start-off a pharmaceutical chemist could have; the South Kensington thing was worth about twenty-two shillings a week, and the pros- pects it opened were vague. But it meant far more scientiHc work than the former, and I was still under the impulse of that great intellectual appetite that is part of the adolescence of men of my type. Moreover, it seaned to lead towards engineering, in which I imagined — I imagine to this day — my particular use is to be found. I took its greater uncertainty ns a fair risk. I came up very keen, not doubting that liie really hard and steady industry that had carried me through Wimblchurst would go on still in tiie new surroundings. Only from the very first it didn't . . . A\1kii I look back now at my Wimblchurst days, I still find myself surprised at the amount of steady grinding study, of strenuous self-discipline tiiat I main- tained tliroughout my apprenticeship. In many ways I think that time was the most honour.xble )UTiod in oiy life. I wish I could say with a certain mind that my motives iu working so well were larg^ and honour- 118 TONO-BUNGAY able too. To a certain extent they were so; there was a fine sincere curiosity, a desire for the strength and power of scientific knowledge and a passion for intel- lectual exercise ; but I do not think those forces alone would have kept me at it so grimly and closely if Wim- blehurst had not been so dull, so limited and so ob- servant. Directly I came into the London atmosphere, tasting freedom, tasting irresponsibility and the pull of new forces altogether, my discipline fell from me like a garment. Wimblehurst to a youngster in my position offered no temptations worth counting, no interests to conflict with study, no vices — such vices as it offered were coarsely stripped of any imaginative glamour — dull drunkenness, clumsy leering shameful lust, no social intercourse even to waste one's time, and on the otlier hand it would minister greatly to the self-esteem of a conspicuously industrious student. One was marked as " clever," one played up to the part, and one's little accomplishment stood out finely in one's private reckon- ing against the sunlit small ignorance of that agreeable place. One went with an intent rush across the market square, one took one's exercise with as dramatic a sense of an ordered day as an Oxford don, one burnt the mid- night oil quite consciously at the rare, respectful, be- nighted passer-by. And one stood out finely in the local paper with one's unapproachable yearly harvest of certificates. Thus I was not only a genuinely keen student, but also a little of a prig and poseur in those days — and the latter kept the former at it, as London made clear. Moreover, Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction. But I did not realise all this when I came to London, did not perceive how the change of atmosphere began at once to warp and distribute my energies. In the first place I became invisible. If I idled for a day, no one except my fellow-students (who evidently had no A LOXDOX STUDENT 110 awe for mc) rrniarkrd it. No one s.iw my midnight taper; no one pointed nie out as I crossed the street as an astonishing intelleclu.il jihenonicnon. In the next place I K-canic inconsidernble. In Winiblchurst I felt I stood for Science; nobody there seemed to have so much as I and to have it so fully and completely. In London I walked ignorant in an immensity, and it was clear that among my fellow-students from the midl.inds and the north I was ill-equipped and under-trained. With the utmost exertion I should only take a .srcondnry position among them. And finally, in the third place, I was distracted by voluminous new interests ; London took hold of nic, and Science, which had been the uni- verse, shrank back to the dimensions of tiresome little formulae compacted in a book. I came to London in late Scptenil)fr, and it was a very different London from that great greylv-ovcreast, smoke-stained house-wilder- ness of my first impressions. I reached it by Victoria and not by Cannon Street, and its centre was now in Exhibition Road. It shone, pale amber, blue-grey and tenderly spacious and fine under clear autumnal skies, a London of hugely handsome buildings and vistas and distances, a London of gardfns and labyrinthine tall museums, of old trees and remote palaces and artificial waters. I lodged near by in West Brompton at a house in a little square. So London faced me the second time, making me forget altogether for a while the grey, drizzling city visage that had first looked upon me. I settled down and went to and fro to my lectures and laboratory; in the beginning I worked hard, and only slowly did the curiosity that presently possessed me to know more of this huge urban province arise, the desire to find some- thing beyond mechanism that I could serve, some use other than learning. With this was a growing sense of loneliness, a desire for adventure and intercourse. I 120 TONO-BUNGAY found myself in the evenings poring over a map of London I had bought, instead of copying out lecture notes — and on Sundays I made explorations, taking omnibus rides east and west and north and south, and so enlarging and broadening the sense of great swarm- ing hinterlands of humanity with whom I had no deal- ings, of whom I knew nothing. . . . The whole illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and sometimes outrageous possibility, of hidden but magnificent meanings. It wasn't simply that I received a vast impression of space and multitude and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged from neglected, veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of perception. Close at hand in the big art museum I came for the first time upon the beauty of nudity, which I had hitherto held to be a shameful secret, flaunted and gloried in; I was made aware of beauty as not only permissible, but desirable and frequent, and of a thou- sand hitherto unsuspected rich aspects of life. One night in a real rapture, I walked round the upper gal- lery of the Albert Hall and listened for the first time to great music; I believe now that it was a rendering of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. . . . My apprehension of spaces and places was reinforced by a quickened apprehension of persons. A constant stream of people passed by me, eyes met and challenged mine and passed — more and more I wanted them to stay — if I went eastward towards Piccadilly, women who seemed then to my boyish inexperience softly splendid and alluring, murmured to me as they passed. Extraordinarily life unveiled. The very hoardings clamoured strangely at one's senses and curiosities. One bought pamphlets and papers full of strange and daring ideas transcending one's boldest; in the parks one heard men discussing the very existence of God, denying the A LONDOX STUDENT 121 s of property, debating a hundred things that one (land not think about in Wiinblchurst. And after the ordinary overcast day, after dull mornings, came twi- light, and London lit up and became a thing of wliite and yellow and red jewels of light and wonderful floods of golden illumination and stupendous and unfathom- able shadows — and there were no longer any mean or shabby people — but a great mysterious movement of unaccountable beings. . . Always I was coming on the queerest new aspects. Late one Saturday night I found myself one of a great slow-moving crowd between the blazing shops and the flaring barrows in the Harrow Road ; I got into com-er- Sation with two bold-eyed girls, bought them boxes of chocolate, made the acquaintance of father and mother and various younger brothers and sisters, sat in a publie- liousc hilariously with them all, standing and being stood drinks, and left them in the small hours at the door of " home," never to see them again. And once I was accosted on the outskirts of a Salvation Army meet- ing in one of the parks by a silk-hatted young man of eager and serious discourse, who argued against scepti- cism with me, invited me home to tea into a clean and cheerful family of brothers and sisters and friends, and there I spent the evening singing hymns to the harmonium (which reminded me of half- forgotten Chat- ham) and wishing all the sisters were not so obviously engaged. . . . Then on the remote hill of this boundless city-world, I found Ewart, III How well I remember the first morning, a bright Sunday morning in early October, when I raided in upon Ewnrt! I found my old schoolfellow in bed in a room over an oil-shop in a back street at the foot of 122 TONO-BUXGAY Highgate Hill. His landlady, a pleasant, dirty young woman with soft brown eyes, brought down his message for me to come up; and up I went. Tlie room presented itself as ample and interesting in detail and shabby with a quite commendable shabbiness. I had an impression of brown walls — they were papered with brown paper — of a long shelf along one side of the room, with dusty plaster casts and a small cheap lay figure of a horse, of a table and something of grey wax partially covered with a cloth, and of scattered drawings. There was a gas stove in one corner, and some enamelled ware that had been used for overnight cooking. The oilcloth on the floor was streaked with a peculiar white dust. Ewart himself was not in the first instance visible, but only a fourfold canvas screen at the end of the room from which shouts proceeded of " Come on ! " then his wiry black hair, very much rumpled, and a staring red-brown eye and his stump of a nose came round the edge of this at a height of about three feet from the ground. " It's old Ponderevo ! " he said, " the Early Bird ! And he's caught the worm ! By Jove, but it's cold this morning ! Come round here and sit on the bed ! " I walked round, wrung his hand, and we surveyed one another. He was lying on a small wooden fold-up bed, the scanty covering of which was supplemented by an over- coat and an elderly but still cheerful pair of check trousers, and he was wearing pyjamas of a virulent pink and green. His neck seemed longer and more stringy than it had been even in our schooldays, and his upper lip had a wiry black moustache. The rest of his ruddy, knobby countenance, his erratic hair and his general hairy leanness had not even — ^to my per- ceptions — grown. " By Jove ! " he said, " you've got quite decent-look- ing, Ponderevo! What do you think of me? " A LOXDOX STUDENT 128 " You're all right. What are you doing here?" "Art, my son — sculpture! And ineidentally " He hesitated. " I ply a trade. Will you hand me that pipe and those smoking tilings? So! You can't make coffee, eh? Well, try your hand. Cast down this screen — no — fold it up and so we'll go into the other room. I'll keep in bed all the same. The fire's a gas stove. Yes. Don't make it bang too loud as you light it — I can't stand it this morning. You won't smoke? . . . Well, it docs me good to sec you again, Ponderevo. Tell me what j'ou'rc doing, and how you're getting on." He directed nic in the service of his simple hospi- tality', and presently I came back to his bed and sat down and smiled at him there, smoking comfortably, with his hands undiT his hcid, surveying me. "How's Life's Morning, Ponderevo? By Jove, it must be nearly six years since we met ! We've got moustaches. We've fleshed ourselves a bit, eh? And you ? " I felt a pijic was becoming after all, and that lit, I gave him a favourable sketch of my career. " Science ! And you've worked like that ! Wliilc I've been potting round doing odd jobs for stone-masons and people, and trying to get to sculpture. I've a sort of fifling that the chisel I began with painting, Ponderevo, and found I was colour-blind, colour-blind enough to stop it. I've drawn about and thought about — thought more particularly. I give myself three days a week as an art student, and the rest of the time — I've a sort of trade that keeps me. And we're still in the beginning of things, young men starting. Do you remember the old times at Goudhurst, our doll's-housc island, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Young Holmes and the rabbits, eh? It's surprising, if you think of it, to find we are still young. And we used to talk of what 124 TONO-BUNGAY we would be, and we used to talk of love ! I suppose you know all about that now, Ponderevo ? " I flushed and hesitated on some vague foolish lie. " No," I said, a little ashamed of the truth. " Do you? I've been too busy." "I'm just beginning — just as we were then. Things happen " He sucked at his pipe for a space and stared at the plaster cast of a flayed hand that hung on the wall. " The fact is, Ponderevo, I'm beginning to find life a most extraordinary queer set-out; the things that pull one, the things that don't. The wants This business of sex. It's a net. No end to it, no way out of it, no sense in it. There are times when women take possession of me, when my mind is like a painted ceiling at Hampton Court with the pride of tlie flesh sprawling all over it. Why? . . . And then again sometimes when I have to encounter a woman, I am overwhelmed by a terror of tantalising boredom — I fly, I hide, I do anything. You've got your scientific explanations per- haps; what's Nature and the universe up to in that matter.^ " " It's her way, I gather, of securing the continuity of the species." " But it doesn't," said Ewart. " That's just it! No. I have succumbed to — dissipation — down the hill there. Euston Road way. And it was damned ugly and mean, and I hate having done it. And the continuity of the species — Lord ! . . . And why does Nature make a man so infernally ready for drinks? There's no sense in that anyhow." He sat up in bed, to put this question with the greater earnestness. " And why has she given me a most violent desire towards sculpture and an equally violent desire to leave ofi" work directly I begin it, eh? . . . Let's have some more cofi'ee. I put it A LONDON STUDENT 125 to you, these things puzzle me, Ponderevo. They dis- hearten me. They keep me in bed." He had an air of having saved up these difficulties for me for some time. He sat with his chin almost touching his knees, sucking at his pipe. " That's what I mean," he went on, " when I say life is getting on to me as extraordinnrilj- queer. I don't see my game, nor why I was invited. And I don't make anything of the world outside either. What do you make of it.* " " London," I began. " It's — so enormous ! " " Isn't it! And it's all up to nothing. You find chaps keeping grocers' shops — why the devil, Ponderevo, do they keep grocers' shops? They all do it very care- fully, very steadily, very meanly. You find people run- ning about and doing the most remarkable things — being policemen, for example, and burglars. They go about these businesses quite gravely and earnestly. I — somehow — can't go about mine. Is there any sense in it at all — anywhere.' " " There must be sense in it," I said. " We're young." " We're young — yes. But one must inquire. The grocer's a grocer because, I suppose, he sees he comes in there. I-'eels that on the whole it amounts to a call. . . . But the bother is I don't see where I come in at all. Do j-ou ? " " Where you come in ? " " No, where you come in." " Not exactly, yet," I said. " I want to do some good in the world — something — something effectual, be- fore I die. I have a sort of idea my scientific work I don't know." " Yes," he mused. " And I've got a sort of idea my sculpture, — but how it is to come in and tvhy, — I've no idea at all." He hugged his knees for a space. " That's what puzzles me, Ponderevo, no end." 126 TONO-BCJNGAY He became animated. " If you will look in that cupboard," he said, " you will find an old respectable- looking roll on a plate and a knife somewhere and a gallipot containing butter. You give them me and I'll make my breakfast, and then if you don't mind watching me paddle about at my simple toilet I'll get up. Then we'll go for a walk and talk about this affair of life further. And about Art and Literature and any- thing else that crops up on the way. . . . Yes, that's the gallipot. Cockroach got in it? Chuck him out — ■ damned interloper. . . ." So in the first five minutes of our talk, as I seem to remember it now, old Ewart struck the note that ran through all that morning's intercourse. . . . To me it was a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new horizons of thought. I'd been working rather close and out of touch with Ewart's free gesticu- lating way. He was pessimistic that day and sceptical to the very root of things. He made me feel clearh', what I had not felt at all before, the general adven- turousness of life, particularly of life at the stage we had reached, and also the absence of definite objects, of any concerted purpose in the lives that were going on all round us. He made me feel, too, how ready I was to take up commonplace assumptions. Just as I had always imagined that somewhere in social arrangements there was certainly a Head-Master who would intervene if one went too far, so I had always had a sort of im- plicit belief that in our England there were somewhere- people who understood what we were all, as a nation, about. That crumpled into his pit of doubt and van- ished. He brought out, sharply cut and certain, the immense effect of purposelessness in London that I was already indistinctly feeling. We found ourselves at last returning through Highgate Cemetery and Water- low Park — and Ewart was talking. A LONDOX STUDENT 127 " Look at it there," he said, stopping and pointing to the great vale of London spreading wide and far. " It's like a sea — and we swim in it. And at last down wc go, and then up we conic — washed up here." He swung liis arms to the long slopes ahout us, tombs and headstones in long perspectives, in limitless rows. " We're young, Pondcrtvo, but sooner or later our whitened memories will wasli up on one of these beaches, on some such bcaeii as this. George Ponderevo, I'.R.S., Sidney Ewart, R.I. P. Look at the rows of 'em!" He p.tused. "Do you sec that hand.' The hand, I mean, pointing upward, on the top of a blunted obelisk. Yes. Well, tliat's what I do for a living — wlien I'm not thinking, or drinking, or prowling, or making love, or pretending I'm trying to be a sculptor without either tlie money or the morals for a model. See? And I do those iicarts atire and those pensive angel guardians with the palm of peace. D.imned well I do 'em and damned cheap! I'm a sweated victim, Ponderevo . . ." That was the way of it, anyhow. I drank deep of talk tliat day; we went into tlieologv, into ))!iilosophy ; I had ray first glimpse of socialism. I felt as though I had been silent in a silence since I and he had parted. At the thought of socialism Ewart's moods changed for a time to a sort of energy. " After all, all this con- founded vagueness might be altered. If you could get men to work together . . ." It was a good talk that rambled through all the uni- verse. I thouglit I was giving my mind refreshment, but indeed it was dissipation. All sorts of ideas, even now, carry me back as it were to a fountain-head, to Waterlow Park and my resuscitated Ewart. There stretches away south of us long garden slopes and white gravestones and the wide expanse of London, and some- where in the picture is a red old wall, sun-warmed, and a great blaze of Michaelmas daisies set off with late 128 TONO-BUNGAY golden sunflowers and a drift of mottled, blood-red, fallen leaves. It was with me that day as though I had lifted my head suddenly out of dull and immediate things and looked at life altogether. . . . But it played the very devil with the copying up of my arrears of notes to which I had vowed the latter half of that day. After that reunion Ewart and I met much and talked much, and in our subsequent encounters his monologue was interrupted and I took my share. He had exercised me so greatly that I lay awake at nights thinking him over, and discoursed and answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical as- sertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and ener- getic nature to active protests. " It's all so pointless," I said, " because people are slack and because it's in the ebb of an age. But you're a socialist. Well, let's bring that about ! And there's a purpose. There you are ! " Ewart gave me all my first conceptions of socialism; in a little while I was an enthusiastic socialist and he was a passive resister to the practical exposition of the theories he had taught me. " We must join some organi- sation," I said. " We ought to do things. . . . We ought to go and speak at street corners. People don't know." You must figure me a rather ill-dressed young man in a state of great earnestness, standing up in that shabby studio of his and saying these things, perhaps with some gesticulations, and Ewart with a clay- smudged face, dressed perhaps in a flannel shirt and trousers, with a pipe in his mouth, squatting philosoph- ically at a table, working at some chunk of clay that never got beyond suggestion. A LONDON STUDENT 129 " I wonder why one doesn't want to," he said. . . . It was onl_v very slowly I came to gauge Eu art's real position in the scheme of tilings, to understand how deliberate and complete was this detachment of his from the moral condemnation and responsibilities that played so fine a part in his talk. His was essentially the nature of an artistic appreciator; he could find interest and beauty in endless aspects of things that I marked as evil, or at least as not negotiable; and the impulse I had towards self-deception, to sustained and consistent self- devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and he gave me a stTies of little shocks of discovery throughout our inter- course. The first of these came in the realisation that he quite seriously meant to do nothing in the world at all towards reforming tlie evils he laid bare in so ensy and dexterous a manner. The next came in the sudden appearance of a person called " Milly " — I've forgotten her surname — whom I found in his room one evening, simply attired in a blue wrap — the rest of her costume behind the screen — smoking cigarettes and sharing a flagon of an ama«in;;ly cheap and self-assertive grocer's wine Ewart affected, called " Canary Sack." " Hullo! " said Ewart, as I came in. " This is Milly, you know. She's been being a model — she is a model really. . . . (Keep calii', Pondcrevo!) Have some sack?" .Millj* was a woman of thirty, perhaps, with a broad, rather pretty face, a placid disposition, a bad accent and delightful blond hair that waved off her head with an irrepressible variety of charm ; and whenever Ewart spoke she beamed at him. Ewart was always sketching this hair of hers and embarking ujjon clay statuettes of lier thot were never finished. She was, I know now, a woman of the streets, whom Ewart had picked up in 130 TONO-BUNGAY the most casual manner, and who had fallen in love with him, but my inexperience in those days was too great for me to place her then, and Ewart offered no elucidations. She came to him, he went to her, they took holidays together in the country when certainly she sustained her fair share of their expenditure. I suspect him now even of taking money from her. Odd old Ewart ! It was a relationship so alien to mj' orderly conceptions of honour, to what I could imagine any friend of mine doing, that I really hardly saw it with it there under my nose. But I see it and I think I understand it now. . . . Before I fully grasped the discursive manner in which Ewart was committed to his particular way in life, I did, I say, as the broad constructive ideas of socialism took hold of me, try to get him to work with me in some definite fashion as a socialist. "We ought to join on to other socialists," I said. " They've got something." " Let's go and look at some first." After some pains we discovered the office of the Fabian Society, lurking in a cellar in Clement's Inn; and we went and interviewed a rather discouraging secretary who stood astraddle in front of a fire and questioned us severely and seemed to doubt the integrity of our intentions profoundly. He advised us to attend the next open meeting in Clifford's Inn and gave us the necessary data. We both contrived to get to the affair, and heard a discursive gritty paper on Trusts and one of the most inconclusive discussions you can imagine. Three-quarters of the speakers seemed under some jocu- lar obsession which took the form of pretending to be conceited. It was a sort of family joke, and as strangers to the family we did not like it. . . . As we came out through the narrow passage from Clifford's Inn to the Strand, Ewart suddenly pitched upon a wizened, A LONDON STUDENT 131 spectacled little man in a vast felt hat and a large orange tie. " How many members arc there in this Fabian So- eii"ty of yours? " he asked. The little man became at once defensive in Iiis manner. "About seven hundred," he said; "perhaps eight." " Liki- — like the ones herei' " The little man gave a nervous self-satisfied laugh. " I suppose they're up to sample," he said. The little man dropped out of existence and we emerged upon the Strand. Ewart twisted his arm into a qucerly eloquent gesture that gathered up all the tall fa9ades of the banks, the business places, tlie projecting clock and towers of the Law Courts, the advcrtiscuients, the luminous signs, into one social immensity, into a capitalistic system gigantic and invincible. " These socialists have no sense of proportion," he said. "What can you expect of them?" IV Ewart, as the embodiment of talk, was certainly a leading factor in my conspicuous failure to go on study- ing. Social theory in its lirst crude form of Democratic Socialism gripped my intelligence more and more power- fully. I argued in the laboratory with the man who shared my bench until we quarrelled and did not speak. And also I fell in love. The ferment of sex had been creeping into my being like a slowly advancing tide through all my Wimble- hurst days, the stimulus of London was like the rising of a wind out of the sea that brings the waves in fast and high. Ewart had his share in that. More and more acutely and unmistakably did my perception of beauty in form and sound, my desire for adventure, my desire 132 TONO-BUNGAY for intercourse, converge on this central and command- ing business of the individual life. I had to get me a mate. I began to fall in love faintly -with girls I passed in the street, with women who sat before me in trains, with girl fellow-students, with ladies in passing car- riages, with loiterers at the corners, with neat-handed waitresses in shops and tea-rooms, with pictures even of girls and women. On my rare visits to the theatre I always became exalted, and found the actresses and even the spectators about me mysterious, attractive, creatures of deep interest and desire. I had a stronger and stronger sense that among these glancing, passing multitudes there was somewhere one who was for me. And in spite of every antagonistic force in the world, there was something in my very marrow that insisted: " Stop ! Look at this one ! Think of her ! Won't she do ? This signiiies — this before all things signifies ! Stop ! Why are you hurrying by ? This may be the predestined person— before all others." It is odd that I can't remember when first I saw Marion, who became my wife — whom I was to make wretched, who was to make me wretched, who was to pluck that fine generalised possibility of love out of my early manhood and make it a personal conflict. I be- came aware of her as one of a number of interesting attractive figures that moved about in my world, that glanced back at my eyes, that flitted by with a kind of averted watchfulness. I would meet her coming through the Art ^Museum, which was my short cut to the Bromp- ton Road, or see her sitting, reading as I thought, in one of the bays of the Education Library. But really, as I found out afterwards, she never read. She used to come there to eat a bun in quiet. She was a -very grace- fully-moving figure of a girl then, very plainly dressed, with dark brown hair I remember, in a knot low on het A LONDON STUDENT 133 neck behind that confessed the pretty roundness of her head and harmonised with the admirable linirs of ears and check, tlie grave serenity of nioufli and brow. She stood out among the other girls very distinctly because they dressed more than she did, struck em])hatic notes of colour, startled one by novelties in hats and bows and things. I've always hated the rustle, the disconcerting colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women's clothes. Her plain black dress gave her a starkness. . . . I do remember, though, how one afternoon I dis- covered the peculiar appeal of her form for me. I had been restless with my work and had finally slipped out of the Laboratory and come over to the Art Museum to lounge among the pictures. I came uj)on her in an odd corner of the Sheepshanks gallery, intently copying something from a picture that hung high. I had just been in the gallery of casts from the antique, my mind was all alive with my newly awakened sense of line, and there she stood with face upturned, her body droop- ing forward from the hips just a little — memorably graceful — feminine. After that I know I sought to see her, felt a dis- tinctive emotion at her presence, began to imagine things about her. I no longer thought of generalised womanhood or of this casual person or that. I thought of her. An accident brought us together. I found myself one Monday morning in an omnibus staggering west- ward from V'ictoria — I was returning from a Sunday I'd spent at Wimblehurst in response to a unique freak of hospitality on the part of Mr. Mantell. She was the sole other inside passenger. And when the time came to -pay her fare, she became an extremely scared, disconcerted and fumbling young woman ; she had left her purse at home. 134 TONO-BUNGAY Luckily I had some money. She looked at me with startled, troubled brown eyes; she permitted my proffered payment to the conductor with a certain ungraciousness that seemed a part of her shyness, and then as she rose to go, she thanked me with an obvious affectation of ease. " Thank you so much," she said in a pleasant soft voice; and then less gracefully, "Awfully kind of you, you know." I fancy I made polite noises. But just then I wasn't disposed to be critical. I was full of the sense of her presence; her arm was stretched out over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body was near me. The words we used didn't seem very greatly to matter. I had vague ideas of getting out with her — and I didn't. That encounter, I have no doubt, exercised me enor- mously. I lay awake at night rehearsing it, and wonder- ing about the next phase of our relationship. That took the form of the return of my twopence. I was in the Science Library, digging something out of the Ency- clopcedia Britannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an evidently premedi- tated thin envelope, bulgingly confessing the coirrs within. " It was so very kind of you," she said, " the other day. I don't know what I should have done, Mr. " I supplied my name. " I knew," I said, " you were a student here." " Not exactly a student. I " " Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I'm a student myself at the Consolidated Technical Schools." I plunged into autobiography and questionings, and so entangled her in a conversation that got a quality of intimacy through the fact that, out of deference to our A LOXDOX STUDENT 135 fcllow-rcndcrs, we were obliged to speak in undertones. And I have no doubt that in substance it was singularly banal. Indeed I have an impression that all our early conversations were incredibly banal. We met several times in a manner half-accidental, half-furtive and wholly awkward. Mentally I didn't take hold of her. I never did take hold of her mentally. Her talk, I now know all too clearly, was shallow, pretentious, evasive. Only — even to this day — I don't remember it as in any way vulgar. She was, I could sec quite clearly, anxious to overstate or conceal her real social status, a little desirous to be taken for a student in the art school and a little ashamed that she wasn't. She came to the museum to " copy things," and this, I gathered, had something to do with some way of partially earning her living that I wasn't to inquire into. I told her things about myself, vain things that I felt might ap- peal to her, but that I learnt long afterwards made her think me " conceited." We talked of books, but there she was very much on her guard and secretive, and rather more freely of pictures. She " liked " pictures. I think from the outset I appreciated and did not for a moment resent that hers was a commonplace mind, that she was the unconscious custodian of something that had gripped my most intimate instinct, that she embodied the hope of a possibility, was the careless proprietor of a physical quality that had turned my head like strong win?. I felt I had to stick to our acquaintance, flat as it was. Presently we should get through these irrelevant exterior things, and come to the reality of love beneath. I saw her in dreams released, as it were, from her- self, beautiful, worshipful, glowing. And sometimes when we were together, we would come on silences through sheer lack of matter, and then my eyes would feast on her, and the silence seemed like the drawing lae TONO-BUNGAY back of a curtain — her superficial self. Odd, I confess. Odd, particularly, the enormous hold of certain things about her upon me, a certain slight rounded duskiness of skin, a certain perfection 'of modelling in her lips, her brow, a certain fine flow about the slioulders. Slie wasn't indeed beautiful to many people— these things are beyond explaining. She had manifest defects of form and feature, and they didn't matter at all. Her complexion was bad, but I don't think it would have mattered if it had been positively unwholesome. I had extraordinarily limited, extraordinarily painful, desires. I longed intolerably to kiss her lips. The affair was immensely serious and commanding to me. I don't remember that in these earlier phases I had any thought of turning back at all. It was clear to me that she regarded me with an eye entirely more critical than I had for her, that she didn't like my scholarly untidiness, my want of even the most common- place style. '" Why do you wear collars like that? " she said, and sent me in pursuit of gentlemanly neckwear. I remember when she invited me a little abruptly one day to come to tea at her home on the following Sunday and meet her father and mother and aunt, that I immediately doubted whether my hitherto unsuspected best clothes would create the impression she desired me to make on her belongings. I put off the encounter until the Sunday after, to get myself in order. I had a morning coat made and I bought a silk hat, and had my reward in the first glance of admiration she ever gave me. I wonder how many of my sex are as pre- posterous. I was, you see, abandoning all my beliefs — ■ all my conventions unasked. I was forgetting myself — immensely. And there was a conscious shame in it A LONDON STUDENT 137 nil. Never a word did I breathe to Ewnrt — to niiy living soul — of what was going on. Her father and niothcr and aunt struck me as the dismnlest of people, and her home in Walhaui Green was chiefly notable for its black and amber tapestry carpets and curtains and table-elotlis, and the age and irrelevance of its books, mostly books with faded pilt on the covers. The windows were fortified 'against the intrusive eye by cheap lace curtains and an " art pot " upon an unstable octagonal table. Several framed Art School drawings of Marion's, bearing official South Kensington marks of approval, adorned the room, and there was a black and gilt jiiano with a hymn-book on the top of it. There were draped mirrors over all Uie mantels, and above the sideboard in the dining- room in which we sat at tea was a ' portrait of her father, villainoush' truthful after the manner of such works. I couldn't see a trace of the 'beauty I found in her in either parent, yet she somehow contrived to be like them both. These people pretended in a way that reminded me of the Three Great Women in my mother's room, but they had not nearly so raueii social knowledge and did not do it nearly so well. 'Also, I remarked, they did it with an eye on Marion. They had wanted to thank me, they said, for the kindness to their daughter in the matter of the 'bus fare, and so accounted for anything unusual in their invitation. They posed as simple gentle- folk, a little hostile to the rush and gadding-about of London, preferring a secluded and unpretentious quiet. \N'hen Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for tea, a card bearing the word " Ap.\htments " fell to the floor. I picked it up and gave it to her before I realised from her quickened coluur that 1 should not have seen it; that j)robably it 138 TOXO-BUNGAY had been removed from the window in honour of my coming. Her father spoke once in a large remote way of the claims of business engagements, and it was only long afterwards I realised that he was a supernumerary clerk in the'Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful man at home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown eyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a paper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a large Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also he cultivated the little garden-yard be- hind the house, and he had a small greenhouse with tomatoes. " I wish I 'ad 'eat," he said. " One can do such a lot 'with 'eat. But I suppose you can't 'ave everything you want in this world." Both he and Marion's mother treated her with a deference that struck me 'as the most natural thing in the world. Her own manner changed, became more authoritative and watchful, her shyness disappeared. She had taken a line of her own I gathered, draped the mirror, got the second-hand piano, and broken her parents in. Her mother must once have been 'a pretty woman ; she had regular features and Marion's hair witliout 'its lustre, but she was thin and careworn. The aunt. Miss Ramboat, was a large, abnormally shy person very like her brother, and I don't recall anything she said on this occasion. To begin with there was a good deal of tension — Marion was frightfully nervous and every one was under the necessity of behaving in a mysteriously unreal fashion until I plunged, became talkative and made a certain ease and interest. I told them of the schools, of my lodgings, of Wimblehurst and my apprenticeship days. " There's a lot of this Science about nowadays," A LONDON STUDENT 139 Mr. Ramlmat reflected; "but I sometimes wonder a bit what good it is? " I was young enough to be led into what he called " a bit of a discussion," which Marion truncated before our voices became unduly raised. " I dare say," she said, " there's much to be said on both sides." I remember Marion's mother asked mc what church I attended, and that I replied evasively. After tea there was music and we sang hymns. I doubted if I had a voice when this was proposed, but that was held to be a trivial objection, and I found sitting close beside the sweep of hair from Marion's brow had many com- pensations. I discovered her mother sitting in tlie horsehair armchair and regarding us sentimentally. I went for a walk with Marion towards Putney Bridge, and then there was more singing and a supper of cold bacon and pie, after which Mr. Ilamboat and I smoked. During that walk, I remember, she told nic the import of her sketchings and copyings in the museum. A cousin of a friend of hers whom she spoke of as Smithie, had de\elopcd an original business in a sort of tea-gown garment which she called a Persian Robe, a plain sort of wrap with a gaily embroidered yoke, and Marion went there and worked in the busy times. In the times that weren't busy she designed novelties in yokes by an assiduous use of eyes and note-book in the museum, and went home and traced out the captured forms on the foundation material. " I don'c get much," said Marion, " but it's interesting, and in the busy times we work all day. Of course the workgirls arc dreadfully common, but we don't say much to them. And Smithie talks enough for ten." I quite understood tlie workgirls were dreadfully common. I don't remember that the Walham Green menage and 140 TOXO-BUXGAY the quality of these people, nor the light they threw on Marion, detracted in the slightest degree at that time from the intent resolve that held me to make her mine. I didn't like them. But I took them as part of the affair. Indeed, on the whole, I think they threw her up by an effect of contrast; she was so obviously controlling them, so consciously superior to them. More and more of my time did I give to this passion that possessed me. I began to think chiefly of ways of pleasing Marion, of acts of devotion, of treats, of sumptuous presents for her, of appeals she would tmder- stand. If at times she was manifestly unintelligent, if her ignorance became indisputable, I told myself her simple instincts were worth all the education and in- telligence in the world. And to this day I think I wasn't really wrong about her. There was something extraor- dinarily fine about her, somethiirg simple and high, that flickered in and out of her ignorance and common- ness and limitations like the tongue from the month of a snake. . . . One night I was privileged to meet her and bring her home from an entertainment at the Birkbeck Institute. We came back on the underground railway and we travelled first-class — that being the highest class avail- able. We were alone in the carriage, and for the first time I ventured to put my arm about her. " You mustn't," she said feebly. " I love you," I whispered suddenly with my heart beating wildly, drew her to me, drew all her beauty to me and kissed her cool and unresisting lips. " Love me ? " she said, struggling away from me, " Don't ! " and then, as the train ran into a station, " You must teU no one. ... I don't know. . . . You shouldn't have done that. . . ." Then two other people got in with us and terminated my wooing for a time. A LONDON STUDENT 141 \\TiPn we found ourselves alone togetlier, walking towards Battcrsca, she had decided to be olTcndod. I partrd from her un forgiven and terribly distressed. When we met again, she told me I must never do " that " again. I had dreamt that to kiss her lips was ultimate satis- faction. But it was indeed only the beginning of de- sires. I told her my one ambition was to marry her. " But," she said, " you're not in a position What's the good of talking like that?" I stared at her. " I mean to," I said. " You can't," she answered. "It will be years " " But I love you," I insisted. I stood not a yard from the sweet lips I had kissed; I stood within arm's length of the inanimate beauty I desired to quicken, and I saw opening between us a gulf of years, toil, waiting, disappointments and an immense uncertainty. "I love you," I said. "Don't you love me?" She looked me in the face with grave irresponsive eyes. " I don't know," she said. " I like you, of course. . . . One has to be sensible . . ." I can remember now my sense of frustration by her unresilicnt reply. I should have perceived then that for her my ardour had no quickening fire. But how was I to know? I had let myself come to want her, my imagination endowed her with infinite possibilities. I wanted her and wanted her, stupidly and in- stinctively. . . . "But/' I said; "Love !" " One has to be sensible," she replied. " I like going about with you. Can't we keep as we are? " 142 TONO-BUNGAY VI Well, you begin to understand my breakdown now. I have been copious enough with these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my behaviour de- generated, my punctuality declined; I was more and more outclassed in the steady grind by my fellow- students. Such supplies of moral energy as I still had at command shaped now in the direction of serving Marion rather than science. I fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped men from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent, hard-breath- ing students I found against me, fell at last from keen rivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the lists. Then Indeed I made it a point cf honour to show by my public disregard of every rule that I really did not even pretend to try. . . . So one day I found myself sitting in a mood of considerable astonishment in Kensington Gardens, re- flecting on a recent heated interview with the school Registrar in which I had displayed more spirit than sense. I was astonished chiefly at my stupendous fall- ing away from all the militant ideals of unflinching study I had brought up from Wimblehurst. I had displayed myself, as the Registrar put it, " an unmiti- gated rotter." My failure to get marks in the written examination had only been equalled by the insufliiciency of my practical work. " I ask you," the Registrar had said, " what will become of you when your scholarship runs out ? " It certainly was an interesting question. \'^Tiat tvas going to become of me? It was clear there would be nothing for me in the schools as I had once dared to hope; there seemed;. A LONDOX STUDENT 143 indwd, scarcely anything in the world except an ill- p;iid nssistantship in some provincial organized Science School or grammar school. I knew that for that sort of work, without a degree or any qualification, one earned hardly a bare living and had little leisure to struggle up to anything better. If only I had even as little as fifty pounds I might hold out in London and take my B.Sc. degree, and quadruple my chances ! My bitterness against my uncle returned at the thought. After all, he had some of my monc_v still, or ought to have. Why sliouldn't I act within my rights, threaten to ' take proceedings " ? I meditated for a space on the idea, and then returned to the Science Library and wrote him a very considerable and occasionally pungent letter. That letter to my uncle was the nadir of my failure. Its remarkable consequences, wliich ended my student days altogether, I will tell in the next chapter. I say " my failure." Yet there are times when I can even doubt whether that period was a failure at all, when I become defensively critical of those exact- ing courses I did not follow, the enc.vclopsedic process of scientific exhaustion from which I was distracted. My mind was not inactive, even if it fed on forbidden food. I did not learn what my professors and demon- strators had resolved I should learn, but I learnt many tilings. ^ly mind learnt to swing wide and to swing by itself. After all, those other fellows who took high places in tlic College examinations and were the professor's model boys haven't done so amazingly. Some are professors themselves, some technical experts ; not one can show things done such as I, following my own interest, have achieved. For I have built boats that smack across the water like whiplashes; no one ever dreamt of such boats until I built them; and I bare 144 TONO-BUNGAY surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries, in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn for obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed to train my mind.^ If I had been trained in research — thit ridiculous contradiction in terms — should I have done more than produce additions to the existing store of little papers with blunted conclusions, of which there are already too many? I see no sense in mock modesty upon this matter. Even by the stand- ards of worldly success I am, by the side of my fello\v- students, no failure. I had my F.R.S. by the time I was thirty-seven, and if I am not very wealthy, poverty is as far from me as the Spanish Inquisition. Suppose I had stamped down on the head of my wandering curi- osity, locked my imagination in a box just when it wanted to grow out to things, worked by so-and-so's excellent method and so-and-so's indications, where should I be now.'' . . . I may be all wrong in this. It may be I should be a far more efficient man than I am if I had cut off all those divergent expenditures of energy, plugged up my curiosity about society with more currently accept- able rubbish or other, abandoned Ewart, evaded Marion instead of pursuing her, concentrated. But I don't believe it! However, I certainly believed it completely and was filled with remorse on that afternoon when I sat de- jectedly in Kensington Gardens and reviewed, in the light of the Registrar's pertinent questions, my first two j'ears in London. CHAPTER THE SECOND THE DAWN COMES, AND MY UNCLE AP- PEARS IN A NEW SILK HAT I TnnouoiiorT my stiuK-nt days I had not scon my uncle. I refrnini'd from going to liim in spite of an occasional regret that in tliis way I estranged myself from my aunt Susan, and I uiaintaiiud a sulky attitude of mind towards him. .And I don't think that once in all that time I gnvf a thought to that mystic word of liis that was to alter all the world for us. Yet I had not alto- gether forgotten it. It was with a touch of memory, dim transient perplexity if no more — why did this thing seem in some way personal? — that I read a nerw inscription upon the hoardings: THE SKC KKT OF VIGOUR, TONO-BUNG.