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THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 t 
 
 I 
 
CONSTABLE'S SHILLING SERIES 
 
 Pocket Size. Boards. 1/- net each. 
 
 The Authors represented in this Series 
 include — 
 
 MARIE CORELLI 
 
 GEORGE DU MAURIER 
 
 MARY JOHNSTON 
 
 ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 
 
 GEORGE GISSING 
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 MAUD DIVER 
 
 MRS. GEORGE WEMYSS 
 
 HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON 
 
 SIR OWEN SEAMAN 
 
 HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 EDWARD NOBLE 
 
 HI LAI RE BELLOO 
 
 G. S. STREET 
 
 AND 
 
 * GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Complete List of Titles supplied 
 on application. 
 
THE MAKING 
 OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 W. L. GEORGE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 '«H« CITY OF LIGHT," "ISRAEL KALISCH," " THE SECOND 
 
 ■LOOMING," "A BED OF ROSES," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 CONSTABLE AND COMPANY 
 
 LIMITED 
 
Firtt publithed January 1914. 
 Reprinted February, March, 1914. 
 Publithed in ConttabU't Shilling 
 Library 1917. 
 
TO 
 
 THE SMALL FRENCH BOY 
 
 WHO IN 1894 FIRST CALLED ME 
 
 JOHN BULL 
 
 AND TO 
 
 THE YOUNG ENGLISHMAN 
 
 WHO IN 1902 FIRST ADDRESSED ME AS 
 
 FROGGY 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 50728: 
 
% 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I RULE, BRITANNIA » 
 
 II HAIL ! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 
 
 III INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 IV MISS MAUD HOOPER 
 V BARBEZAN AND CO. 
 
 VI THE HEART OF ENGLAND 
 
 I'ACJE 
 1 
 
 12 
 40 
 58 
 72 
 106 
 
 PART II 
 
 I EDITH LAWTON 
 
 II HAMBURY .... 
 
 Ill BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 
 
 139 
 
 174 
 210 
 
 PART III 
 
 I THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT . 
 
 II HIE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 
 
 III THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 
 
 IV THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 
 V AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 
 
 221 
 
 252 
 270 
 279 
 289 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PA-RT IV 
 
 CHAF - 
 
 I STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. ... 333 
 
 II RECONSTRUCTION ..... 352 
 
 III THE LAST LAP 3g9 
 
 IV AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOME 390 
 
 # 
 
THE MAKING OF AN 
 ENGLISHMAN 
 
 PART I 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 RULE BRITANNIA 
 
 The dark young man who had just come out of Holy- 
 well Street, a little uncertain, as if he had lost his way, 
 crossed the Strand with hesitation. He drew back as 
 some hansoms came careering towards him, made as if 
 to return to the pavement, then ran across to St. Clement 
 Dane's. He paused awhile on the island, looked at the 
 faintly red sky over the Cecil. There was dubiousness 
 in his movements, the dubiousness of the stranger in 
 a large town, who is anxious to find his way and because 
 of liis pride reluctant to ask it; there was interest too, 
 the stranger's revealing interest in houses with unfamiliar 
 faces, in the traffic which in foreign lands so perversely 
 clings to the wrong side of the street. At last he seemed 
 ulster resolution as he turned eastwards. 
 Some minutes had elapsed since the booming of the 
 quarter from the bells of the nearest church, and as the 
 young man stopped again to look at the Griffin, he seemed 
 to the endless confirmation of the surrounding 
 chimes. They came muffled and faint after their long 
 from St. Paul's and Westminster, shrill from 
 Mnstan's and the Chapel Royal; the chimes seemed 
 and aloof, detached in aristocratic fashion from 
 limbic of the omnibuses and the sharper clip-trop- 
 
2 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 trop of t horses. The dark young man walked 
 
 slowly, his eyes and e*y aware of all this un- 
 
 familiarity and its intimations of unpenetrated mysteries. 
 There were church bells and horses in his own country, 
 but these had an undefinable personality of their own, 
 not to be gauged by a difference in the casting of the metal 
 or in the hands that controlled the beasts. And there 
 were other sounds too, in this not over busy Fleet Street 
 of the night, sounds which bore witness to the transitory 
 importance of something that hung over the town. 
 
 There were no crowds. Indeed, the omnibuses rolled 
 westwards, empty inside, and but half-loaded on the 
 top. But every street corner had its newsboy, aggressive 
 and raucous, shouting incomprehensible extracts from the 
 Echo and the Star under the dim gas-lamp. And the 
 newsboys, bent double under their loads of rosy papers, 
 fleeted past with an air of urgency. There was excite- 
 ment in the air, a little fever, as if everybody w r ere 
 thinking of something that had just happened and of 
 its reactions upon something infinitely more important 
 which might happen soon. And because every Londoner 
 was thus oppressed his town was oppressed; all these 
 people, hurrying or strolling, those screaming boys, 
 fixed, statue-like policemen, those few whose cookshops 
 and public-houses were still open, carried, closely wedded 
 with their cares and their merriment, a common pre- 
 occupation. 
 
 The dark young man was influenced by this atmosphere 
 and knew its causes. He must needs have been blind and 
 deaf not to have felt some excitement in this town, 
 where all day he had seen men and women buy the same 
 papers three times over in the hope of finding news 
 which would bear out or give the lie to the dirty placard 
 he now stared at. The placard roughly stuck on the 
 stones at the corner of Fetter Lane bore the words : 
 
 FALL OF MAFEKING 
 
 The newsvendor had long deserted his afternoon pitch, 
 gone back to the office to bring the false promises 
 
RULE BRITANNIA 8 
 
 of fresh quires, but the placard remained as a dirty 
 memento of disaster, to be trodden on by angry 
 boots, dumbly stared at by passers-by as they tried 
 to believe it was not true. All through that Friday 
 afternoon the stranger had listened to the wild rumour 
 of the streets, the march of Plumer, his defeat, the 
 death of Baden-Powell, the suicide of Eloff, all those 
 mad untruths which rise from the battlefield like dis- 
 turbed crows. He was stirred, he could hear in spirit 
 those guns that roared and rumbled so many thousands 
 of miles away, and he could smell the smell of battle, 
 dust, sweat and hot rifle grease. A stranger and un- 
 linked with this England, he could not drive from his 
 mind the familiar photographs of those long, mud-coloured 
 lines of young men, face upon the ground in the shallow 
 trenches. 
 
 He thought with pleasure of the brown lines, thrilled, 
 choking a little as a man chokes when moved to an 
 exultation in which are pity and some fear. For him 
 the Boer enemy was the shadowy foe of the Kriegspiel, 
 not real as the brothers of those real men among whom he 
 walked. He had no interest in the struggle but he had to 
 share in it, as he could not have watched a brown dog 
 fight a white one without favouring one of the two 
 colours. Though detached he was a partisan, and because 
 he had eaten bread in England and heard her men speak, 
 perhaps because England was quietly folding him in her 
 clumsy, good-natured arms, he was for England and 
 against the vicrldeur. He wondered why he did not, 
 for the sake of his own republican tricolour, desire the 
 victory of the vicrldeur : that question he could not solve ; 
 he merely thought of the thin brown line and stood dumb 
 with those English in front of the dirty placard on the 
 stones. 
 
 II 
 
 The young man reached Ludgate Hill, looked awhile 
 at the railway bridge, at St. Paul's, dazzling white in the 
 
4 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 moonlight and split in two by the black spire of St. 
 Martin Ludgate. He turned back, and, as again he 
 approached the Griffin, a premature clock chimed half- 
 past nine. The stranger stopped. On the opposite 
 pavement he could see three men and a girl, who looked 
 up to the upper windows of a building. That moment 
 had an undefinable quality of hush, as if the world were 
 an audience waiting for the curtain to rise on a play 
 the title of which they did not know. There was nothing 
 to arrest these people's attention, nothing to make them 
 stop, save, perhaps, the secret influence of some event 
 which winged towards them as they waited. The silence 
 grew heavier, then broke. From far down one of the 
 lanes the mouths of which frame the emptiness over the 
 river, the stranger heard a sound. The other watchers 
 heard it too, turned about, strained towards it, as if they 
 could hardly believe in its reality. But the seconds 
 passed, and they knew that this was real. They heard 
 it, the faint voice : " Hip — hip — hip — hurrah 1 " 
 
 The four watchers suddenly became a little knot of 
 people. The sound rose up again, and now unmistakable 
 as if it were the voice not of three or four men but of 
 many scores. " Hip — hip — hip — " roared the phantom 
 in the lane, " — hurrah ! " And then the silence died. 
 As if some magician had struck into life the very stones, 
 they seemed to spurt men and women in solid black 
 lumps, from every porch, from every lane, from the lit-up 
 warmth of every public-house. A hundred windows 
 burst into brilliance and as suddenly were obscured by 
 clusters of men and girls. The phantom in the lane 
 roared again, rival roars rose up ; then the shouts merged 
 in one steady, throbbing sound. It was the sound of 
 cheering, and it grew as the news spread rapid as a 
 stain of oil from their centre in Fleet Street to the 
 farthest suburbs, the sound of cheering without rhythm 
 or measure, of cheering so uncontrollable that the 
 " hurrahs " of it covered the preliminary " hips," the 
 sound of rival songs, of " Rule Britannia " and of " God 
 save the Queen," and of all the things in London fit to 
 
 
RULE BRITANNIA 5 
 
 make a noise — pianos, horns, trays and kettles far away, 
 of whistles too. As the youth leaned back against the 
 wall, wedged in among a shouting, incomprehensible 
 crowd, he could discern in the roar the sharp quality of 
 those whistles. 
 
 At the upper windows of a newspaper office appeared 
 two men who carried a white linen band. It was un- 
 rolled, and the roar grew yet more massive as the crowd 
 read three words, roughly scrawled : 
 
 MAFEKING RELIEVED 
 
 Official 
 
 London had quickened. The desert of Fleet Street 
 seemed to have sucked in all who were within the periphery 
 of its voice, as swiftly and as invincibly as an electro- 
 magnet collects iron filings when the current passes. 
 As minutes piled on minutes, tense and fleet as seconds, 
 London emptied itself into the streets from drawing- 
 room, theatre and kitchen ; the ever-new miracle of the 
 Press repeated itself, as if the editors had foreseen the 
 event, for already the tricolour poster of the Evening News 
 war edition was in the hands of boys, who could be seen 
 fighting their way out of the lanes among the greedy 
 crowd. While some snatched at and stole the precious 
 sheets, others thrust silver into the boys' hands. The 
 crowd swayed, unable to move, crushed itself against 
 the other crowds that had formed as magically at the 
 ion House and Charing Cross. Here and there, 
 cd among the people, was a four-wheeler or an 
 omnibus, whose horses were too listless to take fright. 
 . but unperceived; London had forgotten 
 anted only to sing, to cheer, to embrace. But a 
 <>se must have formed, a restlessness have come, 
 he crowds suddenly felt the desire to move. It was 
 re of panic, the desire that dictates fright, 
 . if exultant desire to do solemn, triumphant 
 to line up and as soldiers to march to nowhere, 
 
6 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 just to march and to feel the earth tremble under the 
 trample of rhythmic steps. The Fleet Street crowd, 
 bound together by the alternation of the national s 
 and of " The Absent-Minded Beggar," began to move 
 towards the West, and I . . , 
 
 III 
 
 Yes, I ! I, who sit at a square knee-hole desk as I 
 write these lines, one of those English desks the Americans 
 have invented, it was an incredible other I who marched 
 with those Englishmen to that Trafalgar Square ... to 
 Trafalgar Square where stands the monument of the 
 admiral who crushed my countrymen. It was not then 
 incredible, but it is now incredible that I can have been 
 what I was, that there was a roll in the " r's " of Trafalgar. 
 For I have lost the " r's," and the feeling of Trafalgar, 
 lost the feeling of Waterloo, lost them so completely 
 that like a born Londoner I have forgotten the blood 
 and smoke that soil those rich names and that they 
 awake in my mind no idea save " open space " and 
 " railway station." 
 
 On the table is a top-hat. It is an ordinary top-hat, 
 and that is extraordinary : it is absolutely impersonal, 
 unoriginal, affords no key to the one who wears it; its 
 brim is neither very curly nor very flat, its crown neither 
 very high nor very low ; it is the sort of top-hat everybody 
 wears, the sort of top-hat which has a steady thousand 
 brothers between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park 
 Corner. I would not know it in a crowd, and I am glad, 
 because — well, that would never do ! 
 
 It is positively an English top-hat ! 
 
 And because it is an English top-hat, and because 
 everything in this room into which has crept a faint ness 
 of London fog is English, so English that it is old English, 
 because I see English papers, English chintz, and English 
 books, and English china, and an English typewriter 
 (made in America) on a Sheraton table (made in Germany), 
 
RULE BRITANNIA 7 
 
 I am glad that all this is English, so English that even 
 rica and Germany are succeeding in being English, 
 just as I, the Frenchman, am English. 
 
 I am glad, and when I think of the young man who 
 
 marched to Trafalgar Square, with a swollen, bounding 
 
 heart under the waistcoat he had bought in the Boulevard 
 
 Imartre, I am amazed. It is I, yes, I am sure of it 
 
 when I look at his photograph. Or it was I. It was a 
 
 young man of twenty, dark, with black eyes and rather 
 
 d eyebrows, hair that ought to have been shorter, 
 
 !l-cut mouth enough, shaded by a long but rather 
 
 thin black moustache. Other documentary evidence, 
 
 my military book, tells me that he had an " ordinary " 
 
 forehead, an " average " chin, that he had no " stigmata." 
 
 And my present figure leads me to believe that he stood 
 
 about five feet nine in his boots, never having been 
 
 measured otherwise, that he was fairly broad and that 
 
 his hands and feet were rather small. 
 
 A fair portrait tins, but no work of art. It lacks life, 
 
 inspiration, and I suspect that no effort of mine will 
 
 endow it with either, for I don't know him any more. 
 
 lands in a world I have left behind; he is my ghost 
 
 and he wears the surprising clothes that ghosts wear; 
 
 (where do they get them?). I understand him perfectly 
 
 and I don't sympathise with him, for I can't feel as he 
 
 I see him; he walks, smiles, speaks; he makes 
 
 jokes and he makes love; he has political ideas, and 
 
 lards of honour, and habits, and nasty envies, and 
 
 bubbling generosities. He is quite the most wonderful 
 
 m the world, but he is not I. 
 
 land has poured him into another man. 
 
 I have called him " the stranger," and I have done 
 
 . for he is a stranger even to me. I know well 
 
 enough why those Englishmen impressed him, but it is 
 
 ordinary that they no longer impress me. I gather 
 
 if he could rise again it is I, the Englishman, would 
 
 impress him, and that I would cast over him the critical, 
 
 I look of the Englishman. The roast beef 
 
 of old England has done its work well ! 
 
8 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 IV 
 
 As we marched towards the West I bought a whistle 
 for a shilling. And from Wellington Street onwards I 
 blew it to exhaustion, blew it with a fine sense of martial 
 demonstration, tossing the squeal of it into the slaty 
 night in honour of the great race which had produced 
 Gladstone, Cromwell and Shakespeare. I remember 
 those who walked to the right and left of me; there 
 was a working-man of some sort, who maintained upon 
 me the stare of a squinting eye and exhaled one of those 
 subtle, penetrating trade smells which blend so curiously 
 with the aroma of beer; the other was an elegant old 
 gentleman with the clipped white moustache and the 
 brick-coloured cheeks of the retired soldier. Neatly 
 pinned across his shoulders was a tricolour newspaper 
 placard. And the backs and heads in front ! how high 
 were the heads held, and how square the shoulders ! 
 One back seemed to own no head, for it was humped, 
 and so bowed that I could not see beyond it. But a 
 hand belonging to that body held up on a stick a bowler 
 decorated with strawberry leaves. The English hunch- 
 back, carrying his ducal headgear, had his share in the 
 glory of the night. 
 
 We marched onwards, and I could not hear a word 
 spoken, though mouths opened towards ears, for the 
 roar of us, and our whistling and blowing of horns, 
 and the tramping of our feet engulfed anything that 
 we might personally feel. There was no I, and as we 
 reached Trafalgar Square, where I linked arms with 
 the odorous working-man and the elegant old gentleman, 
 there 'was no They. There was nothing save an enormous 
 exultant We, a We too big for classes and nationalities, 
 a hurrying, intoxicated We, bursting with relief and 
 self-complacency. 
 
 Round and round Trafalgar Square, where the tide of 
 us had swept the corners clear and swallowed up those 
 people who projected from the pavement, almost in step 
 as we sang— 
 
RULE BRITANNIA 9 
 
 " And when they ask us how it's done, 
 Wo proudly point to every one 
 Of England's soldiers of the Queen. . ." 
 
 Round and round Trafalgar Square, past the National 
 Gallery, the black windows of which confessed that the 
 dians were shamefully in bed, past the two hotels, 
 their windows blocked with people assembled to cheer 
 id to wave Union Jacks, past the full mouth of 
 Whitehall, down the hill of which I could see whole 
 fleets of omnibuses, stalled, helpless and loaded, with 
 i lowing clusters of men and women. 
 Round and round Trafalgar Square, with throats full 
 of ridges choked by dust, and with sweat upon our very 
 eyelashes. Upon the parapet of the Square sat half-a- 
 dozen girls together, who wore all of them dusty black 
 coats ; as I passed I could see they were singing, for their 
 mouths all worked together, and they swayed together 
 from right to left and back. For us they waved their 
 dirty handkerchiefs, and then they were dragged from the 
 pet and patriotically kissed, 
 ind and round Trafalgar Square. The working-man, 
 who still maintained upon me the stare of his squinting 
 eye, dumbly pointed to a four-wheeler, stranded in Pall 
 Mall East, among the seethe of our overflow. On the roof 
 stood a man in evening clothes with a woman in a low 
 . Hands in hands and face to face, they danced 
 a furious dance, leaping up and down like puppets on 
 a wire; the man's white tie had flown loose, and as the 
 woman danced her earrings left behind them little striae 
 of light. Some of her fair hair had escaped, the man had 
 lost his hat ; they danced in abandoned joy. 
 
 And round and round Trafalgar Square. And round 
 and round again. 
 
 met some mounted police and split upon them like 
 
 i a breakwater. We streamed north, up Charing 
 
 o came, those who faced us turned 
 
 1 was still linked with the old gentleman, 
 
 :ri nncd inanely now and hung wearily upon my arm, 
 
 I the working-man. In front I could still see 
 
10 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 the hunchback : his stick had bored a hole in his bowler; 
 he carried the hat with the strawberry leaves upon the 
 crook and had decorated it further by sticking into the 
 hole his Kruger-headed pipe. 
 
 As we passed I could hear the singing better, thanks 
 to the echo of the wails. And, drunkenly excited, I too 
 sang to them that Britons never, never would be sla 
 From the windows of the Alhambra peered clusters of 
 girls' heads, for all the ballet was there — golden curls, 
 and black curls, and red curls, and gorgeous loose manes ; 
 I had a vision of the Alhambra as an extraordinary 
 animal with two flashing eyes of incandescent burners 
 and a hundred white arms outstretched. From the 
 roof of one of the theatres they were firing a toy cannon 
 as fast as they could load it. 
 
 At Shaftesbury Avenue we were stopped by a cube 
 of policemen, and, before we could break down their 
 puny resistance, we heard the fifes and drums. We heard 
 them faintly from the north, and suddenly they .burst 
 in upon us, leading the Endell Street Boys' Brigade. 
 Fife and drum in front, the boys marched past as if 
 truly British Grenadiers; they resolved themselves into 
 bright, smiling faces, glittering buttons and neat dummy 
 rifles. 
 
 " Whene'er we are commanded 
 
 To 8torm.the palisades, 
 Our leaders march with fusees, 
 
 And we with hand-grenades ; 
 We throw them from the glacia, 
 
 About the foemen's ears 
 Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, row, 
 
 To the British Grenadiers." 
 
 The boys vanished, were seized and hoisted on 
 shoulders ; as we poured on towards the north I could 
 hear the determined band struggling to play on as the 
 crowd bore it aloft. 
 
 And so through the Carnival of Friday night and of 
 the next day. Carnival ! I carry for ever in my memory 
 the vision of the Union Jacks on long bamboo poles, of 
 
RULE - BRITANNIA 11 
 
 the paper hats, the B.P. buttons and the patriotic 
 handkerchiefs. Did I not act my part in all of it? 
 Defend an English girl in Piccadilly from the patriotic 
 ticklers ? and see near Marble Arch a great and patriotic 
 fight outside a public-house? And I raised my hat to 
 Kirk, the butcher, who waved his sheets from his bedroom 
 window because he had nothing else to wave. 
 
 For two days they fought and made love and drank, 
 and rode decorated bicycles, and mobbed Volunteers 
 in so friendly a spirit that these took to riding in cabs. 
 
 I have confused memories of two nights when I could 
 hardly sleep, for they were rioting in Oxford Street and 
 letting off fireworks; for they were rioting in the soul of 
 me, the Frenchman, as I lay in bed all a-throb with the 
 triumph of these English, trying to sleep and too tired to 
 do so, too excited to do aught but thrill at the animal 
 splendour of them, unable to repress my habituated lips 
 as they hummed : 
 
 M And when they ask us how it's done, 
 Wo proudly point to every one 
 Of England's soldiers of tiio Queen. . " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 
 
 There has always been an England for me, and though 
 I am or was a Frenchman, I have always been as con- 
 scious of England as of France. For, all through my 
 childhood, I heard the words Angleterre and Anglais 
 occur often in my father's conversation; no doubt I 
 heard him alternately revile and belaud those English, 
 who mattered so very much to the Bordeaux shipbroker 
 he was. If every port in the world is somewhat English, 
 then Bordeaux is almost a colony of the new Carthaginians, 
 those Carthaginians who are Romans too; there is an 
 atmosphere of England about the names of many who 
 sell stores and sails and coal, and caulk the bottoms 
 of the ships, which affects the old, while the young are 
 subject to football and Charles Dickens. We are com- 
 plex, we Bordelais, for we are dark, vivid, noisy ; we twist 
 our moustaches before we have any to twist, and strut 
 every one like a Cyrano de Bergerac in mufti : yet, and 
 perhaps because our city would decay if an earthquake 
 were to lift it from the waters, we have the greedy spirit 
 of commercial England, her vigour and her obstinacy. 
 We like the rough games of the North ; we drink spirits 
 as readily as wine; we cash the sovereign at sight and 
 make a profit on the deal. 
 
 It is this peculiar atmosphere created an England in 
 my mind, an England represented in early days by a 
 Consul who, said my father, was a cochon. That Consul 1 
 I never saw him, never knew his name, but I felt him 
 to be the grey eminence behind that cardinal of ours, 
 
 12 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 18 
 
 the harbour-master; he did not mean anything precise, 
 for he did not mean soldiers, and it is difficult to realise 
 who is who if he does not mean soldiers when you are 
 a very little boy. He was just an influence, something 
 solemn and potential with which you could do anything 
 you chose if you owned it, something like a tableful of 
 money. I have never seen a tableful of money, and 
 I suppose I never shall, for I have little use for money, 
 being so much fonder of those things which money buys ; 
 why then the British Consul was always associated in 
 my mind with a table covered with coins from edge to 
 edge is a little mysterious, unless there be in the very 
 far back of my brain some phrases now forgotten which 
 have marked its lobes, phrases in which " Consul," and 
 " francs," played equal parts. It is certain that this 
 secret power must have meant money, and that England 
 must have shared its glory. As I grew up, England very 
 much meant money, and now I, an Englishman of sorts, 
 still find it very difficult to prevent the golden sovereign 
 from eclipsing the pale sun of the isle. 
 
 In those early days I became aware of England as of 
 something that was partly real : not so real, of course, 
 as the housemaid, Eulalie, or as the dog, a black, golli- 
 woggy dog, or as the Chinese box with the eight corners 
 
 hich chocolate seemed mysteriously to grow by 
 night. No, England was real to me in the sense that 
 God and the wood of the Sleeping Beauty are real to 
 a small boy; it was an undefined country, but it was 
 emphatically somewhere. I once asked my father where 
 
 ind was. I must have been about six years old. 
 d by his side in a black velvet suit with a lace collar 
 
 hich I was very proud, for it was one of the first 
 
 Lof Fontlroi ever seen in Bordeaux; besides, 
 
 ir said that the Parisians, those people of Olympus, 
 
 not the like. I watched the bii^ ships steam down 
 de towards the sea, and while my father talked, 
 iinnally did, I thoughl that the big ships were 
 
 the fat, painted ducks which Eulalie set afloat to 
 
 e me in the flooded kitchen sink. " U Angletcrre I > 
 
14 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 shouted ir^r father. I remember nothing else. I see 
 him, not as he was then but as he was in late years, 
 and set that older figure upon the wharf. It is a tall, 
 corpulent man, still darker than I am, who wears a silk 
 hat upon massive black curls; he has choleric dark 
 eyes, his nose is aggressive; his mouth and chin are 
 hidden in a thick mat of hair that runs up to his brown 
 ears. Through the lobe of each ear a fine gold circlet 
 has been drawn. I shut my eyes and I see my father, 
 arm outstretched towards the North, pointing with his 
 stubby brown finger across the Girondc to the opposite 
 shore. He talks, he talks, he shouts, he glares at me 
 kindly; by periphrase and crackling Gascon adjective 
 he tries to enlighten me, and I listen to him unmoved, 
 well accustomed to the roaring of the metallic Southern 
 throats. For I feel beyond that stubby finger the 
 unknown country : it is distant, for the half mile of 
 Gironde water is my ocean. But I feel the mysterious 
 country, and because it is beyond the water it is a 
 romantic land. The rest of the episode is foggy, but 
 memories of a white garden-wall enable me to reconstruct 
 it. I feel that I looked at the wall anxiously, for it was 
 very high, not less than six feet, and wondered whether, 
 if I stood on the top, I should see the country to which 
 went the ships. I have also an impression of opera 
 glasses, delicate things studded with red and green stars, 
 which usually reposed in the sacred drawer with my 
 mother's black silk dress, her Indian multi-coloured 
 shawl and the little dancing shoes with the high heels, 
 shoes so small that, when I once stole in and put them on, 
 I found they were not much too large for me. 
 
 I think Little Lor 1 Fontlroi stood on the wall, and with 
 the jewelled opera glasses vainly swept the northern 
 horizon. The last impression of the adventure is one 
 of physical pain, of maternal brutality no doubt, for my 
 mother's hand is narrow and long; its fingers are delicate 
 as the limbs of a decrhound, but they must have been 
 very hard. 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 15 
 
 II 
 
 Some years elapsed before I knew that I was a French- 
 man, a subject of the Republic, for there was a dis- 
 tinguishing quality about this English dream, a dream 
 made up of fantastic anticipations; it was a quality ol 
 romantic realism : I saw England not as she was, but 
 as she might be. I have said that England was to my 
 mind the toy that my model railway was to my hands, 
 for the unconsidered fragments of conversation which 
 fall into the greedy ears of a little boy impress him 
 indirectly. They do not evoke definite pictures, but 
 they lay trains of thought ; the word " unconstitu- 
 tional," used by my father when I was eleven, never 
 meant anything to me, but it lodged in some part of 
 me, irritated me into questions to Eulalie which yielded 
 no intelligible answers, into profound reflections which 
 perpetually oscillated between England, the moral 
 inkiness of lies and the existence of a Divine Spirit. 
 Likewise, in earlier days, England set me thinking and 
 making cosmic pictures with ships, fogs, elephants and 
 plum-pudding. This was not, after all, so bad a synthesis 
 of England; I have always been synthetic rather than 
 analytic; I have always wanted to construct, and if I 
 analysed at all it is because I wanted elements with 
 which to create the lovely imaginative. 
 
 The imaginative ! I have loved it as much as the 
 
 logical. It was my French mother, the thin girl who 
 
 came from Tours in the early days of the Third Republic 
 
 to marry that noisy southerner, my father, gave me the 
 
 1 . She came, prim, narrow, economical, dutiful 
 
 ;>ious, with a neat little ordered mind, a mind very 
 
 a bookcase. On one shelf she kept family history, 
 
 >ns and customs; another, a large one, con- 
 
 ed devotional works, which were not exactly religious 
 
 the other shelves were crammed with books <>f 
 
 / he Care of the Child, How to I 
 . Home Finance. I think I understand my 
 mother fairly well— .-is well, that is, as a man can under- 
 
16 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 stand a woman —and I have never felt there was on the 
 shelves of her brain, one romance or one book of verse. 
 And yet, sometimes, when I bubble with emotion, 1 
 myself whether there was not, is not (for my mother 
 lives) just one book, a bold, sinful, delicious book of 
 passion, which she pulls out guiltily at night, to read a 
 few pages. If there be such a book in her library, I am 
 sure she craftily hides it behind the others; it must be 
 her own and beautiful secret, which would cease to be 
 beautiful if I set eyes on it. 
 
 I like to remember her as she was in the 'nineties : 
 demure, cruelly neat. She invariably wore black, much 
 to my father's annoyance, save on orgiastic da)'s, 
 when a wedding, a christening, or a visit to the theatre 
 demanded grey or dark blue. I am sure that she was 
 very unhappy in grey, that she thought she looked like 
 a cockatoo. She was quiet, hard and incredibly efficient : 
 Eulalie, a half negroid Bordelaise, might roar in the 
 kitchen, stamp, vow that she would leave rather than 
 reduce in the stew the percentage of oil, but my mother's 
 thin pipe pierced through Eulalie's coppery clamour, 
 and in the end the percentage of oil was reduced. If, 
 in her rage, Eulalie smashed a dish, my mother would 
 deduct the cost of it from her wages and solemnly hand 
 her, with the balance of the money, the hardware 
 merchant's receipt. 
 
 I owe you such shrewdness as I have, maman, and I 
 have always loved you more than my father, even though 
 he did jog me up and down on his enormous knee, take 
 me to the wharf and teach me to tell which ships were 
 loading for the Brazils and which were about to beat round 
 the Horn or the Cape to the China seas. Not even the 
 ten-franc piece he gave me on my twelfth birthday can 
 outweigh the subtle atmosphere of your love — and of 
 mine, for are you not maman? The mysterious French 
 ma-man who had so much love left to give her little boy 
 because she took to herself a stranger when she took 
 a husband. 
 
 If, with love, my mother gave me the logical my 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 17 
 
 father, with love, gave me the imaginative. He had 
 brought it ashore from the phosphorescent seas which 
 swell below the Line; as a seaman he began, and as a 
 seaman he ended, though he tried very hard to be a ship- 
 broker. Everybody knew it, and nobody called him 
 Monsieur Cadoresse : they called him le capitaine. He 
 was, says a dirty old piece of paper in my dispatch-box, 
 born in Bordeaux in 1838. Another dirty paper records 
 that in 1879 he married Marie Lutand; others show 
 that I was born in 1880, that four years later my sister 
 Jeanne came into the world. 
 
 My father vanishes with the last paper, for he was 
 drowned in 1893. He merely passed through my life, 
 and I shall have little more to say of him, for his burly 
 ghost never disturbs me; this means that he never 
 
 s me, for my father's ghost would not slink by in 
 the unobtrusive English way : his ghost would come on 
 a high wind, shout like the spirit of Pantagruel and borrow 
 all the chains in purgatory for the pleasure of rattling 
 them. He was probably a happy enough man, for he 
 managed to be so busy as not to have time to think. 
 A sea-captain at thirty, he impulsively bought up the 
 
 ying ship-broking firm of Barbezan & Co., and 
 ebulliently boomed it into such prosperity that he was 
 able, at the age of forty-one, to abandon his loves, his 
 gambles, his fights and his drinking companions for the 
 sake of his slim Marie. I have not been told the story 
 of those heroic days, and therefore can do no more than 
 guess at them, for the London agency of Barbezan & Co. 
 founded with " young Lawton " a few months 
 
 re I was born. I am conscious of the growth of the 
 
 Ion agency, a little of the decay of the Bordeaux 
 
 firm. My father must have been failing, or "young 
 
 Lawton " must have been too strong for his old French 
 
 now that the activities of my father did not 
 
 I the firm, and he too knew it, for, in the last year 
 was being taken from him by 
 
 e bold young English hands, the sea began to call 
 
18 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 It called Him, and then it took him. On a sunny May 
 morning I went with my mother and little Jeanne to 
 see the quondam shipbroker sail on a great four-master. 
 The twenty-five years of his inaction had unfitted him 
 for command, but the young skipper was kind; he 
 understood that old Capitaine Cadoresse must be allowed 
 to stand by his side on the bridge and to shout a few 
 orders to the monkey-like sailors. 
 
 I shall never forget his peculiar figure, as the little 
 busy tug contemptuously towed out the big ship which 
 was taking rolling-stock to La Martinique. I suppose 
 he was ridiculous, for he refused to wear the blue serge of 
 the Englishman ; he stood, legs wide apart, his frock-coat 
 flapping about him, his silk hat on the back of Ins curly 
 black hair; a streak of red silk under his waistcoat 
 showed that he wore a sash. He sailed out with his 
 ship, a replica of one of those fat Marseilles sea-captains 
 who helped Napoleon in the 'sixties to vie with England 
 in the Levantine seas. He went down with the great 
 four-master probably on an uncharted rock. 
 
 Ill 
 
 And so away with my father. He fell like a leaf in 
 my path, and like a leaf blew away. He did not leave us 
 poor, for my mother was bought out by " young Lawton " 
 for a lump sum and an annuity. " Young Lawton " 
 came from England, and that was an exciting affair. I 
 was called into the drawing-room, which always made me 
 feel nervous and respectful because it had a strange smell, 
 the smell of rooms which are seldom opened. 
 
 I remember it — a sweet, faintly-scented smell, with a 
 touch of rot in it. When I walked into the drawing-room 
 on that June morning, the sun was streaming on the stiff 
 Empire sideboard and couch, on the prim garnet cushions, 
 the arranged footstools ; but a morbid fancy seized me : 
 my mother sat on the couch, dressed in black, and 
 " young Lawton " stood with his shoulders against 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 19 
 
 the black marble mantelpiece, dressed in black too; my 
 sister Jeanne and I paused inside the door, two small 
 figures in new mourning. It was then the smell seized 
 me and I was sure that it was the smell of a fresh grave. 
 So deeply did this strike me that I hardly answered 
 when Mr. Lawton spoke to me. It was some minutes 
 before I realised him as a tall, slim man, who was not 
 at all young as I understood the word; he was then 
 thirty-eight. But soon he interested me, and I tried 
 not to laugh (feeling that I ought not to laugh until my 
 father had been dead at least a month) though his 
 French was rather bad. " Well, young man," he said 
 gravely, " and what do they teach you at school ? " 
 I did not know what to say, so replied : " Everything." 
 
 Lawton laughed, and one look at my mother's shocked 
 face made me realise that these English had no heart. 
 Or no manners. But I liked his amazing face, for it was 
 regular, clean-shaven and kindly; of course his was 
 a secretive, economical laugh, not the good roar of the 
 South. Still — it was friendly, and I liked to think that 
 he might laugh louder. I vaguely admired his reserve. 
 And I liked his smooth, fair hair, like the coat of a well- 
 groomed horse, his slim build, his calm blue eyes. Also I 
 had never seen such brilliancy of polish on any French 
 collar. 
 
 " Everything," he repeated after me ; " well, that's 
 r than nothing, which is what they teach us in 
 nd." 
 
 I looked at him suspiciously. Surely he would not 
 say that if it were true. Then, being my mother's son, 
 I cut the knot : 
 
 " Don't you know anything, then ? " I asked, 
 miled. " No, not much." 
 
 surprised me. This could not be true. But 
 •f knowing things and not letting people 
 see it? " Don't you want to know things? " I asked. 
 
 doing things that matters, not knowing 
 how to do them." 
 
 I pondered this for some time; it was an interesting 
 
20 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 idea, an idea quite outside the curriculum. But there 
 was a flaw : 
 
 " If knowing things doesn't matter, why do you say 
 it is better for me to learn everything than nothing, as 
 they do in England ? " 
 
 My experience of thirteen years told me that at this 
 stage my father, or any ordinary human being, would 
 have struck the table with his fist, shouted at me, told 
 me to hold my tongue. But Mr. Lawton did not move a 
 ringer, nor raise his voice ; he looked at my mother and said: 
 
 " This child is amazing." 
 
 Then my mother gave us the ancient French hint to go 
 away by telling us to go into the kitchen and see whether 
 she was there. I was not to see Mr. Lawton again for 
 many years, but I believe that I thought of him all 
 the time. He was just the incredible Englishman, a 
 creature of stone, incapable of anger or satisfaction. 
 His extraordinary ideas did not appeal to me, for he 
 contradicted one sentence by another; how did England 
 get rich if she did not know what she thought? To do, 
 instead of to know: that was interesting, but do what? 
 Mr Lawton had drawn an impressionist picture of England. 
 In half-a-dozen sentences he had shown me the viscera 
 of his country: self-confidence, contempt for learning, 
 muddle-headedness and the habit of infinite success. 
 Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, some of the 
 blanks were filled in later by Dickens, Walter Scott, 
 Kipling and Conan Doyle. 
 
 IV 
 
 They came later, these English writers, as I worked 
 my way up at the Lycee. I have little to say of my 
 schooldays : I learned, and then again I learned. Later 
 on I took degrees. To this day I am faintly surprised 
 when an Englishman talks of his school, as if it were the 
 only school, for I am quite sure that there is as little 
 difference between the Lycee ?t Bordeaux and the Lycee 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 21 
 
 at Lille as there is between the workhouse at Dover and 
 the workhouse at York. My school treated me as if 
 I were a goose doomed to produce pdte de foie gras. The 
 games which seem to make English schools illustrious 
 and competitive, we played them, but we played them 
 after school : we did not, as they do in England, steal 
 the school time from the games. 
 
 When I read the memoirs of other men I find it difficult 
 to understand how it is they remember so, well the faces 
 and the sayings of every master and of eveiy boy; there 
 is a minuteness in their evocation which makes me 
 suspicious, for those years at school, between the ages 
 of ten and fourteen, seem to me so futile, are indeed so 
 futile, that I can hardly see them. Or I lack the mental 
 telescope. I was a prize boy and, every year, I staggered 
 down the red cloth of the platform stairs, with half-a- 
 dozen books on my arm, and several crowns of laurel 
 drooping over my nose. I cannot sketch those prize- 
 giving days : I might say that the head master had a 
 beard, that old Gargaillc was fat, but that is all — and 
 I might say that I learned things, but I have forgotten 
 ii, I have forgotten even the curriculum. 
 
 The truth is that school was an unemotional affair 
 
 because my memory enabled me to learn readily and to 
 
 recite facts with parrot-like facility. I did not know the 
 
 thrill of rivalry, the agony of defeat. I remember very 
 
 much better a magnolia in the park, which flowered every 
 
 year and far into the autumn. Every morning I passed 
 
 that tree. It was loaded with blossoms so large that 
 
 my two hands could not cover one of them. Thoy were 
 
 white, flushed with pink, and rufllcd like the short 
 
 hers of a swan's rump. One day, when no keeper 
 
 was about, I drew one bloom down, very tenderly so as 
 
 not to hurt it : the sun had warmed it, and it felt soft 
 
 and firm like a woman's cheek. I buried my lips in it, 
 
 and it softly breathed into my lungs its insidious, heady 
 
 Q times I think I kissed that heavy blossom, 
 
 [] I, when the winter came and the tree 
 
 1 stark naked, this caress of my first love. 
 
22 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 It was emotion called me then, emotion about to sing 
 its swan-song when Chaverac died. Chaverac 1 Perhaps 
 I have never loved anybody as I loved Chaverac. I so 
 openly worsliipped him, and he so obviously accepted my 
 homage, that our form ceased to call us Cadoresse and 
 Chaverac, but invented for us the joint name of Chavor- 
 esse. I cannot even now believe that he was an ordinary 
 person, this boy, one year my senior, for I could not 
 have so loved.him and hated him unless he had had some 
 quality. Or I am too fatuous to think so : to this day 
 I am sure that every woman I have looked on with 
 favour possessed some charm which no other woman had, 
 and I am almost as assured of Chaverac's matchlessness. 
 
 Chaverac was, when I first saw him, fourteen years 
 old, short, dark, curly-headed, like any Gascon, or rather, 
 he would have been curly-headed if his hair had not 
 been close clipped. Set in his brown skin, his red lips 
 seemed dark; they smiled over splendid white teeth, 
 but it was his eyes held me — deep, greenish eyes with 
 brown specks. I liked to think that his eyes were like 
 pools of water in the sun and that the specks were the 
 shadows of the leaves of overhanging branches. 
 
 We had become friends simply, fatally. In those 
 days I had lost the asscrtiveness of earlier years, I was 
 shy, unpopular, and therefore became shyer and more 
 unpopular. One morning I had been bullied by three or 
 four big boys and stood smarting, too proud to cry, 
 against the brick wall of the play-yard. I wanted to 
 cry, not so much because I had been pinched, because 
 my arms had been wrenched, or because I had been jeered 
 at, as because my unready tongue had cloven to my palate. 
 I was logical then, not ebullient. Now they had gone, 
 and a flood of gorgeous invective was rising in me. How 
 great it would have been if it had burst at the right 
 moment 1 Chaverac, who had never before spoken to 
 me, came close, examined me and said : 
 
 " You've got a funny face." 
 
 That is how one offers comfort when one is fourteen. 
 But Chaverac had helped me, relieved the congestion : 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 23 
 
 my pent-up invective burst from me. Chaverac listened 
 to the end and said placidly : 
 " Those fellows are pigs." 
 
 That was just like Chaverac. He understood then 
 as he always did, and it is not wonderful that I could 
 always talk to him. With me he always smiled, remained 
 unrufllcd ; he was willing to be worshipped and willing 
 to be hated ; he was critical, always interested and never 
 fired. At the age of fourteen he was a Laodicean, a man 
 of the world, and as such he drew from me naught save 
 what suited him : calm, light and debonair, he was 
 the elective affinity of my impulsive roughness. We 
 were French both of us, but in those days I had all the 
 passion and he all the acumen of our race. 
 
 I need not dilate upon the adventures of that year, 
 for nothing of any kind befell us. Ours was the in- 
 articulate companionship of boys ; I do not think he 
 wanted to confide to me anytliingof his hopes, and certainly 
 I did not know how to do so myself. Chaverac lived 
 within himself, liked well enough to see me kneeling at 
 Iirine, but was content to hear me talk of Gargaille, 
 of the merits of Dunlop or Clincher tyres, of Lawton the 
 amazing Englishman. He did not feel the need to do 
 more than stimulate my conversation. I still think that 
 : i joyed the sense of mastery it gave him to know 
 he was the only person to whom I talked freely. 
 My intercourse with Chaverac was therefore made up 
 of vast outpourings of facts, of small ambitions, and 
 imate desires. If it was magic to meet him on the 
 1, to take tea (that is bread, fruit and sweet 
 ;-) in Madame Chaverac's cold flat near the Quin- 
 to tell him in the play-yard how I had got full 
 :• composition, it must have been because I was 
 arching for love. Having no idol, I had to 
 :e one. But I could make no heroism, and Chaverac 
 would no doubt bo to-day almost forgotten of mc if his 
 '1 not worked in me a mental revolution. 
 W ih keen cyelists, and I think I must with- 
 
 draw, unsay Hi i i could ever have forgotten this com- 
 
24 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 panion of my leisure. For who save Chaverac could 
 scorch so hard as to catch up with a passing motor-i 
 And who save Chaverac could sit in the sun and mend 
 a puncture without complaining? And who save 
 Chaverac would have romantically refused to carry a 
 lamp, but decorated his handle-bars with Chinese 
 lanterns? It interested him to be romantic, I bcl 
 Yet I might have forgotten if he had not died, for his 
 death became horribly intermingled with my happiness. 
 
 One Sunday morning we had cycled some ten n 
 south, along the Garonne. It was hot, and we had stopped 
 on the crest of a hill, while Chaverac wiped his forehead. 
 
 " Hot," he said. 
 
 " Yes, hot," I replied. 
 
 It was good to think that we should both be hot. We 
 looked down upon the river as it glistened between the 
 meadows like a stream of hot metal and, as we looked, 
 I wondered what Chaverac thought. He did not seem 
 much concerned with the sweep of the river or the purple 
 vineyards, which rippled down terrace after terrace 
 from our feet to the water's edge. He was not for nature, 
 Chaverac, he was for me and for what nature meant to 
 me; he was content to make me his aesthetic vicar. 
 So, while he still placidly wiped his round, dark head, 
 I looked my fill of the ruly river, its little burden of 
 barges, pleasure boats ; I looked at the excursion steamer, 
 which seemed no larger than a launch, and was crowded 
 with a thousand black, ant-like things. 
 
 Beyond the vineyards and the Garonne were the 
 meadows, the tall poplars, the atrocious villas which the 
 builder was beginning to shoot forth into the country. 
 Beyond curtains of trees, in the north-west, was the 
 denseness, the shadow that concealed Bordeaux. A smoke- 
 stack was sharply outlined in* the clear air, and thus 
 graceful. I enjoyed a sense of peace and of attainment, 
 for we had painfully climbed this hill, pushing our 
 bicycles; below us lay the broad white road that circled 
 round it : I could see two bends in it, far below. We 
 stood side by side, saying nothing but content, for we were 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 25 
 
 alone, as two can be on a peak, and by knowing each 
 other knowing all. 
 
 It was because his eyes covered and warmed me with 
 their definite look of understanding that I knew Chaverac 
 to be my good companion, the being who for me alone 
 had emerged from chaos. Up the other side of the hill 
 a cyclist was coming towards us. I could see him grow 
 as he rose, his cap ridiculously fore-shortened and his 
 attenuated feet almost invisible. I watched him a little 
 resentfully, for he was intruding, coming uncalled into a 
 world which I could share with none other than Chaverac ; 
 he grew and I saw him, an absurd figure with a cap 
 that was too small, squat calves which no benevolent 
 trousers hid. He had, and I saw it as he raised his face 
 ids me, the general air of roughness of men who 
 suddenly swerve across the path of bewildered old ladies, 
 race motor-cars, do all the things we did, but in uglier 
 fashion. The man stopped by our side, mopping his 
 forehead, then looked at us as if wondering whether 
 two boys could help him. 
 
 " I say," he asked Chaverac at last, " what's the best 
 road to La Sauve ? " 
 
 " Straight on until you come to the bridge," said 
 Chaverac, pointing to the hot white road. 
 
 ** Ah ! There's no short-cut, I suppose ? " 
 
 I looked at the man and suddenly felt a queer, insane 
 
 hatred of him. I hated his flaccid, white face, his 
 
 rosacia-touched cheeks and the straggling black bar of 
 
 •loustache. I hated him because he was inadequate 
 
 and unconscious of his inadequacy. And his cap, his 
 
 !l cap, his squat, stockinged cah 
 
 " No, there's no short cut," said Chaverac. He was 
 
 polite ; he always was polite, unruflled, even when talk- 
 
 I o men of this kind, creatures that should be mocked 
 
 I felt I must speak, spit some insult at him. 
 
 " Unless," I said, with a savage ring in my voice (and 
 it surprised me), u unl< >vn there." I pointed 
 
 of the hill, through the purple 
 Uic river. The man looked at me, 
 
26 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 amazed and angry, like a bull which glares at the sun on 
 leaving the toril; it pleased me to see the angry glow 
 in his eyes, to feel that a flick of my tongue had done this, 
 pierced the silly sufficiency which clothed his flaccid, 
 white face. But I was frightened by it too, as one is 
 frightened when one has mischievously pushed a lever 
 and the machine begins to work. 
 
 " What ? " said the man. " What do you say ? What 
 do you mean ? Do you take me for an imbecile ? hein ? '" 
 
 I said nothing, but looked at him in a conflict of 
 emotions. I hated him and his ugliness, the mean, 
 stupid satisfaction which could not laugh at itself because 
 too uncertain and weak, but I despised myself because my 
 joke was feeble. True, I had hurt him, and that was good, 
 but how weak had been my sling and how despicable my 
 game. Also I feared him as red rose in his white cheeks. 
 
 " Hein ? " he said again, and lashed himself into fury. 
 44 I ask you a civil question and you — you answer me 
 as if I were an imbiciU. I am not an imbe'cile" he re- 
 peated so angrily that I felt intimately that he knew 
 himself to be one; "it is you the imbecile" He took a 
 step towards me. " Imbe'cile ! " he muttered again. 
 And, as his right hand moved I involuntarily stepped 
 back. I was driven back, I was afraid of him even 
 though I despised him. 
 
 44 Ah ? " he sneered, showing yellow, irregular teeth. 
 But I had stepped back and, very subtly, his self-esteem 
 had suddenly regilded him. He did not strike, but 
 shrugged his shoulders and turned to go down the hill. 
 Only once did he turn towards the spot where I re- 
 mained, frozen and horribly humble. " Imbecile ! " 
 he cried and with unimaginative emphasis : " Sacrt 
 imbecile I " Soon the white road swallowed him. Then 
 he reappeared in the first bend, passed through it and was 
 again swallowed up, reappeared in the last bend. I saw 
 liim turn his head towards me, his absurd little head, 
 under the cap that was too small. It was too far to 
 see his lips, but for me they moved, and the invisible 
 medium that linked our warring spirits conveyed to me 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 27 
 
 his monotonous, inaudible insult: "Imbicilef SacrS 
 (mbicile t " 
 
 Chaverac had not said anything. He had watched 
 the scene with phlegm. Indeed, there was almost 
 amusement in his brown-flecked green eyes; he smiled 
 jovially rather than ironically. 
 
 " Chaverac," I faltered. But I stopped, I could say 
 no more. I was overwhelmed, raging; I knew that my 
 underlip trembled and that again there was welling up 
 in me that frightful torrent of abuse which swells in the 
 breast of the impotent. Oh ! if only the man could 
 come back — I felt hot at the idea of the words I would 
 use. I saw myself, too, smashing my fist into that 
 putty-coloured face, tearing at that straggling black 
 moustache. I was blood-lusty and Chaverac knew it, 
 watched me with his queer air of critical pleasure in the 
 sensations of others, watched me as if he were a vivi- 
 sectionist observing the effects of a drug. 
 
 Then I leapt to my bicycle and threw all my weight 
 into the pedals, so that they might carry me more swiftly 
 from the horrid spot. 
 
 There was a shadow between Chaverac and me. It 
 was nothing at first, a trifling obstacle, an awkwardness 
 such as parts master and dog when the man has trodden 
 on the dog's foot and it returns, whining and wagging 
 its tail, protesting while it is caressed that the pain was 
 nothing. Chaverac had ultimately caught me up on 
 that fatal day and had tactfully left the subject alone; 
 he had diverted the conversation to some inoffensive 
 topic, such as tyres, and Bowdcn brakes, borne with my 
 sullen silence, made jokes, pushed the memory into some 
 far corner of his brain. At first I felt grateful, loved him 
 for it. But he could not wash out the past; he knew 
 and I knew that I ought to have struck the man, at least 
 cd him. I ought to have in (lifted on him injury 
 for injury, and my honour would have been clear, or I 
 
28 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 could have hurt him more than he had hurt me and have 
 been a hero. Because I had wantonly and stupidly 
 wounded him I ought to have wounded him again. 
 I had not done so, and this because I had been afraid, 
 afraid of gibes and blows, afraid because he was a man 
 and I a boy. There was no hiding it, I had behaved 
 like a coward. I knew it. Chaverac, too, knew that I 
 was a coward. Each knew that the other knew, and it 
 was intolerable to share the secret. 
 
 We made desperate efforts, Chaverac and I, to shoulder 
 our burden. We struggled so desperately for our old 
 intimacy that we saturated it with gall. We looked 
 suspiciously into each other's eyes, suspected traps. 
 If I wanted, as I did in those days, to talk of Vaillant 
 and Caserio and the other Anarchists, I held back, and 
 the sweat of fear rushed to my brow, for Anarchism 
 meant killing and courage, and I was a coward. I had 
 had my chance and lost it. And Chaverac, too, suffered, 
 even though his teeth still flashed in forced smiles ; he 
 dared no longer ask me to cycle with him, for he knew 
 what a joint expedition must recall to me. We chose 
 our subjects; then we spoke less, for now we had to 
 think before we spoke for fear that we should open a 
 wound. At -last we hardly spoke at all, but walked 
 homewards side by side, defensively silent. I no longer 
 put my hand on his arm, for I uneasily felt that he might 
 be sullied by my coward's touch. 
 
 We had terrible dialogues. 
 
 " Good-morning." 
 
 " Good-morning." 
 
 " Hot, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 That was all we had to say, we who had chattered, 
 remembered, planned. Everything was going, for every- 
 thing was poisoned and was withering. It was terrible 
 to meet, to see in each other's eyes a pity that was turn- 
 ing into fear. We had to meet, for we could not even 
 part : the memory held us, it was our secret, the gnawing 
 thing set canker in our affection. To part, to 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 29 
 
 avoid these looks, would have been the heavenly relief 
 that follows on the amputation of a ruined limb, but 
 we could not part, because we did not dare; we could 
 not break the link, for to break it would have been to 
 confess, either that the one remembered or that the other 
 understood. We could know, but we could not confess. 
 
 How the horror would have ended if time had not 
 stepped in as a surgeon rather than a healer, I do not 
 know; in insults, recrimination perhaps, in some ex- 
 hibition of rancour, when he would have told me that I 
 was a coward and that he despised me, when perhaps 
 I would have struck him as I ought to have struck my 
 enemy, unless — and this was another horror — unless 
 again I proved myself a coward. I hated him because 
 d loved him. I could have borne disgrace before 
 another, I could not bear it before him. But time 
 helped us and the world helped us. They altered the 
 hour at which a private tutor expected me; they 
 developed in the history master an interest in Chavcrac 
 which kept him back for a few minutes after the lesson, 
 while I escaped alone; they even strengthened friend- 
 ships we had both flouted in the days when we were 
 one. I know that, as I hurried away while Chavcrac 
 6poke to the history master, the voice of the past screamed 
 to me that I should wait, but I hurried away with Adam's 
 averted face, for I had fallen. 
 
 Strengthened by accident, our parting grew more 
 tc. We missed each other, mistook places of meet- 
 ing, discovered urgent engagements on Thursday after- 
 noons and Sunday mornings. Our fellows observed the 
 difference, taunted us, asked whether " Chavoresse " 
 I. Ah ! that was the true suffering, this public 
 exhibition of our distress. The steadfast cruelty of the 
 boy scented out at once that something was amiss, 
 us with quips and questions, hunted us from 
 :se we feared its jeers. We were 
 oute; use we were butts, and yet we could not 
 
 w<> Ishmaelites madly 
 Qg from one another in the desert. Even our families 
 
30 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 tortured us, tortured us with questions, surmises as to 
 absurd quarrels, made barbarous attempts to bring to- 
 gether two boys who could only sit face to face, tongue- 
 tied, full of hostility. 
 
 Time passed, and with it some of the pain, for the boys 
 grew tired of their game and our parents forgot our 
 tragedy. There was nothing left save an awful emptiness 
 where there was not yet room for hatred, nothing but 
 strangling constraint. All had gone — pleasure, peace and 
 interests. I skulked where I had walked merrily. Later 
 only did the past goad me yet further, when Chaverac 
 had become so intimately associated with it that he bore 
 some of the blame, when I began to hate him, to grow hot 
 with rage when I saw him, to shiver with passion when 
 I thought of what he had seen. My mother had forgotten. 
 She knew only that I was moody and fierce-tempered. 
 The doctor ordered me a sedative. I lay under my cope 
 of lead. 
 
 One Thursday evening when I had been out alone, 
 my mother took me into the drawing-room. The smell 
 of the grave was in it still; formal and black-clad, she 
 was a worthy messenger. 
 
 " I have something to tell you," she said. 
 
 *' Ah I " I said listlessly, though her tone was grave. 
 
 14 You must be prepared — it is dreadful " 
 
 41 What is it ? " I asked in a choked voice. I knew — 
 I knew — Chaverac 
 
 44 He was cycling — he slipped — he slipped under a 
 dray." 
 
 44 Is he dead ? " I can still hear my flat voice. 
 
 44 Yes — oh ! — oh ! — what is the matter ? What is the 
 matter with you ? " 
 
 I see my mother's face now as I write, the fear and 
 surprise in her eyes; I see her outstretched hands with 
 spread fingers. She was pale, almost grey, but I know 
 that warm blood had rushed to my cheeks, that relief 
 had burst from me in a great sigh. I was free — free — 
 alone in possession of my shameful secret. How lights 
 must have danced in my eyes 1 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 31 
 
 VI 
 
 I do not shrink from this confession. That which is, 
 is. My story shows how singularly the materialistic 
 child of twelve had evolved into the morbid, intro- 
 spective boy of fourteen. But that boy had yet to grow 
 into a youth and into a man, to undergo other shocks, 
 change again as swiftly as the wind, gain and lose con- 
 victions, adopt attitudes and be moulded by those atti- 
 tudes until they became part of his character. 
 
 The death of Chaverac meant more to me than relief 
 from an obsession. It snapped the links that bound me 
 to my fellow man, it made love, emotion, detestable. 
 His death restored to the throne logic and materialism. 
 I had given my soul and, circumstance aiding, my gift 
 had been flung back to me, soiled and unknowable, 
 
 I had done with the soul. When I was sixteen I had 
 done with faith. I was thrown back upon my brain, 
 and sudden interest in my work rose up ; unfettered by 
 emotion I turned to the intellect. I decided to be rich, 
 powerful, hard. I decided these things in the abstract, 
 I hen looked for a peg on which to hang them : that 
 peg turned out to be England. 
 
 VII 
 
 I have said that I never forgot Lawton; indeed, 
 irilliancc of his linen collar hung for years before my 
 dazzled eyes. That white collar meant England, very 
 much as the magnolia meant France. It meant more, 
 f*>r it was one thing to try and be intellectual and hard, 
 her to be like Lawton; I had the young gener- 
 osity of the South, and if it could not out in friendship 
 ist out in admiration for something, in an ideal, 
 years between fifteen and eighteen were crowded 
 tudy, by the dull memorising of facts; I gained 
 nothing from my education save information and, if 
 ;is had not helped me, I should have been 
 an intolerable prig. But they helped me, in the indirect 
 
32 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 way in which youths help one another, by support 
 mixed with chaff, for they were not all unsympathetic 
 to my ever more vivid English dream. 
 
 I remember three of them especially, at the financial 
 school. We were then all four seventeen, keen, com- 
 bative, different in some way known to none save our- 
 selves from the hundred others who mean nothing to me 
 now. Those others have mostly vanished; some have 
 left behind them names without faces, Dubourg, Arbeillan, 
 Valaze; and some have faces without names, dark, 
 southern faces mostly; and yet others are nothing save 
 a brown suit or a white hat. But the chosen three will 
 never quite die for me ; there was Luzan, a well of intelli- 
 gent and bubbling gaiety, who thought argument was a 
 sort of mental catch-as-catch-can. Luzan writes to me 
 once a year or so to this day, and tells me that my views 
 are idiotic ; whenever I change them they are still idiotic. 
 There was Lavalette, the best dressed young man in 
 Bordeaux : he is now the best dressed man in Paris, but 
 he is not a mere fop ; he has a discriminating if desultory 
 appreciation of the arts and (this endears him) an un- 
 discriminating but sedulous love for England. As for 
 Gobot — I have lost sight of fat, jolly Gobot, with the 
 round, pink face, the piggy, intelligent eyes, and the 
 booming voice. Ours was a heterogeneous company, for 
 Luzan was the mocker, the puck, the miniature Anatole 
 France — Lavalette was the old French grace blended 
 with the new French chic — Gobot embodied all the 
 solidities, stupidities and shrewdnesses of the bourgeois. 
 And I ? I was the hot, restless spirit who felt quite sure 
 that he was cold and judicial. 
 
 Of course, we never played games, we had a better thing 
 to do, and that was to talk. I do not suppose we over- 
 looked anything in those two years, neither faith, nor 
 woman, nor politics, nor the histories of our families, 
 . their weddings and their scandals. We were perfectly 
 frank and perfectly unashamed ; we were not cribbed nor 
 shy — indeed, we affected more liberty of view than we 
 possessed. We were atrociously bad form and it was 
 
HAIL I FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 33 
 
 splendid. One conversation, especially, I remember, at 
 the end of my second year, when we finally settled la 
 question anglaise, as we called it in pompous imitation of 
 the diplomatic jargon. 
 
 " Those English," said Gobot, " are nothing but land- 
 grabbers. That Fashoda affair — why, if we'd had a decent 
 fleet we'd have sailed up the Thames and bombarded 
 London instead of letting Marchand die in a swamp." 
 
 "Which swamp," said Luzan, maliciously, "takes the 
 form of promotion, the Ligion d'Honneur and a triumphant 
 reception in Paris." 
 
 " Marchand morally died in the swamp," said Gobot 
 stodgily, " killed by the Englishmen. He'll never be a 
 general, the Government wouldn't dare. Our Govern- 
 ment never has the insolence of the English ; the English 
 have that one quality and it's useful to them." 
 
 " Oh I " I protested, " the English aren't so bad " 
 
 " Who stole Egypt ? " cried Gobot. 
 44 And who let the Germans crush Napoleon III ? " 
 asked Luzan. He smiled wickedly, and I knew he was 
 g with the sincere Gobot. 
 " You're right, Luzan, and who killed the other 
 .leon? shut him up in an island? and who set 
 >pe on him and never fought at all ? " 
 " Pardon, Gobot," said Lavalette, smoothly, " there was 
 Waterloo." 
 
 44 Waterloo 1 " roared Gobot. His fat, pink face became 
 
 red, and his piggy eyes began to flash. " Speak of 
 
 it ! why it was the Prussians won Waterloo, the English 
 
 sent hardly anybody with their Wellignetonne. England 
 
 r fights, she sends money to hire armies, just as she 
 
 men for her own, and then she swindles everybody 
 
 i the war's over. Who stole India? the English. 
 
 who stole Canada? the English. And who talked 
 
 Iping the Balkan Christians and let the Turk have 
 
 English. Land of Liberty, you say, Cador- 
 
 esse? Did the English help Poland? No 1 we helped 
 
 bile the English were filling their pocket with 
 
 ucrica. And wasn't it the English fought China 
 
34 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 to keep up the opium trade? the poison trade? And 
 wasn't it the English who taught the Indians to drink 
 themselves to death ? Hypocrites, liars, bible-mongers," 
 roared Gobot. " They don't send out missionaries, they 
 send out commercial travellers. And all the women drink." 
 
 We were silent as Gobot suddenly laid before us the 
 result of the elaborate history we are taught ; as his voice 
 rose I felt a foreigner in my own country, for I had no 
 share in this smouldering fury of the French, who have 
 always found in their way a rich island nation, a nation 
 grabbing islands merely to prevent other nations from 
 travelling freely, a people always ready to lend money to 
 their enemies, to side, in the holy name of splendid isola- 
 tion, with anybody whom they could exploit. As Gobot 
 went on, raucous, and therefore weakly absurd, I suddenly 
 saw him as small, thought of him as one of Kipling's 
 monkeys whom the other animals would not notice. 
 
 " All the same," said Lavalette, patting his perfectly 
 oiled head, " they are the only people who know what a 
 gentleman is." 
 
 We discussed the gentleman, as expounded by me ; he 
 was a queer creature, as I took him from my reading, 
 mainly a person who hunted the fox, and told lies to save 
 the honour of women. We discussed Protestantism and 
 whether it was better than the Catholicism we all of us 
 practised, but did not believe in. Gobot was still raging 
 historically, for Luzan had him well in hand and was 
 drawing him back and back, from treaty to treaty and 
 defeat to defeat; they had got to Blenheim, and by and 
 by would get to Agincourt, to Crecy. Meanwhile, as we 
 all four walked slowly round and round the little park, 
 Lavalette and I were better employed on English litera- 
 ture, which we could both read in the text. 
 
 " Those two," said Lavalette, tolerantly, " they don't 
 understand ; what's the use of talking to people who read 
 Walter Scott in French? " 
 
 I looked approvingly at Lavalette. I do not think 
 anybody else had ever so wholly satisfied my aesthetic 
 tastes. He was then nearly six feet tall, very slim, and, 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 35 
 
 because narrow-chested, graceful as a reed. His long 
 neck carried a well-poised and very long head ; his mouth 
 was small and rather full-lipped : it made me think of a 
 tulip. Rut better than his glossy black hair, his delicate 
 hands, which he exquisitely manicured, I remember the 
 sorrowful gaze of his grey eyes. Immense eyes with the 
 opalescent whites ! how kindly you appraised and dis- 
 counted my crudities ! 
 
 " They do not know," said Lavalette, " and that's 
 why they talk. Why, the way they hate the English 
 shows they don't understand them; also it shows that 
 they are inferior to them, for one never hates an equal, 
 one respects him." 
 
 " That's true," I said ; " boxers shake hands before they 
 fight." 
 
 " They do. That's the English way. You find it in 
 all the books, in Kipling, in Conan Doyle; you find 
 phrases like * playing the game ' and ' not hitting a man 
 when he's down.' " 
 
 " You don't find it in Dickens," I said. 
 
 A long pause ensued while we thought this out. 
 
 "No," said Lavalette at last, "you don't. And I've 
 read him through, almost. That's curious." 
 
 " What's curious ? " asked Gobot from behind. 
 
 We told him. He did not know Dickens well, having 
 only David Copperficld in French, but pointed out 
 perhaps Dickens did not play games. 
 
 hat's why," Luzan suggested ; " games make 
 a difference." 
 
 Then we all four spoke together, Gobot because he 
 always talked and Luzan because he always contradicted; 
 but 1 and I had got hold of something and were 
 
 " That's the answer," I said at last; " the Englishman 
 liar animal I his temperament has been 
 
 altervrl by games, lie thinks life is like football." 
 " With rules and rights — " said Lavalette. 
 
 ant in the playing field — " said Luzan, 
 with a sniff. 
 
86 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 44 A Protestant everywhere," I said, as if illumined. 
 " He's always ruled by something, by a code, a habit. 
 That's why he had a Parliament first, that's why he docs 
 not fight duels — " 
 
 " He wants to save his skin," growled Gobot. 
 
 44 Are duels dangerous ? " Luzan asked, thus diverting 
 Gobot from the attack. 
 
 Lavalette and I walked on, full of Vnew realisation ; 
 this idea of the rule of games being made the rule of life 
 was fascinating ; one felt one had suddenly come upon the 
 meaning of this cold, restrained English life. Of course, 
 it was restrained, for the people respected the rules. 
 
 I think we discussed England for the rest of the after- 
 noon ; Lavalette persisted in being literary, in comparing 
 Walter Scott with Dumas. 4t No fire," he said, 44 except 
 in Ivanhoe, but elegance. Now Dumas brawls in taverns. 
 His cardinals are braggarts and his kings are merely 
 vulgar. Of course, Walter Scott is a bore, but such a 
 gentlemanly bore." 
 
 I think we understood Walter Scott pretty well, the 
 severity of his courts and the highfalutin sexlessness of 
 his historical romances ; and Conan Doyle, too, we under- 
 stood. His Englishman was Sherlock Holmes, the cold, 
 hard, shrewd and brave man, and Watson — how English 
 was this splendid, stupid Watson who could listen and do 
 what he was told. Dickens we suspected as an oddity 
 and a sentimentalist, but he made London seem romantic 
 and very comfortable. As for Kipling, Lavalette and I 
 almost gave him up, or rather we gave up his passionate, 
 poetic side, tried to draw from him a picture of another 
 Englishman, the calm Anglo-Indian, so haughty, so 
 efficient, and so brave. 
 
 We created an Englishman from anything that came 
 handy. It was, on the whole, a fairly good lay-figure. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And so, through these early years, when the world was 
 dawning, I saw life as a map divided up into diverse 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 37 
 
 countries ; one was the land of art, another the home of 
 business, a third was marked " love." The first interested 
 me in rather stereotyped fashion : my affection for the 
 arts rested upon my rebellion against our graveyard 
 drawing-room; the second drew me a little more, for it 
 mixed up with England : commerce and liberalism 
 in ideas made up for me the soul of the island. As for 
 love — well, I am French, so I did not suppose there was 
 more to know about it than I did know when I was 
 eighteen. Love had not stolen upon me softly like spring 
 into an English hedge; it had come flaunting, brazen 
 and mercenary in the train of the senior rowdies of the 
 school. If I suspected now and then, when I thought of 
 Agnes and David Copperfield, that it had some fugitive 
 charms not to be found in Bordeaux, I thrust back the 
 idea. Intellect was the real thing, woman^ was the 
 pastime. I knew all about her and all about love. I 
 knew nothing about either, and I might never have known 
 if I had not come to these islands where love burns with 
 a clear, white flame, a flamo which docs not scorch as does 
 that of the French brazier, but beautifully and intimately 
 warms. 
 
 IX 
 
 Then Mafeking. But I have told Mafeking. 
 
 " Land-grabbing again," said Gobot when I came back; 
 " cochons." I smiled in an exasperating and superior 
 manner. I knew. 
 
 X 
 
 Unroll again, film of my life, and show me my dead self 
 
 ht. you show me a young man in a white 
 
 smock, sweeping the barrack-yard : the army. Then 
 
 g man in a small room at Montauban, in red 
 
 belt and bayonet lie on the bed; his lips 
 
 lish irregular verbs: "throw, 
 
 ... blow, blew, blown — ": idealism. The 
 
 . in full regimentals, with half-a-dozen 
 
38 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 more of his kind; they are at the brasserie, have had a 
 little too much to drink; the young man holds upon his 
 knee the tolerant singing girl who goes round with the 
 plate : seeing life. 
 
 ...... 
 
 We sat in the drawing-room, my mother on the right 
 of the black marble mantelpiece, Jeanne on the left, I 
 by the table. I noticed that our three chairs marked the 
 three angles of an equilateral triangle. The magic of the 
 prim room seemed to compel geometry in attitudes. 
 It possessed the one fender on which I had never put my 
 boots, and I had never smoked in it. I tried, that 
 morning, for the regiment had given me assurance, but 
 there was no zest in the performance, or the damp air of 
 the room had affected the saltpetre. I looked at my 
 mother, slim, pretty and black-clad ; at my beetle-browed 
 sister, realised our group as a family council, a dry, 
 loveless thing, fitly held by the stiff Empire couch and 
 the garnet-coloured footstools. The room smelled of 
 death, and suddenly I knew how glad I was to say good- 
 bye to this hardness and formality, to go to England, free, 
 living England. 
 
 " And so you are going to-morrow, Lucien," said my 
 mother. " I hope it is for the best." 
 
 " Oui, maman" I said, thinking of the morrow. 
 
 " Your father always wanted you to go into the branch. 
 I had hoped you might stay here and go into the house ; 
 still " 
 
 My mother paused ; she had never been able to realise 
 the change, to accept that " the house " was in London, 
 that the Bordeaux firm was the branch. For her, the 
 Bordeaux firm was still august, dominant, as in the days 
 of my father and his frock-coats. 
 
 " Still I suppose Monsieur Lawton knows best. You'll 
 write to me, Lucien." 
 
 " Oui, maman." 
 
 I knew I ought to have said more, but life and adventure 
 waited. 
 
 " You will get on, of course. Your father always hoped 
 
HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 39 
 
 to leave you the house. Monsieur Lawton knows that it 
 understood; so you must work hard, Lucien. You 
 are very fortunate, for we are not dependent on you : 
 Jeanne will have a little money, and we shall marry her 
 soon." 
 
 I glanced at Jeanne, who sat playing with her fingers. 
 She was rather a pretty girl, small and thin like my mother, 
 demure, but she had under heavy black brows my father's 
 splendid eyes. She did not move when my mother calmly 
 announced her intention to " place her " with some man. 
 
 " There's no hurry about that," my mother resumed. 
 " Jeanne's only eighteen. Have you packed ? No ? 
 Well, you must do it to-day. And mind you take brandy 
 for the crossing. Your thick socks will come home to- 
 night." 
 
 I was going to thank her formally when she suddenly 
 did something she had never done before : she sighed, 
 and allowed one large tear to roll down her cheek. 
 
 " Maman ! " I cried. And before I could hesitate I 
 
 had broken the coldness, I had thrown my arms round her 
 
 we were both crying, while Jeanne sobbed as she 
 
 knelt by my mother's side and held my hand. I was 
 
 ty-two, " an old soldier," and I wept. But, even as 
 
 I pt and promised my mother to write every week and 
 
 ra every summer, I could hear the roar of the English 
 
 nd. 
 
 XI 
 
 The cliffs of Folkestone stood up, white and green, 
 
 ly like the French cliffs, yet unlike. 
 The wet, green country, the oast-houses and the hop- 
 fields were left behind. Townlet after townlet, deceiving 
 promising London, then dwindling into fields again. 
 . smokestacks, building plots. The 
 mist had thickened, was becoming yellow. 
 1 ' in their gardens, then the bronze 
 
 in the moist, yellow air, the Houses of Parlia- 
 mding out like black bluffs against the pale 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 " This is it, Mr. Cadoresse," said Mrs. Hooper. 
 
 She had preceded me and now stood in the middle of 
 the room, while I remained on the threshold. I had a 
 moment's hesitation, for this was the first time I had seen 
 an English bedroom ; the hotel at which I stayed during 
 Mafeking week and the semi-public rooms of the Lawtons' 
 house had not prepared me for the homely feeling of 
 this sleeping place. For a reason I shall always feel 
 and never quite understand there is a difference between 
 a bedroom in an English house and one in a French 
 flat ; if the Englishman's house is his castle, his bedroom 
 is his keep. But Mrs. Hooper was talking again in 
 gentle tones : 
 
 " I hope you'll be quite comfortable, Mr. Cadoresse. 
 Anything you want — there's the bell near the bed. I 
 suppose you'll be wanting to get ready for dinner, so 
 I'll leave you if you've got everything." 
 
 " Thank you," I said. " I don't want anything. A 
 fire, perhaps." 
 
 It was October and I felt chilly. When I left Bordeaux 
 the magnolias were loaded with blooms. Here the air 
 was misty and raw. 
 
 " If you like, Mr. Cadoresse, though we don't generally 
 light fires before November." 
 
 " Oh ! it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," I said. 
 I felt reproved. I had broken some law. I wanted to 
 apologise, to explain abundantly, but I found that Mrs. 
 Hooper had gone, quietly, without adding another word ; 
 
 40 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 41 
 
 she impressed me by her negativeness. She wore no 
 notable clothes : a dark blouse and skirt, so far as I re- 
 member; she dressed her grey hair neither very tight 
 nor very fancifully; she did not gesticulate, nor welcome 
 me warmly, nor appear churlish; she did not call me 
 "Sir" in propitiating manner, nor was she familiar; 
 she was neither servant nor hostess. I have met many 
 Englishwomen like her : the number of things Mrs. 
 Hooper was not and did not was amazing. But I did 
 not think about her very long : my room interested me. 
 My room had an air of permanence, for I would then 
 have been embarrassed to find other quarters in a private 
 house, A stranger, I was like a shipwrecked sailor for 
 whom the desert island becomes home. Against the wall 
 furthest from the window was a black and brass bed; 
 before the window stood a small table, covered with an 
 old red cloth and bearing a swivel-mirror; a marble- 
 topped washstand with a yellow-tiled splasher, a mahogany 
 chest of drawers at the foot of the bed, and three mahogany 
 chairs made up,' with a brown-painted hanging cupboard, 
 the furniture of the room. All these pieces of furniture 
 struck me as too small, too compact ; they left the room 
 bare, save for thin red curtains at the window ; the room 
 felt too light, too airy. I missed the heavy canopy which 
 shut me in when I slept in my French home, the blue 
 eiderdown, the darkness, the comfortable thickness of 
 the stuffs. 
 
 And yet Mrs. Hooper had not attained the sanitary 
 
 >r of modern English houses; I was spared the 
 
 urn that chills the feet and the distempered walls 
 
 chill the heart. At least she had laid down an old 
 
 ad-brown carpet, which was probably not very well 
 
 >t; on the yellowish rosebud-decorated wall she had 
 
 hung three engravings: "The Peacemaker," "In the 
 
 :n of Eden," and " The Jubilee Procession," while 
 
 !, blue and gold text tried to induce me to remember 
 
 that the Lord was my Shepherd and that I should not 
 
 however, I did not dislike the room, 
 
 C 2 
 
42 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 and I was introspective enough to realise that I would 
 get used to it, that the dog can, after a while, sleep well 
 in the cat's basket. It was nearly seven. I began to 
 unpack my clothes, to lay them out on the bed, hurriedly, 
 for my evening clothes, my smoking as I still called them, 
 seemed scattered among the others, while my shirts, 
 French laundered, had mostly had a bad time on the 
 journey. When, at last, I was ready, I realised that I 
 somehow fell short of the Lawton ideal. I was a neat, 
 dark, slim youth, not ill-looking, but my ready-made 
 black tie did not content me ; my shoes were well enough, 
 but I had that day seen a fashion-plate in a newspaper 
 which proved that on these occasions Englishmen wore 
 pumps; and, in some undefinable way, my linen did 
 not reach the Lawton standard. It never did quite 
 reach it until four years had elapsed, when a sympathetic 
 man told me that I should send it to a French laundry. 
 Incredible ! 
 
 At last I stood in front of the mirror, in the midst of 
 the quantity of clothing two small trunks can discharge, 
 critically considering the candidate for the English 
 quality. I found I had not greatly changed since that 
 historic night when I marched down Shaftesbury Avenue 
 with a thrilled heart, while (and I reminiscently hummed 
 the refrain) the Englishmen sang : 
 
 ** And when they ask us how it's done, 
 We proudly point to every one 
 Of England's soldiers of the Queen." 
 
 " Pas raaZ," I said aloud to the figure. I liked the arch 
 of my eyebrows and the increasing thickness of my mous- 
 tache. Good dark eyes, too, but I suddenly determined 
 to get my hair cut the very next day. Still, the hair 
 would have to pass for that evening, so I opened the door 
 and, as half-past seyen struck, followed a pungent smell 
 of cooking to the ground floor. 
 
 I passed between the red-papered walls to" the hall, 
 which was decorated with a pair of buffalo horns, a gaunt 
 hatstand and a print of the Ileenan v. Sayers fight. Then 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 43 
 
 I hesitated in front of the doors, for nothing told me 
 which was the dining-room. To open the wrong door 
 would be annoying, because it would make me look a 
 fool. I should not have been in the least bashful if, on 
 opening the wrong door I had found Mrs. Hooper in a 
 bath, but I could not have borne being made ridiculous. 
 
 Suddenly I heard muffled peals of laughter; a door 
 opened, the laughter became shrill, and a young girl, 
 running out, nearly rushed into my arms. I do not 
 think I shall forget that first picture. She came, light, 
 bounding, and she is fixed in my mind upon one foot, a 
 Diana Belvedere ; she was laughing still, and I could see 
 the quiver of the light on her brown curls, the white 
 glitter of her teeth, and the sparkle of her dark eyes. 
 But, as I looked, her expression and her attitude changed. 
 The eyes were cast down, long lashes lay on full, faintly 
 blushing cheeks ; the mouth smiled no more, and I saw 
 nothing now but the very pretty and very prim English 
 miss. We stood face to face for two seconds, while I 
 searched my brain for a suitable English sentence and 
 some qualification of the rule that in England you must 
 be introduced, and as I searched I thought I had never 
 seen anything so delightful. But the English miss, eased 
 the strain, threw me a glance which took me in from 
 forehead to shoe, smiled and, with much dignity, passed 
 me by. 
 
 As she went she murmured : " Good evening, Mon- 
 sieur " (alas ! she pronounced it approximately " Mersser ") 
 and, with persistent dignity, climbed the first three or 
 four steps of the stairs. Then dignity seemed to desert 
 her, and she ran upstairs, on sole and heel, loud and 
 y as a boy. This did not kill the charm but intensi- 
 t by making its elements incongruous. I had no time 
 to think more of her, for the room she had come out of 
 was i a bedroom; at least I could see a bed in 
 
 i I boldly turned the handle of the other door. 
 
 Three people looked at me with extreme calm. I 
 
 lit of the calm of fish. One of them was Mrs. 
 
 as I had seen her half-an-hour before; the other 
 
44 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 was a girl, younger than the other, not at all pretty, but 
 still worthy of a glance, for she had flaxen hair, china-blue 
 eyes and a milk-white skin; the third, an elderly man, I 
 judged to be Mr. Hooper. He was a small, thin person, 
 as undecided in colouring as his wife; his mild eyes 
 made me think at once of the younger girl, obviously 
 his daughter; he stood leaning against the mantelpiece 
 where burned no fire (of course, not in October), in a black 
 frock-coat the silk lapels of which were not very fresh. 
 Mr. Hooper was rather bald, looked about fifty; he 
 seemed so mild, so genial, so unruffled, that I wondered 
 whether an immense aggressiveness lay under his mask. 
 
 I had not time to analyse further, for I was struggling 
 with an internal rage. I, Lucien Cadoresse, was wearing 
 the wrong clothes, was being ridiculous. I thought of 
 running from the room, of putting on my tweed suit again, 
 but then I should have been more ridiculous. It was a 
 ghastly situation and I nerved myself to bear the chorus 
 of protest. But there was no chorus; Mrs. Hooper 
 said : 
 
 " Allow me to introduce you to my husband, Mr. 
 Cadoresse, and to my daughter Louise." 
 
 Mr. Hooper said : " Glad to have the pleasure " ; 
 
 Louise, or Lulu as she was called in ordinary circum- 
 stances, mumbled and blushed. Then the girl I had met 
 in the hall came in, now quite demure, was introduced to 
 me as " My daughter Maud." Fully mustered, the family 
 was doubtless going to protest against my clothes. But 
 Mr. Hooper said : 
 
 " Very cold for the time of year," and rubbed his 
 hands. 
 
 41 Much colder than in Bordeaux," I replied, expecting 
 this to lead up to an allusion to my bare shirt front. 
 
 But Mr. Hooper began to question me on " the meteoro- 
 logical conditions in the South of France," as he called 
 them. I satisfied him as well as I could, which cannot 
 have been completely, for Mr. Hooper had one of those 
 thirsts for miscellaneous information found mainly in 
 the City of London and in the North Country, which 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 45 
 
 nothing can ever assuage. Of indifferent health, too 
 poor to indulge in games, bound to daily labour which 
 he was not vigorous enough to realise as uncongenial, 
 Mr. Hooper had developed a desultory acquaintance 
 with every branch of knowledge, from Sanskrit to wood- 
 carving; he knew some French, a little more than no 
 German; he could quote six Latin tags and one Greek 
 one, but he couldn't spell that one; he was fond of 
 history, that is history a Vanglatie, as it is expounded in 
 A Favourite of Henry XXIX, and the like ; he knew where 
 was Taganrog, for he had had to look it up, but could 
 not at once locate Moscow on the map ; he liked to know 
 how many dollars went to the pound and was quite 
 content not to know how many gulden went to the pound. 
 Mr. Hooper's mind was an unlimited patchwork quilt 
 of ideas and facts; occasionally the ideas clashed and 
 the facts did not dovetail, but those little imperfections 
 did not interfere with the progress of the quilt. He 
 never looked for a piece with which to fill a hole when the 
 facts did not accord : a new piece always went end-on 
 to the others and the mental quilt grew larger and larger ; 
 it would have smothered him in time if he had not con- 
 tinually lost bits of it, which made it majaa^cable. 
 
 Mr. Hooper loved a fact. In later days I repeated to 
 
 him the joke in Tlie Man from Blankley's, to the effect 
 
 that the area of the Great Pyramid is exactly equal to that 
 
 of Trafalgar Square. He did not laugh, but with great 
 
 f he fact to the quilt. 
 
 While, that evening, Mr. Hooper entertained me with a 
 schedule of compared temperatures which showed that 
 isotherms had escaped his attention, I examined the 
 room and its inhabitants. The dining-room was em- 
 phatically an English room; it had red paper, well 
 covered with inferior oil-paintings of still life and steel 
 s of British regiments holding the pass or the 
 it be. Opposite the window was a large 
 1'board, awkwardly carved, on which stood 
 a cheap tantalus, some siphons and the bread platter; 
 there was also a bottle of ready-made dressing. The 
 
46 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 mantelpiece carried an elaborate oak overmantel, on 
 which were accumulated brass ash-trays, little china 
 pigs, and some Goss, two bronze candlesticks which did 
 not match, some prospectuses and letters. Into the 
 looking-glass were pushed two or three cards, one of 
 them an invitation to a Conservative meeting at a titled 
 lady's house. This I know, for it stayed there many 
 weeks. Yet the room did not displease me; it was cold, 
 the chairs were ugly, the carpet felt thin and the table 
 appointments seemed common, the plate dirty under the 
 glaring gas, but it was comfortable, it was untidy. I 
 had left formality in France, and I knew it when those 
 people spoke to me so quietly, without trying to enter- 
 tain me, when they refrained from commenting on my 
 evening clothes. 
 
 Mr. Hooper said : " The dinner is late, my dear." 
 Mrs. Hooper said : " The girl will bring it up in a 
 minute, Alfred." 
 
 I looked at Lulu, who at once blushed, then at Maud. 
 Maud's eyes met mine with a boldness that suggested 
 either absolute innocence or deliberate challenge; I 
 found out later that it contained a little of each : that 
 mixed quality is an English monopoly. I looked her full 
 in the eyes, which I could now see were dark-brown, 
 analysed her in detail ; she stood the test very well, and 
 it was singular to find her almost a woman and so much 
 of a boy, for her figure was slim and straight, and yet 
 I foresaw that within two or three years it would show 
 all the gracious curves of maturity. Under my cool 
 inspection, which took in the thin brown stuff of her 
 blouse and the low dressing of her hair, she remained 
 composed, but at last she smiled at me from the corners 
 of her mouth, and looked down at her feet. My heart 
 was beating a little when the gong was struck in the hall 
 and the little maid entered, carrying the soup. 
 
 T regret we cannot offer you hordoovers," said Mr. 
 Hooper archly, " but radishes are not in season. We 
 might have had some sardines, though ; Ethel, where are 
 those sardines you opened for breakfast on Tuesday ? " 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 47 
 
 " You know you had the last of those this morning. 
 Alfred," said Mrs. Hooper. " Besides, sardines don't 
 keep when the tin's open." 
 ">Ielon," said Mr. Hooper. 
 " How can you, Alfred ! Melon in October ! Mr. 
 Cadoresse will have to live as the English live," said 
 Mrs. Hooper, " and of course we can't expect him to like 
 our cooking." 
 
 " Oh, I'm sure it is excellent," I said, as I tasted the 
 soup. It seemed excellent, for I had never before tasted 
 clear soup devoid of grease; this particular soup was 
 just oily water, but it was strange, and therefore good. 
 " I want everything that is English." 
 
 " You shall have it," said Mr. Hooper. " I flatter 
 
 If we are a true British household, though of course 
 
 we are not prejudiced people. Oh, no, we are quite 
 
 cosmopolitan, Mr. Cadoresse. I remember once, when I 
 
 in France " 
 
 I listened while Mr. Hooper gave me in detail the list 
 of the dishes he had partaken of at the " IIoteMc France," 
 at Ncuchatel in 1896. Meanwhile the two girls were 
 carrying on an animated conversation in low tones. 
 
 " Yes," said Lulu, " there she was, Mother, with the 
 pink hat on she wore on Sunday." 
 " Orange, you mean," said Maud. 
 " When I say pink I mean pink," Lulu replied. 
 
 \ nd when you mean orange you say pink," said Maud, 
 sprightly if a little acid. 
 
 I'ink," said Lulu. Her china-blue eyes were bovine 
 ir obstinacy. 
 " S'pose you think I can't tell pink from orange," said 
 Maud. 
 
 And you wouldn't believe it, the whole thing only 
 
 cost two francs," said Mr. Hooper. " Now in Soho it's 
 
 . but I don't care for those places. I always 
 
 is are not quite nice." 
 
 kc the last won! n inverted commas; 
 
 ued dutifully and I joined in, feeling it 
 
 I tunc to do. 
 
48 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 When the roast leg of mutton was brought in, on a dish 
 that was too large and flooded with warm brown water, 
 Mr. Hooper carved, remarking V 
 
 " Mutton thick, beef thin." 
 
 The girls were still wrangling. 
 
 " Fathead," Lulu muttered. 
 
 Maud looked at me with a faint smile that clearly said : 
 " See how I suffer " and replied : " Think I'm colour- 
 blind?" 
 
 I thought I should take the opportunity and said : 
 
 " The brilliance of your eyes, Mademoiselle, demon- 
 strates that there is no justification for the accusation." 
 
 There was a pause, during which Lulu blushed at the 
 compliment addressed to her sister, but Maud did not 
 blush : she made a bread pill and gave me a little smile. 
 Mrs. Hooper said : 
 
 " Now, Mr. Cadoresse, no French compliments. You 
 will turn my young ladies' heads." 
 
 " My head's all right, Ma," said Maud. 
 
 " May be it is, and may be it isn't," said Mrs. Hooper, 
 fondly gazing at the curly brown head, which I judged to 
 be unruly. I was helped to baked potatoes, caked with 
 grease, to nameless green food, which had apparently 
 been moulded and then cut into slabs. The water jug 
 was handed me without question, and I missed the usual 
 wine. 
 
 " How did you leave your dear mother, Mr. Cadoresse ? " 
 asked Mrs. Hooper. " Mr. Lawton said she was very 
 sorry to part with you." 
 
 " Oh, very," I said. 
 
 " She's not thinking of coming over to England ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think so," I replied. 
 
 " Well, I'm not surprised. It seems so easy travelling, 
 sitting in a railway carriage and doing nothing, but it 
 does tire one so. Why, I remember when I went to Paris 
 with your pa, girls, I was that tired I had to lie in bed for 
 two days, and you'll never believe it, butyyour pa had gone 
 along to the bathroom the first morning when I heard a 
 knock at the door. I thought it was bim and said, ' Come 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 49 
 
 in,' and in came the waiter with my breakfast. I don't 
 think that's usual, is it, Mr. Cadoresse ? " 
 
 " Oh, quite," I replied. " He would come to the bath- 
 room if you rang." 
 
 There was a short silence which showed me that I 
 had gone too far, and the position was not eased by Maud, 
 who suddenly burst into a fit of giggles, which recurred 
 at frequent intervals. 
 
 " Stop it, Maud," said Mrs. Hooper; " silly." 
 
 " Can't, Ma," the girl gasped. 
 
 " Well, if you can't," said Mrs. Hooper, resignedly, 
 
 " we'd better change the subject. Yes, I was that 
 
 , Mr. Cadoresse, I couldn't even go and see that 
 
 church ; you know — the church they call the little cakes 
 
 after " 
 
 " The Madeleine ? " I said at random, for I do not 
 know Paris well. 
 
 44 Yes, Madeline. But I went to the shops." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Lulu softly. 44 I'd love to go to Paris and 
 see the shops." 
 
 44 They are lovely shops, aren'J they, Mr. Cadoresse ? " 
 said Maud, who was recovering. 44 Oh 1 I'd love to go 
 to Paris." 
 
 44 You must wait for your honeymoon," said Mr. 
 ;>er, facetiously. 
 
 44 Don't see why," said Mrs. Hooper. 44 They're no 
 better than White-ley's, I'll be bound." 
 
 While stewed apples and custard were being served, a 
 
 <ily debate on the merits of French and English shops 
 
 took place between the father and mother, but Maud and 
 
 I exchanged frequent friendly glances and covert smiles. 
 
 Lulu had lapsed into sulky silence, and steadily ate. 
 
 II 
 
 P was a singular atmosphere, made up of the contest 
 
 ambient dullness and the sparkle of Maud. It 
 
 rhapf too much to say 44 dullness," for my first im- 
 
 one of sobriety, sedateness; the conver- 
 
50 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 sation was absolutely stupid, but then it was exactly the 
 conversation that would have been held at a French 
 bourgeois table where — and I have never so far convinced 
 the English that I speak the truth — the arts and scandals 
 are passed over. All the forcignness of it lay in the 
 Hoopers' abstention from inquiries which would have 
 struck me as normal enough : not only had they not 
 mentioned my unsuitable clothes, but they had not 
 asked what my father was, whether he was alive, how 
 much he earned a year ; they had not asked me whether 
 my sister was marriageable and whether she had a dot; 
 they had not even tried to find out what I thought of them 
 and their city. 
 
 Those English people, did they care ? 
 
 I realised that these were peiits bourgeois, that Mr. 
 Hooper could hardly be worth more than six or seven 
 thousand francs a year, and yet their manners were 
 excellent. As they ate, they dropped no food. Yet 
 classes did not mix in England : therefore they must have . 
 copied. I considered Mrs. Hooper faded, dowdy, stupid, 
 yet perfectly dignified;, and Mr. Hooper limited and 
 dull, yet bound by some code not to trouble his guest 
 with questions. They were copying, those two; they 
 must be copying, or I was drawing incorrect conclusions 
 from my abundant English reading. In those days I had 
 not discovered gentility and the tests by means of which 
 the genteel man is distinguished from the gentleman. I 
 felt almost humble in presence of these self-effacing people, 
 and I rather resented their lack of interest in me. 
 
 But those English people, did they care ? 
 
 Lulu I dismissed as a stupid girl of sixteen, and I was 
 right. She was a very English type, and an ordinary one, 
 for most English girls are stupid, and that is why they 
 are so seductive. They are not hard, purposeful, as are 
 our women ; they do not know anything, and therefore 
 they are grateful when anything is told them. They are 
 the perfect slaves we love; they are seductive because 
 they are innocent. 
 
 Lulu, however, was not seductive that night ; she might 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 51 
 
 have been in my eyes, for she was so unaccustomedly pink 
 and white and flaxen-haired, but there was Maud. Lulu 
 
 born to be overshadowed by Maud, and, I suppose, 
 knew it. While I analysed the Hoopers I looked at Maud ; 
 often our eyes met, and I fancy she did not try to escape 
 my gaze; indeed, on finding that I looked at her small 
 hands as she made bread pills, I am sure that she became 
 yet more industrious at the game. Little hands, I have 
 not forgotten you ; you were broad in the middle, but 
 you tapered to a point, and small white fingers too, you 
 tapered, you blushed at the knuckles and joints, and you 
 glowed into coral at the tips. Small, delicate hands, with 
 the girlish roughness that made me think of cripe de 
 chine, you were warm and animate; folding upon my 
 
 i, you were tender as the wings of a fledgling bird. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We passed upstairs. More of England was revealed 
 to me, for the entire first floor was made into a drawing- 
 room ; the folding doors had been removed and, as the gas 
 brackets gave but little light, the room seemed very large. 
 It was the glory of the house, it was as glorious as our 
 own drawing-room, and it claimed brotherhood with it ; 
 nothing was missing except the smell of the graveyard, 
 and I realised that whatever may differ from country to 
 country some things are not national, but human. The 
 drawing-room was white and gold, the paint was rather 
 dirty and the gold tarnished, but still it was white and 
 gold. Ti a large settee, covered with tapestry; 
 
 armchairs and a number of small ones, either gilt or 
 [> mahogany, were dotted about. On a shelved black 
 bracket stood an elaborate tea-set, which was never 
 s, on the mantelpiece, an imitation 
 Sevres clock, out of ord< t, 1>< Iwcen two tall blue jars filled 
 
 the walls were framed photo- 
 graph Burne-Jones, also portraits of the 
 a. In th< " i 11 " stood the cottage piano, the back 
 d in a piece of Japanese printed cotton. I was 
 
52 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 chilled by the rigidity of it ; while Mrs. Hooper sat down 
 by the mantelpiece and began to embroider a table- 
 cloth, the two girls nudged and whispered on the settee. 
 I was very uncomfortable, for I had had no coffee ; it 
 the first time in my life I had had no coffee after dinner. 
 Perhaps because of that I moved restlessly about the room, 
 went to a table in a corner on which were heaped albums 
 and books. I opened some of them at random, looked at 
 photographs of ugly old people whom I did not know ; 
 albums and books were dusty, as if seldom opened, but 
 they interested me, and I noted titles, unknown authors. 
 I found Ships that Pass in the Night, and Under Two 
 Flags, some sixpenny editions of Merriman. 
 
 Mr. Hooper came in, said good-night. This, he re- 
 gretted to say, was the Debating Club night. He was 
 expected to move the vote of thanks after the debate. 
 Quite an important paper : " Machiavelli." 
 
 I promised to come on another occasion. Mrs. Hooper 
 embroidered steadily, I dared not smoke, I heard the girls 
 whisper mysteriously : 
 
 " Of course, I wasn't taking any," Maud confided. 
 
 Mumble from Lulu. 
 
 M No fear ! " vigorously from Maud. 
 
 " Maud, my dear," said Mrs. Hooper, " won't you show 
 Mr. Cadoresse your picture postcards ? " 
 
 Maud did not seem unwilling. She took from the small 
 cabinet under the shelved bracket a large cloth-bound 
 album, laid it on the book-table after pushing away the 
 "dusty literature, and sat down. . I came and stood beside 
 her while she began with pretty demureness to make me 
 look at every card. 
 
 " That's from Gib," she said, '* and here's another from* 
 Malta. I put 'em all together cos they/came from my 
 cousin Tom. He's in the navy." 
 
 I detected some pride in her speech and became absurdly 
 jealous of Tom. 
 
 " We always thought he'd go for a soldier," she added, 
 " but he didn't. There's another he sent from Bombay 
 with a nigger on it. Old Funny-hat I call him.'! 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 53 
 
 There was an interval during which " old Funny-hat " 
 and " going for a soldier " were explained. My English 
 irood, but it wasn't exactly English, and it did not 
 de this kind of phrase. Indeed, my early inter- 
 course with Maud was one long (and usually inadequate) 
 _ iish lesson. 
 44 Here are some from France. Oh, I get a lot of those 
 
 from pa's friends — Paris, Dieppe, Troovil " 
 
 I was not listening to her. Leaning over as she turned 
 the pages, I looked at the delicate white neck on which 
 clustered the brown curls, at the small hand which pointed 
 at the cards. She must have known, for she chattered 
 on, giving me no opportunity to speak, and from time 
 to time she looked up at me, with a faint smile on her 
 lips and a soft but arch look in her humid brown eyes. 
 Because she was a stranger she was adorable. Then I 
 
 :ht of coffee. 
 44 I get 'em from everywhere. You could have sent 
 me one from Border if I'd known you before you 
 
 came " 
 
 44 You silly kid," said Lulu, looking up from the pink 
 evening paper; "you couldn't know him before he came, 
 could you ? " 
 f 44 One has to mind one's P's and Q's with Miss Clever, 
 Mr. Cadoresse," said Maud to me. Angry, she was 
 .hie, for she flushed. 
 41 Don't bother Mr. Cadoresse, dear," said Mrs. Hooper, 
 who still embroidered; 44 perhaps he's seen enough." 
 
 44 Oh," I protested, 44 it's very interesting. Show me 
 some of Spain, Miss Hooper. I've been there." 
 
 ud looked up at me; there was in her eyes appeal, 
 
 triumph and gratitude. 44 Here's one of Saint Sebasting," 
 
 ud. And as she pointed with the right hand she laid 
 
 her left hand on the tabic, as if by inadvertence, so near 
 
 that I, could feel the warmth of it. The minutest 
 
 d them. Yet it was a distance, and 
 
 hands do not touch it matters very little whether 
 
 hem a yard or the tenth of an inch. I 
 
 r to look at the card. 
 
54 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Bullfights," I said with an effort. And, as I moved, 
 our hands touched. They touched very softly, but 
 definitely. The whole side of her hand was against mint-, 
 and this was very wonderful. We did not move. For 
 some seconds we were silent while each could feel the 
 beating of the other's blood. 
 
 " I shouldn't care to see a bullfight," said Maud, 
 smoothly. "Jlorrid, messy things. And it's so cruel 
 to the horses. We wouldn't have 'em in England. Our 
 Dumb Friends, S.P.C.A., all that sort of thing, you know." 
 
 She chattered on while I stood by her side, quite 
 unable to speak, my throat dry and my cruel desire for 
 coffee quite forgotten. She chattered as if she were 
 perfectly cool, while my hand felt numb and rigid. And 
 still she did not take away her own. 
 
 These English girls, do they know when men touch 
 their hands ? 
 
 Suddenly she shook her brown curls, moved her hand ; 
 the spell was broken. She laughed, and I gave a heavy 
 sigh. 
 
 " You're not saying anything. Penny ? " 
 
 "Penny?" 
 
 Explanations. Then Mrs. Hooper suggested that Maud 
 should sing. She went to the piano. She played a rollick- 
 ing, rhythmic tune, a tune of the " Waiting at the 
 Church " type ; not one word did I understand, but I 
 knew that I wanted to beat time while I watched the 
 white throat swell and the brown curls dance staccato. 
 
 " Very pretty," said Mrs. Hooper, after Maud had sung 
 in an unexpected fit of sentimentalism, "Good Bye"; 
 " very pretty. Lulu, you might run upstairs and find me 
 my other reel of red cotton." 
 
 Maud began to improvise a melody of her own — a gay, 
 splashy thing, very much like the first tune she had 
 played. 
 
 " How long that girl is," Mrs. Hooper murmured. 
 
 Maud broke down in her impromptu, began again in 
 another key. Mrs. Hooper went to the door. 
 
 " Can't you find it, Lulu ? " she called up the staircase. 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 55 
 
 Then, after a pause : " It's in the top drawer — oh, never 
 mind, I know where it is " 
 
 Mrs. Hooper had gone. I was alone with Maud, alone 
 with a young girl. It was impossible. How could one 
 be alone roth a young girl — but then I remembered 
 English liberty. Of course. Maud looked at me round the 
 corner of the piano. In the bad light I could see her 
 smile. 
 
 " Baby can't see. Baby blind," she said in another 
 and a different language. "Baby go quite blind 
 if Frenchman don't light other candle." 
 
 I leaped rather than walked to the piano, but my 
 hand shook so that the match missed the wick. 
 
 " Shaky hand. Late nights, naughty, naughty," said 
 d. 
 
 I looked down at her, and she smiled at me. I bent 
 towards her, and still she smiled without moving. My 
 hand went out, groped on the keys of the piano, found 
 her fingers and grasped them. 
 
 " Ouch," she murmured; "you're hurting." 
 
 But her smile had not vanished, and a very faint, 
 pleasant scent came from her hair. Without a word I 
 slipped my arm round her shoulders and kissed her, 
 trembling a little, clumsily, half on the lips and half on 
 the cheek. 
 
 She remained passive for a second, then drew back. 
 low then, saucy," she said, but she was still smiling. 
 
 When Mrs. returned with Lulu and the red 
 
 >n, the two candles were lit and Maud was banging 
 at a noisy tune. 
 
 IV 
 
 I found sleep difficult. I had stood a long time at the 
 
 looking into the desolate little garden. The fog 
 
 . and under the rays of the moon I could see 
 
 'he wall the dim shadow of a faded rose, while 
 
 • f Michael mas daisies reared up, straggling 
 
 gaunt, in the si tered llower bed. Many 
 
 I not forgotten that I had had 
 
56 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 no coffee, and now that my excitement was past the desire 
 seized me again. Indeed, I am not sure that my memory 
 of the epic kiss was not tainted with the gnawing need. 
 When I think of coffee I feel like an opium-eater. If ever 
 I am sent to gaol I shall go mad. 
 
 I did not at once think of the kiss, for I am a sybarite ; 
 I like to recreate my impressions one by one and as they 
 formed, and I like to give them climaxes followed by flat 
 periods ; I like them to pass through my mind like a well- 
 ordered play. And I want my climaxes to be larger 
 and larger and more significant, so that I may ring down 
 the curtain upon my dream-play, while I bow with actor 
 and author and clap my hands in the royal box. So I 
 resolutely thought about the old Hoopers. I had not, 
 I felt, analysed them very well, and how could I? I 
 had none of the English measures with which to appraise 
 them, I could estimate them only according to French 
 values. But the prestige of England clung to them ; I 
 was enormously impressed by their calm, by their dis- 
 regard of my views and their regard for my comfort. 
 I was paying twenty-seven and six for board and 
 lodging, and it seemed as if I were paying my money 
 for hospitality. 
 
 Mr. Hooper was more evident than his wife; I was 
 surprised by the generality of his interests, by his spare- 
 ness and his youth. In a rigid, unimaginative way he 
 was still studying politics, he took trouble to know some- 
 thing of my people, he was seeking. True, when he 
 captured an idea he slew it and embalmed it. Butterfly 
 hunter ! But still, he was inquiring, he wanted to know, 
 and there was romance even in the despair of his dry 
 quest. His wife troubled me more ; I saw her as gentle, 
 refined, courteous ; I gathered that she had no power of 
 action, but much power of resistance. Nothing would 
 break Mrs. Hooper : if an earthquake had precipitated 
 Westminster Abbey into the Thames I felt she would 
 have remarked : " What extraordinary weather we're 
 having — I wonder where I put that bodkin." Obviously 
 she could control Lulu, who had left no impression on me 
 
INTRODUCTIONS 57 
 
 at all, except that she was sulky, but could make nothing 
 of Maud ; I could see that she loved Maud, thought her 
 an infant prodigy, that Maud's singing was more than 
 an elegant accomplishment, that it was a family rite. 
 While I watched Maud's full white throat swell, I had also 
 noticed Mrs. Hooper's head nod in time, and seen her 
 smile at me when the songs ended. " There ! what do 
 you say to that ? " was in every smile. 
 
 But evidently Mrs. Hooper did not greatly care whether 
 she controlled Maud or not. The girl could do no wrong, 
 and — perhaps this English aloofness extended to the 
 family circle. Perhaps they let each other alone, just as 
 they let the stranger alone. The whole evening seemed 
 to be a lesson in non-intervention. Mr. Hooper had gone 
 without explaining in great detail where he was going 
 to, when he would be back; Lulu had read a novelette 
 without being asked what it was and whether it was 
 interesting; and when Maud could not cease giggling 
 because I had made an undesirable joke, Mrs. Hooper had 
 said, " If you can't stop, we'd better change the sub- 
 ' It was so amazing that I hesitated to conclude 
 that the English do not care what happens. 
 
 One thing, though, I felt assured of : Mrs. Hooper 
 
 would certainly care if anything happened to Maud. 
 
 liberty of theirs must be limited by some custom 
 
 or rule, and I felt sure that she would not condone the 
 
 intrigue into which I was entering. Of course, this was 
 
 trigue. . 
 
 " You haven't done badly," I remarked to the elegant 
 
 figure in the looking-glass ; " you've started a love affair, 
 
 ly got to go on." 
 
 I felt certain that I had nothing to do but go on. Of 
 
 itful and hot-blooded ; I shouldn't 
 
 much trouble with a girl like that, for she was ready 
 
 iy man's arms, and if she wasn't — I laughed 
 
 new all about women and their ways. 
 
 :L, r I did not have, and that was one of hesitation 
 
 i eh men are not made like 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MISS MAUD HOOPER 
 I 
 
 If there were in London no Oxford Street it would 
 have to be invented, for without it straying groups of 
 foreigners would prove a perpetual nuisance to Streatham 
 and Hornsey. I was introduced to Oxford Street by the 
 inside of a hat, which advertised the fact that it had been 
 bought there; in later years the street became definite, 
 thanks to a chromo taken from a Christmas number. 
 That grateful chromo showed " Oxford Circus on Christ- 
 mas Eve," a wonderful vision of carriages, splendid horses 
 driven by liveried coachmen, enormous policemen, and 
 gay young women with rosy cheeks, mostly dressed in 
 furs, followed by dandies who did not disdain to carry 
 parcels. There was a fox-terrier, too, for fox-terriers were 
 fashionable in those days, and " bits of blood " in the 
 shafts of hansoms ; burly Pickwickian coachmen obviously 
 made jokes (of course, bus-drivers did). There radiated 
 from this early product of the three-colour process a 
 jollity, an irresponsible love of food, drink, light. Indeed, 
 I was a little disappointed because London did not turn 
 out to be as like a Christmas card as I expected : but I 
 was not very disappointed, for it had another magic. 
 
 It had the magic of Oxford Street. It was not that 
 Oxford Street was so very broad, for it would be lost 
 in the Champs-Elysees, or so very beautiful : it was for 
 me more than a fine street — it was an English person. 
 The Americans had not yet got hold of it, smirched it 
 with facades of new brick and stucco, or Portland stone; 
 its houses were not very high, and they were houses, not 
 warehouses. I liked the shops and their poor show of 
 
 53 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 59 
 
 plate-glass, the crude display of their wares; it was 
 interesting to compare our idea of showing off boots, 
 which is to put three patent-leather pairs in a nest of 
 green velvet, with the hundreds of boots, the festoons of 
 boots, the bewildering array of shoes for the road and 
 shoes for the bed, of slippers and top-boots, of dandified 
 pumps, and rough, spiked hoofcases for the golfer and the 
 football-player; I could stand and gloat over this kind 
 of show ; it was enormous, Falstaffian ; it suggested large 
 appetites, needs and the fulfilment of needs. Oxford 
 Street was more English than Bond Street because it was 
 not modish ; it did not receive the clothes of the French 
 and Viennese, the enamel of the Russians, the promiscuous 
 patents of America; beyond a little Italian glass and 
 some Indian goods, the latter pardonable, after all be- 
 cause colonial, its wares were English. They were rather 
 dear, neither beautiful nor ugly; they were abundant, 
 and most of them would last for ever. For ever ! that 
 feeling still clings to Oxford Street, to those undefiled 
 portions which threaten to crash down into the road, and 
 it is incredible that they will ever so crash. They have 
 always been there, those shops which intrude into the 
 houses, and I guess their intimacies, their corridors, the 
 clumsy steps which join house with house until an em- 
 porium arises. Above the drapers are the ghosts of dead 
 kitchens, of the parlours and the best bedrooms; and 
 are doorsteps on which once stood grave merchants, 
 \ng the Morning Post, to know what they should 
 think of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 I still have, as I walk that street, the sense of the 
 
 illimitable which is bound up in the streets that run from 
 
 On one side I can feel the rich places, their 
 
 '»ke Poges and its churchyard, "Wiltshire, rolling 
 
 I and the open sea; on the other I wind 
 
 with Oxford Street, through business and slum, to 
 
 locks, the Thames that is like the tongue of the sea, 
 
 .. with, upon its breast, the big ships 
 
 ■ dian spices, and furs, 
 
 and bales of wool. Over all and, as it flaps, making in 
 
60 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 the wind sharp sounds like the slam of a loose door, is the 
 Union Jack. 
 
 Eternal England, that no revolutions ruffle, who return 
 to regimes discarded because you never discard that 
 spirit of order and power which lies under the regimes, 
 you are like Oxford Street. You are indirect, you do not 
 drive through international life as did the bolder Rome; 
 while Rome built those roads which despise rivers and 
 mountain, you built Oxford Street and its vassals from the 
 Bank to Shepherd's Bush, tortuous, broken by angles, 
 here wide and there narrow, inconvenient but per- 
 sistent ; you give way to the obstacle — then surround it ; 
 you fight no battles with the soil, and yet you conquer 
 it, indomitably driving your road, quite careless of beauty 
 and content if the road can serve, unwilling to take a 
 path other than that of least resistance. You erect no 
 monument, you are too busy being a monument. Con- 
 scious of ancestors, you do not strive to have ancestors, 
 and because you are too big to be conscious you are 
 ancestral. 
 