\Y. That was all. It was simjile and yet in some way arresting. I found myself rcjieatiiig the word after I had passed; it roused one's attention like the sound of distant guns. " Tono " — what's that.' and deep, rich, unhurrying; — " Bun — gay! " Then came my uncle's amazing telegram, his answer to my hostile note: "Come to me at oner you are wanted three hundred a year certain tono-bungat/." 146 TONO-BUNGAY, " By Jove ! " I cried, " of course ! " It's something . A patent-medicine ! I wonder what he wants with me." In his Napoleonic way my uncle had omitted to give an address. His telegram had been handed in at Far- ringdon Road, and after complex meditations I replied to Ponderevo, Farringdon Road, trusting to the rarity of our surname to reach him. " Where are you ? " I asked. His reply came promptly: " 192a, Raggett Street, E.G." The next day I took an imsanctioned holiday after the morning's lecture. I discovered my uncle in a won- derfully new silk hat — oh, a splendid hat! with a roll- ing brim that went beyond the common fashion. It was decidedly too big for him — that was its only fault. It was stuck on the back of his head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt sleeves. He welcomed me with a forgetfulncss of my bitter satire and my hostile abstinence that was almost divine. His glasses fell off at the sight of me. His round inexpressive eyes shone brightly. He held out his plump short hand. "Here we are, George! AMiat did I tell you? Needn't whisper it now, my boy. Shout it — loud! spread it about I Tell every one ! Tono — ToNO, — TONO-BUNGAY!" Raggett Street, you must understand, was a thorough- fare over which some one had distributed large quan- tities of cabbage stumps and leaves. It opened out of the upper end of Farringdon Street, and 192a was a shop with tlie plate-glass front coloured chocolate, on which several of the same bills I had read upon the hoardings had been stuck. The floor was covered by street mud that had been brought in on dirty boots, and three energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps^ were packing wooden cases with THE DAWN COPIES 147 pnpcrcd-up bottles, amidst much straw and confusion. The counter was littrrcd with these same swathed bot- tles, of a pattern then novel but now amazingly fa- miliar in the world, the blue jjaper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude giant, and the printed direc- tions of how under practically all circurastanees to take Tono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side opened a staircase down wliicli I seem to renicmbcr a girl de- scending with a further consignment of bottles, and the rest of the background was a high jiartition, also clioco- late, with " Temporary Laboratory " inscribed upon it in white letters, and over a door that pierced it, " Ofncc." Here I rapped, inaudible amid much hammering, and then entered unanswered to find my uncle, dressed as I have described, one hand gripping a sheath of letters, and the other scratching his head as he dictated to one of three toiling typewriter girls. Behind him was a further partition and a door inscribed " ABSOLUTELY PRIVATE— NO ADMISSION," tliereon. Tliis par- tition was of wood painted the universal chocolate, up to about eight feet from the ground, and then of glass. Through the glass I saw dimly a crowded suggestion of crucibles and glass retorts, and — by Jove ! — yes ! — the dear old Winiblchurst air-pump still ! It gave me quite a little thrill — that air-pump! And beside it was the electrical machine — but something — some serious trouble — had hajjpened to that. All these were evidently placed on a shelf just at the kTcl to show. " Come right into the sanctum," said my uncle, after he had finished something about " esteemed considera- tion," and whisked me through the door into a room that quite amazingly failed to verify the promise of that r.pparatus. It was papertd with dingy wall-paper that had peeled in places; it contained a fireplace, an easy- chair with a cushion, a table on whicli stnod two or three bij; bottles, a number of cigar-bv>xcs on the mantel, a 148 TONO-BUNGAY whisky Tantalus and a row of soda syphons. He shut the door after me carefully. "Well, here we are!" he said. "Going strong! Have a whisky, George ? No ! — Wise man ! Neither will I ! You see me at it ! At it — hard ! " " Hard at what? " " Read it," and he thrust into my hand a label — that label that has now become one of the most familiar objects of the chemist's shop, the greenish-blue rather old-fashioned bordering, the legend, the name in good black type, very clear, and the strong man all set about with lightning flashes above the double column of skilful lies in red— -the label of Tono-Bungay. " It's afloat," he said, as I stood puzzling at this. " It's afloat. I'm afloat ! " And suddenly he burst out singing in that throaty tenor of his — " I'm afloat, I'm afloat on the fierce flowing tide. The ocean's my home and my bark is my bride I " Ripping song that is, George. Not so much a bark as a solution, but still — it does ! Here we are at it ! By-the-by ! Half a mo* ! I've thought of a thing." He whisked out, leaving me to examine this nuclear spot at leisure, while his voice became dictatorial with- out. The den struck me as in its large grey dirty way quite unprecedented and extraordinary. The bottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that dear old apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patently " on the shelf " than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. I saw nothing for it but to sit down in the chair and await my uncle's explana- tions. I remarked a frock-coat with satin lapels behind tlie door; there was a dignified umbrella in the corner and a clothes-brush and a hat-brush stood on a side- THE DAWN COMES 149 table. My uncle returned in five minutes looking at his watch — a gold watch — " Gettin' lunch-time, George," he said. " You'd better come and have lunch with me ! " " How's Aunt Susan ? " I asked. " Exuberant. Never saw her so larky. This has buckt'd her up something wonderful — all this." "All what."" " Tono-Bungay." " What I* Tono-Bunpay ? " I asked. My uncle hesitated. " Tell you after lunch, George," he said. " Come along ! " and having locked up the sanctum after himself, led the way along a narrow dirty pavement, lined with barrows and swqit at times by nvalanehe-like porters bearing burthens to vans, to Far- ringdon Street. He hailed a passing cab superbly, and the cabman was infiiritely respectful. " Schiifer's," he said, and off we went side by side — and with me more and more amazed at all these things — to Schafer's Hotel, the second of the two big places with huge lace curtain-covered windows, near the corner of Blackfriars lirulfrc. I will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions as the two colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of Schiifcrs' held open the inner doors for us with a respectful salutation that in some manner they seemed to confine wholly to my uncle. Instead of being about four inches taller, I felt at least the same size as he, and very much slenderer. Still more respectful waiters relieved him of the new hat and the dignified nmbrella, and took his orders for our lunch. He gave them with a fine assurance. Hi" nodded to several of the waiters. " They know me, George, already," he said. " Point me out. Live place ! Eye for coming men ! " 150 TONO-BUNGAY The detailed business of the lunch engaged our at- tention for a while, and then I leant across my plate. " And now? " said I. " It's the secret of vigour. Didn't you read that label?" " Yes, but " " It's selling like hot cakes." "And what is it.'" I pressed. "Well," said mj- uncle, and then leant forward and spoke softly under cover of his hand, " It's nothing more or less than . . ." (But here an unfortunate scruple intervenes. After all, Tono-Bungay is still a marketable commodity and in the hands of purchasers, who bought it from — among other vendors — me. No! I am afraid I cannot give it away.) " You see," said my uncle in a slow confidential whisper, with eyes very wide .and a creased forehead, " it's nice because of the " (here he mentioned a flavour- ing matter and an aromatic spirit), " it's stimulating because of " (here he mentioned two very vivid tonics, one with a marked action on the kidney.) " And the " (here he mentioned two other ingredients) " makes it pretty intoxicating. Cocks their tails. Then there's " (but I toucli on the essential secret.) " And there you are. I got it out of an old book of recipes — all except the " (here he mentioned the more virulent substance, the one that assails the kidneys), "which is my idea. Modern touch ! There you are ! " He reverted to the direction of our lunch. Presently he was leading the way to the lounge — a sumptuous place in red morocco and yellow glazed crockery, with incredible vistas of settees and sofas and things, and there I found myself grouped with him in two excessively upholstered chairs with an earthenware (Moorish table between us bearing coffee and Benedic- THE DAWX COMES 151 tine, and I was tasting the deliglits of a tonpenny eig.'ir. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in nn habituated man- ner, and he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly a little bouwder, round the end of it. It was just a trivial flaw upon our swagger, perhaps, tliat wo both were clear our cigars had to be " mild." He got obliquely across the spaces of his great armchair so as to incline confidentially to my car, he curled up his little legs, and I, in my longer way, adopted a corresponding receptive obliquity. I felt that we should strike an unbiassed observer as a couple of very deep and wily and developing and repulsive persons. " I want to let you into this " — puff — " George," said my uncle round the end of his cigar. " For many reasons." His voice grew lower and more cunning. He made explanations tl)at to my inexperience did not completely exjjlain. I retain an impression of a long credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit and a prospective siiarc with some pirate printers, of a third share for a leading magazine and newspa|>cr proprietor, " I j)layed 'em off one against the other," said my uncle. I took his point in an instant. He had gone to each of them in turn and said the others had come in. " I put up four hundred pounds," said my uncle, " myself and my all. And you know " He assumed a brisk confidence. " I hadn't five hundred pence. At least " For a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. " I ilid," he said, " produce capital. You see, there was that trust affair of yours — I ought, I suppose — in strict legality — to have put that straight first. Zzzz. . . . "It was a bold thing to do," said my uncle, shifting the venue from the region of honour to the region of courage. .\nd then with a characteristic outburst of piety, " Thank God it's all come right ! 152 TONO-BUNGAY " And now, I suppose, you ask where do you come in? Well, fact is I've always believed in }'ou, George. You've got — it's a sort of dismal grit. Bark your shins, rouse you, and j'ou'U go! You'd rush any position you had a mind to rush. I know a bit about character, George — trust me. You've got " He clenched hig hands and thrust them out suddenly, and at the same time said, with explosive violence, " Wooosh ! Yes. You have! The way you put away that Latin at Wim- blehurst; I've never forgotten it. Wo-oo-oo-osh ! Your science and all that ! Wo-oo-oo-osh ! I know my limi- tations. There's things I can do, and " (he spoke in a whisper, as though this was the first hint of his life's secret) " there's things I can't. Well, I can create this business, but I can't make it go. I'm too voluminous — I'm a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it. You keep on hotthig up and hotting up. Paj^in's digester. That's you, steady and long and piling up, — ^then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiiFen these niggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That's what I'm after. You! Nobody else believes you're more than a boy. Come right in with me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun of it — a thing on the go — a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up ! Mak- ing it buzz and spin ! ^Vhoo-oo-oo." — He made alluring expanding circles in the air with his hand. "Eh?" His proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more definite shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and organising. " You shan't write a single advertisement, or give a single assurance," he declared. " I can do all that." And the telegram was no flourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year. (" That's nothing," said my uncle, " the thing to freeze on to, when the time comes, is your tenth of the vendor's share.") Three hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an THE DAWN COMES 153 enormous income to me. For a moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that mueh money in the whole concern ? I looked about me ut the sumptuous furniture" of Schiifcr's Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes. -My head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy. " Let me go back and look at the game again," I said. " Let me see upstairs and round about." I did. " What do j'ou think of it all ? " my uncle asked at last. " Well, for one thing," I said, " why don't you have those girls working in a decently ventilated room? Apart from any other consideration, thcj-'d work twice as briskly. And they ought to cover the corks before labelling round the bottle" " " Why? " said my uncle. " Because — they sometimes make a mucker of the cork job, and then the label's wasted." " Come and change it, George," said my uncle, with sudden fervour. " Come here and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all slick, and then make it woosh. I know you can. Oh ! I know you can." II I seem to remember very quick changes of mind after that lunch. The muzzy exaltation of the unaccustomed stimulants gave way very raj)idlT to a model of pellucid and impartial clairvoyance wliich is one of my habitual mental st.alts. It is intermittent; it leaves me for weeks together, I know, but back it comes at last like justice on circuit, and calls up all my imprcssioirs, all my illusions, all my wilful and passionate proceedings. We came downstairs again into that inner room which pre- 154 TOXO-BUXGAY tended to be a scientific laboratory through its high glass lights, and indeed was a lurking place. Mj uncle pressed a cigarette on me, and I took it and stood before the empty fireplace •while he propped his um- brella in the corner, deposited the new silk hat that was a little ^.00 big for him on the table, blew copiously and produced a second cigar. It came into my head that he had shrunken very much in size since the Wimblehurst days, that the cannon ball he had swallowed was rather more evident and shameless than it had been, his skin less fresh and the nose between his glasses, which still didn't quite fit, much redder. And just then he seemed much laxer in his muscles and not quite as alertly quick in his move- ments. But he evidently wasn't aware of the degener- ative nature of his changes as he sat there, looking suddenly quite little imder my eyes. " Well, George ! " he said, quite happily unconscious of my silent criticism, " what do you think of it all? " " Well," I said, " in the first place — it's a damned swindle ! " " Tut ! tut ! " said my uncle. " It's as straight as It's fair trading ! " " So much the worse for trading," I said. " It's the sort of thing everybody does. After all, there's no harm in the stuff— and it may do good. It might do a lot of good — giving people confidence, f'rinstance, against an epidemic. See? WTiy not? I don't see where your swindle comes in." " H'm," I said. " It's a thing you either see or don't see." " I'd like to know what sort of trading isn't a swindle in its way. Everybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something common on the strength of saying it's uncommon. Look at Chickson — they made Jiim a baronet. Look at Lord Radmore, who did it on THE DAWN COMES 155 lying about the alkali in soap! Rippin' ads those were of his too! " " You don't mcaiT to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and swearing it's the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it at that, is straight? " " Why not, George? How do wc know it mayn't be the quintessence to them so far as they're con- cerned ? " " Oh ! " I said, and shrugged my shoulders. " There's Faith. You put Faith in 'em. ... I grant our labels are a bit emphatic. Christian Science, really. No good setting people against the medicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that hasn't to be — fmpiiatic. It's the modern way! Everybody under- stands it — everybody allows for it." " But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of yours was run down a conduit into the Thames." " Don't sec that, George, at all. 'Mong other things, all our people would be out of work. Unemployed ! I grant j-ou Tono-Bungay may be — not quile so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but the point is, George — it makes trade! And the world lives on trade. C'onmierce ! A romantic eschangc of commodities and property. Romance. 'Magination. Sec.' You must look at these things in a broad light. Look at the wood — and forget the trees ! And hang it, George ! we got to do these things ! There's no way unless you do. What do you mean to do — anyhow ? " " There's ways of living," I said, " without either fraud or lying." " You're a bit stiff, George. There's no fraud in this affair, I'll bet my hat. But what do j-ou propose to do? Go as chemist to some one who it running a business, and draw a salary without a share like I offer 156 TONO-BUNGAY you. Much sense in that! It comes out of the swindle — as you call it — just the same." "Some businesses are straight and quiet, anyhow; supply a sound article that is really neededj don't shout advertisements." " No, George. There you're behind the times. The last of that sort was sold up 'bout five years ago." " Well, there's scientific research." " And who pays for that ? Who put up that big City and Guilds place at South Kensington? Enter- prising business men! They fancy they'll have a bit of science going on, they want a handy Expert ever and again, and there you are ! And what do you get for research when you've done it? Just a bare living and no outlook. They just keep you to make discoveries, and if they fancy they'll use 'em they do." " One can teach." " How much a year, George? How much a year? I suppose you must respect Carlyle ! Well, — you take Carlyle's test — solvency. (Lord! what a book that French Revolution of his is!) See what the world pays teachers and discoverers and what it pays business men! That shows the ones it really wants. There's a justice in these big things, George, over and above the apparent injustice. I tell you it wants trade. It's Trade that makes the world go round! Argosies! Venice ! Empire ! " My uncle suddenly rose to his feet. " You think it over, George. You think it over ! And come up on Sunday to the new place — we got rooms in Gower Street now — and see your aunt. She's often asked for you, George — often and often, and thrown it up at me about that bit of property — though I've always said and alwaj's will, that twenty-five shil- lings in the pound is \yhat I'll pay you and interest up to the nail. And think it over. It isn't me I ask THE DAWN CO:kIES 157 you to help. It's yourself. It's your aunt Susan. It's the whole concern. It's the couinierce of your country. And we want you badly. I tell you straight, I know my limitations. You could take this place, you could make it go ! I can see j'ou at it — looking rather sour. Woosh is the word, George." And he smiled endearingly. " I got to dictate a letter," he said, ending the smile, and vanished into the outer room. Ill I didn't succumb without a struggle to my uncle's allurements. Indeed, I held out for a week while I contemplated life and my prospects. It was a crowded and muddled contemplation. It invaded even my sleep. My interview with the Registrar, my talk with my uncle, my abrupt discovery of the hopeless futility of my passion for Marion, had combined to bring me to a sense of crisis. What was I going to do with life.^ I remember certain phases of my indecisions very well. I remember going home from our talk. I went down Farringdon Street to tlie Embankment because I thought to go home by Ilolborn and Oxford Street would be too crowded for thinking. . . . That piece of Em- bankment from Blackfriars to Westminster still reminds me of that momentous hesitation. You know, from first to last, I saw the business with my eyes open, I saw its ethical and moral values quite clearly. Never for a moment do I remember myself faltering from my persuasion that the sale of Tono- Bungny was a thoroughly dishonest proceeding. The stuff was, I perceived, a mischievous tra.sli, slightly stimulating, aromatic and attractive, likely to become a bad h.'.bit and train people in the habitual use of 158 TONO-BUNGAY stronger tonics and insidiously dangerous to people with defective kidneys. It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to make, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus the cost of the patent medi- cine stamp. A thing that I will confess deterred me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in this affair, was the supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still clung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane and just organisation, and the idea that I should set myself gravely, just at the fine springtime of my life, to developing a monstrous bottling and packing warehouse, bottling rubbish for the con- sumption of foolish, credulous and depressed people, had in it a touch of insanity. My early beliefs still clung to me. I felt assured that somewhere there must be a hitch in the fine prospect of ease and wealth under such conditions; that somewhere, a little overgrown, perhaps, but still traceable, lay a neglected, wasted path of use and honour for me. My inclination to refuse the whole thing increased rather than diminished at first as I went along the Embankment. In my uncle's presence there had been a sort of glamour that had prevented an outright re- fusal. It was a revival of affection for him I felt in his presence, I think, in part, and in part an instinctive feeling that I must consider him as my host. But much more was it a curious persuasion he had the knack of inspiring — a persuasion not so much of his integrity and capacity as of the reciprocal and yielding foolish- ness of the world. One felt that he was silly and wild, but in some way silly and wild after the fashion of the universe. After all, one must live somehow. I as- tonished him and myself by temporising. " No," said I, " I'll think it over! " And as I went along the Embankment, the first effect was all against my uncle. He shrank — for a THE DAWN COMES 159 little while he continued to shrink — in perspective until he was only a very small shabby little man in a dirty back street, sending ott" a few hundred bottles of rub- bish to foolish buyers. The great buildings on the right of us, the Inns anc. 164 TOXO-BUNGAY " Look here, Marion," I said abruptly, " what -K-ould you marry on ? " " What is the good ? " she began. "Would you marry on three hundred a year?" She looked at me for a moment. " That's six pounds a week," she said. " One could manage on that, — easily-. Smithie's brother No, he only gets twc hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting girl." " Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year ? " She looked at me again, with a curious gleam o:' hope. " If J " she said. I held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. " Its a bargain," I said. She hesitated and touched my hand for an instant. " It's silly," she remarked as she did so. " It meais really we're " She paused. "Yes?" said I. " Engaged. You'll have to wait years. W^hat goid can it do you ? " "Not so many years," I answered. For a moment she brooded. Then she glanced at me with a smile, half-swet, half-wistful, that has stuck in my memory for ever. " I like you," she said. " I shall like to be engaed to you." And, faint on the threshold of hearing, I cau;ht her ventured " dear ! " It's odd that in writing his down my memory passes over all that intervened -nd I feel it all again, and once again I'm Marion's boish lover taking great joy in such rare and little things VI At last I went to the address my uncle had pen me in Gower Street, and found my aunt Susan WEting tea for him. THE DAWX COMES 1G5 Directly I came into the room I appreciated the change in outlook that the achievement of Torro-Bungay had made almost as vividly as when I saw my uncle's new hat. The furniture of tlie room struck upon my eye as almost stately. The chairs and sofa were covered with chintz wliich gave it a dim, remote flavour of Bladesover; the mantel, the cornice, the gas pendant were larger and finer than the sort of thing I had grown accustomed to in London. And I was shown in by a real housemaid with real tails to her cap, and great quantities of reddish hair. There was my aunt too, looking bright and pretty, in a blue-patterned tea-wrap witli bows that seemed to me the quintessence of fashion. She was sitting in a chair by the open window ■with quite a pile of yellow-labelled books on the occasional table beside her. Before the large, paper-decorated fireplace stood a three-tiered cake-stand displaying as- sorted cakes, and a tray with all the tea equipage except the teapot, was on the large centre-table. The carpet was thick, and a spice of adventure was given it by a number of dyed sheep-skin mats. " Hel-/o.' " said my aunt as I appeared. " It's George ! " " Shall I serve the tea now, Mem ? " said the real housemaid, surveying our greeting coldly. " Not till ^^r. Pondercvo comes, Meggie," said my aunt, and grimaced with extraordinary swiftness and virulence as the housemaid turned her back. " Meggie she calls herself," said my aunt as the door closed, and left me to infer a certain want of sympathy. " You're looking very jolly, aunt," said I. " What do you think of all this old Business he's got?" asked my aunt. " Seems a promising thing," I said. "I suppose there is a business somewhere?" 166 TONO-BUNGAY " Haven't you seen it ? " " 'Fraid I'd say something at it, George, if I did. So he won't Irt me. It came on quite suddenly. Brood- ing he was and writing letters and sizzling something awful — like a chestnut going to pop. Then he came home one day saying Tono-Bungay till I thought he was clean off his onion, and singing — what was it ? " " ' I'm afloat, I'm afloat,' " I guessed. " The very thing. You've heard him. And saying our fortunes were made. Took me out to the Ho'burn Restaurant, George, — dinner, and we had champagne, stuff that blows up the back of your nose and makes you go So, and he said at last he'd got things worthy of me — and we moved here next day. It's a swell house, George. Three pounds a week for the rooms. And he says the Business '11 stand it." She looked at me doubtfully. " Either do that or smash," I said profoundly. We discussed the question for a moment mutely^ with our eyes. My aunt slapped the pile of books from JIudie's. " I've been having such a Go of reading, George. You never did ! " "What do you think of the business?" I asked. " Well, they've let him have money," she said, and thought and raised her eyebrows. " It's been a time," she went on. " The flapping about! Me sitting doing nothing and him on the go like a rocket. He's done wonders. But he wants you, George— he wants you. Sometimes he's full of hope — talks of when we're going to have a carriage and be in society— makes it seem so natural and topsy-turvy, I hardly know whether my old heels aren't up here lis- tening to him, and my old head on the floor. . . . Then he gets depressed. Says he wants restraint. Says he can make a splash but can't keep on. Says if you THE DAWX COMES 167 don't come in everything will smash But you are coming in? " She pnuscd and looked at me. " Well •• " You don't say you won't come in ! " " But look here, auirt," I said, " do you understand quite? . . . It's a quack medicine. It's trash." " There's no law against selling quack medicine that I know of," said my aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grave. " It's our only chance, George," she said. " If" it doesn't go . . ." There came the slamming of a door, and a loud bel- lowing from the next apartment through the folding doors. " Here — er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom Bo — oling." " Silly old Concertina ! Hark at him, George ! " She raised her voice. " Don't sing that, you old Walrus, you! Sing ' I'm afloat!'" One leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared. "Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan ? " " Thought it over, George ? " he said abruptly. " Yes," said I. " Coming in? " I paused for a last moment and nodded yes. " .Vh ! " he cried. " Why couldn't you say that a week ago? " " I've had false ideas about the world," I said. . . . " Oh! they don't matter now! Yes, I'll come, I'll take my chance with you, I won't hesitate again." And I didn't. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years. CHAPTER THE THIRD HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM I So I made my peace with my uncle, and we set out upon this bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at one-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine a bottle, including the Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my uncle promised me proved truth and understatement; Tono-Bungay carried me to freedoms and powers that no life of scientific research, no passionate service of humanity could ever have given me. . . . It was my miclc's genius that did it. No doubt he needed me, — I was, I will admit, his indispensable right hand; but his was the brain to conceive. He wrote every advertisement; some of them even he sketched. You must remember that his were the days before the Times took to enterprise and the vociferous hawking of that antiquated Encyclopwdia. That alluring, button- holing, let - me - just - tell - you-quite-soberly-somethiirg- you-ought-to-know style of newspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of some attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. " Many people who are moderately well think they are QUITE well," was one of his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, " do not need drugs or medicine," and " SIMPLY A proper regimen to get you in tone." One was warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed " much-advertised nostrums " on one's attention. 168 TOXO-BUXGAY HUMS IGO That trnsh did more harm tlian pood. The thing needed was regimen — and Tono-Bungay ! Very early, too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was usually a quarter column in the evening papers: "hilarity — TOSo-BrNOAy. Like Mountain Air in the Veins." The penetrating trio of questions: "Arc you bored with your Business? Are you bored with your Dinner. Are you bored with your Wife?" — that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both these we had in our first campaign when we worked London south, central, and west; and then, too, we had our first poster, the HEALTH, BEAUTY, AND STRENGTH One. That WaS his design; I happen still to have got by me the first sketch he made for it. I have reproduced it here with one or two others to enable the reader to understand tlic mental quality that initiated these familiar ornaments of London. (The second one is about eighteen montlis later, the germ of the well-known "Fog" poster; the third was designed for an influenza epidemic, but never issued.) These things were only incidental in my depart- ment. I had to polish them up for the artist and ar- range the business of printing and distribution, and after my uncle had had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertising manager of the Daily Regulator about the amount of display given to one of his happy thoughts, I also took up the negotiations of advertise- ments for the press. We discussed and worked out distribution together — first in the drawing-room floor in Gower Street with my aunt sometimes helping very shrewdly, and then, with a steadily improving type of cigar and older and older whisky, in his smiggcry at their first house, the one in Beckcnham. Often we worked far into the niglit — sometimes until dawn. We really worked infernally hard, and, I recall, wc i\^? i 4 4|l 1 s r t '. r ^ "} •< ? ^ Q r i 1 52 Toxo-Hrx(;AV irr.MS 173 worked with a very dceidcd enthusiasm, not simply on my uncle's part but mine. It was a game, an absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were seored in cases of bottles. People think a happy notion is enough to make a man rich, that fortunes can be made without toil. It's a dream, as every millionaire (except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify; I doubt if J. D. Rockefeller in the early days of Standard Oil, worked harder than we did. We worked far into the night — and we also worked all day. We made a rule to be always dropping in at the factory unan- nounced to keep things right — for at first wc could afford no properly responsible underlings — and we travelled London, pretending to be our own representa- tives and making all sorts of special arrangements. But none of this was my special work, and as soon as wc could get other men iir, I dropped the" travelling, though my uncle found it particularly interesting and kept it up for years. " Does me good, George, to see the chaps behind their counters like I was once," he explained. My special and distinctive duty was to give Tono-Bungay substance and an outward and visible bottle, to translate my uncle's great imaginings into the creation of case after case of labelled bottles of nonsense, and the punctual discharge of them by rail- way, road and steamer towards their ultimate goal in the Great Stomach of the People. By all modern standards the business was, as my uncle would say, " absolutely bona fide." We sold our stuff and got the money, and spent the money honestly in lies and clamour to sell more stuff. Section by section we spread it over the whole of the British Isles; first working the middle- class London suburbs, then the outer suburbs, then the home counties, then going (with new bills and a more pious style of " ad ") into W.'iles, a great field always for a new patent-medicine, and then into Lancashire. m TONO-BUNGAY My uncle had in his inner office a big map of England, and as we took up fresh sections of the local press and our consignments invaded new areas, flags for adver- tisements and pink underlines for orders showed our progress. " The romance of modern commerce, George ! " my uncle would say, rubbing his liands together and draw- ing in air through his teeth. " The romance of modern commerce, eh? Conquest. Province by province. Lilie sogers." We subjugated England and Wales; we rolled over the Cheviots with a special adaptation containing eleven per cent, of absolute alcohol; " Tono-Bungay: Thistle Brand." We also had the Fog poster adapted to a kilted Briton in a misty Highland scene. Under the shadow of our great leading line we were presently taking subsidiary specialties into action; " Tono-Bungay Hair Stimulant " was our first supple- ment. Then came " Concentrated Tono-Bungay " for the eyes. That didn't go, but we had a considerable suc- cess with the Hair Stimulant. We broached the subject, I remember, in a little catechism beginning: " Why does the hair fall out? Because the follicles are fagged. What are the follicles? . . ." So it went on to the climax that the Hair Stimulant contained all " The es- sential principles of that most reviving tonic, Tono- Bungay, together with an emollient and nutritious oil derived from crude Neat's Foot Oil by a process of re- finement, separation and deodorization. ... It will be manifest to any one of scientific attainments that in Neat's Foot Oil derived from the hoofs and horns of beasts, we must necessarily have a natural skin and hair lubricant." And we also did admirable things with our next subsidiaries, " Tono-Bungay Lozenges," and " Tono- Bungay Chocolate." These we urged upon the public TUAU-JiUNCiAY HUMS 175 for their cxtraordinnry nutritive and recuperative value in cases of fntisrue anil strain. We gave tliein posters and illustrated adviTtiseniints showing climbers hang- ing from marvellously vertical cliffs, cyclist champions upon the track, mounted messengers engaged in Aix-to- Ghent rides, soldiers lying out in action under a hot sun. " You can GO for twentv-four hours," wc de- clared, " on Tono-Bungay Chocolate." We didn't say whether you could return on the same commoditv. We also sliowed a dreadfully barristerish barrister, wig, side-whiskers, teeth, a horribly life-like portrait of all existing barristers, talking at a table, and beneath, this legend : " A Four Hours' Sjieech on Tono-Bungay I.ozcngcs, and as fresh as when he began." That brought in regiments of school-teachers, revivalist min- isters, politicians and the like. I really do believe there was an clement of " kick " in the strychirine in these lozenges, especially in those made according to our earlier formula. For we altered all our forniulic — in- variably weakening them enormously as sales got ahead. In n little while — so it seems to me now — we were employing travellers and opening up Great Britain at the rate of a hundred square miles a day. All the organisation throughout was sketched in a crude, en- tangled, half-inspired fashion by my uncle, and all of it had to be worked out into a practicable scheme of quantities and expenditure by me. We had a lot of trouble finding our travellers; in the end at least half of them were Irish-.\mericans, a wonderful breed for sell- ing medicine. We had still more trouble over our fac- tory manager, because of the secrets of the inner room, .Tiid in the end we got a very capable woman, Mrs. li.iuipton Digps, who had formerly managed a large millinery workroom, whom we could trust to keep every- thing in good working order without finding out any- thing that wasn't put exactly under her loyal iwd 176 TOXO-BUXGAY energetic nose. She conceived a high opinion of Tono- Bungay and took it in all forms and large quantities so long as I knew her. It didn't seem to do her anv harm. And she kept the girls going quite wonderfullv. Mt uncle's last addition to the Tono-Bungay group was the Tono-Bungay Mouthwash. The reader has probably read , a hundred times that inspiring inquiry of his.. " You are Young Yet, but are yon Sure Nothing has Aged your Gums ? " And after that we took over the agency for three or four good American lines that worked in with our own, and could be handled with it; Texan Embrocation, and " 23 — to clear the system " were the chief. . . . I set down these bare facts. To me they are all linked with the figure of my uncle. In some of the old seventeenth and early eighteenth century prayer- books at Bladesover there used to be illustrations with long scrolls coming out of the mouths of the wood-cut figures. I wish I could write all this last chapter on a scroll coming out of the head of my uncle, show it all the time as unfolding and jwuring out from a short, fattening, small-legged man with stiff cropped hair, dis- obedient glasses on a perky little nose, and a round stare behind them. I wish I could show you him breath- ing hard and a little through his nose as his pen scrab- bled out some absurd inspiration for a poster or a picture page, and make you hear his voice, charged with solemn import like the voice of a squeaky prophet, say- ing, " George ! list'n ! I got an ideer. I got a notion, George ! " I should put myself into the same picture. Best setting for us, I think, would be the Beckenham snug- gery, because there we worked hardest. It would be the lamplit room of the early nineties, and the clock np)on the mantel would indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting on either side of the fire, I with a pipe, my uncle with a cigar or cigarette. There would be glasses standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions would be very grave. My uncle used to sit right back in his armchair; his toes always turned in when he was sitting down and his legs had a way of looking curved, as though tliey hadn't bones or joints but were stuffed with sawdust. "George, whad'yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?" he would say. " Xo good that I can imagine." "Oom! No harm trying, George. We can but try." I would suck my pipe. " Hard to get at. Unless we sold our stuff specially at the docks. !MigIit do a special at Cook's office, or in the Continental Bradshaw." " It 'ud give 'em confidence, George." He would Zzzz, with his glasses reflecting the red of the glowing coals. " No good hiding our light under a Bushel," he would remark. . . . I never really determined whether my uncle regarded Tono-Bungay as a fraud, or whether he didn't come to believe in it in a kind of way by the mere reiteration of his own assertions. I think that his average attitude was one of kindly, almost parental, toleration. I re- member saving on one occasion, " But you don't suppose this stuff ever did a human being the slightest good at all } " and how his face assumed a look of protest, as of one reproving harshness and dogmatism. " You've a hard nature, George," he said. " You're too ready to run things down. How can one tell? How can one venture to tell? . . ." I suppose any creative and developing game would have interested me in fliose years. At -.ny rate, I know I put as much leal into tliis Tono-Bungiy ."s any young lieutenant could have done who suddeiily found himself in command of a ship. It was extraordinarily interest- 178 TONO-BUNGAY ing to me to figure out the advantage accruing from this shortening of the process or that, and to weigh it against the capital cost of the alteration. I made a sort of machine for sticking orr the labels, that I patented; to this day there is a little trickle of royalties to me from that. I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got the bottles, which all came sliding down a guarded slant-way, nearly filled with distilled water at one tap, and dripped our magic in- gredients in at the next. This was an immense economy of space for the inner sanctum. For the bottling we needed special taps, and these, too, I invented and patented. We had a sort of endless band of bottles sliding along an inclined glass trough made slippery with running water. At one end a girl held them up to the light, put aside any that were imperfect and placed the others in the trough ; the filling was automatic ; at the other end a girl slipped in the cork and drove it home with a little mallet. Each tank, the little one for the vivifying ingredients and the big one for dis- tilled water, had a level indicator, and inside I had a float arrangement that stopped the slide whenever either had sunk too low. Another girl stood ready with my machine to label the corked bottles and hand them to the three packers, who slipped them into their outer papers and put them, with a pad of corrugated paper between each pair, into a little groove from which they could be made to slide neatly into position in our stand- ard packing-case. It sounds wild, I know, but I believe I was the first man in the city of London to pack patent medicines through the side of the packing- case, to discover there was a better way in than by the lid. Our cases packed themselves, practically; had only to be put into position on a little wheeled tray and ■wheal full pulled tp the lift that dropped them t9 the TONO-BUXGAY HUMS 179 men downstairs, who padded up the free space and nnilod on top and side. Our girls, moreover, packed with corrugated paper and matchbox-wood box partitions when everybody else was using expensive young men to pack through the top of the box with straw, many breakages and much waste and confusion. II As I look back at them now, those energetic years seem all compacted to a year or so; from the days of our first hazardous beginning in Farringdon Street with barely a thousand pounds' worth of stuff or credit all told — and that got by something perilously like snatching — to the days when my uncle went to the public on behalf of himself and me (one-tenth share) and our silent partners, the drug wholesalers and the printing people and the owner of tliat grouj) of maga- zines and newspapers, to ask with honest confidence for i." 150,000. Those silent partners were remarkably sorry, I know, that they had not taken larger shares and given us longer credit when the subscriptions came pouring in. My uncle had a clear half to play with (including the one-tenth understood to be mine). £150,000— think of it!— for the goodwill in a string of lies and a trade in bottles of mitigated water ! Do you realise the madness of the world that sanctions such a tiling.^ Perhaps you don't. At times use and wont certainly blinded me. If it had not been for Ewart, I don't think I should have had an inkling of the won- derfulness of this development of my fortunes; I should have grown accustomed to it, fallen in with all its de- lusions as completely as my uncle presently did. He was immensely proud of the flotation. " They've never been given such value," he said, " for a dozen years." 9ut £wart, with his gesticulating hairy bands and bon/ 180 TONO-BUNGAY, wrists, his single-handed chorus to all this as it plays itself over again in my memory, and he kept my funda- mental absurdity illuminated for me during all this astonishing time. " It's just on all fours with the rest of things," he remarked; "only more so. You needn't think you're anything out of the way." I remember one disquisitiorr very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had been to Paris on a mysterious ex- pedition to " rough in " some work for a rising Ameri- can sculptor. This young man had a commission for an allegorical figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State Capitol, and he needed help. Ewart had re- turned with his hair cut en brosse and with his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I remem- ber, a bicycling suit of purplish-brown, baggy beyond imagining — the only creditable thing about it was that it had evidently not been made for him— a voluminous black tie, a decadent soft felt hat and several French expletives of a sinister description. " Silly clothes, aren't they ? " he said at the sight of my startled eye. " I don't know why I got 'm. They seemed all right over there." He had come down to our Eaggett Street place to discuss a benevolent project of mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable discourse over the heads (I hope it was over the heads) of our bot- tlers. "What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry. . . . That's where we get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory like this. Think! . . . One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very possibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round 'em and sell 'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I'll admit, him and his dams, but after all there's a sort of protection about 'em, a kind of muddy prac- TOXO-BUXGAY HUMS 181 til ility! Tlicy prevent things gotting at liini. And it's nut yiiiir pootry only. It's the poetry of the customer t(H). I'oet answering to poet — soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty — in a bottle — the magic philtre! Like a fairy tale. . . . " Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I'm calling it footle, Ponderevo, out of praise," he said in parenthesis.) " Think of the little clerks and jaded women and overworked people. People overstrained with wanting to do, people overstrained with wanting to be. . . . People, in fact, overstrained. . . . The real trouble of ' life, Ponderevo, isn't that wc exist — that's a vulgar error; the real trouble is that we don't really exist and we want to. That's what this — in the highest sense — ' muck stands for ! The hunger to be — for once — really alive — to the finger tips ! . . . " Nobody wants to do and be the things people are — rol>ody. You don't want to preside over tliis — this bot- tling; / don't want to wc.ir these beastly clothes and be led about by you ; nobody wants to keep on sticking labels on silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn't existing! That's — sus — substratum. None of us want to be what we are, or to do what we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? You know. / know. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is something perpetually young and beautiful — young Jovcs — young Joves, Ponderevo " — his voice be- came loud, harsh and declamatory — " pursuing coy, half-willing nymjihs through everlasting forests." . . . There was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us. > " Come downstairs," I interrupted, " wc can talk better there." " I can talk belter here," he answered. He WM just going on, but fortunately tlic implacable 182 TONO-BUNGAY j face of Mrs. Hampton Diggs appeared down the aisl^ of bottling machines. i " All right," he said, " I'll come." ... *■ In the little sanctum below, my uncle was taking ai digestive pause after his lunch and by no means alert.; His presence sent Ewart back to the theme of modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him^ He behaved with the elaborate deference due to a busi-* ness magnate from an unknown man. j " What I was pointing out to your nephew, sir," said Ewart, putting both elbows on the table, " was the poetry of commerce. He doesn't, you know, seem to sea it at all." I My uncle nodded brightly. " Whad I tell 'im," he' said round his cigar. " We are artists. You and I, sir, can talk, if yoil will permit me, as one artist to another. It's advertise-^ ment has — done it. Advertisement has revolutionise^ trade and industry ; it is going to revolutionise the worlds The old merchant used to tote about commodities; the new one creates values. Doesn't need to tote. He takes something that isn't worth anything — or something that isn't particularly worth anything — and he makes it worth something. He takes mustard that is just like anybody else's mustard, and he goes about saying, shout- ing, singing, chalking on walls, writing inside people's books, putting it everywhere, ' Smith's Mustard is the Best.' And behold it is the Best! " " True," said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of mysticism; "true!" "It's just like an artist; he takes a lump of white marble on the verge of a lime-kiln, he chips it about, he makes — he makes a monument to himself — and others — a monument the world will not willingly let die^ Talking of mustard, sir, I was at Clapham Junction th^ other d&j, and all the banks are overgrown with horse* TOXO-BUXGAY HUMS 183 radish that's got loose from a garden somewhere. You know what horseradish is — grows like wildfire — spreads — spreads. I stood at the end of tlie phitforni looking at tlie stuff and thinking about it. ' Like fame," I thouglit, ' rank and wild wlicre it isn't wanted. Why don't tlie really good things in life grow like horse- radish.' ' I thought. My mind went off in a peculiar way it does from that to the idea that mustard costs a penny a tin — I bought some the other day for a ham I had. It came into my head that it would be ripping good business to use horseradish to adulterate mustard. I had a sort of idea that I could plunge into business on that, get rich and come back to my own proper nionu- ment.'il art again. And then I said, ' But n'hif adul- terate? I don't like the idea of adulteration.'" " Shabby," said my uncle, nodding his head. " Bound to get found out ! " " And totiUy unnecessary, too ! Why not do up a mixture — three-quarters pounded horseradish and a quarter mustard — give it a fancy name — and sell it at twice the mustard price. See? I very nearly started tlie business straight away, only something happened. My train came along." " Jolly good ideer," said my uncle. He looked at me. " That really is an ideer, George," he said. " Take shavin's, again ! You know that poem of Longfellow's, sir, that sounds exactly like the first de- clension. What is it.' — ' Mair's a maker, men say! ' " My uncle nodded and gurgled some quotatioir that died away. " Jolly good poem, George," he said in an aside to mc. " Well, it's about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you know, and some shavin's. The child made no end out of the shavin's. So might you. Powder 'em. They might be anything. Soak 'cm in jipper, — Xylo- 184 ,TONO-BUNGAY tobacco! Powder 'em and get a little tar and turpen- tinous smell in, — wood-packing for hot baths — a Certain Cure for the scourge of Influenza! There's all these patent grain foods, — what Americans call cereals. I believe I'm right, sir, in saying they're sawdust." j " No ! " said my uncle, removing his cigar ; " as far I as I can find out it's really grain, — spoilt grain. ... I've been going into that." " Well, there you are ! " said Ewart. " Say it's spoilt grain. It carried out my case just as well. Your mod- I em commerce is no more buying and selling than — ; sculpture. It's mercy — it's salvation. It's rescue worls ! i It takes all sorts of fallen commodities by the hand and raises them. Cana isn't in it. You turn water — into Tono-Bungay." J, " Tono-Bungay's all right," said my uncle, suddenly grave. " We aren't talking of Tono-Bungay." " Your nephew, sir, is hard ; he wants everything to ] go to a sort of predestinated end; he's a Calvinist of : Commerce. Offer him a dustbin full of stuff; he calls it refuse — passes by on the other side. Now you, sir — you'd make cinders respect themselves." My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of appreciation in his eye. " Might make 'em into a sort of sanitary brick," he reflected over his cigar end. " Or a friable biscuit. Why not? You might adver- tise : ' Why are Birds so Bright ? Because they digest their food perfectly ! Why do they digest their food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn't man a gizzard.'' Because he can buy Ponderevo's Ash- pit Triturating, Friable Biscuit — Which is Better.' " He delivered the last words in a shout, with his hairy hand flourished in the air. . . . " Damn clever fellow," said my uncle, after he had gone. " I know a man when I see one. He'U do. Bit TOXO-BUNGAY HUMS 185 drunk, I should say. But tliat only makes some clmps brighter. If he n-ants to do tliat poster, he can. Zzzz. That idcer of his about tlie horseradish. There's some- thing in that, George. I'm going to think over that. . . ." I may say at once that my poster project came to notliing in the end, tliough Ewart devoted an interesting week to the matter. He let his unfortunate disposition to irony run away with him. He produced a picture of two beavers with a subtle likeness, he said, to myself and my uncle — the likeness to my uncle certainly wasn't half bad — and tliey were bottling rows and rows of Tono-Bungay, with the legend " Modern Commerce." It certainly wouldn't have sold a case, though he urged it on me one cheerful evening on the ground that it would " arouse curiosity." In addition he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively and need- lessly nude, but, so far as I was able to judge, an admir- able likeness, engaged in feats of strerrgth of a Gargan- tuan type before an audience of deboshed and shattered ladies. The legend, " Health, Beauty, Strength," below, gave a needed point to his parody. This he hung up in the studio over the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper by way of a curtain over it to accentuate its libellous offence. CHAPTER THE FOURTH MARION As I look back on those days in which we built up the great Tono-Bungay property out of human hope and a credit for bottles and rent and printing, I see my life as it were arranged in two parallel columns of unequal width, a wider, more diffused, eventful and various one which continually broadens out, the business side of my life, and a narrow, darker and darkling one shot ever and again with a gleam of happiness, my home-life with Marion. For, of course, I married Marion. I didn't, as a matter of fact, marry her until a year after Tono-Bungay was thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts and discussions of a quite strenuous sort. By that time I was twenty-four. It seems the next thing to childhood now. We were both in certain direc- tions unusually ignorant and simple; we were tempera- mentally antagonistic, and we hadn't — I don't think we were capable of — an idea in common. She was young and extraordinarily conventional — she seemed never to have an idea of her own but always the idea of her class — and I was young and sceptical, enterprising and passionate; the two links that held us together were the intense appeal her physical beauty had for me, and her appreciation of her importance in my thoughts. There can be no doubt of my passion for her. In her I had discovered woman desired. The nights I have Iain awake on account of her, writhing, biting my wrists in a fever of longing! . . . 186 MARION 187 I have told how I got myself n silk hnt and black coat to please her on Sunday — to the derision of some of my fellow-students who chanced to meet mc — and how we became engaged. But that was only the begin- ning of our differences. To her that meant the begin- ning of a not unpleasant little secrecy, an occasional use of verbal endearments, perhaps even kisses. It was something to go on indefinitely, interfering in no way with her gossiping spells of work at Smithie's. To mc it was a pledge to come together into the utmost intimacy of soul and body so soon as we could contrive it. . . . I don't kirow if it will strike the reader that I am setting out to discuss the queer, unwise love relation- ship and my bungle of a marriage with excessive solem- nity. But to me it seems to reach out to vastly wider issues than our little personal affair. I've thought over my life. In these last few years I've tried to get at least a little wisdom out of it. And in particular I've thought over this part of my life. I'm enormously im- pressed by the ignorant, unguidcd way in which we two entangled ourselves with each other. It seems to me the queerest thing in all this network of misunderstand- ings and misstatements and faulty and ramshackle con- ventions which makes up our social order as the individ- ual meets it, that we should have come together so acci- dentally and so blindly. Because we were no more than samples of tlic common fate. Love is not only the car- dinal fact in the individual life, but the most important concern of the community; after all, the way in which the young people of this generation pair off determines the fate of the nation; all the other affairs of the Stato arc subsidiary to that. And we leave it to (lushed and blundering youth to stumble on its own significance, with nothing to guide it but shocked looks and sentimental twaddle and base whisperings and cant-smearcd cx- nmi)lc3. 188 TONO-BUNGAY I have tried to indicate something of my own sexual development in the preceding chapter. Nobody was ever frank and decent with me in this relation; nobody, no book, ever came and said to me thus and thus is the world made, and so and so is necessary. Everything came obscurely, indefinitely, perplexingly; and all I knew of law or convention in the matter had the form of threat- enings and prohibitions. Except through the furtive, shameful talk of my coevals at Goudhurst and Wimble- hurst, I was not even warned against quite horrible dan- gers. My ideas were made partly of instinct, partly of a romantic imagination, partly woven out of a medley of scraps of suggestion that came to me haphazard. I had read widely and confusedly " Vathek," Shelley, Tom Paine, Plutarch, Carlyle, Haeckel, William Morris, the Bible, the Freethinher, the Clarion, " The Woman Who Did," — I mention the ingredients that come first to mind. All sorts of ideas were jumbled up in me and never a lucid explanation. But it was evident to me that the world regarded Shelley, for example, as a very heroic as well as beautiful person ; and that to defy convention and succumb magnificently to passion was the proper thing to do to gain the respect and affection of all decent people. And the make-up of Marion's mind in the matter was an equally irrational affair. Her training had been one, not simply of silences, but suppressions. An enor- mous force of suggestion had so shaped her that the in- tense natural fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into an absolute perversion of instinct. For all that is cardinal in this essential business of life she had one inseparable epithet — " horrid." Without any such train- ing she would have been a shy lover, but now she was an impossible one. For the rest she had derived, I sup- pose, partly from the sort of fiction she got from the Public Library, and partly from the workroom talk at MARIOX 180 Siuithic's. So far as tlic former origin wciit, slic had nn idea of love as a state of worship and service oir the part of the man and of condesecnsion on the part of tlie woman. There was nothing " horrid " ahout it in any fiction she had read. The m.'in gwc presents, did services, souglit to be in every way delightful. The woman " went out " with him, smiled at him, was kissed by him in decorous secrecy, arrd if he chanced to offend, denied her countenance and presence. Usually she did something " for his good " to him, made him go to church, made him give up smoking or gamMing, smart- ened him up. Quite at the end of the story came a marriage, and after that the interest ceased. That was the tenor of Marion's fiction; but I think the work-table conversatiorr at Smithie's did something to modify that. At Smithie's it was recognised, I think, that a " fellow " was a possession to be desired; that it was better to be engaged to a fellow than not; that fel- lows had to be ke|)t — they might be mislaid, they might even be stolen. There was a case of stealing at Smithie's, and many tears. Smithie I met before we were married, and afterwards she became a frequent visitor to our house at Ealing. She was a thin, briglit-eyed, hawk-nosed girl of thirty- odd, with prominent teeth, a high-pitched, eager voice, and a disposition to be urgently smart in her dress. Her hats were startling and various, but invariably discon- certing, and she talked in a rapid, nervous flow that was hilarious rather than witty, and broken by little screams of "Oh, my dear!" and "You never did!" She was .iif first woman I ever met who used scent. Poor old Smithie! What a harmless, kindly soul she really was, and how heartily I detested her! Out of the profits on the Persian robes she supported a sisti-r's family of three chiidretr, she " helped " a worthless brother, and over- flowed in help even to her workgirls, but that didn't 190 TONO-BUNGAY ■weigh with me in those youthfully-narrow times. It was one of the intense minor irritations of my married life that Smithies whirlwind chatter seemed to me to have far more influence with Marion than anything I had to say. Before all things I coveted her grip upon Marion's inac- cessible mind. In the workroom at Smithie's, I gathered, they always spoke of me demurely as " A Certain Person." I was rumoured to be dreadfully " clever," and there were doubts — not altogether without justification — of the sweetness of my temper. II Well, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand the distressful times we two had together when presently I began to feel on a footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the mind and the wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidly, must be in her. I think she thought me the maddest of sane men; "clever," in fact, which at Smithie's was, I sup- pose, the next thing to insanity, a word intimating in- comprehensible and incalculable motives. . . . She could be shocked at anything, she misunderstood everything, and her weapon was a sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed her face of beauty. " Well, if we can't agree, I don't see why you should go on talking," she used to say. That would always enrage me beyond measure. Or, " I'm afraid I'm not clever enough to understand that." Silly little people! I see it all now, but then I va: no older than she and I couldn't see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn't come alive. We would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sun- day, and part speechless with the anger of indefinable MARION 191 offences. Poor Marion! The tilings I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about thcolog}', about Socialism, about lestlielies — tlic very words ai)i)alled licr, gave her the faint chill of approaching inijiropriety, the terror of a very present iirtellectual impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would suppress myself for a time and continue a talk that made her happy, about Smithie's brother, about the new girl who had come to the workroom, about the house wc would presently live in. Hut there we differed a little. I wanted to be ac- cessible to St Paul's or Cannon Street Station, and she had set her mind quite resolutely upon Ealiirg. . . . It wasn't by anj- means quarrelling all the time, you understand. She liked me to plaj- the lover "nicely"; slic liked the effect of going about — wc had lunches, we went to Earl's Court, to Kcw, to theatres and concerts, but not often to concerts, because, though Marion " liked " music, she didn't like " too much of it," to picture shows — and there was a nonsensical sort of baby- talk I picked up — I forget where now — that became a niigiity peacemaker. Her worst offence for mc was an occasional excursion into the Smithic style of dressing, debased West Ken- sington. For she had no sense at all of her own beauty. Slie had no comprehension whatever of beauty of the body, and she could slash her beautiful lines to rags with hi.t-brims and trimmings. Thank Heaven ! a natural re- finement, a natural timidity, and her extremel}- slender purse kept her from the real Sraithie efflorescence! Poor, simple, ix-autiful, kindly, limited Marion! Now that I am forty-five, I can look back at her with all my old admiration and none of my old bitterm-ss, with a new affection and not a scrap of passion, and take her part against the equally stupid, drivingly-energetic, sensuous, intellectual sprawl I used to be. I was a young beast for her to Lave married — a young beast. With her it 192 TONO-BUNGAY. was m}' business to understand and control — and I ex- acted fellowshipj passion. ... We became engaged, as I have told; we broke it off and joined again. We went through a succession of such phases. We had no sort of idea what was wrong with us. Presently we were formally engaged. I had a wonderful interview with her father, in which he was stupendously grave and h-less, wanted to know about my origins and was tolerant (exasperatingly tolerant) be- cause my mother was a servant, and afterwards her mother took to kissing me, and I bought a ring. But the speechless aunt, I gathered, didn't approve — having doubts of my religiosity. Whenever we were estranged we could keep apart for days; and to begin with, every such separation was a relief. And then I would want her; a restless longing would come upon me. I would think of the flow of her arms, of the soft, gracious bend of her body. I would lie awake or dream of a trans- figured Marion of light and fire. It was indeed Dame Nature driving me on to womankind in her stupid, in- exorable way; but I thought it was the need of Marion that troubled me. So I always went back to Marion at last and made it up and more or less conceded or ignored whatever thing had parted us, and more and more I urged her to marry me. . . . In the long run that became a fixed idea. It entan- gled my will and my pride; I told myself I was not going to be beaten. I hardened to the business. I think, as a matter of fact, my real passion for Marion had waned enormously long before we were married, that she had lived it do\vn by sheer irresponsiveness. When I felt sure of my three hundred a year she stipu- lated for delay, twelve months' delay, " to see how things would turn out." There were times when she seemed simply an antagonist holding out irritatingly against something I had to settle. Moreover, I began 31AU1U.\ 193 to be greatly distracted by the interest and exeitemcnt of Tono-Bungay's success, by the cliangc and niovcnient in things, tlie going to and fro. I would forget her for days together, and then desire her with an irritating intensity. At last, one Saturday afternoon, after a brooding morning, I determined almost savagely that these delays must end. I went off to the little home at Walham Green, and made Marion come with me to Putney Common. Marion wasn't at home when I got there and I had to fret for a time and talk to her father, who was just back from his office, he explained, and enjoying himself in his own way in tlie greenhouse. " I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me," I said. " I think we've been waiting lon<» enough." " I don't approve of long engagements either," said her father. " But Marion will have her own way about it, anj-how. Seen this new powdered fertiliser? " I went in to talk to Mrs. Rambont. " She'll want time to get her things," laid Mrs. Ramboat. . . . I and Marion sat down together on a little seat under some trees at the top of Putney Hill, and I came to my point abruptly. "Look here, Marion," I said, "are you going to marry me or are you not? " She smiled at me. " Well," she said, " we're engaged — aren't we ? " " That e n't go on for ever. Will you marry me next week ? " She looked me in the face. " We can't," she said. " You promised to marry me when I had three hun- dred a year." She was silent for a space. " Can't we go on for a time as we are? We could marry on three hundred a year. But it means a very little house. There's Smithie's brother. They manage on two hundred and fifty, but 191 TOXO-BUXGAY that's very little. She says they have a semi-detached house almost on the road, and hardly a bit of garden. And the wall to next-door is so thir they hear every- thing. When her baby cries — they rap. And people stand against the railings and talk. . . . Can't we wait? You're doing so well." An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this in- vasion of the stupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered her with immense restraint. " If," I said, " we could have a double-fronted, de- tached house — at Ealing, say — with a square patch of lawn in front and a garden behind — and — and a tiled bathroom " " That would be sixty pounds a year at least." " Which means five hundred a year. . . . Yes, well, you see, I told my uncle I wanted that, and I've got it." "Got what?" " Five hundred pounds a year." " Five hundred pounds ! " I burst into laughter that had more than a taste of bitterness. " Yes," I said, " really! and notv what do you think? " " Yes," she said, a little flushed ; " but be sensible ! Do you really mean you've got a E^se, all at once, of two himdred a year? " " To marry on — yes." She scrutinised me a moment. " Yon've done this as a surprise! " she said, and laughed at my latjhter. She had become radiant, and that made me radiant, too. " Yes," I said, " yes," and laughed no longer bit- terly. She clasped her hands and looked me in the eyes. She was so pleased that I forgot absolutely my dis- gust of a moment before. I forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds a year and that I had bought her at that. "Come!" I said, standing up; "let's go towards MARION 195 the sunset, dear, and t;ilk about it all. Do you know — this is a most beautiful world, an amazingly beautiful world, and when the sunset falls upon you it makes you into shining gold. No, not gold — into golden glass. . . . Into something better than cither glass or gold." . . . And for all that evening I wooed her and kept her glad. She made me repeat my assurances over again and still doubted a little. We furnished that double- fronted house from attic — it ran to an attit — to cellar, and created a gardtni. "Do you know Pampas Grass.*" said Marion. "I love Pampas Grass ... if there is room." " You shall have Pampas Grass," I declared. And tliere were moments as we went in imagination about that house together, when my whole being cried out to take her in my arms — now. But I refrained. On that aspect of life I touched very lightly in that talk, very lightly because I had had my lessons. She promised to marry me within two months' time. Shyly, reluctantly, she named a day, and next after- noon, in heat and wrath, we " broke it off " again for the last time. We split upon procedure. I refused flatly to have a normal wedding with wedding cake, white favours, carriages and the rest of it. It dawned upon me suddenly in conversation with her and her mother, that this was implied. I blurted out my ob- jection forthwith, and this time it wasn't any ordinrary difference of opinion; it was a " row." I don't remem- ber a quarter of the things we flung out in that dispute. I remember her mother reiterating in tones of gentle remonstrance: "But, George dear, you must have a cake — to send round." I think we all reiterated things. I seem to remcnibcT a refrain of my own: " A marriage is too sacred a thing, too private a thing, for this dis- play." Her father came in and stood behind me against 196 TONO-BUNGAY the wall, and her aunt appeared beside the sideboard and stood with folded arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a sternly gratified prophetess. It didn't occur to me then how painful it was to ISIarion for these people to witness my rebellion. " But, George," said her father, " what sort of mar- riage do you want? You don't want to go to one of those there registry offices ? " " That's exactly what I'd like to do. Marriage is too private a thing " " I shouldn't feel married," said Mrs. Ramboat. "Look here, Marion," I said; "we are going to be married at a registry office. I don't believe in all these — fripperies and superstitions, and I won't submit to them. I've agreed to all sorts of things to please you." " What's he agreed to ? " said her father — unheeded. " I can't marry at a registry office," said Marion, sallow-white. " Very well," I said. " I'll marry nowhere else." " I can't marry at a registry office." " Very well," I said, standing up, white and tense, and it amazed me, but I was also exultant ; " then we won't marry at all." She leant forward over the table, staring blankly at nothing. " I don't think we'd better," she said in a low tone ; " if it's to be like this." " It's for you to choose," I said. I stood for a mo- ment watching the cloud of sulky offence that veiled her beauty. "It's for you to choose," I repeated; and regardless of the others, walked to the door, slammed it behind me and so went out of the house. " That's over," I said to myself in the road, and was full of a desolating sense of relief. . . . MARION 197 But presently her half-averted face began to haunt me as she had sat nt tlie table, and her arm and the long droop of her shoulder. Ill The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle, " Bad temper not coming to business," and set off for Highgate and Ewart. He was actually at work — on a bust of Millie, and seemed very glad for any interruption. " Ewnrt, you old Fool," I said, " knock off and come for a day's gossip. I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to Staines and paddle up to Windsor." " Girl? " said Ewart, putting down a chisel. " Yes." That was all I told him of my affair. " I've got no money," he remarked, to clear up any ambiguity in my invitation. We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart 's suggestion, two Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the boathousc and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and medi- tation, our boat moorctl in a shady place this side of Windsor. I seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and sunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more, against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and bushes. " It's not worth it," was the burthen of the voice. " You'd better get yourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you wouldn't feel so upset." " No," I said decidedly, " that's not my way." . . . .\ thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an altar. . . . 198 TONO-BUNGAY " Everything's a muddle, and you think it isn't. No- body knows where we are — because, as a matter of fact, ■we aren't anywhere. Are women propertj^ — or are they fellow-creatures? Or a sort of proprietary goddesses? They're so obviously fellow-creatures. You believe in the goddess? " " No," I said, " that's not my idea." " \^'bat is your idea ? " " Well " " H'm," said Ewart, in my pause. " My idea," I said, " is to meet one person who will belong to me — to whom I shall belong — body and soul. No half -gods! Wait till she comes. If she comes at all. . . . We must come to each other young and pure." " There's no such thing as a pure person or an im- pure person. . . . Mixed to begin with." This was so manifestly true that it silenced me alto- gether. "And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponde- revo — which end": the head ? " I made no answer except an impatient " Oh ! " For a time Tve smoked in silence. . . . " Did I tell you, Ponderevo, of a wonderful dis- covery I've made?" Ewart began presently. " No," I said, " what is it? " " There's no Mrs. Grundy." "No?" "No! Practically not. I've just thought all that business out. She's merely an instrument, Ponderevo. She's borne the blame. Grundy's a man. Grundy un- masked. Rather lean and out of sorts. Early middle age. With bunchy black whiskers and a worried eye. Been good so far, and it's fretting him ! Moods ! . . . There's Grundy in a state of sexual panic, for example, -— ' For God's sake cover it up ! They get together — MARION 199 they get together ! It's too exciting ! The most dreadful things arc happening!' Rushing about — loirg arms going like a windmill. ' They must be kept apart ! ' Starts out for an absolute obliteration of everything — absolute separations. One side of the road for men, and the other for women, and a hoarding — without posters — between them. Every boy and girl to be sown up in a sack and sealed, just the head and hands and feet out until twenty-one. Music abolished, calico garments for the lower animals! Sparrows to be suppressed — ab-so- lutely." I laughed abruptly. " Well, that's Mr. Grundy in one mood — and it puts Mrs. Grundy She's a much-maligined person, Pon- derevo — a rake at heart — and it puts her in a most painful state of fluster — most painful! She's an amen- able creature. When Grundy tells her tilings are shock- ing, she's shocked — pink and breathless. She goes about trying to conceal her profound sense of guilt behind a haughty expression. . . . " Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of complete whirl- about. Long lean knuckly hands pointing and gesticu- lating! 'They're still thinking of things — thinking of things! It's dreadful. Tliey get it out of books. I can't imagine where they get it ! I must watch I There'rc people over there whispering! Nobody ought to whisper! There's something suggestive in the mere act! Then, pictures! In the museum — things too dread- ful for words. Why can't we have pure art — with the anatomy all wrong and jiure and nice — and pure fiction, pure poetry, instead of all this stuff" with allusions — allusions ? . . . Excuse me ! There's something up behind that locked door! The keyhole! In the interests of public morality — yes. Sir, as a pure good man — I insist — /'// look — it won't hurt me — I insist on looking — my duty — M'm'm — the keyhole! ' " 200 TONO-BUNGAY He kicked his legs about extravagantly, and I laughed again. " That's Grundy in one mood, Ponderevo. It isn't Mrs. Grundy. That's one of the lies we tell about women. They're too simple. Simple! Women are simple ! They take on j ust what men tell 'em . . ." Ewart meditated for a space. " Just exactly as it's put to them," he said, and resumed the moods of Mr. Grundy. " Then you get old Grundy in another mood. Ever caught him nosing, Ponderevo.' Mad with the idea of mysterious, unknown, wicked, delicious things. Things that aren't respectable. Wow ! Things he mustn't do ! . . . Any one who knows about these things, knows there's just as much mystery and deliciousness about Grundy's forbidden things as there is about eating ham. Jolly nice if it's a bright morning and you're well and hungry and having breakfast in the open air. Jolly unattractive if you're off colour. But Grundy's covered it all up and hidden it and put mucky shades and covers over it until he's forgotten it. Begins to fester round it in his mind. Has dreadful struggles with himself about impure thoughts. , . . Then you get Grundy with hot ears, — curious in undertones. Grundy on the loose, Grundy in a hoarse whisper and with furtive eyes and convulsive movements — making things indecent. Evolving — in dense vapours — in- decency ! " Grundy sins. Oh, yes, he's a hypocrite. Sneaks round a corner and sins ugly. It's Grundy and his dark corners that make vice, vice! We artists — we have no vices. " And then he's frantic with repentance. And wants to be cruel to fallen women and decent harmless sculp- tors of the simple nude — like me — and so back to bis panic again." MARIOX 201 ■■ Mrs. Grundy, I suppose, doesn't know he sins," I remarked. "No.' I'm not so sure. . . . But, bless her lieart ! she's a woman. . . . Shtr's a woni.nir. '■ Tlicn again you get Grundy with a large greasy smile — like an accident to a butter tub^all over his face, being Liberal Minded — Grundy in his Anti-Puritan moments, ' trying not to see Harm in it ' — Grundy the friend of iniroeent pleasure. He makes you sick with the Harm he's trying not to see in it. . . . " .-^nd that's why everything's wrong, Pondercvo. Grundy, d.imn him ! stands in the light, and we young people can't see. His moods affect us. We catch his gusts of panic, his disease of nosing, his greasiircss. We don't know what we may think, what wc may say. He does his silly utmost to prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one sort of discussion we find — quite naturally and properly — supremely interesting. So we dorr't adolesce; we blunder up to sex. Uare — dare to look — and he may dirt you for ever! The girls are terror-stricken to silence by his significairt whiskers, by the bleary something in his eyes." Suddenly Ewart, with an almost Jack-in-the-box effect, sat up. " He's about us everywhere, Pondercvo," he said, very solemnly. " Sometimes — sometimes I think he is — in our blood. In mine." He regarded me for my opinion very earnestly, with his pipe iiT the corner of his mouth. " You're the remotest cousin he ever had," I said. . . . I reflected. " Look here, Ewart," I asked, " how would you have things diiTerent.' " He wrinkled Jip his queer fact-, regarded the water and made his pipe gurgle for a space, thinking deeply. " ThCTe ore complications, I admit. We've grown 202 TONO-BUNGAY up under the terror of Grundy and that innocent — but docile and — yes — formidable lady, bis wife. I don't know how far the complications aren't a disease, a sort of bleaching under the Grundy shadow. . . - It is possible there are things I have still to learn about women. . . . Man has eaten of the Tree of Knowl- edge. His innocence is gone. You can't have your cake and eat it. We're in for knowledge; let's have it plain and straight. I should begin, I think, by abolishing the ideas of decency and indecency . . "Grundy would have fits!" I injected. " Grundy, Ponderevo, would have cold douches — pub- licly — if the sight was not too painful — three times a day. . . . But I don't think, mind you, that I should let the sexes run about together. No. The fact behind the sexes — is sex. It's no good humbugging. It trails about- — even in the best mixed company. Tugs at your ankle. The men get showing off and quarrelling — and the women. Or they're bored. I suppose the an- cestral males have competed for the ancestral females ever since they were both some sort of grubby little reptile. You aren't going to alter that in a thousand years or so. . . . Never should you have a mixed company, never — except with only one man or only one woman. How would that be.^ . . . " Or duets only .''... " How to manage it .'' Some rule of etiquette, per- haps." . . . He became portentously grave. Then his long hand went out in weird gestures. " I seem to see — I seem to see — a sort of City of Women, Ponderevo. Yes. ... A walled enclosure — good stone-mason's work — a city wall, high as the walls of Rome, going about a garden. Dozens of square miles of garden — trees — fountains — arbours ■ — lakes. Lawns on which the women play, avenues in which they gossip, boats. . . . Women like that sort of thing. MARION 203 Any woman who's been to a pood eventful girls' school lives on the memory of it for the rest of her life. It's one of the pathetic things about woniciT, — the superiority of school and college to anything they get afterwards. And this city-garden of women will have beautiful places for music, places for beautiful dresses, places for beau- tiful work. Everything a woman can want. Nurseries. KindtTgartens. Seho Least of all can one of the two participants. Even now, with an intcr\'al of fifteen years to clear it up for me, I still find a mass of impressions of Marion as confused, as discordant, as unsystematic and self -contradictory as life. I think of this thing and love her, of that and hate her — of a hundred aspects in which I can now sec lur with an unimpassioned sympathy. As I sit here trying to render some vision of this infinitely confused process, I recall moments of hard and fierce estrangement, moments of unclouded intimacy, the passage of transition all for- gotten. We talked a little language together when wc 212 TOXO-BUXGAY were " friends/' and I was " !Mutney " and she was " Ming," and we kept up such an outward show that till the very end Smithie thought our household the most amiable in the world. I cannot tell to the full how Marion thwarted me and failed in that life of intimate emotions which is the kernel of love. That life of intimate emotions is made up of little things. A beautiful face differs from an ugly one by a difference of surfaces and proportions that are sometimes almost infinitesimally small. I find myself setting down little things and little things; none of them do more than demonstrate those essential tem- peramental discords I have already sought to make clear. Some readers will understand — to others I shall seem no more than an imfeeling brute who couldn't make allowances. . . . It's easy to make allowances now; but to be young and ardent and to make allow- ances, to see one's married life open before one, the life that seemed in its dawn a glory, a garden of roses, a place of deep sweet mysteries and heart throbs and woirderful silences, and to see it a vista of tolerations and baby-talk; a compromise; the least effectual thing in all orre's life. Every love romance I read seemed to mock our dull intercourse, every poem, every beautiful picture reflected upon the uneventful succession of grey hours we had together. I think our real difference was one of aesthetic sensibility. I do still recall as the worst and most disastrous aspect of all that time, her absolute disregard of her own beauty. It's the pettiest thing to record, I know, but she could wear curl-papers in my presence. It was her idea, too, to " wear out " her old clothes and her failures at home when " no one was likely to see her " — " no one " being myself. She allowed me to accumulate a store of ungracious and slovenly memories. . . . 3IARI0N 213 All our conceptions of life differed. I remember how we dirt'»Te-.-: I 4K4.TI tXij!r:l~u^'-i i:: i V'-ix V.^*i;u'rr, '/.'.„« t-"^ 'i-^ !>■'< JiJe*; it l^t faer "dsii,^ siwr fmd, but sl%a • (mk di« kqpM to ^ to SmdKie's «)g;«m aad to det«bp » to «fcpe»JaMe •r Mv AC SwJiUe'c cfe «w awr A mm* widi « p*- tmmiaieh»immert0tpmd. She «mU tolce Saridtfe to t&«st>» «>)d cat to iMKfc cad tolc McfiirfnUjr «nfce hw J H i nnir, — d S a ^iftie tewae • agrt rf pen—iwt wiett- caderwitfcw^ AW Mcnm «st « qwi^ Md 1k«m to E«difc Mid fcf«datib* is giMiei. She edkd mm m • u^^^bsmr. Her fMmrte kft WalhM G»m— her Ciifcer fir« is s cKsdl fco«e I toek fcr ticai sear at, aad tk^ ««se wmA aftfc e& CAi ffe Uttkaew «»f ffe drfsfi Oat cn^pcsate «fea Ae fwatfflfai «^ Ijf « sk oabttond! M7 l«db»4»lav wr^mf^ mt: to fafar to g uiei a m g. He inltotad mk be- " Y«a tUafe too aMKfc," fe awdd fSf- " If 7«a aa* t0hti»»yt wiOi » ep»ae, yarn wi0tt sam '«re Art gjBadfta sf jmut • Vki«m af fUmn, Tkatt* hetUr Am ti i Ukimg , Gmm^" Or is « %mm «i fyaa p gr rt to a, " J emn^t ffttofc, Gcaqpe^ «ltf 7«s dos't get • bit «f i^B 'ene, TU* aaaajr eanwr jm e'd da «aad«» arjdb • bit af gfaMu" Jlsd te ffce msmmet ^mm U merer tame to ■«>■■< pj ir fenaisg « «»rt «f w aj ariag trUk is ffce bill, ssd toJk^f «afa wi b!frr i «ad te «M tog» f tn* a afiprrfifd fwfato af ^. yeimm, " Att out «r mg mk hit," WA s*y im meu^yatj toaec, ff« kf t a trafl af wi^tolsfe pradars to dwe H««t a a awiil pl«eie», «s aw atrfb a wd b, thtrtwaydn, tlK top« af tM««ai«K, fienreBc! fcav the aaddea aao' MARIOX 215 It did much to widen our C'itrnnj:cnirnt thnt M irinn and mr aunt failed to mnke friends, became, br a sort of instinet, antagonistic. My aunt, to begin with, called rntlier frequently, for she was really anxious to know Marion. At first she would arrive likr a whirlwind and pervade the house with an atmosphere of hello! She dressed already with that cheerfully extravagant abandon thnt signalis«'d her accession to fortune, and dressed her best for these visits. She wanted to play the mother to nie, I fancy, to tell Marion occult secrets about the way I wore out my boots and how I never could think to put on thicker things in cold weather. But Marion rectived licr with that defensive suspiciousness of the shy person, thinking only of the possible criticism of herself; and my aunt, perceiving this, became nervous and slangy. . . " She says such queer things," said Marion onci.*, dis- cussing her. " But I suppose it's witty." " Yes," I said ; " it i* witty." " If I said things like she does " The queer things my aunt said were nothing to the queer things she didn't s.iy. I remember her in our drawing-room one day, and how she c!ic sat down in a draped armchair. " I have cared lur ynu," she said. I shrugged my shoulders. " I suppose." she said, " she cares for you? " 222 TONO-BUNGAY I had no answer. " Where is she now ? " "Oh! does it matter to you? . . . Look here, Marion ! This— this I didn't anticipate. I didn't mean this thing to smash down on you like this. But, j'ou know, something had to happen. I'm sorry — sorry to the bottom of my heart that things have come to this between us. But indeed, I'm taken by surprise. I don't know where I am — I don't know how we got here. Things took me by surprise. I found myself alone with her one day. I kissed her. I went on. It seemed stupid to go back. And besides— why should I have gone back? Why should I? From first to last, I've hardly thought of it as touching you. . . . Damn ! " She scrutinised my face, and pulled at the ball-fringe of the little table beside her. " To think of it," she said. " I don't believe . . . I can ever touch you again." We kept a long silence. I was only beginning to realise in the most superficial way the immense catas- trophe that had happened between us. Enormous issues had rushed upon us. I felt unprepared and altogether inadequate. I was unreasonably angry. There came a rush of stupid expressions to my mind that my rising sense of the supreme importance of the moment saved me from saying. The gap of silence widened until it threatened to become the vast memorable margin of some one among a thousand trivial possibilities of speech that would vex our relations for ever. Our little general servant tapped at the door — Marion alwnys liked the servant to tap — and appeared. " Tea, M'm," she said^and vanished, leaving the door open. " I will go upstairs," said I, and stopped. " I will go upstairs," I repeated, " and put my bag in the spare room." MARION 223 We remained motionless and silent for a few sceonds. " Mother is having tea with us to-day," Marion re- marked at Inst, and dropped the worried end of ball- fringe and stood up slowly. . . . And so, with this immense discussion of our changed relations hanging over us, we presently had tea with the unsus])ecting Mrs. Raraboat and the spaniel. Mrs. Kamboat was too well trained in her position to remark upon our sombre preoccupation. She kept a thiir trickle of talk going, and told us, I remember, that Mr. Ram- boat W.1S " troubled " about his cannas. " They don't come up and they won't come up. He's been round and had an explanation with the man who sold him the bulbs — and he's very heiited and upset." The spaniel was a great bore, begging and doing small tricks first at one and then at the other of us. Neither of us used his name. You sec we had called him Miggles, and made a sort of trio in the baby-talk of Mutney and Miggles and Ming. VIII Then presently we resumed our monstrous, momentous duologue. I can't now make out how long that duologue went on. It spread itself, I know, in heavy fragments over either three days or four. I remember myself grouped with Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking standing in our dining-room, sa3-ing this thing or that. Twice wc went for long walks. And we had a long evcTiing alone together, with jaded nerves and hearts that fluctuated between a hard and dreary recog- nition of facts and, oir my part at least, a strange un- wonted tenderness; because in some extraordinary way this crisis had destroyed our mutual apathy and made us feel one another again. It was a duologue that had discrepant parts, that 224 TONO-BUNGAY fell into lumps of talk that failed to join on to their predecessors, that began again at a different le\'elj higher or lower, that assumed new aspects in the intervals and assimilated new considerations. We discussed the fact that we two were no longer lovers; never before had we faced that. It seems a strange thing to write, but as I look back, I see clearly that those several days were the time when Marion and I were closest together, looked for the first and last time faithfully and steadfastly into each other's soul. For those days only, there were no pretences, I made no concessions to her nor she to me; we concealed nothing, exaggerated nothing. We had done with pretending. We had it out plainly and soberly with each other. Mood followed mood and got its stark expression. Of course there was quarrelling between us, bitter quarrelling, and we said things to one another — long pent-up things that bruised and crushed and cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate confrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholj', tear-stained, injured, implacable and dignified. "You love her?" she asked once, and jerked that doubt into my mind. I struggled with tangled ideas and emotions. " I don't know what love is. It's all sorts of things — it's made of a dozen strands twisted in a thousand ways." " But you want her .'' You want her now — when you think of her ? " " Yes," I reflected. " I want her — right enough." " And me ? Where do I come in ? " " I suppose you come in here." " Well, but what are you going to do ? " " Do ! " I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon me. " What do you want me to do ? " As I look back upon all that time — across a gulf MAKIOX 225 of fifteen active years — I find I see it with an under- standing; judgment. I sec it as if it were the business of some one else — indeed of two other people — intimately known yrt judged without passion. I see now thot this shoek, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in rial fact bring out a mind and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged from habits, timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow will-impulse, and became a personality. Her ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged pride. This situation must end. She asked me categorically to give up Effie, and I, full of fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused. " It's too late, Marion," I said. " It can't be done like that." " Then we can't very well go on living together," she said. " Can we.' " " Very well," I deliberated, " if you must have it so." " Well, can we."" " "Can you stay in this house? I mean — if I go awav ? " '■ I doir't know. ... 