 II 
 
 Almost every day I walked along Oxford Street, from 
 my home with the Hoopers in St. Mary's Terrace, along 
 the Edgware Road, until I reached Fenchurch Street, the 
 bewildering City which housed Barbezan & Co. So much 
 did it bewilder me that I confided my impressions to the 
 not very sympathetic Maud. But she was not entirely un- 
 sympathetic, indeed, she was,,for an English girl, strangely 
 curious of my affairs; I would not have talked of them 
 with her if she had readily responded to more amorous 
 moods, but I was ready enough to share with her the 
 impressions I accumulated so rapidly that they hurt : 
 not to talk is always dreadful for a southerner, and I 
 think I would rather talk about anything than not talk 
 at all. For Maud was proving a puzzle to me. When I 
 went to my room and acted the dream-play, which ended 
 in the adventurous kiss, I thought I saw quite clearly 
 the sequelae of the deed. I thought of other kisses, less 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 61 
 
 rapid, more reciprocal; I imagined responses, had no 
 difficulty in conjuring up a softer and yet mysteriously 
 aggressive Maud, who would tell me that she loved me, 
 that I had but to ask to be given. 
 
 I had no doubts at all : a girl who so openly attacked 
 me the first evening could not be difficult to win. I was 
 not in love with her; if she occupied my mind at all, she 
 was merely one of my comforts. She was the woman 
 sent by the kindly Providence of Lovers to fill, for the 
 time being, a certain part of my life. She was charming, 
 provoking and — convenient. It was thus with a degree 
 of confidence that I threw one arm round her shoulders 
 when, the next evening, I met her on the first floor land- 
 ing, outside the bathroom where she had washed her 
 hands. Just before I did it she was smiling; she looked 
 deliciously demure, for her eyes were half-closed, and her 
 attitude, as she rubbed against each other her still moist 
 palms, was almost quakerish. But as I touched her, her 
 expression changed. She put out both hands against my 
 shoulders, pushed me away : 
 
 " Now then, Mr. Frenchman, none of your monkey 
 tricks." 
 
 I laughed, tried to break her resistance. Coquetry, of 
 course. But there was something else in the coquetry — 
 nacy, I supposed, for we fought silently on the 
 landing for some moments. I was the stronger, drew her 
 to me, but she bent her head down, pushed the curls into 
 my face. I kissed the warm brown hair, and, as I did so, 
 she half freed herself, and I saw this was not coquetry, 
 for she was flushed and the pretty mouth had set in a 
 ht line. 
 
 M Let me go," she whispered ; " leave go, can't you ? I 
 i think I want you messing me 
 about? No fear ! " 
 
 She wrenched herself free, and I looked at her in 
 amazem- 
 
 "Crumpling my blouse," she grumbled, as she patted 
 it. "Wl i take me for? Rag doll? or what?" 
 
 " But, Maud " I faltered. 
 
62 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Not so much of your Mauds, Mr. Frenchman. Have 
 a shave and try Miss Hooper." 
 
 I was puzzled by the seemingly irrelevant advice to 
 M have a shave," and, while I thought, took her hand. 
 She did not withdraw it, looked at me with a faint smile. 
 
 " Sorry you spoke, aren't you ? Well, you needn't 
 look sulky about it." 
 
 " I am not sulky," I said. 
 
 " Yes, you are. Cross old bear. Baby quite frightened." 
 
 I understood that I was forgiven, but I knew better 
 than to accept forgiveness : the only way to gain absolute 
 forgiveness from a woman is at once to offend again. So, 
 without another word, I pulled Maud towards me ; there 
 was a slight show of resistance, soon vanquished. But, 
 before I could kiss her, her lips rested a second on my 
 cheek, firm and cool, and she escaped : 
 
 " No more, Mr. Frenchman," she said, with some 
 dignity; " I'm not out for choe'lates, just had grapes." 
 
 She ran down the stairs, laughing, and I went to my 
 room. I had something to think about : Why had she 
 repulsed me ? Then kissed me ? then repulsed me again ? 
 Coquetry I had met before, but not this kind of coquetry ; 
 I knew the methods practised by my own countrywomen, 
 by which man is encouraged, discouraged, then heartened, 
 and the French rack is no kinder than the English : but 
 in those cases there had been no prefacing caress. With 
 the first kiss came the downfall of the defence, the acquies- 
 cent rout and capture of the defender. It was not so 
 here : apparently an English girl, or at least English 
 Maud, could with impunity hold the hand of the man who 
 attracted her, even clasp him in her arms ; she could rely 
 on her own powers of resistance. 
 
 Strictly speaking, I did not " learn about women from 
 *er " ; I learned about her from other and later women. 
 I understood her much better after parting from her and 
 was surprised to find her different from her old self when 
 I met her again. Maud was a very ordinary English type, 
 a type to be found in none save Anglo-Saxon countries; 
 she was unawakened in the passionate sense, and I do not 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 68 
 
 think that the kiss of Prince Charming himself could have 
 roused her from her sleep. She could attain a passionate 
 stage, to maintain the metaphor, akin to somnambulism, 
 but she was never awake. She was made up of two 
 strands, one positive and the other negative. The first 
 was the strand of interest, money, adornment, cheap 
 excitement, eager vanity, and there are many splendid 
 mates, English, Latin and Slav, who have such a strand 
 in their composition : la Dame aux Camelias was so 
 made, and Cleopatra somewhat. But it was Maud's 
 negative strain made her different from any Latin, Teu- 
 tonic or Slav woman I have ever met. Her capacity for 
 resisting caresses, for showing that she did not want them, 
 her ability to live without love, without emotion, her 
 self-contained and neutral attitude, I have met these 
 traits again and again and believe in their reality only 
 because of their recurrence. 
 
 Paradoxically enough, Maud, or I will say the Maud- 
 type, is aggressive. It prepares for seduction by clothing 
 itself as little as it may, by using the powder, the rouge, 
 and the scent of the man-huntress; it ogles, it rustles, 
 it drops its voice to tender murmurs, it invites, it clamours 
 for capture — no, not capture, pursuit. For the array for 
 seduction is not the prelude of desired defeat : the in- 
 •on is to restrict to a sham fight the reality of the 
 ^ement. The Maud-type is the exact counterpart 
 of the fowler, the man whom victory bores when it is in 
 Bight — victory, that is, in the accepted sense. The victory 
 of the Maud-type consists in instigating attack, defeating 
 it and instigating it again ; if the victim shows signs of 
 ust be cajoled, and minor privileges may be 
 If it be clear that he is almost disgusted, that 
 11 not attack the main position, an outpost is suddenly 
 evacuated ; he occupies it, surprised, advances and is at 
 once I, as if he had been ambushed. But the 
 
 ■»e never intends him to win : the struggle is real, 
 and if the victim suddenly perceives that he is being 
 tricked and retires in anger he is immediately forgotten 
 lurry presents itself. My intercourse with 
 

 64 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Maud was made up of these continual strategic advances 
 and retreats. So determined was she to hold me, for 
 purposes she hardly defined to herself, that I was often 
 surprised by the extent of the concessions she would make 
 to achieve her object. She had moods in which minor 
 surrenders and acquiescences were so many that my 
 triumph seemed assured — but were they moods or 
 policies? I do not pretend that such girls are entirely 
 devoid of emotional feelings, but these are buried very 
 deep; there is gold in some abysses of the sea, and it is 
 therefore untrue to say that there is no gold there : but 
 nobody has ever been able to dive deep enough to secure 
 it. There were days when Maud would of herself take my 
 arm in a quiet street, others when she spontaneously 
 offered caresses; she seemed to yield, but she never 
 yielded. I do not think she wanted to, and I am not 
 sure that she could. She had a fierce dislike of love in 
 its robe of red and flame ; she understood it solely in the 
 flirtatious pink and tinsel of musical comedy. She was 
 afraid of it, because she felt it to be brutal, big, and 
 earnest. She did not want anything to be earnest, she 
 wanted things gay, comic. But she would make con- 
 cessions to me so that I might continue to flatter her by 
 pursuing her, so that I should pay. The Maud-type knows 
 one thing very well — that man must pay, and pay for 
 nothing save exasperation. It does not consider, as does 
 its analogue in America, that man is bound by chivalry 
 and disinterested courtesy to supply candies, novels, ice- 
 cream and seats at the theatre ; but it does consider that 
 man must supply the English equivalents of those things 
 on a limited pleasure contract. It wants them so desper- 
 ately that it sometimes gives more than it intended, and 
 in later life it often takes for granted that it must give 
 everything for greater delights, such as the use of a 
 motor-car, fine clothes, and Brighton holidays, but 
 throughout it does not want to give. It wants to take. 
 If it can take everything for nothing, good; if every- 
 thing for something, unfortunate; if it must take some- 
 thing for everything, it docs so resignedly. Between 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 65 
 
 Maud and me there was an ever open contract which 
 we never signed ; she never taught me to bargain, for I 
 am of those who give heartily and take greedily, asking 
 no questions : she was all implicit bargain. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the name of English liberty. Maud was sent with me . 
 on the eve of my entry into Barbezan & Co., so that I 
 might find in romantic Oxford Street the shops I needed. 
 "Funny sort of shirt you've got on," said Maud; 
 4t stew 'em in tea in Border, don't they? " 
 
 ired her we did not stew shirts in tea. 
 " Well, I only asked. And, of course, you've got to 
 j our cuffs sewn on. No, you can't get a ready- 
 made tie here. Can't tie it ? Don't be silly, I'll show 
 you, Frenchy; anybody can see you aren't sailors over 
 there." 
 
 44 My father was a sea-captain," I said, rather curtly, 
 for this annoyed me. 
 
 " Well, he might have taught you to make knots. My 
 cousin Tom — he*s in the navy, you know — he taught me. 
 Of course, your hat's too small." 
 
 44 Perhaps that is because my hair is too thick," I 
 
 ted, with an attempt at sarcasm. 
 
 u 1 get a haircut," said Maud, w T ho did not 
 
 lve the irony; ' 4 but even then it's sizes too small. 
 
 Boots, too ; you don't want a point to them, if you 
 
 t going to pick your teeth with them, and you're 
 
 just bursting out of your glov< 
 
 you," I said, for the criticism was galling. 
 Now you're being nasty. Well, do what you like. 
 I don't mind if you look like a picture postcard. You're 
 ffs, one of the kid-gloved Dandy Fifth, I 
 don*t thii 
 
 kick on mc, began to gaze intently into 
 
 I a window full of bead necklaces. I was still angry, but 
 her irritation killed mine, and I could sec under the> 
 cluster of hex brown curls a gleam of white neck which 
 
66 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 moved me to repentance. I took her by the elbow and 
 made her .turn towards me. She smiled a little. 
 
 44 Now you're sorry, aren't you ? Leave go of my arm 
 and say so." 
 
 I apologised, and being humbled was forgiven. But 
 I was also subjugated, the outfit was taken out of my 
 hands. 
 
 " He wants a couple of blue ties," she explained to the 
 shopman. 
 
 44 Excuse me," I said, 44 as I am dark " 
 
 44 That's all right. You put' him up those two in 
 poplin. . . . Oh, no, don't trouble, he's a Frenchman, 
 he doesn't know. And now you just run along to the 
 linen department, tea-caddy." 
 
 Tea-caddy ! I, Cadoresse, for her 4 * caddy " and then 
 44 tea-caddy." 
 
 44 You know what I told you : ju^t as tight. round the 
 neck as you can stick it, and cuffs sewn on, and five and 
 six's the price, with a bob off for six. You can get half-a- 
 dozen coloured ones while you're about it, and mind you 
 don't get mauve, 'cos it washes out third time." 
 
 44 1 don't like coloured shirts," I said. 
 
 44 Well, you've got to like 'em. I'm not going about 
 with a blooming mute." . r 
 
 This was Maud in her element, enjoying the new and 
 amusing sensation of dressing a young man. The occu- 
 pation did not show her up at her worst, for she had 
 somehow learned how a man should dress; at least she 
 had the instinct which, left to itself, makes for flashiness, 
 but, when educated, ends in correctness. She had, for 
 men, the sharp ideas of fashion which she derived from 
 the rapt contemplation of popular actors; they in- 
 fluenced her enormously. She could not have said 
 whether trousers should be pegtop, whether collars should 
 be double or Wing, but she responded to influence so well 
 that she spontaneously rejeeted-the thing that was not 
 the thing of the day : when it became the thing of the 
 ,£ay she as spontaneously suggested that I should adopt 
 it. The triumph of clothes was attained when she could 
 say of a passing man : 44 This is It. v ' 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER' 67 
 
 I was difficult to fit at the hatter's. 
 
 " Xo wonder. I often think, you're barmy on the 
 
 ipet," Maud commented, who had then known me 
 
 for a week. " S'pose they were clearing a job line the 
 
 day you got your head. Still, you aren't worse than pa, 
 
 with the bald bit at the back under the brim." 
 
 I found her good company, this cheerful, energetic 
 girl ; she was less managing than adventurous ; amused 
 by the " spree," she threw all her energy into an occu- 
 pation which she would have voted a nuisance if it had 
 i habitual. She was so pleased because she was 
 doing something new that she did not reprove me when 
 icezed /her hand behind the liftman's back. She 
 even pouted at me the imitation of a kiss. While charm- 
 ing, she remained competent, or rather voracious ; she 
 was bent on extracting rebates for quantities ; she asked 
 iiop-soiled goods, as if she were a thrifty French house- 
 wife. But thrift was not the motive ; she displayed the 
 street-arab acuteness of those who systematically make 
 a show on small means. 
 
 At last I was equipped. I had been in four shops, and 
 an undoubtedly English wardrobe was travelling towards 
 <>om. I suggested lunch. 
 '•• Wbat'll ma say?" said Maud, doubtfully. Then: 
 '• Who cans ? We'll say we waited while they wondered 
 what it was 'd blown in. An' if she doesn't like it she 
 can lump it." 
 "Lump it?" 
 "1 her thing." 
 
 I accepted the unintelligible explanation, and we 
 
 luneh at. It was past one o'clock. 
 
 lighl of November made the grey pave- 
 
 fly opal< stent \\ i Iks of nocturnal mois- 
 
 D was not shining, but I could feel 
 
 it was shining behind the colourless haze, and though 
 
 (1 for a moment whether, in Bordeaux, it was 
 
 j on the red and purple leaves of the 
 
 I did Dpi fed homesick. Pot was this not pulsating, 
 
 land; jolly, warm i ? A green Atlas 
 
 i!y trotting ; the omnibus 
 
68 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 rolled as it went, like a big, fat forester, or some enormous 
 bloated scarab. Busy, sturdy England, and pretty, 
 white-necked English girl, I . . . 
 
 " Penny," said Maud as usual. 
 
 " I was thinking of restaurants" I lied, having learned 
 her laiYguage. 
 
 "Oh, we don't want a ristorang; too nobby; you 
 come along." 
 
 Maud led me to one of those shops where people have 
 tea at one o'clock and fried eggs at four. Four or five 
 companies maintain many hundreds of them, and I re- 
 member that it struck me as splendid that there should 
 be hundreds of these shops ; it was ,& large idea, it con- 
 veyed a notion of national appetite ; and the uniformity 
 of the arrangement, the levelling of Bond Street and 
 Chiswick, held a suggestion of democracy. The more 
 uniform things are, the more they arc part of a civilisation. 
 
 "You better have a Kate and Sidney," said Maud; 
 " it's English, quite English you know. Hi ! Miss." 
 
 The black-clad, slim Miss responded sulkily to the 
 shrill cry, smiled when I looked at her. English girls 
 still smile when I look at them, even when I hardly notice 
 them : my e} f e has habits. 
 
 " You needn't keep a glowing orb on her," said Maud, 
 as the girl left, charged to bring us a " steak and kidney 
 pudding, with boiled, and half a veal an' ham pie, and 
 two coffees." " I didn't bring you here to make goo-goo 
 eyes . . . codfish." 
 
 " Oh ! but she was so pretty, Maud," I said, innocently. 
 " All the English girls are pretty. She had hair like the 
 sunshine — not like yours, of course; that is like the nuts 
 in September." 
 
 " Been kissing the Blarney Stone, Frenchy. But you 
 don't come it over me like that, even if I haven't got hair 
 like the moonshine or whatever you call it. Pretty ! 
 It's a lot you know about it ; why she's just a job lot of 
 broomsticks. And you should give up that habit, looking 
 at girls with that ' take me away and bury me near 
 mother ' look of yours." 
 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 69 
 
 " Look at that one with the green eyes and red hair," 
 I said, mischievously. 
 
 w Carrots t" ^ 
 
 And those two, the dark ones. They can't be 
 
 ; ish " 
 
 " S'pose I'm not English," Maud snapped. She was 
 
 angry, provoked by my open admiration for the others. 
 
 leaned her elbows on the table, propped her face 
 
 upon her hands ; two dimples appeared in the rosy cheeks. 
 
 I bent across the table. 
 
 " You're the Rose of England," I said ; " not the Rose of 
 England I thought I would find, you know, the White 
 Rose. You're the beautiful warm red rose, and your 
 eyes are like brown crystals, your hair is like mahogany, 
 and it shines like it, and your mouth is like red velvet 
 round two rows of pearls." 
 
 "My!" said Maud, smiling; " you can tell the tale, 
 
 Where did you learn English ? " 
 " I've always been learning English, I knew we should 
 
 ( ." 
 M Tell me another." 
 M I really did." 
 
 km't say ' I really did,' you dummy, say * honest.' 
 I tell you what, Caddy, you talk too well, you give your- 
 self away." 
 
 It was true; it was the grammatical excellence of my 
 
 d my foreignness : it has cost me years of 
 
 at labour to learn to speak as badly as the English. 
 
 I began to eat my first steak and kidney pudding : I 
 
 do not think I have ever tasted anything so delicious as 
 
 that first pudding; 1 rem* -ml >er the tender consistency of 
 
 net, the solid quality of the gravy, and the thrill 
 
 thai expected steak suddenly discovered 
 
 And I suppose that, after the oil of my fathers, 
 
 ligation of potatoes flavoured with nothing 
 
 but warm water. While Maud daintily pecked at the 
 
 and ham pie, Dibbling like a bird, she talked in- 
 intly, just then of her people. 
 " Oh, pa," to a question; " the 
 
70 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 dad's all right. He's a dignified old cock, but you 
 mustn't mind him, even if he will go on about his talky- 
 talkies. You just tell him a little bit out of Answers 
 once a week and he'll be happy like the larks in May." 
 
 " What does he do ? " 
 
 " He's in the City, like you ; the same sort pi job ; 
 that's how he got hold of you from a fellow in Barbezan. 
 We've been wanting a lodger. Oh, but don't let mother 
 catch you saying that : you're a paying guest, you know ; 
 ma's so genteel " 
 
 Maud began to laugh, and I laughed too when she ex- 
 plained the distinction. I liked this-'brusque, laughing girl", 
 for I saw she had no snobbery ; at least she never showed 
 signs of it except when she met the " skivvy " in the hall 
 on best hat days. Then Maud was " quite the lady." 
 
 " They're all right," she summed up, " but they're a 
 bit full of themselves. Lor', you wouldn't believe the 
 row there was when I said I'd go to the 'Cademy last 
 spring. It wasn't genteel. I'm going to be an actress, 
 you know." 
 
 " Is there a conservatory here ? " I asked, translating 
 at random, 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by a conservatory. I 
 go to Madame Tinman's — Mother Tinman they call her in 
 the profesh ! You've heard of her. What ! not heard 
 of Mother Tinman ? What did they teach you in Border? 
 Anyhow, I go there four times a week. Singing and 
 dancing's my line ; » singing's what I like : 
 
 " Oh, mother dear, sing mc to ileep 
 
 And beg the angels my soul keep . . ." 
 
 she humme^. " What d'you say to stewed fruit next?" 
 While we ate the stewed fruit she expatiated on her 
 work at Mother Tinman's, and I wondered at her small 
 appetite, for she had left half her pie; few French girls 
 would have done that. She seemed enthusiastic, and I 
 dimly realised that to this peculiar education of hers was 
 due the difference which existed between her and her 
 parents, and stodgy Lulu. Taken at sixteen from the 
 
MISS MAUD HOOPER 71 
 
 rigid gentility of Mrs. Hooper's home, from the limita- 
 of a budget of some two hundred and fifty a year, 
 she had been plunged into the artificial atmosphere of the 
 outer stage. At Mother Tinman's, I found out by degrees, 
 singing lessons were given by professionals who were 
 resting, and while voice production of a kind was taught 
 to w the voiceless as well as to the gifted, the pupils were 
 well fitted to earn money. 
 
 " You should hear old Bella Billion," said Maud : 
 " ' Never you mind if you can't go up to D,Vshe says, 
 1 you just keep your eye on the man in the stage box. 
 One wink for him and a nice goo-goo for the gallery^boy. 
 Twirl your sunshade, twirl away, tooraloo, and never 
 you mind the words so long, as you've the limelight on 
 your pearlies; the chorus's the thing, my gal; you sing 
 it to the gallery boy until he shouts it back at you. And 
 let him know you've got a knee^and frillies that weren't 
 washeti in printer's ink. Up and down, me dear, an' 
 round an' round, goo-goo, tooraloo, that's how you do 
 the trick, my gal.' Lor', it's enough to give you a fit on 
 the mat." 
 
 P don't think that for many months I understood 
 
 Maud and the jolly looseness of her talk, but there is 
 
 no' forgetting that extraordinary language of hers; its 
 
 >ulary is not very large. Bella Billion and her 
 
 the talk of cars and of trips to Maidenhead, of 
 
 f a hundred a week and the indiscretions of peers, 
 
 all this had created in Maud's pretty head an amazing 
 
 confusion. Gentility, propriety, all the English starch 
 
 had already been taken out of her by coarse English 
 
 < visibility. But, and this was amazing, personal 
 
 (I. I laid my hand upon hers, pressed 
 
 pointed finders. 
 
 (1 as she snatched her hand away. 
 
 Why did we go so freely ? I wondered. Matchmaking ? 
 
 no doubt, since marriage leads to love, they say, more 
 
 rarely than love 1<> m And English Utterly too. 
 
 ish liberty, how difficult it was to understand you 
 
 ice. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BARBEZAN AND CO. 
 I 
 
 The old firm received me well enough. The office 
 was large and rich; it occupied a whole floor in a new 
 Fenchurch Street skyscraper, and conveyed an impression 
 of well-oiled machinery. Letters were numbered and 
 sorted by the office boy into baskets, one of which was 
 known as the basket because it stood on Mr. "Lawton's 
 clesk; after Mr. Lawton had dealt with them they were 
 distributed by Mr. Hugh, mechanically acknowledged in 
 polite, stiff letters which began by " Sir " and ended 
 " yours obediently." I never heard of one unacknow- 
 ledged letter. They passed into obscurer baskets, were 
 collected by a junior clerk, who checked their numbers, 
 traced any that Mr. Lawton had held up in defiance of 
 his own rules. At last they went to the card-index, an 
 innovation which rather clashed with our formality, to 
 the files. We never lost a letter, forgot one entry. We 
 were never short of brown paper and string. 
 
 The extraordinary part of it was that this caused no 
 fuss. How things got done in that noiseless, swift way, 
 between ten and five, I can explain only by saying that 
 we never talked about work. We talked of other things, 
 and accordingly these grew confused, but work was done 
 in silence and seemed to demand no conferences. I 
 believe silence is England 1 . and I bore many a 
 
 snub before I acquired the habit. I had not been in 
 Barbezan a week before I began to learn that I, the foreign 
 correspondent, must do my own jobs, 
 
 " What is the address ? " I asked Mr. Hugh Lawton, who 
 72 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 73 
 
 had handed me a slip bearing, with the notes for a letter, 
 the name ' Marillot.' " And the whole name ? " 
 M You must look it up." 
 
 " Yes — but do those ships dock at Pauillac? " 
 " I cannot tell you." 
 
 I was minded to ask whether the tons referred to were 
 " short " or "long," but refrained, for Mr. Hugh had 
 already turned away and, in his cold, precise voice, was 
 telling Purkis he would need supplementary bills of lading 
 for the Florabel shipment. I realised, as I watched the 
 smooth back of his head, that I had been thrown into the 
 water, that nobody wanted to know whether I could swim, 
 that I would have to find all this out. I might drown — 
 but then, if I struggled I would not drown; such is 
 the English way of teaching people to swim. 
 
 Magic English business, when I think of you to-day, 
 I have my boyish impression of England as wealth; 
 your wheels revolve silent and steady, grinding out gold, 
 without waste of material or time; you pass from father 
 to son, you endure for ever, and you are a concern so 
 sacred that you must be shielded from the prying eyes 
 of woman. There are three kinds of Englishmen who 
 • fit rust no secrets to their wives: Cabinet Ministers, 
 nasons and business men, and as the latter are more 
 numerous than the other two classes they set the tone 
 for tip ir rare. The English business man is most interest- 
 confronted with a new appliance or a new idea; 
 he sniffs it like a dog who is offered a piece, let us say, of 
 wild boar, or some other outlandish food; he feels it 
 hut novel ; it must be looked at, smcllcd, 
 ! in the air to see whether it falls properly 
 : and hai At List it may be nibbled, then 
 
 lily eaten. Then the two, dog and Englishman, sit 
 id declare each in his own way that he has hungered 
 
 for tin, tor years, that he has made special efforts to 
 
 procure it and that he is not in the least afraid of 
 
 !fy. 
 
 'Hi -w Phi!,! i| the calculator. Purkis, 
 
 when I lirst knew him, was elderly : I met him in Moor- 
 
 I) 2 
 
74 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 gate Street last week and he is as elderly as ever, but not 
 a day older though ten years have elapsed. On the calcu- 
 lator occasion he appeared to me as a short man, with a 
 square face and sparse brown hair in which ran some silver 
 streaks. Small and very delicate* hands contrasted with 
 his bulky body, especially in his familiar attitude, when 
 he leaned his shoulders against the mantelpiece and crossed 
 his hands upon his rather aggressive paunch. Purkis 
 looked so broad, then, that I had to think of a frog. 
 
 That was the attitude he adopted when a new idea 
 arrived in Fenchurch Street. Purkis would examine 
 it with suspicious grey eyes, clench his little hands upon 
 his large stomach and say : 
 
 " What are we coming to next ? " or "I don't know 
 anything about it." 
 
 The first formula meant that Purkis was willing to 
 tolerate the intruder; the second that he didn't want to 
 know anything about it. Remove the bauble. Purkis 
 had said " I don't know anything about it "to the German 
 canvasser who now stood in front of him, amiably blink- 
 ing behind his gold-rimmed glasses and quite unaware 
 that Purkis had pronounced sentence, that all he had to do 
 was to take the calculator out and hang it. 
 
 " Ver' goot thing," he * remarked, genially. "It will 
 do all calculations." 
 
 The German turned from the impassive Purkis to me, 
 in whom he divined interest : " You say figures. I 
 multiply." 
 
 I made up a terrific sum, a multiplication of five or six 
 figures by five or six more, behind which trailed treacherous 
 decimals, the sort of multiplication I hope never to have to 
 effect. The Grerman threw me a gratified glance : "Ver' 
 simple, ver' simple," he muttered. deftly seized 
 
 lever after lever, pulled each one down to the indicator 
 figure while my fantastic multiplicand appeared in the 
 upper frame, lie smiled at the machine from under his 
 yellow moustache, seized the lever; hall a dozen rasping 
 sounds, click, moi another click, rasp, rasp, rasp. 
 
 The German drew ,back, pointed triumphantly at the 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 75 
 
 machine ; he evidently looked upon the product as a work 
 of art. 
 
 " So ! " he said, triumphantly. 
 
 " How do\you know it's right ? " asked the calm voice 
 of Mr. Hugh, who had come in. 
 
 The German drew himself up, as if tempted to hand the 
 questioner a card and a cartel, then decided to clear the 
 machine's reputation. 
 
 " I prove it now," he said. He looked at Purkis 
 defiantly, solemnly handed me a slip on which he had 
 written the multiplicand. A quick shift of the levers, the 
 product became a dividend, the multiplier a divisor; the 
 lever was rotated towards the operator and, preceded by a 
 tornado of clicks, the quotient suddenly showed the 
 figures of the written multiplicand. It was exactly like 
 a conjuring trick. 
 
 " Ver' simple," he declared, as a cherubic smile illumined 
 his rosy face. 
 
 " That's rather ingenious," said Mr. Hugh, and began 
 to linger the levers. " It might be handy for those 
 long statements of gross weights. What do you think, 
 Purkis?" 
 
 " J don't know anything about it, Sir." 
 
 " Oh, I egsplain — £' the German protected. 
 
 " No, I understand. How much docs it cost? " 
 
 M Twenty-six pounds — " 
 
 Ml right. Send in the bill." 
 
 While the German wreaked his ve~ngeance on Purkis 
 
 tplaining to him everything that might be done with 
 
 a calculator, 1 was able to meditate on the swollen rash- 
 
 • business methods. Twenty-six pounds! 
 
 ish mini ich, but — I found this out later, 
 
 do not like small i ; if the German had 
 
 wanted twenty-ox shillings he would have had no order; 
 
 would have been nothing tmpressive in his new 
 
 I don't know anythiu it," said Purkis iu> 
 
 t ii (, rmaf] i !' ; t h • oili"<'. He did 
 • thai h i ii \ tiling about it, 
 
76 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 and he never will ; he will do the gross weights state- 
 ments himself with a pencil, but he will not touch the 
 calculator; no junior has ever used it in his presence 
 without being told to take the damned thing into the 
 waiting-room. The calculator may grow old and decayed ; 
 it may even get out of order and thus become thoroughly 
 respectable, but Purkis will never recognise it : in his own 
 phrase, " that would never do." 
 
 Certainly Hugh Lawton was of a different type. He 
 had recently come down from Oxford (in those days I 
 said " up ") with a pass degree and, though he has never 
 told me so, I now know from a chance reference to 
 " notions " that he had been through Winchester. Hugh 
 Lawton was then twenty-three or four, and so very much 
 of a young Roman that some uninformed girls called him 
 " The Greek God." Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, 
 slim-hipped, with a high, white forehead, calm, blue eyes, 
 a nose on the bridge of which there was but little thick- 
 ness of skin, he attracted attention even in this England, 
 whose sons are the sons of Apollo; he had a long, thin- 
 lipped mouth, a resolute chin; his large white hands 
 were always in good condition, though never manicured. 
 Upon his loose limbs clothes hung so easily that I was re- 
 minded again of a Roman statue whose toga and limbs 
 are hewn of one piece. Indeed, it was pathetic to see 
 him stand next to Purkis : there was such sharp contrast 
 between their trouser knees. 
 
 I do not want to dwell upon Hugh Lawton's clothes, 
 though they were a bitterness to me in those early days ; 
 he had his father's recipe for white collars, and his ties, 
 always faint in shade, must have been specially made 
 for him, as I never managed to match them. But his 
 clothes were significant because they expressed him, very 
 much, I suppose, as mine revealed my own individuality. 
 It is not enough to say that Hugh never appeared with 
 a red tie or a purple shirt: 'it was impossible for him 
 to do so; it could not have occurred to him to buy such 
 things. The things he did buy were so neutral tli;it they 
 were, in a sense, a negation rather than an assertion of 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 77 
 
 attire; like most Englishmen of his class he was dressed, 
 while I was got up. He could do nothing so positive 
 as get himself up. I have never yet seen signs of his doing 
 anything positive. 
 
 The strength of Hugh Lawton lay in his abstentions. 
 He did not speak much, he did not gossip, he did not 
 plead or urge ; * twice only in his intercourse with me did 
 he lay down views, and they turned out to be those of 
 bis class. But if he did not obtrude himself he did not 
 draw back ; he stood, as his nation has stood in every part 
 of the world, until the world, tired of wondering whether 
 it would go away, let it stay. In the more familiar atmo- 
 sphere of his father's house he laid down views from time 
 to time, and this does not go counter to what I have said 
 of his silence and the two breaks that took place in it : 
 the dinner-table and drawing-room remarks were hardly 
 views, they were statements, and ex parte statements only 
 in so far as they were repetitions of equally motiveless 
 statements taken from his newspaper. Though a Liberal 
 is no Liberal partisan: he was a Liberal because 
 his father supported the Liberals, a Liberal by right of 
 birth. 
 
 How Hugh Lawton came to tolerate Liberalism I do 
 not yet. know, unless he tolerated it because he accepted 
 conditions as they were. His indifference was foreign 
 to tli spirit of rank-and-file Liberalism*; I never 
 
 frit that he approved of the Liberal creed, but I am 
 quite sun- that lie did not disapprove of it; certainly 
 he had not attained acceptance of his party's theories 
 lint of scepticism. Certainly! I do not know that 
 
 I dai for Hugh Lawton must have 
 
 had lifr; he must have had, hreause I never 
 
 found that he had a public one; I never knew him to 
 
 his admiration for a movement not comprised 
 
 Within tin- party Creed; he had many friends but I do 
 
 not know whether he eared for them; I have never been 
 
 re thai he fell in love, though he paid moderate 
 
 impartial attentions to many friends of his sisters. 
 
 II earn: M neutral; some mental modesty 
 
78 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 must have concealed — what? And when I speculate 
 on this problem I am carried away by my prejudices; 
 I think of another Hugh Lawton, out for adventure^ in 
 the shining armour of idealism, and of yet another, with 
 flushed face and glowing eyes, intent upon the pursuit 
 of some base passion. What did he do ? Secretly drink ? 
 Smoke opium or gamble near Tottenham Court Road? 
 Pursue some strange loves ? I don't know. I shall never 
 know; it is impossible that there was nothing behind 
 that rigid face — no desire, no hope, no lust. But how is 
 one to find out ? 
 
 His tastes were not evidence, for they were not definite. 
 He saw, I believe, most plays as they came out, one night 
 the latest " Girl," the other some gloomy importation 
 from Sweden; if a play was produced at, say, the Hay- 
 market, he went ; if it was produced at the Court he did not. 
 It did not matter what the play was, it mattered what the 
 theatre was, who the players were/ I think he read a few 
 books, not many, but the contrasts wtere amazing; he 
 shrank neither from the Life of Gladstone nor from paper- 
 backed novels which were finally stolen and enjoyed by 
 the housemaid. He liked games : that is, he played them, 
 but he displayed no enthusiasm. He neither ate much nor 
 drank much, nor smoked much, but he did not openly dis- 
 approve of teetotallers and non-smokers. Infrequently he 
 swore, but without conviction. I believe he did not swear 
 because he was irritated, but because most men swore;. 
 
 The mystery of Hugh Lawton is the mystery of England, 
 and it is insoluble; no steps are taken to guard it, but 
 I suspect it is guarded by the immense inarticulate 
 of the English. They do not feel the need to explain 
 themselves; if others explain them they do not protest. 
 Perhaps they do not understand, and perhaps they do 
 not care. But in those days I felt this English mystery 
 as a reserve of power; I knew that Hugh Lawton would 
 never give himself away, never lav himself open to attack ; 
 he was the tortoise, typical of his race, able to hear all 
 blows on its shell and resolved on one thing^only : that 
 it would never, never, never put out its head. 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 79 
 
 I admired, and I still admire Hugh Lawton. I admire 
 him impersonally as a statue, an opera or a principle, 
 a thing the appeal of which is inherent to itself and not 
 dependent on clamorous expression. Though I do not 
 completely understand him, I feel him to be fixed. He 
 is permanent, he is like the Oxford turf, mown, watered, 
 and rolled for three hundred years ; a western civilisation 
 has made of him a finished product, and it may be that 
 his existence is a presage of defeat : breeding cannot 
 go higher, but it can go lower. Too much he towers 
 over the underman, and too unconscious is he to be the 
 overman ; he is the finest product of the average of his 
 
 . the apogee of the commonplace, and with him 
 
 land stands in apotheosis. 
 
 i 
 II 
 
 Hugh Lawton stood as a banner, dignifying Barbezan 
 
 . ; his commercial training was less than mine, but 
 he had common sense : that is to say he was so afraid 
 of committing himself that he was never likely to do N the 
 wrong thing : whether he was likely to do the right one 
 
 •pen to quesl ion. lie was, at^hat time, head of the 
 
 here I suspect Barker did the work, 
 
 witli lit 1 1 < - Merton, the junior, while I took over the cor- 
 
 indence in French and German under the kindly 
 rule of old Purkis. (They called him old Purkis when 
 
 tttered t he office at the age of twenty-five.) Old 
 
 Puikis, who loved only one thing in (he world, his garden 
 
 at Pcnge (he really did live at Penge though he called it 
 
 bad mad' friend of Farr, his second, 
 
 be too loved, in order, his garden at Hornsey, 
 
 then his nan. then his wife, who was the most 
 
 leifll] woman in the world. Fait was about thirty; 
 h< bad a round, v with two black currants stuck 
 
 in fol Msc in the world. I think 
 
 I disliked him at first rigfaJ because black hairs grew 
 perpendicularly from his wide nostrils. Then Farr saw 
 men If, and that J found hard to forgive, 
 
80 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 as hard as it had been to forgive Chaverac, the witness of 
 my cowardice. 
 
 After I had been a month in the office Farr saw me, 
 one afternoon, putting on my hat. I forget where I was 
 going to. He called me back. " Oh, Cadoresse," he 
 said with hesitation, " as you're going out, do you mind 
 paying this cheque in ? It's five to four and the sergeant's 
 out, while Lord knows where Tyler is. You don't mind, 
 do you? " 
 
 I hesitated, for it did not seem to me right that the 
 foreign correspondent should do commissionaire's work. 
 One must preserve one's dignity. Still, I took the cheque 
 without a word and went out with an air of erectness 
 intended to convey that I was condescending. When I 
 reached the bank I looked at the cheque, a large one, 
 for over two thousand pounds and, though I knew that a 
 cheque already endorsed and crossed with the name of 
 the bank was of no use to me, it pleased me to be handling 
 even the dummy of so large a sum. I pushed the cheque 
 and paying-in book under the cashier's little railing; he 
 glanced at the cheque, turned it over, made a tick on 
 the foil as he tore out the slip, and pushed the book back 
 with a mumbled " all right." 
 
 I waited. A liveried commissionaire gently pushed me 
 to show that he had his business to do. At last the 
 cashier looked up. 
 
 " Yes ? " he said. 
 
 " I am waiting for a receipt." 
 
 "Receipt?" He had blue eyes, and they bulged 
 under his raised white eyebrows. 
 
 " Yes, a receipt for this cheque." I showed the paying- 
 in book. 
 
 " We don't give receipts." 
 
 « But " I faltered. 
 
 rry up," the commissionaire remarked. 
 
 " Hanks don't give receipts/' said the old man sulkily. 
 '" Here." II<- held out his hand for the book the com- 
 missionaire was putting through the bars. The push 
 became harder. I found myself being edged along 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 81 
 
 the counter. I remember protesting again, being pushed 
 still further away, for two clerks had hurried in as four 
 was about to strike. 
 
 I left the bank more dismayed than angry, for I had 
 not seen the commissionaire leave, with or without a 
 receipt; besides, nothing showed that he had paid in 
 cheques ; while I did my own short business I remember 
 the oppression of the affair; I wondered whether this 
 were serious, what Barbezan & Co. would say; at any 
 rate I could swear I had paid the cheque in. I rehearsed 
 my speech to be delivered in the witness-box; it was a 
 fine, manly speech ; I squared my shoulders as I delivered 
 it. When I returned to the office my heart was beating, 
 and I laid the book in front of Farr, pale but determined. 
 
 44 They did not give me a receipt," I faltered. 
 
 14 \ receipt? What do you want a receipt for? " 
 
 " Is it not right we should have a receipt ? " 
 
 44 What do 'you want a receipt for? " 
 
 The stupid repetition angered me. I hated the white 
 hoe and the rigid black hair. 
 
 44 We fill up a form in France and we always have a 
 pt," I said, obstinately. 
 
 44 Well, we aren't in France." 
 
 44 It is a curious way to do business," I persevered. 
 
 44 Oh, don't be a silly fool." 
 
 In the moment of silence that followed I felt my cheeks 
 grow very hot. He had insulted me! And in that 
 moment the whole of the scene on the hill, so many years 
 unrolled on the film that obscured my eyes. Never 
 Main ! At least this time I would be no coward. Vyhile, 
 with extreme dignity, I took out my card-case, I had a 
 vision of this low fellow neatly spitted on my sword. 
 The point. I f<lt certain, would slick out between his 
 ihoulder-blad 
 
 *• Lord ! "* i 1 as he took up my card; 44 what's 
 
 this 
 
 •• You have insulted me. You will receive my seconds 
 to-morrow." 
 
 me larger than I had ever 
 
82 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 seen them before; his open mouth showed irregular 
 pointed teeth. . Suddenly he threw himself back in his 
 chair, and roar after roar of laughter came from him, 
 while I looked at him severely, my right hand on my hip. 
 Barker, who was at that time consulting a reference 
 book on the corner table, looked up. 
 
 " What's the joke ? " he asked. 
 
 Young Tyler came up to us, as if by accident, and framed 
 in the door I saw Merton. 
 
 " He — Cadoresse " Farr gasped, pointing a stubby, 
 
 white finger at me. Then he collapsed again, waving my 
 card. 
 
 A group formed about us. 
 
 " Take his, collar off," said Barker. 
 ■ " Give the gentleman air," Merton suggested. 
 
 44 No, no," Farr wheezed ; then he recovered. 4 ' Cador- 
 esse has challenged me. I'm in for a bloomin 5 
 duel." 
 
 Then they all laughed, and I could hardly understand 
 them, for they talked all together, and Purkis, who came 1 
 in to ask what the noise was about, exploded into feeble 
 titters. 
 
 44 At your disposal, Mr. Shivaleer," said Farr, bowing, 
 with his hands on his chest ; 44 but I choose the weapons. 
 What do you say to safety pins ? " 
 
 44 A gentleman fights with the weapons of gentlemen," 
 I said, but I was no longer secure 1 in my dignity. 
 
 I was overwhelmed with pleasantries ; Barker sug- 
 gested squirts ; Merton asked whether we would all go 
 to B'long for the week-end and would I show them the 
 sights after honour had been satisfied. Even Tyler, 
 my despised junior, ventured to ask whether breastplates 
 were barred. 
 
 I turned away, I twirled my little black moustache 
 as I went to my desk. I ought to have known better 
 than mix myself up in a brawl with my inferiors. 
 
 44 I don't know anything about it," Purkis summed up 
 as he left the room. 
 
 Of course not. ilis sort didn't. 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 83 
 
 III 
 
 I suppose I was a silly young man. Perhaps I was 
 morbidly sensitive rather than silly ; I resented anything 
 tli tt displeased me in England, less because it displeased 
 me than because I could not bear to think there was 
 anything displeasing in England. The duel represented 
 one of the gaps in my knowledge of the English; I had 
 not read enough modern literature to understand that 
 Walter Seott was properly dead. I found myself famous 
 in the office; the word " shivaleer " clove to me, or 
 I was called " the Knight," and " Cyrano," for Coquelin 
 had recently come to London. I was subjected to chaff, 
 the chaff I have found so difficult to grow accustomed to; 
 I had to get used to being asked how many frx>gs I had 
 had for breakfast, to be hailed with " Hullo, socialism," 
 if I wore my favourite red tie, to be told not to go for 
 my landlady with a fork if the peas were hard. 
 
 ff ! Amazing island in English reserve, right to 
 
 1 and reciprocal insult. Englishmen could not 
 
 ate that which they do if they were not phlegmatic, 
 
 •hatic. I have not yet found out why an Englishman 
 
 who will not venture to ask you how much you earn a 
 
 will address \<>n as " gold bug " if you buy a 
 
 sixpenny paper. We Frenchmen don't chaff: we dare 
 
 did, we should be fighting all day. I do 
 
 not like chaff now — it makes me a little uncomfortable, 
 
 quite sure that I know the ring of it; but 
 
 I have accepted that the duel is 
 
 ! noilgh for me that the Engjjsh should chaff 
 
 their difft hould be settled by list or writ : 
 
 c;ni do no «TOng, So determined was I already in 
 
 this thai 1 ed to the detested Fair, 
 
 ation did qtol ; it spread over the 
 
 BBoe and entertained it for weeks, it 
 
 bed Hugh Lawton, who dded to the end 
 
 of a letter I. : 
 
 "I it duel, I '. It's not done, 
 
 • n't done." 
 
84 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Well, if it wasn't done I wouldn't do it. I might not, 
 in Rome, do as the Romans did, but in London I would 
 certainly do as the English did. Was I not going to be 
 an Englishman ? a real, beef-eating, beer-drinking, sport- 
 ing Englishman ? A fury of Anglicisation came over me. 
 I watched Barker furtively as he worked, for he was very 
 well dressed/ and as I was still far too proud to ask for 
 the address of his tailor, I covertly examined his coat when 
 he went out to wash. The result was not quite a success, 
 for I chose an aggressive Donegal tweed, and, as I felt my 
 clothes were too tight, had it made several sizes too large. 
 It fitted me as a sack does a potato. I was nicknamed the 
 teddy-bear. Then I had my hair cut very short. 
 
 " 'Ello, Dartmoor," said Maud, playfully, when I came 
 home. I realised that I talked too much : I became 
 wooden. I even thought of shaving off my little black 
 moustache, but Maud would not hear of it. I was going to 
 be English, one of these splendid calm people, whose temper 
 was so easy that insult could rebound from them ; I was 
 going to be silent, self-reliant, purposeful, in brief Olympian. 
 And I was going to speak English like an Englishman. 
 
 In those days I overdid it, for I was not content with 
 continually noting idioms, looking up new words and 
 grammatical rules : I wanted to obliterate from English 
 the intruding Latin, I was as enthusiastic as the German 
 who substituted " Fernsprecher " for " telephone." You 
 v/ill picture me, then, at six o'clock, in a deserted office 
 and quite unmindful of Maud ; I have a French dictionary 
 and an etymological dictionary and I translate from a 
 newspaper : 
 
 " Our constitution, derived from the customs of 
 ancient England, is a monument which no Cabinet 
 will venture to destroy — " 
 
 Latin ! good enough for the English, but not for a would- 
 
 be Englishman. I remember my patriotic translation : 
 
 " Our laws, which have come down to us from our 
 
 fathers, are a tower that no henchman of the King 
 
 will dare to cast down — " 
 
BAR]3EZAN AND CO. 85 
 
 The word " tower " was a great trouble to me ; " hench- 
 men of the King " was, I felt, a subterfuge made necessary 
 by the non-delegation of the powers of the moot; yet 
 it could pass, while tower could not. But there seemed 
 to be no Anglo-Saxon idea of monument, and the Eliza- 
 bethans were so woefully foreign. The Elizabethans were 
 not good enough for me, and I had not yet discovered 
 Miles Coverdale. 
 
 My enthusiasm was damped by another of those little 
 incidents which make up the history of my first months 
 with Barbezan. 
 
 I had come to London well primed with commercial 
 phrases, my tongue glib with " yours to hand of the 8th 
 inst.," and " as per contra," and the other barbarisms, 
 but I began to rebel. I did not like these sentences, 
 which could be translated almost word for word into 
 any one of the atrocities the world chooses to call business 
 forms. I decided to redeem the unliterary City, and I 
 decided to be original. 
 
 It is digressing to tell what I suffered because I was not 
 
 allowed to be original or distinguished, but I digress as 
 
 docs a sheep in a new and succulent pasturage, where it 
 
 town ids a tender shoot before it has munched the 
 
 a just bitten off ; they are too rich, those English 
 
 fields.. I suffered from obscurity because I had never 
 
 Jmown it before ; as a child I had recited fables to admir- 
 
 B a boy I had stacked my prizes in the draw- 
 
 room and exacted tribute whenever the graveyard was 
 
 (1 ; and then it had been youth, more academic 
 
 modish clothes, minor prowess in athletics. 
 
 I do not think I had ever hit a tennis ball over the net 
 
 without looking whether the performance was 
 
 • vtd. Jr J. as Hugh Lawton said, this was 
 
 n<»t done. And though the avarice of this country when 
 
 d of it, galled me, 1 accepted it as a harsh 
 
 but beneficent tome ; was it not the custom of this 
 
 northern Rome to give no credit, to recognise naught 
 
 duty done? 
 But I had to swallow my tonic, and it was nasty. If 
 
86 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 the draught contained in the duel was unpleasant, oti 
 as bad and worse, had to be swallowed too. The famous 
 Saxon business letter was one of those. I have forgotten 
 the bulk of it, but I believe that in my enthusiasm I 
 began by telling our correspondent, who had asked for 
 a r -rebate on Barbezan's commission, that " We begged to 
 acknowledge his writing of the fourth of last month " ; 
 I then went on to " We must say, in answer, that we cannot 
 grant that our share in the yield of the business is over 
 great — " I assured him at the. end, having been in- 
 structed to say that our " charges were so inadequate as 
 barely to balance our working expenses," that " our 
 share was so small as to be less than our need." 
 
 I was called into Mr. Lawton's private room. He sat 
 at a large knee-hole desk — a handsome man, then close 
 on fifty and very like Hugh. In front of him was my 
 remarkable screed. 
 
 " Qu'est-ce que e'est qy,e cela, Cadoresse ? " he asked, 
 taking it up. 
 
 " That is the letter to Burland & Co.," I said. 
 
 "Yes," he said after a pause; "that's all very well. 
 But why ' our share in the yield of the business is not over 
 great ? ' Why not 4 the commission is in ' accordance 
 with current practice ' ? " 
 
 This did not sound like a very good phrase, even in 
 City Latin English. But I ignored that, fell back on 
 my main defence : 
 
 " Mine," I said, carefully choosing my words, " is 
 written in Saxon, in Gothic alone." 
 
 " In Gothic alone," gasped Mr. Lawton. Then he 
 began to laugh, while I stood in front of the desk, very 
 mortified and rather angry. " But what do you want to 
 write Gothic for? You'll be making up charter-parties 
 in black-letter by and by." 
 
 " Gothic, or Saxon," I said, and paused reverently, 
 " is a wonderful tongue, Mr. Lawton, it is so full of mean- 
 ing, so concise — " 
 
 " Concise," said Mr. Lawton, wickedly, " is not Saxon. 
 You are falling from grace." 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 87 
 
 But I was too excited to feel his shaft. I wanted to tell 
 him how much I loved the word " craft " and hated 
 "art," how inferior " remarkable " was to "wonder- 
 ful " j I was making a bad case, I was carried away by 
 analogy; in my mistaken philological zeal I branded as 
 Low Latin honest Prankish words which had strayed 
 into French. I buttressed my view with Shakespeare, 
 the Bible and Fletcher (whom I had never read); I 
 stuttered in vain <*f forts readily to find Saxon equivalents 
 of " psychology " and " retrograde." I tried to make him 
 feel my craving to be English, historically English. 
 
 He listened up to the end, without interrupting me, 
 holding his chin in his left hand. Then he looked up at 
 me with amusement in his eyes. 
 
 " So you're going to be the John Bright of Fenchurch 
 Street ? I'm sorry for you, Cadoresse, you'll have a rotten 
 1 1 1 j t< -. But, really, are you only a silly ass or are you 
 pulling my leg? What are you doing? " 
 
 I blushed and confessed that I had noted the idiom in* 
 my pocket-book, for inquiry. 
 
 " Well, you're trying, anyhow," he said, laughing again. 
 " But you'd better not go too far. I'm afraid you're 
 plus anglais que les Anglais, Cadoresse." 
 
 Th«* lett< r was r« written. But, a week later, I received 
 an invitation to dine at Lancaster Gate, of which I shall 
 have something to say; that was a very good ending to 
 the affair; at hast it seemed good until Muriel Lawton 
 quietly asked me whether I was the " Girondin Ancient 
 m." 
 
 «: 
 
 IV 
 
 I had reprcssscd my desire to talk of Maud, though 
 
 tonally arch about a certain Dora whom 
 
 iroured for lunch, while Tyler and Merton frequently 
 
 exchanged within my hearing views, on women where 
 
 biblical BUbftantivefl and Stuart adjectives curiously 
 
 with modern Cockney. Prudence or reserve pre- 
 
 ed me from doing lik . nothing is, after all, 
 
88 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 so interesting to talk about as women, especially con- 
 quered women. But then I had not conquered Maud. 
 Three months had elapsed, and I did not seem to have 
 advanced much beyond the /stage I attained the first 
 evening, though our opportunities were many, while 
 the tolerance that surrounded us was almost incompre- 
 hensible. Lulu did not trouble us, any more than she 
 troubled anybody else; the sulky flaxen-haired girl 
 had not in three months exchanged with me more than 
 a dozen sentences beyond daily salutations. Lulu seemed 
 to live in a dream, and I realised that this was a dream 
 of romance induced by her fierce appetite for novelettes. 
 If I met Lulu in the hall she was either coming in or going 
 out with Bella's Millions or Daisy and the Duke; some- 
 times she was coming in with a bundle of these things, 
 which she bought in the Edgware Road at the rate of 
 seven for sixpence ; and though they evidently served her 
 as a drug, she was not ashamed of them. Perhaps they 
 were a habit rather than a drug, and they bred in me 
 another habit, that of thinking of her (infrequently) 
 in her studious attitude : china-blue eyes and mouth 
 open, absolute inexprcssiveness ; she seldom laughed or 
 wept; she read. And then she forgot. This I know, 
 for Lulu left novelettes behind her like a trail ; I found 
 them on the dining-room sideboard, in the drawing- 
 room, in other places the most remarkable of which was 
 not the bath-room. So I ventured to experiment, to 
 steal a novelette from the new set she had left on a chair 
 and substitute an old one, which happened to be clean. 
 I told Maud, but she remained unmoved. 
 " Bless you," she said, " she'll never know." 
 Certainly she showed no sign of knowing, for she read 
 the old novelette right through. Maud was not afflicted 
 with the same disease : her reading, in addition to the 
 Daily Graphic (discarded a few months later for the 
 Mirror) was made up mainly of the Era, which she went 
 through from title to printer's name and of the Sporting 
 and Dramatic, in which sin- held a sixth share with "five 
 other members of the Tinman Academy. 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 89 
 
 M We draw for it once a week," she confided to me; 
 " comes in handy for cutting out ; got Sarer Bernard 
 out of it this time, stuck her in the looking-glass." 
 
 I found out that Maud had plastered the wall-paper 
 in her corner of the bedroom with pictures of a number of 
 actors and actresses and especially of comedians. One 
 picture postcard, too valuable to be put in the album, 
 was signed " Yours sincerely, Dan Leno." 
 
 " He did 'em for the lot of us this summer, when old 
 Tinman took us to his special." 
 
 This is hearsay, for I had never entered the bedroom 
 Maud shared with Lulu, and I never entered it to the end. 
 I once caught Maud on the threshold before dinner, 
 but as I moved she slammed the door in my face and did 
 not speak to me that evening. Truly Mr. and Mrs. Hooper 
 were justified in their trust ; the}' accepted that Maud and 
 1 were great friends, could afford to let us wrangle and talk 
 all the evening in the dining-room. The family never 
 assembled in the drawing-room after the first evening. 
 
 " You don't mind, Mr. Cadoresse, do you ? " said Mrs. 
 
 Hooper. " I think the dining-room's so much more homey." 
 
 I agreed, and for my part, never put my evening clothes 
 
 on again to dine at St. Mary's Terrace. We settled very 
 
 comfortably in the dining-room, where Mrs. Hooper 
 
 on working tea-cloths and table-centres, to be given 
 
 away in due course on birthdays and Christmases ; Lulu 
 
 lly read of peers, honest maidens and motor-car 
 
 elopements (1 wonder whether they elope in aeroplanes 
 
 in the modern novelette); Mr. Hooper was out three 
 
 ■ < i !;. <i. hating, or attending Masonic meetings : 
 
 on other nights he often engaged me in conversation 
 
 M Tin history and customs of foreign peoples " or 
 
 his substitute for the Bible, Fyfe's Five Thousand 
 
 and Fancies. Meanwhile I worked with grammar 
 
 and dictionary until Maud; jealous of my absorption in 
 
 anything but herself, though she did not seem particularly 
 
 nit my attentions, suddenly threw a newspaper or 
 
 of cotton on my open book. 
 
 threw, and an expression in hei eyes told 
 
90 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 me when she was about to do so ; it was her instinct : in 
 a. Swiss hotel she would have thrown bread by the pound. 
 
 " Maud, my dear, how can you ? " Mrs. Hooper would 
 say, with a look of reproach in her mild eyes. But Maud 
 could, and her mother had given up serious interference. 
 Sometimes we made too much noise, disturbed Mr. Hooper 
 in his study of Five Thousand Facts and Fancies ; on 
 one of these occasions he raised his head and remarked : 
 
 " Since you've got to make so much noise, Maud, you'd 
 better go up to the drawing-room and try the piano." 
 
 " Talk of bright ideas !" Maud cried; "you take the 
 biscuit, Pa." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Maud," said Mrs. 
 Hooper, helpless but admiring. " Don't turn all the gas 
 on, dear." 
 
 " 1 won't .turn any gas on at all. You can listen, and 
 hear me read you off the Dead March in Saul, as sung by 
 Mr. Dutch Daly, Esquire, all done by kindness and by the 
 light of my glowing orb. Come along and be the stalls, 
 old coffee-pot." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't call Mr. Cadoresse " coffee-pot," 
 moaned Mrs. Hooper. 
 
 " Well, he is a coffee-pot, aren't you ? Or is it the Red 
 Lion you slip round to every night on the Q. T. ? " 
 
 " It's only coffee," I said as I opened the door' for her. 
 " Honest Injun." 
 
 " That's right, we'll make a John Bull of you by and 
 by, I don't think." 
 
 It was not the first time I had been allowed to accompany 
 Maud to the icy drawing-room, where she tortured the 
 old piano into songs in which were weepings and wailings 
 and the gnashing of wires. It no longer struck me as 
 extraordinary to be alone with her; I was contented, 
 having hadmy coffee at a dreadful little Italian restaurant 
 in the Harrow Road; I was in the after-dinner gallant 
 mood. 
 
 " Stop it," said Maud, freeing herself from my sudden 
 grasp as we entered the dark room. " Stop it, I say. 
 I won't have my hair pulled." 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 91 
 
 I kissed her at random on neck and cheek, seeking her 
 lips. 
 
 " Oh ! do behave," she protested, weakly ; then she 
 pushed me away. " If you don't stop it I'll go downstairs 
 again.". I released her. "There. That's better. You 
 be good." She kissed me lightly on the cheek, murmured 
 " sauce-box," and eluded me in the dark. 
 
 I lit the candles for her, as I had learned that she must 
 not be coerced; she had to be irritated by indifference 
 or handled as lightly as a butterfly. 
 
 " You dare," she said warningly, and began one of her 
 
 noisy tunes. She smiled, rolled her brown eyes and shook 
 
 her curls. Smiling all the time, she sang a tune I had heard 
 
 iy at some hall. It was incongruous to hear this 
 
 pretty girl declare that : 
 
 It ain't all 'oney and it ain't all jam, 
 
 Wheelin' round the 'ouses a three -wheeled pram . . . 
 
 And it was delightful that this dainty creature should 
 sing of slums, babies, pubs, lodgers, sausages and cheese ; 
 18 unexpected; she was the ilower on a dunghill. 
 I laughed as she san<r, and she smiled more broadly. 
 roguishly, and I went to her side, gently 
 stroked tin- back of her firm neck; she seemed indifferent 
 to ti it on with her song : 
 
 ... I 'aven't any money, I go nuffin' to eat, 
 
 I'm walkin' round tho 'ouses on mo poor ole feet . . . 
 
 I leaned down and softly kissed her neck, first on the left 
 tie further, and then again, surrounding her 
 plump neck with a ring of kisses. She continued to sing 
 with king to appreciate tin- can 
 
 lie know I w;is k : 
 " Oo," she said at last, M you're tieklit 
 But still she wenl on singing, and she did not strike 
 a single wrong note though I went on caressing her neck, 
 playing with her soft brown curls. And even when I 
 
 1 herein] ed her mouth, 
 
02 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 she showed no anger : as soon as I released her she burst 
 out with : 
 
 Good-bye, oh, rose of summer's sowing, 
 Good-bye, oh, flower-scented wind . . . 
 
 " Oh, do give over," she protested angrily, for I had 
 put my arm round her waist, lifted her off the piano stool ; 
 I crushed her against my chest, covered her face with 
 greedy kisses; a thin film hung over my eyes, so that, 
 round a candle, I could see a zone of purple. 
 
 " Maud, Maud, my darling, my angel, I love you, 
 I adore you," I murmured thickly into her hair. She 
 did not struggle, she seemed frightened as I grew bolder. 
 And for a moment she seemed to respond to my passion ; 
 she coiled one arm round my neck, and as our lips met I 
 had the terrible thrill of victory. 
 
 " Do you love me ? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, go on." 
 
 " You do." 
 
 " Well, perhaps I do." 
 
 "Say it." 
 
 " Say it," I repeated fiercely, and I think that in my 
 anger I savagely shook her. 
 
 " I do love you." 
 
 And with that I had to be content ; never did she say 
 pimply ancj splendidly, the te I love you " for which I 
 waited. She seemed to respond, she did not rebel against 
 my- caresses, but she had her fixed limits and, if I grew 
 over-bold, would repulse me without showing offence 
 or content. 
 
 " Now then, that'll do," she said at last that night ; 
 "stop it. What d'you take me for? Bit o' butter* 
 scotch?" 
 
 She sat down at the piano, leaving me angry and per- 
 plexed, and began again : 
 
 Good-bye, oh, rose of summer's sowing, 
 Good-bye, oh, flower-scented wind . . . 
 
 I looked at her meekly, full of dim realisations. And 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 93 
 
 yet she smiled as she sang, practised her stage tricks, 
 languished. first to the right and then to the left, and looked 
 up towards a gallery crowded by her imagination with 
 " boys " to whom she winked. I saw Her as everybody's 
 thing and wondered why she could be nobody's thing; 
 I questioned whether she loved me, liked me or preferred 
 my attentions to none ; it was very difficult to make her 
 out. 
 
 " Well, sulky," she said, as she finished her third song. 
 The jocularity of the address did not seem to clash in 
 her mind with the last words of her lyric : 
 
 . . . We'll meet again in heaven blue. 
 
 I did not reply, still looked at her, sunken in my ugly 
 mood. 
 
 " Look here," she said brightly. " I'll have to give 
 you a good old talking-to if you go on like this." She 
 stood up, leaned an elbow on the piano and rested her 
 i on her hand. " I didn't say I wanted to spoon. 
 No fear. Why don't you wait till you're asked ? 'Stead 
 of sitting there with a face like yesterday. You take 
 my tip and don't make so free." 
 
 " I didn't make free with you," I -said, acidly. 
 ■ Well, if that's what you call not making free, I'd 
 rather not know what you do call making free." 
 
 I stood tip, went to the wall and vacantly gazed at 
 
 be Queen, while Maud sat down with a thump 
 
 on the piano stool and thundered out another music-hall 
 
 1 thought bitterly that she was playing it very 
 
 badly, that anger could make her miss notes, while caresses 
 
 1 1 not. At that moment I hated her, and half resolved 
 
 <> to my room. But Maud, on finishing the noisy 
 
 i, banging an accompaniment to a monotone 
 
 of her own composition : 
 
 I don't care, I don't care. 
 Let him go to I air, 
 
 it care, I don't care. 
 Let him go to Parcc-Mayfair. 
 
 ne two minutes I bore with this nonsense, which 
 
94 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 V 
 
 grew louder and louder and more purposeful. I knew it 
 as half-defiance, half-signal. It made me tingle; I felt 
 like a bull that becomes angrier with every thrust of the 
 banderillas. 
 
 " Stop it," I shouted as I strode to the piano. 
 
 The laughing eyes were fixed upon me, the red mouth 
 was open, and I could see the 'white throat swell as she 
 screamed her idiotic refrain. And her gibe was so subtly 
 aphrodisiac that I did not know how much her youth 
 and grace drew me. I hated her, despised her ; I wanted 
 to seize and twist her firm neck, shake her, kick her; 
 and a sense of degradation mixed with my delight as I 
 clasped both arms round her, lifted her off the stool : 
 
 I don't care, I xlon't care, 
 *** Let him go to Paree-Mayfair . . ' . 
 
 Maud screamed as I carried her to the sofa. And then, 
 for some moments, there was silence while I caressed her 
 with a ferocity born of my baulked hunger for her. She 
 laughed on a high note; she did not struggle though I 
 knew I was painfully crushing the hand I held, though 
 a heavy curl fell across my face as I bent to kiss her. 
 ^She did not return the kisses I pressed upon her eyelids, 
 her neck, her lips ; she remained quiescent in 'my grasp, 
 as if aware tn*at she would struggle in A^ain, as if conscious 
 that the brute must dominate awhile until fluting reason 
 can be heard. But as I held her I was revengeful rather 
 than joyous, for I knew that hers was but a partial 
 surrender, that she was paying in small favours for 
 attentions and pleasures, that I would never break the 
 steely barrier of her coldness, that on my exceeding the 
 limits formulated by her sex-policy I would be repulsed 
 and dismissed. Oh, in her own language, she wouldn't 
 give herself away. 
 
 She sat on my knees, one arm round my neck, limp and 
 half-smiling; she seemed tired, as if some content had 
 come to her out of the wooing my prudence had rest raim <1. 
 But there was no heat of excitement in the hand I held : 
 it was firm, cool, able no doubt to carry without tremor a 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 95 
 
 • 
 
 glass brimful of water. She would not spill a drop. And 
 I knew bitterly that my eyelids were moist, as if something 
 inside me had cried out with pain and had tried very 
 hard to weep. 
 
 She sat up and away from me at last, pushed up her 
 flying hair. " My ! " she said; " you're a bit of all right, 
 you are." - A very little grudging admiration filtered to 
 me through the phrase, but she eluded me as I tried to 
 clasp her again. 
 
 " No," she said, firmly. " Never no more again, Mister. 
 One might think you were barmy on the crumpet the way 
 you go on, pulling a girl aboiic like a rag doll. If that's 
 the way they do it in Border I'm not surprised you got the 
 hoof. No," she added, a note of anger in her voice 
 d her hand ; " it's closing time, house full. Keep 
 off the grass, I tell you," she cried as she stood up, " and 
 
 talk sensibly or " 
 
 W '.- talked sensibly. I tried to tell Maud what I did 
 at the office; I described old Purkis, Farr and the per- 
 pendicular hairs. "Don't be dirty," was her comment 
 on my description of Farr; Tyler and Barker gained^*o 
 appreciation, but she seemed interested in Hugh Lawton. 
 " Sounds like a bit of a toff." 
 
 Oh, Maud, if I had met you ten years later would you 
 !i >t have said Hugh Lawton was a k'nut ! 
 She pestered me with questions. How old was lie? 
 s Ik- like? But exactly? Yes, she did like 'em 
 fair. Was lie his father's partner? Would he be? 
 Id I? SI iih rested in everything that was 
 
 did not know that there was anything 
 rial. She did i j she spooned. She- 
 
 She could not feel 
 f hat sltt had put her foot in it. 
 Shedidnol believe in God; she could fear hell. 
 
 II'- a shadow on her mental 
 
 i' his ties in the 
 >n Arcadt\ while I bought mine in Cheapside, 
 
 bo i he young m«-n who houghs th<ir 
 
 it ion, prospects — 
 
96 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 she could understand all that, but I could make her under- 
 stand nothing else. I tried to explain the Saxon business 
 letter. 
 
 " Oh, German, you mean," she said vaguely. 
 
 I gave it up. I tried to make her see what it meant to 
 be an Englishman, to feel, to think like one. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know," she said ; " didn't you say you could 
 get out of camp, or whatever it is, if you naturalise? " 
 
 We could talk only of facts ; we could hardly talk of 
 love. For her love was a subject with two compartments ; 
 in the first sne put questionable jokes, which I now realise 
 she did not quite understand ; in the second was a singular 
 cloying composition : hand-holding on the Front at 1 
 Brighton, moon-gazing on the River, ultimate marriages 
 involving nightly attendances at the halls or theatres; 
 there was a strain of melancholy in it : the young lover 
 was quite as pleasant dead as alive, for one laid flowers 
 on his grave, and one was " true " to him ; later on 
 one was comforted by an older man, whom one met by 
 " mother's grave." One married the older man, and 
 somehow, after lying in one's own grave, one might meet 
 the first love in heaven. There were love-letters too, 
 but she called them " silly talk." 
 
 All this mixture of mental sensuality and sentiment 
 rested on a paradoxic foundation of ignorant purity. 
 Maud was cold, or rather una wakened. She had not been 
 told : she had heard, at Tinman's, in the street, but she 
 had not been marked by her knowledge; she had not 
 connected the fragments of enlightenment which had 
 come her way. Essentially JCnglish, she had few curiosi- 
 ties and did not devote to the theoretic side of pa 
 the thought and research hardly a French girl neglects; 
 the subject did not interest, did not attract her; she 
 knew " in a sort of way," and did not want to know any 
 more. Indeed, she often repulsed me with a sharp 
 " Stop it," when I tried to correlate in her mind the im- 
 pressions I found there. 
 
 You were pure in your own way, little flower of the 
 London gutter. 
 
 in 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. » 9T 
 
 Of course, the Hoopers were trying to entrap me into 
 marriage. I found that out later, with some stirprise, for, 
 in my own opinion, I was not a bon parti, and I did not 
 realise that a young man with a salary of a hundred and 
 twenty a year could be appreciated by the genteel Hoopers. 
 I did not, for years, grasp that an English girl can leave her 
 father's Kensington house, his brougham and her skating 
 club to control a suburban brick box and a twelve pound 
 " general." Nor did I understand that. Mrs. Hooper 
 would have been quite satisfied to see Maud installed with 
 me in an upper part in the Harrow Road, that she accepted 
 her husband's view : " Young people must not expect 
 to begin where their parents left off." Besides, Maud had 
 not the dowry usual in civilised countries, I think, and, 
 even now I am a little uneasy when the English girl 
 plunges for love and nothing a year. 
 
 They are too hard on the dot, those sentimental English, 
 
 who. by the way, shrink from dots and insist upon marriage 
 
 settlements. I like to think that a girl does not come 
 
 iless into her husband's house, that she has the option 
 
 between maintaining her financial independence and, 
 
 therefore, conjugal affection, or helping her husband in 
 
 his career, or keeping her money to educate her children. 
 
 In spite of my own record I still distrust those matches 
 
 in hot blood, without regard for class, suitability, 
 
 monetary chanc< .-s. And I don't like to think of all 
 
 those BngHsh girls sold m marriage to the first bidder, 
 
 no second. We sell to the best bidder, 
 
 the English to the first. And they do sell, for what 
 
 can a penniless woman do in presence of a hated but 
 
 1 ? Love ! yes, there's love — but after 
 
 all. fray man 
 
 [fat oi marriage with naud. I wanted 
 
 tarry an English girl some tic I I would love, but 
 
 fast set in my mind. I could 
 
 have introduced .Maud t<nmy mother if my mother 
 
 lish girls. And I wanted a girj 
 
98 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 with some money : I was not going to hunt money, 
 but one must have money. I looked upon my affair 
 with Maud as an adventure, just as she looked upon it 
 as a flirtation ; I still hoped to bring it to a satisfactory 
 end, and until that time could not brag of it at the office, 
 but of Lottie I could brag and did. 
 
 For I was not faithful to Maud. There was no reason 
 why I should have been, as faithfulness is, after all, no 
 more than acquired insensitiveness ; also faithfulness 
 cuts one off from experience. In this respect only did 
 I make exceptions to the British code I was adopting; 
 I could not bring myself to find other eyes dull because 
 those of Klaiid were bright. They were not dull, and they 
 were rewarding, for there are not two looks alike, two 
 smiles as witching, and the tender break in a woman's 
 voice when she murmurs and laughs low is never twice 
 quite the same. Those soft low laughs are all of a family, 
 but different. Appetite for adventure, for an excite- 
 ment that was mainly mental, drove me into perpetual 
 conflict with women. I had to look into the eyes of the 
 waitress when I ordered my chop, and if I made her blush 
 it was a success : I took this blush back to the office 
 and hung it up like a rosy curtain across the Fenchurch 
 Street window. In the Underground, in the streets, on 
 the top of jolting horse-buses, where propinquity com- 
 bines with the excitement of release from work to saturate 
 the air with aphrodisiac vapours, I had eyes for all those 
 fair heads and curly brown heads, and clear blue eyes and 
 bold black eyes, tokens of some fiery southern ancestry. 
 To this day I cannot walk the streets without disquiet, 
 so treacherously soft and treacherously pure are these 
 English girls. 
 
 For they are pure, and I was not very successful. 
 Indeed, if I had not had the persistency of the spider 
 [would not have continued my pursuit of them in the 
 face of the snubs which I received. They were afraid 
 of me, tiie foreigner, for jthe cold mantle of their purity 
 let through disquiet when I drew near; I have been told, 
 and have no reason to doubt it, that there is no banter in 
 
BARBEZAN AND QO. 99 
 
 my black eyes. I have never looked upon a woman, 
 old or young, without there being a caress in my glance, 
 however casual; I have no talent for banter, I never 
 flirt, I am always dangerous. They knew it, and if they 
 did not snub me, soon they gave me short answers, were 
 " surprised at me " or " wouldn't have thought it of me." 
 One of them, at Earl's Court, I think, threw me a frightened 
 glance and ran away. But even if I had never succeeded, 
 I would still have tried, for I had in my life the young 
 bachelor's demon, loneliness. Often Maud was out 
 with a "pal," or "studying" at the halls; then, after 
 a while, I looked up from my books, gazed at Mrs. Hooper, 
 knitting or embroidering, at Mr. Hooper, deep-buried in 
 Science Siftings, or Tit-Bits. A placid air of content hung 
 over them, while Lulu, in an armchair, read at extreme 
 speed some tale of dairymaid and duke. The atmosphere 
 was — stuffy, and there was about the very gas an air of 
 finality : it would, never, never turn into electric light. 
 I would make an effort, mumble out : " . . . but worship 
 and humbug are exceptions ; though the accent be on the 
 first syllable the final consonant is redoubled." Then 
 I would memorise the double ps and gs, contrast the 
 words with "refer," — worship, worshipping; refer, 
 referring — until the rule began to slip away and I ceased 
 to know whether the typical word was pronounced 
 " refer " or " reffer." 
 
 Up to my room on those nights. First a vicious casting 
 
 of my body upon the bed, accompanied by an internal 
 
 cry :" " What shall I do? what shall I do? " Then a 
 
 aze at the text, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I 
 
 shall QOl want." In the had light I had to guess at the 
 
 I English ch A muttered curse on all 
 
 mult from my Jacobin temper. There w;is 
 
 not}, . I wanted to do nothing. I leaped off the 
 
 bed, walked round tie room, I xamining each article, 
 
 her, old red doth, swivel mirror; the 
 
 1 il " Peacemaker*" 
 
 -play love 1 pah I Then "In the Garden of 
 
 rk and a typist, in nineteenth-century fig- 
 
100 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 leaves. The Jubilee procession troubled me on those 
 nights ; it always seemed to think me emotional, hysteri- 
 cal, un-English. 
 
 But at last I had looked at everything, felt mental 
 nausea in front of my books, looked into the garden, then 
 sodden with winter rains. I would stand for some . 
 moments in the middle of the room, slowly walk to the 
 window, stare into the blackness, walk back to the bed, 
 then back to the window. Pause. Then I would begin 
 to go round the room, slowly, hands in pockets, head down. 
 As I passed, the dirty carpet lost all its pattern. I 
 began to walk faster, round and round, half -conscious 
 of impressions, black window, empty grate, dirty boots. 
 Faster and faster still, like a convict in his cell or a beast 
 at the Zoo. I went round and round the room, which 
 seemed to grow smaller all the time ; I was like a squirrel 
 in its wheel with a night's turning in front of it. And, 
 as I turned and turned, one thought speared my loneli- 
 ness : what shall I do ? what shall I do ? And again 
 and again it came, ebbing and flowing, like successive 
 waves beating upon a shore. ° 
 
 At last \ would seize my hat, rush out of the house, 
 ' slamming the front door to get some noise into my life. 
 Sometimes I would walk aimlessly on, eyes towards' the 
 ground, as fast as I could, contemptuous of traffic and 
 butting into passers-by, ikntil I stopped quite suddenly at 
 Hendon or Shepherd's Bush, just tired and dulled enough 
 to want my bed. And on other nights I would climb into 
 the gallery of a music-hall and stare at the backs of the J 
 people in front of me, or drink whisky on the top of stout 
 in a public-house, just to exchange a word with a barmaid 
 or find interest in a " drunk." Or I would engage in long, 
 aimless pursuits of women who had caught my fancy. 
 Once I ran after a cab laden with luggage and offered 
 my breathless services after a two-mile sprint. One mu^t 
 do something, one must. 
 
 It was on one such night I met Lottie. I had walked 
 a long way, far beyond Notting Hill, when I caught her, 
 up — a slim fair girl. The obvious shopgirl, badly dressed, 
 
BARBEZAN AND CX). 101 
 
 with cheap lace sticking out. of her old, modish grey coat 
 and two visible brooches. I found out a little later that 
 she wore two more — also a pendant and a necklace of 
 sham pearls. 
 
 " Are you going far? " I asked. 
 
 " Just about as far as turn-back," said the girl. I saw, 
 as she looked at me, that she must be twenty-five. Fair 
 hair, blue eyes, pale face : five more years of good looks 
 and she would be old. 
 
 " May I go with you ? " I asked. 
 
 * ; Xo, thanks," she said; " not out for chocolates, just 
 had grap 
 
 But this is only the smarl change of London gallantry. 
 Soon I was walking by Lottie's side, holding her arm, 
 univbuked. 
 
 She did not mind, she ^prattled of her " people " in 
 
 Norfolk, of her situation at a stationer's, of Kew and 
 
 Carl's Court, and didn't I think those railway bridges 
 
 a lot of money to build ? She did not mind my going 
 
 with her, she did not mind when I kissed her in a silent 
 
 f of villas, she^did not mind kisses, fervid or tepid. 
 
 Lottie did not want anything or object to anything; she 
 
 had never develop- d ; even her taste -for pleasure was 
 
 faint : she did not long for Sunday afternoon River trips, 
 
 sh<- merely liked them. I took her for a misty walk in 
 
 Kiehmond Park, three days later, and she never took my 
 
 I, nor drew hers away when I grasped it. She never 
 
 1 me my name, thua never knew it : I was a " fellow,'' 
 
 and when f<.r a few brief hours I was a lover, a " fellow M 
 
 d. Not for a moment did any enthusiasm leap 
 
 up Jo meet mine, and when I dropped out of her life, out 
 
 B, I do not suppose she suffered. She 
 
 I not f 'Inner to remember; 
 
 douh; I lew " to a " fellow." 
 
 The ignominy ol it lay heavy upon me sometimes, 
 and ■ .1 not e\ ,imd and 
 
 round in my l wld drive me to this. But it did : 
 
 what can one do? what can one do? Ignominious as 
 was this adventure, the Brsi of many, it was, however, 
 
"l\)2 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 an adventure, and I had to brag of it. I began by- 
 throwing out hints to Barker ; I would in any case have 
 done so, but he began by talking of Dora. 
 
 " She s a little bit of all right, is Dora. And I rather 
 think yours truly is a bit of afavourite with her." 
 
 " How can you tell ? " 
 
 " Oh, I go late — perhaps that's my little plan, and 
 there's never more than two or three at her tables at half- 
 past two. So she comes and sits down and gasses away 
 about this, that and the other, and we have a fine old 
 &me. Blime ! if I wasn't a married man " 
 
 " What does that matter ? " 
 
 " Now then, now then. None of your continental ways 
 here. They won't wash. Besides, Cadoresse, you don't 
 understand English girls ; they're not after you like flies 
 round a honey-pot." 
 
 Memories of Maud collided with memories of Lottie 
 and others, and I looked inimically at this handsome, 
 well-brushed young man who stood before me like Don 
 Juan lecturing Casanova. It was absurd, I reflected, 
 that a suburban puritan should masquerade as^ a gay 
 dog, and more absurd that so attractive a young man 
 should be a puritan. For Barker looked very.srnart in 
 his soft, dark grey tweed ; he managed to buy good clothes 
 in Poultry for three guineas, while I failed in Sackville 
 Street for five. He had an agreeable, -open face, tanned 
 once a week on the golf course, fine grey eyes, a small, 
 beautifully-cut mouth; but for a small chin and a very 
 slight narrowness of forehead he would have been as hand- 
 some as Hugh Lawton, He exasperated me, therefore, 
 for two reasons. 
 
 "Aren't they?" I said, at length. "Well, they're 
 
 not so farouche as you think, Barker. There's " I 
 
 was going to say " my landlady's daughter," but 
 honesty twisted the phrase : " Many of them are quite 
 easy. Why, you can talk to English girls in the street." 
 
 " Oh, you can," said Farr, who had come in as we 
 talked ; " but everybody knows that sort, they don't 
 count." 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. 103 
 
 I suddenly*understood an English attitude : two kinds 
 of women, the accessible undesirable and the inaccessible 
 desirable. 
 
 " I cannot tell whether they count," I said, " but " 
 
 I told them the story of my meeting with Lottie, 
 
 of my subsequent meetings, fully state d her in terms of 
 
 conquest. I enlarged upon the adventure : Lottie's 
 
 shimmered like gold, her pale eyes became as deep, 
 
 blue, sunlit pools ; in my story she was fervid, passionate ; 
 
 she became the Golden Girl; a lovely romantic light 
 
 with the fires of passion) flowed over Notting Hill. 
 
 44 Go on with you," said Barker at last ; " you rotten 
 
 dog." i 
 
 44 And what did she say to that ? " Farr asked. There 
 a glow in his ugly little eyes, and the black hairs 
 moved as his nostrils twitched. 
 
 All, this man liked my story; puritan Englishman, 
 what is there under your black coat? I elaborated the 
 \\ filled it with response, made it dramatic ; a histrion, 
 I liked to play upon'Farr. 
 
 44 Well," he said at length, exhaling a puff of breath 
 
 from his white cheek?, 4 ' she's a " 
 
 How can men say such things? or such words? I 
 am not yet used to the English vocabulary. And to 
 apply sueh words to love ! 
 
 For it is love, it is always love. Even inarticulate, even 
 
 al, even cold, it is love and always love, and because 
 
 it is love it is wonderful. I am injove with love. It makes 
 
 DM happy to know there are lovers, thousands, millions 
 
 of lovers, and it makes me miserable to think I shall die, 
 
 then 1 shall no longer know love. It made me 
 
 shudder when he suddenly dragged from my "poor little 
 
 coat of many colours. But Basker was not 
 
 he had none of l"arr*s hateful sensuous 
 
 which, among his like, expresses itself 
 in words from the t is h market. He lectured me : 
 
 44 You know, ( , it sounds very nice and 
 
 romantic, .'11 that, but what about the girl? Have you 
 ht of what it means for h< r ? " 
 
104 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " It means for her what it means for me.*' 
 
 " No, you silly old josser ; you're all like that 
 abroad. You don't understand women; you think 
 they're just like you. Well, they aren't : they feel 
 disgraced and lose their self-respect. Why, there's 
 no knowing what harm you may have done the .girl; 
 you may have ruined her life for all you know." 
 
 I suggested that as Lottie was not my first adventure 
 I might be deemed not to be her first either. 
 
 " That's got nothing to do with it," said Barker, 
 severely; "it's your -responsibility all the same. Pufc 
 yourself in her shoes, and perhaps you'll see she can't 
 hold her head up again; she feels dishonoured, she may 
 break her heart over it, refuse to marry somebody 
 else." 
 
 "Oh, stuff," I said. 
 
 They laughed : that was not the word I ought to have 
 used, but I could not bear to use their word. 
 
 Barker went on with his reprimand. As an enlightened 
 chapel-goer he had to turn me from the path of sin, and as 
 he talked I understood the Englishman better, understood 
 the depth of his illusion about women. Barker saw woman 
 as a calm„ passionless, charming creature, anxious, in his 
 own words, " to marry to have someone to take care of." 
 He was not mercenary, and could not believe that woman 
 was mercenary ; he could not believe that a woman could 
 want anything her husband did not want; he credited 
 her with no initiatives, with desiring nothing save dresses 
 and babies. Barker thought that women did not mind, 
 at thirty, being spinsters in their fathers' houses, if those 
 homes were comfortable. If in those days there had 
 been militant suffragettes he would have fold them to go 
 home and mind the baby. He loved his wife, who repre- 
 sented woman ; he looked upon her as an ideal and as 
 a type : religious, domesticated, obedient, gay, loyal and 
 respectably romantic. He would have given her to- 
 drink his last drop of blood but would not have spared 
 h< r a penny for a newspaper, lie thought she was perfect, 
 that woman was perfect, that woman was so noble and 
 
BARBEZAN AND CO. - 105 
 
 beautiful that she must be set on a pedestal and wor- 
 shipped : but she was never to get off the pedestal and do 
 what she liked. According to Barker it was the husband 
 knew what his wife liked, and her tastes conformed 
 singularly with his own. 
 
 I began that day to see why Englishwomen are so 
 bored. 
 
 At the end of the lecture Farr abruptly said : 
 " Heard that limerick, Barker, about the young lady 
 of Turin ? " 
 
 The limerick was recited. Disgusting. Then came 
 two jokes out of one of the weeklies, where wit was absent 
 and foulness abundant. Barker laughed uproariously. 
 
 M Heard that story about "? 
 
 A very pretty actress was dragged through the gutter. 
 Tyler came in, contributed his quota to the conversation, 
 and little Morton drew near, sniggering and squirming; 
 a nasty, hot blush climbed up his rosy cheeks. Clearly 
 this abominable talk bore no relation to actual fact; it 
 just talk : they never connected those stories with 
 living men and women. 
 
 These Englishmen ! They keep their ideas apart, like 
 
 each in one kennel, lest they should fight, I suppose. 
 
 0, the process is less conscious; they have their 
 
 lards and their lists of points, with which to classify 
 
 the dogs. One kind of dog goes under "spaniels,'' 
 
 another under "retri* md so on, and there are 
 
 K for mongrels and kennels for curs, and kennels 
 
 for pariah dogs, and there is a big, secure pen for "foreign 
 
 They padlock thai one and put barbed wire round 
 
 it for fear they 1 1 ii lt h t themselves go too close and be 
 
 Utten. One tiling they never do, and that is conneet 
 
 the mongrd and the spaniel and say : " Both are dogs." 
 
 <1. pun women, and " bad lots " — thai is all they see. 
 
 It is saying that convent ion can make the first 
 
 out of dullards, or that romance can lift the second upon 
 
 id carry them up aloft: that would interfere 
 
 with the classification. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE HEART OF ENGLAND 
 
 I have not done what I set out to do. I have been 
 too critical, allowed later and more judicial impressions 
 to fog the sharp, partisan views I took of England in 
 those early days, and to clear the chaos created in my 
 mind by their conflict. I cannot, now that I speak 
 English so well that people ask me whether I am Scotch 
 or Welsh, now that I conform to English conventions and 
 believe in a few of them, restore the freshness of the 
 mind I brought from France. I figure the past as one 
 may trace out on some very old Italian fresco a faint 
 design over which an economical iconoclast painted 
 another picture. I could not see England for the English. 
 
 I gave them all more or less heroic qualities (except 
 Farr, whom I endowed with undeservedly villainous 
 traits), because I understood them only in flashes. They 
 always came out with strong, high lights. A flash, and 
 I saw Barker, for instance, as the moderate, sober, honest 
 man, a little narrow but perfectly calm, irrepressibly 
 calm — and then I saw him no more. I have sai$ that I 
 thought him limited, uninformed on the woman question, 
 but I excused him to myself. I was always the advocate 
 of the English; if they injured me and advocacy became 
 impossible, I refused to prosecute. Thus, silly old Purkis 
 d as the rock of security, Tyler, Morton as energetic, 
 intelligent young men, finely pure (as a rule) and in- 
 capable of playing anybody a dirty trick. Hugh Lawton 
 represented for me in the flesh what the young wrestlers 
 on the Embankment represent in bronze. Oh, Olympian 
 
 106 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 107 
 
 Hugh, where is the laurel-wreath that sat sq well on your 
 currycombed head ? 
 
 It is because I saw no more than the main lines that I 
 understood the English : it takes a foreigner to do that. 
 If an Englishman struck me as pure-minded, he was 
 Galahad ; if strong, he was Hercules ; if bad, he was Jack 
 the Ripper. Nowadays I judge men, perhaps better, 
 perhaps with more regard for shades of temperament, 
 but not so surely ; I do not so readily part the lions from 
 the unicorns. I judged violently, in a prejudiced spirit, 
 and I almost invariably approved. If I had hesitations 
 as to the genteel Hoopers, as to the clerks of Barbezan, I 
 think I had none about the Lawtons after the august 
 dinner. It took place in January. Invited because my 
 
 n business letter had amused Mrs. Lawton and 
 because my status was, thanks to my name, not quite 
 that of a clerk, I found myself, at half-past seven (for the 
 dinner hour had not yet travelled to a quarter-past eight) 
 inwardly a little shy and outwardly very bold, seated at 
 a large round table between Mrs. Lawton, a sprightly, 
 
 -looking matron, and a delicate fair-haired girl, 
 
 Edith, her daughter. I have no very clear memory of 
 
 lap <>f t lie conversation, for the preoccupation of 
 
 clothes, after all these years, still hangs stifling over the 
 
 ion. I was again wearing the wrong clothes. I 
 
 always was, and to this day I am never safe in this country 
 
 wearing of the black is governed half by rules 
 
 and hall by intuitions; whether I choose tails or dinner 
 
 tie and waistcoat or White, I am never sure 
 
 I shall be in the majority. Now clothes is the one 
 
 in the world in which Frenchman who is trying 
 
 i Englishman docs not want to be original. 
 
 ,\Vh< : ol trying to become an Englishman, he does 
 
 •niial, and I have vivid memories of a white 
 
 ir, now unfortunately lost, before I 
 
 red at it bewildered, as if 
 
 they were Hottentoti confronted with a motor-car. But, 
 
 that night, my trouble was not confined to my tie, 
 
 which was blark. One seat away was Kdwanl Kent, a 
 
108 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 short, fair young man, who looked as if he shaved three 
 times a day; his tailcoat was moulded into him, his tie 
 and waistcoat sat, precise and intolerably white, on his 
 plump body; Mr. Lawton too, wore tails, but for mysteri- 
 ous reasons a black waistcoat, while Hugh, to make 
 my unease complete, had dared a dinner jacket with a 
 white waistcoat' and tie. I judged this to be modish, 
 but remained cheerless, for one thing was quite clear : I 
 was not white enough. When, in later days, I tried to be 
 white enough, I was generally too white ; I could never 
 grade entertainments, gauge the difference between 
 dinners " Class A (family and two intimates)," and dinners 
 " Class B (four strangers)," and dinners " Class C (un- 
 limited ostentation)." Nor could I distinguish between 
 the livery of the master of the house, that of youth, that 
 of the guest— between the livery for food, the livery for 
 song, the livery for the dance. In Hugh's 'Varsity phrase, 
 I managed to dress either as a " cad " or as a " bounder." 
 He never said this of or to me, as that would not have been 
 like Hugh, but such was his classification ; for Hugh there 
 were only the dressed, the underdressed, the over- 
 dressed. It took me four years of labour to enter the 
 " dressed " class frequently : English syntax was much 
 easier. But, that night, as I rolled anxious eyes from 
 the chattering Mrs. Lawton to the shy Edith, when 
 " cad " and " bounder " were unknown terms, I felt like 
 a waiter or a mute. I hardly knew what I said, as I 
 glared at the opposition clothes, though little seemed to 
 be expected of me save to listen. Mrs. Lawton had 
 nothing to say, but she said it very prettily ; in my per- 
 turbation her gossip was very comforting. 
 
 " You must dislike this weather very much," she said, 
 " after the South. I know what it's like, for I simply 
 can't stand London after the middle of January. I simply 
 have to go to the Rivi< 
 
 "Riviera?" I said blanklf, quite unable to connect 
 this word with the Cote d'Azur. 
 
 " Yes, the Riviera. I generally go to Cannes, or 
 Men tone, though that's getting impossible now the 
 
THE. HEART OF ENGLAND 109 
 
 Germans have found it out. Of course, there's Monte 
 Casio, but there's too much noise, too many people; 
 
 what I want is a quiet place, just to sit in the sun " 
 
 Mrs. Lawton developed at immense length her idea of 
 a quiet life ; I smiled as much as I could, I tried to smile 
 with my ear,* I suppose, and I do not remember what she 
 took to be a quiet life. I have a vague feeling that its 
 quietude was rather eventful. Meanwhile I inspected 
 the guests, Hugh and Mr. Lawton, who were as rigid and 
 polite outside as inside the office, and then my cheerful 
 
 il)our. Mrs. Lawton was pleasing enough. She 
 looked about thirty-seven or eight, but at the time was 
 actually forty-three, for she had the Englishwomen's 
 
 •t of looking much less than their age, probably be- 
 cause they do not grow up ; she was dark-haired, buxom, 
 and her colour, though a little ruddy over the cheek- 
 bones, was agreeable. I i^iled to find upon her face a 
 trace of powder or rouge, and regretted it a little, for the 
 loveliest features in the world are set off by the subtle 
 wickedness of these artifices; yet I liked her, her gaiety, 
 and her triangular eyes. It was Mrs. Lawton's eyes made 
 one look at her twice ; to say they were triangular is the 
 only way of saying that the eyelids drew close together 
 at the outer corners of the sockets, while they parted a 
 littlr wider near tli This gave the grey-green pupils 
 
 an astonished, batten-like air. Mrs. Lawton's eyes were 
 
 well-bred to ask questions, but they always seemed a 
 
 littlr surprised when information was volunteered. She 
 
 had given those eyes to her daughter Muriel, who now 
 
 Iniost opposite to me, and Showed exactly what her 
 
 mother had been twenty years before. Indeed, had 
 
 1 net been the taller, and had not her shoulders 
 been rather thin, she could well have passed for her 
 
 mot ter. 
 
 Muriel did not return my scrutiny, for she leaned 
 ham< dly t ..wards Edward Kent, who now sat stroking 
 
 his little fat chin, while his inanieiired hand played with 
 
 •_,dass of hock. 1 could hear his thin, piping voice, 
 the conversation whicl 1 him invitations to dinner. 
 
110 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " I really am, I really am,*' he protested. " You 
 think I never do anything, Miss Lawton, because I never 
 have anything to do. Now that's where you're wrong. It 
 is the lazy people are the busy people because they are so 
 unused to work that what they must do takes an awful 
 long time." 
 
 " Paradoxes," said Muriel, raising a pretty, thin 
 shoulder. 
 
 " That is to say, truths. Truth, you see, lives in a well, 
 and you don't know that when you see the well. It's the 
 same with paradox : you find truth in it, but you must 
 haul her out." 
 
 " Mr. Kent," said Muriel, " you are tiring me out." 
 
 " You should take more exercise, then " 
 
 " Oh, spare us, Mr. Kent," said Mrs. Lawton, suddenly 
 forgetting me and the Riviera and leaning over towards 
 the entertainer, " and tell us what happened at 
 Caux." 
 
 For several minutes I was left out ; while I ate the thin 
 slices of saddle of mutton and found out I liked it with 
 red currant jelly, I saw that Louisa Kent was fiirting 
 with Hugh. She was very pretty, I thought, with her 
 dark hair, her rosy colour; she had her brother's little 
 fat chin, but on her it was charming instead of being 
 faintly ridiculous. She was talking quickly, in tones too 
 low for me to understand what she said ; perhaps she did 
 not want to be overheard, though there was nothing in 
 the placid smile which flickered about Hugh's beautiful 
 lips to show that he cared. It was extraordinary, but 
 evidently Muriel and Louisa were " making up " to the 
 men, and these did not even swell as conquerors, they 
 basked in the sunshine that was their due. 
 
 Indeed, no man seemed to think of the women, except 
 Mr. Lawton, whom I could hear gently talking to Edith 
 about Brussels, which he seemed to know well. 
 
 " Oh, you must ask Mr. Cadoresse," he suddenly said, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 I turned in time to catch the faint smile and the quick, 
 shy look of the girl. 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 111 
 
 " Yes ? " I said. " Can I be of service to Mademoi- 
 selle 
 
 « Oh " She paused, blushed. " It's only father. 
 
 He says that it's not Bwar der lar Camber. He wants me 
 to roll my r's like — like " 
 
 " Like me," I said. 
 
 Edith blushed so hotly that her neck and shoulders 
 grew pink, and I thought her pretty. Insignificant, of 
 course, as blue eyes and fair hair make a girl, but pretty. 
 
 " Oh — I didn't mean — I didn't say that — I really 
 didn't." 
 
 Her eyes were downcast and I wondered whether there 
 were tears in them. I felt I had been clumsy, that I had 
 trodden on a little flower. 
 
 " Cambrrr," I said, reassuringly. 
 
 She looked up at me, smiled, shook her head. 
 
 " Try," I suggested. " Cambrrr." 
 
 But she would not try. She sat smiling and blushing, 
 nervously tapped on a fork with thin, white fingers that 
 trembled. 
 
 M My little girl mustn't be shy," murmured Mr. Lawton. 
 There was a new gentleness in the eyes that were rathe? 
 like 1 
 
 " I'm not shy, father," she murmured, but again 
 blushed. 
 
 " No ? Then will the little girl say Cambrrr to her 
 fath.i-V " 
 
 y laughed together. Her father ! Her grand 
 father rather. I looked across to Muriel, who was still 
 wrapped up in Edward Kent. That was a girl ! and 
 nlv I thought of Maud, her bold brown eyes. I 
 wished she could see me then, "among the upper ten," 
 as she would have s;iid. and I felt a little disappointed 
 people spoke slowly, in modulated voices. 
 They b ty, not ragging. 
 
 . Lawton again turned to me. Did I like London? 
 
 O oottrse I had seen all the sights, the To wer ? N<>! that 
 
 been to the Tower, she owned. Did I like" 
 
 the 1 1 replied. I had plenty to say, but I could 
 
112 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 not talk of the things I cared for, the office, my schooling, 
 my home, the Hoopers. Mrs. Lawton made no com- 
 ments, and her questions were not indiscreet ; she seemed 
 to want to know only what I thought in general, not what 
 I thought in particular. I wanted her to lay hands on 
 my private life. I invited her to do so. 
 
 " I am quite happy in my rooms," I said, irrelevantly; 
 " the people are very nice to me, and it is amusing because 
 there are two young girls in the house." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mrs. Lawton, " and it's very handy for 
 the Underground. Don't you think it's easy to get about 
 in London ? " 
 
 " Very easy," I said. " Yes, I like it very much ; and 
 the City too. I like the men I meet. There is one of 
 the clerks, Mrs. Lawton, whose clothes are an education, 
 they are so good, though he does buy them in the City; 
 he " 
 
 " Ah," said Mrs. Lawton, " the City is a wonderful 
 place. Have you seen the Lord Mayor's coach ? " 
 
 The conversation went on in that way, I struggling to 
 figure my own life, Mrs. Lawton inertly bent on com- 
 pelling me to sink it in the life of the crowd. I wanted 
 her to tear at my personality — but that isn't done : she 
 didn't do it. I was angry because I was baulked, I sulked, 
 allowed Mrs. Lawton to say what she liked, interposing a 
 minimum of " yeses " and " noes." She did not mind. 
 She was there to talk to me from half -past seven to nine ; 
 if I was silent she would talk a great deal ; if I had a great 
 deal to say, she would gracefully listen ; if I made unusual 
 or improper remarks she would misunderstand them and 
 suavely lead me back to the safeties of the Royal Family 
 or the London police. While she talked 1 examined the 
 furniture. The dining-room was what is called hand- 
 some, for there was a red paper over a white dado, a 
 Bplendid mahogany sideboard; I could feel a thick Turkey 
 carpet under my feet and see expensive-looking oils on 
 the walls. But — the revelation came suddenly — it was 
 the Hoopers' dining-room; the wallpaper was the same, 
 except that it had probably cost four and sixpence a piece 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 113 
 
 instead of two shillings, and the sideboard was the same. 
 True, there were no cruets nor salad-dressing bottles on it, 
 but there was the tantalus. And the oils ! There were 
 bad oils on the Hoopers' red walls ! I seemed to under- 
 stand the Lawtons, the Lawton breed, the " Terraces " 
 and " Places " and " Gardens " and " Gates " which 
 are full of Lawtons, Lawtons all alike, who buy the same 
 things at different prices. As I looked at this furniture 
 and those who sat among it I understood : they had tried 
 to be like everybody else, and they had brought it off. 
 That was why they were Good People. 
 
 44 In the house I live in," I tactlessly said, " they have 
 red paper in the dining-room." 
 
 " They say brown is coming in," replied Mrs. Lawton. 
 44 I have seen it up at Egerton Jones'. What do you 
 think of our big shops ? " 
 
 I told Iter vaguely, and as I did so, listened to the 
 
 conversation of the others. Kent was telling the story 
 
 I have since heard in many forms, of the judge who was 
 
 rude to the counsel for the defence and at last pointed to 
 
 r, remarking : 
 
 " It doesn't matter what you say, it goes in here and 
 comes out on the ot her side." 
 
 44 No doubt, my Lord," Kent narrated smoothly ; 44 there 
 is nothing to stop it." 
 
 If the circle began to laugh, and before the laughter 
 
 subsided Kent was talking mixed hockey; he did not 
 
 spoil his effect, I heard Muriel protest against a charge 
 
 of whacking tin men's shins, Mr. Lawton gravely remon- 
 
 i. for whom the Steinway wasn't good 
 
 M I couldn't eital in that lit tie 
 
 e of having studied with Marsay if 
 
 i » 8 7 " 
 
 I t il pianis! 
 
 I to beeoine m; Mr>. Lawton had turned 
 
 . I addressed Edith. 
 •■ 1 - e I aid. 
 
 "Oh, \ (1 Edith; 44 she's been 
 
114 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 to Dresden and she's studied in Paris under Marsay. 
 Now she's going to give her first recital and I'm sure she'll 
 be a success, though she says nobody cares for the piano. 
 She looks so well, too, on the platform ; don't you think 
 she's very pretty ? " 
 
 " Very," I said. " And you, do you play the piano ? " 
 
 " A little— oh, it's nothing." 
 
 Edith had blushed and stammered. Curious, she 
 coidd chatter of Louisa Kent without a trace of shyness. 
 but a single reference to her own affairs deprived her of 
 all self-possession. I went on talking to her, gently, as 
 to a child, and little by little she became able to speak to 
 me, not freely but adequately. 
 
 " I like it in Brussels," she confided. " I'm going to 
 stay at least two years, to be finished as they say." 
 
 " Well, I hope they will not finish you completely, as 
 you are only just commenced — begun I mean." 
 
 " Begun ! " Muriel almost screamed across the table, 
 and then exploded into giggles. " What did I tell you 
 about the Ancient Briton, Edith ? " 
 
 " Muriel, my dear," said Mrs. Lawton reproachfully, 
 but she smiled. 
 
 Mr. Lawton laughed. 
 
 " Your laurel -wreath as a student of Gothic is on your* 
 head, Cadoresse." 
 
 "Mr. Kent," said Muriel, faintly; "never say fork 
 again — say prong." 
 
 " I will say prong — I will say ' Je prong ' to please you." 
 
 I glared fiercely at the red paper, which was no redder 
 than my ears. They were laughing at me, all of them, 
 English pigs, because they couldn't speak their own 
 language. I did not reply to Mrs. Lawton 's gentle apolo- 
 gies and requests tint I should not mind chaff. Chaff ! 
 they call insults chaff ! Under that calm, that decorum, 
 lies a desire to wound ; hypocrites, they never lose their 
 self-control save when the foreigner gives them an opening. 
 I ate my ice angrily, barely replying when Mrs. Lawton 
 asked me questions; Hugh had smiled, and Louisa had 
 giggled when Mr. Lawton explained the joke. 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 115 
 
 " I think" it's rather a shame," said Edith's gentle voice, 
 but I did not warm to her. I hated them all. 
 
 I had barely regained my composure when Mrs. Lawton 
 rose; there was a scuffle of chairs, a rustling of skirts as 
 the conversation suddenly ebbed away. As I thrust my 
 chair aside I had the mortification of seeing Kent dart 
 past me and open the door, next to which he stood with 
 bent head while the ladies filed out. I was gloomily 
 conscious that I, who was nearest to the door, should 
 have done this, but the realisation did not prey upon me, 
 for I was too interested in Kent's sudden act of courtesy, 
 following as it did upon his indifference to the women 
 during dinner. But then door-opening is done. 
 
 We drew together at the table ; we were already drinking 
 port when the coffee came, and after the coffee we returned 
 to port. The conversation was languid. Mr. Lawton 
 asked me whether I was getting used to London; this 
 question was beginning to be wearisome but I took it 
 up. 
 
 44 Yes," I said. " I don't feel a stranger. Everything 
 i easy here, for you don't have to know people long, 
 and the fog is so amusing." 
 
 44 Oh, I say, that's a bit thick," said Kent. 
 
 44 Kent ! Another one of those and I throw you out," 
 said Hugh. 
 
 I went on, unaware of Kent's detestable pun. I said 
 that London in the fog was romantic, that the buildings 
 lifted up in it until they looked like Laputa floating 
 in tin clouds. 
 
 44 You're a | id Mr. Lawton. 44 This'll never do 
 
 in Fenchureh Street, Cadoresse; you'll be seeing romance 
 in a bill of lading if you go on. Now a real Englishman 
 lik<- yon OUghl t<> like nothing but hard fact, know facts, 
 
 thousands of them " 
 
 I iv< thousand," I cried. And after I had laughed 
 I told Mr. Lawton about Mr. Hooper and Five Thousand 
 Facts and Fancies. He listened to me, faintly smiling, 
 no doubt because I had laughed ; lie did not seem to think 
 Hooper so very odd. 
 
116 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Oh, well," he summed up ; " you don't know whether 
 h«" facts won't come in handy one day." 
 
 I suggested that Hooper would be better off reading 
 the paper and acquiring political views. This did not 
 displease Mr. Lawton, and soon he was talking suavely of 
 the Conservative Government, to which he was opposed. 
 At first he did npt interest me much, and I listened with 
 one ear to Kent and Hugh, who discussed with gravity the 
 correct strapping of skis. What their difference of opinion 
 was I do not know, but they seemed full of intensity. 
 
 44 Of course, no one can tell how long this will go on," 
 said Mr. Lawton. "A Government which comes in in 
 the middle of a war may do anything it likes when the 
 war's over ..." 
 
 Hugh and Kent were still engrossed, disagreeing as to 
 the respective merits of Norwegian and Swiss ski-running, 
 but I did not hear the end of their debate, for Mr. Lawton 
 had gripped my attention. 
 
 "This Education Bill, for instance. Well, I don't 
 mind religious education, far from it; but I don't think 
 it fair that the Nonconformists should share the cost of 
 keeping up Church schools." 
 
 I asked for an explanation and received it. It was 
 a clear, moderate exposition; without a gesture, without 
 ^raising his voice, Mr. Lawton figured for me the dual 
 system of English education, the Church schools and the 
 Board schools, made me understand the grievance of the 
 Dissenters. 
 
 " So you see, that is all the trouble. I think it wrong 
 that people should pay to have taught a creed they do 
 not practice. And I can say it, I think, as I am a Church- 
 man myself." 
 
 " What ! " I cried. I could hardly believe him ! How 
 could a man who professed a creed grant that other creeds 
 had rights? 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Lawton. " I am a Churchman, and 
 I am re^ady to pay for Church teaching, but I cunix 
 that Nonconformists should pay for it too. They are 
 free to believe what they choo 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 117 
 
 " Should not your religion dominate ? Why don't you 
 burn them ? " 
 
 "" We did, once upon a time," said Mr. Lawton gently, 
 " but we're wiser now. And we never burned them 
 enthusiastically. After all, a man may believe what he 
 chooses." 
 
 " I can hardly understand it." 
 
 " You couldn't, you're French. I suppose you're a 
 Roman Catholic and " 
 
 " I'm an atheist," I said, roughly. 
 
 44 Oh ... of course, you're free to believe what you 
 >se (the fetish phrase !). There are lots of agnostics 
 in this country." 
 
 True, in moderate England the atheists are all agnostic. 
 Mr. Lawton continued mildly to dilate on religious free- 
 dom. I was amazed ; he seemed so ready to allow people 
 i ve their own souls ; he seemed so devoid of rancour. 
 He was certain of nothing except that men should be free. 
 I did not, before I met him, understand that for the English 
 ■veral ways of reaching heaven. And he 
 could discuss politics without excitement; he did not 
 interrupt me when I opposed him, he did not anticipate 
 my questions, or shout, or call anybody a traitor or a 
 hireling. Hugh and Edward Kent heard us, no doubt, hut 
 did not seem to want to thrust their views upon us; they 
 talked indolently now of the hotels of Vermala and Caux. 
 
 •• Have some more port, Cadoresse," said Mr. Lawton. 
 
 I m out another glassful, then returned 
 
 the deeaiiter to him. 
 
 ., no — not that way — jpyc it to me, Cadoresse." 
 
 a shout. The three men had burst into 
 
 animated protests; they were almost excited. I looked 
 
 at them, dumbfounded, th< decanter in my hand. Hugh 
 
 1 1, while Kent, with outstretched hand, 
 
 Seemed taut with excitement. And there was a Hush 
 on Mr. La wt on's I 
 
 v>i that pray, nol Ilia' .id in a loud voice. 
 
 J5ut what had I done, what had I done? AH three 
 
 explained together, interrupted one another, offered 
 
118 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 explanations, seemed ready to consult history books to 
 seek out the origin of the tradition. 
 
 44 The way of the sun, the way of the sun," said Mr. 
 Lawton ; c Vgive it to Kent." 
 
 As we rose to go to the drawing-room I was still trying 
 to understand : politics, religion, these things could be 
 viewed temperately, but there might be a riot if the port 
 went from right to left instead of left to right. (I am 
 not yet quite sure which way it does go.) And these are 
 the sons of John Hampden ! 
 
 We lingered in the hall, looked at the hunting pictures. 
 Kent asked Mr. Lawton where he had picked them up, 
 while Hugh offered to show him the two new ones he had 
 temporarily hung in the morning-room. I was impatient, 
 for I wanted to join the ladies. But we lingered again 
 on the stairs, and Hugh resumed his argument with Kent 
 as to the Swiss hotels. At last we sauntered into the 
 drawing-room, as if we were indifferent to the women. 
 The three men certainly seemed careless ; they smiled but 
 faintly as each one moved towards an empty seat, idly 
 sat down; it was cruelly significant that Muriel and 
 Louisa Kent should both have in their eyes a gleam of 
 interest for Kent and Hugh who so languidly came to 
 them. And it was, perhaps, their languor partnered me 
 for a while with Muriel, while Louisa succeeded in capturing 
 Hugh. Mr. Lawton had deliberately chosen Edith, and 
 soon I could hear Mrs. Lawton laugh at Kent's jokes? 
 Were they jokes? or was it some artificial quality? 
 I exclaimed as I sat down, for the seat was very low. 
 