1 don't think I could." " Then — what do you want? " Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word " divorce " was before us. "If wc can't live together we ought to be free," said Marion. " I don't know anything of divorce," I said — " if you mean that I don't know how it is done. I shall have to ask somelwdy — or look it up. . . . Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We may as well face it" We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent futures might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my questions answered by a soliritor. " We can't as a matter of fact," I said, " get di- 226 TONO-BUNGAY vorced as things are. Apparently, so far as the law goes you've got to stand this sort of thing. It's silly — but that is the law. However, it's easy to arrange a divorce. In addition to adultery there must be deser- tion or cruelty. To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that sort, before witnesses. That's impossible — but it's simple to desert you — legally. I have to go away from you; that's all. I can go on sending you money — and you bring a suit, what is it.'' — for Restitution of Conjugal Rights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey, 'then you can go on to divorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make me come back. If we don't make it up within six months and if you don't behave scan- dalously — the Decree is made absolute. That's the end of the fuss. That's how one gets unmarried. It's easier, you see, to marry than unmarry." " And then — how do I live .'' What becomes of me ? " " You'll have an income. They call it alimony. From a third to a half of my present income — more if you like — I don't mind — three hundred a year, say. You've got your old people to keep and you'll need aU that." " And then — then you'll be free .'' " " Both of us." " And all this life you've hated- — — •" I looked up at her wrung and bitter face. " I haven't hated it," I lied, my voice near breaking with the pain of it all. " Have you? " IX The perplexing thing about life is the irresoluble complexity of reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil. As for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, we sounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh MARIOX 227 jangle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously sellish, generously self-sacrificing. I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn't hang together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were, nevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see them now as so many vain experiments in her effort to appre- hend the crumpled confusions of our complex moral landslip. Some I found irritating beyond measure. I answered her — sometimes quite aboraiffably. " Of course," slie would say again and again, " my life has been a failure." " I've besieged you for three years," I would retort, "asking it not to be. You've done as you pleased. If I've turned away at last " Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage. "How you must hate me! 1 made you wait. Well, now — I suppose j'ou have your revenge." " Revenge! " I echoed. Then she would try over the aspects of our new sepa- rated lives. " I ought to earn my own living," she would insist. " I want to be quite independent, I've alwaj's hated London. Perhaps I shall try a poultry farm and bees. You won't mind at first my being a burden. After- wards " " We've settled all that," I said. " I suppose you will hate me anyhow . . ." There were times when she seemed to regard our separation with absolute coniplaceney, when she would plan nil sorts of freedoms and characteristic interests. " I shall go out a lot with Smithie," she said. .\nd once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed bale her for, that I cannot even now quite forgive her. 228 TOXO-BUNGAY "Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me . . ." Into my memory of these pains and stresses comes the figure of Smithie, full-charged with emotion, so breathless in the presence of the horrid villain of the piece that she could make no articulate sounds. She had long tearful confidences with ilarion^ I know, sym- pathetic close clingings. There were moments when only absolute speechlessness prevented her giving me a stupendous " talking-to " — I could see it in her eye. The wrong things she would have said ! And I recall, too, ]\Irs. Ramboat's slow awakening to something in the air, the growing expression of solicitude in her eye, only her well-trained fear of Marion keeping her from speech. . . . And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether beyond our control, parting came to JIarion and me. I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came to Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all otlier things, and turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time the prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the out- rage on her proprietorship and pride. For the first time in her life she really showed strong emotions in regard to me, for the first time, perhaps, they really came to her. She began to weep slow, reluctant tears. I came into her room, and found her asprawl on the bed, weep- ing. " I didn't know," she cried. " Oh ! I didn't under- stand ! " I've been a fool. All my life is a wreck ! " I shall be alone ! . . . Muiney! Mutney, don't leave me ! Oh ! Mutney ! I didn't understand." I had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in those last hours together that at last, too MARION 229 late, the longed-for thing had happened and Marion had coiuc alive. A iiCTV-borii hunger i'or nic lit her eyes. " Don't leave me! " slie said, " don't leave me! " She clung to me; she kissed me with tenr-snlt lips. . . . I waa promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this impossible dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it needed but a cry, but one word to have united us again for all our lives. Could we have united again? Would that passage have en- lightened us for ever or should we have fallen back in a week or so into tlie old estrangement, the old tempera- mental oi)i)osition.* Of that tliere is now no telling. Our own resolve car- ried us on our predestined way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers, parting inexorably, but all the preparations we had set going worked on like a machine, and we made no attempt to stop them. My trunks and boxes went to the station. I packed my bag ■with Marion standing before me. We were like children who had hurt each other horribly in sheer stupidity, who didn't know now liow to remedy it. We belonged to each otlicr immensely — immensely. The cab came to the little iron gate. " Good-bye ! " I said. " Good-bye." For a moment we held one another in each other's arms and kissed — incredibly witiiout malice. We heard our little servant in the passage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves to one another. Wc were not lovers nor enemies, but two human soids in a frank community of pain. I tore myself from her. " Go away," I said to the ser^'ant, seeing that Marion had followed me down. I felt her standing behind me as I spoke to the cab- man. I got into the cab, resolutely not looking back, and 230 TONO-BUNGAY then as it started jumped up, craned out and looked at the door. It was wide open, but she had disappeared. . . . I wonder — I suppose she ran upstairs. X So I parted from Marion at an extremity of per- turbation and regret, and went, as I had promised and arranged, to EfBe, who was waiting for me in apart- ments near Orpington. I remember her upon the station platform, a bright, flitting figure looking along the train for me, and our walk over the fields in the twilight. I had expected an immense sense of relief when at last the stresses of separation were over, but now I found I was beyond measure wretched and perplexed, full of the profoundest persuasion of irreparable error. The dusk and sombre Marion were so alike, her sorrow seemed to be aU about me. I had to hold myself to my own plans, to remember that I must keep faith with Efiie, with Effie who had made no terms, exacted no guarantees, but flung herself into my hands. We went across the evening fields in silence, towards a sky of deepening gold and purple, and Effie was close beside me always, very close, glancing up ever and again at my face. Certainly she knew I grieved for Marion, that ours was now no joyful reunion. But sue showed no re- sentment and no jealousy. Extraordinarily, she did not compete against ^Marion. Never once in all our time together did she say an adverse word of Marion. . . . She set herself presently to dispel the shadow that brooded over me with the same instinctive skill that some women will show with the trouble of a child. She made herself my glad and pretty slave and handmaid; she forced me at last to rejoice in her. Yet at the back MARIOX 231 ot," " bluff," say " snap." He became particularly addicted to the last idiom. Towards the end every con- ceivable act took the form of saying " snap ! " . . . The odd fish that came to us! And among otliers came Gordon-Nasmyth, that queer blend of romance and illegality who was destined to drag me into the most irrelevant adventure in my life, the Mordet Island 260 TONO-BUNGAY affair; and leave me, as they say, with blood upon my hands. It is remarkable how little it troublefe my conscience and how much it stirs my imagination, that particular memory of the life I took. The story of Mordet Island has been told in a government report and told all wrong; there are still excellent reasons for leaving it wrong in places, but the liveliest appeals of discretion forbid my leaving it out altogether. I've still the vividest memory of Gordon-Nasmyth's appearance in the inner sanctum, a lank, sunburnt person in tweeds with a yellow-browrr hatchet face and one faded blue eye — the other was a closed and sunken lid — and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible story of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered on the beach behind Mordet's Island among white dead mangroves and the black ooze of brackish water. " What's quap ? " said my uncle on the fourth repe- tition of the word. " They call it quap, or quab, or quabb," said Gordon- Nasmyth ; " but our relations weren't friendly enough to get the accent right. . . . But there the stuff is for the taking. They don't know about it. Nobody knows about it. I got down to the damned place in a canoe alone. The boj^s wouldn't come. I pretended to be botanising." . . . To begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic. " Look here," he said when he first came in, shutting the door rather carefully behind him as he spoke, " do you two men — yes or no — want to put up six thousand — for a clear good chance of fifteen hundred per cent, on your money in a year ? " " We're always getting chances like that," said my uncle, cocking his cigar offensively, wiping his glasses and tilting his chair back. " We stick to a safe twenty." THE IIARDINGHAM 2G1 Gordon-Xasuiyth's quick tcuipt-r sliowcd in a sliglit slittVning of his attitude. " Don't you believe hiiu," said I, getting up before lie could reply. " You're dift'erent, and I know your books. We're very glnd you've come to us. Confound it, uncle! It's Gordon- Nnsraytli! Sit down. What is it? Minerals.' " " Quap," said Gordon-Xasniyth, fi.xing his eye on me, " in heaps." " In Iieaps," said my uncle softly, with his glasses very obli(|ue. " You're only fit for the grocery," said Gordon- Nasniyth scornfully, sitting down and helping himself to one of my uncle's cigars. " I'm sorry I came. But, still, now I'm here. . . . And first as to quap; quap, sir, is tiie most radio-active stuff in the world. That's quap! It's a festerin-g mass of earths and heavy metals, polonium, radium, ythorium. thorium, carium, and new things, too. There's a stuff called Xk — provisionally. There they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand. What it is, how it got made, I don't know. It's like as if some young creator had been playing about there. There it lies in two heaps, one small, one great, and the world for miles about it is blasted and scorched and dead. Vou can have it for the getting. You've got to take it— tliafs all ! " . . . " That sounds all right," said I. " Have you samples.' " " Well — should I ? You can have anything — up to two ounces." " Where is it .■' " . . . His blue eye smiled at mc and scrutinised me. He smoked and was fragmentary for a time, fending off my questions; then his story began to piece itself to- gether, lie conjured up a vision of tills strange for- gotten kink in the world's littoral, of the long meander- 262 TONO-BUNGAY ing channels that spread and divaricate and spend their burthen of mud and silt within the thunderbelt of At- lantic surf, of the dense tangled vegetation that creeps into the shimmering water with root and sucker. He gave a sense of heat and a perpetual reek of vegetable decay, and told how at last comes a break among these tilings, an arena fringed with bone-white dead trees, a sight of the hard-blue sea line beyond the dazzling surf and a wide desolation of dirty shirrgle and mud, bleaclied and scarred. ... A little way off among charred dead weeds stands the abandoned station, — abandoned because every man who stayed two months at that sta- tion stayed to die, eaten up mysteriously like a leper — • with its dismantled sheds and its decaying pier of worm- rotten and oblique piles and planks, still insecurely pos- sible. And in the midst, two clumsy heaps shaped like the backs of hogs, one small, one great, sticking out under a rib of rock that cuts the space across, — quap ! " There it is," said Gordon-Nasmyth, " worth three pounds an ounce, if it's worth a penny; two great heaps of it, rotten stuff and soft, ready to shovel and wheel, and you may get it by the ton ! " "How did it get there?" " God knows ! . . . There it is — for the taking ! In a country where you mustn't trade. In a country where the company waits for good kind men to find it riches and then take 'em away from 'em. There you have it — derelict." " Can't you do any sort of deal ? " " They're too damned stupid. You've got to go and take it. That's all." " They might catch you." " They might, of course. But they're not great at catching." We Avent into the particulars of that difficulty. " They THE HARDIXGIIAM 263 wouldn't c/itoh rjie, l>co.-uisr IM sink first. Give nio n yacht," said Gordon-Nasiiivtli; "that's nil I need." " But if you get caught," said uiy uncle. . . . I am inclined to think Gordon-Nasmyth imagined we ■would give him a cheque for six thousand pounds on the strength of his talk. It was very good talk, but we didn't do that. I stipulated for samples of his stuff for analysis, and he consented — reluctantly. I think, on the whole, he would rather I didn't examine samples. He made a motion pocketwards, that gave us an in- vincible persuasion tliat he Ind a sample u)ion him, and that at tlie last instant he decided not to produce it pre- maturely. There was evidently a curious strain of secretiveness in him. He didn't like to give us samples, and he woiddn't indicate within three hundred miles the position of this Mordct Island of his. He had it clear in his mind that he had a secret of immense value, and he had no idea at all of just how far he ought to go with business people. And so presently, to gain time for these hesitations of his, he began to talk of other things. He talked very well. He talked of the Dutch East Indies and of the Congo, of Portuguese East Africa and Paraguay, of JIalays and rich Chinese merchants, Dyaks and negroes and the spread of the Mehoinetjn world in Africa to-day. And all this time he was trying to judge if we were good enough to trust with his adventure. Our cosy inner office became a little place, and all our business cold and lifeless exploits beside his glimpses of strange minglings of mcrr, of slayings un- avenged and curious customs, of trade where no writs run, and the dark treacheries of eastern ports and un- charted channels. We had neither of us gone abroad except for a few vulgar raids on Paris; our world was England, and the 2G4 TONO-BUNGAY places of origiir of half the raw material of the goods ■we sold had seemed to us as remote as fairyland or the forest of Arden. But Gordon-Nasmyth made it so real and intimate for us that afternoon — for me, at any rate — tliat it seemed like something seen and forgotten and now again remembered. And in the end he produced his sample, a little lump of muddy clay speckled with brownish grain's, in a glass bottle wrapped about with lead and flannel — red flannel it was, I remember — a hue which is, I know, popularly supposed to double all the mystical eflScacies of flannel. " Don't carry it about on you," said Gordon-Nasmyth. " It makes a sore." I took the stuff to Thorold, and Thorold had the ex- quisite agony of discovering two new elements in what was then a corrfidential analysis. He has christened them and published since, but at the time Gordon- Nasmyth wouldn't hear for a moment of our publication of any facts at all ; indeed, he flew into a violent passion and abused me mercilessly even for showing the stuff to Thorold. " I thought you were going to analyse it yourself," he said with the touching persuasion of the layman that a scientific man knows and practises all the sciences. I made some commercial inquiries, and there seemed eren then much truth in Gordon-Nasmyth's estimate of the value of the stuff. It was before the days of Capern's discovery of the value of canadium and his use of it in the Capern filament, but the cerium and thorium alone were worth the money he extracted for the gas-mantles then in vogue. There were, however, doubts. Indeed, there were numerous doubts. "What were the limits of the gas-mantle trade? How much thorium, not to speak of cerium, could they take at a maximum. Suppose that quantity was high enough to THE IIARUINGIIAM 26.5 justify our sliipload, came doubts in another quartiT. Were the heaps up to sample? Were tliey as big as he said? Was Gordon-Nasmyth — imaginative? And if these values lield, could we after all get the stuff? It wasn't ours. It was on forbidden ground. You see, there were doubts of every grade and class in the way of this adventure. We went some way, nevertheless, in the discussion of liis project, though I think we tried his patience. Then suddenly he vanished from London, and I saw no more of him for a year and a half My uncle said that was wliat he had expected, and when at last Gordon-Xasmyth reappeared and mcn- tioired in an incidental way that he had been to Paraguay on private (and we guessed passionate) affairs, the business of tlie " quap " expedition had to be begun again at the beginning. My uncle was disposed to be altogether sceptical, but I wasn't so decided. I think I was drawn by its picturesque aspects. Hut wc neither of us dreamt of touching it seriously until Capcrn's discovery. . . . Nnsmyth's story had laid hold of my imagination like one small, intense picture of tropical sunshine hung on a wall of grey business affairs. I kept it going during Gordon-Nasmyth's intermittent appearances in England. Every now and then he and I would meet and reinforce its effect. We would lunch in London, or he would conic to see my gliders at Crest Hill, and make new projects for getting at those heaps again, now with me, now alone. At times tliey became a sort of fairy-story with us, an imaginative exercise. And their came Capcrn's discovery of what he called the ideal filament, and with it an altogether less problemati- cal quality al)out the business side of qunp. I'or Ihi ideal filament needed five per cent, of canadiuni, and cnnadium was known to the world only as n newly 266 TOXO-BUNGAY separated constituent of a variety of tjie rare mineral rutile. But to Thorold it was better known as an element in a m_vsterious sample brought to him by me, and to me it was known as one of the elements in quap. I told my uncle, and we jumped on to the process at once. We found that Gordon-Nasmyth, still unaware of the altered value of the stuff, and still thinking of the experimental prices of radium and the rarity valua of cerium, had got hold of a cousin named Pollcicic, made some extraordinary transaction about liis life in- surance policy, and was buying a brig. We cut in, put down three thousand pounds, and forthwith the lii'e insurance transaction and the Pollack side of this finance vanished into thin air, leaving Pollack, I regret to say, in the brig and in the secret — except so far as canadium and the filament went — as residuum. AVe discussed earnestly whether we should charter a steamer or go on with the brig, but we decided on the brig as a less conspicuous instrument for an enterprise that was after all, to put it plainly, stealing. But that was one of our last enterprises before our great crisis, and I will tell of it in its place. So it was quap came into our affairs, came in as a fairj'-tale and became real. More and more real it grew until at last it was real, until at last I saw wilh my eyes the heaps my imagination had seen for so long, and felt between my fingers again that half-gritty, half- soft texture of quap, like sanded moist-sugar mixed with clay in which there stirs something • One must feel it to understand. All sorts of things came to the Hardingham and offered themselves to my uncle. Gordon-Nasmyth stands out only because he played a part at last in* the crisis of our fortunes. So much came to us that it seemed THE IIARDIXGHA.M 2G7 to mc nt times as tliough tlic whole world of human afTairs was ready to i)rostitiite itself to our real and imaginary millions. As I look bnek, I am still dazzled and inercdulous to think of the quality of our oppor- tunities. We did the most e?:traordinary things; things that it seems absurd to me to leave ta any casual man of wealth and enterprise who cares to do them. I had some ama.^ing perceptions of just how modern thought and the supply of fact to the general mind may be controlled by money. Among other tilings that my uncle ofl'cred for, he tried very hard to buy the liritish Medi- cal Journnl and the Lancet, and run them on what he called modern lines, and when they resisted him he talked very vigorously for a time of organising a rival enterprise. That was a very magnificent idea indeed in its way; it would have given a tremendous advantage in the handling of innumerable sj)ceialties, and indeed I scarcely know how far it would not have put the medical profession in our grip. It still amazes me — I shall die amazed — that such a thing can be possible in the modern state. If my uncle f.iiled to bring the thing off, some one else may succeed. But I doubt, even if he had got both these weeklies, whether his i)oculiar style would have suited them. The change of purpose would have shown. He would have found it difficult to keep up their dignity. He certainly did not keep up the dignity of the Sacred Grove, an important critical organ which he ac- quired one day — by s.aying " snap " — for englit hundred pounds. He got it " lock, stock and barrel " — under one or other of which three aspects the editor was in- cluded. Even at that price it didn't pay. If you are a literary person you will remember the bright new cover he gave that representative organ of British in- tellectual culture, and how his sound business instincts jarred with the exalted pretensions of a vanishing age. One old wrapper I discovered tlie other day runs: — 268 TOXO-BUNGAY "THE SACRED GROVE." A Weekly Magazine of Art, Philosophy, Science and Belles Lettres. Ha»-e you a Nastt Taste ix tour AIouth? It is Ln-EB. You NEED ONE Twenty-Three Pill. (JrST ONE.) Not a Drug but a Lite American Remedy. CONTENTS. A Hitherto Unpublished Letter from Walter Pater. Charlotte Bronte's Maternal Great Aunt. A New Catholic Historj- of England. The Genius of Shakespeare. Correspondence:— The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive; "Commence," or "Begin;" Claverhouse; Socialism and the Individual; The Dignity of Letters. Folk-lore Gossip. The Stage; the Paradox of Acting. Travel, Biography, Verse, Fiction, etc. The Best Pell in the World foe an Irregcl.\r Liver. I suppose it is some lingering traces of the Bladesover tradition in me that makes this combination of letters and pills seem so incongruous, just as I suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish imagination that at bottom our State should be wise, sane and dignified, that makes me think a country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private en- terprise and open to the advances of any purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition. These are ideal conceptions of mine. As a matter of fact, nothing could be more entirely natural and representative of the relations of learning, thought and the economic situ- THE IIARDIXGHAM 2G9 ation in the world at the present time than this cover of the Sacred Grove — the quiet conservatism of the one eiement enibiddt^ in the aggressive brilliance of tlie other; the contrasted notes of bold physiological experi- ment and extreme mental immobility. VI There comes back, too, among tliese Hardingham memories, an impression of a drizzling November day, and how we looked out of the windows upon a proces- sion of the London unemployed. It was like looking down a well into some momen- tarily rCT'caled nether world. Some thousands of needy ineffectual men had been raked together to trail their spiritless misery through the West Einl with an appeal that was also in its way a weak and unsubstantial threat: "It is Work we need, not Charity." There they were, half-phanlom through the fog, a silent, foot-dragging, interminable, grey procession. They carried wet, dirty banners, they rattled boxes for pence; these men who had not said " snap " in the right place, the men who had " snapped " too eagerly, the men who had never said " snap," the men who had never had a chance of saying " snap." A shambling, shameful stream they made, oozing along the street, the gutter waste of competitive civilisation. And we stood high out of it all, as high as if we looked godlike from another world, standing in a room beautifully lit and furnished, skilfully warmed, filled with costly things. " There," thought I, " but for the grace of God, go George and Edward Pondcrcvo." But my uncle's thoughts ran in a different channel, and he made that vision the text of a spirited but in- conclusive harangue upon Tariff Reform. CHAPTER THE SECOND OUR PROGRESS FROM CAMDEN TOWN TO CREST HILL So far my history of my aunt and uncle has dealt chiefly with his industrial and financial exploits. But side by side with that history of inflation from the in- finitesimal to the immense is another development, the change year by year from the shabby impecuniosity of the Camden Town lodging to the lavish munificence of the Crest Hill marble staircase and my aunt's golden bed, the bed that was facsimiled from Fontainebleau. And the odd thing is that as I come to this nearer part of my story I find it much more difficult to tell than the clear little perspective memories of the earlier days. Impressions crowd upon one another and overlap one another; I was presently to fall in love again, to be seized by a passion to which I still faintly respond, a passion that still clouds my mind. I came and went be- tween Ealing and my aunt and uncle, and presently between Effie and clubland, and then between business and a life of research that became far more continuous, infinitely more consecutive and memorable than any of these other sets of experiences. I didn't witness a regular social progress therefore; my aunt and uncle went up in the world, so far as I was concerned, as if they were displayed by an early cinematograph, with little jumps and flickers. As I recall this side of our life, the figure of my round-eyed, b\:tton-nosed, pink-and-white Aunt Susan 2T0 OUR PROGRESS 271 teirds always to tlie ccntrnl position. We drove the car and sustained the ear, she sal in it with a magnificent variety of headgear poised upon lier delicate neek, and — always with that faint ghost of a lisp no misspelling can render — commented on and illuminated the new aspects. I've already sketched the little home behind the Wira- hlchurst chemist's shop, the lodging near the Cobdcn statue, and the apartments in Gower Street. Thence my aui.t and uncle went into a flat in Redgauntlet Man- sions. There they lived when I married. It was a compact flat, with very little for a woman to do in it. In those days my aunt, I think, used to find the time heavy upon her hands, and so she took to books and rending, and after a time even to going to lectures in the afternoon. I began to find unexpected books upon her table: sociological books, travels, Shaw's plays. "Hullo!" I said, at the sight of some volume of the latter. " I'm keeping a miml, George," she explained. "Eh.>" " Keeping a mind. Dogs I never cared for. It's been a toss-up between setting up a mind and setting up a soul. It's jolly lucky for Him and you it's a mind. I've joined the London Library, and I'm going in for the Royal Ii'.stitutioir and every blessed lecture that comes along next winter. You'd i)etter look out." . . . And I remember her coming in late one evening with a note-book in her hand. "Where ye been, Susan?" said my uncle. " Birkbeek — Physiology. I'm getting on." She sat down arrd look off" her gloves. " You're just glass to iv.c," slie sighed, and then in a note of grave reproach: " You old Package! I had no idea! The Things you've kept from me!" . . . Presently they were setting up the house at Bccken- 272 TONO-BUNGAY ham, and my aunt intermitted her intellectual activities. The house at Beckenham was something of an enterprise for them at that time, a reasonably large place by the standards of the early years of Tono-Bungay. It was a big, rather gaunt villa, with a conservatory and a shrubbery, a tennis-lawn, a quite considerable vegetable garden, and a small disused coach-house. I had some glimpses of the excitements of its inauguration, but not many because of the estrangement between my aunt and Marion. My aunt went into that house with considerable zest, and my uncle distinguished himself by the thoroughness with which he did the repainting and replumbing. He had all the drains up and most of the garden with them, and stood administrative on heaps — administratirrg whisky to tlie workmen. I found him there one day, most Napoleonic, on a little Elba of dirt, in an atmos- I>here that defies print. He also, I remember, chose what he considered cheerful contrasts of colours for the painting of the woodwork. This exasperated my aunt extremely — she called him a " Pestilential old Splosher " with an unusual note of earnestness — and he also en- raged her into novelties of abuse by giving each bed- room the name of some favourite hero — Clive, Na- poleon, Caesar, and so forth — and having it painted on the door in gilt letters on a black label. " Martin Luther " was kept for me. Only her respect for domestic discipline, she said, prevented her retaliating with " Old Pondo " on the housemaid's cupboard. Also he went and ordered one of the eompletest sets of garden requisites I have ever seen^ — and had them all painted a hard clear blue. My aunt got herself large tins of a kindlier hued enamel and had everything secretly recoated, and this done, she found great joy in the garden and became an ardent rose grower and herbaceous borderer, leaving her Mind, indeed, to damp OUR PROGRESS 273 evenings nnd the winter montlis. When I think of her at Bicktnhnm, I always tliiiik first of her as dressed in lliat blue eotton stuff" slie affVeted, with her arms in huge gauntleted gardening gloves, a trowel in oite hand nnd a small but no doubt hardy and promising annual, limp nnd very young-looking and sheepish, in the otiier. Beekenhani, in the persons of a vicar, a doctor's wife, and a large proud lady called Hogbcrry, " called " on uiy uncle and aunt almost at once, so soon in fact as the lawn was down again, and afterwards my aunt made friends with a quiet gentlewoman next door, a propos of an overhanging cherry tree and the need of repairing the party fence. So she resumed her place in society from which she had fallen with the disaster of Winiblc- hurst. She made a partially facetious study of the eti- quette of her position, had cards engraved nnd retaliated calls. And then she received a card for one of Mrs. Hogbcrry "s At Homes, gave an old garden party herself, participated in a bazanr and sale of work, and was really becoming quite cheerfully entangled in Bccken- ham society when she was suddenlj- tnken up by the roots again by my uncle and transjilanted to Chiselhurst. " Old Trek, George," she said compactly, " Onward and L'p," when I found her superiirtending the loading of two big furniture vans. " Go up and say good-bye to ' Martin Luther," and their I'll see what j'ou can do to help me." II I look into the jumbled stores of the middle distance of memory, and Beckcnham seems to me a (juite transi- tory phase. But really they were there several years; through nearly all my married life, in fact, and far longer than the year nnd odd tuontlis we lived together at Winiblehurst. But llic WinibK hurst time with llieni is fuller in ray memory by far than the Beckcnham 271 TONO-BUNGAY period. There comes back to me with a quite consider- able amount of detail the effect of that garden party of my aunt's and of a little social misbehaviour of which I was guilty on that occasion. It's like a scrap from an- other life. It's all set in what is for me a kind of cuta- neous feeling, the feeling of rather ill-cut city clothes, frock coat and grey trousers, and of a high collar and tie worn in sunshine among flowers. I have still a quite vivid memory of the little trapezoidal lawn, of the gath- ering, and particularly of the hats and feathers of the gathering, of the parlour-maid and the blue tea-cups, and of the magnificent presence of Mrs. Hogberry and of her clear, resonant voice. It was a voice that would Lave gone with a garden party on a larger scale ; it went into adjacent premises; it included the gardener who was far up the vegetable patch and technically out of play. The only other men were my aunt's doctor, two of the clergy, amiable contrasted men, and Mrs. Hogberry's imperfectly grown-up son, a youth just bursting into collar. The rest were women, except for a young girl or so in a state of speechless good behaviour. Marion also was there. Clarion and I had arrived a little estranged, arrd I remember her as a silent presence, a shadow across all that sunlit emptiness of intercourse. We had embit- tered each other with one of those miserable little dis- putes that seemed so unavoidable between us. She had, with the help of Smithie, dressed rather elaborately for the occasion, and when she saw me prepared to accom- pany her in, I think it was a grey suit, she protested that silk hat and frock coat were imperative. I was re- calcitrant, she quoted an illustrated paper showing a garden party with the King present, and finally I capitu- lated — but after my evil habit, resentfully. . . . Eh, dear! those old quarrels, how pitiful they were, how trivial ! And how sorrowful they are to recall ! I think OUR PROGRESS 275 they grow more sorrowful as I grow older, and all the stnnll passionate reasons for our mutual anger fade and fade out of memory. The impression that Beckenham company has left on my mind is one of a modest unreality; they were all maintaining a front of unspecified social pretension, and evading the display of the economic facts of the case. Most of the husbands were " in business " off stage — it would have been outrageous to ask what the business was — and the wives were giving tin ir energies to pro- duce, with the assistance of novels and the illustrated ni.igazines, a moralised version of the afternoon life of tJie aristocratic class. They hadn't the intellectual or moral enterprise of the upper-class woman, they had no political interests, they had no views about anything, and consequently they were, I remember, extremely difficult to talk to. They all sat about in the summer-house and in garden-chairs, and were very hatly and ruffley and sunshady. Three ladies and the curate played croquet with a general immense gravity, broken by occasional loud cries of feigned distress from the curate. " Oh ! Whacking me about again ! Augh ! " The dominant social fact that afternoon was Mrs. Hogberry; she took up a certain position commanding the croquet and went on, as my aunt said to me in an incidental aside, " like an old Roundabout." She talked of the way in which Beckenham society was getting mixed, and turned on to a touching letter she had re- cently received from her former nurse at Little Goss- deau. Followed a loud account of Little Gossdean and how much she and her eight sisters had been looked up to there. " .My poor mother was (juite a little Queen there," she s.:id. "And such nice Common People! People say the country labourers are getting disrespect- ful nowadays. It isn't so — not if tlicy're properly treated. Here of course iu Lockenham it's different. I 276 TONO-BUNGAY don't call the people we get here a Poor — they're cer- tainly not a proper Poor. They're Masses. I always tell Mr. Bugshoot they're Masses, and ought to be treated as such." . . . Dim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to her. . . . I was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Jlumble— but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that after- noon, either by way of humour or necessit}-. That must have been one of my earliest essays in the art of polite conversation, and I remember that I began by criticising the local railway service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs. Mumble said in a distinctly bright and encouraging way that she feared I was a very " frivolous " person. I wonder now what it was I said that was " frivo- lous." J don't know what happened to end that conversation, or if it had an end. I remember talking to one of the clergy for a time rather awkwardly, and being given a sort of topographical history of Beckenham, which he assured me time after time was " Quite an old place. Quite an old place." As though I had treated it as new and he meant to be very patient but very convinc- ing. Then we hung up in a distinct pause, and my aunt rescued me. " George," she said in a confidential undertone, " keep the pot a-boiling." And then audibly, " I say, will you both old trot about with tea a bit.^ " " Only too delighted to trot for you, ^Slrs. Ponderevo," said the clergyman, becoming fearfully expert and in his element; "only too delighted." I found we were near a rustic table, and that the housemaid was behind us in a suitable position to catch us on the rebound with the tea things. OUR PROGRESS 277 " Trot ! " repeated the clergyman to me, much amused; "excellent expression!" And I just saved him from the tray as he turned about. We handed tea for a wliile. . . . " Give 'cm cakes," said my aunt, flushed, but well in hand. " Helps 'em to talk, George. Always talk best after a little nushment. Like throwing a bit of turf down an old geyser." She surveyed the gathering with a predominant blue eye and helped herself to tea. " They keep on going stifl"," she said in an under- tone. ..." I've done my best." " It's been a huge success," I said encouragingly. " That boy has had his legs crossed in that position and hasn't spoken for ten minutes. Stiffer aiid stifTcr. Brittle. He's beginning a dry cough — always a bad sign, George. . . . Walk 'cm about, shall I } — rub their noses with snow?" Happily she didn't. I got myself involved with the gentlewoman from next door, a pensive, languid-looking little womaiT with a low voice, and fell talking; our topic. Cats and Dogs, and which it was we liked best. " I always feel," said the pensive little woman, " that there's sometliiiig about a dog A cat hasn't got it." " Yes," I found myself admitting with great enthu- siasm, " there it something. And yet again " " Oh ! I know there's something about a cat, too. But it isn't the same." "Not quite the same," I admitted; "but still it's something." "Ah! But such a different something!" " More sinuous." " Much more." " Ever so much more." . . . " It makes all the diirerence, don't you think? " " Yes," I said, " all." 278 TONO-BUNGAY She glanced at me gravely and sighed a long, deep- felt " Yes." A long pause. The thing seemed to me to amount to a stale-mate. Fear came into my heart and much perplexity. " The — er — Roses," I said. I felt like a drowning man. "Those roses— don't you think they are — very beautiful flowers ? " " Aren't they ! " she agreed gently. " There seems to be something in roses — something — I don't know how to express it." " Something," I said helpfully. " Yes," she said, " something. Isn't there? " "So fe^v people see it," I said; " more's the pity!" She sighed and said again very softly, " Yes." . . . There was another long pause. I looked at her and she was thinking dreamily. The drowning sensation returned, the fear and enfeeblement. I perceived by a sort of inspiration that her tea-cup was empty. " Let me take your cup," I said abruptly, and, that secured, made for the table by the summer-house. I had no intention then of deserting my aunt. But close at hand the big French window of the drawing-room 3'awned inviting and suggestive. I can feel all that temptation now, and particularly the provocation of my collar. In an instant I was lost. I would Just for a moment ! I dashed in, put down the cup on the keys of the grand piano and fled upstairs, softly, swiftly, three steps at a time, to the sanctuary of my uncle's study, his snuggery. I arrived there breathless, convinced there was no return for me. I was very glad and ashamed of myself, and desperate. By means of a pen- knife I contrived to break open his cabinet of cigars, drew a chair to the window, took off my coat, collar and tie, and remained smoking guiltily and rebelliously, and OUR PROGRESS 270 pn ping tliroiijrh the blind at the nssenibly on the lawn until it was altogether gone. . , . The clergymen, I thought, were wonderful. Ill A few such pictures of those early days at Becken- li nil stand out, and then I find myself among the Cliisclhurst memories. The Chiselhurst mansion had " grounds " rather than a mere garden, and there was a gardener's cottage and a little lodge at the gate. The ascendant movement was always far more in c\'idence there than at Beckcnham. The velocity was increasing. One niglit picks itself out as typical, as, in its way, marking an epoch. I was there, I think, about some advcrfiscmer.t stuff, on some sort of business anyliow, and mj- uncle and aunt had come back in a fly from a dinner .it the Runcorns. (Even their he was nibbling at Runeorn with the idea of our great Amalgamation budding in his mind.) I got down there, I suppose, about eleven. I found the two of them sitting in the study, my aunt on a chair-arm with a whimsical pen- sivetress on her face, regarding my uncle, and he, much extended and very rotund, in tlie low arm-chair drawn up to the fender. " I.ook here, George," said my nnclc, after my first grcetitrgs. " I just been saying: We aren't Oh Fay! " "Eh?" " Not Oh Fay ! Socially ! " " Old Fl;/, he means, George — French ! " "Oh! Didn't think of French. One never knows where to have him. What's gone wrong to-night.'" " I IvcTi thinking. It isn't any p.Trtieular thing. I ate t(H> much of that fishy stuff at first, like salt frog spawn, and w.as a bit confused by clivcs; and — well, I didn't know which wine was which. Had to say that 280 TOXO-BUNGAY : each time. It puts your talk all wrong. And she -wasn't ': in evening dress, irot like the others. We can't go on in that style, George — not a proper ad." \ " I'm not sure you were right," I said, " in having ! a fly." " We got to do it all better," said my uncle, " we got ] to do it in Style. Smart business, smart men. She tries to pass it off as humorous " — my aunt pulled a ; grimace — " it isn't humorous ! See ! We're on the up- ' grade now, fair and square. We're going to be big. We aren't goirrg to be laughed at as Poovenoos, see ! " j " Nobody laughed at you," said my aunt. " Old i Bladder!" " Nobody isn't going to laugh at me," said my imcle, glancing at his contours and suddenly sitting up. * My aunt raised her eyebrows slightly, swung her foot, and said nothing. " We aren't keeping pace with our own progress, ! George. We got to. We're bumping against new peo- ple, and they set up to be gentlefolks — etiquette dinners • and all the rest of it. They give themselves airs and I expect us to be fish-out-of-water. We aren't going to be. They think we've no Style. AVell, we give them . Style for our advertisements, and we're going to give , 'em Style all through. . . . You needn't be born to ^ it to dance well on the wires of the Bond Street trades- \ meir. See ? " I I handed him the cigar-box. . " Runcorn hadn't cigars like these," he said, trun- j eating one lovingly. " We beat him at cigars. We'll beat him all round." ! My aunt and I regarded liim, full of apprehensions. " I got idees," he said darkly to the cigar, deepen- ing our dread. \ He pocketed his cigar-cutter and spoke again, " We got to learn all the rotten little game first. See ? OUR PROGRESS 281 F'rinsUncc, we got to gtt samples of all the blessed wines there are — and learn 'eui up. Stern, Sinoor, Uur- gundy, all of "eui ! She took Stern to-night — and wlicn she tasted it first You pulled a face, Susan, you did. I saw you. It surprised you. You bunched your nose. We got to get used to wine and not do that. We got to get used to wearing evening dress — you, Susan, too." " Always have had a tendency to stick out of my clothes," said my aunt. " However Who cares ? " She shrugged her shoulders. I had never seen my uncle so immensely serious. " Got to get the hang of etiquette," he went on to the fire. " Horses even. Practise everything. Dine every night in evniing dress. . . . Get a brougham or something. Learn up golf and tenuis and things. Country gentleman. Oh Fay. It isn't only freedom from Goocherv." "Eh.>" I said. "Oh! — Gawshery, if you like!" " French, George," said my aunt. " But I'm not old Gooch. I made that face for fun." " It isn't only freedom from Gawshery. We got to have Style. See! Style! Just all right and one better. That's what I call Style. We can do it, and we will." He mumbled his cigar ami smoked for a space, lean- ing forward and looking into the fire. "What is it," he asked, "after all.' Wh.at is it? Tips about eating; tips about drinking. Clotlics. How to hold yourself, and not say jcs' the few little things they know for certain are wrong — jcs' the shibboleth things." . . . He was silent again, and the cigar crept up from the horizontal towards the zenith as the coirfidencc of his month increased. " Learn the whole bag of tricks in six months," he 282 TONO-BUXGAY said, becoming more cheerful. " Eh, Susan? Beat 'em out! George, you in particular ought to get hold of it. Ought to get into a good club, and all that." " Always ready to learn," I said. " Ever since you gave me the chance of Latin. So far we don't seem to have hit upon any Latin-speaking stratum in the population." " We've come to French," said my aunt, " anyhow." " It's a very useful language," said my uncle. " Put's a point on things. Zzzz. As for accerrt, no Englishman has an accent. Xo Englishman pronounces French properly. Don't you tell me. It's a Bluff. It's all a Bluff. Life's a Bluff— practically. That's why it's so important, Susan, for us to attend to Style. Le Steel Say Lum. The Style it's the man. Whad you laughing at, Susan? . . . George, you're not smoking. These cigars are good for the mind. . . . What do you think of it all? We got to adapt ourselves. We have — so far. . • . Not going to be beat by these silly things." IV "What do you think of it, George? " he insisted. What I said I thought of it I don't now recall. Only I have very distinctly the impression of meeting for a moment my aunt's impenetrable eye. And any- how he started in with his accustomed energy to rape the mysteries of the Costly Life, and become the calmest of its lords. On the whole, I think he did it — thor- oughly. I have crowded memories, a little difficult to disentangle, of his experimental stages, his experimental proceedings. It's hard at times to say which memory comes in front of which. I recall him as presenting on the whole a series of small surprises, as being again and again, unexpectedly, a little more self-confident, a little more polished, a little richer and finer, a little OUR rilOGRESS 283 more aware of the positions and values of things and men. There was a time — it must linvc been very early — when I saw him deeply impressed Ky the splendours of the dining-room of flie National Liberal Club. Heaven knows who our host was or what that particular little " feed " was about now! — all that stieks is the im- pression of our straggling entry, a string of six or seven guests, and my uncle looking about him at the numerous briglit red-shaded tables, at the exotics in great Majolica jars, at the shining ceramic columns and pilasters, at tlie impressive portraits of Liberal statesmen and heroes, and all that eoirtributes to the ensemble of that pala- tial spectacle. He was betrayed into a whisper to me, "This is all Right, George!" he said. That artless comment seems almost incredible as I set it down; there came a time so speedily when not even the clubs of New York could have overawed my uncle, and when he could walk through the bowing magnificence of the Royal Grand Hotel to his chosen table in that aggres- sively exquisite gallery upon the river, with all the easy calm of one of earth's legitimate kings. The two of them learnt tlie new game rapidly and well ; they experimented abroad, they experimented at home. At Cliiselhurst, with tlie aid of a new, very costly, but highly instructive cook, they tried over every- thing they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any reputation for difficulty, from asparagus to plovcrV eggs. They afterwards got a gardener who could w.ii. at table — and he brought the soil home to one. Tliiii there came a butler. 