 44 Did I leave a needle there? " Muriel asked. 
 
 44 Oh, no, but this chair is so low. But it's quite 
 comfortable, very soft." 
 
 44 Don't you have soft chairs in France? " 
 
 44 No, hardly ever. Fine straight chairs — Louis XV, 
 Louis XVI, Empire — you know wii.it I mean." 
 
 44 I don't," said Muriel. 44 I'm awfully ignorant." She 
 laughed again, and I had to admire her dark hair, her 
 white skin, her extraordinary triangular eyes. ".Tell me 
 what a French drawing-room is like." 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 119 
 
 I described our graveyard, Empire sideboard, garnet 
 footstools and all. 
 
 " It doesn't sound comfortable," said Muriel. " Don't 
 you like this better? " She nodded towards the chintz- 
 covered settee, now occupied by Kent and Mrs. Lawton. 
 I examined the detail of the room and found it singular. 
 With the exception of three mahogany chairs, Chippendale 
 I believe, there was not a piece of furniture into which 
 one could not sink. The settee looked like a swollen bed 
 red with pink-flowered chintz; Mr. Lawton half dis- 
 appeared in a similarly covered grandfather, while the 
 others lounged on padded tapestry. Under my feet I 
 could feel a thick carpet; I could guess that the green 
 velvet curtains were very soft. But I liked the room, 
 white walls, the water colours, the small gilt mirror 
 over the mantelpiece, the flowered cushions. I liked it 
 and 5 Iiy of it. 
 
 I said, " much better, but . . ." 
 it?" 
 " Hut ... a drawing-room, you know . . ." 
 " Oh, it's hardly a drawing-room ; we sit in it half the 
 day." 
 
 .Veil, that's it," I blurted out; " it doesn't feel official. 
 Now if you had white and gold walls . . ." 
 
 tad kept it neat?" said Muriel, and smiled rather 
 wickedly. 
 
 I found my eyes straying to a little stool on which was 
 
 a piece of unfinished fancy work, to the brass fender 
 
 ing papers had fallen in a pink and 
 
 i heap. Muriel followed the direction of my looks, 
 
 .'. herself back in her chair j her slim white shoulders 
 
 shook as she laughed. 
 
 " M aid in a loud voice. " Mr. Cadoresse 
 
 itidy. He lays we leave the papers about 
 
 ash on the Moor; he says " 
 
 M I " I eried in iuueh distress. " I assure you, 
 
 ■ 
 "I you didn't," Mr- Lawton interposed. " T 
 
 Muriel, and no more will you if you're wise." 
 
120 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 I recovered my ground, apologised for nothing, quite 
 honestly reviled the French gilt chairs, our stiffness and 
 stuffiness. I warmed, I converted myself, I felt almost 
 sure that a drawing-room need not be a holy. I tried 
 not to be angry with Muriel, to remember that the English 
 chaff, and succeeded, for she was charming now, though 
 her eyes often roved towards Kent. 
 
 " I am bored with the theatre," said Kent ; " it's so 
 uniform. If only the frivolous plays were deep and the 
 serious plays were skittish I'd go and see one every night." 
 
 " Don't you think Mr. Kent very clever? " said Muriel. 
 
 " Very amusing," I said, observing that this was the 
 first personality I had heard that evening, and wondering 
 what it implied. " What does he do ? " 
 
 " He's a barrister. It's a pity. I'm sure he would have 
 preferred a fellowship at Cambridge." 
 
 I obtained a vague idea of the meaning of " fellow," 
 gathered that Kent's capacities were mainly academic. 
 It was intolerable that this pretty girl should praise 
 another man to me. So I spoke of my own career, of my 
 course in economics, political finance, international law. 
 
 " How very clever of you," said Muriel, respectfully. 
 
 " You must have been a swat," said Hugh. 
 
 "A swat?" 
 
 " A mugger. A hard worker." 
 
 " I suppose so. I was seventh of my year." I pre- 
 tended to be modest, but I happened to know this 
 formula; I was very proud of the achievement. 
 
 " Good for you," said Kent ; " when I was at Harrow 
 I only wanted to be a blood." 
 
 " Out of two hundred and eighty-five," I added, without 
 even feigned modesty. 
 
 There was a short pause during which everybody 
 seemed to be looking at me. Then Hugh laughed a little 
 shrilly. 
 
 " Lord ! I was sent down." 
 
 " Hugh ! How can you ? " 
 
 Tli' chorus of protests through which I gathered 
 
 that Hugh had not been sent down, that he had come down 
 
THE HEART .OF ENGLAND 121 
 
 with an adequate degree. I wondered why he should 
 belittle himself. I did not do so. While Muriel continued 
 to talk, of a play I think, I remember that a very distant 
 memory came to me, a memory of a handsome middle- 
 aged man who stood in a Bordeaux drawing-room in front 
 of a small black-clad boy, and told him that in England 
 people didn't know anything. He, too, had belittled 
 himself, and I threw side-glances at Mr. Lawton, the 
 open-minded advocate of popular rights, wondered why 
 he, too, hid his merits. 
 
 Muriel refused a cigarette from Kent, with an osten- 
 
 is " Not in public." 
 " Do you smoke in private ? " I asked. 
 M Rather. Then father hasn't got to know." 
 "But he does know? " 
 " Oh, of course, but he's not supposed to." 
 T<> know and not to know. Well, I suppose it made 
 life easier. Muriel vowed it did, pleaded for peace against 
 clarity. I was ready enough to be convinced. 
 
 ;id, of course, I always have my whisky and soda 
 in bed." 
 
 I looked at her, shocked; I could not believe that she 
 :s, thai her lovely lips were soiled with spirits 
 and tobacco : but the inner Frenchman -in me spoke : 
 " Y- . II.: sh ladies all drink." 
 
 It was too late to call if back, My remark was retailed 
 all round, and at intervals 1 was made the butt of the 
 evejii d if I drank to my fiancie only with mine 
 
 by Muriel to drain a bumper of wassail with 
 tilery, told by Mrs. Lawton that she adored 
 methylated spirits. 
 
 d nul Buffer as mueli as usual. I was getting hard- 
 tnng to understand the English; I 
 
 H a black eye or anything 
 I 
 
 Mn: loWTJ ;it the piano, played some Henry VIII 
 
 ces, while Hi . I. nrton I >ld me what plays I ought 
 
 to s< ■ I disdain of the music, assured me 
 
 that "blast men scored, for they expected so little that 
 
122 TPIE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 everything amused them." I talked to Hugh, exclusively 
 of myself and uninterrupted. It was getting late when, , 
 at last, Edith was pushed to the piano by her father, 
 made in my honour to sing a French song. 
 
 It was the pretty little lay of a conscript's bride, tripping, 
 sentimental, where village rhymed with courage, amour 
 with retour. She was like a shepherdess of Dresden china. 
 Her blue eyes were misty and as she sang her neck swelled 
 towards me, a little as that of a slow-moving swan. I 
 looked at Muriel, at her slim shoulders, her strange eyes. 
 
 II 
 
 I walked home slowly along Oxford Terrace towards 
 Edgware Road. The dull light of the gas lamps was 
 reflected in the black varnish of the wet pavement. As 
 I walked, undisturbed, save when a cab splashed through 
 the puddles, I tried in vain to relate these people \o one 
 another, to analyse them and of their elements to make 
 a whole. They were all different, as half a dozen 
 French people would have been different, and yet had 
 that something common for which the French group 
 would have had a national equivalent.; Kent's bland 
 brilliance, Hugh's calm, the frankness and liberalism of 
 Lawton . . . discords, and yet over all, a concordance 
 of behaviour, manners, therefore morals. The men were 
 linked to the women, to the garrulous and discreet Mrs. 
 Lawton, to shy Edith, to g$y, audacious Muriel. 
 
 I thought most of the things I could not see, of their 
 reticences. Yes, that was the link : they all held back. 
 
 At the corner of a side street I stopped to let a four- 
 wheeler pass. The old driver, who looked in the night 
 like a bundle of rugs, pulled up in front of me. 
 
 "Got a light, mister? " 
 
 I handed him my matchbox, and as he lit his pipe, 
 observed : 
 
 " It has been raining, has it not? " 3 
 
 " Mum," he grumbled, " yes. Not much in it for me. 
 Ain't a night for old ladies." 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 123 
 
 I made a polite sound. The old cabman puffed at his 
 pipe, declared that times weren't wfyat they had been, 
 wondered what they would be soon. 
 
 " I suppose you're going home," I said, as he did not 
 whip up. 
 
 " Shouldn't be hanging about if I wasn't. Been out 
 since ten this morning." 
 
 He paused. Then : " Well, mustn't keep the missus 
 wailing, or she'll have the poker ready for me." He 
 clucked, shook the reins, and as the old horse leisurely 
 strained at the harness, added humorously, " No, it 
 wouldn't do; mustn't let the turtle soup get cold." 
 
 He, too, was an Englisliman. But was he ? And as I 
 thought of the old cabman I felt less certain of his nation- 
 ality. Heat and cold, money, food, a wife, those were his 
 thoughts ; was there anything to show that his moral 
 outlook, his standard of art, his hopes for a future of 
 ease and peace, differed from those of any cabman who at 
 thai time sat on his box in Bordeaux, Naples or Berlin? 
 Those classes are all alike, can know nothing but the 
 primitive : they have no time; they must eat, love, die, 
 and that is a big business. Some may be gay and others 
 dour, some bait the bull in the plaza and others back cocks 
 for a WBger, but the varnish upon their souls is very thin. 
 And . the intellectuals, the artists, they are 
 
 linked by the fineness of mental tilings as the lower folk 
 arc linked by the material ; it is a Swinburne for a Baude- 
 Spinoza for a Descartes, a Dostoievsky for a 
 StendhaL They, too, are alike, think alike. 
 
 □ the highest and the lowest lies the nation. 
 The nation is made up of those who have leisure and 
 mon< h to think not too much of material things, 
 
 and yet no spirit to transcend these. The. nation lies 
 ! he plebeian and the intellectual patrician. As 
 I walked away towards the Kdgware Road, where the 
 poor were making merry in as cheap and ron<rh a way 
 as they do in Belleville, I knew that behind me. in Lan- 
 castr- lifl tic- hrarl of Kngland, 
 
 g very regularly, very slowly and for all time. . 
 
124 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 III 
 
 In the months that followed I found that the Lawtons 
 bred in ftfaud a feeling of disquiet. She took in them an 
 interest which she did not share with the other inhabi- 
 tants of the house, who, I soon discovered, viewed my new 
 intimacy with satisfaction. One evening Mrs. Hooper 
 stood at the foot of the stairs, watching me while I teased 
 my tie into a proper set in front of the hallstand mirror. 
 
 " You won't make too much noise when you come in, 
 will you ? " she said, confidentially, for familiarity had 
 grown a little between us. 
 
 "No," I promised; " besides, I shall not be late. I'm 
 going to Mrs. Lawton's." 
 
 " Ah ! ■* Mrs. Hooper paused ; curbed by her manners, 
 she repressed a question and released a comment. " I 
 like to see' a gentleman in evening clothes, Mr. Cadoresse." 
 
 ^ Yes," I said ; " besides, one has to wear them." 
 
 " Of course, of course, when there's company. We're 
 quite homely here, but it's different at Mr. Lawton's." 
 
 I pondered for a moment on the curious sex-difference 
 which made me think of Lancaster Gate as " Mrs. 
 Lawton's," while Mrs. Hooper saw it as " Mr. Lawton's " ; 
 then : 
 
 " They always dress, I think, for I've been there when 
 they were alone." 
 
 " Quite right too. So shall we . . . when our ship 
 comes home?" 
 
 She smiled rather sadly and I thought of her and her 
 snobbish innocence, of the gradations, the people who 
 didn't wash before food, those who washed, those who 
 " changed," the great who " dressed." The Royal 
 Family on the iop — not that it had anything to do with 
 clothes, but whatever it was Mrs. Hooper classified, the 
 Royal Family somehow always came to the top. 
 
 " I used to think I'd like it too. when I first married," 
 she said, reflectively; "but Mr. lloopcr thought in our 
 position it wouldn't look well. Of course," she hurriedly 
 remarked, " it's different for young gentlemen." 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 125 
 
 She threw me a glance of approval, rather a fond glance,' 
 which made me wonder whether Mrs. Hooper regrett'ed 
 that she had no son, whether she would have .exchanged 
 Lulu for me; yet she would not have parted with Maud, 
 the artist, the infant prodigy. Maud was the centre of 
 the house. 
 
 I had begun to understand Maud, her emptiness and 
 the nature of her charm; very reluctantly I was coming 
 to see that she would resist me to the end, not because 
 she had anything to protect, but because she had nothing 
 to give. Our conversations were seldom of love, infallible 
 that there was no love; we spoke (I by compulsion) 
 of the new musical comedy, of the new star on the halls, 
 of record railway runs, the cost of London buildings. 
 We also spoke a good deal of the Lawtons, or rather 
 Maud questioned me as to their habits. She had none 
 df the reserve I choose to think English. 
 
 " I 'spect they're pretty oofy ? Does she have a car- 
 ? No footman? Well, I don't think much of 
 that, having to get out and ring the bell herself. How 
 much do you think they've got a year? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " What's the good of your being in the business if you 
 don't know ? Ten thousand ? " 
 
 " 1 shouldn't think so much." 
 
 "Hive, then?" 
 
 M I don't know." 
 
 " Well, there's not much in it unless it's five thousand, 
 it of the house?" 
 
 W .dking in the Park that Saturday afternoon, 
 
 and as I had just arrived from the City it was still before 
 
 Maud, intent on the Law ton rental, insisted on 
 
 calling on a house agent and pretending to want a house 
 
 in I. .II booked at us with suspicion, as 
 
 id not seem the sort of young couple likely to set 
 
 up there, but his book, being too old in his trade 
 
 \ly. 
 
 " I r 90a. Two hundred and fifty a year," he 
 
 said, gloomily. 
 
126 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Maud had the audacity to say that was just a little 
 too much. We left with an order to view a mere hundred 
 and forty pounder in Connaught Square. We said we 
 would lefriiim know. The estate agent smiled cheerlessly 
 and did not open the door for us ; he knew life. 
 
 The episode was vulgar, and a bitterness crept into my 
 reward,' which consisted in viewing the house in Con- 
 naught Square ; Maud viewed it magnificently. 
 
 " Why is there no electric light ? " she asked fiercely 
 of the haggard caretaker. 
 
 " 1 couldn't say, Miss. P'raps Marstons " 
 
 "Pooh! Marstons don't know anything. And that 
 panel's cracked." 
 
 Maud examined the whole house, scowling at the care- 
 taker, and, behind her back, grinning at me. At last I 
 entered into the joke. By Maud's instruction I loudly 
 addressed her as Lady Grace. The caretaker collapsed 
 completely; her earlier remarks were replaced by half 
 inaudible " Yes, your Ladyships " and " No, your Lady- 
 ships." ; * 
 
 "There aren't enough cupboards," said Maud; then, 
 angrily : " Where do you suppose the second housemaid 
 will keep the brooms ? " 
 
 The caretaker's attitude intimated that she didn't 
 know what a second housemaid was. Maud pranced and 
 fumed, asked me to remember Ascot, Hurlingham and 
 (a slip) the Tivoli; she abused the bedrooms, swore her 
 maid wouldn't stand the second floor back, declared that 
 her " husband " must have a bath fitted in his dressing- 
 room. While the caretaker shuffled to the basement to 
 fetch a candle, so that Maud could inspect the inside of 
 a hanging cupboard, we both laughed, and I loved her for 
 her gay insolence, her cheek, and I kissed her, still laughing, 
 while the old woman slowly climbed the stairs. 
 
 But not all our talks were enlivened by such pranks. 
 Often Maud commented bitterly on Lawtoniana. 
 
 M They're only a set of prigs. There they are, all over 
 starch and you'd think the butter wouldn't melt, talking 
 about Eton and the different kinds of port, and thinking 
 al! the time of us, Mother Tinman's little girls who'll 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 127 
 
 
 be at the Gaiety in another two years. I know the 
 sort." 
 
 Not far wrong as an impression. But could it be that 
 the Hugfa Lawtons of London nursed far-back thoughts 
 of the Mauds ? 
 
 " See 'em hanging about when we come out," Maud 
 summed up. " But I'm not taking any. No fear." 
 
 For Maud the "toffs " were a race apart, whom she 
 hated and admired because she knew that, in this land of 
 caste, she would not be accepted of them save by chance 
 of marriage. Though English, she understood them little 
 better than I did, for she knew nothing but their external 
 habits, the addresses of their tailors, the restaurants and 
 clubs they frequented, the location of their winter and 
 summer pleasures. She admired their good looks and 
 ct clothes, the easy, cold manners which she angrily 
 affected to despise. 
 
 " I'll be the Honourable Mrs. before I've done," she 
 
 confided to me one day ; " anybody could do it now that 
 
 y Bell has got the old earl." 
 
 Then she would recite the list of the latestprizes captured 
 
 by the privateers of the stage, and towards the stage her 
 
 talk would drift . Hers was a double instinct : she wanted 
 
 1 i"i i 1 >< < ■ausc she would like to have it to humiliate 
 
 Id associates, to rise, and she probably nursed a dim 
 
 equivalent of lex talionis. To marry a " toff " would be 
 
 When she said, "Ain't I good enough? " 
 
 poke with the voice of all the girls of her class whom 
 
 aristocrat yed on, and almost said, "An eye 
 
 for an eye, a tooth tor a tooth." I could not protest, for 
 
 : Id riot off : I eouKl only say : 
 
 darling, I love you," and she, " You can tell the 
 
 ire thai the Lawton girls made 
 
 up tl . and Bhe was darkly jealous of the adniira- 
 
 nad convicted me of feeling for Muriel and her 
 
 triangular ey 
 
 out," she said ; M triangular you call it, as 
 
 if a gl I'd have an eye like that. Shape of a d;, 
 
 il, anyhow, so you look out." 
 Then she would i ere protests that she 
 
128 THE MAKING -'OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 i 
 
 was much prettier, repulse my .advances, later woo me 
 back and, when successful, repulse me again. She feared 
 Muriel, for she had to confess she " sounded all right," 
 but laid no stress on Edith. She knew the sort : been sent 
 to the cleaners too often, like Lulu, and got all the colour 
 washed out. 
 
 Maud annoyed me when she attacked the Lawton girls. 
 I was not in love with either, but they were apart from 
 Maud as fremi me, and when she sneeered at their " quite 
 the lardy " manners I felt like a devout Catholic who 
 sees an irreverent tourist try to enter a mosque with his 
 boots on. 
 
 IV 
 
 Maud had matter for her questions. As the months 
 passed and the English summer shyly- sidled into the 
 country, I went more often to the Lawtons, on Sunday 
 afternoons, on Mrs. Lawton's at-home day, not then 
 abolished by fashion, a little to the houses of their friends. 
 For I was still a curiosity and, as such, well received. 
 
 " One never knows what you'll say next," said Mrs. 
 Raleigh, the comfortable wife of Colonel Raleigh. " When 
 you begin to talk, Mr. Cadoresse, I'm always afraid that 
 it's going to be quite dreadful." 
 
 " Do you mind it's being dreadful ? " I asked, audaciously, 
 for I resisted Mrs. Raleigh no more than I resisted any 
 other woman. I must, loving them all, suggest to all 
 women that I love them. Audacity is the path to love. 
 
 " Well . . . no," said Mrs. Raleigh, " perhaps I don't. 
 It's refreshing to hear you talk of the latest society 
 divorce as if it were an everyday sort of affair, but you 
 oughtn't to." 
 
 "Why?" d 
 
 " qh, how can I tell you ? ... We don't do it. Of 
 course, we know these things happen, but " 
 
 " But you think they only happen in the papers? " 
 
 " You're too sharp for me, Mr. Cadoresse," said Mrs. 
 Raleigh, with a mock sigh. She leaned back in her chair, 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 129 
 
 smiling at me with her very good teeth; she was forty- 
 five, but her wavy brown hair, her fine skin and bright 
 blue eyes were still attractive. If only she had worn 
 proper stays ! But those Englishwomen are always 
 unconsciously insuring against temptation. 
 
 " Still," she added, " you oughtn't to talk like that. 
 It's silly of you to say we think those things only happen 
 in the papers. We know all about them, but we don't 
 think it necessary to discuss them ; there are lots of things 
 wc don't discuss " 
 
 " For instance ? " 
 
 " If you think you're going to entrap me into discussing 
 things with you by telling you which are the ones I won't 
 you're wrong, Mr. Cadoresse; I'm not to be 
 caught like that. No, there just are things we don't dis- 
 cuss publicly — we don't see why we should ; they're quite 
 unnecessary. Why should, we trouble about the un- 
 ant things ? They do none of us any good and they 
 do harm, while there are so many pleasant ones." 
 
 My conversations with Mrs. Raleigh generally ended 
 in this way. She was not narrow, she was almost racy 
 sometimes, but there were things she liked to have illusions 
 about. This led me to talk seriously to her, which generally 
 made her laugh and say, " Oh, of course, you're a French- 
 man, you can't understand." That phrase always 
 exasperated me. I didn't want to be a Frenchman, so 
 I tried to understand ; it was not easy, even with faith 
 to help me. On those occasions I generally lost my head 
 and shouted. If'Colonel Raleigh and Gladys were present 
 I ma ber ridiculous, for my careful pronuncia- 
 
 tion failed me. On one occasion Colonel Raleigh tactfully 
 inter 1 tried to change the subject by making me 
 
 talk of th her I si ill had friends 
 
 there, and in my excitement I managed i<> tell him that I 
 ' t al Tours, in a regiment of dragons." 
 Leigh left the room, declaring that if he 
 art would . Raleigh and 
 
 lys apologised. 1 quite unnerved, and that 
 
 was the day I referr d to the ik tablecarpet." Tiny did 
 
 F 
 
130 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 not chaff me mercilessly, and indeed Gladys, whose 
 precise, pale face and quiet manner had designed her for 
 a schoolmistress, promised to drill me in the mysteries 
 of the words which end in " ough." I think they liked 
 my absurdity, the occasional incongruity of my frock- 
 coats and brown boots, my unexpected accents and the 
 general strangeness of my point of view. And yet I did 
 not want to be strange ; I had done everything I could 
 to be an Englishman; I knew London well, had even 
 explored several suburbs; I had learned to like English 
 beer, to open the door for a lady, to say that Fiona (the 
 Lawton's Scotch terrier) "ought to be shown at Cruft's. 
 I had even- begged a morning to see the Boat Race, which 
 was very dull, and had taken part in Boat Race Night, 
 which was very mild. 
 
 I was an oddity, outside them. " You are not one of 
 us," said every lineament of Colonel Raleigh. I admired 
 the old soldier, knew the tale of the fort he had held near 
 Chitral, knew that he could not cheat at cards, or give 
 a woman away, or wear the wrong hat : but I could not 
 connect him with my own old colonel, who was fat, took 
 snuff, and whose amorous adventures were the talk of 
 our regiment. Colonel Raleigh was not very human, 
 or rather he was no longer human. He was an officer 
 and a gentleman. 
 
 There were others, too : Bessie Surtces, dark and 
 madonna-like, except when she was in Switzerland and 
 purposely fell into the snow when a curate or a school- 
 master were near enough to pick her up. And Dicky 
 Bell, tall, upright, bird-like, who was ashamed of his 
 grammar school, and Archie Neville, who dressed on 
 nothing a year. They whirled about me, all of them, 
 amiable, dignified, and well- washed, asking me general 
 questions . about French customs and tolerating the 
 answers, revealing themselves but slowly and reluctantly. 
 Chaos still reigned in my mind. 
 
 It was many months before I knew that Bessie Surtees 
 was trying to make me propose to her because this was 
 one of her habits, and that she had a brother in the army 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 131 
 
 for whose sake her father had mortgaged his life insurance. 
 They refused themselves, and even Dicky Bell, who talked, 
 gave me little more than a hint of severely regulated 
 affairs of the heart. They wanted to talk of theatres, 
 games, politics (a little), France, but not of themselves 
 and me. 
 
 And yet I loved them, because, in their own word, 
 they were " decent." I might inwardly rage and long 
 to ask questions, though I knew they would evade them, 
 but I knew that Bessie Surtees never told a lie, while 
 Dicky Bell spent half his evenings drilling boys at a settle- 
 ment for the fun of the thing. And Archie Neville, who 
 was not sure that twenty-five francs went to the pound, 
 was poor because he had shouldered a dead father's debts. 
 Simple and simply fine, they were hard to themselves, 
 these Romans. 
 
 These people made me think of their own houses, houses*, 
 of the Queen's Gate type. No man can live in those 
 houses unless he has five thousand a year, and yet no man 
 gilds his door, which he could well afford to do. They take 
 it coolly, all of them, and never talk about it. That 
 sort of thing gives one the measure of the English quality. 
 
 V 
 
 Into the midst of England fell, every week, a letter 
 
 from my mother, a letter she wrote every Friday and will 
 
 write every Friday until one of us dies.^ It was written 
 
 in the fine sloping hand the French call English and the 
 
 English Italian, with violet ink on cheap white paper. 
 
 lwavs filled foul I o more, no less, as if she 
 
 kept on those shelves which I like to put up in her brain, 
 
 rv marked " News for Lucicn," and every week 
 
 took out just enough notes to make up- my ration. Her 
 
 letters followed a Ian : 1. Hopes that my health 
 
 was good. 2. Her health and Jeanne's. 8. Hopes that 
 
 I was doing well in business, feOC and warnings 
 
 IKm, at k and loud clothes). 
 
 ! my Saint's 
 
132 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 day the four sections were reduced owing to pressure on 
 space, for congratulations were included. At Easter I 
 received a flaming heart, or chromolithographed angels. 
 On the anniversary of my father's death came the yearly 
 reference to him, a hope that all was well with his soul, 
 and this formula : "I shall go and lay flowers upon 
 his grave to-morrow. As this is the month of May, the 
 flowers are beautiful." 
 
 Dear mother, I know you bargain with the flower-seller 
 for those flowers, try to make her abate her price by 
 telling her that they are for the dead ; you loved my father 
 economically, but you loved him dutifully, for he was 
 your husband and could not do quite wrong, as you love 
 me cautiously, for I am your son and cannot do quite 
 right. Your letters are written in another planet, where 
 people do extraordinary things, where Jeanne goes up 
 for her Brevet Ele?ne?itaire, where the vine has bad years 
 and M. de Pouvonac stands as a Catholic Republican for 
 the Bordeaux Town Council. In those days you were 
 incredibly remote by the side of this English knowledge 
 I had so greedily been sucking in; I began to see you 
 and the things that surrounded you as toys with which 
 little foreign children played. For the English held me 
 by maintaining me in the middle of their whirlpool. Their 
 faces flash past me as I think of them, and I cannot 
 remember where I saw them, these people ; some of them 
 are dead, some gone, some merely older and friendly; 
 one of them will endure for ever, and for ever beautiful 
 and young. Among them is even the black face of a 
 dog. It is the face of Fiona, the Aberdeen whom I saw 
 for the first time as she sat on the mat outside the dining- 
 room door when 1 entered the house of the Law! 
 As I took off my coat she surveyed me with unemotional 
 calm, as befitted her staid portliness; she winked round 
 brown eyes at me from under her shaggy eyebrows; she 
 did not growl, or stand up; she moved so little as she 
 watched me that the dull sheen on her coat seemed 
 fixed. Fiona was Scotch, therefore more closely allied 
 to the true English than the soft people of the South. 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 133 
 
 She seldom hurried ; when she wanted a door opened she 
 scratched it with indomitable obstinacy; if she required 
 sugar she sat up and monotonously waved her front 
 paws. She never barked except for a purpose. She 
 never loved anybody nor hated anybody, but she could 
 show her liking by a small wriggle of her twisted tail. 
 Amiable, self-centred, resolute, limited, brave enough to 
 three cats together, Fiona was an English dog. 
 Other scenes and people too, dinner-parties, Sunday 
 afternoon calls, Saturdays at Ranelagh, the River, all 
 splotched with white, and pink, and blue, the Strangers' 
 Gallery, and restaurants and English taverns, the Horse 
 Guards, the meet of the Four-In-Hand Club, the inside 
 of the Stock Exchange (a dangerous expedition), the ritual 
 fish lunch at Simpson's — these things rise up and all 
 blur together into chaotic early impressions of slow, 
 steady men, youths with all the purpose of their lives 
 in their strong arms and legs, and girls with lily-petal 
 skins. I love them; I like to think of them because they 
 can live without care for age or fate, because for them 
 life is so like cricket that an ugly deed is " not cricket." 
 Cricket ! I was bent on being English and mastered 
 the rules of the game; I grew so enthusiastic that I ran 
 out of the oflice on certain afternoons to buy a paper 
 and see what was the state of the score at Lord's. I 
 watched football matches, sagely preferred Rugby to 
 Association (at the beginning; later I thought more of 
 soccer than rugger). I found with melancholy that I 
 !d to take up the game, was by Muriel tactfully 
 directed towards tennis. 
 
 Oik tennis-party, a very early one, I remember best. 
 
 and the Ral longed to a club near 
 
 Souj they p! atatiously on 
 
 They rejoiced in the sin until a little guilt 
 
 <1 as a guest, I figure 
 
 myself, lookir • rkin my white garments, collarless*. 
 
 unfortn! in blue silk. Partnered by Muriel, 
 
 I pj od Glad igh, rather badly. I 
 
 think ii and I were a study in contrasts, for he seemed 
 
134 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 slow, almost lazy, struck swift and very low balls towards 
 the bottom of the court, while I leapt into the air, struck 
 wildly and savagely, aiming straight at Hugh's feet or 
 at Gladys's left. I am sure I would have fouled if one 
 could foul at tennis, for I wanted to win, to extract 
 admiration from the little crowd, Colonel and Mrs. Raleigh, 
 Eorth, Mrs. Lawton, who seemed amused by the per- 
 formance. With them was a girl I have never seen again, 
 a Miss Fox-Kerr. 
 
 But the game was going against us. Having led off 
 by winning my service and Gladys's we began to lose 
 ground, were beaten four times in succession. Muriel 
 ran in vain, begging me at times not to hit all the balls 
 into the neighbours' court. I recovered a little, made a 
 few lucky shots, looking every time towards the spectators 
 to see whether I was watched. I felt angry because the 
 relaxed look on Miss Fox-Kerr's long face told me that 
 her attention was fleeting. But she was watching me all 
 the same, for she smiled, said something to Edith which 
 made her giggle. My wounded pride translated itself 
 into wilder hitting, while Hugh's long arm worked like a 
 machine. At last came the crucial ball of the last game, 
 a swift return from Hugh. ... I heard a cry of " Back I " 
 from Muriel. ... I struck, heard the sharp " splack " 
 of the baft against the net ribbon. I also heard a con- 
 temptuous " Pff " come from Miss Fox-Kerr, saw her 
 lips purse up. I said nothing in reply to the cry of " Game 
 and," for my soul was full of hatred, I could not trust 
 myself to speak in presence of this girl. I have learned 
 to be a sportsman now, to take my beatings and my chaff, 
 to win without strutting, but I think I hate her still, this 
 dim girl, before whom I was a fool, who knew I was a 
 fool and did not conceal it. She is in my little museum, 
 by the side of Chaverac who saw me exposed as a coward. 
 
 And alf goes fleeting : Edith, who in those days appeared 
 only three or four times a year when the Brussels finislnng 
 school made holiday; Muriel, with whom I had a timid 
 flirtation, who good-humouredly accepted innocent kisses 
 when Edward Kent's superior fascination palled on her. 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 135 
 
 Maud even, that continual irritant, is less vivid, for her 
 attractiveness wore a little thin as I grew accustomed to 
 the exasperation her presence and her inaccessibility- 
 provoked in me. Besides, a new feeling was born in me, 
 a curious feeling towards women which had no roots in 
 my Latin temperament. Very slowly I had ceased to. 
 look upon women as toys; England was beginning my 
 sentimental education. I had been prepared for my 
 evolution by Barkers lecture on good women and bad, by 
 his analogous but less strict division of men into good 
 and bad. He had not shaken me at the moment, but he 
 had sown in my mind the seed of a new flower called 
 purity, which blooms more readily under the pale English 
 sky than in our own fierce sun. He did not influence my 
 conduct, but he made it possible for my conduct to 
 change ; I was ready to modify my standards, then, 
 when Hugh suddenly opened to me. 
 
 We sometimes, in search of exercise, walked westwards 
 from Fen church Street to Marble Arch, an incongruous 
 and not unfriendly couple. I liked Hugh, and though we 
 never had much to say to each other when we had ex- 
 hausted skysigns, the play, and the contents of the evening 
 r, it pleased me to walk with this handsome figure. 
 evening, as we jostled through the press in Cheapside, 
 1 broke off in a sentence to exchange smiles with a young 
 furl as sli us; I even turned to look back at her : 
 
 it was harmless, even from the English point of view, 
 for nil I wanted was to gratify my own vanity, to see 
 he, too, looked back. But, after this, I had for 
 some minutes the conversation to myself; Hugh did not 
 say a word until we reached Holborn, when he suddenly 
 <1 my comments on The Chinese Honeymoon* 
 
 44 Look heie, C aid, haltingly; "you 
 
 know, you oughtn't to do that." 
 
 44 Do* what ! 
 
 rls in the street. I wish you wouldn't." 
 'I threw him a quick | The admonition had 
 
 disphascd me, but il ontenoe had surpi 
 
 and moved me a little, for Hugh had never before con- 
 
136 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 nectcd himself with me, and now he was trying to express 
 personal interest, to drag himself out of his unemotional 
 Enstfishness. 
 
 "Why?" I asked, gently. 
 
 " It's jiot done. But it's not that only," he added, 
 hurriedly, as if dimly aware that this reason was not 
 enough ; " it's not what a decent sort of chap does. You 
 see, that kind of thing's rather cheap ; if you get snubbed 
 you feel very small, and if you don't, well, you ought to." 
 
 " But how is one to know people one wants to if one 
 can't get introduced ? " 
 
 " Oh, you know I don't mean that," said Hugh, rather 
 acidly. " Those aren't the people you might get intro- 
 duced to; I don't set up for a saint, but a man's got to 
 keep away as much as he can from that sort of thing. 
 He wants to forget all about it, keep his head clear for 
 the things that matter. He can't be big unless he's 
 straight." 
 
 " Galahad," I said, ironically. 
 
 M Who's Galahad ? " 
 
 " A man in a book." Hugh was Galahad sans le 
 savoir, then. " Never mind, go on." 
 
 44 Oh, I'm not going in for pi -jaw, but believe me, 
 Cadoresse, I'm right and you're wrong, even if you are 
 cleverer than mc." 
 
 I protested, though I did think myself cleverer than 
 this fine fellow, whose clear blue eyes seldom held the 
 animation of an idea. But he did not pursue this side 
 issue, for he apparently knew that he was not very clever 
 and accepted the fact without demur, while he was bent 
 on reforming me. 
 
 44 That sort of thing," he began again after some minutes 
 of silence, during whicli I waited anxiously for what he 
 would say; 44 it's all right for . . . well, ail sorts of people 
 . . . the fellows at the office. . . . They do that sort of 
 thing on the pier at Hastings ... by the bandstand, 
 all that. But somehow a fellow like you can't. Of 
 course, I know you're French and it makes a difference, 
 but you're in England and you've got to choose . . ." 
 
THE HEART OF ENGLAND 137 
 
 We walked along Oxford Street and I said very little 
 wliile he floundered, trying to say what he thought, 
 drawing back because he was afraid of preaching,* and 
 sometimes quite unable to express himself because he so 
 seldom did express an idea. But his lecture came down to 
 
 THE CREED OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL BOY 
 
 4i I believe in the gentlemen of England. I believe 
 that I must shave every morning and every morning 
 take a bath, have my clothes made to order, in 
 such wise that no man shall look at them twice. I 
 believe in the Church, the Army, the Navy, the Law, 
 and faithfully hold it to be my duty to maintain 
 myself in my caste if Fate has called me to a walk 
 in life other than these. I believe that I must 
 have a decent club. I believe that I must not 
 drink to excess, nor be a teetotaller. I believe in 
 my father's politics. I believe that I must not tell 
 lies, nor cheat at cards, nor apply the letter of the 
 law in games. I believe that I must perjure myself 
 to save a woman's reputation, even if she has none, 
 respect all women, except those who are not respect- 
 able, for they are outlawed ; I believe that I must 
 
 !d my passions in check, feci shame when they 
 me and yield only in secret, because I am a 
 gentleman of England. And, above all, that which 
 I believe I must never tell." 
 
 It moved me very much to hear Hugh telling, violating 
 
 for my sake the canons of his reserve, compelling himself 
 
 terfere, because it m straight thing," "the 
 
 handsome thing." When he had done I was silent for 
 
 g time, so long that we did not exchange a word until 
 
 M Arch, where our roads diverged. Then 
 
 h suddenly spoke again : 
 
 "• You know ... I don't want you to think . . . well, 
 
 I of thiir '1 believe it if 
 
 yon tti 1" . . . p i ni wrong. I can't be 
 
 • right, only I've always taken all that for 
 
 - 
 
138 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 granted ... so I don't want you to feel . . . hurt . . . 
 or anything . . ." 
 
 I shook hands with him, hard. 
 
 " That's all right, Lawton ; I understand. It's very 
 good of you ; I feel ..." 
 
 " Good-night, good-night," he said, hurriedly, and 
 walked away from me. 
 
 He could not bear my thanks, for they made him see 
 that he had " given himself away " ; he disliked the idea 
 of preaching, disliked the half-apology his heart had 
 dictated, disliked my quick, over-emotional response. 
 He walked away, very fast, as if he were escaping from 
 some menace. Perhaps he was afraid that I was going 
 to kiss him outside the Tube Station. Unaccountably, 
 much of his spirit entered into me ; the samurai began in 
 my heart to struggle with the voluptuary; I saw more 
 grace, less seduction, I saw grounds for respect, and self- 
 respect, decencies, 7 knightlinesses, all kinds of lofty but 
 appealing fetishes. The samurai did not triumph, and 
 has not yet triumphed, perhaps, but he fought hard for 
 the dignity of my soul; he was often beaten, on those 
 nights when I paced my little room, avoiding the sickening 
 sight of " In the Garden of Eden " and " The Jubilee 
 Procession," on others when a sudden gentleness came 
 over Maud and she was all allure. 
 
 But I tried, for you can be a Frenchman and just be 
 a Frenchman, a German, and that is enough ; but what's 
 the good of being an Englishman unless you can be an 
 English gentleman too ? 
 
PART II 
 
 CHAPTER I , 
 
 E D I T il LA\fTON 
 
 Suddenly I became aware of Edith., I had been in 
 England just two years. Across the dissolving view of 
 my impressions she had flitted from time to time, a fair, 
 gracious tittle figure. Flitted ! Hardly; while bolder 
 actors held the stage she had stood in the wings, watching 
 the play, shyly peeping from behind the scenery, showing 
 in the shadow her pale golden head, her tender blue eyes. 
 And if ever I looked at the figure it blushed, soon with- 
 draw, as a dryad might shrink away from the gaze of a 
 sat yr. 
 
 I had seen her only during the short holidays of the 
 
 an school, at that first dinner, then again at the tennis 
 
 ., some afternoons at her mother's house, not ten 
 
 in all. She had never math red; she had been 
 
 , like the white walls and tin- flowered cushions 
 
 of the drawing-room; she had talked to me a little more 
 
 readily after the tennis-party, tor site had resented the 
 
 inptuous " Pff " with which tyiss Fox-Kerr branded 
 
 me. I knew this, for we had exchanged a few words 
 
 ernoon. 
 
 ■' I lay badly/ 1 I loomily watching 
 
 mortified and 
 hunched-up in in; the colours of which I was not 
 
 led to use, 
 M 5Ton d y badly." said Edith; " you only want 
 
 practice." 
 
 130 
 
140 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " No doubt," I replied. I was curt, for that was not the 
 remark I wanted. 
 
 44 You play quite as well as Miss Fox-Kerr, anyhow." 
 
 I threw Edith a side-glance. Why had she picked out 
 the girl who had insulted me ? But Edith's reply to my 
 next sentence made her attitude clear. 
 
 " She does not seem to think so," I suggested. 
 
 There was a pause. Then Edith said, inconsequently : 
 " I think it's rather a shame." I made no comment, but 
 I understood her; I looked at the slim white fingers that 
 grasped the racket, thought I "should like to kiss them, to 
 kiss them not so much because I wanted to kiss them, as 
 because such a gesture would express my gratitude. But 
 one does not in public kiss the hands of shy English girls ; 
 I said nothing, because I should have said something 
 emotional, and I knew already this was not done. Bufe*^ 
 when Edith returned to Brussels, and whenever she came 
 back, I did not forget. Now and then, when I sat in my 
 room alone, Hecate sent me a graceful empusa. The 
 ghost always said the same thing : " It's rather a shame." 
 
 I must not exaggerate : I did not so very often think 
 of Edith while she was at school, for the claims of new 
 common things, of England, of my business, of Maud, of 
 others, of Muriel, tended to fill my mind. My relation to 
 Muriel was peculiar, for the girl did not set out to fascinate 
 me, being more drawn towards Edward Kent and, in his 
 absence, to others amongst whom I did not greatly count. 
 Yet she was friendly, and, while treating me as a friend, 
 treated me as a man : that is, as a creature susceptible of 
 becoming a lover. She did not admit me as a lover, but 
 she did not consider it impossible I might become one, 
 for she was light enough and, so far, untouched enough 
 by love to make no emphatic distinctions between men. 
 Ours was a comradeship, an amittt amoureuse. 
 
 "Hello! what's to-day's tie? Valenciennes? Poirt 
 d'Alencon ? " 
 
 44 It isn't lace," I said, roughly. 
 
 41 It looks rather like it. Now Mr. Cadoressc, if I were 
 you I'd go in for Irish; it's more solid, more manly." 
 
EDITH LAWTON 141 
 
 " You know quite well I never wore a lace tie. A little 
 
 insertion " 
 
 44 I'll be fair. It isn't lace to-day. It's more like the 
 Mediterranean." 
 
 11 Do you want me to wear black? " 
 k " X". of course not." Muriel grew serious, ceased to 
 chaff me. "Don't be obstinate; go to any place you 
 like in Jermyn Street and ask them to sell you the tie 
 they've sold most of during the past month, and you'll be 
 all right." 
 
 It was Muriel, in her kindliness, anglicised my clothes 
 as soon as she became friendly enough to criticise me to 
 my face. She also gravely taught me the things to do. 
 
 " You've got to be smart," she said. "A man's got 
 no right not to be smart. It's the only way he has of 
 looking pretty. Now he mustn't look like a mute, and 
 he mustn't overdo it. You did overdo it with that suit 
 
 of yours, the teddy-bear, Hugh called it " 
 
 '" Well, I saw it in the window," I said, flushing. 
 44 If a suit is exposed for sale, the buyer is exposed to 
 ridict 
 
 44 I will bet that sentence is one of Kent's." 
 " What if it is? " Muriel threw me a rather spiteful 
 glance, then relented, not displeased by my suggestion 
 Kent condescended to be brilliant for her sake. 
 44 It's true. Now listen, Mr. Cadoresse. . . ." 
 
 I owe a great deal of my education to Muriel; she was 
 
 fundamentally dashing; she classed people by their 
 
 unes and places of residence. In her own words, 
 
 1 no use for people whose fare to the City was 
 
 ice M j the did pise these people : she 
 
 DOied t hem. It was Muriel explained to me that 
 
 »urt wasn't right; bui that the Welcome Club 
 
 l> oo1 to go to the seaside on Sunday League 
 
 hilling for tea in Bond 
 
 dthout, thai I bad better pave no club than 
 
 join one v, bich had no waiting I 
 
 14 And d v off," she said. 44 It isn't done. You 
 
 tell people how well yon did «>i or what a 
 
142 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 lady-killer you arc, or that you can pull twenty miles 
 without feeling it." 
 
 " Well, I can," I said, sulkily, as I thought of a wonderful 
 Sunday with Maud between Hampton Court and Staines. 
 
 " There you go again. Don't say it." 
 
 " I suppose you think I'm a bounder." 
 
 " If I did, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't talk to 
 you." 
 
 I unbent. I even took her hand, told her she was very 
 sweet to me, tried to kiss her; she resisted me at first, 
 but soon surrendered, with a serene indifference which 
 ought to have told me .she valued me no more than the 
 others. Like most English girls Muriel did not care vety 
 much whether one man or another made advances to her ; 
 if she invited his attentions it was to satisfy her vanity. 
 She liked me, was amused by my Frenchness, the un- 
 certain temper she so often had to soothe; she found an 
 obscure maternal pleasure in training me. She was not 
 in love with me, and I could not fall in love with her 
 because I knew she did not care. 
 
 Thus my heart was free when Edith returned for good. 
 This was in October. I had not seen her for six montlis, 
 for the Lawtons had settled at Ostend in August, and she 
 suddenly struck me as new. She was eighteen and had 
 grown a good deal ; this I judged early, for I did not know 
 I would find her as I entered the drawing-room on a 
 Sunday afternoon, when the air was still warm and 
 glowing. She stood at the open window, and had evi- 
 dently not heard the maid announce mc, for she had one 
 hand upon the window bolt and was looking out towards 
 the Gardens. As I came in and stood watching her, 
 Fiona turned, came towards me, faintly wagging her tail, 
 stopped a yard away and, lying on her back, gazed at me 
 with unebullient friendliness. I could see Edith's profile, 
 the pale gold of her h;iir, now " up " and dressed in soft 
 coils, the low forehead, the small, straight nose, the little 
 pink mouth with the serious air. Upon the boll. Kay her 
 slender, white hand; as she stooped I observed, detached 
 as if I looked at a statue, the* long curves of her arms and 
 
EDITH XAWTON 143 
 
 shoulders, the noble straight line of her back. Upon the 
 carpet Fiona lay and rubbed herself, grunting a little with 
 content ; very lightly her tail went " swish, swish '* 
 •across the pile. 
 
 >th turned round, saw me. But she did not blush 
 bright as I expected ; a faint flush, no more, rose to her 
 ks. She smiled, came towards me, her hand frankly 
 outstretched. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Cadoresse ? I didn't hear you 
 come in." 
 
 " How do you do ? " 
 
 I released her hand, which I had held just that fraction 
 
 of time which expresses significant instead of emotional 
 
 salutation. She did not seem disturbed, sat down on the 
 
 e, indicated a chair with a movement so gracious 
 
 that it chilled me a little, until I realised, which I did 
 
 within a lew minutes, that Edith the child had become a 
 
 woman. She was a woman, though but eighteen, having 
 
 forced towards maturity by association with the 
 
 bolder Belgian and German girls. She was conscious 
 
 ■ d self-conscious, 
 
 M What were you looking at? " I asked, as I bent down 
 
 a behind the ear. 
 
 ■ 1 don't know. The motors, and the people in the 
 
 Gardens. They're sitting down, some of them, as if it 
 
 midsummer.* 1 
 
 "As if it v. ed upon me. How those English 
 
 glish ! But I resisted the impulse to correct and 
 
 : 
 
 M I boo," I said, "like looking at people. They're all 
 so difiVn : 
 
 " ^ ! Edith, softly, "they're all different. All 
 
 mething different, wanting something different," 
 
 I Watched h< r. This interest of hers in people, it w;is 
 
 t . Edith was not prici 
 as Maud would I which Muriel 
 
 could not help doing. T: a gentle reflective 
 
 in hex preoccupation. 
 
 " S tin y have lives ? " I suggested ; " that 
 
144 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 they're not ready-made goods produced by the hundred 
 million?" 
 
 "Of course." She laughed. "I like to think they 
 have wonderful lives, arid some of them dreadful lives — " 
 She paused abruptly. " Oh, well, it's none of my busi- 
 ness. Mother '11 be down in a minute." 
 
 I think she had broken the spell with intent, for she 
 seemed embarrassed, hurried. You too, Edith, you were 
 afraid in that first minute of " giving yourself away." 
 Or instinct watched over you. 
 
 Mrs. Lawton dicf not come down for some time, as I 
 was an early caller and she was not ready. So I went on 
 talking to Edith and scratching Fiona's ear. Edith had 
 become a little aloof after she had expressed a little more 
 of her soul than she intended, and now I did most of the 
 talking; at times she interjected a leading question. 
 
 " I suppose you had a good time this summer ? " 
 ' As it happened I had been to Pontaillac, where my 
 mother had taken a small Villa for the season. I described 
 Pontaillac, the haunts of the Bordeaux smart set, the 
 little woods, the vine-clad hills. 
 
 " And you see the Gironde," I said. " It's lighter than 
 the sea ; it looks grey, while the sea is green. Across the 
 estuary you can see the cliffs, and it is so hot that some- 
 times there is a mirage and another line of cliffs seems to 
 sit upside down on the top of the rea^ones." 
 
 " How lovely ! " said Edith, without excitement. She 
 induced me to talk of the open cafes, the petits chex-aur, 
 which had not in those days been superseded by la boule ; 
 of the extraordinary clothes, notably the red trousers the 
 Bordelais like to wear at the seaside. She said it 
 rather like Ostend, asked whether I did not think all 
 seaside places were alike. 
 
 " Hardly," I said. " There's nothing like the English 
 . nothing so dull. Worthing, for instance." Then 
 I plunged, looked her straight in the eyes and said, " I've 
 , to Worthing, on a Sunday League trip." 
 
 " How jolly ! " said Edith. And her smile meant that 
 she thought it jolly. 
 
EDITH LAWTON 145 
 
 It amused and pleased me that she did not snub me as 
 Muriel had done when I mentioned this inexpensive 
 pleasure. 
 
 The keynotes of this and of other conversations I had 
 with Edith were always the same : frankness and fresh- 
 ness, mixed with sudden reserves. She was the young 
 girl, who is modest and bold, not la jeune frile, who is 
 curious and furtive. She was afraid of the. things she did 
 not understand, and became shy and silent whenever I 
 spoke of anything that verged on the " naughty," as the 
 English say. Naughty ! you have to be English to be 
 " naughty "; if you are French and " naughty " you are 
 bad. 
 
 II 
 
 I talked a good deal with Edith during the next few 
 
 months. Ours was a paradoxic relation : absolute but 
 
 limited frankness; that is to say, the things we could 
 
 discuss we discussed without reserves, while we ignored 
 
 I hers. She frequently fell to my share, for Hugh was 
 
 being more and more closely hemmed in by Louisa Kent 
 
 and watched by Bessie Surtees, while Muriel, who was 
 
 not jealous, was quite equal to enjoying simultaneously 
 
 Dicky Bell and Neville or any men she could 
 
 ich from Gladys Raleigh. Muriel made no piratical 
 
 efforts : she was an Autolycus — she gathered rather than 
 
 stole. So very often I found that I talked to Edith for 
 
 an hour at a time, and there was about her a fragrance of 
 
 h which slowly began to charm me. I did not love 
 
 but I ft 1 i pleasure in h< r society, a gentle, 
 
 pleasure As We talked I found myself 
 
 nt ally as w< 11 as physically, realising 
 
 and hn r toy-like daintiness. But I suspected 
 
 that under the toy-like exterior was some strength, not 
 
 that noble strength ol action which is ^ven to so few 
 
 women, but the strength of uncomplaining endurance. 
 
 She almost I xprrssrd it oner when I asked her whether 
 i not bore her to drive in t he Park with Mrs. Lawton's 
 mother. 
 
146 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Well," she said, " it's not very amusing; she's funny, 
 she's always losing her spectacles, or her handkerchief. 
 Or she wants to stop and look at the children feeding the 
 ducks, or playing. She made me get out yesterday and 
 tackle five dirty li^le boys who were picnicking " 
 
 " Picnicking ! "^1 cried; "in December." 
 
 " Yes. Small boys will do that sort of thing. They 
 had a sham camp fire and a sentry to watch for the park- 
 keeper — anyhow, Grannie made me ask them all their 
 names and whether they were Hurons or Iroquois, which, 
 of course, they didn't know, and give them a penny each 
 to buy rifles. We had quite a little crowd before I had 
 done. I felt " 
 
 " Silly ? " I suggested out of mere mischief. 
 
 " Of course I felt silly," said Edith, with sweet severity. 
 " One does hate to be looked at. Still, she likes it, and 
 what does it matter? " 
 
 I gave vent to a little Nietzscheanism. ' 
 
 " Well, perhaps you're right, but one has to bear a few 
 things in life, hasn't one? " Edith looked at me with so 
 soft an expression in her blue eyes that I wanted to agree 
 with her, but as I did not reply she went on : " It wouldn't 
 be good for one, would it, to do everything one liked ? " 
 
 " It would be very pleasant." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it would be nice. But if one always 
 did what one liked one would become so selfish, one 
 wouldn't remember how to do anything for anybody. 
 Perhaps it isn't good for one to be too happy." 
 
 " Puritan," I said. 
 
 " I wonder whether I am ? " Edith looked reflectively 
 at her slim hands. " I don't think so, though; I like to 
 enjoy myself, only I want other people to enjoy themselves 
 too." 
 
 Edith was not telling the truth : at heart she dis- 
 trusted pleasure; she loved it, but she was never sure 
 that it was not sinful. Ten generations of Protestant 
 ancestors had given her an attitude almost incompre- 
 hensible to a Roman Catholic, that is a Pagan, such as I. 
 But the gentle severity of it. her rectitude and sim- 
 
EDITH LAWTON 147 
 
 plicity, appealed to me as the pretty Quaker maidens have 
 ever appealed to the most hardened adventurers. And I 
 was far from being hardened; I had loved often and 
 lightly, but seldom grossly ; that is, I had always managed 
 to introduce into the most commonplace adventures a 
 strain of romantic idealism. 
 
 I wondered, after this conversation, whether Edith 
 were more capable of idealism than of enthusiasm. I 
 was not sure, for it is not often a human creature can feel 
 intensely in one way only; I ought to have known her 
 better, to have understood hdw fettered and canalised 
 is the English faculty for romance. I ought to have 
 guessed that' Edith sometimes thought of love and 
 marriage, if never of love alone; that she had visions of 
 a very respectful lover, very strong and very gentle, very 
 brave, very generous, upright, God-fearing, and reason- 
 ably addicted to the virile habits of tobacco, oaths and 
 drink. A sort of Launcelot, this, not Hugh's Galahad; 
 a Launcelot with a commission in the Guards. 
 
 It is true that Edith did not help me much. She was 
 all implications; she never revealed herself, never tore 
 body off to show me her soul. But that is not the 
 way of the soulful. Besides, I had not often the oppor- 
 tunities I needed to cross-examine hery to drive her by 
 syllogism and inference into positions which would compel 
 bet to conf< bs; though we talked long we seldom talked 
 alone : rival coin intruded upon ours or throat- 
 
 ; to do so, so that I could not produce the atmosphere 
 in w I and women tell one another the things that 
 
 malt iotisly enough, in those days I never won- 
 
 I whether ti anything to be drawn from 
 
 b ; already, no doubt, I suspected thai Edith must 
 be as other an extraordinary field where grew 
 
 Bowers oi imp* ision, desire and r : I must have 
 
 suspected that sfa n things t <ly, 
 
 Done th< l(lv because- dumbly. Edith, 
 
 ii< in nay thoughts, for I still put- 
 id with the hopeless obstinacy a man can ex- 
 hibit only if lie li\e in the same house as the one he 
 
148 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 favours. I had then as a somewhat cynical motto that 
 there were many good fish in the sea, and I would have 
 forgotten Maud when another woman crossed my path 
 if I had not seen her every day. She had not altered much. 
 On the night of my arrival, when she granted me that 
 bold but deceptive kiss, she had been young for seventeen. 
 Two years later she was young for nineeten. Her training 
 was finished : she never would have had any training if 
 the Hoopers had not faintly hoped that by wasting time 
 they could gain time, prevent her from going on the stage 
 and safely marry her off. They would gladly have 
 married her off to me. 
 
 " Yes, she's getting a big girl now," Mrs. Hooper said, 
 ruminati vely ; "she oughtn't to be on the shelf long. 
 Not," she added with compunction, " that I want to lose 
 my little Maudie, though — " (proudly) " — with all her 
 education — ■'well, well, I suppose it'll always be the same ; 
 young gentlemen are already paying her attentions; 
 there's Mr. Saunders, he's doing well in the Estate office. 
 And Mr. Colley — though a dancing master, Mr. Cadoresse 
 —well ■" 
 
 "Exactly," I said, my masculine pride being exasperated 
 by any idea of rivals. 
 
 " Yes, that's just what I think. Still — of course, it's 
 not like Lulu." 
 
 Mrs. Hooper sighed, for Lulu at seventeen had fulfilled 
 the promise of being plain which she made at fifteen. 
 She had maintained her one characteristic of reading 
 penny novels, and acquired no others. I think I saw 
 Lulu the other day (she must be twenty-five now); she 
 was stouter and wore good, dowdy clothes : some paper- 
 backs were sticking out of her muff. 
 
 " You've never thought of getting married, Mr. 
 Cadoresse ? " 
 
 I parried, alleged youth and lack of moix y. 
 
 " Oh, well," said Mrs. Hooper, encoui. : M young 
 
 people can't expeet to begin where their parents left 
 off." 
 
 Mrs. Hooper began to enlarge once more on her 
 
EDITH LAWTON 149 
 
 daughter's accomplishments, her dancing, her singing. 
 " Comes in so handy in society," she said. Evidently 
 she thought that the teaching of Mother Tinman could be 
 made into a refined asset, that in da}'s to come Maud 
 would, thanks to Mother Tinman, shine in, say, Kensal 
 Green circles. Perhaps charity concerts — or graciously 
 political socials. 
 
 Maud was franker. 
 • " Oh, I let the old dear talk. I know what I'm after. 
 You don't think I swallowed old Bella Billion neat and 
 her tooraloo and keeping the limelight on your pearlies. 
 I wasn't going to start up as a third line girl on a quid a 
 week and work up to the first and wait ten years for a 
 line : Np ! I'll start up in the flies, old dear, give you my 
 solemn ! " 
 
 She had changed, I suppose, though she seemed young 
 for nineteen. The vernacular of the stage had gained 
 on the cockney. But she remained hard, invincible, 
 ready to play me off against Saunders or Mr. Colley. 
 Their cause advanced no more than mine. 
 
 " Of course ma sits dreaming (dreams of love and 
 
 ms of you) — every time she thinks she's spotted a 
 
 winner. Why, the old dear can't say rice, or slipper, 
 
 without making a goo-goo sort of eye at me — you know, 
 
 you my cheeild,' sort of eye. But I'm not 
 
 taking any, I can tell You. Don't say I wouldn't look 
 
 at a Duke if there's one going cheap, or even an Earl, but 
 
 ked a wrong 'un if she thinks I'm going to warm 
 
 | >j>( i s for him or prance round with the grocer 
 
 for the s.'ikc of the Signor." 
 
 1 laughed, for Maud had gauged "Signor" Colley's 
 
 . but tin- subtle quality of "spotting a winner" 
 
 g un' " tended to show that Saunders, the 
 
 h adway. I was not indifferent, 
 
 '1 I chafed, for the brown eyes had never been so 
 
 bright . the small pointed h rm and cool, but I had 
 
 . dared not be called sulky, as Maud 
 
 applied sulkiness in return and always beal me at the 
 
 game. If I did oof allow myself to be wooed back after 
 
150 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 having been practically insulted she sometimes refused 
 to speak to me for several days. 
 
 " Such a spirited girl," said Mrs". Hooper, fondly. 
 
 When this happened I fell back on Mr. Hooper, who 
 had completely failed to educate me in the tenets of 
 Conservatism, though he had taken me to his club, in a 
 back street off the Harrow Road, to be properly grounded 
 by his fellow members and occasional speakers from the 
 headquarters of Unionist, naval and military societies. 
 I had no precise politics in those days, I had nothing but 
 an unappeasable thirst for information which made me 
 read, in the Tube, at lunch and in the intervals of work, 
 indigestible chunks of oratory, emasculated Liberal 
 ideas in the Tory papers, and garbled Conservatism in the 
 Radical press. For two years I had every day been 
 reading the paper, skipping sports, murders and law 
 reports; I had abandoned foreign affairs, for was I not 
 going to be an Englishman? Tariff Reform and Free 
 Trade pamphlets, booklets on the land question, licensing, 
 the iniquities and virtues of the House of Lords, the 
 rights of Chinamen, all this jostled in my head, slowly 
 ordering itself, mixed with the history politicians use, 
 tags about Magna Charta, Cromwell, Burke, Phoenix 
 Park, Gladstone and the paper duty, Disraeli and prim- 
 roses. I suppose I knew as much about politics as the 
 ordinary man, perhaps more, for I wanted to know, while 
 he merely had to. But Mr. Hooper failed to move me, 
 no doubt because the Lawtons were Liberals ; if Lawton, 
 Hugh and their women had been repellent to me I should 
 have been a Tory Democrat, which is the rough equivalent 
 of the FrenVch Radical I was. But the Lawtons were the 
 great English and conkl do no wrong. 
 
 I did not, however, despise the Conservatives, for they 
 too were English and could not be quite wrong. Thus 
 Mr. Hooper retained hopes of saving my political soul. 
 Sometimes, at the club, he spoke. I can see him, a thin, 
 bald little figure, with a melancholy blue eye. He stands 
 upon the low platform, holding tight the lapels of his 
 frock- coat : 
 
EDITH LAWTON 151 
 
 14 — The Free Traders are always saying — er — that the 
 tariff would raise prices. Now, gentlemen, I don't think 
 anybody can say what will happen — er — under — under 
 the new system. Of course they might, the prices I' mean 
 — but then if we were getting more for our work it wouldn't 
 matter. Of course, there are all sorts of ways, like Layshell 
 Mobil " 
 
 Then Mr. Hooper would throw back his mind to Five 
 Thousand Facts and Fancies, or some other book of the 
 kind, and expound L'fichelle Mobile, that cunning re- 
 ciprocal scale of prices and duties, becoming eloquent an<J 
 secure as soon as he abandoned ideas for the firm ground of 
 fact. But at last he would tail off again into references 
 to " Joe " (for whom there was a large cheer and a faint 
 Unionist Free Trade hiss), beg the audience to give the 
 tariff a fair trial. A fair trial ! that is what impressed 
 me in the dingy little club, which had as a president an 
 undertaker and as members some fifty shopkeepers, 
 workmen and clerks. Even here, in a dusty back room, 
 which always smelled of pipes, the tendency was to 
 nine the new idea suspiciously and yet to try it. I 
 r heard anybody talk wildly of high protection, or 
 call the Opposition leader a liar, a traitor or a hireling in 
 Germany's pay. Tin- members seldom interrupted : if 
 did the undertaker stroked his grey whiskers and 
 said M Gentlemen ! " with an air of shocked mournfulness, 
 : 1 , which at once restored peace. They 
 they believed in the decencies of 
 debate. Perhaps they were too sane. Often I longed 
 to jump up, and though I was nominally a Liberal, roar : 
 M Down with the little Englanders ! " I wanted to wake 
 the little elul) up, but 1 felt dimly that it would not wake 
 up. The chib I her awake nor asleep, it was sleep- r 
 
 walking. If I had Bhouted I should not have been thrown 
 interrupter ought to be thrown; the 
 
 OUld have Said : " (Questions will he allowed 
 later." Still.it was good to think that tempers could be 
 so well k( pt — if tie 
 
152 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 III 
 
 But my political days were only dawning. They were 
 near, but Edith was nearer, and as I turned away from 
 the glare of Maud's footlights I began to see the soft 
 glimmer of Edith. One startling fact stood out : I had 
 not kissed Edith under the mistletoe. I was a guest at 
 the dignified Christmas dinner, on which followed a dim 
 rowdiness of games ; I had dragged Muriel, Bessie Surtces 
 and laughing Gladys Raleigh under the iconoclastic berry 
 and publicly kissed them; I had seen Edith kissed by 
 almost every one of the men, from the collected Edward 
 Kent to the self-doubting Neville. But I had not kissed 
 her ; I could have done so and, for one moment, I wanted 
 to ; then I hesitated and knew that I was not lost. Some 
 unexplained impulse prevented me from treating in 
 sportive wise the Dresden Shepherdess, something tremu- 
 lous that made my heart beat. I was not in love with 
 her, I told myself, but I could not bear to think that I 
 would have to wrench her slim shoulders round and force 
 upon her a caress which she would not permit if the 
 idiotic licence of Christmas did not compel her to do so. 
 
 It was a long time before I knew that I wanted Edith's 
 lips consenting, and not conventional. 
 
 But soon accident was to intervene and to drive us 
 further towards intimacy. I had not seen Edith for a 
 fortnight when, one Saturday afternoon, as I walked down 
 Bond Street, where on that day I liked to shopgaze 
 though most of the showcases were sealed by iron shutters 
 or holland blinds, I saw her slowly coming up the hill. 
 I knew her at once, by her long measured stride, the 
 rigidity of her carriage and the un-English steadiness of 
 her arms. 
 
 Almost tall in her tight blue coat and skirt. Her little 
 feet shone in patent leather. Upon the high, boned, 
 neck of her plain white blouse, the (lower of her winter- 
 stung face, crowned with a small blue velvet hat, round 
 which circled a light blue feather. Gently she came 
 with downcast eyes, easy, slow-moving and slim, like a 
 
EDITH LAWTON 153 
 
 fi>l ling-smack under little sail. She saw me, stopped, 
 and as she smiled I mumbled of the fineness of the day, 
 for I was stirred by the surprise of the meeting. I, 
 Cadoresse, man of the world, hero of thirty affairs of the 
 heart, stood almost abashed because a Dresden Shep- 
 herdess was prettily smiling. She said she had been lunch- 
 ing with two girls who had that morning been examined 
 at Burlington House, and now she was going home. I 
 detained her, talked quickly and idly, of Hugh, the big 
 poulterer opposite, Fiona, anything that came to me, so 
 that I might think how to prolong a meeting which Edith 
 lly but firmly trying to cut short. 
 Then an idea struck me. 
 
 " Look here," I said ; " I suppose you are in no hurry. 
 Have you seen the Claude Moncts? " 
 " No — you mean the painter? " 
 
 " Yes, Monet, the impressionist. They are showing 
 him just there." I indicated with a nod a gallery over 
 the way. " You must come. He's wonderful." 
 
 " I'd love to, but " 
 
 " The show will be closed in three days," I lied ; " now 
 
 have nothing to do, have you ? " 
 
 '.<>, but — " Edith paused. Evidently she wanted 
 
 <me, and evidently she was afraid. But it would not 
 
 do, I knew, to let her see that I knew. I grew fervid, 
 
 onal value, the dullness of Saturday; then 
 
 inspired to say : 
 
 . I want to go myself, and I hate going alone." 
 
 " Very w< 11, then," said Edith, moved by this argu- 
 
 in the cause of human charity she followed me 
 
 b th< road, and I glowed with my victory, for was I 
 
 inganew >n : ta king one of the house 
 
 n to a public spectacle? This was not like the 
 
 ling, amu-in-arm si roll, with Maud, for we 
 
 b other, dignified, careful that our 
 
 elbon i -h. It was a cold companionship, 
 
 ii.it of a king and queen who sit on a common 
 
 throne, but 01 but, after all, we were only 
 
 iit y. 
 
154 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 It was a small show, the series of twelve (or is it 
 twenty?) rustic bridges spanning the reed -grown rivulet. 
 I have forgotten the details, remember only the atmo- 
 sphere of the pictures, for all represent an absolutely 
 similar subject, and all differ in lighting and weather. 
 Their colour, though, I remember well, their faintnesi 
 and suggestion of transience and the baldness of that 
 suggestion : for in those days, when Post-Impressionists 
 had not yet slain Sisley, when Futurism was swathed in 
 the veils of the future, the Impressionists were still im- 
 pressive. We stoppepl in front of the third. There the 
 bridge stood in the grey morning, a black shadow on a 
 sky which, a few minutes earlier, had been as black. 
 The reeds hung dejected and damp in the whitish mist 
 that rose from the river. 
 
 44 What do you think of it ? " I asked. 
 
 Edith did not reply for a moment, then said : " It 
 looks very cold, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, but do you like it ? " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose I do, because it makes me feel cold — 
 melancholy." 
 
 I listened with a mixed feeling. This was not exactly 
 stereotyped art criticism, which of course interested me, 
 but it was, I thought, too subjective. 
 
 " But don't you think it beautiful ? " 
 
 44 1 don't know. Yes. It is pretty."^- 
 
 " I think it beautiful," I repeated, emphasising the 
 adjective. 44 Why, look at the light, so pale and so 
 watery. I've seen it like that, very early, when I was 
 mounting guard on the fortifications." 
 
 44 You mean when you were on sentry-go," Edith 
 corrected. 44 Of course, I've never been up so early, but 
 that doesn't matter, does it ? If it makes me feel it must 
 be like that ? " 
 
 44 1 suspect, Miss Lawton," I said, after another re- 
 flective pause, 4t that you know a good deal about 
 pictur 
 
 44 Oh, no, no, I don't," cried Edith, with an air of distress. 
 44 When we were at Brussels they took us to the Wiertz 
 
EDITH LAWTON 155 
 
 now and then, but I don't really know anything. I 
 really don't. Only, I want to feel something." 
 
 wrangled amicably over the next two. I had an 
 expert air, I liked to use the words " background," " fore- 
 ground, " " masses ; " I liked to hear myself say " tclair- 
 age." Suddenly I saw myself as I was and said (to myself): 
 " Prig." Edith, I felt, was the truer apprcciator of us two, 
 for she wanted to feel, not to judge. She did not measure 
 pictures by a standard of quality, as do the men who 
 cannot understand them ; while they have for them a set 
 of units, equivalents of pints and yards, such women as 
 Edith, who know nothing and understand everything, 
 have a standard of emotion. 
 
 " That one," she said ; " it's lovely." 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " It looks as if it were painted with 
 crushed opals and with the powder of those mauve 
 pebbles, like old, dull glass, that you find on the sea- 
 
 r 
 ith said nothing, and I went on criticising the picture, 
 enthusiastically, for it held all the flush of a wet dawn. 
 I was literary, a little artificial, but at the bottom of the 
 artifice was some truth, and I wondered whether Edith 
 lacked artifice because no admiration was in her to in- 
 it. I doubted her < suddenly, she 
 
 " Muri< I just like that." 
 
 W P< chape b the picture," I spitefully 
 
 suggested. 
 
 "j(»ii, do, Muriel wouldn't come here." Edith gave a 
 frank laugh and, as I joined in, my chilled feeling pc 
 
 <• in the domain of the very little 
 th'n h matter so much. Accomplices. 
 
 at she artistic?" 
 11 No, I shouldn't say so. Her dressmaker's rather 
 
 smaker is your si Ivation." 
 
 Edith 1' the next picture a:, she spoke the two 
 
 curt wor< turned away from me a very little, 
 
156 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 a significant couple of inches, and a slight rigidity had 
 come into the set of her shoulders. I felt I had said the 
 wrong thing. I still had to learn what family loyalty 
 means, but at that moment I began to realise dimly that 
 Edith could have said " Muriel is a beast," while, if I 
 had said " Muriel is a beast," Edith would have replied : 
 " How dare you speak of My sister like that ? " Con- 
 scious of the snub, I talked more briskly, compelled her to 
 stop in front of the other studies, delicate phantasies in 
 blue, and others, full of twilight, where the leaf was heavy 
 and green. Little by little Edith seemed to forgive ; she 
 answered me, and, at last, when we stood before the last 
 picture, we were once more side by side. 
 
 " That's the best," she said, decisively. " I like all that 
 colour; it's sunshine. It's pretty — " Then, her eyes 
 twinkled as she added : " Beautiful, as you say." 
 
 " It is beautiful," I said, aggressively. " But why don't 
 you say ' beautiful ' ? " 
 
 " I don't know — it seems " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 44 Well, you know — exaggerated. We say things are 
 pretty, or lovely " 
 
 44 Or nice ? " 
 
 " Yes — nice — I mean, at school we used to say ' nice ' 
 a lot, but they say I mustn't now. Like 4 horrid.' " 
 
 44 But do they say you mustn't say 4 beautiful ' ? " 
 
 44 One mustn't exaggerate," said Edith, with an air of 
 gentle obstinacy. And further than that I could not 
 draw her. 
 
 Apparently " beautiful," save when it was used by a 
 long-haired pianist, was the word of a gushing schoolgirl 
 which womanly Edith ought not to be. I was inclined 
 to pursue the subject, to get to the bottom of this modesty 
 of Edith's ears. 
 
 44 I know what you mean," I said; 44 it was like that at 
 my school. If anybody tried to recite poetry properly 
 everybody laughed at him." 
 
 44 One mustn't show off. Still — I don't mean one 
 ought not to recite properly." 
 
EDITH LAWTON 157 
 
 " But not like an actor ? " 
 
 M No, of course not. That would be showing off." 
 
 " But do good actors show off ? No, of course not. 
 Then oughtn't one to recite Shakespeare like an actor ? " 
 
 " There's something between," said Edith. 
 
 I knew what she meant, something between Kean and 
 a gabbling child, something moderate, English. And J 
 therefore felt that she was right. We were still standing 
 in front of the sunlit picture ; there were only four people 
 in the gallery just then : another young couple, who 
 whispered in a corner, so near the picture that they cer- 
 tainly could not see it, an old gentleman who pains- 
 takingly looked at each study through a handglass held 
 in front of his spectacles, and a quick, angular woman 
 with a notebook. SJie was too busy to notice us ; a 
 journalist probably, making notes for an article. We were 
 not looking at the picture, but covertly at each other. 
 
 " Yes," I said, reflectively, " that did bother me at 
 school. But, of course, you remember better; you 
 :'t left it so long ago." 
 
 • No," said Edith. " I liked it, you know,"- She 
 
 began speaking of the Belgian school, some girls, Caroline 
 
 de Wocsten, a certain Henrictte, who recurred. " We 
 
 I to see the Prince, riding in the Avenue Louise, in 
 
 t .orning." 
 
 M Did*ou smile at him? " 
 
 " Of c< did, all of us, he was so handsome. 
 
 < line bought a picture postcard of him and hid it in 
 did get into trouble when Madame Bcaujour 
 d it, with a poem on the back. It began : 
 
 ice Albert je vous adoro, 
 la vio et pour la mort. . ." 
 
 W i 1 :. d 1 : Sdith looked almost 
 
 melai though hex head, thrown back, showed a 
 
 white tli elled with laughter, as she thought 
 
 Id tini( s ! not so very old. 
 
 Th< \ weren'1 good verse, were they? But then 
 s only a I \teen now." 
 
158 THE MAKING GF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Well," I said, " you're not much older." 
 
 "I'm eighteen," said Edith, very staid. " And what 
 about you ? " 
 
 I paused before I replied, for the question pleased and 
 surprised me. " Not quite twenty-five." 
 
 " I suppose that does feel old," said Edith. 
 
 We were silent for some moments. Then we heard 
 the chimes of St. George's Church. A quarter past four. 
 
 " I must go," said Edith, hurriedly. 
 
 " Yes," I said, " but not yet. It is time to go and have 
 tea." 
 
 " Oh, no, I couldn't— I really couldn't." 
 
 " Well, you might ask me to go back to Lancaster Gate 
 to have it." 
 
 " You can if you like. Do come." 
 
 " But do you know if anybody else will be at home ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think so. Still " ' 
 
 "Well, then, you may as well come with me to the 
 Carlton." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ; not the Carlton." 
 
 Edith seemed frightened, as I expected, and I watched 
 the success of my ruse, for I guessed that, by giving her 
 the shock of the Carlton, I could make any other place 
 appear innocent. 
 
 " No," I said, smilingly machiavellian ; "we'll go to Mrs. 
 Robertson's. Come along." 
 
 I think I took her elbow for a moment to urge her on, 
 and at once released it so as not to frighten her. She was 
 blushing a little and did not speak much as we went 
 through Mrs. Robertson's passage and up the stairs, but 
 ^he seemed unnaturally self-possessed when she sat down, 
 so self-possessed that I realised she was nervous. I could 
 see her, as I ordered tea, look quickly to the right and left 
 in case some one should know her. But the week-end 
 calm already hung pver the dignified tea-shop, which has 
 now followed many Victorian dignities into the grave; 
 there was nothing to disturb her, for one couple had so 
 arranged their seats as to turn their backs upon us, while 
 the family up from the country seemed too busy with 
 
EDITH LAWTON . 159 
 
 topics of its own to trouble about its. A tall, melancholic 
 voung man, who was evidently waiting" for somebody, 
 broke the tedium of his watch over the door by frequent, 
 if discreet glances at Edith, but on the whole we were 
 unobserved; besides, I made some business of ordering 
 the tea, complications of toasted scones and their degree 
 of toasting, so as to give Edith time to settle thoroughly 
 into the faintly compromising slough. And then, as we 
 rather silently drank our tea, I looked at her, established 
 in the large chintz-covered armchair. 
 
 She sat up very straight. The blue hat and the pale 
 golden hair stood out against a green curtain. The moon 
 of her face looked like a delicate rose, soft by the side of 
 those vivid roses which sprawled over the chintz. Her 
 open coat showed her plain white blouse, revealed by the 
 slimness of her that the child had not long been expelled 
 and the woman installed. One ungloved hand lay upon 
 the table, and the rosy finger-tips played idly with the 
 lace edge of the teacloth. She looked up, and suddenly 
 was mischievous : 
 
 " I shan't be able to tell anybody I came here, you 
 
 •v." 
 
 "Of course not," I said, smoothly; "though I don't 
 know wh; 
 
 " You do know why, Mr. Cadoresse," she said, and I 
 vere. " You of all people, a Frenchman. 
 rich girls don't even go out alone." 
 
 1 the French system, was all for 
 Edith did not differ from me; she, too, thought 
 it silly that girls should be watched. 
 
 : it then, perhaps the French know what they're 
 ed. "They may be right and we 
 
 liberalism charmed mc, and I repressed the desire 
 
 to teH her thai she had not faced the question, that 
 
 : i girls could not be allowed En 
 liberties, lacking English innocence. We spoke guardedly 
 of chaperonage, of marriage in France, and Edith showed 
 some indignation when I told her that my sister Jeanne 
 
160 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 had but poor chances because her dot was only fifty 
 thousand francs. 
 
 44 Two thousand pounds,'/ she said. " It seems a lot — 
 but don't you think it dreadful ? One doesn't want to 
 marry for money." 
 
 I agreed, though in my heart I differed. I did not state 
 the case for the French marriage, the restf ulness of it, 
 its ease and secureness. I did not want to oppose Edith, 
 to shock her, annoy or frighten her; she was with me so 
 simple and so frank that I did not want to lay hard hands 
 upon her dreams. And, thanking my star for so much 
 good fortune, I did not try to detain her when she rose 
 to go. We parted at Bond Street Station. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said, as we shook hands ; " thank you 
 for a very pleasant afternoon." My spirit rebelled 
 against the conventional phrase, but again came the 
 mischief : "I don't know what I shall say at home if 
 they're back." 
 
 I still had in mine the hard-impressed illusion of her 
 firm, gloved hand. And in my mind was the conscious- 
 ness that we shared a secret, she and I. A guilty one. 
 I carried with me the feeling that I had had an adventure 
 by the side of which coarse realities did not seem real, for 
 visions are sometimes keener than concrete things; a 
 dream may be more vivid than a material object which the 
 eye can overlook. t She had been so simple, had confided 
 in me as readily as her reserve would let her; she had 
 become a significant figure in my life. She was imprinted 
 upon my brain no longer as the younger Miss Lawton, 
 but as Edith. 
 
 In her home she was not the .same ; she did not avoid 
 me, but she did not deliver herself into my hands ; she 
 was, like Muriel, my good comrade. As I grew familiar 
 with the house and its tenants I accepted this comradeship 
 so foreign to my nature. Before three years had passed 
 I was then so angUcised that I was able to look upon 
 women less as women than as human beings. My thoughts 
 no longer leapt so quickly to their pretty faces; I found 
 in their society the mixed and purely English feeling 
 
EDITH LAWTON 161 
 
 - 
 which makes of girls and boys gathered together a large 
 family. I could still admire Muriel, her challenging eyes, 
 and Louisa Kent's rosy skin ; I meant what I said when I 
 told Bessie Surtees she looked like an Italian Madonna, 
 but an element had been obscured in my imagination; 
 I was less disturbed, less preoccupied by these young 
 women than I would have been in earlier days. I came 
 to England ready to pursue even a Lulu Hooper, to accept 
 her ridiculous taste for novelettes, unable to look upon 
 any woman, young or old, beautiful or ugly, without keen 
 consciousness of her womanhood. But now some strange 
 scales had grown upon my eyes, for I could chaff and bear 
 chaff from the graceful and the fair without being pro- 
 voked by conflict ; I could let Muriel re-tie my black bow 
 into a more modish shape without leaning forward to 
 breathe the suavity of her dark hair. 
 
 They were comrades, all of them. It was comrade 
 Muriel pushing past me into the drawing-room, butting 
 me with her shoulder as she passed and telling* me good- 
 humouredly to get out of the way; and comrade Gladys 
 (though precise) fearlessly touching my hand as she helped 
 me to set up a ping-pong net ; it was comrade Bessie with 
 the deep eyes, comrade Edith too. There were no 
 roughnesses of contact between us, for I feared to touch 
 her, just as if she actually were a Dresden Shepherdess, 
 so much that, at a Cinderella, she had to beg* me not to 
 hold her as if she were a meringue. ' There was comrade- 
 ship even between me and Maud, when there was not 
 sulkiness or fierce allure, an incomprehensible capacity 
 for wrangling, contradicting each other, for throwing 
 small objects at each other under the meek, protesting 
 ;>er. 
 I he English fog getting into my blood? 
 
 I carried with me no disquiet as I went to my work, 
 which I did well enough, inspired by the comparatively 
 speedy rise of my salary to a hundred and sixty a year. 
 I was still foreign correspondent, but I was now framing 
 my letters and submitting them to Mr. Lawton instead 
 of merely taking his instructions. I enjoyed a hearing 
 
162 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 when I had something to say. Merton and Tyler no 
 longer presumed to chaff me, and sometimes I lunched 
 with Barker in the chop-houses I affected because they 
 had bills of fare and not menus. It was in the chop- 
 houses, and especially in the Meccas and Caros where I 
 drank my necessary coffee, that Barker criticised my 
 criticisms of England. 
 
 " You silly old josser," served him usually as a begin- 
 ning. " You don't know what you're talking 'about. 
 You're always gassing about our .being cold and never 
 letting ourselves go ; one might think you never read the 
 police news, or that you'd never seen anybody tight. 
 You should come down our way, you should; I'd show 
 you something when they turn 'em out of the pubs. 
 They come out like a lot o' sheep, laughing and singing 
 like — jackasses, and kissing and going on anyhow; there's 
 always a fight going on round the corner, all about 
 nothing, only to let off steam, which you say we haven't 
 got. And if you like to come on a bit further I'll show 
 you Clapham Common about eleven; that'll open your 
 eye, Froggy; you haven't got a monopoly of that sort 
 of thing in gay Paree. Now I'll tell you something. 
 One night I was walking home across the Common -" 
 
 Handsome, gay Englishmen like Barker always end 
 by telling one stories in which they have figured as 
 frightful dogs. The stories are too disgusting to be true. 
 Englishmen so much' dislike bragging that they can brag 
 only of the things they have not done. I put up par- 
 ticular instances of English coldness. 
 
 " Well, what about it? " Barker commented. " What 
 do you want old Purkis to Do? Want him to run round 
 shrugging his shoulders and singing Mon Dew ? . And 
 what about it if he does work in the garden ? " 
 
 I tried to put into words the immense contempt I felt 
 for gardens, for this sordid growing of smutty flowers; 
 it was difficult to express, for I did not know how to say 
 without seeming a prig that men should keep their brains 
 busier than their muscles. The innocent priggishness 
 of the early days was smothered in self-consciousness. 
 
EDITH LAWTON 163 
 
 44 Dunno what you're driving at," said Barker at last. 
 "I like a bit of a garden; / indulge in geoponics," he 
 added, playfully. " You talk of old Purkis ! Why, his 
 place at Penge " 
 
 44 Sydenham," I suggested. 
 
 "Bit of swank, Sydenham. It's Penge, I tell you; 
 but what was I talking about? Oh, yes, old Purkis's 
 garden. You should see it in the summer time, it's lovely." 
 
 44 But oh, in the winter time, in the winter time," I 
 quoted from Maud. 
 
 44 Never you mind the winter time. In the summer 
 it's all over honeysuckle, and sweet peas and crimson 
 ramblers. Why, he's got a pergola . . ." 
 
 Barker talked on inexhaustibly of gardens and garden- 
 ing, for which he had early acquired a taste by working 
 in his landlady's flower-beds. When 44 Mrs. Right came 
 along"- he was not found unready. He bought a dog 
 and began to satiate, on a space ten yards by twenty, his 
 English passion for the land. Barker was the raisonneur 
 of the English play; he explained old Purkis, his crabbed 
 of his garden; he mitigated Farr by representing 
 him as a decent man, fond also of his garden, sound in his 
 ics and proud of his son. He had a broad tolerance 
 for the futile 44 sprees " of Merton and Tyler, their shilling 
 poplin ties and their shock-socks. 
 
 lk Dunno what you want," was his continual grumble. 
 h£ would expound the creed of the plain man living 
 beyond the four-mile radius : 
 
 THE CREED OF A MIDDLE-CLASS MAN 
 
 44 I believe in the suburbs of London. I believe 
 they are enough for me. I believe that I must shave 
 nd take a bath every morning, unless 
 I have overslept myself, Wear dark suits as is seemly 
 in the City. I believe in drawing-rooms for the use 
 of calL rs, semi-d< t ached villas, nasturtiums in season 
 and with aristocratic, if distant relatives. I 
 
 believe that public-school bo rsitymen (who 
 
 must not be called Varsity men), and commissioned 
 
164 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 officers are snobs. I believe that the West End is a 
 gilded haunt of vice. I believe in sober worship 
 once a week, regular payments to the clergy. I 
 believe in temperance, saving an occasional bust, a 
 spree, a night on the tiles (when the wife is in the 
 country), but even 'then ^1 believe I mustn't go too 
 far. I believe in a bit of fun with a lady now and 
 r then, being a dog and all that, so long as there's no 
 harm in it. I believe that I am a gentleman and 
 must be genteel, not too toney though, for it must 
 not be said that I swank. And I believe enough to 
 be saved with. I believe that my wife loves me and 
 that I must reward her by insuring my life ; ' I believe 
 that my sons should be clerks and that my daughters 
 should wait until clerks marry them. I believe that, 
 when I die, the neighbours must approve of my 
 funereal pageant. I believe tfiat I must be honest, 
 that I must not swear in mixed company, that I must 
 visit the upper classes whom I despise. I balieve 
 that I am the backbone of England. I am a middle- 
 class man." 
 
 Barker loved to expound his creed. It seemed ridi- 
 culous that this well-groomed young fellow with the 
 delicate mouth and the fine grey eyes should be a Puritan, 
 but the blood of the Covenanters still flows through the 
 English veins : that is really blood, not water. Still, 
 there were impulses in him upon which I played; he 
 liked to hear me brag of and unveH my conquests, invent 
 adventures for his benefit* this exercise filled him with 
 subtle, sinful delight. 
 
 " Shut up," he would say at last. But Barker's 
 41 shut up " meant very little more than a woman's 
 " don't" 
 
 Sometimes, not often, I talked. to him of the Lawtons, 
 for whom, as represented by Mr. Law ion, Hugh and 
 shadowy " young ladies," he harboured mixed feelings : 
 envy, admiration and hatred. A sort of mental sandwich. 
 But I never spoke of Edith. 
 
EDITH LAWTON 165 
 
 IV 
 
 For Edith was stealing upon me, gently, softly, as the 
 dawn steals up into the wet English skies, so subtle that 
 one hardly knows it has come until one realises suddenly 
 that the sun has risen. She came a little nearer when 
 Hugh's engagement leaked out, for love is contagious 
 among the young. If this engagement of Hugh's were 
 love, of course, for I say advisedly that it leaked out; 
 it was not proclaimed by an interested family, nor did 
 it burst forth outrageously and irresistibly like a water- 
 spout from the sea. Murie^told me, between an appre- 
 ciation of the art of George Alexander and her plans for 
 r on the South Coast. When I ventured to ask 
 •when Hugh wouldfcmarry Louisa Kent, Muriel said : 
 " I don't know. Year or two." 
 
 Evidently nobody had made any plans; those two 
 had not been affianced, they had " got engaged." The 
 Lawtons did not seem much more moved than if Hugh 
 kad contracted the measles : measles and engagements 
 gave a little trouble in the house, but in due course, as 
 mild have been cured by lying in bed, the- 
 nt would be remedied by marriage. I did not 
 li much more emotional. 
 " I hear I aril to congratulate you," I said. 
 "Thanks, awfully." lie paused, then added, shame- 
 • Don't let it out at the office." 
 1 could promise a discretion which seemed 
 king of his father's chances at Ham- 
 bury, whieli I Liberal interest. As 
 Liked, I « ! her he eared for Louisa, when 
 and where he had proposed to her. \\r had alwa\ 
 
 r< (1 wi! n Bhe was in Hie house. 
 
 eli ; lie must, be, for Mrs. 
 
 t's house in Thurloe Plat I comfort, not 
 
 wealth. 1 priced nee at a hundred 
 
 t flrn — what was this love, 
 
 ■ n? I should 
 
 have expected from Hugh some splenetic fits, some 
 
166 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 attitudes of devotion, some rages. But no. If a post- 
 man knocked at the door when I Was there, Hugh did 
 not start up. He was attentive to Louisa, but he seemed 
 equally attentive to Gladys Raleigh or to any other girl. 
 And Louisa? A shade more triumphant, perhaps; she 
 was a trifle more proprietorial in her attitudes, more 
 secure in her " I say, Hugh " than she had been in her 
 " What do you think, Mr. Lawton ? " I wondered 
 whether she had proposed to him. As I looked at the 
 steady brown eyes, the firm-set rosy lips, I grew almost 
 sure that she had not felt the cost of the first step. 
 
 I soon had an opportunity of finding out. For now 
 Edith was beginning to haunt me. Her picture did not 
 obtrude itself upon me, as did sometimes the dashing 
 figure of Maud ; I did not walk with an ache in my heart, 
 but I was disturbed by " something " that was about 
 me, a vague, enveloping atmosphere, like an undefinable 
 scent I might, have brought with me in my clothes and 
 suddenly perceived when the wind blew towards me, 
 then forgotten, then noticed again. The Dresden Shep- 
 herdess did not follow me, but I could never be sure that, 
 when I looked up from my desk, rested my pen, I would 
 not see her slim figure before me. I might, at immense 
 pains, be explaining to a French merchant that the 
 bottomry bond he held on the brig Augustine-ThSrese was 
 irrecoverable, the unfortunate ship having gone down 
 with all hands off Vigo, when the slim figure would appear. 
 I would lean back, look unseeing at the grey frontages 
 of Fenchurch Street, evoke her, dressed in light blue or 
 faint pink . . . with little knots of roses frilling the skirt 
 ... a palely pink face, tender blue eyes, smooth hair 
 of very old, worn silvergilt. I would try to dispel the 
 vision, mutter fiercely " bottomry . . . bottomry . . . 
 nous regrettons. . . ." But my thoughts would wander. 
 I found myself saying, writing, " barratry " instead of 
 " bottomry," thinking of her gentle presence, until it 
 so insisted that I surrendered, gave myself up to an 
 undefinable day-dream. Little Dresden Shepherdess, 
 your hands hung idly by your sides, long and lax as sprays 
 
EDITH LAWTON 167 
 
 of fern, and when you smiled the bud of your mouth 
 bloomed so sweetly as to be sad. Your eyes were like 
 the mist in melancholy, when the sun is about to pierce 
 it in merriment. 
 
 My heart did not compel me to seek her, but I wanted 
 to find her, and soon it was not enough to speak to her 
 while Louisa played. Bach to soothe her ridiculous brother 
 and the indifferent Hugh, or while Muriel threw spells 
 over Bell or Archie Neville ; I wanted Edith alone, to speak 
 to her of herself. I surprised myself in a big Oxford 
 t shop, at six, throwing quick glances at every fair 
 girl — on the chance; I began to walk home along the 
 water Road, which meant a quarter of an hour's 
 delay — on the chance, but I never met her. I grew 
 exasperated ; I began to be angrily conscious that my office 
 hours, ten to five-thirty, cut me off from the possibilities 
 of intercourse. At last Edith precipitated the crisis ; in 
 reply to a question she said : 
 
 11, I don't think women as good as men." 
 "Why? "I asked. 
 
 " I'll tell you some other time," she said. And I could 
 drive her no further, for Muriel, Hugh and Louisa came 
 to claim me, to make me play bridge, a new accomplish- 
 ment of mine. When I was dummy I looked at Edith : 
 d upon a large cushion she looked up at her father, 
 i her in low tones. Her blue eyes were full 
 of sv I decided to make an opportunity 
 
 'me closer to h< sr, to haunt the neighbourhood until 
 Id force my society iipon her. 
 
 • a familiar of Lancaster Gate and the 
 
 Bayswatcr Road, on weekdays between half-past six 
 
 and t unlay afternoons, at odd times on 
 
 Sundays. Waiting lH>red me, but racked my nerves, for 
 
 I to be O it !hc corner of the street 
 
 ild be seen by other members of the household ; 
 
 I saw Hugh or Mr. Lawton come home, or 
 
 i stop at the door and disgorge Mrs. Lawton 
 
 with Edith, but her mother or her 
 
 t accompanied her. I became naturalised to the 
 
168 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 district, knew the mews, the public-house; I expected 
 the postman, the boys who deliver the late editions of 
 the papers ; the servants of other families seemed like old 
 friends, and one housemaid began to look forward to my 
 appearance, to smile up from the basement with an in- 
 viting air. ' And if the policeman had not often been 
 changed I should certainly have been cautioned against 
 loitering with intent to steal. I was ready for him, 
 however, with a confession and half-a-crown. I had 
 hardened, and though I hardly knew what I wanted, I 
 was determined to have it if I had to wait for weeks. 
 
 I did not have to watch for more than ten days. I 
 knew I should not have to, for Easter had come ; thus I 
 could watch for two and a half days, during which Edith 
 would certainly come out alone, for the family had not 
 left for the South Coast ; Muriel, had gone on a visit in 
 the country, while Hugh and his father went out early 
 to goljL Edith would riot always be with her mother. 
 I was not wrong. At ten o'clock on Easter Monday the 
 familiar door opened and Fiona came bounding down 
 the steps, leaping at sparrows and barking as the sharp 
 air sizzled through her coat. Behind her came Edith; 
 she paused on the step, and I could feel my heart beating. 
 The presence of Fiona meant that her mistress intended 
 to walk in the Park; I felt exultant, as a poacher who, 
 approaching his trap, hears an animal rattle it. She turned 
 to the right ; I followed cautiously, allowed her to cross 
 into the Gardens, which she did slowly, for she carried 
 Fiona across the road by the scruff of her neck. I ran 
 a hundred yards westwards, entered the Gardens by the 
 little gate, doubled back. For one deadening moment 
 I thought I had lost her. Then, suddenly, I saw her, 
 coming towards me, who sauntered on as coolly as I 
 could. 
 
 " Hullo, Fiona," I said, bending down to the little 
 beast, who snuffed my trousers and burrowed at my hand 
 with her wet nose. Then, successfully affecting sur- 
 prise : " Good morning, Miss Lawton." 
 
 " Oh, good morning. Isn't it fine ? " 
 
EDITH LAWTON 169 
 
 " Very. And so cold ! I don't appreciate it as much 
 as Fiona does." 
 
 "Oh, she's Scotch; she likes it." 
 
 I talked of the habits of Aberdeens, and, having turned 
 by degrees until I faced westwards, moved step by step, 
 drawing Edith on. By imperceptible gradations we began 
 to walk side by side, slowly, then quickly, as if we had 
 set out together. Edith, realising her entanglement, 
 but finding nothing to urge against it, was embarrassed 
 and rather silent. 
 
 " Tell me," I said suddenly, " what did you mean the 
 other night, when you said that men were better than 
 women ? " 
 
 " Oh, I hardly know," she reflected. " It's so difficult 
 to find words. I feel somehow that we're so small, so 
 busy doing nothing, that it's men who are making the 
 roads in India, and .fighting, and inventing things, and 
 writing books, while we ... we sit at home and wait." 
 A slight weariness was in her young voice. 
 
 44 That does not make them better," I said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it does. They're doing things." 
 
 44 Working in offices, ten to five-thirty." 
 
 44 WeD, even that. I couldn't. Father wouldn't 
 have me as a typist, would he? I'd make too many 
 takes." 
 
 We laughed together, and I wanted to say that it would 
 
 it In t white fingers with copying 
 
 ink, but I knew better than to pay compliments, even 
 
 I understood her attitude; it was 
 
 achieveni' nl admi] 
 
 I with life ? " 1 asked, bluntly. 
 
 "What funny questions you ask! No, noi exactly 
 
 boxed, 1 ;i ' to do; I skate and read a lot, 
 
 and ut. Still . . ." 
 
 "Still? " 
 
 44 Wf\ good of it .-,11?" 
 
 14 1 Uitabfc in youth,' 1 I said, rather senten- 
 
 tious! v. u \\ hat do y< to do? " 
 
 44 I don't know. Something different from what I do." 
 
170 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Fall in love ? " I said suddenly. I had not planned 
 that remark. 
 
 Edith flushed, called Fiona, who came to us, bright- 
 brown-eyed, quivering with excitement as she guessed 
 that her mistress was going to throw a stone. The stone 
 was thrown into the rough grass, and Fiona went search- 
 ing ; as she nuzzled among the crisp blades her tail wagged 
 rhythmically, upright, as if translating all the excitement 
 of her little black body. I watched Edith covertly, for 
 the loss of the stone had defeated her object. The flush 
 was not yet dead on her cheeks. 
 
 " What else is there to do but fall in love ? " I said. 
 
 "I don't know. Well, I suppose I shall get married 
 some day." 
 
 " Married 1 " I cried. " But that's not love." 
 
 Edith began to laugh, at her ease again now that I 
 seemed absurd. 
 
 " Of course it is. Oh, you are odd, you Frenchmen ; 
 you have such complicated ideas. We fall in love here 
 and we get married, and there you are." 
 
 " And there you are ! " I said, a little bitterly. " Yes, 
 and there we are in France. Of course, I don't' say one 
 shouldn't get married, but marriage is only — well, regis- 
 tration of a fact. While love " 
 
 I think that for several minutes I spoke of love, and I 
 spoke of it as never before ; the old, gross shell had fallen 
 away, and I seemed to know love as the angels «iay know 
 it. I painted for her love so fine that the lover could 
 hardly bear it ; I said it was not good unless it was for- 
 bidden; that it was shy, mysterious, secret, that it (led 
 if grasped too hard. 
 
 " It comes . . . like a shadow, and it lies across your 
 path . . . and if you obscure the sun it is gone. . . . 
 You do not know that it is there, until it is, and if you 
 have seen it once you never forget it. Love is the only 
 thing that matters : we make money to gain the one we 
 love, we want fame so that she may be proud, and we are 
 pure so that she may have peace." 
 
 " Peace," said Edith, softly. 
 
EDITH LAWTON 171 
 
 44 Love is not the bird that rides in the storm — I do 
 not know its name — the bird that flies over the waves. 
 It is more like the beautiful peacock in the garden 
 that struts and flaunts its tail. It does not lose its feathers 
 if they are real and not placed upon a jay. It is the only 
 thing that lasts and makes things last. . . . For you may 
 have everything, and yet you have nothing if you have 
 no one to whom to giw ■." 
 
 " One docs want to give," said Edith. " I always feel 
 with my mother ..." 
 
 But I would not be turned, I let my speech blaze into 
 rhetoric, I said of love things I do not believe, but they 
 seemed true in that quiet avenue, as the wind hissed in 
 hare branches. We walked slowly, she silent and I 
 stirred. The people that passed were not people, but 
 shapes ; young couples and old couples, and family parties, 
 a few soldiers with their girls, they went by as unobtru- 
 sively as the scenery round the revolving stage at Drury 
 . As if by common accord we stopped near the 
 Dutch garden, where a shower of almond blossom had 
 fallen into the grass amon^fhe crocuses. 
 
 The crocuses stood erect, white, yellow and purple, 
 
 jangled wreaths of iridescent tears. I bent down, 
 
 ae of the fallen almond blossoms, gave them 
 
 to Edith. She looked at the soft, almost fleshy flowers 
 
 as they nestled in her grey-gloved hand. I was not to 
 
 hem again for many long years, and then they were 
 
 dry, crumpled, as if they had been crushed, and I thought 
 
 ;i faint scent of suede glove. Silently 
 
 walked towards Kensington, then to the Achilles 
 
 hen Edith tried bravely to talk of some friends 
 
 staying at the Hyde Park Hotel. Hut 
 
 her v rambling, her sentences disconnected, as 
 
 We had nod spoken of ourselves, 
 
 •i of immortal filings, and we could not 
 
 • nsciousness of the 
 
 unspoken, which perhaps we could not have expressed, 
 
 stood rating and linking us, a little ironic 
 
 olution never to ide. And, strangely 
 
172 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 enough, there ran through my embarrassed ravishment 
 a strain of anger; I called myself a sentimental fool, 
 told myself that I had been inflated, rhetorical ; I threw 
 glances at Edith, who did not raise her eyes, and hated 
 her because she made me idealistic, romantic, because 
 she made me slough gross tastes, gross desires, filled me 
 with a religious worship for abstract loveliness. Ah, if 
 it had been her loveliness, it would have been different : 
 but her influence upon me was not to draw me to her; 
 she inflamed me for what she represented rather than 
 for what she was. 
 
 And then I wondered whether I had been clumsy, 
 frightened her by the sudden violence of my impersonal 
 romanticism. I tried to talk, and as we walked towards 
 Marble Arch we almost succeeded in discussing whether 
 Mayfair were not stuffy. 
 
 " All those mews . . ." said Edith. 
 
 " Yes," I said, " mews . . . everywhere." 
 
 We had nothing else to say, for we dared not talk of 
 the only thing we could talk of. We separately patted 
 Fiona, disturbing her in Her* favourite occupation of 
 snuffing the soil, we looked at watches, we commented 
 on the cold. But I think neither of us was unhappy when, 
 on reaching Marble Arch, we parted. The phrase I had 
 in my mind would not come. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Edith. She raised to mine blue 
 eyes in which was no anger, but a shyness new to me. 
 And in my own, I think there was shyness too. 
 
 That night in my room I looked at " In the Garden 
 of Eden," clerk and typist in the Park. I tried to scoff 
 at myself, but my sense of humour failed me. 
 
 I spoke the phrase a month later, driven to it by my 
 obsession of her, by my certainty .that I must see her, 
 if only to be sure that I wanted to. 
 
 " Will you meet me to-morrow at three ? " I said in 
 a low voice. 
 
 She did not reply. Louisa played a minuet, a minuet 
 for the Dresden Shepherdess. I repeated my question. 
 
 " I can't," she whispered. And 1 saw fear in her eyes. 
 
EDITH LAWTON 173 
 
 " You're not engaged. Are you ? " 
 
 " M>— but " 
 
 " To-morrow — three o'clock — at Prince's main en- 
 trance — nobody ever goes there on Saturdays." 
 
 She did not reply. I saw her fingers tremble. 
 
 "Don't you want to? " And it was I trembled, for 
 -lie might say " No." 
 
 She looked at me, still with frightened eyes, as if saying : 
 u \Vhy do you- torture me — frighten me ? I am such a 
 little girl, please, please don't." But I was in no mood 
 for mercy : indeed, I began to understand it was her help- 
 lessness, her delicate weakness made to me this incredible 
 appeal. I hardened my gaze, suggested, commanded 
 now with a harsh voice that sued no more. 
 
 " To-morrow," I said, assured of victory. 
 
 Edith looked down rather than nodded, as if I had 
 laid a yoke upon her neck. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HAMBURY 
 
 Even aliens felt it coming, and I sooner than my 
 fellows, for I longed to shed my alienage, this election the 
 result of which everybody foresaw. Even the Germans 
 who, in the City, paint their brains with khaki, knew that 
 the Liberals would win, and went loudly boasting, but 
 conscious that they would have to eat the leek and the 
 thistle and the shamrock too, while^the rose wilted by the 
 side of the primrose. And I am sure that my Liberalism 
 was enhanced by the knowledge that my side would win ; 
 had the result been in doubt I do not suppose that, at 
 twenty-five, I could have taken a judicial view. I should 
 have been for armies, for Imperial Preference, because 
 it was imperial. The Englishman of my dreams was not 
 the Radical with whom I began to mix ; I distrusted his 
 whiskers, or his smooth legal cheeks, his fondness for 
 oppressed nationalities and his taste for ginger ale; I 
 did not feel that the real Englishman could care much 
 about Chinamen, and I was sure that the last thing he 
 would do would be to close the public-houses. 
 
 My wonderful Englishman was short, stout, ruddy; 
 he had plenty of grey hair, a Roman nose, stubby hands 
 and a fierce look in his blue eyes, when it was not a tender 
 one. He insisted, this phantom, on wearing a low, glossy 
 top-hat with a curly brim, comfort able for driving, 
 breeches and top-boots, a riding coat and, over his 
 capacious paunch, a red vest. He never said much at a 
 time, and then it was " Bless my soul ! " or " Tally ho ! " 
 or " Damnation," In those days he often said : " The 
 
 174 
 
HAMBURY 175 
 
 country's going to the dogs." He ate enormously, beef, 
 boiled potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, also " greens M 
 (said to be vegetable); he drank beer in imperial pints, 
 and plenty of crusted port, which was bad for his toe and 
 impelled it towards niggers, Germans, reform feeders, 
 revivalists and artists in general. He was ruined every 
 year by bad crops, but rode to hounds; he denounced 
 the local authorities if they suggested he should be rated 
 five shillings to feed school children, but sent two guineas 
 and a tear to free-meal clubs. He suspected halfpenny 
 papers and read them, believing every word they said, and 
 grew very angry in a general, bullish way. 
 
 Bullish ! it was John Bull I was in love with, and no 
 wonder, for he was the most absurd and charming person 
 I had ever met. I delighted in his gross joviality, his 
 childish glee, his irrepressible brutality and his shamefaced 
 emotion. He seemed, in that crucial year, to have waked 
 up and to be trying to get into the skin of the English, 
 to remind them that Falstaff was not dead : he was 
 having a bad time. For old John Bull had been asleep 
 for many years, and he could not believe these were 
 his grown-up sons : Bullenstein, on the Stock Exchange, 
 and Mr. Bull-Bull, K.C., who had taken a hyphen with 
 silk; and he particularly disliked General Cannon Bull 
 because the warrior was always hanging about and shout- 
 " Hullo, Bull ! wake up. Can't you hear the bugle? 
 You're wanted in the barrack square." 
 
 John Bull had gone to sleep comfortably in 1886, a Tory. 
 
 later he found that the prodigy of Rip 
 
 Winkle had been " speeded up " by his Americanised 
 
 rs and that he was a mere Unionist. He also dis- 
 
 red t hal he Owed two hundred and fifty millions, which 
 
 piled up v while he snored, that he hadn't 
 
 got much in exchange if all those tales about Chinamen 
 
 in gold mines were true; to make confusion complete 
 
 he b actually going to introduce tariffs, 
 
 i hich mighl interfere with his trade. 
 
 I >hn Hull's blood boHj its boiling point is 
 
 not low, but when it boils it seldoms stops until the hunt- 
 
176 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 ing-crop has been broken on somebody; if the hunting- 
 crop acts as a boomerang, recoils on John Bull's nose, 
 he growls and strikes again. His trade ! He wanted to 
 protect his navy, his religion and his women, in order, 
 and to keep cool about it, but he wasn't going to have them 
 monkeying with his trade. 
 
 So John Bull threw savage glances at Bullenstein, Bull- 
 Bull, K.C., and General Cannon Bull, flung them a few 
 Elizabethan adjectives and substantives and looked about 
 him for a body in which to materialise. He had to materi- 
 alise if he wanted to vote, and he passionately believed 
 that there was a vast difference between blue ballot-papers 
 and buff. I think he glanced at the Socialists and Labour 
 men, but made few remarks ; indeed, nothing is recorded 
 of these save scattered words : " Sharing out — loafers — 
 sandals and nut-sandwiches — free-love — " He had then 
 but one place on which to lay his bullet head, for elimina- 
 tion left only the Liberals. Elimination was his way of 
 deciding; he picked out and discarded the worst, then 
 the bad, then the inferior, and developed enormous 
 enthusiasm for the survivors. This is what John Bull 
 called " compromise " or " making the best of a bad job." 
 He was not getting what he wanted, though he never 
 asked for more than he wanted, and was quite willing 
 to take less if allowed to grumble ; the Liberals were not 
 giving him his desire, and he hated them, but they were 
 riot trying to give him what he did not want, and he 
 began to love , them. He discovered in Edwardian 
 Liberalism the creed he was longing for, the great creed 
 which is called Letting Well Alone. The Liberals were 
 Not going to interfere with Free Trade ; they were going 
 to put back education where it Was when he went to sleep ; 
 they promised also to restore in South Africa labour 
 conditions as they Had Been. " Not 1 Was 1 Had 
 Been ! " said John Bull, cheerfully ; " I like those words." 
 He had heard rumours he did not care for : " Home 
 Rule," which aroused troublesome memories, and " Land,*' 
 which always made him very angry, but these words were 
 only whispered, while the roar of " Not I Was I Had 
 
HAMBURY 177 
 
 Been ! " filled his ears. As he liked' the roar very much 
 he did not trouble about the whispers and beamed upon 
 those who roared, his youngest sons, Ebenezer Holyoake 
 Bull, and Bull (of the Watermeadows) ; he told Macbull 
 that he had always thought him a clever fellow, O'Bull 
 that he had a sense of humour, and went so far as to shake 
 hands with Llewellyn Bull, after buttoning up his pockets 
 as a matter of habit. He went over to the Whigs. It 
 is true that there were no Whigs, but something of their 
 subtle essence hung about the Liberals, an essence which, 
 snuffed by John Bull's broad nostrils, reminded him of 
 Cromwell, Hampden, ship-money, democratic arson at 
 Bristol ; he had been fond of the Whigs once upon a time, 
 of their way of letting well and ill alone, of their factories, 
 counting-houses and (a long time ago) public-houses. 
 Their tricks in* Egypt, South Africa and Ireland had an- 
 noyed him, but he was so afraid of the Tories, because they 
 n minded him of sheep suffering from the rabies, that he 
 said : " I'm for the Whigs." When told there were no 
 Whigs he flung himself into a terrific passion and declared, 
 characteristically enough, that even if there were no Whigs 
 he'd vote for them all the same. He wasn't going to argue 
 about it, lie was for the people who were going to let things 
 he Whigs, and he was going over to the Whigs. 
 d I with him. I did not take them quite as he did, 
 for 1 was a Frenchman and believed that people intended 
 when they said they were going to do them; 
 to lei bad things alone, nor, for the matter 
 of tli ad I had rooted in my mind that, 
 
 as anything that was must be bad, one could not go 
 wrong if one broke up institutions. I was for the new 
 law l I was the new law; I would have accepted 
 
 ion if it had b ated as progress. Thus Tariff 
 
 rm did not seduce me because I had been used to it 
 'K' : 1 been born under Free Trade, thus 
 
 hipped it ; had 1 natural born Englishman 
 
 ght have shouted "Down with it!" but I was a 
 
 ! peal to me, for I was 
 a crude revolutionary. I wanted to smash, not to build. 
 