1 remember my aunt's first dinner-gown very brightly, and how she stood before the fire in the drawing-room confessing once unsuspected pretty arms with all the courage she possessed, and looking over her shoulder at herself in a mirror. 284 TONO-BUNGAY " A ham," she remarked reflectively, " must feel lit this. Just a necklace." . . . I attempted, I think, some commonplace complimen My uncle appeared at the door in a white waistcos and with his hands in his trouser pockets; he halted an surveyed her critically. " Couldn't tell you from a duchess, Susan," he r< marked. " I'd like to have you painted, standin' at th fire like that. Sargent! You look^spirited, somehov Lord ! — I wish some of those damned tradesmen at Win blehurst could see you." . . . They did a lot of week-ending at hotels, and somf times I went do^vn with them. We seemed to fall inl a vast drifting crowd of social learners. I don't kno' whether it is due simply to my changed circumstance^ but it seems to me there have been immensely disprc portionate developments of the hotel- frequenting an restaurant-using population during the last twent years. It is not only, I think, that there are crowds c people who, like we were, are in the economically a; cendant phase, but whole masses of the prosperous se< tion of the population must be altering its habits, givin up high-tea for dinner and taking to evening dres: using the week-end hotels as a practise-ground for thes new social arts. A swift and systematic conversion i gentility has been going on, I am convinced, throughoi the whole commercial upper-middle class since I ws twenty-one. Curiously mixed was the personal qualit of the people one saw in these raids. There were cor scientiously refined and low-voiced people reeking wit proud bashf ulness ; there were aggressively smart peopl using pet diminutives for each other loudly and seeli ing fresh occasions for brilliant rudeness; there wei awkward husbands and wives quarrelling furtivel about their manners and ill at ease under the eye o the Tvaiter; cheerfully amiable and often discrepai OUR PROGRESS 28.3 couples with a disposition to inconspicuous corners, and the jolly sort, affecting an unaffected ease; plump happy ladies who laughed too loud, and gentlemen in even- ing dress who subsequently " got their pipes." And nobody, you knew, was airj'body, however expensively they dressed and whatever rooms they took. I look back now with a curious remoteness of spirit to those crowded dining-rooms with their dispersed tables and their inevitable red-shaded lights and the un- sjTiipathetic, unskilful waiters, and the choice of " Thig or Glear, Sir.' " I've not dined in that way, in that sort of place, now for five years — it must be quite five years, so specialised and narrow is my life becoming. My uncle's earlier motor-car jjhases work in with these associations, and there stands out a little bright vignette of the hall of the Magnificent, liexhill-on-Sea, and people dressed for dinner and sitting about amidst the scarlet furniture-satin and white-enamelled wood- work until the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvellously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious man- ager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance iiT that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned, a short figure, compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of brown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a table-land of motoring cap. So it was wc recognised our new needs as fresh invaders of the upper levels of the social system, and set ourselves quite consciously to the acquisitioir of Style and Sacoir Faire. Wc became part of what ia 286 TONO-BUNGAY nowada3'S quite an important element in the confusion of our world, that multitude of economically ascendant people who are learning how to spend money. It is made up of financial people, the owners of the businesses that are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources of wealth, such as ourselves; it includes nearly all America as one sees it on the European stage. It is a various multitude having only this in common: they are all moving, and particularly their womankind are moving, from conditions in which means were in- sistently finite, things were few, and customs simple, towards a limitless expenditure and the sphere of attrac- tion of Bond Street, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. Their general effect is one of progressive revolution, of limit- less rope. They discover suddenly indulgences their moral code never foresaw and has no provision for, elaborations, ornaments, possessions beyond their wildest dreams. With an immense astonished zest they begin shopping, begin a systematic adaptation to a new life crowded and brilliant with things shopped, with jewels, maids, butlers, coachmen, electric broughams, hired town and country houses. They plunge into it as one plunges into a career; as a class, they talk, think, and dream possessions. Their literature, their Press, turns all on that; immense illustrated weeklies of unsurpassed mag- nificence guide them in domestic architecture, in the art of owning a garden, in the achievement of the sump- tuous in motor-cars, in an elaborate sporting equipment, in the purchase and control of their estates, in travel and stupendous hotels. Once they begin to move they go far and fast. Acquisition becomes the substance of their lives. They find a world organised to gratify that passion. In a brief year or so they are connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures, good old furniture. OtJR PROGRESS 287 Their first crude conception of dazzlinp; suites of the newly perfect is replaced nluiost from the outset by a jnckdaw dream of accumulating costly discrepant old things. . . . I seem to remember my uncle taking to slioppmg quite suddenly. In the Beckenham days and iir the early Chiselluirst days he was chiefly interested in get- ting money, and except for his onslaught on the Beck- enham house, bothered very little about his personal surroundings and possessions. I forget now when the change came and he began to spend. Some accident must have revealed to him this new source of power, or some subtle shifting occurred in the tissues of his brain. He began to spend and " shop." So soon as he began to shop, he began to shop violently. He began buying pictures, and then, oddly enough, old clocks. For the Chisclhurst house he bought nearly n dozen grandfather clocks and three copper warming pans. After that he bought much furniture. Then he plunged into art patronage, and began to commission pictures and to make presents to churches and institutions. His buying increased with a regular acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes that came to him in the wild excitements of the last four years of his ascent. Towards the climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with large unexpected purchases, he shopped like a mind seeking expression, he shopped to astonish and dismay; shopped crescendo, shopped fortissimo, con molto esprettione until the magnificent smash of Crest Hill ended his shopping for ever. Always it was he who shopped. My aunt did not shine as a i)urchascr. It is a curious thing, due to I know not what fine strain in her composition, that my aunt never set any great store upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded baznar of Vanity Fair during those feverish years, spcndiirg no doubt freely and largely, but spend- 288 TONO-BUNGAY ing with detachment and a touch of humorous contempt for the thingSj even the " old " things, that money can buy. It came to me suddenly one afternoon just how detached she was, as I saw her going towards the Hard- ingham, sitting up, as she always did, rather stiffly in her electric brougham, regarding the glittering world with interested and ironically innocent blue eyes from under the brim of a hat that defied comment. " No one," I thought, " would sit so apart if she hadn't dreams — and what are her dreams ? " I'd never thought. And I remember, too, an outburst of scornful de- scription after she had lunched with a party of women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She came round to my rooms on the chance of finding me there, and I gave her tea. She professed herself tired and cross, and flung herself into my chair. . . . " George," she cried, " the Things women are ! Do I stink of money? " " Lunching .'' " I asked. She nodded. " Plutocratic ladies? " " Yes." " Oriental type? " " Oh ! Like a burst hareem ! . . . Bragging of possessions. . . . They feel you. They feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good ! " I soothed her as weU as I could. " They are Good, aren't they ? " I said. " It's the old pawnshop in their blood," she said, drinking tea ; and then in infinite disgust, " They run their hands over your clothes — they paw you." I had a moment of doubt whether perhaps she had not been discovered in possession of unsuspected for- geries. I don't know. After that my eyes were quick- ened, and I began to ice for myself women running OUR PROGRESS 289 their bands over other women's furs, scrutinising their I Ince, evi-n demanding to handle jewellery, apj)raising, t envying, testing. They have a kind of etiquette. The 1 woman who feels saj-s, "What beautiful sables?" " What lovely lace? " The woman felt admits proudly: " It's Real, you know," or disavows pretension modestly and hastily, " It's not Good." In each other's houses they peer at the pictures, handle the selvage of hang- ings, look at the bottoms of china. . . . I wonder if it i» the old pawnshop in the blood. I doubt if Lady Drew and the Olympians did that sort of thing, but here I may be only clinging to an- other of my former illusions about aristocracy and the State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty, \and never anywhere has there been such a thing as house and furnishings native and natural to the women and men who made use of them. . . . VI For mc, at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle's career when I learnt one day that he had " shopped " Lady Grove. I realised a fresh, M'idc, unprcludcd step. He took mc by surprise with the sudden change of scale from such p.irtablc possessions as jewels and motor-cars to a stretch of countryside. The transaction was NapoKMuic; he was told of the place; he said "snap"; there were no preliminary desirings or search- ings. Thei' he came home and said what he had done. Even my aunt was for a day or so measurably awe- stricken by this exploit in purchase, nnd we both went dowrr with him to see the house in a mood near conster- nation. It struck us then as a very lordly place indeed. I remember the three of us standing on tlie terrace tliat looked westward, surveying the sky-reflecting win- dows of the house, and a feeling of unwarrantable in- trusion comes back to me. 290 TONO-BUNGAY Lady Grove, you know, is a very beautiful house in- deed, a still and gracious place, whose age-long seclu- sion was only effectively broken with the toot of the coining of the motor-car. An old Catholic family had died out in it, century by century, and was now alto- gether dead. Portions of the fabric are thirteenth cen- tury, and its last architectural revision was Tudor; within, it is for the most part dark and chilly, save for two or three favoured rooms and its tall-windowed, oak- galleried hall. Its terrace is its noblest feature; a very wide, broad lawn it is, bordered by a low stone battle- ment, and there is a great cedar in one corner under whose level branches one looks out across the blue dis- tances of the Weald, blue distances that are made ex- traordinarily Italian in quality by virtue of the dark masses of that single tree. It is a very high terrace; southward one looks down upon the tops of wayfaring trees and spruces, and westward on a steep slope of beechwood, through which the road comes. One turns back to the still old house, and sees a grey and lich- enous fafade with a very finely arched entrance. It was warmed by the afternoon light and touched with the colour of a few neglected roses and a pyracanthus. It seemed to me that the most modern owner conceiv- able in this serene fine place was some bearded schol- arly man in a black cassock, gentle-voiced and white- handed, or some very soft-robed, grey gentlewoman. And there was my uncle holding his goggles in a seal- skin glove, wiping the glass with a pocket-handkerchief, and asking my aunt if Lady Grove wasn't a " Bit of all Eight." My aunt made him no answer. " The man who built this," I speculated, " wore ar- mour and carried a sword." " There's some of it inside still," said my uncle. We went inside. An old woman with very white hair OUR PROGRESS 291 was in charge of the place and cringed rather obviously to the new master. Siie evidently found him a very strnrrge and friglitful apparition indeed, and was dread- fully afraid of him. But if the surviving present bowed down to us, the past did not. We stood up to the dark, long portraits of the extinguished race — one was a Holbein — and looked them in their sidelong eyes. They looked back at us. We all, I know, felt the enigmatical quality in them. Even my uncle was momentarily em- barrassed, I think, by that invincibly self-complacent expression. It was just as though, after all, he had not bought them up and replaced them altogether; as though that, secretly, they knew better and could smile at him. . . . The spirit of the place was akin to Bladesover, but touched with something older and remoter. That ar- mour that stood about had once served in tilt-yards, if indeed it had not served in battle, and this family had sent its blood and treasure, time after time, upon the most romairtic quest in history, to Palestine. Dreams, loyalties, place and honour, how utterly had it all evap- orated, leaving, at last, the final expression of its sprit, these quaint painted smiles, these smiles of triumphant completion! It had evaporated, indeed, long before the ultimate Durgan had died, and in his old age he had cumbered the place with Early Victorian cushions and carpets and tapestry table-cloths and imalid appliances of a type even more extinct, it seemed to us, than the crusades. . . . Yes, it was different from Bladesover. " Bit stuffy, George," said my uncle. " They hadn't much idee of ventilation when this was built." One of the panelled rooms was half-filled with presses and a four-poster bed. " Might l)c the ghosi room," said my uncle; but it did not seem to me that so retiring a family as the Durgans, so old and com- pletely exhausted a family as the Durgans, was likely 292 TONO-BUNGAY to haunt anybody. What living thing now had any concern with their honour and judgments and good and evil deeds? Ghosts and witchcraft were a later inno- vation — that fashion came from Scotland with the Stuarts. . . . Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a broken nose, under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the restricted limits of the present DufEeld church, and half buried in nettles. " Ichabod," said my uncle. "Eh? We shall be like that, Susan, some day. ... I'm going to clean him up a bit and put a railing to keep off the children." " Old saved at the eleventh hour," said my aunt, quoting one of the less successful advertisements of Tono-Bungay. But I don't think my uncle heard her. It was by our captured crusader that the vicar found us. He came round the corner at us briskly, a little out of breath. He had an air of having been running after us since the first toot of our horn had warned the village of our presence. He was an Oxford man, clean-shaven, with a cadaverous complexion and a guardedly respect- ful manner, a cultivated intonation, and a general air of accommodation to the new order of things. These Oxford men are the Greeks of our plutocratic empire. He was a Tory in spirit, and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress of circumstances; that is to say, he was no longer a legitimist; he was prepared for the substitution of new lords for old. We were pill vendors, he knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul ; but then it might have been some polygamous Indian rajah, a great strain on a good man's tact, or some Jew with an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were English, and neither Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully prepared to do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us. He might have preferred OUR PROGRESS 293 Anicricnns for some rensons ; ihcy are rrot so obviously taken from one p;irt of the social system and dumped down in another, aird they are more teachable; but in this world we cannot always be choosers. So he was very bright and pleasant with us, showed us the church, gossiped inforuiingly alxjut our neiglibours on the coun- tryside — Tux, the banker; Lord Boom, the magazine and newspaper proprietor; Lord Carnaby, that great siwrtsman, and old Lady Osprey. Ami finally he took us by way of a village lane — three children bobbed convulsively with eyes of terror for my uncle — through n meticulous garden to a big, slovenly Vicarage with faded \'ictorian furniture and a faded Victorian wife, who gave us tea and introduced us to a confusing family ^dispersed among a lot of disintegrating basket chairs upotr the edge of a well-used tennis lawn. These people interested me. They were a common type, no doubt, but they were new to me. There were two lank sons who had been playing singles at tennis, red-cared youths growing black moustaches, and dressed in conscientiously untidy tweeds and unbuttoned and ungirt Norfolk jackets. There were a number of ill- nourished-looking daughters, sensible and economical in their costume, the younger still with long, brown- stockinged legs, and the eldest present — there were, we discovered, one or two hidden away — displaying a large gold cross and other aggressive ecclesiastical symbols; there were two or three fox-terriers, a rctricverish mon- grel, and an old, bloody-eyed and very evil-smelling St. Bernard. There was a jackdaw. There was, more- over, an ambiguous, silent lady that my aunt subse- quently decided must be a very deaf paying guest Two or three other people had concealed themselves at our coming and left unfinished teas behind them. Rugs and cushions lay among tlic chairs, and two of the latter were, I noted, covered with Union Jacks. 294 TONO-BUNGAY The vicar introduced us sketchily, and the faded Vic- torian wife regarded my aunt with a mixture of con- ventional scorn and abject respect, and talked to hesr in a languid, persistent voice about people in the neigh- bourhood whom my aunt could not possibly know. My aunt received these personalia cheerfully, with her blue eyes flitting from point to point, and coming back again and again to the pinched faces of the daughters and the cross upon the eldest's breast. Encouraged by my aunt's manner, the vicar's wife grew patronising and kindly, and made it evident that she could do much to bridge the social gulf between ourselves and the people of family about us. I had just snatches of that conversation. "Mrs. Merridew brought him quite a lot of money. Her father, I believe, had been in the Spanish wine trade — quite a lady though. And after that he fell off his horse and cracked his brain pan and took to fishing and farming. I'm sure you'll like to know them. He's most amusing. . . . The daughter had a disappointment and went to China as a missionary and got mixed up in a massacre." . . . " The most beautiful silks and things she brought back, you'd hardly believe ! " . . . " Yes, they gave them to propitiate her. You see, they didn't understand the difference, and they thought that as they'd been massacring people, they'd be mas- sacred. They didn't understand the difference Chris- tianity makes." . . . " Seven bishops they've had in the family ! " . . . " Married a Papist and was quite lost to them." . . . " He failed some dreadful examination and had to go into the militia." . . . " So she bit his leg as hard as ever she could and he let go." . . . " Had four of his ribs amputated." . . . OUR PROGRESS 295 " Cauglit meningitis and was carried off iir a week." " Had to have a large piece of silver tube let into his throat, and if he wants to talk he puts his finger on it. It makes him so interesting, I think. You feel he's sincere somehow. A most charming man in every way." " Preserved them both in spirits very luckily, and there they are in his study, though of course he doesn't show them to evcrj-body." The sileirt lady, unperturbed by these apparently exciting topics, scrutinised my aunt's costume witli a singular intensitj-, and was visibly moved whcif she uirbuttoncd her dust cloak and flung it wide. Meanwhile we men conversed, one of the more spirited daughters listened brightly, and the youths lay on the grass at our feet. My uncle offered them cigars, but tliey both declined, — out of bashfulncss, it seemed to me, whereas the vicar, I think, accepted out of tact. When we were not looking at them directly, these young men would kick each other furtively. Under the influence of my uncle's cigar, the vicar's mind had soared beyond the limits of the district. " This Socialism," he said, " seems making great head- way." My uncle shook his head. " We're too individualistic in this country for that sort of nonsense," he said. " Everybody's business is nobody's business. That's where they go wrong." " They have some intelligent people in their ranks, I am told," said the vicar, " writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished playwright, my eldest daughter was telling me — I forget his name. Milly, dear! Oh! she's not here. Painters, too, they have. This Socialism, it seems to me, is part of the Unrest of the Age. . . . But, as yon say, the spirit of the people is against it In the country, at any rate. The people down here are 296 TONO-BUNGAY too sturdily independent in their small way, — and tot sensible altogether." . . . " It's a great thing for DufEeld to have Lady Grovi occupied again," he was saying when my wandering at tention came back from some attractive casualty in hii wife's discourse. " People have always looked up t( the house — and considering all things, old Mr. Durgaj really was extraordinarily good — extraordinarily good You intend to give us a good deal of your time here I hope." " I mean to do my duty by the Parish," said m; uncle. " I'm sincerely glad to hear it — sincerely. We'\i missed — the house influence. An English village isn' complete People get out of hand. Life grow: dull. The young people drift away to London." He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment. " We shall look to you to liven thirrgs up," he said,— poor man ! My uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from hi; mouth. " Whad you think the place wants ? " he asked. He did not wait for an answer. " I been thinking while you been talking — things one might do. Cricke — a good English game — sports. Build the chaps t pavUion perhaps. Then every village ought to have i miniature rifle range." " Ye-ees," said the vicar. " Provided, of course there isn't a constant popping." . . . " Manage that all right," said my uncle. " Thing'c be a sort of long shed. Paint it red. British colour Then there's a Union Jack for the church and the vil lage school. Paint the school red, too, p'raps. Nd enough colour about now. Too grey. Then a maypole.' " How far our people would take up that sort oi thing " began the vicar. OUR PROGRESS 297 " I'm all for gcttirT- venient altogether for a great financier's use. For me that was a period of increasing detachment from our business and the great world of London ; I saw it more and more in broken glimpses, and sometimes I was working in my little pavilion above Lady Grove for a fortnight together; even when I came up it was often solely for a meeting of the aeronautical society or for one of the learned societies or to consult literature or employ searchers or some such special business. For my uncle it was a period of stupendous inflation. Each time I met him I found him more confident, more com- prehensive, more consciously a factor iir great affairs. Soon he was no longer an associate of merely business men; he was big enough for the attentions of greater powers. I grew used to discovering some item of personal news about him in my evening paper, or to the sight of a full-page portrait of him in a sixpeniry magazine. Usually the news was of some munificent act, some romantic piece of buying or giving or sonic fresh rumour of reconstruction. He saved, you will remember, the Parbury Reynolds for the country. Or at times it 300 TONO-BUNGAY '■ would be an interview or my uncle's contribution to j some symposium on the " Secret of Success," or such- j like topic. Or woiiderful tales of his power of work, ] of his wonderful organisation to get things done, of , his instant decisions and remarkable power of judging i his fellow-men. They repeated his great mot: " Eight- ; hour working day — I want eighty hours ! " He became modestly but ^-esolutely " public." They '■ cartooned him in Vanity Fair. One year my aunt, look- ] ing indeed a very gracious, slender lady, faced the por- : trait of the King in the great room at Burlington \ House, and the next year saw a medallion of my uncle ■ by Ewart, looking out upon the world, proud and im- ' perial, but on the whole a trifle too prominently convex, from the walls of the New Gallery. < I shared only intermittently in his social experiences. People knew of me, it is true, and many of them sought to make through me a sort of flank attack upon him, ' and there was a legend, owing, very unreasonably, partly ; to my growing scientific reputation and partly to an ; element of reserve in my manner, that I played a much \ larger share in planning his operations than was ac- ' tually the ca. % Tliis led to one or two very intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one or two house I parties and various odd offers of introductions and serv- \ ices that I didn't for the most part accept. Among '■ other people who sought me in this way was Archie , Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no particu- ; lar distinction, who would, I think, have been quite pre- i pared to develop any sporting instincts I possessed, and | who was beautifully unaware of our former contact. I He was always oft"ering me winners; no doubt in a 1 spirit of anticipatory exchange for some really good • thing in our more scientific and certain method of get- ' ting something for nothing. ... In spite of my preoccupation with my experimental OUR PROGRESS 801 work, I did, I find now that I conic to ransack my impressions, see a great deal of the great world during those eventful years; I had a near view of the machinery by which our astounding Empire is run, rubb«l shoulders and exchanged experiences witli bishops and statesmen, political women and women who were not political, jihysieians and soldiers, artists and authors, the directors of great journals, philanthropists and all sorts of emi- nent, significant people. I saw the statesmen without their orders and the bishops with but a little jjurple silk left over from their canonicals, inhaling, not irrccnse, but cigar smoke. I could look at them all the better because, for the most part, they were not looking at me, but at my uncle, and calculating consciously or uncon- sciously how they might use him and assimilate him to their system, the most unpremeditated, subtle, successful and aimless plutocracy that ever encumbered the desti- nies of mankind. Not one of them, so far as I could sec, until disaster overtook him, resented his lies, his almost naked dishonesty of method, the disorderly dis- turbance of this trade and that, caused by his spasmodic operations. 1 can sec them now about him, see them polite, watchful, various; his stiff compact little figure always a centre of attention, his wiry hair, his brief nose, his under-lip, electric with self-confidence. Wan- dering marginally through distinguished gatherings, I would catch the whispers: " That's Mr. Pondcrcvo! " "The little man.>" " Yes, the little bounder with the glasses." " They say he's made " . . . Or I would see him on some parterre of a platform beside my aunt's hurraying hat, amidst titles and cos- tumes, " holding his end up," as he would say, sub- .scribing heavily to obvious charities, even at times making brief convulsive speeches in some good cause before the most exalted audiences. " Mr. Chairman, 302 TOXO-BUXGAY your Royal Highness, my Lords, Ladies and Gentle- men," be would begin amidst subsiding applause and adjust those obstinate glasses and thrust back the wings of his frock-coat and rest his hands upon his hips and speak his fragment with ever and again an incidental Zzzz. His hands would fret about him as he spoke, fiddle his glasses, feel in his waistcoat pockets; ever and again he would rise slowly to his toes as a sentence unwound jerkily like a clockwork snake, and drop back on his heels at the end. They were the very gestures of our first encounter when he had stood before the empty fireplace in his minute draped parlour and talked of my future to my mother. In those measurelessly long hot afternoons in the little shop at Wimblehurst he had talked and dreamt of the Romance of Modern Commerce. Here, surely, was his romance come true. VIII People say that my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes, but if one may tell so much truth of a man one has in a manner loved, he never had very much head to lose. He was always imaginative, erratic, inconsistent, recklessly inexact, and his inundation of wealth merely gave him scope for these qualities. It is true, indeed, that towards the climax he became in- tensely irritable at times and impatient of contradic- tion, but that, I think, was rather the gnawing uneasiness of sanity than any mental disturbance. But I find it hard either to judge him or con\'ey the full development of him to the reader. I saw too much of him ; my mem- ory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects. Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic. OUR PROGRESS 303 and — in some subtle fundamental way that I find diffi- cult to define — absurd. There stands out — because of the tranquil beauty of its setting perhaps — a talk we had in the veranda of the little pavilion near my worksheds behind Crest Hill in which my aeroplanes and navigable balloons were housed. It was one of many similar conversations, and I do not know why it in particular should survive its fellows. It happens so. He had come up to me after his cofiVc to consult me about a certairr chalice which in a moment of splendour and under the importunity of a countess he had determined to give to a deserving church in the east-end. I, in a moment of even rasher generosity, had suggested Ewart as a possible artist. Kwart had produced at once air admirable sketch for the sacred vessel surroimded by a sort of wr.ath of Millies with open arms and wings and had drawn tifty pounds on the strength of it. After that came a scries of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last even the drawing receded. My uncle grew restive. ..." You see, George, they'll begin to want the blasted thing ! " " What blasted thing? " "That chalice, damn it! They're beginning to ask questions. It isn't Business, George." " It's art," I protested, " and religion." " That's all very well. But it's not a good ad for us, George, to make a promise and not d'liver the goods. . . . I'll have to write off your friend Ewart as a bad debt, that's what it comes to, and go to a dciint firm." . . . We sat outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whisky, and. the chalice dis- posed of, meditated. His temporary annoyance passed. 304 TONO-BUNGAY It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage from which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed like wet steel. The season must have been high June, for down in the woods that hid the lights of the Lady Grove windows, I remember the nightingales thrilled and gurgled. . . . " We got here, George," said my uncle, ending a long pause. "Didn't I say.'" " Say ! — when ? " I asked. " In that hole in the To'ncm Court Road, eh ? It's been a Straight Square Fight, and here we are ! " I nodded. "'Member me telling you — Tono-Bungay? . . . Well. ... I'd just that afternoon thought of it!" "I've fancied at times ;" I admitted. " It's a great world, George, nowadays, with a fair chance for every one who lays hold of things. The career ouvert to the Talons — eh? Tono-Bungay. Think of it ! It's a great world and a growing world, and I'm glad we're in it — and getting a pull. We're getting big people, George. Things come to us. Eh.'' This Palestine thing." T . . He meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly. Then he became still. His theme was taken up by a cricket iiT the grass ur.til he himself was ready to resume it. The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some scheme of its own it had got there. " Chirrrrrrup," it said; " chirrrrr- rup." . . . "Lord, what a place that was at Wimblehurst ! " lie broke out. "If ever I get a day off we'll motor there. OUR PROGRESS 305 George, and run over that dog that sleeps in the High Street Always was a dog asleep there — always. Always ... I'd like to see the old shop again. I daresay old Riiek still stands between the sheep at his door, grinning witli all his teeth, and Marbel, silly beggar! conies out with his white apron on and a pencil stuck behiml his ear, trying to look awake. . . . Wonder if they know it's me? I'd like 'em somehow to know it's me." " They'll have had the International Tea Company and all sorts of people cutting them up," I said. " And that dog's been on the pavement this six years — can't sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor-horns and its shattered nerves." " Movirr' everywhere," said my uncle. " I expect you're right. . . . It's a big time we're in, George. It's a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time. This Palestine business — the daring of it. . . . It's — it's a Process, George. And we got our hands on it. Here we sit — with our hands on it, George. Entrusted. " It seems quiet to-night. But if we could see and hear." He waved his cigar towards Leatherhead and London. " There they are, millions, George. Jes' think of what they've beeir up to to-day — those ten millions — each one doing his own particular job. You can't grasp it. It's like old Whitman says — what is it he says? Well, anyway it's like old Whitman. Fine chap. Whit- man ! Fine old chap ! Queer, you can't quote him ! . . . And these millions aren't anything. There's the millions over seas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, M'rocco, Africa generally, 'Meriea. . . . Well, here we are, with power, with leisure, picked out — ■ because we've been energetic, because we've seized op))or- tunities, because we've made things hum when other people have waited for them to hum. Sec? Here wc 306 TONO-BUNGAY are — with our hands on it. Big people. Big growing people. In a sort of way, — Forces." He paused. " It's wonderful, George," he said. " Anglo-Saxon energy," I said softly to the night. " That's it, George — energy. It's put things in our grip — threads, wires, stretching out and out, George, from that little office of ours, out to West Africa, out to Egypt, out to Inja, out east, west, north and south. Running the world practically. Running it faster and faster. Creative. There's that Palestine canal affair. Marvellous idee! Suppose we take that up, suppose we let ourselves in for it, us and the others, and run that water sluice from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea Valley — think of the difference it will make ! All the desert blooming like a rose, Jericho lost for ever, all the Holy Places under water. . . . Very likely de- stroy Christianity." . . . He mused for a space. " Cuttin* canals," murmured my uncle. " Making tunnels. . . . New countries. . . . New centres. . . . Zzzz. . . . Finance. . . . Not only Palestine. " I wonder where we shall get before we done, George? We got a lot of big things going. We got the investing public sound and sure. I don't see why in the end we shouldn't be very big. There's difficul- ties — but I'm equal to them. We're still a bit soft in our bones, but they'll harden all right. ... I sup- pose, after all, I'm worth something like a million, George — cleared up and settled. If I got out of things now. It's a great time, George, a wonderful time!" . . . I glanced through the twilight at his convexity — and I must confess it struck me that on the whole he wasn't particularly good value. " We got our hands on things, George — us big people. We got to hang together, George — run the show. Join up with the old order like that miU-wheel of Kipling's. OUR PROGRESS 307 (Finest thing he ever wrote, George; — I jes' been read- ing it ngnin. Made nie buy Lady Grove.) Well, we got to run the country, George. It's ours. Make it a Scientific — Organised — Business — Enterprise. Put idees into it, 'Lectrify it. Run the Press. Run all sorts of developments. All sorts of doelopnienls. I been talking to Lord Boom. I been talking to all sorts of people. Great things. Progress. The world on business lines. Only jes' beginning." . . . He fell into a deep meditation. He Zzzzed for a time and ceased. " I'm," he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with ultimate solutions to the profound- cst problems. " What.'' " I said after a seemly pause. My uncle hung fire for a moment and it seemed to me the fate of nations trembled in the balance. Then he spoke as one who speaks from the very bottom of his heart — and I think it was the very bottom of his heart. " I'd jes' like to drop into the Eastry Arms, jes' when all those beggars in the parlour are sittin' down to whist, Ruck and M.irbel and all. and give 'cm ten minutes of my mind, George. Straigl-.t from the shoulder. Jes' cx.'ictly what I think of tlinn. It's a little thing, but I'd like to do it — jes' once before I die. " . . . He rested on that for some time — Zzzz-ing. Then he broke out at a new place in a tone of de- tached criticism. " There's Boom," he reflected. " It's a wonderful system — this old British system, George. It's staid and stable and yet it has a place for ncrw men. We come up and take our pl.-ices. It's almost expected. We take a hand. That's where our Democ- racy ditfi-rs from .Vraerica. Ov>-r tlirre a n:in s-ioceer's; all he gets is money. Here there's a system — open to 308 TONO-BUNGAY everj' one — practically. . . . Chaps like Boom — • come from nowhere." His voice ceased. I reflected upon the spirit of his •words. Suddenly I kicked my feet in the air, rolled on mj' side arrd sat up suddenly on my deck chair with my legs down. " You don't mean it ! " I said. " Mean what, George ? " " Subscription to the party funds. Reciprocal ad- vantage. Have we got to that? " " Whad you driving at, George ? " " You know. They'd never do it, man ! " " Do what .'' " he said feebly ; and, " Why shouldn't they? " They'd not even go to a baronetcy. No! . . . And yet, of course, there's Boom! And Collingshead — and Gorver. They've done beer, they've done snip- pets! After all Tono-Bungay — it's not like a turf com- mission agent or anything like that! . . . There have of course been some very gentlemanly commission agents. It isn't like . a fool of a scientific man who can't make money ! " My uncle grunted; we'd differed on that issue be- fore. A malignant humour took possession of me. " What would they call you ? " I speculated. " The vicar would like DutSeld. 'Too much like Duffer! Difficult thing, a title." I ran my mind over various possibilities. " Why not take a leaf from a socialist tract I came upon yester- day. Chap says we're all getting delocalised. Beautiful word— delocalised ! Why not be the first delocalised peer? That gives you — Tono-Bungay! There is a Bungay, you know. Lord Tono of Bungay — in bottles everj'where. Eh?" My uncle astonished me by losing his temper. " Damn it, George, you don't seem to see I'm serious! OUR PROGRESS 309 You're always sneering at Tono-Bungny ! As though it was some sort of swindle. It was perfec'ly legitimate trade, perfec'ly legitimate. Good value and a good article. . . . When I come up here and tell you plans and exchange idces — you sneer at me. You do. You don't see — it's a big thing. It's a big thing. You got to get used to new circumstances. You got to face what lies before, us. You got to drop that tone." . . . IX My uncle was not altogether swallowed up in business and ambition. He kept in touch with modern thought. For example, he was, I know, greatly swayed by what he called "This Overman idee, Nietzsche — all that stuff." He mingled those comforting suggestions of a potent and exceptional human being emancipated from the pettier limitations of integrity with the Napoleonic legend. It gave his imagination a considerable outlet. That Napoleonic legend! The real mischief of Na- poleon's immensely disastrous and accidental career be- gan only when he was dead and the romantic type of mind was free to elaborate his character. I do believe that my «incle would have made a far less egregious smash if there had been no Napoleonic legend to mis- guide him. He was in many ways better and in- finitely kinder than his career. But when in doubt between decent conduct and a base advantage, that cult came in more and more influentially : "think of Na})oleon; think what the inflexibly-wilful Napoleon would have done with such scruples as yours;" that was the rule, and the end was invariably a new step in dishonour. My uncle was in an unsystematic way a collector of Napoleonic relics; the bigger the book about bis hero. 310 TONO-BUNGAY the more readily he bought it; he purchased letters and tinsel and weapons that bore howe\'er remotely upon the Man of Destiny, and he even secured in Geneva, though he never brought home, an old coach in which Buonaparte might have ridden ; he crowded the quiet walls of Lady Grove with engravings and figures of him, preferring, my aunt remarked, the more convex portraits with the white vest and those statuettes with the hands behind the back which threw forward the figure. The Durgans watched him through it all, sar- donically. And he would stand after breakfast at times in the light of the window at Lady Grove, a little apart, with two fingers of one hand stuck between his waistcoat- buttons and his chin sunken, thinking, — the most pre- posterous little fat man in the world. It made my aunt feel, she said, " like an old Field Marshal — knocks me into a cocked hat, George ! " Perhaps this Napoleonic bias made him a little less frequent with Lis cigars than he would otherwise have been, but of that I cannot be sure, and it certainly caused my aunt a considerable amount of vexation after he had read Xapoleon and the Fair Ser, because for a time that roused him to a sense of a side of life he had in his commercial preoccupations very largely forgotten. Suggestion plays so great a part in this field. My uncle took the next opportunity and had an " affair " ! It was not a very impassioned affair, and the exact particulars never of course reached me. It is quite by- chance I know anything of it at all. One evening I was surprised to come upon my uncle in a mixture of Bohemia and smart people at an At Home in the flat of Robbert, the R.A. who painted my aunt, and he was standing a little apart in a recess, talking or rather being talked to in imdertones by a plump, blond little woman in pale blue, a Helen Scrymgeour who wrote OUR PROGRESS 311 novels and was organising a weekly magazine. I rl- l)owed a large Indy who was saying something about them, but I didn't need to hear tlic thing slie said to perceive tlie relationship of the two. It hit me like a placard on n hoarding. J was amazed the whole gath- ering did not see it. Perhaps they did. She was wear- ing a remarkably fine diamond nicklace, nuich too fine for journalism, and regarding him with that quality of questionable proprietorship, of lenshal but straining intimacy, that seems inseparable from this sort of affair. It is so much more palpable than matrimony. If any- thing was wanted to complete my conviction it was my uncles's eyes when presently he became aware of mine, a certaiiT embarrassment and a certain pride and de- fiance. And the next day he made an opportunity to praise the lady's intelligence to me conciselj', lest I should miss the point of it all. After that I heard some gossip — from a friend of the lady's. I was much too curious to do anything but listen. I had never in all my life imagined my uncle in air amorous attitude. It would appear that she called him her " God in the Car " — after the hero in a novel of .Anthony Hope's. It was essential to the convention of their relations that he should go relentlessly when- ever business called, and it was generally arranged tliat it did call. To him women were air incident, it was understood between them ; Ambition was the master- passion. A great world called him and the noble hunger for Power. I have never been able to discover just how honest Mrs. Scrymgeour was in all this, but it is quite possible the immense glamour of his financial largeness prcraikd with her and that she did bring a really ro- mantic feeling to their encounters. There must have been some extraordinary moments. . . . I was a good deal exercised and distressed about my aunt when I realised what was afoot. I thought it 312 TONO-BUNGAY would prove a terrible humiliation to her. I suspected her of keeping up a brave front with the loss of my uncle's affections fretting at her heart, but there I simply underestimated her. She didn't hear for some time and when she did hear she was extremely angry and energetic. The sentimental situation didn't trouble her for a moment. She decided that my uncle " wanted smacking." She accentuated herself with an unexpected new hat, went and gave him an inconceivable talking-to at the Hardingham, and then came round to " blow-up " me for not telling her what was going on before. . . . I tried to bring her to a proper sense of the accepted values in this affair, but tny aunt's originality of out- look was never so invincible. " Men don't tell on one another in affairs of passion," I protested, and such- like worldly excuses. " Women ! " she said in high indignation, " and men ! It isn't women and men — it's him and me, George! Why don't you talk sense? " Old passion's all very well, George, in its way, and I'm the last person to be jealous. But this is old nonsense. . . . I'm not going to let him show off what a silly old lobster he is to other women. . . . I'll mark every scrap of his underclothes with red let- ters, ' Ponderevo — Private ' — every scrap. . . . " Going about making love indeed ! — in abdominal belts!