178 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 It was not the cry of " Not ! Was ! Had Been ! " 
 which appealed to me then. While John Bull folded 
 the Liberals to his arms because he took them for the 
 Conservatives, I hailed them as the iconoclasts. I read 
 the pamphlets which poured upon me when i became a 
 subscriber to their official publications ; I chuckled over 
 cartoons where Cabinet Ministers appeared as foxes, 
 rabbits and mad hatters. The Liberals were the people 
 for me : they were going to " give one " to the capitalists, 
 and another to the Church (d has les calotins /), to take 
 votes from the powerful — and there was a rumble in their 
 machine, a rumble I could just hear; in those days the 
 rumble sounded faintly like : " Down with the Lords ! " 
 I did not know that the rumble would eventually develop 
 into a mighty roar, that I would stand on a cart near 
 Peckham Rye and be cheered while I referred to the Lords 
 as " the gilded scum of the earth, titled ruffians, hangers- 
 .on of the chorus — " as is our political way down South, 
 but even as a rumble it thrilled me. 
 
 The Liberals had a bold air of activity which pleased 
 me; they were against abuses, they did not dislike 
 foreigners, they were going to turn the country upside 
 down and make of it a better place : I honestly wanted 
 it to be a better place, and as it could be made such by 
 smashing all the old things I decided to be a Liberal. 
 I wanted votes,, land, houses for everybody, but I mainly 
 wanted to take the votes, the land and the houses from 
 somebody. It was, I felt, going to be a great big rag. 
 Besides, Air. Lawton and Hugh were Liberals. And Edith 
 was a Liberal. I had to be loyal. 
 
 II 
 
 I joined a Liberal Club, which proved a temporary 
 cause of estrangement between Mr. Hooper and me. 
 He made no remark when I aggressively told him that I 
 had abandoned the primrose ; he sighed, as if to say that 
 good grain often fell on stony places. Sometimes, when 
 
HAMBURY 179 
 
 he returned from his own and purer political association, 
 he found me obstinately reading The Life of Gladstone, or 
 a booklet on land taxation : then he would sit down in 
 the armchair by the grate, and do nothing for a while, 
 as if this sight took the strength out of him. If I looked 
 up I found his mild blue eye fixed upon me and un- 
 mistakably signalling: "The pity of it." This filled 
 me with malignant joy, and I went so far as to murmur 
 44 hear, hear," and 44 good " as I read the poisonous 
 gospels. Soon I provoked him sufficiently to make him 
 •k me. 
 
 44 All that sort of thing," he said generally, " it's all 
 talk. You People, you only want to upset things ; and 
 don't want to do what the country's crying out for. 
 Why, look at the unemployed ! How arc you going to 
 find work for them ? With all our home market swamped ? 
 and everybody leaving the land because they can't make 
 hing out of it. No wonder they emigrate, all the best 
 of them; they're not going to stay here and starve. 
 There's much too many of us, that's what it is, but we've 
 got to feed them somehow." 
 
 Mr. Hooper rubbed the bald part of his head with his 
 I kerchief, peeping at me from under it, and I was struck 
 by the pathos ol his attitude; here he was with a whole 
 handle of problems : trade, agriculture, overcrowding, 
 and the conflict was so complete that he regretted in the 
 same breath < in mi at ion and the increase in the population. 
 
 44 Well," I said, "tariff reform won't settle all that, 
 will it do 
 
 44 Work for all," said Mr. Hooper, delivering a swift blow, 
 
 I quoted Austrian and Italian figures of appalling un- 
 
 1 h, we don't count tJiem" said Mr. Hooper, airily. 
 "What about Germany?" He quoted most reassuring 
 figur< unemployment. 
 
 Then I quoted absolutely enormous figures of American 
 unemployment, calmly picking out a period during which 
 
 brike and confining myself to 
 lilding t 
 
180 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Mr. Hooper, shaken for a moment, retorted, " What 
 about tinplates ? " 
 
 " Well, what about tinplates ? " I asked, angrily. 
 
 " Going," said Mr. Hooper, gloomily. 
 
 " Oh ? Cotton is going too, I suppose ? and wool is 
 gone ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Hooper, with ghoulish delight. 
 
 Then there was a rumble of figures and I grew excited, 
 Mr. Hooper talkative. 
 
 " It's all been stolen from under our noses, and the 
 foreigner's coming in and taking our markets. Now I 
 was talking to a man I know, he's a traveller in brasswork, 
 he is, fenders and fire-irons, that sort of thing. Do you 
 know what he said ? Well, he said that in half the places 
 he used to book orders they said there was nothing doing, 
 that they were buying in Germany — cheaper ! " cried 
 Mr. Hooper, with restrained, passion in his voice. 
 " Cheaper ! do you hear ? And there's all your Liberal 
 lot going round and saying that if we have Tariff Reform 
 everything '11 cost more. It's a shame, that's what it is." 
 
 " But how do they manage to make them cheaper in 
 Germany ? " 
 
 " Sweating," said Mr. Hooper, with infinite contempt. 
 « Why " 
 
 " Then Tariff Reform means sweating ? " 
 
 " It means nothing of the kind. In America a brick- 
 layer gets a pound a day." 
 
 " In France he gets three shillings." 
 
 " I'm not talking of France," said Mr. Hooper, with a 
 stately air. 
 
 " No, you were talking about Germany, where you 
 say there's Tariff Reform sweating " 
 
 " I did not, Mr. Cadoresse." 
 
 " Now, Mrs. Hooper, I appeal to you," I said. 
 
 " Oh, don't ask me," said Mrs. Hooper, without raising 
 her eyes from her fancy work; " I don't understand 
 politics. You tell Mr. Cadoresse, Alfred." 
 
 We " told " each other with increasing energy, we feinted 
 when cornered, we found figures and we tortured facts. 
 
HAMBURY 181 
 
 We proved Spanish theory by German practice. We 
 whirled in the midst of tariffs, Socialism and credit; we 
 completely tied each other up in the payment for imports 
 by exports ; our talk became simultaneous, expanded, 
 sucked in the waste of money on drink, housing, the hiring 
 of barristers by the poor, tramps, betting — we touched 
 peers, skimmed the divorce court — we slung heavy names 
 at each other. I shouted " Gladstone," Mr. Hooper 
 fluted " Disraeli." I laughed as I observed Lulu, a 
 novelette in her lap, and her mouth so wide open that I 
 could see her palate. 
 
 \\ C grew silent suddenly, and I saw Mr. Hooper wipe 
 his head again, very carefully, as if he had sworn to leave 
 none of it unwiped. I pictured him again, pathetic, like 
 a wretched little cork tossed on a stormy sea, rather a 
 in spate ; nothing was so near our debate as a turgid 
 river, flinging refuse into the air. Mr. Hooper took 
 thought, then closed the discussion : 
 
 " All that sort of thing," he said, generally; "it's all 
 
 talk. You People, you only want to upset things ; and 
 
 you don't want to do what the country's crying out for." 
 
 d an exact replica of his opening speech ! 
 
 We had argued in a circle, then. And for one moment 
 
 I wondered whether I, too, had argued in a circle. But 
 
 this did not trouble me long, for I felt sure I could break 
 
 f any circle, however charmed. 
 
 I f. It strong primed by the literal ure issued at my club. 
 
 Th. library we owed to a pious founder, Clogg, sometime a 
 
 Borough Councillor. The aged pensioner who kept it, 
 
 d " fought under William Kwart," prac- 
 
 ai8 shelves an extraordinary religion, Clogg- 
 
 ch he \v;is high priest and sole adept. He 
 
 ii took a i without coni iring sotto voce with 
 
 Mr. (Hogg's spirit. When j id told him I 
 
 wanted b Q,hesmi] tie, thin-lipped 
 
 ; under his white eyebrows 1 sparkled. 
 
 d to the young generation, 
 
 then with a rapid f tone : " What would you like 
 
 »n, sir?" And! e a suggestion, 
 
182 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 he murmured : " No, Mr. Clogg, really no, we can't start 
 a boy like that on Progress and Poverty — now, come, Mr. 
 Clogg, really — well, if you think so, Mr. Clogg " 
 
 He interrupted his conversation with the ghost and 
 offered me a disreputable-looking copy of Progress and 
 Poverty. Evidently the shade of the Borough Councillor 
 had prevailed. The old librarian's name was Smith, 
 but the club called him Cloggie behind his back ; he was 
 well over seventy and would have been very tall if his 
 back had not been bent as a boW; his stoop compelled 
 him to thrust his brownish face forward as he talked, 
 which he always did at some length, for he had the rapid, 
 yet mellifluous flow of the practised speaker. But, alas, 
 Cloggie was no longer as lucid as on that great day in 
 1882, when he had stood at the back of the orchestra 
 in the Grand Theatre (which he sometimes located in 
 Birmingham and sometimes in Wolverhampton) and held 
 Gladstone's hat and overcoat. 
 
 " There I stood," said Cloggie, " for one hour and a 
 half, and I could hear Him rolling away like a trombone, 
 and I couldn't hear what He said 'cos they were cheering 
 every five minutes, but it was splendid, I can tell you — 
 and I couldn't feel my legs any more, what with standing 
 up and what with the excitement, and people shoving 
 me to see Him. And then the cheering at the end. I 
 couldn't hear myself shout, though I could fetch a good 
 howl then, being a bit of a boy. And then He came along, 
 quick, you know, with His eyes all alight, and His chin 
 waggling up and down in that collar of His, and laughing 
 because they were all crowding round Him, all Birmingham, 
 and trying to get hold of His hand. * Where's my coat ? ' 
 He shouts, and I can tell you I was proud when I stepped 
 along with it, saying ' by your leave,' and seeing them make 
 way for me as if I were the King's messenger. And then, 
 when I was putting it on Him, trembling all over I was, 
 He turns and looks me in 1h<* eye — looking like an eagle. 
 He says to me : ' What's your name ? ' He asks. * Smith, 
 sir,' I said (and I nearly said Your Majesty). ' Smith ? * 
 says William Ewart; 'that's a good name. Go and tell 
 
HAMBURY 183 
 
 all the Smiths of Wolverhampton to hammer privilege 
 on the anvil of democracy.' You should have heard 
 them shout when He said that." 
 
 The old man stopped, choked with emotion. 
 
 " Yes," I said, " that must have been fine." 
 
 " Fine ! Why, Mr. Clogg and I used to talk about Him 
 for hours and hours. Don't believe me if you like, 
 but Mr. Clogg knew Him." Yes, he had dinner with Him 
 in 1887 — " Cloggie worked his psychic switch, and 
 suddenly I heard him wrangle respectfully with the dead : 
 " I remember quite well, Mr. Clogg — it was 1887 — when 
 you were standing for St. Anne's Ward — oh — um — well, 
 in the spring of 1886 — well, perhaps you're 
 right, Mr. Clogg." Cloggie switched Mr. Clogg off and 
 announced, with an air of relief : " 1886, I mean." 
 
 The adorable Cloggie did, however, more than amuse 
 
 me; he liked my being a boy, that is under sixty, for 
 
 he was himself always "a bit of a boy" in any story 
 
 anterior to 1890 or so; he decided to educate me, so 
 
 I often forsook the smoke-filled clubroom to go and 
 
 sit with Cloggie, and be catechised. Cloggie was bent 
 
 on my being thorough; it was he lent me Morley's Life 
 
 speeches of John Bright, Mill on Libmty. 
 
 . to his great chagrin, to make me take away the 
 
 four volumes of Sir Spencer Walpole's History of Twenty" 
 
 five Years. I was, said Cloggie, wilful and would do 
 
 no good. But the blue eyes, that twinkled under the 
 
 aid he didn't mean that, and that the 
 
 old man, wl; ly was either dead or in distant 
 
 colonies, had found in me a sort of grandson. So he let 
 
 me browse in the succulent p I:. Clogg had left 
 
 d him, nibble at Bagehot, Adam Smith and Mazzini 
 
 (who was almost erjual to Hun); and he forgave my 
 
 Might horn Walpole when I appeared with a compact but 
 
 ilox J. \{. Green. And sometimes he would press 
 
 mysteriously, a very old pamphlet. 
 
 "Read that,* 1 he whispered. "It's grand, grand." 
 
 It was usually some contemporary of the Repeal of the 
 
 r Duty. But Cloggie felt it would strengthen my 
 
184 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 faith. He was not wrong, for I read with fierce enthusiasm 
 in the Tube, at home, when Maud was out, while I dressed, 
 in the street as I walked. I could not read while I shaved, 
 but soapmarks on my Life of John Lord Russell show 
 that I read while I lathered my face. And sometimes 
 Cloggie would emerge from his book-lined bunk and sit 
 in the clubroom, cheerfully blinking, while his wonderchild 
 hurled the principles of Liberalism, in almost faultless 
 English marred by a fairly strong foreign accent, at an 
 unoffending speaker who had come from Headquarters 
 to expound Franchise or Poor Law Reform. 
 
 - Ill 
 
 And that is how it came about that I contested Ham- 
 bury. That is, I soon began to feel that it was I, and not 
 Mr. Lawton, who was going to stand for that shapeless 
 slice of country where the old merchant suburbs of London, 
 the villas of the clerks, workmen's dwellings and a few 
 scattered farms have made an evolving little world of 
 their own. Hambury, which I could reach from Euston 
 in twenty minutes, began in the south by being urban, 
 grew neo-urban a little further, then died in the fields ; 
 here and there it burst into smoke-stacks, while a pest of 
 building plots, sown with sardine tins and old boots, 
 had spread to every corner ; even the elms, judging from 
 the notice boards, were to be let on lease. And, not far 
 from brooks and hedges, when one stood on a hillock, 
 one could see companies of navvies breaking the roads 
 so that the tramways, whose terminus was still in the 
 south, could crawl nearer to the fields and strangle them 
 with snaky steel tracks. It was on such a hillock that we 
 stood, Edith and I, on a Saturday afternoon in November, 
 for we were both of us " nursing " the constituency. We 
 were not nursing it very loyally that afternoon, for I had 
 not called at the office of the Liberal Association, while 
 Edith had pleaded a second engagement and escaped from 
 Mrs. Murchison's garden party in time to reach, by devious 
 
HAMBURY* 185 
 
 ways, this place where there were no votes and therefore 
 no risks. 
 
 It was warm, for the Indian summer still lingered, 
 as if reluctant to forsake the peaceful fields; the sun, 
 veiled by faint mists, coloured tenderly the western sky, 
 and there still was heat in its oblique rays. Indeed, 
 something of the gladness of summer enfolded us, though 
 the heavy dews had risen, blunted the sharp f outlines of 
 the branches; a faint but pungent smell of dead leaves 
 was carried on the light wind, and, in a hedge, I could see 
 a large spider, moving very slowly in its web, spiritless 
 as if it knew that winter and death were coming. But 
 we were alive, full of that quiet life which sometimes 
 assures us of an immortality of which we are not aware 
 in our more hectic turbulences. We stood, very content 
 with each other, for I knew that everything of £dith, 
 • date grace, and the repose of her small gloved hands, 
 filled me with a sense of rest : she stroked my soul, 
 and it purred. And I had begun to gather as she looked 
 at me, now a little more eloquent, that my dark face, my 
 alert black eyes, my moustache and its audacity suggested 
 to her something lurid which my words did not belie; 
 for her I was the unexpected, the danger, the creature 
 without rules or canons, who was exploring her world and 
 daring to question it. She was, I felt, deliciously afraid 
 of me. I liked to lei J she was afraid of me, and to think 
 njoyed hex f 
 
 " Isn't it. jolly? " she said. 
 
 M I n't it?" 
 
 We remained silent for some moments, registering 
 imp! and I wondered whether in h< t mind I 
 
 with the landscape as much as she did in mn 
 
 M You know," ! iily, " I like you better 
 
 I haO in London." 
 •Thanks." She smiled rather archly. "Am I so 
 dful in town | 
 
 M You're charming. Bat here, you're different because 
 th<- ! nt. You're sensitive, you see, life 
 
 chameleon. 5 ir of the place. And I like 
 
186 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 this colour better than that of London. It's all so restful 
 and so simple; life seems so easy ; I think of milkmaids, 
 and calling the cattle home. Listen — that's a cow bell." 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Edith, resolutely; " it's a tram." 
 
 " Tush ! " I was angry. " How can you talk of trams ? 
 Trams ! They murder the world — they and the railways. 
 It isn't like sedan chairs, and chaises, and hansoms; 
 even motor-cars and motor-buses are better; all those 
 things don't leave a trail of steel lines and posts and 
 signals to remind you what a beastly world we're making. 
 Trams ! If I go to hell when I die and they want to do 
 their worst, they'll put me in an L.C.C. garage. Oh, 
 you laugh — but don't look that way, Edith, where there 
 are men. Look there, towards the skyline, where the 
 sky's blushing and making the cows look black." 
 
 I took her by the arm, and she yielded, turned towards 
 the west. On the crest of the long, low hill, a cow stood 
 outlined, snuffing towards the sunset with her raised 
 snout. She was flat and, though dun-coloured probably, 
 black against ^emptiness. 
 
 " She's lovely," Edith murmured. " What is she 
 doing, I wonder ; do you think she's saying her prayers ? 
 Perhaps she is, saying : * Oh, sunshine — send me green 
 fields and let the hay smell sweet — and let my baby calf 
 grow up until it's too late for him to become veal — oh, 
 sunshine, give him long life, so that he may be beef.' " 
 
 We both laughed together, but grew serious again, 
 and I held her arm closer, moving my fingers slowly, 
 taking in with all my hand its delicate, but firm outline. 
 
 " That's not the end," I said. " She's also praying : 
 ' Oh, sunshine, let my hide be golden and glossy, my eye 
 deep as a pool and my muzzle soft as velvet — so that the 
 black bull with a gaze like hot coals, who paws the ground 
 and throws steam from his nostrils, shall look at me while 
 I stumble by — and make me shiver and yet draw nearer 
 ;;sl pass ' " 
 
 Edith drew her arm away with a jerk. 
 
 " You are silly. And I've already told you not to call 
 me Edith." 
 
HAMBURY 187 
 
 " Why not ? You can call me Lucien if you like. 
 You did, once." 
 
 " That was an accident. And then you laughed at 
 me because I pronounced it Loosian." 
 
 " Call me Loosian. I love it, please, Edith." 
 M No," said Edith, firmly. " It's wrong. What would 
 people think, if I called you Lucien? And I don't 
 want to call you Lucien." 
 
 I managed just in time not to tell her that she liked 
 calling me " Lucien," that she had done it twice in her 
 entence, for the pleasure of it. For I was not sure 
 of her, I was not quite sure that I wanted to be sure of her. 
 44 NObody would know," I murmured. " Any more than 
 they know we're here." . 
 
 " But if they did ? " Edith looked at me with appealing 
 eyes. " Wouldn't it be dreadful ! I know I oughtn't to 
 vou here — if father knew he'd be so angry." 
 " But he doesn't know." 
 
 " lie dorsn't. But don't you see that because I know 
 
 ■ uldn't like it I can't feel it's right. A thing doesn't 
 
 become right because it isn't found out, does it? " 
 
 I was compelled to own that it didn't, then turned on her. 
 
 44 But you wouldn't like him to know, would you, 
 
 if it made him unhappy? You'd hide rather than hurt 
 
 him." 
 
 41 1 suppose 1 would," said Edith. " Of course I couldn't 
 hurt him. I sec what that means; I mustn't meet you 
 again." 
 
 " Edith," I said, reproachfully, again laying my hand 
 n hex arm; 44 but then you'd be hurting me." 
 
 am I to do ? " she cried out, and there was 
 i y in hex voice. 4t If I go <>n meeting you like 
 ; B pig — and if I 1 1 11, they won't Le1 na- 
 
 if I don't come you say you'll be miserable." 
 
 ili could n. ,t bejftl to hurt her father or me, and it 
 
 to hex mind th.it hex father might not care 
 
 or that I might not. suffer. She took us as we seemed, 
 
 and in this, I think, was h< r attraction : she simply 
 
 red in what, she saw; unflinchingly honest, she 
 
188 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 believed others were honest, and now she suffered because 
 her life was no longer without a secret. I tried to comfort 
 her, for I had at every meeting to dispel her scruples 
 and her fears ; I reminded her that we did not often come 
 together. 
 
 " Why should you worry ? We've only met four times, 
 by arrangement I mean; once at Prince's, and twice in 
 Battersea Park, and once at Kew." 
 
 " And once on Primrose Hill — five times," she said 
 
 softly; "you've forgotten, and " She stopped 
 
 abruptly, and we looked at each other. She blushed, and 
 at once we knew that the quality of our relation had 
 changed : it was she, not I, who had remembered, and 
 she had unguardedly acknowledged that those meetings — 
 mattered. We began to talk feverishly, both together; 
 she interrupted my protestations with commonplaces, 
 and the forced tone in her voice told me that she was hold- 
 ing back an emotional impulse. And I, Cadoresse the 
 adventurer, was afraid. I helped her, and soon we were 
 talking of Mrs. Murchison, and Chike, the progressive 
 grocer. We laughed ; I even recited a limerick. The 
 strain ceased, and quite gravely we were able to discuss 
 my rdle in the election. 
 
 " Father's awfully pleased with you," Edith confided. 
 " He says you're frightfully keen ; he hasn't told you, 
 I suppose, but he's going to ask you to come down and 
 help for ten days when the election comes. You'll come, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 " Will you ? " 
 
 " Of course I will." 
 
 " Then, of course," I said, significantly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't w^nt you to put it like that. You really 
 are keen, are/i't you ? " 
 
 " Of course I'm keen. I don't say I believe in the 
 programme, the whole of it, but I think on the whole 
 it's the best." 
 
 "I'm so glad," said Edith, "I wouldn't like you 
 to do it because — because — on account of me. I want 
 things put right, you know." 
 
HAMBURY 189 
 
 Edith became sociological. The end, not the means, 
 interested her; she wanted everybody happy, sober, 
 working, each man in his little house, with a garden and 
 some flowers in front. 
 
 44 I'd give anything for that," she murmured, and as I 
 looked at her pure, rosy face, I knew she was speaking 
 the truth. We had left the hillock and walked through 
 a field, then into a straggling wood. We climbed the 
 low hill and looked over the crest where the cow had 
 stood, towards the clustering villas of Hamburyville, 
 the new suburb o£ the old town. Little streamlets of 
 bluish smoke rose from the chimneys. A mile away we 
 could_see the tiny station and its model engine, and dots 
 on the high road : the return of the Stock Exchange. 
 
 44 They're coming home," she said ; 44 it's getting late." 
 
 ** Oh, not yet, not yet," I murmured. I drew her 
 away, made her walk homewards by a devious way. 
 It was half-past five, and the sun had set. We hardly 
 spoke, but slowly, reluctantly went towards Hambury. 
 We stopped for a long time, leaning on some palings, 
 while invisible cows in the valley sent towards us, as 
 I hey shambled towards their stable, the music of their bells, 
 ,11 VI said. "I was right. There still are cowbells." 
 , which has now engulfed Hambury, had not yet 
 stamped them out. And so, softly, as we waited, the 
 tinkled, some crystalline and gay, and others mourn- 
 ful, and yet others deep and portentous. I looked at 
 the slim giri, her seriou cd on the sky; I imagined 
 
 her dream of imp le hope for all those poor and 
 
 d, who had soiled their lives with cupidities and 
 envies. And there was such wist fulness in those eyes, 
 such undefined, greedy loi I those creatures that 
 
 breathed, that I Leaned forward, with words upon my 
 • I, made my mouth twitch. But Edith 
 
 ** Come," she said, t4 we must go, for the night is 
 
 '•(.ming." 
 
 Wt i pari vvhere a few lights shone in 
 
 the wind'. 
 
190 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " You will come again," I said. 
 
 " I oughtn't to." 
 
 " But you will ? You will, Edith— little Edith, you 
 will?" 
 
 " ^Perhaps." The eyes were veiled under the delicate, 
 veined lids. 
 
 " Say 4 I will write next time.' " 
 
 She laughed nervously. " Oh, I couldn't -write." 
 
 " Then how shall I know? How shall we meet? " 
 
 She was silent. Then at length, very low, as if 
 frightened : 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 I took her hand. " Good-bye, Edith." 
 
 " Good-bjfe." 
 
 " No, not good-bye. ' Good-bye, Lucien \" 
 
 She looked towards the ground, obstinately silent. 
 
 " Good-bye, Lucien," I repeated. 
 
 She shook her head. " No." I held her hand, pressed 
 it without speaking. At last she looked up, and I saw 
 her lips tremble, form "No" — But, quite suddenly 
 and spontaneously, I think, I heard her blurred, hoarse 
 " Good-bye, Lucien " ; her slim fingers pressed mine, 
 while I bent down, and with my lips touched the glove 
 on her unresisting hand. 
 
 IV 
 
 I had two whole months to think of Edith, to define 
 my intentions to myself, for I heard, ten days later, 
 that she had caught a chill and was in bed, then that 
 she had been sent to Brighton for a month, in charge 
 of an old aunt, for the Liberals had come into temporary 
 power and the election was upon us : her niother could 
 not be spared. Mrs. Lawton and Muriel were almost 
 every day in Hambury, canvassing, smiling and making 
 friends by means of. condescensions and expensive furs. 
 But I think I knew that I wanted my slim English girl 
 only when I thought of her as ill, of her golden hair 
 flowing on the pillow, of her little listless hands. My 
 
HAMBURY 191 
 
 pity kindled my love, for Edith had not the strong 
 body which arouses contempt when it is sick; so like a 
 flowering white convolvulus was she that I loved her 
 first in her greatest weakness, as I might tenderly have 
 raised the fallen plant and helped it to cling once more 
 to the more robust ivy. 
 
 I loved her. I loved her in spite of myself, for love 
 of Edith involved marriage, and my old tradition held 
 me enough to urge that a Frenchman does riot marry 
 at twenty-five; also it reminded me that Edith would 
 have no dot, that my income was a hundred and sixty 
 a year : it laughed at me. But I laughed at it, for 
 England had breathed her spirit in me, wiped out some 
 of my grossness, some of my mercenary spirit. I was 
 ready to take Edith poor and weak, to be poor and weak 
 with her, to bow before her, the beautiful and pure, if 
 only she would take my humble forehead between her 
 smooth white hands. If I had thought of her, in the 
 very early days, when she ceased to be a figment and 
 became a woman, as the road I might follow to a partner- 
 ship in Barbezan & Co., I had now forgotten such 
 imaginings. My quest of the Golden Girl was at end, 
 y, delicious quest during which the knight upon 
 the mad meets such as Maud, Lottie and their like, and 
 knightly speeds on. While the months oozed away, 
 my love crept back upon itself, for I could not see Edith, 
 or write to h'er, and dared but seldom question Hugh; 
 1 to such expedients as to alternate between 
 h^r father, mother, sister and brother, so that my interest 
 might not arouse suspicion, to question casually even 
 Loui . who stung me with the remark that Edith 
 
 little thing." 
 I think I hfl 
 
 I suffered that madness oi isolation which always 
 
 lieu I have lost the treasure I had or 
 
 do not yet see the treasure to come. I fastened on the 
 
 ided me, all of them tOO busy with 
 
 <>f Barbezan were 
 
 Christmas holidays and had no eye for the 
 
192 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 alien; and Maud preferred to me, to Saunders, the 
 auctioneer, and to " Signor " Colley, a new friend, " a 
 real gent who'd been introduced to her at Tinman's," 
 a certain Bert Burge. I had not seen Bert Burge, but 
 I knew he had something to do with the halls : as Maud 
 was " on him like a bird," while he was " gone on her," 
 she found a reason to be out of the house nearly every 
 evening. 
 
 " So high-spirited," said Mrs. Hooper, with her air 
 of mournful prjde. 
 
 I was thrown back on Hambury, for now four weeks 
 only separated us from the test. I had conceived a 
 passion for Hambury, and, ten days before Christmas, 
 I solemnly informed Mr. Lawton that I intended to 
 devote myself to " The Cause," to give Hambury every 
 night and every Saturday. 
 
 " Thank you," he said ; " it's very decent of you." 
 
 Bare thanks ! English thanks, or rather recognition 
 of my sense of duty. I wanted more, and I wanted 
 tribute. I did not have tribute, but a more precious 
 gift was waiting for me that night : it was a letter in an 
 unknown hand, addressed in good round writing, almost 
 childish in its carefulness. The Brighton postmark 
 made my heart pound against my side, and I could feel 
 it still as I read, feel it long after I had nnishea learning 
 the words : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Cadoresse, 
 
 " I thought you would like to know that I am 
 much better. I suppose you know I have been ill. Only 
 a chill, but I had a high temperature. I oughtn't to 
 write to you but — (several words scratched out)^— I 
 didn't want you to think I had forgotten to write before 
 we met again. 1 do want to come back, but they won't 
 let me until next month, or they won't let me canvass — 
 -and I do want to canvass ; it'll be such fun. You would 
 like Brighton (but how silly of me, you know it), for 
 the sea is so blue, it's like turquoise ;• you'd think of 
 something much prettier to compare it with, but I feel 
 
HAMBURY 193 
 
 stupid. How is Mr. Chike and have you converted 
 Mrs. Chike ? 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Edith Lawton. 
 " P.S. — Of course you mustn't write to me. It isn't 
 safer 
 
 I went to my room to read the letter again. I read 
 it five or six times ; the letter was Edith, shy, affectionate ; 
 it tried to say what she meant and shrank from at the 
 last moment. It thrilled me, its spontaneity and the 
 fact that it was spontaneous; I kissed the letter and 
 rejoiced because it carried no scent. The innocent 
 underlining, the literary timidity which made her eschew 
 similes, all this was Edith. It was all she, the boyish 
 anticipation of the election rag, the mild scoff at the 
 progressive grocer, the fear lest her silence should have 
 hurt me; that was Edith, and exquisite, but more 
 precious to me was the Edith in relation to me implied 
 in the scratched-out words, which I made out with a 
 dfying-glass to be " I wanted to." She had wanted 
 to write to me, and she had dared to do it, but she had 
 not dared to wanted to — just as her postscript 
 
 implied that she wanted me to reply, though she dared 
 not let me. Sweet fugitive, I knew what you meant, 
 h you did not say it, and I, who ever loved the 
 loved your shrinkings. And I thought of her by 
 the turquoise sea. 
 
 nst the western wind she stands upon the 
 
 whit- ! 1 for whom the blast is too rude. 
 
 Is muffled in white wool, she rules the straying gold 
 
 of her hair, and the wind furls her skirts about her, 
 
 js to and its soft, cold bosom. 
 
 The wind kisses into vividness the roses of her cheeks 
 
 and tints with purple her mouth that pouts as a split. 
 
 ny, and a Might her eyes arc dim with One 
 
 'ie turqu and it is jealous 
 
 of her eyes' blue dept 
 
 B 
 
194 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 And on again to the comedy of elections which so re- 
 calls the fights of dirty little boys who roll in the London 
 gutter; to meetings, canvassings, lies, proofs and smart 
 retorts ; to charges of unfairness and appeals for the play- 
 ing of the game ; to fine prejudice too, to noble fanaticism, 
 to generosities and unselfish hopes; to impracticable 
 cures for evils, to truthful promises and self-abnegation ; 
 to all that incoherence and turbidness of purpose out 
 of which comes, after all, stumbling and halting, some 
 mercy and a little justice. 
 
 Every night at half-past six, I reported at the central, 
 committee-room. I came out with a bundle of canvass 
 cards, sometimes alone and sometimes' as escort of Muriel 
 or Mrs. Lawton, when they had to visit certain quarters 
 of the old town reputed to be " dangerous." For Hambury 
 was getting on in the world : the merchants had deserted 
 the old houses for modern detached residences, so that 
 Hambury had had to turn the early- Victorian homes, 
 among which was occasionally a fine, square Georgian house, 
 into tenements. It was among these tenements I had to 
 take ^tfuriel, who wrinkled her nose at the smell of man — 
 food — washing, to stand by her side and look confidently 
 at the big, truculent navvies who were laying the tram- 
 lines towards the blessed fields, while she recorded their 
 opinions, and said the weather would improve if the 
 Liberals got in. 
 
 We were splendidly efficient; we wasted no time on 
 argument, for Hambury was unmanageable : since the 
 redistribution its electorate had grown from about eight 
 thousand to twenty-seven thousand. Thus all the can- 
 vassers could do was to ascertain where was the strength, 
 so that it might be polled. 
 
 " It's simple enough," said Muriel ; " we found that out 
 when father stood for Bowley. In these big divisions 
 it's not worth while arguing : poll your strength and 
 you win; at Bowley we polled seventy-nine per cent., 
 which was jolly bad; if we'd polled eighty-five we'd 
 
HAMBURY 195 
 
 have got home. You don't want to turn a vote. Just 
 poll your own." 
 
 \Yhether this was or was not democratic government 
 did not seem to trouble Muriel much; I remember her 
 during that month as a completely cynical girl, intent 
 only on winning; her dash had been transmuted into a 
 ceaseless and businesslike activity, her talk of theatres 
 and dances into a rhapsody of half-a-dozen words : " doubt- 
 ful — removed — ours — theirs — meeting — canvass." We 
 raced each other along opposite sides of a street, waving 
 ironically across the road when we had gained a couple 
 of canvassed houses; we learned to work at top-speed 
 with a blunt pencil, slippery canvass cards and uncertain 
 electric lamps ; we talked only of elections, and we never 
 kissed. Tacitly Muriel had abandoned me to Edith, 
 and I, being now so little of a Frenchman, accepted her 
 attitude. 
 
 Hambury was a centre of chaos, for I seemed not only 
 to be always canvassing, always rushing into the com- 
 mittee-rooms for further supplies of cards, to find there 
 a buzzing group of women, who checked lists of voters, 
 addressed envelopes, scrapped the dead, always catching 
 trains and omnibuses to lose myself in Balham or Rich- 
 mond while I tracked removals, or stewarding at meetings, 
 or whirling in a motor-car in an aimless, distraught way, 
 going to a place I didn't know, with a message I didn't 
 understand, to meet a man who did not appear. The 
 fog of the election was like the fog of war, and I, a 
 private, did not know what I was doing. But one thing 
 ild feel : the splendid English organisation. The 
 professional showed amazing mastery of the 
 
 f the Corrupt Practices Act, and of the 
 topography of Hambury; the constituency was covered, 
 area by area; cai allotted and marshalled; 
 
 meet Id in si at a time, speakers 
 
 . men imported from London, 
 
 :^n<[ at scheduled points, 
 
 emptied (A ti and whisked off again by other 
 
 to do service twenty miles away. Our colours 
 
196 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 were everywhere; our cars, decked with red ribbons, 
 and posters, let their engines race and roar in the market- 
 place, so that Hambury should know we were there, 
 mob us, stand open-mouthed and mentally promise 
 votes to the authors of the fine to-do. 
 
 And figures crowd about me : Hepson, the agent, 
 who, on being informed that one of our cars had killed 
 an old woman at Broughton remarked : " That's all 
 right. Broughton 's a quarter of a mile over the bound- 
 ary " — and Mrs. N Mill, a sweet-faced old piano-teacher, 
 a Roman Catholic, who burned a candle every morning 
 at the shrine of her favourite saint while praying for 
 our triumph — and Wing, his friend Mayne, both Young 
 Liberals, who 'ad a bit on ole Lawton and 'ud give three 
 to one agin the other blighter. They crowd, some of 
 them just names — Rennie, Morrison. Miss Festing — and 
 some nameless faces, ascetic faces of old men with side- 
 whiskers, and the sly, fat muzzle of a publican who saw 
 the point of being the one Radical innkeeper, and very 
 young, boyish and girlish faces, rosy, blue-eyed; faces 
 of children who wept for favours and occasionally 
 paraded with our poster pinned on their backs. And 
 others : Lady Bondon, the wife of Sir Thomas Bondon, 
 our opponent, a large, red lady, with an enormous black 
 silk bust and a voice which Sir Thomas must have learned 
 to respect in his — no, her own house. 
 
 There is Hugh lecturing me because I had called Sir 
 Thomas a blackguard.^. 
 
 " He's not that — he's on the other side, but " 
 
 " If we're right the other side must be blackguards." 
 
 " Oh, no — he's entitled to think as he likes, and one 
 mustn't mind. You know, Cadoresse, in England 
 political enemies can be personal friends." 
 
 " Hypocrisy." 
 
 " Not exactly; of course an M.P. may feel a bit sore 
 
 when he's being slanged in the House by the chap he 
 
 T8 golf with, but he mustn't say so. One's got to 
 
 play the game and keep a stiff lip when one gets one 
 
 in the ey 
 
HAMBURY 197 
 
 It struck me as a little artificial, but the Englishman 
 always plays the game, and thinks everybody ought to 
 do so. I think Muriel carried the attitude to its extreme 
 development when she told me that fox-hunting was all 
 right because the fox had a chance to get away. 
 
 " Not like pigeon shooting," she said, scornfully, 
 " or hunting carled stags. That's not sport, but the 
 fox has got a chance — he likes a run." 
 
 Well ! 
 
 And there is Chike, the progressive grocer; five foot 
 two, or three at most, marvellously active and apologetic, 
 running like an overgrown rat about the streets, with 
 his little brown eyes racing towards the point of his long 
 nose, and a general air of timid, incredibly swift scuttle. 
 
 " Hullo, Chikey," screamed the urchins as he ran ; 
 " look out, 'ere She is." 
 
 And then Chike would leap as he ran, and shake wild, 
 Futile little fists at the boys, for She was Mrs. Chike, 
 Primrose Dame, thirteen stone in weight, and deter- 
 mined that her husband should not disgrace himself 
 with our Low lot. Everybody knew that she thrashed 
 Chike, that she locked him up as soon as the shop was 
 closed " to keep him out of trouble." But Chike was 
 much more than nimble : he developed extraordinary 
 cunning, once dived right under her vast person, when she 
 d t he door, and rushed out more like a rat than ever, 
 like a rut that a cat is chasing. He had his revenges 
 too. 
 
 " I got even with In ,; lay," he excitedly related. 
 
 14 I was trackin' removals 'cos I 'ad time, bcin' early 
 
 So when I got me first, I scs to meself, 'ere's 
 
 a chance, ses I : III telephone the ole gell to cheer 'er 
 
 up. So I telephoi hi' you should 'ave 'card Vr. 
 
 I telephoned 'er again i 4 Got another, Maria,' says I. 
 
 *Whi — ycr dirty tyl 'Ah, 
 
 like to kl } I. And I telephoned 'er 
 
 when I ,L r "t another — an' she 'ad to answer, 'cos 
 
 ihe couldn't tell it wasn't a customer — so I telephoned 
 
 t for luck. Cost me eight pence altogether, 
 
198 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 but it was worth it, but "— Chike rubbed his head 
 significantly — " she did go on awful when a' got 'ome." 
 
 Yet the contest seemed to breed no ugliness. We did 
 not always tell the truth, but I seemed to miss the 
 atmosphere of violence in which French politicians 
 breathe ; I looked in vain for the inspiring red, white and 
 blue posters which, when Frenchmen are polling, stare 
 at us from every wall : 
 
 LIAR ! 
 
 Voters ! Do not be deceived by a Candi- 
 date WHOM I DO NOT CONDESCEND TO NAME, 
 
 a Man who has sold to the Jews such 
 honour as he derives from nis illegitimate 
 parentage. . . . 
 
 or — 
 
 I CHALLENGE 
 
 That Hireling of the Church to say he 
 did not suddenly receive elghty thousand 
 Francs. (Did you say Panama ? Hush!). . . 
 
 ■> 
 That is what I called electioneering, and I told Hepson 
 
 so, but he merely laughed and said that in* England no 
 man was a traitor until he was in office. I felt that my 
 attempts to " ginger up " our leaflets were coldly received. 
 Reluctantly I decided to help win this election like a 
 gentleman : our French way is a much bigger rag. 
 
 VI 
 
 And at last Edith came. In ten days the people of 
 Hambury would go to the poll. She came, and in the 
 first handshake she gave me, which lingered a little, she 
 said : " Here I am.'* And her blush, her quickly averted 
 glance repeated : " Here I am," added, " What are you 
 going to do with me ? " 
 
 I did not know what I was going to do with her. 
 Perhaps I did not know what I was going to do with my- 
 
HAMBURY 199 
 
 sell, unless I intended to place myself in the hands of 
 the Providence of Lovers, beg it to make or mar me as 
 it would. All I knew was that the shy girl thrilled me 
 because she was no longer so shy with me : I was as 
 Christopher Columbus landing on the shores of America; 
 I had not explored a continent, but I had set my foot 
 within its boundaries. 
 
 This inner life of mine was one of storm, for the tender 
 
 bordered ever on the businesslike; we perpetually 
 
 drifted to the personal while we canvassed, and then 
 
 again we would be driven away from the open gates by 
 
 preoccupation of an illegible name on a card, the 
 
 facetious howl of some small boy, or meetings with other 
 
 canvassers. Those other canvassers ! How intolerably^ 
 
 bright and metallic was the surface with which they 
 
 coated their jadedness, their sickness of the whole affair; 
 
 made jokes "out of cold feet, lost pencils, electors 
 
 removed to another corner of the borough, things that 
 
 are quite tragic in January. We met Dicky Bell, his 
 
 brown eyes beady with excitement because he had found 
 
 a street of seventeen " Fors," one " Against " and one 
 
 *' Doubtful." He announced the result at the top of 
 
 his voice, shouted " Hooray ! Hoo-blastedray," apolo- 
 
 I to Edith with a " Beg pardon, election fever," 
 
 and ran away to the central committee-room for new 
 
 An Englishman excited. And sometimes we 
 
 saw Neville, patiently plodding from door to door, 
 
 lis hat to tii< suspicious wives of the rail waymen, 
 
 and gaining p by the sheer pathos of his innocent 
 
 B. Neville could suffer rebuffs in silence, cover 
 
 curly fair hair, and squaring his weak 
 
 chin as well as he could, go on to the next house, humbly, 
 
 stod: .still al work on his father's debts. 
 
 . palling for cards, 1< ailc,ts, window- 
 
 our supporters, notices of meetings, all of them : 
 
 Louisa, with Hugh in hex train, and Kent, who had 
 
 given op e " when you were polite the 
 
 poor knew you were being rude," and Gladys Raleigh, 
 
 and Bessie Surtees, and the local enthusiasts, Wing, 
 
200 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Mayne, all red tie and three-inch collar; Mrs. Mill, always 
 a little prayerful; the sly, fat Radical innkeeper, and 
 Chike, scuttling past, with a glance of apprehension for 
 every big woman. Wc talked, we argued, we contra- 
 dicted, we told each other the way, we clamoured for 
 notes to be made that Thompson wouldn't come unless 
 we sent an electric, that O'Kelly wanted Home Rule 
 for his vote, and would Mr. Lawton go and blarney 
 him? that Smith was engaged up to five minutes to 
 eight, that Emmett could speak and wouldn't, while 
 Morrison would speak and couldn't — Fog ! And in 
 the midst was Mr. Lawton, neat, not too smart, in 
 perpetual conference with Hepson, gravely forbidding 
 us to give the children pennies, cautioning us against 
 treating when treated, reminding us that to give favours 
 was a corrupt practice-t— I see his tired, handsome face as 
 he sits with Hepson. 
 
 " Ward four is very bad, you must double the open- 
 airs there, Hepson — and I can't speak at the Drill Hall 
 at eight fifteen if I'm to be at St. Catherine's Schools at 
 nine — you must recall that poster, it's too thick — the 
 Burglars' Cabinet, I mean — Lord Wynfleet will lend two 
 cars for the day " 
 
 Fog ! And then Mr. Lawton, in the market-place, on 
 a dray. He speaks slowly, hands clasped behind him, 
 without notes, his face lit up by a naphtha flare. I hear 
 his steady voice : 
 
 " And because we are free we intend to remain free. 
 We will not have to lead us the men who have stolen our 
 schools, who have placed our women and our children in 
 the hands of the liquor trade, who have sat upon the 
 fence when we asked whether they would tax our food, 
 who have not even had the courage to lie. No, English- 
 men, you must never again trust them, never allow 
 them to enslave your trade any more than to enslave 
 Chinamen " 
 
 And I hear the roar that rises from hundreds of faces, 
 white, ghastly under the flares, stained by the hundred 
 black holes of their open, roaring throats. The sound 
 
HAMBURY 201 
 
 rises, beats upon the four facades of the market-place, 
 drowns the feeble oratory in the other corner where 
 Sir Thomas Bondon is being heckled, for Lawton has 
 hit home. They sing, these open throats : 
 
 There is a golden Rand, 
 
 Far, far away. 
 Millionaires say they can't pay 
 
 Uore'n a bob a day ; 
 There Chinese toil all day 
 And, toiling, sadly say : 
 Chinee-man ho likee be 
 
 Far, far sway. 
 
 VII 
 
 But one night we were lost, in that fateful ward four. 
 
 Having set out with hazy ideas of our destination we 
 
 could not find Molton Street; questions to the natives 
 
 ised our confusion, for the Hamburyites did not 
 
 know their way, they found it by instinct. We were told 
 
 to the left for Granby Street while the Granby 
 
 ■ plate showed opposite in the light of a gas-lamp; 
 
 we missed turnings, retraced our steps, sought for villas 
 
 in dark little streets where llickered the window lights 
 
 of stationers, tobacconists and cheap confectioners, of 
 
 • •-houses which Liberals dared not enter. Directed 
 
 iare, we suddenly arrived on the banks of 
 
 the Ham. 
 
 M ! ':u rick of this," I said, stopping. " Aren't you? " 
 41 Well, I am rather tired, Edith. "Still " 
 
 I looked at her, smiling, her eyes blade in the bad light, 
 
 I wistfully determined to go on. 
 M Only one day more-," she said, bravely trying to 
 » 
 
 ■\ ! I detected a hoarseness in my 
 
 Victory? Yes, for Lawton — but did the word 
 
 .in vt hin 
 
 II I. up tor I'D minutes, Shall we? I 
 go al 
 
 "All right, M said Edith. 
 
202 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 We walked along the tow-path. The night was dark; 
 between the gas-lamps we could not see each other's 
 ~~faces. The river flowed very slowly, and, here and there, 
 where rubbish had accumulated, a film of dust made 
 sheets of shimmering grey satin. We went silent, and 
 very close together, elbows touching and intimately 
 conscious of solitude. Then, near a light, we found an 
 old stone bench. " Rest in Peace, Wanderer, and in 
 Peace Depart. 1787," said the inscription. We both 
 smiled ; Edith traced the letters with her finger. 
 
 " Come," I said. " Let us sit down for a little." 
 
 Edith did not reply, sat down, and as she did so, 
 shivered, for the night was cold. 
 
 " I'm glad you've come back," I said at last. " It 
 was a long time since you wrote." 
 
 " I ought not to have," she said, in a low voice. Her 
 face was averted. " But " 
 
 " But you wanted to," I suggested. 
 
 And so gently had I spoken that, after a while, she 
 sighed and said : 
 
 " I suppose I did." r 
 
 " I wanted you to come back, Edith, dreadfully. 
 Without you it was dark. But now — everything is 
 different. When I'm with you I feel alive, I want to 
 be great. Oh, I know, I'm nobody " 
 
 " You mustn't say that," replied Edith, " or you'll 
 never be anything. And I — I want you to be something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I don't know — I want — oh, I can never talk to 
 you, Lucien, you — you talk so qucerly — you frighten 
 me." 
 
 She shivered. 
 
 " You are cold," I said. And for the first time I laid 
 my arm across' her shoulders, held her gloved hand. 
 She did not resist; indeed, I fancied that she rested 
 against my shoulder, that her slim fingers clasped mine. 
 And t§iter, as I drew her closer, I found her cheek against 
 my shoulder, light as a leaf upon a stream. As I looked 
 down I could see some loose strands of pale hair, the 
 
HAMBURY 203 
 
 blunted edge of her foreshortened nose. She was so 
 near that I could feel her breathe, so near that an inclina- 
 tion of my head would have brought my lips to her eye- 
 lids, and the desire of it began to hang behind me, urging 
 me on, pressing my head down with soft, ghostly hands. 
 But some other instinct held me back, some obscure 
 aestheticism which forbade that I should spoil with a 
 concrete caress this minute most exquisite, because it 
 was the first. 
 
 " What am I doing? " said Edith, at last, to herself 
 rather than to me. Then : " I ought to be away, out 
 there, where the lights are " 
 
 "No, no," I said thickly; "stay here, stay here. 
 There is nothing out there. If all Hambury were to 
 become air we should be here both of us — little Dresden 
 Shepherdess, that is what I call you; when I hold you like 
 this I know that life is good." 
 
 " Life is good," said Edith. And later : 
 
 " I'm not so frightened as I was. I was frightened, 
 vou know." 
 
 " Of what ? " 
 
 " I don't know. You're so dark — you seem so fierce 
 
 — you look at me with your black eyes. They glow like 
 
 — and you're French. I hardly know what you mean 
 
 sometimes, when you talk about- pictures — and you're 
 
 il. Oik know what you mean." 
 
 '• !', it you know," I murmured, holding her now so 
 uld feel against my side the hurried beating 
 of her heart. 
 
 M I try to Understand. Bat you're not like the other 
 men I know! they say what I expect." She lau: 
 
 . " It's so easy with them, while with you, I'm 
 ."mid that I'll not understand, when you say 
 ; LOUt their heads — or other 
 things — about ieal thin- 
 
 M I never say cynieal things about you." 
 
 '* No— you thin! I'm a baby." 
 
 '* S u oof feel like a child, as I hold 
 
 you so close ? " 
 
204 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " You oughtn't to," she said, weakly. Then : " Yes 
 — I suppose I do . . . And I don't mind." 
 
 The light grew, for the heavy clouds that shrouded the 
 moon were slowly drifting towards the east. A white 
 glow oozed through them where the hidden planet hung. 
 I released Edith's hand, let my hand glide along her arm, 
 to the slim shoulder that trembled, until my fingers 
 touched her cheek. A shiver, a long shiver that shook 
 her whole body passed through her, and as she pressed 
 her head on my shoulder, while I caressed her cheek, 
 soft and smooth as the flesh of an orchid, the cloud 
 became as a film of grey gauze, let the deathly pale rays 
 of the moon silver the hair of my beloved. We sat, 
 thus linked, for a long time, I think, and I was so ravished 
 that I listened to the chimes of Hambury Church with 
 such indifference as may feel a prisoner for life, when the 
 hours ring out. We did not speak, we had nothing to 
 say, but I knew, as I felt my knees tremble, that every- 
 thing had been said, that nothing was left for us to do 
 save to put that everything into words. 
 
 " We must go," she said, without moving. 
 
 " We must go," I repeated. 
 
 But at last the chimes sounded ten o'clock. We 
 started up. 
 
 " Oh— what shall we do ? " cried Edith. 
 
 I was holding her hands, drawing her towards me. 
 
 " Edith — Edith — my darling " I murmured, in a 
 
 voice so thick, so muffled that I could hardly form my 
 words. 
 
 " Oh, we must go — we must go " she whispered. 
 
 She let me draw her against me, clasp her close, but she 
 averted her face, buried it into my coat. As she freed 
 herself I knelt down and, holding palms upward the 
 little hands, pressed two kisses into the openings of the 
 gloves — two long, tremulous kisses upon the scented 
 suede and the smooth, cold palms. Together we turned 
 back, and our hands did not unclasp until we saw 
 before us the glaring naphtha lamps of the market- 
 square. _ 
 
HAMBURY 205 
 
 VIII 
 
 And the next night I spoke. Canvassing was over, 
 so I hung near the most eastern of our two Roman Street 
 platforms, while Edith exchanged dignified and com- 
 pulsorily democratic pleasantries with Mayne, who was 
 now giving four to one agin the other blighter. He could 
 afford to, though we had to pull down a majority of 
 sixteen hundred and to reckon with a new vote of six 
 thousand, mainly in Hamburyville ; for our canvass 
 showed that we ought to win by at least fifteen hundred, 
 and on this night, the eve of the poll, a jovial, singing, 
 hear-hearihg crowd was perpetually expanding from our 
 platforjn into the High Street, then swirling back as the 
 tramways cleft through it to a fierce accompaniment of 
 bell-ringing. Twenty yards away a struggling mob was 
 shout in g down Sir Thomas Bondon's men, and a shrill 
 crowd of •eliiidi m, decked out in our red favours, screamed 
 and whist led them into inaudibility. 
 n't it great? " I said. 
 
 " Great/' said Edith, excitedly. 
 
 We were against the platform and, over our heads, the 
 
 Headquarters man, Federation, I think, boomed out 
 
 . eloquent phrases that stimulated the crowd 
 
 into cheering, fired off the morning paper's epigrams, 
 
 spurted personalities to which the crowd responded. 
 
 "The Tories scuttled when we talked Tariffs. Shall 
 . ? " 
 roared the crowd. 
 
 44 Will you have Hambury boots made by Chinese 
 
 "NO, NO— to 'ell with 'cm." 
 
 Phrase by phrase the speaker lashed them, striking 
 .it the ('■ until at last the mob 
 
 it into the sottg : 
 
 ro is a goldon Rand, 
 Far, far aw.iy. . . 
 
 But something was wrong, for he bent down to the 
 chairman : 
 
206 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " I can't go on — voice going," he said, hoarsely. 
 
 " Oh, try, sir, try," said the chairman. It was one of 
 the ascetic-looking, whiskered old men. 
 
 " Five minutes," said the speaker; " spoken six times 
 to-day." He wiped his face with his handkerchief. 
 I heard the old man muttering, " What's to be done ? 
 What's to be done ? " Then my heart began to beat, 
 a little vein to shiver in my left temple. The blood was 
 thick in my head — I remember imposing my help on 
 the old man — -and Mayne* advising me to " give 'em 
 'ell," and Edith, with a mouth that trembled and tried 
 to smile. And then I was on the platform, speaking 
 in a raucous vojee that did not belong to me, terrified, 
 excited — saying things I did not know I knew, to a great, 
 white sheet of faces full of black mouth-holes — and 
 when the wind blew the stench of the burning naphtha. 
 I spoke. I heard a roar of approval. What had I said ? 
 Ah, yes — I had forgotten the election, plunged into the 
 future — I had said that dukes were not two a penny, 
 but certainly two for a fully-paid share — I began to 
 describe Protection in France, my country — sugar at 
 fivepence halfpenny a pound — suits cheap at sixty 
 shillings — bread at twopence a pound — I saw Edith, 
 deadly white, with three black stains for eyes and mouth 
 — and Majme, grinning. 
 
 " Down with 'em — down with 'em," roared the crowd. 
 
 I spoke, and on, and on, growing clearer, calmer now, 
 smiling back at Edith, pointing an excited finger at her. 
 
 " They say that England's going to the dogs — it will, 
 if we get the tariff, for then we'll EAT the dogs." ( \\< >ar.) 
 