— at his time of life!" . . . I cannot imagine what passed between her and my uncle. But I have no doubt that for once her customary badinage was laid aside. How they talked then I do not know, for I who knew them so well had never heard that much of intimacy between them. At any rate it was a concerned and preoccupied " God in the Car " I had to deal with in the next few days, unusually Zzzz-y and given to slight impatient gestures that had nothing to do with the current conversation. And it OUR PROGRESS 313 was cvitlcnt that in all directions he was finding tilings unusually difficult to explain. All the intimate moments in this affair were hidden from me, but in the end my aunt triumphed. He did not so much throw as jerk over Mrs. Scrymgeour, and she did not so much make a novel of it as ui)set a huge pailful of attenuated and adulterated female soul upon this occasion. My aunt did not appear in that, even remotely. So that it is doubtful if the lady knew the real causes of her abandonment. The Napoleonic hero was practically unmarried, and he threw over his lady as Napoleon threw over Josephine for a great al- liance. . . . It was a triumph for my aunt, but it had its price. For some time it was evident things were strained be- tween them. He gave up the lady, but he resented having to do so, deeply. She had meant more to his imagination than one could have supposed. He wouldn't for a long time " come round." He became touchy and impatient and secretive towards my aunt, and she, I noted, after an amazing check or so, sto|)ped that stream of kindly abuse that had flowed for so long and had been so great a refreshment in their lives. Tiiey were both the poorer for its cessation, both Ic^s happy. She devoted herself more and more to Lady Grove and the humours and complications of its management. The servants took to her — as tliey say — she god-mothered three Susans during her rule, the coachman's, the gardener's, and the Up Hill gamekce]>er's. She got together a library of old household books that were in the vein of the place. She revived the still-room, and became a great artist in jellies and elder and cow- slip wine. 314 TONO-BUXGAY And while I neglected the development of my uncle's finances — and my own, iir my scientific work and my absorbing conflict with the difficulties of flying, — his schemes grew more and more expansive and hazardous, and his spending wilder and laxer. I believe that a haunting sense of the intensifying unsoundness of his position accounts largely for his increasing irritability and his increasing secretiveness with my aunt and my- self during these crowning years. He dreaded, I think, having to explain, he feared our jests might pierce unwittingly to the truth. Even in the privacy of his mind he would not face the truth. He was accumulating unrealisable securities in his safes until they hung a potential avalanche over the economic world. But his buying became a fever, and his restless desire to keep it up with himself that he was making a triumphant progress to limitless wealth gnawed deeper and deeper. A curious feature of this time with him was his buying over and over again of similar things. His ideas seemed to run in series. Within a twelve-month he bought five new motor-ears, each more swift and powerful than its predecessor, and only the repeated prompt resignation of his chief chauiFeur at each moment of danger, pre- vented his driving them himself. He used them more and more. He developed a passion for locomotion for its own sake. Then he began to chafe at Lady Grove, fretted by a chance jest he had overheard at a dinner. " This house, George," he said. " It's a misfit. There's no elbow-room in it; it's choked with old memories. . . . And I can't stand all these damned Durgans ! " That chap in the corner, George. No ! the other corner! The man in a cherry-coloured coat. He watches OUR PROGRESS 315 von! He'd look silly if I stuck a poker through his Gizzard ! " " He'd look," I reflected, " much as he does now. As though he was amused." He replaced his glasses, which had fallen nt his emotion, and glareti at his antagonists. " What arc tlity? What are they all, the lot of 'cm? Dead as Mutton! They just stuck iir the mud. They didn't even rise to tiie Reformation. The old out-of-date Reformation ! Move with the times ! — they moved against the times. Just a Family of Failure, — they never even tried ! . . . " They're jes', George, exactly what I'm not. Exactly. It isn't suitable. . . . All this living in the Past. " And I want a bigger place too, George. I want air and sunlight and room to move about and more service. A house where you can get a Move on things ! Zzzz. Why I it's like a discord — it jars — even to have the telephone. . . . There's nothing, nothing ex- cej)t the terrace, that's worth a Raj). It's all dark and old and dried up and full of old-fashioned things — musty old idees — fitter for a silver-fish than a modern man. ... I don't know how I got here." He broke out into a new grievance. "That damned vicar," iie complained, " thinks I ought to think myself lucky to get this place! Every time I meet him I can see him think it. . . . One of these days, George, I'll show him what a Mod'un house is like! " And he did. I remember the day when he declared, as Americans say, for Crest Hill. He had come up to see my new gas plant, for I was then only just beginning to experl- meirt with auxiliary collapsible balloons, and all the time the shine of his glasses was wandering away to the open down beyond. " Let's go back to Lady Grove 316 TONO-BUNGAY over the hill," he said. "Something I want to show you. Something fine ! " It was an empty sunlit place that summer evening, sky and earth warm with sundown, and a pe-wit or so just accentuatiirg the pleasant stillness that ends a long clear day. A beautiful peace, it was, to wreck for ever. And there was my uncle, the modern man of power, in his grey top-hat and his grey suit and his black-rib- boned glasses, short, thin-legged, large-stomached, pointing and gesticulating, threatening this calm. He began with a wave of his arm. " That's the place, George," he said. " See ? " " Eh ! " I cried — for I had been thinking of remote things. " I got it." "Got what?" " For a house ! — a Twentieth Century house ! That's the place for it ! " One of his characteristic phrases was begotten in him. " Four-square to the winds of heaven, George ! " he said. "Eh? Four-square to the winds of heaven!" " You'll get the winds up here," I said. " A mammoth house it ought to be, George — to suit these hills." " Quite," I said. " Great galleries and things — running out there and there — See? I been thinking of it, George! Looking out all this way — across the Weald. With its back to Lady Grove." " And the morning sun in its eye." " Like an eagle, George, — like an eagle ! " So he broached to me what speedily became the leading occupation of his culminating years. Crest Hill. But all the world has heard of that extravagant place which grew and changed its plans as it grew, and bubbled like a salted snail, and burgeoned and bulged OUR PROGRESS 317 anJ evermore grew. I know not wlint delirium of pinna- cles and tcrrnccs and arcades and corridors glittered at last upon the uplands of his mind; the place, for nil that its expansion was terminated abruptly by our col- lapse, is wonderful enough as it stamls, — that empty instinctive building of a childless man. His chief archi- tect was a young man named Westminster, whose work he had picked out in the architecture room of the Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him he associated from time to time a num- ber of fellow jirofessionals, stonemasons, sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes, metal workers, wood carvers, furniture designers, ceramic specialists, landscape gardeners, and the man who designs the ar- jangement and ventilation of the various new houses in the London Zoological Gardens. In addition he had his own ideas. The thing occupied his mind at all times, but it held it completely from Friday night to Monday morning. He would come down to Lady Grove on Friday night in a crowded motor-car that almost dripped architects. He didn't, however, confine himself to architects ; every one was liable to an invitation to week-end and view Crest Hill, and many nn eager pro- moter, unaware of how Najjoleonically and completely my uncle had departmcntalised his mind, tried to creep np to him by way of tiles and ventilators and new electric fittings. Always on Sunday mornings, unless the weather was vile, he would, so soon as breakfast and his secretaries were disposed of, visit the site with a considerable retinue, and alter and develop plans, mak- ing modifications, Zzzz-ing, giving immense new orders verbally — an unsatisfactory way, as Westminster and the contractors ultimately found. There he stands in my memory, the symbol of this age for me, the man of luck and advertisement, the current master of the world. There he stands upon the 318 TONO-BUNGAY | great outward sweep of the terrace before the huge main ', entrance, a little figure, ridiculously disproportionate to | that forty-foot arch, with the granite ball behind him — \ the astronomical ball, brass coopered, that represented : the world, with a little adjustable tube of lenses on a ' gun-metal arm that focussed the sun upon just that i point of the earth on which it chanced to be shining j vertically. There he stands, Napoleonically grouped j with his retinue, men in tweeds and golfing-suits, a little , solicitor, whose name I forget, in grey trousers and a black jacket, and Westminster in Jaeger underclothing, j a floriferous tie, and peculiar brown cloth of his j own. The do^vTiland breeze flutters my uncle's coat-tails, disarranges his stiff hair, and insists on the evidence of ^ undisciplined appetites in face and form, as he points out this or that feature in the prospect to his attentive collaborator. ; Below are hundreds of feet of wheeling-planks, ! ditches, excavations, heaps of earth, piles of garden . stone from the Wealden ridges. On either hand the i walls of his irrelevant unmeaning palace rise. At one | time he had working in that place — disturbing the eco- i nomic balance of the whole countryside by their presence ' — upwards of three thousand men. ... | So he poses for my picture amidst the raw beginnings \ that were never to be completed. He did the strangest ; things about that place, things more and more detached j from any conception of financial scale, things more and ' more apart from sober humanity. He seemed to think ; himself, at last, released from any such limitations. He : moved a quite considerable hill, and nearly sixty mature [ trees were moved with it to open his prospect eastward, moved it about two hundred feet to the south. At another time he caught a suggestion from some city \ restaurant and made a billiard-room roofed with plate OUR PROGRESS 819 glass beneath the waters of his ornamental lake. He furnislicd one wing while ils roof still awaited com- pletion. He had a swinmiiirg bath thirty feet square next to his bedroom upstairs, and to crown it all he commcneed a great wall to hold all his dominions to- gether, free from the invasion of common men. It was a ten-foot wall, glass surmounted, atid had it been com- pleted as he intended it, it would have had a total length of nearly eleven miles. Some of it towards the last was so dishonestly built that it collapsed within a year upon its foundations, but some miles of it still stand. I never think of it now but what I think of the hundreds of eager little investors who followed his " star," whose hopes and lives, whose wives' security and children's prospects are all mixed up beyond redemption with that flaking mortar. . . . It is curious how manj' of these modern financiers of chance and bluff have ended their caretTS by building. It was not merely my uncle. Sooner or later they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation, try to make their fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar, bring moonshine into relations with a weekly wages-sheet. Then the whole fabric of confidence and imagination totters — and down they come. . . . When I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of bricks and mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the general quality of unfore- seeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I am reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey and shorts beside my machine, fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous face failed to con- ceal a peculiar desolation that possessed him. " Almost you convince me," he said, coming up to me, " against my will. ... A marvellous inven- tion! But it will take you a long time, sir, before you 320 TONO-BUNGAY can emulate that perfect mechanism — the wing of a bird." He looked at my sheds. " You've changed the look of this valley, too," he said. " Temporary defilements," I remarked, guessing what was in his mind. " Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But H'm. I've just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo's new house. That — that is something more permanent. A magnifi- ceiTt place! — in many ways. Imposing. I've never somehow brought myself to go that way before. . . , Things are greatly advanced. . . . We find — the great number of strangers introduced into the villages about here by these operations, working-men chiefly, a little embarrassing . It put us out. They bring a new spirit into the place; betting — ideas — all sorts of queer notions. Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one's outhouses — and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The other morning I couldn't sleep — a slight dyspepsia — and I looked out of the window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A silent procession. I counted ninety- seven — in the dawn. All going up to the new road for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I've been up to see what they were doing." " They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago," I said. "Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at all — comparatively. And that big house " He raised his eyebrows. " Really stupendous ! . . . Stupendous. " All the hillside — the old turf — cut to ribbons ! " His eye searched my face. " We've grown so accus- OUR PROGRESS 321 tomed to look up to Lady Grove," he said, and smiled in search of sympathy. " It shifts our centre of gravity." " Things will readjust themselves," I lied. He snatched at the phrase. " Of course," he said. "They'll readjust themselves — settle down again. Must In the old way. It's bound to come right again — a comforting thought Yes. After all. Lady Grove itself had to be built once upon a time — was — to begin with — artificial." His eye returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver preoccupations. " I should think twice," he remarked, " before I trusted myself to that concern. . . . But I suppose one grows accustomed to the motion." He bade me good morniirg and went his way, bowed and thoughtful. . . . He had kept the truth from his mind a long time, but that morning it had forced its way to him with an aspect that brooked no denial that this time it was not just changes that were coming in his world, but that all his world lay open and defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike, to change. CHAPTEE THE THIRD SOARING For nearly all the time that my uncle was incubating and hatching Crest Hill I was busy in a little transverse valley between that great beginning and Lady Grove with more and more costly and ambitious experiments in aerial navigation. This work was indeed the main sub- stance of my life through all the great time of the Tono-Bungay symphony. I have told already how I came to devote myself to this system of inquiries, how in a sort of disgust with the common adventure of life I took up the dropped ends of my college studies, taking them up again with a man's resolution instead of a boy's ambition. From the first I did well at this work. It was, I think, largely a case of special aptitude, of a peculiar irrelevant vein of faculty running through my mind. It is one of those things men seem to have by chance, that has little or nothing to do with their general merit, and which it is ridiculous to be either conceited or modest about. I did get through a very big mass of work in those years, working for a time with a concentrated fierceness that left little of such energy or capacity as I possess un- used. I worked out a series of problems connected with the stability of bodies pitching in the air and the internal movements of the wind, and I also revolution- ised one leading part at last of the theory of explosive engines. These things are to be found iir the Philo- sophical Transactions, the Mathematical Journal, an^ SOARING 323 less frequently in one or two other such publications, and they needn't detain us here. Indeed, I doubt if I could write about them here. One acquires a sort of shorthand for one's notes and mind in relation to such special work. I have never taught nor lectured, that is to say, I have never had to express my tiioughts about mechanical things in ordinary everyday language, and I doubt very much if I could do so now without extreme tedium. . . . My work was, to begin with, very largely theoretical. I was able to attack such early necessities of verification as arose with quite little models, using a turntable to get the motion through the nir, and caire, whalebone and silk as building material. But a time came when incal- culable factors crept in, factors of human capacity and factors of insufficient experimental knowledge, when one must needs guess and try. Then I had to enlarge the scale of my operations, and soon I had enlarged them very greatly. I set to work almost concurrently on the balance and stability of gliders and upon tlie steering of inllated bags, the latter a particularly expensive branch of work. I was no doubt moved by something of the same spirit of lavish expenditure thiU was run- ning away with my uncle in these developments. Pres- ently my establishment above Lady Grove had grown to a painted wood chalet big enough to accommodate six men, and in which I would sometimes live for three weeks together; to a gasometer, to a motor-house, to three big corrugated-roofed sheds and lock-up houses, to a stage from which to start gliders, to a workshop and so forth. A rough road was made. We brought up gas from Cheaping and electricity from Woking, which place I found also afforded a friendly workshop for larger operations thaif I could manage. I had the luck also to find a man who seemed my heaven-sent sccond-iu-command — Cothope liis name was. He wa« 324 TONO-BUNGAY a self-educated man; he had formerly been a sapper and he was one of the best and handiest working engineers alive. Without him I do not thicdi I could have achieved half what I have done. At times he has been not so much my assistant as my collaborator, and has followed my fortunes to this day. Other men came and went as I needed them. I do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not experienced it, the peculiar in- terest, the peculiar satisfaction that lies in a sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money. It is a different thing from any other sort of human effort. You are free from the exasperating conflict with your fellow-creatures altogether — at least so far as the essential work goes; that for me is its peculiar merit. Scientific truth is the remotest of mistresses; she hides in strange places, she is attained by tortuous and la- borious roads, but she is always there! Win to her and she will not fail you; she is yours and mankind's for ever. She is reality, the one reality I have found in this strange disorder of existence. She will not sulk with you nor misunderstand you nor cheat you of your reward upon some petty doubt. You cannot change her by advertisement or clamour, nor stifle her in vul- garities. Things grow under your hands when you serve her, things that are permanent as nothing else is permanent in the whole life of man. That, I think, is the peculiar satisfaction of science and its enduring reward. . . . The taking up of experimental work produced a great change in my personal habits. I have told how already once in my life at AVimblehurst I had a period of discipline and continuous effort, and how, when I came to South Kensington, I became demoralised by the immense effect of London, by its innumerable impera- tive demands upon my attention and curiosity. And SOARING 325 I parted with much of my personal pride when I gave up scieirce for the devi'lopnient of Tono-Bung.iy. But my poverty kept me abstinent and my youthful roman- ticism kept mc cliastc until my married life was well under way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I did a large amount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my maximum nor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were avoid.ible things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more carelessly. I felt no rc-ison why I should do anything else. Never at any point did I use myself to the edge of my capacity. The emotional crisis of my divorce did not produce any immediate change in these matters of personal discipline. I found some diflSculty at first in concentrating my mind upon scientific work, it was so much more exacting than business, but I got over that difficulty by smoking. I be- came an inordinate cigar smoker; it gave me moods of profound depression, but I treated these usually by the homoeopathic method, — by lighting another cigar. I didn't realise at all how loose my moral and nervous fibre had become until I reached the practical side of my investigations and was face to face with the necessity of finding out just how it felt to use a glider and just what a man could do with one. I got into this relaxed habit of living in spite of very real tendencies in my nature towards discipline. I've never been in love with self-indulgence. That philosophy of the loose lip and the lax paunch is one for which I've always had an instinctive distrust. I like bare things, stripped things, plain, austere and continent things, fine lines and cold colours. But in these plethoric times when there is too much coarse stuff for everybody and the struggle for life fakes tlie form of competitive advertisement and the effort to fill 326 TONO-BUNGAY your neighbour's eye, when there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident. Always before these times the bulk of the people did not over-eat themselves, because they couldn't, whether they wanted to do so or not, and all but a very few were kept " fit " by unavoidable exercise and personal danger. Now, if only he pitch his standard low enough and keep free from pride, almost any one can achieve a sort of excess. You can go through contemporary life fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry nor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest moment a mere sentimental orgasm, and your first real contact with primary and elemental necessities, the sweat of your death-bed. So I think it was with my uncle; so, very nearly, it was with me. But the glider brought me up smartly. I had to find out how these things went down the air, and the only way to find out is to go down with one. And for a time I wouldn't face it. There is something impersonal about a book, I sup- pose. At any rate I find myself able to write down here just the confession I've never been able to make to any one face to face, the frightful trouble it was to me to bring myself to do what I suppose every other col- oured boy in the West Indies could do without turning a hair, and that is to fling myself off for my first soar down the wind. The first trial was bound to be the worst; it was an experiment I made with life, and the chance of death or injury was, I supposed, about equal to the chance of success. I believed that with a dawn- like lucidity. I had begun with a glider that I imagined was on the lines of the Wright brothers' aeroplane, but I could not be sure. It might turn over. I might upset it. It might burrow its nose at the end and smash itself and me. The conditions of the flight necessitated SOARING 3«r alert ntlention; it wasn't n thing to be done by jumpinj; off and shutting one's eyes or getting angry or drunk to do it. One liad to use one's weight to balance. And when at last I did it it was horrible — for ten seconds. For ton seconds or so, as I swept down the air flattened on my infernal framework and with the wind in my eyes, the rush of the ground beneath me filled me with sick and helpless terror; I felt as though sonic violent oscillatory current was throbbing in brain and back- bonp, and I groaned aloud. I set my teeth and groaned. It was a groan wrung out of me irr spite of myself. My sensations of terror swooped to a climax. And then, you know, they ended! Suddenly my terror was over and done with. I was soaring through the air right way up, steadily, and no mischance had happened. I felt intensely alive and ray nerves were strung like a bow. I shifted a limb, swerved and shouted between fear and triumph as I recovered from the swerve and heeled the other way and steadied myself. I thought I was going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me, — it was queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of nothingness, and I yelled helplessly, " Get out of the way ! " The bird doubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the right abruptly and vanished from my circle of in- terest. Then I saw the shadow of my aeroplane keeping a fixed distance before me and very steady, and the turf as it sermed streaming out behind it. The turf! — it wasn't after all strenniitrg so impossibly fast . . . When I came gliding down to the safe spread of level green I had chosen, I was as cool and ready as a city clerk who drops off an omnibus in motion, and I had learnt much more than soaring. I tilted up her nose at the right momrnt, levelled again and grounded like a snowflake on a windless day. I lay flat for an instant 328 TONO-BUNGAY and then knelt up and got on my feet atremble, but very satisfied with myself. Cothope was running down the hill to me. . . . But from that day I went iirto training, and I kept myself in training for many months. I had delayed my experiments for very nearly six weeks on various ex- cuses because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardice spurred me none the less because it was probably alto- gether my own secret. I felt that Cothope at any rate might suspect. Well, — he shouldn't suspect again. It is curious that I remember that shame and self- accusation and its consequences far more distinctly than I recall the weeks of vacillation before I soared. For a time I went altogether without alcohol, I stopped smoking altogether and ate very sparingly, and every day I did something that called a little upon my nerves and muscles. I soared as frequently as I could. I substituted a motor-bicycle for the Londorr train and took my chances in the southward traffic, and I even tried what thrills were to be got upon a horse. But they put me on made horses, and I conceived a perhaps un- worthy contempt for the certitudes of equestrian exer- cise in comparison with the adventures of mechanism. Also I walked along the high wall at the back of Lady Grove garden, and at last brought myself to stride the gap where the gate comes. If I didn't altogether get rid of a certain giddy instinct by such exercises, at least I trained my will until it didn't matter. And soon I no longer dreaded flight, but was eager to go higher into the air, and I came to esteem soaring upon a glider, that even over the deepest dip in the ground had barely forty feet of fall beneath it, a mere mockery of what flight might be. I began to dream of the keener fresh- ness in the air high above the beechwoods, and it was SOARING 329 rather to satisfy that desire than as any Icgiliniate i\c- Telopmcnt of my proper work that presently I turned a part of my energies and the bulk of my private iucomc to the problem of the navigable balloon. II I had gome far beyond that initial stage; I had had two smashes and a broken rib which my aunt nursed with great energy, and was getting some reputation in the aeronautic world when, suddenly, as though she had never really left it, the Honourable Beatrice Normandy, dark-eyed, and with the old disorderly wave of the hair from her brow, came back into my life. She came riding dowrr a grass path in the thickets below Lady Grove, perched up on a huge black horse, and the old Earl of Carnaby and Archie Garvell, her half-brother, ■were with her. My uncle had been bothering me about the Crest Hill hot-water pipes, and we wore returning by a path transverse to theirs and came out upon them suddenly. Old Carnaby was trespassin'g on our ground, and so he hailed us in a friendly fashion and pulled up to talk to us. I didn't note Beatrice at all at first. I was interested in Lord Carnaby, that remarkable vestige of his own brilliant youth. I had heard of him, but never seen him. For a man of sixty-five who had sinned all the sins, so they said, and laid waste the most magnificent political debut of any man of his generation, he seemed to me to be looking remarkably fit and fresh. He was a lean little man with grey-blue eyes in his brown face, and his cracked voice was the worst thing lit his effect. " Hope you don't mind us coming this way, Ponde^ revo," he cried ; and my uncle, who was sometimes a little too general and generous with titles, answered, 330 TONO-BUNGAY " Not at all, my lord, not at all ! Glad you make use of it ! " " You're building a great place over the hill," said Carnaby. " Thought I'd make a show for once," said my uncle. " It looks big because it's spread out for the sun." " Air and sunlight," said the earl. " You can't have too much of them. But before our time they used to build for shelter and water and the high road." . . . Then I discovered that the silent figure behind the earl was Beatrice. I'd forgotten her sufficiently to think for a moment that slie hadn't changed at all since she had watched me from behind the skirts of Lady Drew. She was looking at me, and her dainty brow under her broad- brimmed hat — she was wearing a grey hat and loose unbuttoned coat — was knit with perplexity, trying, I suppose, to remember where she had seen me before. Her shaded eyes met mine with that mute question. . . . It seemed incredible to me she didn't remember. " Well," said the earl and touched his horse. Garvell was patting the neck of his horse, which was inclined to fidget, and disregarding me. He nodded over his shoulder and followed. His movement seemed to release a train of memories in her. She glanced sudderrh' at him and then back at me with a flash of recognition that warmed instantly to a faint smile. She licsitated as if to speak to me, smiled broadly and underslandingly and turned to follow the others. All three broke into a canter and she did not look back. I stood for a second or so at the crossing of the lanes, watching her recede, and then became aware that my uncle was already some paces off and talking over his shoulder in the belief that I was close behind. I turned about and strode to overtake him. My mind was full of Beatrice and this surprise. I SOARING 331 remembered her simply as a Norniandy. I'd clean for- gotten that Garvcll was the son and she the step- daughter of our neighbour, Lady Osprcy. Indeed, I'd probably forgotten at that time tli.it we had Lady Os- prey as a neighbour. Tliere was no reason at nil for remembering it. It was amazing to find her in this Surrey countryside, when I'd never thought of her as living anywhere iir the world but at Bladesover Park, near forty miles and twenty years away. She was so alive — so unchanged ! The same quick warm blood was in her cheeks. It seemed oidy yesterday that we had kissed among the bracken stems. . . . " Eh.'' " I said. " I say he's good stuff," said my uncle. " You can say what you like against the aristoeracj', George; Lord Carnaby's rattling good stuff. There's a sort of Savoir Faire, something — it's an old-fashioned phrase, George, but a good one — there's a Bong-Tong. . . . It's like the Oxford turf, George, you can't grow it in n year. I wonder how they do it. It's living always on a Scale, George. It's being there from the beginning." . . . " She might," I said to myself, " be a picture by Romney come alive!" " They tell all these stories about him," said my uncle, " but what do they all amount to? " "Gods!" I said to myself; "but why h.ivc I for- gotten for so long.' Those queer little brows of hers — the touch of mischief in her ej-es — the way she breaks into a smile ! " " I don't blame him," said my uncle. " Mostly it's uuaginatioiT. That and leisure, George. When I was a young man I was kept pretty busy. So were you. Even then ! " What puzzled me more particularly was the queer trick of my memory that had never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I met Garvell again. 332 TONO-BUNGAY that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish antag- onism and our fight. Now when my senses were full of her, it seemed incredible that I could ever have for- gotten. . . . Ill " Oh, Crikey ! " said my aunt, reading a letter be- hind her coffee-machine. " Here's a young woman, George ! " We were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that looks upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London. I sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg- " Who's Beatrice Normandy? " asked my aunt. " I've not heard of her before." " She the young woman } " " Yes. Says she knows you. I'm no hand at old etiquette, George, but her line is a bit unusual. Prac- tically she says she's going to make her mother " "Eh? Step-mother, isn't it?" " You seem to know a lot about her. She says ' mother ' — L.idy Osprey. They're to call on me, any- how, next Wednesday week at four, and there's got to be you for tea." "Eh?" " You — for tea. " H'm. She had rather — force of character. When I knew her before." I became aware of my aunt's head sticking out obliquely from behind the coffee-machine and regarding me with wide blue curiosity. I met her gaze for a moment, flinched, coloured, and laughed. " I've known her longer than I've known you," I said, and explained at length. My aunt kept her eye on me over and round the SOARING 333 coffee-machine as I did so. She was greatly interested, and askt'd several elucidatory questions. " Why didn't you tell rae the day you saw her.'' You've had her on your mind for a week," she said. " It I* odd I didn't tell you," I admitted. " You thouglit I'd get a Down on her," said my aunt conclusively. " That's what you thought," and opem>d the rest of her letters. The two ladies came in a pony-carriage with con- spicuous punctuality, and I had the unusual experience of seeing my aunt entertaining callers. We had tea upon the terrace under the cedar, but old Lady Osprey, heing an embittered Protestant, had never before seen tlie inside of the house, and we made a sort of tour of inspection that reminded me of my first visit to thu place. In spite of my preoccupation with Beatrice, I stored a queer little memory of the contrast between t'le two other women; my aunt, tall, slender and awk- ward, in a simple blue homekeeping dress, an omnivorous reader and a very authentic wit, and tiie lady of j)edi- grce, short and plump, dressed with Victorian fussiness, living at the intellectual level of palmistry and genteel fiction, pink in the face and generally flustered by a sense of my aunt's social strangeness and disposed umlcr the circumstances to behave rather like an imitation of the more queenly moments of her own cook. The one seemed made of whalebone, the other of dough. My aunt was nervous, partly th'ough the intrinsic difficulty of handling the lady and pnitly because of her passion- ate desire to watch Beatrice and me, and her nervous- ness took a common form with her, a wider clumsiness of gesture and an exacerbation of her habitual oddity of phrase which did much to deepen the pink jicrplcxity of the lady of title. For instance, I heard my aunt admit that one of the Stuart Durgan ladies did look a bit "balmy on the crumpet"; she described the knights of 334 TONO-BUXGAY the age of cliivalry as " korvorting about on the off- chance of a dragon"; she explained she was "always old mucking about the garden," and instead of offering me a Garibaldi biscuit, she asked me with that faint lisp of hers, to " have some squashed flies, George." I felt convinced Lady Osprey would describe her as " a most eccentric person" on the very first opportunity; — "a most eccentric person." One could see her, as people say, " shaping " for that. Beatrice was dressed very quietly in brown, with a simple but courageous broad-brimmed hat, and an un- expected quality of being grown-up and responsible. She guided her step-mother through the first encounter, scrutinised my aunt, and got us all well in movement through the house, and then she turned her attention to me with a quick and half-confident smile. " We haven't met," she said, " since " " It was in the Warren." " Of course," she said, " the Warren ! I remembered it all except just the name. ... I was eight." Her smiling eyes insisted on my memories being thorough. I looked up and met them squarely, a little at a loss for what I should say. " I gave you away pretty completely," she said, meditating upon my face. " And afterwards I gave away Archie." She turned her face away from the others, and her voice fell ever so little. " They gave him a lickiu'g for telling lies ! " she said, as though that was a pleasant memory. " rVnd when it was all over I went to our wigwam. You re- member the wigwam ? " " Out in the West Wood? " " Yes — and cried — for all the evil I had done you, I suppose. . . . I've often thought of it since." . . . Lady Osprey stopped for us to overtake her. " My SOARING 335 dear!" she snid to Be.itricc. "Such a beautiful gnl- Icry!" Then slir stared vir_v I'.ard at nie, puzzled in the most naked lasliion to understand who I might be. " People say the oak staircase is rather good," said my aunt, and led the way. I.ady Osprey, with her skirts gathered for the ascent to the gallery aird her hand on the newel, turned and addressed a look full of meaning— ovcTfiowing indeed with meanings — at her charge. The chief meaning no doubt was caution about myself, but much of it was just meaning at large. I chanced to catch the response in a mirror and detected Beatrice with her nose wrinkled into a swift and entirely diabolical grimace. Lady Osprey became a deeper shade of pink and speechless with in- dignation — it was evident she disavowed all further re- sponsibility, as she followed my aunt upstairs. " It's dark, but there's a sort of dignity," said Bea- trice very distinctly, rej;arding the hall witli serene tran- quillity, and allowing the unwilling feet on the stairs to widen their distance from us. She stood a step up, so that she looked down a little upon me and over me at the old hall. She turned upon mc abruptly when she thought her step-mother was beyond ear-shot. " But how did you get here? " she asked. "Here?" " All this." She indicated space and leisure by a wave of the hand at hall and tall windows and sunlit terrace. "Weren't you the housekeeper's son?" " I've adventured. My uncle has beconi' — a great financier. He used to be a little chemist alioul twenty miles from Bl.idesover. We're promoters now, amalga- mators, big people on the new model." " I understand." She regarded me with interested ejes, visibly thinking me out. " And you recognised mc ? " I asked. 336 TONO-BUNGAY " After a second or so. I saw you recognised me. I couldn't place you, but I knew I knew you. Then Archie being there helped me to remember." "I'm glad to meet again," I ventured. "I'd never forgotten you." " One doesn't forget those childish things." We regarded one another for a moment with a curi- ously easy and confident satisfaction in coming together again. I can't explain our ready zest in one another. The thing was so. We pleased each other, we had no doubt in our minds that we pleased each other. From the first we were at our ease with one another. " So picturesque, so very picturesque," came a voice from above, and then: " Bee-atrice ! " " I've a hundred things I want to know about you," she said with an easy intimacy, as we went up the wind- ing steps. . . . As the four of us sat at tea together under the cedar on the terrace she asked questions about my aeronautics. My aunt helped with a word or so about my broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most undesirable and improper topic — a blasphemous intru- sion upon the angels. " It isn't flying," I explained. " We don't fly yet." " You never will," she said compactly. " You never wiU." " Well," I said, " we do what we can." The little lady lifted a small gloved hand and indi- cated a height of about four feet from the ground. " Thus far/' she said, " thus far — and no farther! No!" She became emphatically pink. " No," she said again quite conclusively, and coughed shortly. " Thank you," she said to her ninth or tenth cake. Beatrice burst into cheerful laughter with her eye on me. I was lying on the turf, and this perhaps caused a slight con- SOARING 337 fusion about the primordial curse in Lady Osprcy's mind. " Upon his belly shnll he go," she said with quiet distinctness, " all the days of his life." After which we talked no more of aeronautics. Beatrice s.nt bunched together in a chair mid regarded me with exactly the same scrutiny, I thought, the same adventurous aggression, that I had faced long ago at the tea-table in my mother's room. She was amazingly like that little Princess of my Bladesovcr memories, the wilful misbehaviours of her hair seemed the same — her voice; things one would have expected to be changed altogether. She formed her plans in the same quick way, and acted with the same irresponsible decision. She stood up abruptly. "What is there beyond the terrace?" she said, and found me promptly beside her. I invented a view for her. At tlie further corner from the cedar she perched herself up upon the parapet and achieved an air of comfort among the lichenous stones. " Now tell me," she said, " all about yourself. Tell me about yourself; I know such duffers of men! They all do the same things. How did you get — here? All my men were here. They couldn't have got here if they hadn't been here always. They wouldn't have thought it right. You've climbed." "If it's climbing," I said. She went off at a tangent. " It's — I don't know if you'll undiTstand — interesting to meet you again. I've remembered you. I don't know why, but I have. I've oscd you as a sort of lay figure — when I've told myself stories. But you've always been rather stitF and diffi- cult in my stories — in ready-made clothes — a I.alwiir MtTiibcr or a Bradlaugh, or something like that. You're not like that a bit. And vet vou are! " 338 TONO-BUNGAY She looked at me. " Was it much of a fight ? Thej make out it is. I don't know why." " I was shot up here by an accident," I said. " There was no fight at all. Except to keep honest, perhaps — and I made no great figure in that. I and my uncle mixed a medicine and it blew us up. No merit in that! But you've been here all the time. Tell me what you have done first." " One thing we didn't do." She meditated for a moment. "What?" said I. " Produce a little half-brother for Bladesover. So it went to the Phillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and my step-mother — we let, too. And live in a little house." She nodded her head vaguely over her shoulder, and turned to me again. " Well, suppose it was an acci- dent. Here you are ! Now you're here, what are you going to do.^ You're young. Is it to be Parliament? I heard some men the other day talking about you. Be- fore I knew you were you. They said that was what you ought to do." . . . She put me through my intentions with a close and vital curiosity. It was just as she had tried to imag- ine me a soldier and place me years ago. She made me feel more planless and incidental than ever. " You want to make a flying-machine," she pursued. " And when you fly? What then? Would it be for fight- ing?" . . . I told her something of my experimental work. She had never heard of the soaring aeroplane, and was ex- cited by the thought, and keen to hear about it. She had thought all the work so far had been a mere pro- jecting of impossible machines. I'or her Pilcher and Lilicirthal had died in vain. She did not know such men had lived in the world. SOARING 889 " But that's dangerous ! " she said, with a note of discovery. " Oh ! — it's dangerous." . . . " Bee-atrice ! " Lady Osprcy called. Beatrice dropped from the wall to her feet. " Where do you do this -soaring? " " Beyond the high Barrows. East of Crest Hill and the wood." " Do you mind people coming to see? " " Whenever you please. Only let nie know " " I'll take my chance some day. Some day soon." She looked at me thoughtfully, smiled, and our talk was at an end. IV All my later work in aerorrautics is associated in my memory with the quality of Beatrice, with her incidental presence, with things she said and did and things I tliought of tliat had reference to her. In the spring of that year I had got to a flying ma- chine that lacked nothing but longitudinal stability. My model flew like a bird for fifty or a hundred yards or so, and then either dived and broke its nose or, what was commoner, reared up, slid back and smashed its propeller. The rhythm of the pitching puzzled me. I felt it must obey some laws not yet quite clearly stated. I became therefore a student of theory and literature for a time; I hit upon the string of considerations that led me to what is called Ponderevo's Principle and my F.R.S., and I worked this out in three long papers. Meanwhile I made a lot of turn-table and glider models and started in upon an idea of combining gas-bags and gliders. Balloon work was new to me. I had made one or two ascents in the balloons of the Aero Club before I started my gasometer ami the balloon shed and gave Cotliopc a couple of months with Sir Peter Rum- 310 TONO-BUNGAY chase. My uncle found part of the money for these developments; he was growing interested and competi- tive in this business because of Lord Boom's prize and the amount of reclame involved, and it was at his re- j quest that I named my first navigable balloon Lord i Roberts Alpha. j Lord Roberts a very nearly terminated all my inves- j ligations. My idea both in this and its more successful .; aird famous younger brother, Lord Roberts p, was to j utilise the idea of a contractile balloon with a rigid • flat base, a balloon shaped rather like an inverted boat I that should almost support the apparatus, but not quite. J The gas-bag was of the chambered sort used for these 1 long forms, and not with an internal balloonette. The trouble was to make the thing contractile. This I sought * to do by fixing a long, fine-meshed silk net over it that was fastened to be rolled up on two longitudinal rods. ^ Practically I contracted my sausage gas-bag by netting ; it down. The ends were too complex for me to describe ' here, but I thought them out elaborately and they were very carefully planned. Lord Roberts a was furnished . with a single big screw forward, and there was a rudder i aft. The engine was the first one to be, so to speak, right in the plane of the gas-bag. I lay immediately under the balloon on a sort of glider framework, far ' away from either engine or rudder, controlling them by j wire-pulls constructed on the principle of the well- known Bowden brake of the cyclist. j But Lord Roberts a has been pretty exhaustively ; figured and described in various aeronautical publica- \ tions. The unforeseen defect was the badness of the ; work in the silk netting. It tore aft as soon as I began 1 to contract the balloon, and the last two segments im- j mediately bulged through the hole, exactly as an inner '. tube will bulge through the ruptured outer cover of a i pneumatic tire, and then the sharp edge of the torn SOARING 341 net cut tlie oiled-silk of the distended last segment along a weak seam and burst it with a loud report. Up to that point the whole thing had been going on extremely well. As a navigable balloon and before I contracted it, the Lord Roberts a was an unqualified success. It had run out of the shed admirably at nine or ten miles an hour or more, and although there was a gentle southwester blowing, it had gone up and turned and faced it as well as any craft of the sort I have ever seen. I lay irr my customary glider position, horizontal and face downward, and the invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of independent levitation. Oirly by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, swish, swish, swish of the vans of the propeller. I mnile a wide circle over Lady Grove and Duffield and out towards Effingham and came back quite successfully to the starting-point. Down below in the October sunlight were my sheds and tlie little group that had been summoned to witness the start, their faces craned upward and most of them scrutinising my expression through field-glasses. I could see Carnaby and Beatrice on horseback, and two girls I did not know with them; Cothopc and three or four workmen I employed; my aunt and Mrs. Levin- stein, who w.-!s staying with her, on foot, and Dimmock, the veterinary surgeon, and one or two others. My shadow moved a little to the north of them like the shadow of a fish. At Lady Grove the servants were out on the lawn, and the Duffield school playground swarmed with children too indifferent to aeronautics to cease their playing. But in the Crest Hill direction — the place looked extraordinarily squat and ugly from above — there were knots and strings of staring work- men everywhere — not one of them working, but all 342 TOXO-BUNGAY | I agape. (But now I write it, it occurs to me that per- j hajjs it was their dinner hour; it was certainly near | twelve.) I hung for a moment or so enjoying the soar, | then turned about to face a clear stretch of open down, j let the engine out to full speed and set my rollers at \ work rolling in the net, and so tightening the gas-bags, j Instantly the pace quickened with the diminished resist- ,1 ance. ... 1 In that momciTt before the bang I think I must have '^ been really flying. Before the net ripped, just in the | instant when my balloon was at its systole, the whole , apparatus was, I am convinced, heavier than air. That, > however, is a claim that has been disputed, and in i any case this sort of priority is a very trivial thing. Then came a sudden retardation, instantly followed J by an inexpressibly disconcerting tilt downward of the machine. That I still recall with horror. I couldn't see what was happening at all and I couldn't imagine. ; It was a mysterious, inexplicable dive. The thing, it i seemed, without rhyme or reason, was kicking up its heels in the air. The barrg followed immediately, and ■ I perceived I was falling rapidly. j I was too much taken by surprise to think of the ■ proper cause of the report. I don't even know what I 1 made of it. I was obsessed, I suppose, by that perpet- i ual dread of the modern aeronaut, a flash between en- j gine and balloon. Yet obviously I wasn't wrapped in | flames. I ought to have realised instantly it wasn't that. I did, at any rate, whatever other impressions ! there were, release the winding of the outer net and I let the balloon expand again, and that no doubt did < something to break my fall. I don't remember doing that. Indeed, all I do remember is the giddy efi'ect upon the landscape of falling swiftly upon it down a I flat spiral, the hurried rush of fields and trees and cot- | tages on my left shoulder and the overhung feeling aa ' SOARING 348 if tlic whole apparatus was pressing down the top of my head. I didn't stop or attempt to stop the screw. That was going on, swish, swisli, swish all the time. Cothopc really knows more about the fall than I do. He describes the easterly start, the tilt, and the appear- ance and bursting of a sort of bladdi-r aft. Then down I swooped, very swiftly, but not nearly so steeply as I imagined I was doing. " Fifteen or twenty degrees," said Cothope, " to be exact." From him it was that I learnt that I let the nets loose again, and so arrested my fall. He thinks I was more in control of myself than I remember. But I do not sec why I should have forgotten so excellent a resolution. His imiiression is that I was really steering and trying to drop into the Farthing Down beeches. " You hit the trees," he said, " and the whole affair stood on its nose among them, and then very slowly crumpled up. I saw you'd been jerked out, as I thought, and I didn't stay for more. I rushed for my bicycle." As a matter of fact, it was purely accidental that I came down in the woods. I am reasonably certain that I had no more control then than a thing in a parcel. I rcTnember I felt a sort of wincing, " Now it comes ! " as the trees rushed up to me. If I remember that, I should remember steering. Then the propeller smashed, everything stopped with n jerk, and I was falling into a mass of yellowing leav<'s, and Lord Roberts a, so it seemed to me, was going back into the sky. I felt twigs and things hit me in the face, but I didn't feel injured at the time; I clutched at things that broke, tumbled through a froth of green and yellow into a shadowy world of great bark-covered arms, and there, snatching wildly, got a grip on a fair round branch, and hung. I became intensely alert and clear-headed. I held by that branch for a moment and then looked about mc, and 3U TONO-BUNGAY caught at another, and then found myself holding to a practicable fork. I swung forward to that and got a leg around it below its junction, and so was able pres- ently to clamber down, climbing very coolly and delib- erately. I dropped ten feet or so from the lowest branch and fell on my feet. " That's all right," I said, and stared up through the tree to see what I could of the deflated and crumpled remains that had once been Lord Roberts a festooned on the branches it had broken. " Gods ! " I said, " what a tumble ! " I wiped something that trickled from my face and was shocked to see my hand covered with blood. I looked at myself and saw what seemed to me an aston- ishing quantity of blood runnirrg down my arm and shoulder. I perceived my mouth was full of blood. J| It's a queer moment when one realises one is hurt, and perhaps badly hurt, and has still to discover just how far one is hurt. I explored my face carefully and found unfamiliar contours on the left side. The broken end of a branch had driven right through my cheek, dam- aging my cheek and teeth and gums, and left a splinter of itself stuck, like an explorer's fartherest-point flag, in the upper maxillary. That and a sprained wrist were all my damage. But I bled as though I had been chopped to pieces, and it seemed to me that my face had been driven in. I can't describe just the horrible disgust I felt at that. " This blood must be stopped, anyhow," I said, thick- headedly. " I wonder where there's a spider's web "-^ an odd twist for my mind to take. But it was the only treatment that occurred to me. I must have conceived some idea of going home un- aided, because I was thirty yards from the tree before I dropped. Then a kind of black disc appeared in the middle of the world and rushed out to the edge of things and SOARING 345 blotted them out. I don't remonibcr fulling down. I fainted from excitement, disgust at my injury and loss of blood, and lay there until Cothope fouird me. He was the first to find me, scorching as he did over the downland turf, and making a wide course to get the Carnaby plantations at their narrowest. Then pres- ently, while he was trying to apply the methodical teach- ings of the St. John's Ambulance classes to a rather abnormal case, Beatrice came galiopiirg through the trees full-tilt, with Lord Carnaby hard behind her, and she was hatless, muddy from a fall, and white as death. " And cool as a cucumber, too," said Cothope, turning it over in his mind as he told mc. (" They never seem quite to have their heads, and never seem quite to lose 'em," said Cothope, general- ising about the sex.) Also he witnessed she acted with remarkable decision. The question was whether I should be taken to the house her step-mother occupied at Bedlcj' Corrrer, the Carnaby dower house, or down to Carnaby 's place at Easting. Beatrice had no doubt in the matter, for she meant to nurse me. Carnaby didn't seem to want that to hap- pen. " She nould have it wasn't half so far," said Cothope. " She faced us out. . . . " I hate to be faced out of my opimon, so I've taken a pedometer over it since. It's exactly forty-three yards further. " Lord Carnaby looked at her pretty straight," said Cothope, finishing the picture; " aird then he give in." But my story has made a jump from June to October, and during that time my relations with Beatrice and the countryside that was her setting had developed in many directions. She came and went, moving in an 346 TONO-BUNGAY orbit for which I had no data, going to London and; Paris, into Wales and Northampton, wliile her step-; mother, on some independent system of her own, also j vanished and recurred intermittently. At home thev j obeyed the rule of an inflexible old maid, Charlotte, and ] Beatrice exercised all the rights of proprietorship in, Carnaby's extensive stables. Her interest in me wasj from the first undisguised. She found her way to my worksheds and developed rapidly, in spite of the sin- j cere discouragement of Cothope, into a keen amateur of ■ aeronautics. She would come sometimes in the morn- 1 ing, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes afoot with an Irish terrier, sometimes riding. She would come for three or four days every day, vanish for a fortnight or' three weeks, return. It was not long before I came to look for her. Frortr the first I found her immensely interesting. To me she was a new feminine type altogether — I have made it, plain, I think, how limited was my knowledge of women. ' But she made me not simply interested in her, but inj myself. She became for me something that greatly | changes a man's world. How shall I put it.^ She be-; came an audience. Since I've emerged from the emo-' tional developments of the affair I have thought it outj in a hundred aspects, and it does seem to me that thisj way in which men and women make audiences for one; another is a curiously influential force in their lives.' For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they l seek audiences as creatures seek food; others again, myj uncle among them, can play to an imaginary audience, i I, I think, have lived and can live without one. In my; adolescence I was my own audience and my own court! of honour. And to have an audience in one's mind is to play a part, to become self-conscious and dramatic; For many years I had been self-forgetful and scientific. I had lived for work and impersonal interests until 1 1 SOARIXG 847 'ound scrutiny, applause ami expectation in Beatrice's yes. Tlien I began to live for the effect I imagined t nade upon her, to make that very soon the principal alue in my life. I played to her. I did things for he look of them. I began to dream more and more of icautiful situations and fine poses and groupings with ler and for her. I j)iit these things down because they puzzle me. I hink I was in love with Beatrice, as being in love is isually understood; but it was quite a different state Itogethcr from my passionate hunger for Marion, or [ly keen, sensuous desire for and pleasure in Effie. rhese were selfish, sincere things, fundamental and iir- tinctivc, as sincere as the leap of a tiger. But until natters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was an nnmense imaginative insurgence of a quite different uality. I am setting down here very gravely, and per- aps absurdly, what are no doubt elementary common- ilaccs for innumerable people. This love that grew up ctwccn Beatrice and myself was, I think — I put it uitc tentatively and rather curiously — romantic love. !'hat unfortunate and truncated affair of my uncle and he Scrymgeour lady was really of the same stuff, if a ittle different in quality. I have to admit that. The actor of audience was of primary importance in eithei ase. Its effect upon me was to make me in many respects dolescent again. It made me keener upon the point of onour, and anxious and eager to do high and splendid [lings, and in particular, brave things. So far it eir- obled and upheld me. But it did also push me towards uigar and showy things. At bottom it was disingen- ous; it gave my life the quality of stage scenery, witli nc side to the audience, another side that wasn't mcnnt J show, and an economy of substance. It certainly [>bbed my work of high patience and quality. I cut 348 TONO-BUNGAY down the toil of research in my eagerness and her eager- ness for fine flourishes in the air, flights that would tell. I shirked the longer road. And it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity. . . . Yet that was not everything iir our relationship. The elemental thing was there also. It came in very sud- denly. It was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without reference to my experimental memo- randa whether it was in July or August. I was work- ing with a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing curvatures studied from Lilien-thal, Pilcher and Phillips, that I thought would give a different rhythm for the pitching oscillations than anything I'd had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework on the old barrow by mj"^ sheds down to Tinker's Corner. It is a clear stretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn to the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started, and was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which my new arrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me appeared Beatrice, riding towards Tinker's Corner to waylay and talk to me. Slie looked round over her shoulder, saw me com- ing, touched her horse to a gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my machine. There was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn't all smash together. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up and drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undam- aged — a poor chance it would have been — in order to avoid any risk to her, or whether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This latter I did. She had already got her horse in hand when I came up SOARING 849 o her. Her woman's body lay along his neck, and he glanced up as I, with wings asprcad, and every lerve in a state of tension, swept over her. Then I had landed, and was going back to where ler horse stood still and trembling. We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her sad- lie into my arms, and for one instant I held her. ' Those great wings," she said, and that was all. She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment he had fainted. " Very near a nasty accident," said Cothopc, coming ip ami regarding our grouping with disfavour. He ook her horse by the bridle. " Very dangerous thing oming across us like that." Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a aoment trembling, and then sat down on the turf. ' I'll just sit down for a moment," she said. " Oh ! " she said. She covered her face with her hands, while Cothope Doked at Iier with an expression between suspicion and mpatiencc. For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope emarked that perhaps he'd better get her water. As for me, I was filled with a new outrageous idea, icgotten I scarcely know how from this incident, with ts instant contacts and swift emotions, and that was hat I must make love to and possess Beatrice. I see no larticular reason why that thoiiglit should have come me in that moment, but it did. I do not beliexe that tfore then I had thought of our relations irr such emis at all. Suddenly, as I remember it, the factor of lassion came. She crouched there, and I stood over cr, and neither of us said a word. But it was ust as though something bad been shouted from the Cothope iiad gone twenty paces perhaps when she 350 TONO-BUNGAY uncovered her face. " I shan't want any water/' she said. " Call him back." VI After that the spirit of our relations changed. The old ease had gone. She came to me less frequently, and when she came she would have some one with her, usually old Carnahy, and he would do the bulk of the talking. All through September she was away, \^^len we were alone together there was a curious constraint. We became clouds of inexpressible feeling towards one another; we could think of nothing that was not too momentous for words. Then came the smash of Lord Roberts a, and I found myself with a bandaged face in a bedroom in the Bed^ J ley Corner dower-house with Beatrice presiding over an inefficient nurse. Lady Osprey very pink and shocked in the background, and my aunt jealously interven- ing. My injuries were much more showy than serious, and I could have been taken to Lady Grove next day, but Beatrice would not permit that, and kept me at Bedley Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the sec- ond day she became extremely solicitous for the proper aeration of the nurse, packed her off for an hour in a brisk rain, and sat by me alone. I asked her to marry me. On the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to eloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages, and with some little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I w,-s feverish and in pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long with regard to her became now an unendurable impatience. " Comfortable .'' " she asked. " Yes." SOARING 351 " Shall I read to you ? " " Xo. I want to talk." " You can't. I'd better talk to 3-ou." " No," I said, " I want to talk to you." She came and stood by my bedside and looked me irr the eyes. " I don't — I don't want you to talk to me," she said. " I thought you couldn't talk." " I get few chances — of you." " You'd better not talk. Don't talk now. Let me chatter instead. You ought not to talk." " It isn't much," I said. " I'd rather you didn't." " I'm not going to be disfigured," I said. " Only a scar." " Oh ! " she said, as if she had expected something quite different. " Did you think you'd become a sort of gargoyle.' " " L'Hommc qui Ril! — I didn't know. But that's all right. Jolly flowers those are ! " " Michaelmas daisies," she said. " I'm glad you're not disfigured. And tiiose are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all.' When I saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to have been, by all the rules of the game." She said some other tilings, but I was thinking of my next move. " Are we social equals ? " I said abruptly. She stared at me. " Queer question," she said. " But arc we? " " H'm. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? la the daughter of a courtesy Baron who died — of general disrcputablcncss, I believe — before his father ? I give it up. Docs it matter ? " " No. My mind is confused. I want to know if yon will marry me." She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I 352 TONO-BUNGAY i must plead with her. " Damn these bandages ! " I said, [ breaking into ineffectual febrile rage. j She roused herself to her duties as nurse. " What are you doing? Why are you trying to sit up? Sit down ! Don't touch your bandages. I told you not to talk." She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders and pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I had raised to my face. j " I told you not to talk," she whispered close to my ' face. " I asked you not to talk. Why couldn't you do \ as I asked you? " i " You've been avoiding me for a month," I said. " I know. You might have known. Put your handj back — down by your side." I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush j had come to her cheeks, and her eyes were very bright, i " I asked j'ou," she repeated, " not to talk." ; Jly eyes questioned her mutely. j She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tor- [ mented. " How can I answer you now? " she said. ; " How can I say anything now ? " " What do you mean ? " I asked. I She made no answer. , " Do you mean it must be ' No ' ? " She nodded. i " But " I said, and my whole soul was full of ; accusations. " I know," she said. " I can't explain. I can't. But j it has to be 'No!' It can't be. It's utterly, finally, i for ever impossible. . . . Keep your hands still ! " ) " But," I said, " when we met again " : " I can't marry. I can't and won't." ' She stood up, "Why did you talk?" she cried. " Couldn't you see? " SOARING 353 She seemed to hare something it was impossible to say. She came to the table beside my bed and pulled tlie Miehaelmas daisies awry. " Why did you talk like that.' " she said in a tone of infinite bittcriti-ss. " To begin like that ! " " But what is it.' " I said. " Is it some circumstance — my social i)osition.' " " Oil, damn your social position ! " she cried. She went and stood at the further window, staring out at the rain. For a long time wc were absolutely still- The wind and rain came in little gusts upon the ]>an(-. She turned to me abruptly. " You didn't ask me if I loved you," she said. "Oh, if it's ^Afl/.'"said I. " It's not that," she said. " But if you want to know " She paused. " I do," she said. We stared at one another. " I do — witli all my heart, if you want to know." " Then, why the devil .' " I asked. Slie made no answer. She walked across the room to the piano and began to play, rather noisily and rap- idly, with odd gusts of emphasis, the shepherd's pipe music from the last act in " Tristan and Isolde." Presently she missed a note, failed again, ran her fin- ger heavily up the scale, struck the piano passionately with her fisl, making a feeble jar in tlie treble, jumped up, and went out of the room. ... , The nurse found me still wearing my helmet of bandages, partially dressed, and pottering round the room to find the rest of my clothes. I was in a state of exasperated hunger for Beatrice, and I was too in- flamed and weakened to conceal the stale of my mind. I was feebly angry because of the irritation of dress- ing, and particularly of the struggle to put on my 354 TONO-BUNGAY trousers without being able to see my legs. I was staggering about, and once I had fallen over a chair^ and I had upset the jar of Michaelmas daisies. I must have been a detestable spectacle. " I'll go back to bed," said I, " if I may have a word with Miss Beatrice. I've got something to say to her. That's why I'm dressing." My point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the household had my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do not know, and what Lady Osprey can have made of it in the former case I don't imagine. . . . At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. "Well?" she said. " All I want to say," I said with the querulous note J of a misunderstood child, " is that I can't take this as final. I want to see you and talk when I'm better — and write. I can't do anything now. I can't argue." I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, "I can't rest. You see.^ I can't do anything." She sat down beside me again and spoke softly. " I promise I will talk it all over with you again. ^Mien you are well. I promise I will meet you somewhere so that we can talk. You can't talk now. I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know. . . . Will that do?" " I'd like to know " She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it. Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly with her face close to me. "Dear," she said, "I love you. If it will make you happy to marry me, I will marry you. I was in a mood just now — a stupid, inconsiderate mood. Of course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. Women SOARING 855 are such things of mood — or I would have — behaved differently. Wc say ' Xo ' when wc mean ' Yes ' — and fly into erises. So now, Yes — yes — yes. I will. . . . J can't even kiss you. Give mc your hand to kiss tliat. Understand, I am yours. Do you understand? I am yours just as if we had been married fifty years. Your wife — Beatrice. Is that enough.'' Now — now will you rest? " "Yes," I said, "but why ?" " There are complications. There arc difficulties. When you are better you will be able to — understand them. But now they don't matter. Only you know this must be secret — for a time. Absolutely secret be- tween us. Will you promise that? " " Yes," I said, " I understand. I wish I could kiss you." She laid her head down beside mine for a moment, and then she kissed my hand. " I don't care what difficulties there are," I said, and shut my eyes. VII But I was only beginning to gauge the unaccount.nble elements in Beatrice. For a week after my return to Lady Grove I had no sign of her, and then she called with Lady Osprey and brought a huge bunch of peren- nial sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, "just the old flowers there were in your room," said my aunt, with a relentless eye on me. I didn't get any talk alone with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us she was going to Lomlon for some indefinite number of weeks. I couldn't even pledge her to write to me, and when she did it was a brief, enigmatical, friendly letter witii not a word of the reality between us. I wrote back a love letter — my first love letter — and 356 TONO-BUNGAY she made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl : : " I can't write letters. Wait till we can talk. Are you better?" ... I think the reader would be amused if he could see the papers on my desk as I write all this^ the mangled , and disfigured pages, the expcrimerrfal arrangements of '• notes, the sheets of suggestions balanced in constclla- ; tions, the blottesque intellectual battlegrounds over which I have been fighting. I find this account of my relations to Beatrice quite the most difficult part of my story to write. I happen to be a very objective-minded person, I forget my moods, and this was so much an affair of moods. And even such moods and emotions as I recall are very difficult to convey. To me it is about j as difficult as describing a taste or a scent. Then the objective story is made up of little things that are diflicult to set in a proper order. And love is an hysterical passion, now high, now low, now exalted, and now intensely physical. No one has ever yet dared to tell a love story completely, its alternations, its com- ings and goings, its debased moments, its hate. The love stories we teU, tell only the net consequence, the ruling effect. . . . How can I rescue from the past now the mystical ' quality of Beatrice; my intense longing for her; the overwhelming, irrational, formless desire.'' How can I explain how intimately that worship mingled with a high, impatient resolve to make her mine, to take her by strength and courage, to do my loving in a violent heroic manner.? And then the doubts, the puzzled arrest at the fact of her fluctuations, at her refusal to marry me, at the fact that even when at last she returned to Bedley Corner she seemed to evade me? That exasperated me and perplexed me beyond meas- ure. I felt that it was treachery. I thought of every conceivable explanation, and the most exalted and ro- SOARING 357 mantic confidence in her did not simply alternate, but mingled with the basest misgivings. And into the tangle of nitniories comes the figure of Carnaby, coming out slowly from the background to a position of significance, as an influence, ns a predomi- nant strand in the nets that kept us apart, as a rival. What were the forces that pulled her nway from mc when it was so clearly manifest she loved me? Did she think of marrying him? Had I invaded some long- planned scheme? It was evident he did not like me, that in some way I spoilt the world for him. She re- turned to Bedlcy Corner, and for some weeks she was flitting about me, and never once could I have talk with her alone. When she came to my sheds Carnaby was always with her, jealously observant. (Why the devil couldn't she send him about his business?) The days slipi)ed by and my anger gathered. All this mingles with the making of Lord Roberts /3. I had resolved upon that one night as I lay awake at Bedlcy Corner; I got it planned out before tlie bandages were off my face. I conceived this second navigable balloon in a grandiose manner. It was to be a second Lord Roberts a, only more so; it was to be three times as big, large enougli to carry three men, and it was to be an altogether triumpliant vindication of my claims upon the air. The framework was to be hollow like a bird's bones, airtight, and the air pumped in or out, as the weight of fuel I carried changed. I talked much and boasted to Cothope — whom I suspected of scepti- cisms about this new type — of what it would do, and it progressed — slowly. It progressed slowly because I was restless and uncertain. At times I would go away to London to snatch some chance of seeing Beatrice there, at times nothing but n day of gliding and hard and dangerous exercise would satisfy me. And now in the newspapers, in conversation, in everything about mc. 358 TONO-BUNGAY arose a new invader of my mental states. Something was happening to the great schemes of my uncle's af- fairs; people were beginning to doubt, to question. It was the first quiver of his tremendous insecurity, the first wobble of that gigantic credit top he had kept spinning so long. There were comings and goings, November and De- cember slipped by. I had two unsatisfactory meetings with Beatrice, meetings that had no privacy — in which we said things of the sort that need atmosphere, baldly and furtively. I wrote to her several times and she wrote back notes that I would sometimes respond to alto- gether, sometimes condemn as insincere evasions. " You don't understand. I can't just now explain. Be pa- tient with me. Leave things a little while to me." So she wrote. I would talk aloud to these notes and wrangle over them in my workroom — while the plans of Lord Roberts p waited. " You don't give me a chance ! " I would say. " \Vliy don't you let me know the secret.' That's what I'm for — to settle difficulties ! — to tell difficulties to ! " And at last I could hold out no longer against these accumulating pressures. I took an arrogant, outrageous line that left her no loopholes; I behaved as though we were living in a melodrama. " You must come and talk to me," I wrote, " or I will come and take you. I want you — and the time runs away." We met in a ride in the upper plantations. It must have been early in January, for there was snow on the ground and on the branches of the trees. We walked to and fro for an hour or more, and from the first I pitched the key high in romance and made understand- ings impossible. It was our worst time together. I SOARING 859 boasted like an actor, and she, I know not why, was tired aird spiritless. Now I think over that talk in the light of all that has happened since, I can imagine how she came to rae full of a human appeal I was too foolish to let her make. I don't know. I confess I have never com- pletely understood Beatrice. I confess I am still per- plexed at many things she said and did. That after- noon, aiT}-how, I was impossible. I posed and scolded. I was — I said it — for " taking the Universe by the throat ! " "If it was only that," she said, but though I heard, I did not heed her. At last she gave way to me and talked no more. Instead she looked at me — as a thing beyond her con- trolling, but none the less interesting — much as she had looked at me from behind the skirts of Lady Drew in the Warren when we were children together. Once even I tliought she smiled faintly. "What are the difficulties.'" I cried. "There's no difficulty I will not overcome for you! Do your people think I'm no equal for 3-ou? Who says it? My dear, tell me to win a title! I'll do it in five years! . . . " Here am I just grown a man at the sight of you. I have wanted something to fight for. Let me fight for you! . . . " I'm rich without intending it. Let me mean it, give me an honourable excuse for it, and I'll put all this rotten old warren of England at your feet!" I said such things as that. I write them down here in all tlieir resounding base pride. I said these nnpty and foolish things, and they are part of me. \\'liy should I still cling to pride and be ashamed? I shouted her down. I parsed from such megalomania to petty tions. 360 TOJs^O-BUNGAY " You think Camaby is a better man than I ? " I said. " No ! " she cried, stung to speech. " No ! " " You think we're unsubstantial. You'%'e listened to all these rumours Boom has started because we talked of a newspaper of our own. When you are with me you know I'm a man; when you get away from me you think I'm a cheat and a cad. . . . There's not a word of truth in the things they say about us. I've been slack. I've left things. But we have only to exert ourselves. You do not know how wide and far we have spread our nets. Even now we have a coup — an expe- dition — in hand. It will put us on a footing." . . . Her eyes asked mutely and asked in vain that I would cease to boast of the very qualities she admired in me. In the night I could not sleep for thinking of that talk and the vulgar things I had said in it. I could not understand the drift my mind had taken. I was acutely disgusted. And my unwonted doubts about my- self spread from a merely personal discontent to our financial position. It was all very well to talk as I had done of wealth and power and peerages, but what did I know nowadays of my uncle's position? Suppose in the midst of such boasting and confidence there came some turn I did not suspect, some rottemiess he had concealed from me ? I resolved I had been playing with aeronautics long enough; that next morning I would go to him and have things clear between us. I caught an early train and went up to the Harding- ham. I went up to the Hardingham through a dense Lon- don fog to see how things really stood. Before I had talked to my uncle for ten minutes I felt like a man who has just awakened in a bleak, inhospitable room out of a grandiose dream. CHAPTER THE FOURTH low I STOLE THE HEAPS OF QUAP EROM MORDET ISLAND ' We got to make a fight for it," said my uncle. " We 5ot to face the music ! " I remember that even at the sight of him I had a cnse of impending c.ilimity. He sat under tlie electric ight with the shadow of his liair making bars down lis fact". He looked shrunken, and as though his skin lad suddenly got loose and yellow. The decorations of he room seemed to have lost freshness, and outside — he blinds were up — tlicre was not so much fog as a dun larkness. One saw tlie dingy outlines of the chimneys ipposite quite distinctly, and then a sky of such a )rown as only London can display. "I saw a placard," I said: "'More Pondercvitv.' " " Thai's Boom," he said. " Boom and his damned rewspapers. He's trying to fight me down. Ever since ' offered to buy the Daily Decorator he's been at me. Vnd he tliinks consolidating Do Ut cut down the ads. rie wants everything, damn liim ! He's got no sense of iealing. I'd like to bash his face!" " Well," I said, " what's to be done.' " " Keep going," said my uncle. " I'll smash Boom yet," he said, with sudden ««T- igcry. "Nothing else?" I asked. " We got to keep going. Tin re's a scare on. Did 361 362 TONO-BUNGAY you notice the rooms? Half the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they touch it up 1 . . . They didn't used to touch things up ! Now they put in character touches — insulting you. Don't know what journalism's coming to. It's all Boom's doing." He cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour. " Wellj" said I, " what can he do? " " Shove us up against time, George ; make money tight for us. We been handling a lot of money — and he tightens us up." " We're sound? " " Oh, we're sound, George. Trust me for that ! But all the same There's such a lot of imagination in these things. . . . We're sound enough. That's not it" He blew. " Damn Boom ! " he said, and his eyes over his glasses met mine defiantly. " We can't, I suppose, run close hauled for a bit — stop expenditure?" " Where? " " Well,— Crest Hill." "What!" he shouted. "Me stop Crest Hill for Boom ! " He waved a fist as if to hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty. He spoke at last in a reasonable voice. " If I did," he said, " he'd kick up a fuss. It's no good, even if I wanted to. Every- body's watching the place. If I was to stop building we'd be down in a week." He had an idea. " I wish I could do something to start a strike or something. No such luck. Treat those workmen a sight too well. No, sink or swim. Crest Hill goes on until we're under water." I began to ask questions and irritated him instantly. "Oh, dash these explanations, George!" he cried; "you only make things look rottener than they are. now I STOLE THE QUAP 303 It's your way. It isn't a case of figures. We're all right — there's only one thing we got to do." "Yes?" " Show value, George. That's where this quap comes in; that's why I fell in so readily with what you brought to me week before last. litre we are, we got our option on tlie perfect filament, and all we want's eanadium. Nobody knows there's more canadium in the world than will go on the edge of a sixpence except me and you. Nobody has an idee the perfect filament's more than just a bit of theorising. Fifty tons of quap and we'd turn that bit of theorising into somothin' We'd make the lamp trade sit on its tail and howl. We'd put Ediswan and all of 'em into a parcel with our last year's trousers and a hat, and swap 'em ofl" for a pot of geraniums. See? We'd do it tlirougli Business Organisations, and there you are! Sec? Capern's Pat- ent Filament! The Ideal and the Real! George, we'll do it! We'll bring it ofl! Arrd then we'll give such a facer to Boom, he'll think for fifty years. He's laying up for our London and African meeting. Let him. He can turn the whole paper on to us. He says the Business Organisations shares aren't worth fift\'-two — and we quote 'em at eiglity-four. Well, here we are. Gettin' ready for him — loading our gun." His pose was triumphairt. " Yes," I said, " that's all right But I can't help thinking where should wc be if we hadn't just by acci- dent got Capern's Perfect Filament. Because, you know it was an accident — my buying up that." He crumpled up his nose into an expression of im- patient distaste at my unreasonableness. " And after all, the meeting's in June, and you haven't begun to get the quap! After all, we've still got to load our gun " " They start on Toosday." 364 TONO-BUNGAY " Have they got the brig ? " " They've got a brig." " Gordon-Nasmyth ! " I doubted. " Safe as a bank," he said. " More I see of that man the more I like him. All I wish is we'd got a steamer instead of a sailing ship " " And," I went on, " you seem to overlook what used to weigh with us a bit. This canadium side of the business and the Capern chance has rushed you off your legs. After all — it's stealing, and in its way an international outrage. They've got two gunboats on the coast." I jumped up and went and stared out at the fog. " And, by Jove, it's about our only chance ! . . . I didn't dream." I turned on him. " I've been up in the air," I said. " Heaven knows where I haven't been. And here's our only chance — and you give it to that adventurous lunatic to play in his own way — in a brig ! " " Well, you had a voice " " I wish I'd been in this before. We ought to have run out a steamer to Lagos or one of those West Coast places and d^ne it from there. Fancy a brig in the Channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest ! " " I dessay you'd have shoved it, George. Still You know, George. ... I believe in him." " Yes," I said. " Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. Still " He took up a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it. His face became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow, reluctant move- ment and took off his glasses. " George," he said, " the luck's against us." " What.? " He grimaced with his mouth in the queerest way at the telegram. HOW I STOLE THE QUAP 305 " That." I took it up and read: " Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon naismith what price mordet now " For a moment neither of us spoke. " That's all right," I said at last. "Eh?" said my uncle. "I'm going. I'll get that quap or bust." II I had a ridiculous persuasion that I was " saving the situation." " I'm going," I said quite consciously and dramati- cally. I saw the whole affair — how shall I put it.' — in American colours. I sat down beside him. " Give me all the data you've got," I said, " and I'll pull this thing off." " But nobody knows exactly where " " Xasmyth does, and he'll tell lue." " He's been very close," said my uncle, and re- garded me. " He'll tell me all right, now he's smashed." He thought. " I believe he will." "George," he said, "if you pull this thing off ! Once or twice before you've stepped in — with that sort of Woosh of yours " He left the sentence unfinished. " Give me tliat note-book," I s.aid, " and tell me all you know. Where's the ship.' Where's Pollack.' And where's tliat telegram from.' If that qu.ip's to be got, I'll get it or bust If you'll hold on here until I get back with it." , . . And so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life. I requisitioned my uncle's best car forthwith. I went 366 TONO-BUNGAY j I down that night to the place of despatch named on 1 Nasmyth's telegram, Bampton S.O. Oson, routed him j out with a little trouble from that centre, made things I right with him and got his explicit directions; and I • was inspecting the Maud Mary with young Pollack, his ; cousin and aide, the following afternoon. She was >< rather a shock to me and not at all in my style, a beast ' of a brig inured to the potato trade, and she reeked from end to end with the faint, subtle smell of raw potatoes so that it prevailed even over the temporary • smell of new paint. She was a beast of a brig, all hold J and dirty framework, and they had ballasted her with j old iron and old rails and iron sleepers, and got a mis- cellaneous lot of spades and iron wheelbarrows against the loading of the quap. I thought her over with Pol- ■*' lack, one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes and don't help much, and then by myself, and as : a result I did my best to sweep Gravesend clean of ] wheeling planks, and got in as much cord and small 1 rope as I could for lashing. I had an idea we might i need to run up a jetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort of inadvertent way, a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn't , examine, but which I gathered were a provision against > the need of a trade. The captain was a most extraordinary creature, under I the impression we were after copper ore; he was a Rou- manian Jew, with twitching, excitable features, who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary naval experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of impenetrable reserve. The crew were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute and dirty; most of them youths, unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook, was a mulatto; and one, the best-built fellow of them all, was a Breton. There was some subterfuge about our position on board — I forget the particulars now — ■ HOW I STOLE THE QUAP 867 I was called tiic supercargo and Pollack was the steward. This added to the piratical Havour that insufficient funds and Gordon-Nasuiyth's original genius had already given the enterprise. Those two days of bustle at Gravcscnd, under dingy skies, in narrow, dirty streets, were a new experience for nie. It is like nothing else in my life. I realised that I was a modern and a civilised man. I found the food filtliy and the coffee horrible; the whole town stank in my nostrils, the landlord of the Good Intent on the quay had a stand-up quarrel with us before I could get even a hot bath, and the bedroom I slept iir was infested by a quantity of exotic but voracious flat parasites called locally " bugs," in the walls, in the woodwork, every- wliere. I fought them with insect powder, and found them comatose in the morning. I was di|)ping down into the dingy underworld of tlie contemporary state, and I liked it no belter than I did my tirst dip into it when I stayed with my Uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at Chatham — where, by-the-by, we had to deal with cockroaches of a smaller, darker variety, and also with bugs of sorts. Let mc confess that tlirough all this time before wc started I was immensely self-conscious, and tliat Be.i- trice played the part of audience in my imagination throughout. I was, as I say, " saving the situation," and I was acutely aware of that. Tlie evening before we sailed, instead of revising our medicine-chest as I had intended, I took the car and ran across country to lj»dy Grove to tell my aunt of the journey I was making, dress, and astonish Lady Osprey by an after- dinner call. The two ladies were at home and alone beside a big tire that seemed wonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I rcmemboT the effect of the little parlour in which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady 308 TONO-BUNGAYi Osprev, in a costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played an elaborately spread-out patience by the liglit of a tall shaded lamp; Beatrice, irr a white dress that showed her throat, smoked a cigarette in an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow. The room was white-panelled and chintz-curtained. About those two bright centres of light were warm dark shadows in which a circular mirror shorre like a pool of brown water. I carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of etiquette. There were moments when I think I really made Lady Osprey believe that my call was an un- avoidable necessity, that it would have been negligent of me not to call just how and when I did. But at the best those were transitory moments. They received me with disciplined amazement. Lady Osprey was interested in my face and scrutinised the scar. Beatrice stood behind her solicitude. Our eyes met, and in hers I could see startled interrogations. " I'm going," I said, " to the west coast of Africa." They asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague. " We've interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don't know when I may return." After that I perceived Beatrice surveyed me steadily. The conversation was rather difficult. I embarked upon lengthy thanks for their kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady Osprey 's game of patience, but it didn't appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for me to understand her patience. I came to the verge of taking my leave. " You needn't go yet," said Beatrice, abruptly. She walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet near, survej'ed Lady Osprey's bnck, and with a gesture to me dropped it all deliberately on to the floor. " Must talk," she said, kneeling close to me as I IIO\V I STOLE THE QUAP 369 helped her to pick it up. " Turn my pages. At the piano." " I can't read music." " Turn my pages." Presently wc were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy inaccuracy. Slic glanced over her shoulder and Lndy Ospre_v had resumed her patience. The old lady was very pink, and appeared to be ab- sorbed in some attempt to cheat herself wiliiout our observing it. " Isir't West Africa a vile climate.*" "Are you going to live there.' " " Why arc you going.* " Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to answer. Then taking a rhytlim from the music before her, she said — " At the back of the house is a garden — a door in the wall — on the lane. Understand.'" I turned over the pages without any effect on her playiirg. " When ? " I asked. She dealt in chords. " I wish I could play this ! " she said. " Midnight." She gave her attention to the music for a time. " You may have to wait." " 111 wait." She brought her playing to an end by — as school- boys say — " st.-ishing it up." " I can't play to-night," she said, standing up and meeting my eyes. " I wanted to give you a parting voluntary." " Was that Wagner, Beatrice ? " asked Lady Osprey, looking up from her cards. " It sounded very con- fused." . . . I took my leave. I had a curious twinge of con- science as I parted from Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-ngc or my inexperience in to- 370 TOXO-BUXGAY '. mantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect of invading this good lady's premises from the garden door. I motored up to the ; pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told him for the ' first time of West Africa, spent air hour with him in settling all tlie outstanding details of Lord Roberts /3, i and left that in his hands to finish against my return. • I sent the motor back to Lady Grove, and still wearing : my fur coat — for the January night was damp and ] bitterly cold — walked to Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the b.ack of the Dower House without any diffi- i culty, and was at the door in the wall with ten minutes ! to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking up and down. This queer flavour of intrigue, this nocturnal garden-door business, had t.iken me by surprise and j changed my mental altitudes. I was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of Beatrice, of that elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that always took me by surprise, tliat had made her for example so instantly conceive this meeting. She came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she appeared, a short, grey figure io a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded to the cold driazle. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in her dusky face. "Why are you going to West Africa?" she asked at once. " Business crisis. I have to go." "You're not going ? You're coming back?" " Three or four months," I said, " .it most" " Then, it's nothing to do with me ." " " Nothing," I said. " Why should it have ? " " Oh, that's .all right. One never knows what people think or what people fancy." She took me by the arm. " Let's go for a walk," she said. I looked about me at darkness and rain. HOW I STOLE THE QUAP 371 " That's all right," she laughed. " We can go along the lane and into the Old Woking Road. Do you niirtd? Of course you don't. My head. It doesn't matter. One ne»cr meets anylwdy." " How do you know? " " I've wandered like this before. ... Of course. Did you think " — she nodded her head back at her home — " that's all ? " " No, by Jove!" I cried; "it's manifest it isn't." She took my arm and turned nu- down the lane. " Night's my time," she said by my side. " There's a touch of the werewolf iir my blood. One never knows in these old families. . . . I've wondered often. . . . Here we are, anyhow, alone in the world. Just darkness and cold and a sky of clouds and wet. And we — together. I like the wet on my face and hair, don't you? When do you sail?" I told her to-morrow. " Ob, well, there's no to-morrow now. You and I ! " She stopped an'd confronted me. " You don't say a word except to answer! " " No," I said. " Last time vou did all the talking." " Like a fo^l. Now " Wc looked at each other's two dim faces. " You're glad to be here ? " " I'm glad — I'm beginning to be — it's more than glad." She put her hands on my shoulders and drew m« down to kiss her. "Ah!" she said, and for a moment or so wc just clung to one another. " That's all," she said, releasing herself. " What bundles of clothes we are to-iright. I felt we tbould kiss some day again. Always. The last time w«« ages ago." 372 TONO-BUNGAY " Among the fern stalks." " Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold. Were mine? The same lips — after so long — after so much! . . . And now let's trudge through this blotted-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take your arm. Just trudge, see? Hold tight to me because I know the way — and don't talk — don't talk. Unless you want to talk. . . . Let me tell you things! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out — it's dead and gone, and we're in this place. This dark wild place. . . . V/e're dead. Or all the world is dead. No ! We're dead. No one can see us. We're shadows. AVe've got out of our positions, out of our bodies — and together. That's the good thing of it — together. But that's why the world can't see us and why we hardly see the world. Sssh! Is it all right? " " It's all right," I said. We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit, rain-veiled window. " The silly world," she said, " the silly world ! It eats and sleeps. If the wet didn't patter so from the trees we'd hear it snoring. It's dreaming such stupid tilings — stupid judgments. It doesn't know we are passing, we two — free of it — clear of it. You and I ! " We pressed against each other reassuringly. "I'm glad we're dead," she whispered. "I'm glad we're dead. I was tired of it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and so entangled." She stopped abruptly. We splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember things I had meant to say. " Look here! " I cried. " I want to help you beyond measure. You are entangled. What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me. You said you would. But there's something." My thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them. now I STOLE THE QUAP 373 "Is it sometliinc; about my position? . . . Or is t sometliing — perhaps — about some other man?" There was an immense assenting silence. " You've puzzled me so. At first — I mean quite early —I thought you meant to make me marry you." " I did." " And then ? " " To-night," she said after a long pause, " I can't xplain. No ! 1 can't explain. I love you ! But — xplanations ! To-night My dear, here we are n the world alone — and the world doesn't matter, "fothing matters. Here I am in the cold with you — ind my bed away there deserted. I'd tell you will tell you when things enable me to tell you, and loon enough they will. But to-night I won't. won't." She left my side and went iir front of me. She turned upon me. " Look here," she said, " I nsist upon j-our being dead. Do you understand? I'm lot joking. To-night you and I are out of life. It's ur time together. There may be other times, but this re won't spoil. \\'e're — in Hades if you like. Where here's nothing to hide and nothiirg to tell. No bodies ven. No botliers. We loved each other — down there — nd were kept apart, but now it doesn't matter. It's ver. ... If you won't agree to that — I will go ome." " I wanted," I began. "I know. Oh! my dear, if you'd only understand understand. If you'd only not care — and love me >-night" " I do love yon," I said. " Then love me," she answered, " and leave all these Itings tliat bother yon. Love me! Here I am!" "But !" " No! " she said. 374 TONO-BUNGAY ^ " Well, have j'our way." So she carried her point, and we wandered into the ; night together and Beatrice talked to me of love. . . . j I'd never heard a woman before in all my life who '] could talk of love, who could lay bare and develop and ; touch with imagination all that mass of fine emotion ' every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love, j she had thought of love, a thousand sweet lyrics had ; sounded through her brain and left fine fragments in 1 her memory; she poured it out, all of it, shamelessly, . skilfully, for me. I cannot give any sense of that talk, : I cannot er\'en tell how much of the delight of it was " the magic of her voice, the glow of her near presence. ' And always we walked swathed warmly through a chilly air, along dim, interminable greasy roads — with J never a soul abroad it seemed to us, never a beast in ' the fields. ' "Why do people love each other .^" I said. j "Why not? " " But why do I love you ? Why is your voice better than any voice, your face sweeter than any face ? " " And why do I love you ? " she asked ; " not only what is fine in you, but what isn't? Why do I love your dullness, your arrogance? For I do. To-night I love the very raindrops on the fur of your coat ! " . . . So we talked; and at last very wet, still glowing but a little tired, we parted at the garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in our strange irrational community of happiness, and all the world about us, and particularly Lady Osprey and her household, had been asleep — and dreaming of anything rather than Beatrice in the night and rain. She stood in the doorway a muffled figure with eyes that glowed. " Come back," she whispered. " I shall wait for you." now I STOLE THE QUAP 375 She hesitated. She touched the lapel of my coat " I love you notv," she said, and lifted her face to mine. I held her to me and was atremblc from top to toe. "O God!" 1 cried. "And I must go!" She slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the world seemed full of fantastic possibilities. " Yes, Go! " she said, and vanished and slammed tlie door upon uie, leaving nie alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the blaek darkness of the night. Ill That expedition to Mordet Island stands apart from all the rest of my life, detached, a piece by itself with air atmosphere of its own. It would, I suppose, make a book by itself — it has made a fairly voluminous official report — but so far as this novel of mine goes it is merely an episode, a contributory experience, and I mean to keep it at that. Vile weather, an impatient fretting against unbear- able slowness and delay, sea-sickness, general discom- fort and humiliating self-re%elatioiT arc the master values of th^se memories. I was sick all through the journey out. I don't know why. It was the only time I was ever sea-sick, and I have seen some pretty bad weather since I became a boat-builder. But that phantom smell of potatoes was peculiarly vile to me. Coming back on the brig we were all ill, every one of us, so soon as we got to sea, poi- soned, I firmly believe, by qtiap. On the way out most of tlie others recovered in a few days, but the stuffiness below, the coarse food, the cramped dirty accommoda- tion kept me, if not actually sea-sick, in a state of acute physical wretchedness the whole time. The ship 376 TONO-BUNGAY abounded in cockroaches and more intimate vermin. I was cold all the time until after we passed Cape Verde, then I became steamily hot; I had been too preoccupied with Beatrice and my keen desire to get the Maud Mary imder way at once, to consider a proper wardrobe for myself, and in particular I lacked a coat. Heavens ! how I lacked that coat ! And, moreover, I was cooped up with two of the worst bores in Christendom, Pollack and the captain. Pollack, after conducting his illness in a style better adapted to the capacity of an opera house than a small compartment, suddenly got insup- portably well and breezy, and produced a manly pipe in which he smoked a tobacco as blond as himself, and di- vided his time almost equally between smoking it and trying to clean it. " There's only three things you can ' clean a pipe with," be used to remark with a twist of paper in hand. " The best's a feather, the second's a straw, and the third's a girl's hairpin. I never see such a ship. You can't find any of 'em. Last time I came this way I did iind hairpins anyway, and found 'em on the floor of the captain's cabin. Regular deposit. Eh? ' . . . Feelin' better ? " At which I usually swore. i " Oh, you'll be all right soon. Don't mind my puffin' : a bit.> Eh?" ! He never tired of asking me to " have a hand at Nap. ; Good game. Makes you forget it, and that's half the ;: battle." i He would sit swaj'ing with the rolling of the ship ; and suck at his pipe of blond tobacco and look with j an inexpressibly sage but somnolent blue eye at the ■ captain by the hour together. " Captain's a Card," he j would say over and over again as the outcome of these • meditations. " He'd like to know what we're up to. I He'd like to know — no end." j That did seem to be the captain's ruling idea. But now I STOLE THE QUAP 377 lie also w.intcd to impress me witli the notion tlint lie was a gentleman of good family and to air a number of views adverse to the Eirglisli, to English literature, to the English constitution, and the like. He had learnt the sea in the Roumanian navy, and English out of a book ; he would still at times pronounce the c's at the" end of " there " and " here "; he was a naturalised Eiiglishmair, and he drove me into a reluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his everlasting carping at things English. Pollack would set himself to " draw him out." Heaven alone can tell how near I came to murder. Fifty-three days I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and profoundly depressed mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the rest of his leisure In lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up in a perpetual smell, in a persistent sick hunger that turned from the sight of food, in darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship that rolled and pitched and swayed. And all tiic time tlic sands iir the hour-glass of my uncle's fortunes were streaming out. Misery! Amidst it all I remember only one thing briglitly, one morning of sunshine in the Bay of Biscay and a vision of frothing waves, sapphire green, a bird following our wake and our masts rolling about the sky. Then wind and rain close in on us again. You must no has lapsed into poaching. And the business only began to assume proper proportions for me as I got near the ship, to seem any other kind of thing than the killing of a bird or rabbit. In the night, however, it took on enormous and por- tentous forms. " By God ! " I cried suddenly, starting wide awake; "but it was murder!" I lay after that wide awake, staring at my memories. In some odd way these visions mixed up with my dream of mj* uncle in his despair. The black body which I saw now damaged and partly buried, but which, never- theless, I no longer felt was dead but acutely alive and perceiving, I mixed up with the ochreous slash umler my uncle's face. I tried to dismiss this horrible obses- sion from my mind, but it prevailed over all my efforts. 394. TONO-BUXGAY The next day was utterly black with my sense of that ugly creature's body. I am the least superstitious of men, but it drew me. It drew me back into those thick- ets to the very place where I had hidden him. Some evil and detestable beast had been at him, and he lay disinterred. ^Methodically I buried his swollen and mangled car- cass again, and returned to the ship for another night of dreams. Next day for all the morning I resisted the impulse to go to him, and played nap with Pollack with my secret gnawing at me, and in the evening started to go and was near benighted. I never told a soul of them of this thing I had done. Nest day I went early, and he had gone, and there were human footmarks and ugly stains round the muddy hole from which he had been dragged. I returned to the ship, disconcerted and perplexed. That day it was the men came aft, with blistered hands and faces, and sullen eyes. When they proclaimed, through Edwards, their spokesman, " We've had enough of this, and we mean it," I answered very readily, " So have I. Let's go." VII We were none too soon. People had been reconnoi- tring us, the telegraph had been at work, and we were not four hours at sea before we ran against the gunboat that had been sent dovra the coast to look for us and that would have caught us behind the island like a beast in a trap. It was a night of driving cloud that gave intermittent gleams of moonlight; the wind and sea were strong and we were rolling along through a drift of rain and mist. Suddenly the world was white with moonshine. The gunboat came out as a long dark shape wallowing on the water to the east. She sighted the now I STOLE THE QUAP 30.5 Maud yiary at once, and fired souic sort of popgun to arrest us. The mate turned to me. "Shall I tell the captain?" " The captain be damned ! " said I, and vc let him sleep through two hours of chase till a rainstorm swal- lowed us up. Then we changed our course and sailed right across them, and by morning only her smoke was showing. We were clear of Africa — and with the booty aboard. I did not see what stood between us and home. For the first time since I had fallen sick in the Thames my spirits rose. I was sea-sick and physically disgusted, of course, but I felt kindly in spite of my qualms. So far as I could calculate tlit-n the situation was saved. I saw myself returning triumphantly into the Thames, and nothing on earth to })rcvcnt old Capern's Perfect P'ilament going on the market in a fortnight. I had the monopoly of electric lamps be- neath my feet I was released from the spell of that bloodstained black body all mixed up with grey-black mud. I was going back to baths and decent food and aeronautics and Beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and my real life again — out of this well into which I had fallen. It would have needed something more than sca-sickncss and quap fever to prevent my spirits rising. I told the captain that I agreed with him that the British were the scum of Europe, the westward drift of all the people, a disgusting rabble, aird I lost three pounds by attenuated retail to Pollack at ha'penny nap and euchre. And then you know, as we got out into the Atlantic this side of Cape Verde, the ship began to go to |)ieces. I don't pretend for one moment to understand what happened. But I think Grciffenhagcn's recent work on 396 TONO-BUXGAY the effects of radium upon ligneous tissue does rather carry out my idea that emanations from quap have a rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre. From the first there had been a different feel about the ship, and as the big winds and waves began to strain her she commenced leaking. Soon she was leaking — • not at any particular point, but everywhere. She did not spring a leak, I mean, but water came in first of all near the decaying edges of her planks, and then through them. I firmly believe the water came through the wood. First it began to ooze, then to trickle. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin paper bag. Soon we were taking in water as though we had opened a door in her bottom. Once it began, the thing went ahead beyond all fight- ing. For a day or so we did our best, and I can still remember in my limbs and back the pumping — the fa- tigue in my arms and the memory of a clear little drib- ble of water that jerked as one pumped, and of knock- ing off and the being awakened to go on again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At last we ceased to think of anything but pumping; one became a thing of torment enchanted, doomed to pump for ever. I still remember it as pure relief when at last Pollack came to me pipe in mouth. " The captain says the damned thing's going down right now," he remarked, chewing his mouthpiece. "Eh?" Good idea ! " I said. " One can't go on pumping for ever." And without hurry or alacrity, sullenly and wearily we got into the boats and pulled away from the Maud Mary until we were clear of her, and then we stayed resting on our oars, motionless upon a glassy sea, wait- ing for her to sink. We were all silent, even the cap- now I STOLE THE QUAP 307 lain was silent until she went down. And then he spoke quite mildly in an undertone. " Dat is the first ship I haf ever lost . . . And it was not a fair game! It wass not a cargo any man should take. No ! " I stared at the slow eddies that circled above the de- parted Maud Mary, and the last chance of Business Organisations. I felt weary beyond emotion. I thought of my heroics to Beatrice and my uncle, of my prompt " 77/ go," and of all the ineffectual months I had spent after this headlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself and fate. But the captain and the men did not laugh. The men scowled at me and rubbed their sore and blistered hands, and set themselves to row. . . . As all the world knows we were picked up by the Union Castle liner, Portland Castle. The hairdresser aboard was a wonderful man, and he even improvised me a dress suit, and produced a clean shirt and warm underclothing. I had a hot bath, and dressed and dined and drank a bottle of Burgundy. "Now," I said, "are there any newspapers? I want to know what's been happening in the world." My steward gave me what he had, but I landed at Plymouth still largely ignorant of the course of events. I shook off Pollack, and left the captain and mate in an hotel, and the men iir a Sailor's Home until I could send to pay them off, and I made my way to the station. The newspapers I bought, the placards I saw, all England indeed resounded to my uncle's bankruptcj. BOOK THE FOURTH THE AFTERMATH OF TONO- BUNGAY CHAPTER THE FIRST THE STICK OF THE ROCKET That evening I talked with my uncle in the Harding- ham for the last time. The atmosphere of the place had altered quite shockingl)-. Instead of the crowd of importunate courtiers there were just half a dozen un- inviting men, journalists waiting for arr interview. Ropper the big commissionaire was still there, but now indeed he was defending my uncle from something more than time-wasting intrusions. I found the little man alone in the inner office pretending to work, but really brooding. He was looking yellow and deflated. "Lord!" he said at the sight of me. "You're lean, George. It makes that sear of yours show up." We regarded each other gravely for a time. " Quap," I said, " is at the bottom of the Atlantic. There's some bills We've got to pay the men." . . . "Seen the papers.'" " Read 'em all in the train." " At bay," he said. " I been at bay for a week. . . Yelping round me. . . . And mc facing the music. I'm feclin' a bit tired." He blew and wiped his glasses. " My stomach isn't what it was," he explained. " One finds it — tlicse times. How did it all happen, George .> Your Marconigram — it took mi in the wind a bit" I told him concisely. He nodded to tlic paragraphs of my narrative and at the end Le poured something 401 402 TONO-BUNGAY from a medicine bottle into a sticky little wineglass and drank it. I became aware of the preseirce of drugs, of three or four small bottles before him among his dis- order of papers, of a faint elusively familiar odour in the room. " Yes," he said, wiping his lips and recorking the bottle. " You've done your best, George. The luck's been against us." He reflected, bottle in hand. " Sometimes the luck goes with you and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't. And then where are you f Grass in the oven ! Fight or no fight." He asked a few questions and then his thoughts came back to his own urgent affairs. I tried to get some comprehensive account of the situation from him, but he would not give it. " Oh, I wish I'd had you. I wish I'd had you, George. I've had a lot on my hands. You're clear headed at times." " What has happened? " " Oh ! Boom ! — infernal things." "Yes, but — how? I'm just ofl" the sea, remember." " It'd worry me too much to tell you now. It's tied up in a skein." He muttered something to himself and mused darkly, and roused himself to say — " Besides — you'd better keep out of it. It's getting tight. Get 'em talking. Go down to Crest HiU and fly. That's your affair." For a time his manner set free queer anxieties in my brain again. I will confess that that Mordet Island nightmare of mine returned, and as I looked at him his hand went out for the drug again. " Stomach, George," he said. " I been fightin' on that. Every man fights on some- thing — gives way somewhere, — head, heart, liver — some- THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 408 thing. Zzzz. Gives way somcwliere. Nnpolcon did at last. All through the Waterloo campaign, his stomach — it wasn't a stomach ! Worse than mine, no end." The mood of depression passed as tlie drug worked witliin him. Mis eyes briglitened. He began to talk hig. He began to dress up the situation for my eyes, to recover what he had admitted to mc. He jjut it as a retreat from Russia. There were still the chances of Leipzig. " It's a battle, George — a big fight We're fighting for millions. I've still chances. There's still a card or so. I can't tell all my plans — like speaking on the stroke." " You might," I began. " I can't, George. It's like asking to look at some embryo. You got to wait. I know. In a sort of way, I know. But to tell it No! You been away so long. And everything's got complicated." My perception of disastrous entanglements deqDencd with the rise of liis spirits. It was evident that I could only help to tie him up in whatever net was weaving round his mind by forcing questions and explanations upon him. My thoughts flew off at another airgle. " How's Aunt Susan? " said I. I had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped for a moment, and he answered in the note of one who repeats a formula. " She'd like to be in the battle with mc. She'd like to be here in London. But there's corners I got to turn alone." His eye rested for a moment on the little bottle beside him. " And things have happened. " You might go down now and talk to her," he said, in a directcr voice. " I shall be down to-morrow night, I think." Hf looked up as though he hoped that would end Dur talk. 401 TONO-BUNGAY " For the week-end ? " I asked. " For the week-end. Thang God for week-ends, George ! " II My return home to Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I had anticipated when I had got out to sea with my load of quap and fancied the Perfect Filament was safe within my grasp. As I walked through the evening light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the stillness of something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen any more, no cyclists on the high road. Cessation was manifest everywhere. There had been, , I learnt from my aunt, a touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill work had come to an end and the men had drawn their last pay; they had cheered my uncle and hooted the contractors and Lord Boom. I cannot now recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted one another. I must have been very tired then, but whatever impression was made has gone out of my memory. But I recall very clearly how we sat at the little round table near the big window that gave on the terrace, and dined and talked. I remember her talking of my uncle. She asked after him, and whether he seemed well. " I wish I could help," she said. " But I've never helped him much, rrever. His way of doing things was never mine. And since — since . Since he began to get so rich, he's kept things from me. In the old days — it was different. ... j " There he is — I don't know what he's doing. He j won't have me near him. ... I " Flore's kept from me than anyone. The very serv- ! ants won't let me know. They try and stop the worst ; THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 405 of the papers — Boom's things — from coming upstairs. . . , I suppose thej''ve got him in a corner, George. Poor old Teddy ! Poor old Adam and Eve we are ! Fieial Receivers with flaming swords to drive us out of our garden! I'd hoped we'd never have another Trek. Well — anyway, it won't be Crest Hill. . . • But it's hard on Teddy. He mu!>t be in such a mess up there. Poor old chap. I suppose we can't help him. I suppose we'd only worry him. Have some more soup, George — while there is some? . . ." The next day was one of those days of stroirg per- ception that stand out clear in one's memory when the common course of days is blurred. I can recall now the awakening in the large familiar room that was always kept for me, and how I lay staring at its chintr- covercd chairs, its spaced fine furniture, its glimpse of the cedars without, aird thought that all this had to end. I have never been greedy for money, I have never wanted to be rich, but I felt now an immense sense of impending deprivation. I read the newspapers after breakfast — I and my aunt together — and then I walked up to sec what Cothope had done iir tlic matter of Lord Roberts p. Never before had I appreciated so acutely the ample brightness of the Lady Grove gardens, the dignity and wide peace of all about me. It was one of those warm mornings in late May that have won all the glory of summer without losing the gay delicacy of spring. The shrubbery was bright with laburnum and lilac, the beds swarmed with daffodils and narcissi and with lilies of the valley in the shade. I went along the well-kciit paths among the rhodo- dendra and through the private gale into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were in pro- fusion. Never before had I tasl.d so eomjilctely the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all this has to end. 406 TONO-BUNGAY Neither my uncle nor I had made any provision for disaster; all we had was in the game, and I had little doubt now of the completeness of our ruin. For the first time in my life since he had sent me that wonderful telegram of his I had to consider that common anxiety of mankind, — Employment. I had to come olf my magic carpet and %valk once more in the world. And suddenly I found myself at the cross drives where I had seen Beatrice for the first time after so many years. It is strange, but so far as I can recollect I had not thought of her once siirce I had landed at Plymouth. No doubt she had filled the background of my mind, but I do not remember one definite, clear thought. I had been intent on my uncle and the finan- cial collapse. It came like a blow in the face now; all that, too, had to end! Suddenly I was filled with the thought of her and a great longing for her. What would she do when she realised our immense disaster? What would she do? How would she take it? It filled me with astonishment to realise how little I could tell. . . . Should I perhaps presently happen upon her? I went on through the plantations and out upon the downs, and thence I saw Cothope with a new glider of his own design soaring down wind to my old familiar " grounding " iilace. To judge by its long rhythm it was a very good glider. " Like Cothope's cheek," thought I, " to go on with the research. I wonder if he's keeping notes. . . . But aU this will have to stop." He was sincerely glad to see me. " It's been a rum go," he said. He had been there without wages for a month, a man forgotten in the rush of events. " I just stuck on and did what I could with the stuff. THE STICK OF THE ROCKET t07 I pi)t a bit of money of my own — and I said to mysrlf, ' Well, here you arc with the gear and no one to look after you. You won't get such a chance again, my boy, not in all your born days. Why not make what you can with it? ' " "How's Lord Roberts /3?" Cothopc lifted his eyebrows. " I've had to refrain," he said. " But he's looking very handsome." "Gods!" I said, "I'd like to get him up just once before we smash. You read the papers .> You know we're going to smash?" " Oh ! I read the papers. It's scandalous, sir, such work as ours sliould depend on things like that. You and I ought to be under the State, sir, if you'll excuse me " " Nothing to excuse," I said. " I've always been a Socialist — of a sort — in theory. Let's go and hare a look at him. How is he? Deflated?" " Just about quarter full. Tliat last oil glaze of yours holds the gas something beautiful. He's not lost a cubic metre a week." . . . Cothopc returned to Socialism as we went towards the sheds. " Glad to think you're a Socialist, sir," he said, " it's the only civilised state. I l)ccn a Socialist some years — off the Clarion. It's a rotten scramble, this world. It takes the things we make and invent and it plays the silly fot)l with 'cm. W'c scientific people, we'll have to take things over and stop all this financing and advf that adventure is like dipping haphazard into an ilbum of views. One is rcmindetl first of this ami then sf tliat. We were both lying down on a horirontrl plate of basketwork; for Lord Roberts /? had none of the elegant accommodation of a balloon. I lay forward, jnd my uncle behind me in such a position that he lould sec hardly anything of our flight. \Vf were pro- tected from rolling over simply by iretting between the steel stays. It was impossible for us to stand up at all; »f had cither to lie or crawl on all fours over tJie basket- 416 TONO-BUNGAY work. Amidships were lockers made of Watson's Aulite material, and between these it was that I had put my uncle, wrapped in rugs. I wore sealskin motoring boots and gloves, and a motoring fur coat over my tweeds, and I controlled the engine by Bowden wires and levers for- ward. The early part of that night's experience was made up of warmth, of moonlit Surrey and Sussex landscape, and of a rapid and successful flight, ascending and swooping, and then ascending again southward. I could not watch the clouds because the airship overhung me; I could not see the stars nor gauge the meteorological happening, but it was fairly clear to me that a wind shifting between north and northeast was gathering strength, and after I had satisfied myself by a series of entirely successful expansions and contractions of the real air-worthiness of Lord Roberts /?, I stopped the engine to save my petrol, and let the morrster drift, checking its progress by the dim landscape below. My uncle lay quite still behind me, saying little and staring in front of him, and I was left to my own thoughts and sensations. My thoughts, whatever they were, have long since faded out of memory, and my sensations have merged into one continuous memory of a countryside lying, as it seemed, under snow, with square patches of dimness, white phantoms of roads, rents and pools of velvety blackness, and lamp-jewelled houses. I remember a train boring its way like a hastening caterpillar of fire across the landscape, and how distinctly I heard its clatter. Every town and street was buttoned with street lamps. I came quite close to the South Downs near Lewes, and all the lights were out in the houses, and the people gone to bed. We left the land a little to the east of Brigliton, and by that time Brighton was well abed, and the brightly lit sea-front deserted. Then I THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 417 let out the gas chamber to its fullest extent and rose. I like to be high above water. I do not clearly know what happened in the night I tliink I must have dozed, and probably my uncle slept. I remember that once or twice I heard him talking in an eager, muffled voice to himself, or to an imaginary court. But there can be no doubt tiic wind changed right round into the east, and that we were carried far down the Channel without am* suspicion of the immense leeway we were making. I remember the kind of stupid perplexity with which I saw the dawn breaking over a grey waste of watcr.s below, and realised that something was wrong. I was so stupid that it was only after the sunrise I really noticed the trend of the foam caps below, and perceived we were in a severe easterly gale. Even then, instead of heading southeasterly, I set the engine going, beaded south, and so continued a course that must needs have either just hit Usliant, or carry us over the Bay of Biscay. I thought I was cast of Cher- bourg, when I was far to the west, and stopped my engine in that belief, and then set it going again. I did actually sight the coast of Brittany to the southeast in the late afternoon, and that it was woke me up to the gravity of our position. I discovered it by accident in the southeast, when I was looking for it in the south- west I turned obout cast and faced the wind for some time, and finding I had no chance in its teeth, went high, where it seemed less violent, and tried to make a course southeast It was only then that I realisid what a gale I was in. I had becw going westward, and per- haps even in gusts north of west, at a pace of fifty or sixty miles an hour. Then I began what I suppose would be called a Fight against the cast wind. One calls it a Fight, but it was really almost as unlike a fight as plain sewing. The wind tried to drive me wcslwardly, and I tried to 418 TONO-BUNGAY get as much as I could eastwardly, with the wind beat- ing and rocking us irregularly, but by no means unbear- ably, for about twelve hours. My hope lay in the wind abating, and our keeping in the air and eastward of Finisterre until it did, and the chief danger was the exhaustion of our petrol. It was a long and anxious and almost meditative time; we were fairly warm, and only slowly getting hungry, and except that my uncle grumbled a little and produced some philosophical ref- flections, and began to fuss about having a temperature, we talked very little. I was tired and sulky, and chiefly worried about the engine. I had to resist a tendency to crawl back and look at it. I did not care to risk con- tracting our gas chamber for fear of losing gas. Noth- ing was less like a fight. I know that in popular maga- zines, and so forth, all such occasions as this are de- picted in terms of hysteria. Captains save their ships, engineers complete their bridges, generals conduct their battles, in a state of dancing excitement, foaming recon- dite technicalities at the lips. I suppose that sort of thing works up the reader, but so far as it professes to represent reality, I am convinced it is all childish non- sense. Schoolboys of fifteen, girls of eighteen, and lit- erary men all their lives, may have these squealing fits, but my own experience is that most exciting scenes are not exciting, and most of the urgent moments in life are met by steady-headed men. Neither I nor my uncle spent the night in ejacula- tions, nor in humorous allusions, nor any of these things. We remained lumpish. My uncle stuck in his place and grumbled about his stomach, and occasionally rambled off into expositions of his financial position and denun- ciations of Neal — he certainly struck out one or two good phrases for Neal — and I crawled about at rare intervals in a vague sort of way and grunted, and our basketwork creaked continually, and the wind on our THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 419 quarter made a sort of ruffled flapping in the wall of the gas chamber. P'or all our wraps we got frightfully cold as tlie night wore on. I must have dozed, and it was still dark when I real- ised with a start that we were nearly due south of, and a long way from, a regularly-flashing lighthouse, stand- ing out before the glow of some great town, and tiion that the thing that had awakened me was the cessation of our engine, and tliat we were driving back to the west Then, indeed, for a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I crawled forward to the cords of the release valves, made my uncle crawl forward too, and let out the gas until we were falling down through the air like a clumsy glider towards the vague grejncss that was land. Something must have intervened here that I have for- gotten. I saw the lights of Bordeaux when it was quite dark, a nebulous haze against black ; of that I am rea- sonably sure. But certainly our fall took place in the cold, uncertain light of early dawn. I am, at least, equally sure of that And Mimizan, near where we dropped, is fifty miles from Bordeaux, whose harbour lights I must have seen. I remember coming down at last with a curious indif- ference, and actually rousing myself to steer. But the actual coming to earth was exciting t-nough. I remem- ber our prolonged dragging landfall, and the difficulty I had to get clear, and how a gust of wind caught Lord Roberts P as my uncle stumbled away from the ropes and litter, and dropped me heavily, and tlircw me on to my knees. Then came the realisation that the monster was almost consciously disentangling itself for escape, and then the light leap of its rebound. The rope slip|)ed out of reach of my hand. I remember running knee- deep in a salt pool in hopeless pursuit of the airship 420 TONO-BUNGAY as it dragged and rose seaward, and how only after it had escaped my uttermost effort to recapture it, did I realise that this was quite the best thing that could have happened. It drove swiftly over the sandy dunes, lifting and falling, and was hidden by a clump of wind- bitten trees. Then it reappeared much further off, and still receding. It soared for a time, and sank slowly, and after that I saw it no more. I suppose it fell into the sea and got wetted with salt water and heavy, and so became deflated and sank. It was never found, and there was never a report of any one seeing it after it escaped from me. VI But if I find it hard to tell the story of our long flight through the air overseas, at least that dawn in France stands cold and clear and fuU. I see again al- most as if I saw once more with my bodily eyes the ridges of sand rising behind ridges of sand, grey and cold and black-browed, with an insufficient grass. I feel again the clear, cold chill of dawn, and hear the distant barking of a dog. I find myself asking again, ) " ^^Tiat shall we do now } " and trying to scheme with a brain tired beyond measure. At first my uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering a good deal, and it was all I could do to resist my desire to get him into a comfortable bed at once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in this part of the world. I felt it would not do to turn up anywhere at dawn and rest, it would be altogether too conspic- uous ; we must rest until the day was well advanced, and then appear as road-stained pedestrians seeking a meal. I gave him most of what was left of the biscuits, emptied our flasks, and advised him to sleep, but at first THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 421 it was too coldj albeit I wrapped the big fur rug around him. I was struck now by the flushed weariness of his face, and the look of ape the grey stubbble on his unshaved chin gave him. He sat crumpk-d up, sliivcring nnd coughing, munching reluctantly, but drinking eagerly, and whimpering a little^ a dreadfully pitiful figure to me. But we had to go through with it; tlicrc was no way out for us. Presently the sun rose over the pines, and the sand grew rapidly warm. My uircle had done eating, and sat with his wrists resting on his knees, the most hope- less-looking of lost souls. " I'm ill," he said, "I'm damnably ill! I can feel it in ray skin ! " Then — it was horrible to mc — he cried, " I ought to be in bed; I ought to be in bed . . . instead of flying about," and suddenly he burst into tears. I stood up. "Go to sleep, man!" I said, and took the rug from him, and spread it out and rolled him up in it "It's all very well," he protested; "I'm not young enough " " Lift up your head," I interrupted, and put his knap- sack under it. " They'll catch us here, just as much as in an inn," he grumbled, and then lay still. Presently, after a long time, I percrived he was asleep. His breath came with peculiar wheezings, and every now and again he would cough. I was very stiff and tired myself, and perhaps I dozed. I don't re- member. I remember only sitting, as it seemed, nigh interminably, beside hira, too weary even to think in that sandy desolation. No one came near us, no creature, not even • dog. 422 TONO-BUNGAY I roused myself at last, feeling that it was vain to seek to seem other than abnormal, and with an effort that was like lifting a sky of lead, we made our way through the wearisome sand to a farmhouse. There I feigned even a more insufficient French than I possess naturally, and let it appear that we were pedestrians from Biar- ritz who had lost our way along the shore and got be- nighted. This explained us pretty well, I thought, and we got most heartening coffee and a cart to a little road- side station. .My uncle grew more and more manifestly ill with every stage of our journey. I got him to Bayonne, where he refused at first to eat, and was after- wards very sick, and then took him shiverin-g and col- lapsed up a little branch line to a frontier place called Luzon Gare. AVe found one homely inn with two small bedrooms, kept by a kindly Basque woman. I got him to bed, and that night shared his room, and after an hour or so of sleep he woke up in a raging fever and with a wan- dering mind, cursing Neal and repeating long, inaccurate lists of figures. He was manifestly a case for a doctor, and in the morning we got one in. He was a young man from Montpelier, just beginning to practise, and very mysterious and technical and modern and unhelp- ful. He spoke of cold and exposure, and la grippe and pneumonia. He gave many explicit and difficult direc- tions. ... I perceived it devolved upon me to or- ganise nursing and a sick-room. I installed a religieuse in the second bedroom of the inn, aird took a room for myself in the inn of Port de Luzon, a quarter of a mile away. VII And now my story converges on what, in that queer corner of refuge out of the world, was destined to be my uncle's deathbed. There is a background of the THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 423 Pyrenees, of blue hills and sunlit houses, of the old castle of Luzon and a noisy cascading river, and for a foreground the dim, stuffy room whose windows both the religieuse and hostess conspired to shut, with its waxed Hoor, its four-poster bed, its charncterislicnlly French chairs and fireplace, its champagne bottles and dirty basins and used towels and packets of Somatote on the table. And in the sickly air of the confined space behind the curtains of the bed lay my little uncle, with an effect of being enthroned and secluded, or sat up, or writhed and tossed in his last dealings of life. One went and drew back the edge of the curtaina if one wanted to speak to him or look at him. Usually he was propped up against pillows, because so he breatlicd more easily. He slept hardly at all. I have a confused memory of vigils and mornings and afternoons spent by that bedside, and how the religieute hovered about me, and how meek and good and inefficient she was, and how horribly black were her nails. Other figures come and go, and particularly tlie doctor, a young man pluniply rococo, in bicycling dress, with fine waxen features, a little pointed beard, and the long black frizzy hair and huge lie of a minor poet. Bright and clear-cut and irrelevant arc memories of the Basque hostess of my uncle's inn and of the family of Spanish people who entertained me and prepared tiic most amazingly elaborate meals for me, with soup and salad and chicken and remarkable sweets. They were all very kind and sympathetic people, systematically so. And constantly, without attracting attention, I was try- ing to get newspapers from home. My uncle is central to all these impressions. I have tried to make you picture him, time after lime, as the young man of the Wimblehurst chemist's shop, as the shabby assistant in Tottrnham Court Road, as the adventurer of the early days of Tono- Bungay, as 424 TONO-BUNGAY the confident, preposterous plutocrat. And now I have to tell of him strangely changed under the shadow of oncoming death, with his skin lax and yellow and glis- tening with sweat, his eyes large and glassy, his coun- tenance unfamiliar through the growth of a beard, his nose pinched and thin. Never had he looked so small as now. And he talked to me in a whispering, strained voice of great issues, of why his life had been, and whither he was going. Poor little man ! that last phase is, as it were, disconnected from all the other phases. It was as if he crawled out from the ruins of his career, and looked about him before he died. For he had quite clear-minded states in the intervals of his delirium. He knew he was almost certainly dying. In a way that took the burthen of his cares off his mind. There was no more Neal to face, no more flights or evasions, no punishments. " It has been a great career, George," he said, " but I shall be glad to rest. Glad to rest! . . . Glad to rest." His miird ran rather upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a note of satisfaction and ap- proval. In his delirious phases he would most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splen- dours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare be- fore him, and whisper half-audible fragments of sen- tences. " What is this great place, these cloud-capped towers, these airy pinnacles? . . . Ilion. Sky-y-pointing. . . . Ilion House, the residence of one of our great merchant princes. . . . Terrace above terrace. Reach- ing to the heavens. . . . Kingdoms Caesar never knew. ... A great poet, George. Zzzz. Kingdoms Csesar never knew. . . . Under entirely new management. " Greatness. . . . Millions. . . . Universities. > . . He stands on the terrace — on the upper terrace THE STICK OF THE ROCKET 42 -. — directing — dirtcUng — by the globe — directing — the trade. " . . . It was hard at times to tell when his ganc talk ceased and his dc-lirium began. The secret springs of his life, the vain imaginations were revealed. I sometimes think that all the life of man sprawls abed, careless and un- kempt, until it must needs clothe and wash itself and come forth scvmly iir act and speech for the encounter with one's fellow-men. I suspect that all things un- spoken in our souls partake somewhat of the laxity of delirium and dementia. Certainly from those slimy, tormented lijis above the bristling grey beard came nothing but dreams and disconnected fancies. . . . Sometimes he raved about Neal, threatened Ncal. " \Vhat has he got invested.' " he said. " Does he think he can escape me? . . . If I followed him up. . . . Ruin. Ruin. . . . One would think / had taken his money." And sometimes he reverted to our airship flighL " It's loo long, George, too long and too cold. I'm too old a man — too old — for this sort of thing. . . , You know you're not saving — you're killing me." Towards the end it bwnrae evident our identity was discovered. I found the press, and especially Boom's section of it, had made a sort of hue and cry for us, sent special conmiissioncrs to hunt for us, and though none of these emissaries rt-ached us until my uncle was dead, one felt the forewash of that storm of energy. The thing got into the popular French press. People be- came curious in their manner towards us, and a numl)cr of fresh faces appeared about the weak little struggle that went on in the closeness bt-hind the curtains of the bed. The young doctor insisted on consultations, and a motor-car came up from Biarritz, and suddenly o