 For twenty minutes I spoke, and I saw Edith clap 
 her hands with the others, though the idd chairman 
 put up a deprecating hand as I ended on my " rouser." 
 " I've come all the way from France, boys, a thousand 
 miles, to tell yqu that England's the place for men — 
 (cheers) — that England is your privilege and your trust. 
 (Blank silence.) To. ask you not to let it.be chained 
 and starved and enslaved by a gang of blackguard 
 manufacturers allied with drunken squires." (Roar.) 
 
HAMBURY 207 
 
 When at last I came down into the crowd, flushed, 
 mobbed by the friendly, hot bodies, I was glad, if a little 
 ashamed of my violence, for was not this violence the 
 only expression I could give to my love for this land of 
 freedom and silent passions, seldom unleashed ? And 
 Edith had slipped her bare hand into mine, gripped me 
 convulsively. I heard her voice : 
 
 kt It was splendid — splendid " 
 
 Was it splendid? Was this not Darkest England 
 I saw ? This England of elections where men yawned 
 vid " Principles of Liberty," and shouted if you 
 said " Pretty Fanny? " England, must you -wallow in 
 the mud sometimes, because you are a buffalo? But 
 I crushed down my suspicions, told myself this great 
 force could not be fine or gentle ; I pictured the progress 
 of England as that of some Roman warrior on a chariot, 
 racing the wind, brutal but conquering, and magnificent, 
 winning the race, winning. I filled my ears with the 
 thunder of t^he hoofs. ^ 
 
 And in tne midst .of chaos we polled. Twelve hours 
 
 of terrific noise, the hooting of the cars, the songs, the 
 
 bands. For there were bands to bring up the two hundred 
 
 s on the blue-decked vans of Hardafort's brewery, 
 
 Lead the Liberal reds from the boot-factory, 
 
 and the band of tin- Ancient Order of Elephants, doubtful 
 
 one; the temperance interest wore red for v the day; 
 
 I flowed to the ward four schools 
 
 an orange-decked drum, and interrupted polling for 
 
 while they settled the Home Rule 
 
 tion with (lie rest of the Irish interest. 
 
 One d: nost continuous din, for the tramways 
 
 tinning, crammed to the doors with people 
 
 who speechified in defiance of bye-laws, a day when 
 
 spin bine lit up Ilambury, so that a passing 
 
 its (juilt of i i reamers 
 
 and favours for the tODC of Harlequin. I seemed to 
 
 be running all the tin tiling at the same 
 
 e to make sure thai Thomson had polled, or helping 
 
 bed-ridden old 1 into a car; also I bundled our 
 
208 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 people into the Bondon cars, having stripped off my favour 
 and bluffed the Tory chauffeur. I ate standing up in 
 the central committee-room, beside Edith, who trembled 
 with excitement, and Hugh who smoked, with splendid 
 calm, consecutive pipes, while Louisa in vain tried to 
 hustle him into activity. 
 
 Some little things jut out, like church-spires out of 
 a fog. Cloggie, who came up at six, saying that he had 
 polled his shrfre, Cloggie, anxious, bright-eyed, whispering 
 of the Repeal of the Paper Duty and the greatness of the 
 late Mr. Clogg — and Neville, as resigned and mild as ever, 
 progressing saintlike in ward four, escorted by twoscore 
 dirty little boys who threatened to put him in the Ham 
 — and Chike. 
 
 Chike ! I did not see him until ten minutes to eight. 
 I stood wearily with Edith at the entrance of the schools 
 in ward three. Only ten minutes more ! There was 
 nothing more to be clone, for we had either won or lost. 
 
 A few yards away, watching the door, was a very big 
 woman with a red face, over which fell some rumpled 
 grey hair. 
 
 44 Mrs. Chike," I whispered to Edith. 44 Watching for 
 him." 
 
 Edith laughed merrily, then murmured, 44 Poor Mr. 
 Chike. What a shame ! " 
 
 44 He won't poll," I said; 44 she's locked him up in the 
 coal-eellar, I expect, and she's watching to be sure he 
 doesn't escape." 
 
 We laughed again, both of us, looking into each other's 
 eyes; I was full of the intimacy of love. And I knew 
 now that Edith felt that intimacy. Yet I left her, 
 for I wanted to go into the station and, for the first 
 time, see the actual voting. An excited crowd surged 
 in it, mobbed the clerks, snatched the slips and filled them 
 in at the desks, maintaining the secrecy of their choice 
 by ostentatious hunchings of their shoulders and squarings 
 of their elbows. It amused me, this seriousness, and it 
 enhanced the splendour of hard, steady England. 
 
 There was a swirl in the crowd, caused by four big 
 
HAMBURY 209 
 
 men and a load. I heard protests, an " All right, guvnor." 
 In a cleared space lay a large case marked Hardafort 
 Brewery Company, Ltd. 
 
 11 What the devil " said one of the clerks as he 
 
 stood up. 
 
 There was a breathless moment as the lid slowly rose 
 and there peeped out the long, ratlike nose and beady 
 of Chike. Then a roar of laughter and cheers as 
 the progressive grocer unfolded his little limbs, proudly 
 strode up to the table and proclaimed : " Chike, Thomas 
 Albert, 5 Fullerton Street." 
 
 " She kept an eye on me, she did — but she didn't 
 think of looking inside the empties when my pals came 
 for 'em — she thought I was "in the store-room gettin' 
 some more when they carried me out. Lor' ! " — he re- 
 moved some straw from his hair, — " it was 'ot in there." 
 
 " It'll be 'otter outside, ole man," said Mayne; "you 
 bet she saw the van and twigged it — she'd 'ave stopped 
 it if the police 'adn't been there." 
 
 " Lor' ! " said Chike, apprehensively, and peeped out 
 of the window into the night. 
 
 " Any'ow, a've done me little bit for ole Lawton." 
 
 " Four to one agin the other blighter," said Mayne, 
 automatically. 
 
CHAPTER III <* 
 
 BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRI/ 
 
 I 
 
 " Are you going to the count? " said Edith. 
 
 I shook my head. " No, they'll only let three people 
 in. Your father is- taking Hugh and Kent." 
 
 " Then there's nothing to do but wait." 
 
 " Two hours and a half at least. Where shall we go 
 to?" 
 
 " Oh, we can't go anywhere — I'd better find Muriel 
 and mother. Mother's at Roman Street, I fnink." 
 
 " Edith ! " J drew nearer, spoke in a whisper, though 
 the voices of the crowd would have allowed of ordinary 
 speech, in a deliciously guilty whisper. " Don't go- 
 come with me. We have time; you won't be missed; 
 everybody's so excited. Come with me — we'll go to the 
 old bench near the Ham. Look, there are the stars all 
 over the sky, like silver-headed nails." 
 
 " I mustn't," she said, but weakly. 
 
 " Go and find your mother," I suddenly commanded. 
 44 Tell her you want some air, that you're going to find 
 Bessie and that you'll be back in an hour " 
 
 "Rut " 
 
 " Rut of course you won't find Ressie. You'll take the 
 tram to Four Trees Corner; it's quite near the river, and 
 I'll wait for you there. We can't go together; everybody 
 knows you. And — if you've got a thick coat, wear it." 
 
 Edith looked at me, still hesitating; I drew closer to 
 her, gripped her hand. 
 
 " It may be our last chance for a long time, little 
 Edith." 
 
 I left her before she could reply, and as I sat in the 
 210 
 
BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 211 
 
 tramway among the men who were returning from the 
 poll, I was barely conscious of their computations of 
 chances, their stories and oaths; even the obsessing 
 song : 
 
 There is a golden Rand, 
 Far, far. away. . . 
 
 formed but a background to my thoughts. For I knew 
 that this was the Day. 
 
 V 
 
 As she looked up at me, with a little fear in her misty 
 eyes, a tremble in her mouth, I knew that Edith had 
 come to me — no, that I had snatched up her light frame 
 and sat it in my heart upon a throne. She would come, 
 I knew it, she would have to come, for she could not help 
 it, I wanted her so much that she could not escape. I 
 ached for her. 
 
 Half-an-hour later we sat' together on the stone bench. 
 
 She was buried in a thick motor-coat; her head was 
 
 hooded but hat less, so that under the rough blue frieze 
 
 and the pale hair her face was in a shadow, broken only 
 
 by the depths of her darker eyes. I held in mine her 
 
 isting hand. We had been sitting in silence for 
 
 I, at first linked and peaceful, then restless, 
 
 I s at Edith I wanted suddenly to 
 
 her, crush her in my arms, mutter into her frightened 
 
 ears an avowal so (i-ry as to frighten her more. For I 
 
 Knew the quality of this love of mine; it was infinitely 
 
 tender and worshipping and yet it was cruel, it wanted 
 
 1 to hold. I loved her for her fear of me; 
 
 I wanted her to lay upon my altar a broken and contrite 
 
 heart so that I, I and no other, should heal it and make 
 
 41 I whethej: we've won," she s; ally. 
 
 41 Oh " I surprised myseli by the anger in my 
 
 44 What does if D What dors . anything 
 
 on are here^ you, with me? I've 
 i everythi you, my sweet." And 
 
 now I surpri If by my own gentleness. 
 
212 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " My sweet, my sweet," I murmured, and without con- 
 scious intention laid my arm across her shoulders, drew 
 her closer to me, pillowed her hooded head so that my 
 cheek rested on the harsh stuff. She did not resist. For 
 a very long time, I think, we did not speak; both, I feel, 
 were assured that the irremediable, the delicious irreparable 
 was achieved. Then again : 
 
 '" Edith, my darling — I said it might be our last chance 
 for a long time. It isn't true, it could not be true. For 
 you haven't come to me just to go away. Have you, my 
 sweet? " 
 
 The hooded head shook on my shoulder. 
 
 " I've found you — you're precious — you're like the 
 scent of violets- " 
 
 Edith raised- her head, looked at me, and our faces 
 were serious. 
 
 " Lucien, I " She faltered, then hurriedly : " Oh, 
 
 Lucien, don't look at me like that, I'm afraid — I — I 
 too " 
 
 " Edith," I said, very slowly, detaching the two 
 syllables, tremulous, wondering. 
 
 " Oh — you don't know what you're doing — other men 
 have said things to me, things — nice things — but you, 
 Lucien, oh, I don*t know, I don't understand. When you 
 look at me like that you make me tremble and yet I'm 
 glad. What am I saying? What am I saying? " 
 
 There was a ring of sorrow, shame in her last words. 
 It stirred me so deeply that I suddenly turned her towards 
 me, sat almost face to face to her, my hands on her 
 shoulders, looked into her eyes, and mine, I know, told 
 my need of her. The hood fell, her upturned face shone 
 white in the light of th§ moon, and her eyes were 
 veiled. 
 
 " Edith," I said at last ; " my little girl. My beautiful 
 — I love you." 
 
 I saw a little tremor convulse her lips, but she did not 
 move. . 
 
 " I love you," I said hoarsely. " I've loved you for 
 a year. That day when we stood among the almond 
 
BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 213 
 
 blossom, I wanted to ask you whether you'd be my wife 
 — my darling, my darling." 
 
 Still she did not reply. My insistent hands drew her 
 towards me, and I trembled as she yielded, trembled as 
 she lay close against my breast. I inclined my head, 
 laid my cheek upon hers. And my phrases were broken 
 now by the intensity of my emotion. 
 
 " My darling, my love — say you will come to me — 
 say you'll not leave me — I love you- — I can't be without 
 you — my Edith, my little girl " 
 
 She did not speak, but I felt our faces move, yet^ 
 without parting, as if they clung together, as if they 
 could not bear to part. Slowly they moved, and I 
 trembled, as my lips brushed the smooth cheek. Then I 
 was looking at her lowered eyelids, while my hands 
 knotted round her and, as if answering, she held up for 
 my kiss her parted lips. 
 
 Soon I had drawn her across me, seated her upon my 
 
 knees. And now she lay, nestled in my arms, with her 
 
 head upon my shoulder, silent but breathing fast. I 
 
 could feel upon my face her warm, fragrant breath. My 
 
 s travelled from her forehead, where a few golden 
 
 .<ls citing to my lips, to her cheeks, hot and feverish, 
 
 li whiteness of her neck, to her tender, yielding 
 
 mouth. As I caressed her I could feel her draw closer 
 
 to me as if some instinct bade her lose herself in the void 
 
 my love had dug in my b< 
 
 •Will you, my beloved?" I asked. 
 
 Then, at last, si d eyes that seemed immense, 
 
 rave were they and as if awed by some incredibly 
 
 joyful px li r hands climbed to my shoulders, 
 
 trembled against my neck and, as she whispered, she 
 
 lightly touched with hers my hungry, dry lips. 
 
 II 
 
 Nine bundled and eighl ! Market Square was full 
 from wall to wall. Righl and left, the High Street was 
 
 blocked with tramcaTS that rang their bells. There was 
 
214 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 cheering and booing, and some blew tin trumpets, some 
 played the Chinamen's song on mouth-organs, and those 
 who had no instruments whistled or shouted. Here, on 
 the balcony of the Town Hall, was Mr. Lawton, the 
 victor, smiling broadly as he proposed the vote of thanks 
 to the returning officer; Sir Thomas Bondon, doing his 
 best to smile as he seconded ; Lady Bondon, monumental 
 and smiling sadly as an insulted Juno; Mrs. Lawton, 
 Muriel, both dead-white with weariness and excitement, 
 their smiles were wan. I saw them, I heard them, but 
 they were a Punch and Judy show, a study in smiles, 
 'not a group of human beings. There was nothing real, 
 even in the vast crowd about me, save Edith, pressed 
 against me, save her bare hand gripped in mine. 
 
 " You're hurting me," she whispered. 
 
 14 Do you mind ? " 
 
 " No — I don't mind anything "c 
 
 " I adore you." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Subtle is the air when,Eros flies and tell-tale the beating 
 of His wings. Maud understood. As I reached the gate 
 at St. Mary's Terrace she crossed over from Fulham 
 Place, and I felt a spasm of contempt when I realised 
 that she had been a half of the couple I saw from a 
 distance, publicly embracing. . 
 
 " Hullo,* Caddy. You're in the nick : I haven't got a 
 key an' I don't know where I live ! Got yours ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is that all you've got to say for yourself?" she 
 asked in the hall, as she pulled the chain of the incan- 
 descent burner. I looked at her contemptuously. This 
 girl — this was the girl who had inspired a passion in me ! 
 This bold, aggressive girl with the sulky mouth, the 
 tumbled, crimped hair, the hat that carried too many 
 flowers. I read in the loose curls the embrace at' the 
 corner of the street — I tried, in my unjust revulsion of 
 feeling, to see the traces of drink on the lovely skin, for 
 
BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 215 
 
 I hated her and hated myself for ever having cared for 
 her. ^ 
 
 " 'Spose you saw me with Bert," she blurted out. 
 " Well — and what about it? " 
 
 I made no reply, and she lashed herself into anger. 
 
 " 'Spose I've got a right to' go about with who I like. 
 Why, you must be barmy if you think I've got nothing 
 better to do than hang about until me noble lord pleases. 
 I'm not so gone on your face as you think, I can tell you." 
 
 My eyes strayed about the wall, and I thought how well 
 vulgarity sat on Maud in tins setting of red-papered wall; 
 there were dusty hats on the stand ; the buffalo horns were 
 dirty. And still she raged at me, angry because I was 
 not angry, because she could not hold me whom she did 
 not v 
 
 M . . . I've had about enough of it, I can tell you, 
 Mr. Frenchman, what with your airs and graces, and ma 
 turning up her eyes, and pa trying to get me off with 
 •nilkman. I've had enough of the whole blooming 
 shoot and I'm going on the halls. What do you say to 
 that . 
 
 * 1 don't care." w 
 
 "Oh, you don't, don't you? Well, it's . Bert who's 
 going to get me a show. How's that ? " 
 
 M 1 don't care whal BerJ does." 
 
 " Not so much of your Berts. Mr. Burge, please." 
 
 She pushed hair and hat away from her eyes and, for 
 
 one moment, looked intoxicated. " Bert may not be 
 
 one of your extra-su]>< lline A 1 quality toffs, but he's a 
 
 gentleman, he is, and tin re's no flies on him. No, don't 
 
 you try that on," she eried, barring the passage with 
 
 bed arms as I tried to go upstairs; " you've got 
 
 mi me this time I've had enough of your 
 
 :. uck, all your 1 ngabQUl star.s, and ffo 
 
 and all your beastly goings-on. D'you think I don't 
 
 it's what? " 
 
 And thin, f terrible mini:' . I aw thai Maud 
 
 did !.• bat, thai she knew it with a terrible 
 
 clarity which had so far been spared me, that she had 
 
216 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 leapt to the heart of fact while I wandered over London 
 in my desperate loneliness, that nothing was too pitiful 
 for her to make it ugly. But — but, what was this ? 
 
 " I know all about you, Caddy ; while you've been 
 messing round me you've made goo-goo eyes at the 
 Lawton girl. I know her. The one with a face like a 
 drv-cleaned sheep " 
 
 " Silence ! " 
 
 I was deafened by my own voice and, trembling, I 
 stood in front of Maud with a raised, clenched first. And 
 she stood there too, afraid but laughing, hysterically, as 
 if she could not stop. Then I heard a mild voice, felt 
 at last the cold air from the open door, realised that some 
 of her words and my reply must have reached the ears 
 of Mr. Hooper, who stood at the door. I heard stirrings 
 in Lulu's room, and Mrs. Hooper, in a red-flannel dressing- 
 gown, appeared at the top of the stairs. 
 
 " What's this ? " Mr. Hooper was saying. " What's 
 the meaning of this ? I can't have you quarrelling with 
 my daughter in the middle of the night." 
 
 " Quarrelling ! " screamed Maud. " I'm just telling 
 him off, the " 
 
 " Maud ! " cried Mrs. Hooper, as if she had been 
 stabbed. " Oh, Mr. Cadoresse, what have you been 
 doing?" 
 
 " Mind your own business, ma," said Maud, savagely. 
 
 " I cannot allow you to speak to your mother like 
 that," said Mr. Hooper. 
 
 " I'll say what I like. And if you don't like it you 
 can do the other thing." 
 
 Maud stamped, again gave her hair and hat that 
 intoxicated shove. The door of her room opened, and, 
 very cautiously, Lulu put her head out. I saw her 
 vacant, frightened eyes, discovered that she put her hair 
 in curlers. And, suddenly, irresistibly, I began to laugh, 
 and I laughed more as I looked at Mr. Hooper, severe 
 and shocked, at the tearful figure in the red dressing-gown. 
 
 " You seem to be enjoying yourself," said the tragic 
 Hooper. 
 
 % 
 
BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 217 
 
 " Oh " I gasped at last, " it's just like one of Lulu's 
 
 novelettes." 
 
 There was a crash as Lulu slammed the door. Maud 
 threw me a sulky look. 
 
 " Oh — so it's Lulu too, is it? Not even Miss Lulu? " 
 laud," said Mr. Hooper, with sudden force. " Go 
 to your room. I'll settle this with Mr. Cadoresse." 
 
 44 Shan't." 
 
 44 Do you want me to put you there and lock you in ? " 
 
 Mr. Hooper took a step forward, and Maud, after throw- 
 liim a look of defiance, shrugged her shoulders and 
 walked away. There was another slam. 
 
 44 Alfred, Alfred," moaned Mrs. Hooper, " shall I come 
 down?" 
 
 So. Go to bed." 
 
 " Very well, Alfred." Then, as he opened the dining- 
 room door, " You might turn down the light, Alfred, if 
 you're going to be long," 
 
 But Mr. Hooper was past economy. In silence he lit 
 hut the door. We stood face to face on either 
 Ol the table. 
 
 14 Now, Mr. Cadoresse, I am waiting for an explanation." 
 
 I considered the dining-room, the common sideboard, 
 bad oils. The only remark I could think of was : " Why 
 do you keep the salad dressing in a bottle? " 
 
 M Well ? " 
 
 M There's no explanation." 
 
 44 No explanation ? When I find a gentleman quarrelling 
 in ti. - in the hall, with my daughter— at mid- 
 
 night? I heard her say things which, I trust, are not 
 true " 
 
 This little shocked man in the shabby frock-coat, whose 
 bin. re no longer mild, did not seem ridiculous. 
 
 I bad an English imp.. 
 
 44 I am le such a noise," I said. 
 
 41 ^ i.ut why was there a noise? I am entitled 
 
 to knov 
 
 4 * Well/' I s;u 'l' botly, 44 if you do want to know, Maud 
 is jealou 
 
218 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 44 Jealous ? My daughter jealous of you ? May I ask 
 what your relation is with her, that she should be jealous ?" 
 
 44 There's no relation." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 Mr. Hooper was not ironical. I saw, as he stroked his 
 bald patch, that he was honestly trying to understand 
 the mystery. I determined to help him. 
 
 44 Look here, Mr. Hooper, here is the truth. When I 
 first came here, I — I admired your daughter, I told her 
 so — and -she did not seem to mind. But she did not — 
 respond " 
 
 44 Respond ? You mean that she did not care for 
 you?" 
 
 44 That's it," I said, realising that my original intentions 
 would never occur to him. 
 
 44 All this going on behind my back ! But why is she 
 jealous if she does not care for you? " 
 
 Then I lost control of my tongue. I, Lucien Cadoresse, 
 betrothed to the perfect Edith, was 7 not going to be 
 catechised by this futile creature. In one breath I gave 
 him my opinion of Maud, suppressed the details of my 
 pursuit of her, but painted her as a philanderer, a harpy. 
 
 Mr. Hooper did not speak for at least a minute. Then : 
 
 44 1 accept your explanation for what it is worth. I 
 make no inquiries as to my daughter's conduct. Good- 
 night." 
 
 But I was not going to let the matter rest there. If 
 I had still been a Frenchman I wouldi have spared him 
 nothing; I would have given him every detail of my vain 
 but degrading courtship — I would not have let him ignore 
 the existence of Bert Burge ; I would have flung into his 
 face my knowledge of his desire that Maud should marry 
 Saunders, or 44 Signor " Colley, or me, or anybody. Yet, 
 some new cleanliness, decency invaded me; I had been 
 French enough to attack Maud generally while defending 
 myself : that was done, but now I was English enough to 
 44 play the game " — not to give her away. 
 
 44 One moment," I said. 44 You will not be surprised, 
 Mr. Hooper, if I say that I^nust leave your house." 
 
BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 219 
 
 Mr. Hooper looked at me with an expression of mingled 
 dismay and resignation in his mild eyes. A compromised 
 daughter and a lost " paying guest " in a quarter of an 
 hour 1 
 
 " Well," he said, reluctantly, " I suppose if you feel " 
 
 Then, with an access of dignity : " Perhaps that will be 
 the best thing to do." A note of genuine regret came 
 into his voice : " We shall be sorry to lose you." 
 
 And I respected him. He had found dignity. This 
 
 absurd, elderly clerk, despite his shopman's frock-coat, 
 
 his petty mind, found it in that wonderful reserve of the 
 
 ish, in their repose. Somehow Mr. Hooper could 
 
 the music even when it consisted in such a tune as 
 
 venty-seven bob a week." 
 
 " I shall pay a full week and leave to-morrow," I said. 
 
 W shook hands silently, and I think we were both 
 
 sorry that our ease should be broken into by one whom 
 
 even her father could not hold blameless. As I went to 
 
 my room there intruded into my regret a feeling that I 
 
 was not blameless either, that I had not played in the 
 
 encounter the part of a Galahad. Borne on the pinions 
 
 of my love, I hated m\ -s. If for ever having pursued such 
 
 a one- as Maud, and others of her kind. I knotted my 
 
 hand rj I felt slf-contempt rather than remorse. 
 
 out into the hlaek garden, and as I raised my 
 
 Minds I was filled with the thought that comes 
 
 idom to men, so often to w< -men when at last they 
 
 I mourn the loss of the tot freshness which they 
 
 to (lie beloved : " Oh — why was it so ? Why 
 
 1 you not he the tot, the only one? Why, my 
 
 could you. riot have come before, first of all, 
 
 e all, alone of all women, my Edith? " 
 
 IV 
 
 I ti face down upon my bed. Edith! As 
 
 Ice the pillow from which my breath 
 
 .ply into my face, the ugliness of the past 
 
 half-hour disappeared as a dissolving view. I ceased to 
 
220 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 think of Maud and her harsh vulgarity, of her irrelevant 
 mother and sister, of Hooper and his dignity. The 
 Hoopers became as actors on a stage ; the ugliness of their 
 association receded until, on the blank screen of my mind, 
 there was room for the ever-better denned figure of the 
 Dresden Shepherdess. 
 
 Little Edith, I saw you in that minute. The acute 
 clarification of my mind recreated you as you were, your 
 cheek upon the pillow, your mouth as an open rose, and 
 your hair spread about you as if a cornfield had been 
 turned to molten, flowing gold. I felt admitted. I had 
 penetrated all the arcana of England ; I was as other men 
 and more, for I loved, was loved. \ Love had pointed the 
 way. And as I lay in my beatitude I felt something 
 upon my face, something fine that troubled me, clung to 
 my eyes and lips; I tried to brush it away, but it clung, 
 almost defiantly. I seized it at last. It was a hair. 
 But, as I negligently pulled at it, it seemed very long — 
 and suddenly I knew whose it was. I leapt from the 
 bed, gripping the* precious token with two fingers, lit 
 the gas. I placed the hair upon my outspread black 
 coat, where it lay, very long, glittering. Oh, wonderful 
 golden hair, you were She. Fine, pale and yet delicately 
 brilliant, you were the North, its imagination, its melan- 
 choly and its shy tenderness. You came to me, to whom 
 the South had given naught save the crude glare of the 
 sun and the bibulous ecstasy of passion, you came soft 
 and grateful as the dew, master of all beauty and wist- 
 f illness. You were fine as a razor edge, and as a razor 
 edge you were the bridge over which I, the faithful, would 
 glide into Paradise. 
 
PART III 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 
 I 
 
 When I look back upon the early months of my engage- 
 ment I wonder how it came about that I accepted so calmly 
 my new condition. These three and a half years of 
 England must have anglicised me more than I knew : I 
 had long intended to become an Englishman, to marry 
 an English girl, and now that I had come closer to the 
 English ideal the fact of being betrothed to an English 
 girl was not so extraordinary as I had expected. True, 
 triumph had come, nay efforts had been successful; I 
 knew that I was going to do more than marry a daughter 
 of the greatest race, but the feeling was not baptismal, as 
 I had expected : it was confirmatory. 
 
 I think that several facts militated against the abstract 
 
 triumph of England through an English girl. In earlier 
 
 . when the I i rl was a hypothetical figure, 
 
 : I knew only that she would be fair and pure, the 
 
 marrying of her was coldly idealistic; in those days the 
 
 merely one part of my broader career, 
 
 rentual naturalisation, a partnership — a 
 
 in Parliam< rri ; the girl did not exist and was therefore 
 
 i Edith came, and she was not the English 
 
 the pale pink cheeks, 
 
 and the fair hair of the menial picture, but 
 
 •ill. She 
 was not an English girl, sh<- wa just, Edith, whom I 
 would ha L, I think, if sh<- had been an American 
 
 221 
 
222 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 or a Russian, if only she had still been Edith. I forgot 
 her great English quality because she ceased to be a 
 representative of her country; she herself assumed the 
 purple, and it was her I loved. 
 
 Moreover, three and a half years of upward strivings, 
 of intercourse with the English, of attempts to speak, 
 dress, think like them, of watching their games, reading 
 their books and courting their votes, had worked a change 
 in me. Though still a Frenchman with a marked foreign 
 accent, I had gained repose. I spoke less and not so-loud ; 
 I had my hair cut shorter, but not too short; I did not 
 wear a bowler with a morning coat and no longer bought 
 aggressive " teddy-bear " suits. I was beginning not to 
 say, not to do : I was becoming English. * Nobody will 
 ever know how much concentration was required of me 
 by the English attitude, for I was secretive; my labours 
 were done in the dark, as I always wanted to emerge 
 suddenly and surprise the English by my identification 
 with them : the French frog wanted to swell in the dark 
 until he became a John Bull. 
 
 The frog often thought he would burst in the process 
 of swelling. I have still a black copy-book which might 
 have been tear-stained if I had filled it as a small boy, so 
 impossible did it seem to me to remember the English 
 said association, not association, that villages had no 
 mayors, and that St. James and Moses, when possessively 
 inclined, were St. James's in the former case, Moses' in 
 the latter. But I clung to my book, my passport to Eden, 
 read it almost every day as a priest, eager for Paradise, 
 reads his breviary ; when it grew and threatened to become 
 as all-pervading as Mr. Hooper's Five Thousand Facts 
 and Fancies, I found it more precious, more necessary. 
 For it was the record of my efforts and glowed with mem- 
 ories, memories of a snub due to my having pronounced 
 Caius College " Kayus," of triumph when I alone, in a 
 wide company, had known the statusof a Bishop Suffragan. 
 The black book was my record, and I was proud to think 
 that I no longer made everyday entries of new errors. 
 One week I learned nothing, which was wonderful ; the 
 following I made one mistake, but I was human enough 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 223 
 
 to cheat myself and to forget to enter it. I am still 
 uncomfortable when I remember that occasion, but it 
 is too late to atone : I have forgotten my blunder and 
 can do no more than hope that I would not make it 
 again. 
 
 So far did I go in my neophyte fury that I altered my 
 voice. This had too long been high and, when I was 
 excited, shrill ; Barker and Merton would, on those occa- 
 sions, compare it to tin whistles and bicycle bells, not 
 very good similes, which humiliated and angered me. I 
 began to study the^ English voice. It is deep, low, and 
 there is about it a muffled quality, a quality of average- 
 ness that is national ; it is neither so high, produced from 
 the anterior palate, as is French, nor so throaty as German. 
 I determined to lower my pitch, to produce from the 
 posterior palate with a little " head " influence taken from 
 Hugh's Oxford voice. A bad cold made the change easy, 
 /or I emerged from it with a new, low voice, which I 
 ascribed to " a permanent lesion of. the vocal cords." 
 The new, low voice had nothing to do with lesions : it 
 l>een manufactured in seven evenings, after mid- 
 night, in quiet squares. After I "had guiltily accepted 
 ympathy of everybody who heard me, I found that 
 tile new voice was popular; Muriel called it " wood-wind " 
 and preferred it to my former " brass band," and Edith 
 said that she didn't care what instrument it recalled so 
 long as its tune did no! alter. 
 
 • Edith was franker than she had been. She no 
 
 r feared me so much and could afford to laugh at me 
 
 a lit i, as a man plays with his very 
 
 big dog; though less articulate than I wished she was 
 
 abl- now to say what she meant, to be gracefully arch, 
 
 irect and cril It did not hurt me overmuch 
 
 i she criticised me, for she had always ready on my 
 
 arm an anesthetic hand. But tl re infrequent 
 
 Ii'. l'.\c for inc was made up of shynesses 
 
 .cious r< and exquisite 
 
 reticences; under the Ughl of day it wilted like a violet 
 
 <T-fieree sunshine, and it is literal to say that she 
 
 (1 the day; for once, when I tried to kiss her behind 
 
224 tup: making of an englishman 
 
 a great clump of lilac in the garden of an untenanted 
 house, she whispered rather than said : " Oh, no — the day 
 — the cruel day." But she found some sacrcdness in 
 her love which it was reverent she should hide : once, in 
 the coffee-room of an inn at Harrow, I came in suddenly 
 to find her softly caressing the grey felt of my Homburg 
 hat. As I came up behind her she wheeled about, and 
 her face was flaming with shame when I took her in my 
 arms. 
 
 Such moments are immortal, and I think that while I 
 have a body there will be graven on some tablet of my 
 brain the picture of .the slim girl whose hair the sun 
 made into his brother, as she caressed the hat which had 
 covered the head she loved. It was significant of Edith 
 that she should be bold with the symbol and shy with 
 the object, for she did not with it have to fear judgment 
 or response. She loved Love and she feared it. She 
 was woman, she courted love, longed for it, and yet 
 withdrew from it, eternally elusive, eternally desirous, 
 assured of victory in capture, fearing capture and welcom- 
 ing it in a turmoil of emotion. And along the windings 
 of the rose-grown path I stumbled, adjusting the rougher 
 male gait of me^to the tortuous twistings of this woman- 
 spirit, reading assent in its refusals, certainty into its 
 doubts, bewildered and ever looking ( for a truth of feeling 
 which could not exist until I created it. And over all 
 this searching, this analysis and the cold blood thereof, 
 over the thrust and parry of love-making, the jugglery 
 of its subterfuges, I threw the golden mantle of Love 
 itself, the mantle so thick that once under it one cannot 
 see the world, so thin that the illumined eyes that gaze 
 through it can see the world and beyond. 
 
 I loved her. I needed her. She was of my essence 
 and should be mine. 
 
 II 
 
 For I had " intentions." I had not idly slid into the 
 relation which existed between us. though my intentions 
 formed after rather than before the night on the banks 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 225 
 
 of the Ham, when Edith for the first "time offered me her 
 tremulous lips. The retirement of Escott, the chief 
 accountant, had resulted in a general post at Barbezan's ; 
 Barker had been made second in the accountant's office, 
 while my own duties were Split with a junior typist, so 
 that I became second in the Exports, immediately under 
 Hugh, retaining the foreign correspondence. My salary 
 was raised %o two hundred a year : I had every reason to 
 expect that the admission of Hugh to partnership when 
 he married Louisa would result in my becoming head of 
 the Exports with a salary of three hundred and fifty or 
 four hundred pounds. Sometimes I encouraged wilder 
 1 reams of a simultaneous admission to partner- 
 ship of Hugh and myself, of two weddings in one week; 
 that was uncertain, but after all I was a Cadoresse, the 
 son of the old founder, and betrothed to the daughter 
 of Barbezan's master. Why not? 
 
 There ran thus a faintly mercenary trail over my love, 
 but I do not want to blacken myself : I saw that it was 
 a good stroke to marry my employer's daughter, but I 
 
 never planned to marry her as such. Well aware 
 that " the little God of Love " cannot " turn the spit, 
 spit, spit," I knew that to marry Edith I needed money; 
 determined to make it, but I knew that I loved 
 Edith, not Lawton's daughter, that I would have taken 
 her as she was and asked her to share my two hundred 
 
 r and my rooms in Cambridge Street. For affluence 
 
 led me to gratify my growing desire for comfort. 
 
 I had now two rooms on the third floor, from the front 
 
 windows of which I could lee the gay little public-house, 
 
 1 t }\c sunset ; as I had furnished 
 I me but twelve shillings a week, 
 
 ling nominal attendance andjh-- use o! a modern 
 
 room. I . for the furniture, 
 
 rl h, was mine, and doubly mine because 
 
 h had chosen the chintz for m . my curtains 
 
 and my te a se t. I think those pure] >ugh1 us closer 
 
 than would I, avowal <>r any 01 intimate 
 
 are tl iong which one i^ t<> live. 
 
226 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " I wish I were buying'it for us," I whispered behind 
 the shopman's unobtrusive back ; " it would tie us up." ' 
 
 " Tie us up? " said Edith, genuinely puzzled. 
 
 14 Yes — I hardly know how to say it, but things like 
 chintz, which one has chosen together, which one lives 
 with, which are — the witnesses — you see ? " 
 
 " Yes, I see," said Edith, softr^. 
 
 " The chintz is not you, and not me, it's We, it becomes 
 We. It becomes so usual that one can't think of oneself 
 outside it. It's like an atmosphere which two people 
 need to breathe. If we had that chintz we could never 
 part " 
 
 " Until it wore out and I went to buy chintz with 
 somebody else " 
 
 " Yes — but never again the same chintz." 
 
 "No," said Edith, with sudden gravity*; " never the 
 same." 
 
 And, behold, as I write I see not the pink rosebuds on 
 white of that very early purchase, but a newer chintz, 
 green leaves on a black ground. Shall I rejoice or sorrow 
 because one never buys the same chintz twice? 
 
 Edith enjoyed the furnishing even more than I did. 
 We had grave discussions as to whether we should buy 
 anew sitting-room table or the second-hand and ponderous 
 Victorian tripod. The first was cheap, but the second 
 was in the hands of a diplomatic German Jew who had 
 drawn blushes into Edith's cheeks by persistently calling 
 her " Madam." And she calculated cretonne widths for 
 curtains, achieving unexpected (and invariably incorrect) 
 results when trying to determine whether foUr-feet width 
 at three and nine was cheaper for seven-feet curtains than 
 three-feet width at two and eight. She sat at a table 
 in a Clapham A.B.C., scribbling upon the back of a letter, 
 and I laughed as she despairingly pushed the hair away 
 from her wrinkled forehead. Her one regret was that 
 she would never see the rooms. When invited to come 
 alone, or to bring Muriel, Hugh, everybody, she shook 
 her head. 
 
 " No — I couldn't. I couldn't come alone, could I ? 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 227 
 
 And if I brought the others, they'd think — well, they'd 
 think it funny of me, they'd suspect. And you don't 
 want them to do that? " There was a note of appeal 
 in her voice. 
 
 " No, they mustn't, not yet; they shall soon." 
 
 " Not yet. Oh, please, not yet." There was appeal in 
 her eyes now. 
 
 I asked " why? ", but I knew. Edith had something to 
 hide, felt guilty, and she hugged her guilt because of the 
 romance it carried. Incapable of the dishonest, she 
 clung to the secret; if questioned she would have con- 
 fessed, but, unquestioned, she liked to bask in private 
 knowledge, to feed her imagination with pictures which 
 her mother could not see. Her mind was in search of 
 romance ; starving, it seized upon anything that touched 
 me, gilded it, and, having gilded it, hid it as a magpie 
 hides a spoon. She hardly knew that she did this; I 
 had to construct from my own inferences her delicate 
 mental sensuality. " I don't know why," she said ; " it 
 wouldn't be the same if they knew.* They mightn't like 
 it — I couldn't bear that. And if they liked it — - — " 
 
 "You'd be glad, darling?" 
 
 " Oh-.— glad, glad." The blue eyes shone, but not quite 
 gaily, and I suddenly felt a fear seize me that they wouldn't 
 like it, that she knew it, that we were both blinding 
 ourselves to the truth. " Yes, I'd be glad, but if they 
 did like it, they'd — talk — make jokes " 
 
 I closed my hand upon hers, crushed it, the pencil and 
 the envelope within my larger fist, 
 
 II They shan't know, my sweet, not un£il you choose." 
 I almost added : M Don't be afraid. I shan't stab the 
 picture you have painted," but I felt that she would 
 think th J, that she would be disturbed and 
 
 ion whether she were " being silly." 
 
 Silly, little Edith," I thought, and, as I thought, 
 
 grew old; " you will not always find it easy to be silly." 
 
 No, I would tell them later, when my position was better 
 
 assured. Should I, by haste, spoil tin- glamour of early 
 
 when haJ for hands? No; 
 
228 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 rriy precocious sybaritism told me already that this was 
 the most wonderful experience in the world, that I must 
 not urge on love to its fulfilment, for here was the time 
 when it tried its wings. Rather would I let it perch 
 upon my wrist, smile at its awkwardness and find it 
 graceful; I would have everything love can give, its 
 doubts, its timidities, its half avowals; I would have its 
 romance, its sentimentality and its languor. When the 
 time came for love to fulfil itself I would open my arms 
 to it, but not an emotion should be stolen from me : an 
 emotion marks for evermore, and comes again nevermore. 
 I was no Goth to hurry it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Reasons other than these rather neurotic delicacies 
 helped to hold me back from a blazoning forth of my 
 passion. I saw the Lawtons with new eyes : these people 
 were not so strange because I could conceive of a time 
 when they would no longer be strangers, and, as I under- 
 stood them better, I found points of difference where I 
 had found, if not similarities, at least an absence of 
 dissirnilarities. I knew them to be aloof, self-centred, 
 "islands in an island," but, I had not taken the measure 
 of the hatred they felt for interference, of the protection 
 they afforded to the rights of their souls. Muriel, perhaps, 
 awakened me first from my dreams. 
 
 " I like Neville," she said ; " he's a good sort." 
 
 " Yes, and rather handsome." 
 
 " Handsome ? Well, I suppose he is, in a pocket Adonis 
 sort of way. Wavy hair, blue eyes and not too much 
 chin — it's a smart face, rather. But I don't mean that; 
 he's decent, you know, having taken on his father's debts, 
 the old rotter ! " 
 
 She gave me a full history of the " old rotter," who 
 was apparently not much worse than his " rotter " an- 
 cestors. Neville was* the last of his line : great-grandson 
 of a country gentleman who rode to hounds, diced and 
 put up a hundred guineas for cricket matches; grandson 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 229 
 
 of a fashionable Harley Street physician, who would 
 have his horses and money to pay for his son's Grand 
 Tour, and son of a commercial agent who lived at Brixton 
 so as to be able to afford a car, he was on the step of the 
 social stair below which is the working-class. The last 
 of his line, loaded with its follies and devoid of the energy, 
 the life-lust which had made them possible. 
 
 "That's just it," Muriel summed up; " they're .going 
 down, those Nevilles, and Archie's got nothing in him, 
 except to be decent. He's got no spirit and he wants 
 to do the handsome thing : that's enough to smash him 
 up, for he's not strong enough to afford it." 
 
 " What will become of him? " 
 
 " How do I know ? - He might have a stroke of 
 luck." 
 
 I Fe might get married to a clever woman," I suggested. 
 
 " He might. Of course, he'd be easy to manage, he's 
 
 a pussy-cat." 
 
 The mysteries of feminine classifications were unveiled; 
 
 M pussy-cat," meek, kindly and pretty; the 
 
 ugly, leering men were " toads," and I fastened the word 
 
 re " worms " too, creatures as mild as 
 
 "-the pussy cats," but in every case nasty; creeping, 
 
 timals. 
 
 AMI." I said at last, "why'don't you marry the 
 
 hi dun him into a Blue Persian." 
 
 The " triangular," grey-green eyes turned away from 
 
 riel replied, and her voice; was thin and cold: 
 "I without any hurry, she began to 
 
 l.i it no longi r of the thin ice I had broken. 
 I bhii her. 
 
 I was snub! Hugh where he would 
 
 i he married I 
 '" \ v . Mi te for sports I'd live in the country, 
 
 if I " I'm sure you would like a ride 
 
 in the morning and you could get up from Epsom or 
 
 I Hugh. 
 
 " Yc> he town, I don't, do you ? " 
 
230 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," said Hugh. 
 
 " Of course, you'd like some parts better, wouldn't 
 you ? Kensington ? " 
 
 " Got nothing against it," said Hugh. * 
 
 " Or Hampstead, though it's far out." 
 
 " Perhaps it is," said Hugh. 
 
 " But I hear they're going to build a new tube. Have 
 you heard that ? " 
 
 " Can't remember," said Hugh. 
 
 I went on at great length, analysed the merits of 
 Bayswater; " I'll tell you the name of a good agent," I 
 volunteered, remembering the melancholy man who had 
 given Maud and me an order to view. 
 
 " Thanks," said Hugh. 
 
 There was a silence, and I gathered that Muriel was 
 looking at me coldly, that Mr. Lawton, who leaned 
 against the mantelpiece, was staring over my head. On 
 Edith's face I could see a very slight perturbation ; I 
 knew there was something wrong, but what? And the 
 Lawtons did not tell me : Mr. Lawton was the first to 
 speak again, asked me whether I thought the Licensing 
 Bill went far enough'. I might never have known what 
 I had done, for the Lawtons never told : it was not for 
 them to interfere with me by telling me. By degrees 
 only, and from Edith did I gather what I did. 
 
 44 You see — they're like that — if you're interested they 
 think — well, I hardly like to say, only it feels like inter- 
 fering." Edith, too, could not tell ; it was only because 
 she loved me that she hinted. Yet she helped me to see 
 the English resenting my interest in their affairs, the 
 influence I wanted to acquire over their course; she 
 showed me that Hugh might not know where he wanted 
 to live, but he didn't want me to tell him; he did not 
 want my help to find a house-agent; he had far rather 
 make a bad bargain and make it himself than suffer 
 intrusion into his business. And that remark to Muriel 
 was dreadful : it was, Edith regretfully confessed, enough 
 to wreck the chances of the match, for Muriel was going 
 to marry her man herself, not to be taken by the hand 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 231 
 
 and given unto him until the wedding-day. Sometimes 
 Lgrew angry. 
 
 " I think they're very conceited," I said. 
 
 " No, no, they really aren't," Edith pleaded ; " it's not 
 that. I hardly understand them myself, but they aren't. 
 They don't brag, do they? " 
 
 I had to agree they did not brag, remembering Hugh's 
 account of his career at Oxford, but maintained my 
 position. 
 
 " It's not conceit," said Edith, " but they don-'t like 
 
 to be corrected, told things. They want to be let alone; 
 
 you should hear Hugh sometimes, not often, when he's 
 
 alone with me ; he says he's an awful duffer in business. 
 
 not, is he ? " 
 
 44 Oh — no," I said. Then I found a very slight frigidity 
 in Edith's voice. I had not been enthusiastic enough : 
 therefore I had criticised. 
 
 " Of course he's not a duffer," she said. " But he 
 says he is, and he means it ; he doesn't think he's any good." 
 
 M Then why won't he be helped? Docs he think I'm 
 a duffer?" 
 
 44 Of course not," said Edith, indignantly; " he thinks 
 a lot of you. He says you're smart; he's said it several 
 ." 
 Hut then why won't he let me tell him something 
 I ? " I asked, and was still in the fog. 
 
 44 I don't know. He's like that, perhaps we're all like 
 that. We want to be let alone — perhaps we don't want 
 to be improved. Silly, isn't it ? " 
 
 \\ '<■ laughed together, and the chill passed away. 
 
 "I'll tell you how I see it, Edith," I summed up). 
 
 41 The English are always saying, 44 I'm not mtfbh, but, 
 
 I ood as you." 
 
 ths chief preoccupation, in those days, was that I 
 
 :<1 make upon her people so good an impression that, 
 
 when the time came, our engagement would be agreed 
 
 to. She was always coaching me, at our stolen meetings ■ 
 
 "NOW, mind, don't tell father that the Liberals ape 
 bound to break up into Moderates and Radicals. Oh, 
 
232 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 yes, I know it's true, that you've got a dozen parties in 
 France, and perhaps it's true that we'll have them here 
 too, but he's — well, I can't tell you," but he doesn't like it." 
 
 " Has he said anything? " 
 
 ** He hasn't; you don't expect him to, do you? " 
 
 " How are you to tell if he doesn't say something? " 
 
 " Oh, Lucien, how silly you are." Edith squeezed my 
 arm as we sat together in one of those secluded corners 
 of Kcw Gardens where lovers go to. " We don't say 
 things, I suppose, at least not like you." 
 
 " I suppose not," I said, rather gloomily, and I realised 
 that there were portions of the English psychology which 
 I had not explored. I am not sure that I have even now 
 explored it all, that I know the subtle reactions of national 
 upon personal characteristics. In those days I was 
 haunted by the problem : " How does one become popular 
 among the English ? " 
 
 " Oh, you're doing it very well," said Edith, cheerfully. 
 " I'm sure they like you ; even if you do rub them up the 
 wrong way sometimes. You see," she added, with a 
 sweet, confidential smile, " they know you're French." 
 
 " Indeed ? " I was rather angry. " They make allow- 
 ances for me ? You mean they don't expect me to behave 
 properly ? " 
 
 " Lucien ! " 
 - " I understand," I said, in a hard voice, "I seem to 
 remember things — I remember what Muriel said when 
 I tpld her that I didn't see why one might bet on a soccer 
 match but not a rugger match. Do you know what she 
 said? " I went on, more angrily than ever. " She said : 
 4 Oh, you can't understand, you're French.' That . is to 
 say, she looks down upon me, she thinks I don't think as 
 a gentleman " 
 
 " She doesn't." There was a shrill note in Edith's 
 voice, and I felt that I was on the edge of a quarrel, for 
 the sweet face was inflamed, the lips were compressed. 
 I had touched sacred things. " She doesn't mean any- 
 g of the kind. Of course, you can't feel like — being 
 French, you " 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH* THE SPIRIT 233 
 
 44 Ah, you too, Edith ! " I laughed bitterly. " You too. 
 You. feel I'm an intruder, you think I can't see things 
 properly because I can't see them as you do." I knew 
 I was hurting her, but I had to go on. 44 What am I, 
 after all ? I'm a stranger, a foreigner — a dirty foreigner 
 as they call. us in the City. Do you think I don't take 
 baths ? I suppose you think I eat frogs — you're looking 
 for my wooden shoes " 
 
 44 Lucien ! " 
 
 But the pathetic note in her voice did not move me, 
 I was too angry to respect the tears in her eyes. 
 
 44 What do you want? A flat-brimmed topper? Or 
 shall I shrug my shoulders and scream 4 Mon Dieu ' ? 
 Shall I? Yes — look — look,^ watch me shrugging my 
 .shoulders." , ^ 
 
 As I write I am two men. The writer is calm, almost 
 taciturn, owns a bulldog and this morning's Times — but 
 the other, the dead one, is a dark young Frenchman who 
 stands in Kew Gardens, near the plantation ; he faces a 
 slim, golden-haired girl, blue-clad against the grey-blue 
 sky. And while she clasps her -hands together, while E 
 
 roll down her flushed cheeks, he shrugs his shoulders 
 again and again, waves his hands; he grins, he laughs 
 maniacally, he is maddened by his sense of injury, by 
 his sense fk exclusion, he feels like a pariah dog driven 
 away with stones and sticks from the homes of men. 
 And all that because he is not an Englishman, because 
 the BngMsh won't accept him for one. 
 
 1. . Lucien," Edith wailed. She put out a trem- 
 
 bling hand. My shoulders st ill .work, d convulsively; I 
 could not stop. I hey shrugged naturally, and I laughed. 
 I Id not restrain the hysterical ring of my laughter. 
 I thrust the hah away from my forehead, the movement 
 of my shoulders beean id suddenly I saw myself 
 
 became cool, then conscious that I had done 
 rrible thing: I had hurl her, for Ihc first time made 
 her cry. 
 
 i i li — I,** I Altered, " [—what have I done?" 
 hand was still extended. I l<<ok« d round hurriedly; 
 
234 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 there was no one near us. I led Edith towards a group 
 of chairs ; she followed, still weeping, but quite silently. 
 There we sat for several minutes, while I held and fondled 
 the little, quivering hand. At last she ceased to cry, 
 looked at me with immense, tragic eyes. 
 
 " Edith," I said, gravely, " can you forgive me? Can 
 you ever forget this; care for me again?" 
 
 She pressed my hand hard, but did not speak.- A last 
 sob escaped her. 
 
 " I don't know what seized me— I lost my head, I acted 
 
 like a cad " 
 
 . "Dear, no " 
 
 " I did. I lost my temper, and then I lost my head. 
 I was so angry because the English wouldn't have me — 
 and I did just the things that make them turn me away." 
 
 " I won't ever turn you away," said Edith, in a low 
 voice. " Never — Lucien." 
 
 We looked at each other sadly, rich in experience now, 
 and I vaguely felt that the hateful incident had united 
 as much as it parted us, for I had ceased to be the mag- 
 nificent, romantic Lucien Cadoresse; I had shown myself 
 as a human and weak thing; because I was weak the 
 mother in Edith was coming out to fondle and heal me. 
 
 " I understand what you feel," she said. Then, gently, 
 as if she reproved a child : " You mustn't let yourself go, 
 dear; I know it's hard, but you must be patient, you 
 must learn. If you want to be like us — I don't know 
 why you want to — you must be very quiet. You will, 
 dear, won't you ? " 
 
 I pressed the hand. Then : 
 
 " I hardly know how to explain. You're the splendid 
 people of the earth, for me. You're the handsomest 
 race, you're strong, and yet gentle; you never swerve^ 
 from your purpose, you never know when you're beaten, 
 and if you are beaten you take it well.* You're truthful, 
 honourable — I want to be like you " 
 
 " I know, dear — I know " 
 
 " And I can't quite — I'm excitable, and a sort of 
 despair seizes me, for I feel I'll never be like you, never 
 be one of you " 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 235 
 
 " Never mind, dear, if you don't. But you will, you 
 will." 
 
 I looked long at the lovely rosy cheeks, the glittering 
 hair, the blue eyes that met mine so indulgently. Then, 
 after a quick glance to the right and left, I bent down, 
 pressed my lips to the back of the smooth hand, pressed 
 them long, humbly, hopefully, as if by the act of worship 
 I cleansed myself of all those traits which made me an 
 alien. As if my feeling had passed into her body Edith 
 softly laid her other hand upon my head. Gently she 
 stroked my hair, and I was soothed; I wanted her to 
 take my head upon her breast and, with almost imper- 
 ceptible caresses, smoothe all my pain away. At last 
 she spoke. 
 
 " Come, dear, don't think about it — let's go and see 
 .the orchid^.*' 
 
 We went into the hothouse. Though the air outside 
 was warm, here was another warmth. I closed the 
 double glass doors and, for some moments, stood inhaling, 
 taking in through the pores of my skin the heavy, hot 
 moisture. Before my eyes were the palm trees, the 
 bamboos, the fat, crawling and gliding plants with the 
 thick leaves that were soft and dank as wet flesh. Climb- 
 ing about a post was some tropical string hung all over 
 with fierce, purple blossoms, and there were squat growths 
 that wanted to burst -out of their own bosoms, so con- 
 1 were they with their cribbed energy. The yellow 
 of the waterllowers stared out of the pool. 
 
 We itood side by side in the steamy haze, at the foot 
 
 of the bamboos that reared up like the gouty fingers of 
 
 some Malay giant, and as we breathed our lungs were 
 
 filled with the oppressive air, air hot and languorous, 
 
 laden with the scents of herb thai rots in the water, of 
 
 Dos thai fight for predominance. Winn the doors 
 
 : did QOl move: it slunk about 
 
 ing our hoes with Ddoist velvet, and as we 
 
 walked it gave way like some deep cushion, closing behind 
 
 and stifling us. The wildness of the jungle was in the 
 
 , of the Sowers, while the swum}) spoke, drawled 
 
 out some contemptuous message tlirough the reek of the 
 
236 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 wet earth. It was the most ancient earth, fed of the 
 dead it had swallowed alive, and the wetness of its giant 
 tongue lay over its black clots. 
 
 We passed a tree all edged with the fire of scarlet cones ; 
 about the base of another the moss was rising like a 
 green and never ebbing tide ; there was a mop of streamers 
 so fine and so pale that no mermaid seen through shallow 
 water could have trailed behind her as she swam a greener 
 golden mane. We did not, we could not speak, though 
 I heard the voices, the Cockney voices of other couples ; 
 we could not criticise, we had to feel, and the suck of the 
 jungle was about our feet. At last we stopped in front 
 of an orchid that stood alone. Upon a thick stalk it 
 carried green sepals that glittered as paintqd metal, 
 sepals that opened to hold the pale rose flowers. One 
 I remember, large as a man's hand ; its edges curled back 
 to show that the rosiness of the rim melted by incredibly 
 fine gradations into white absolute; from its heart pro- 
 truded a long -red pistil. 
 
 " Look," I whispered. 
 
 Edith gazed at the thing, then I felt her draw back. 
 
 " Oh— - — " she murmured. " It's lovely — but — I'm a 
 fool, I'm afraid of it." 
 
 I understood what Edith felt, for I suddenly knew what 
 this thing was; I remembered what I had read of the 
 fly-eater. I saw that its lower edge hung like a lip, that 
 its upper edge was^ without a curl ; I saw that it was not 
 a flower but a mouth, a white mouth, with a long red 
 tongue. And as I looked at it I fancied that I saw it move, 
 move with indomitable deliberation. I put ont my hand, 
 and, while Edith gave a stifled cry, touched the lower lip. 
 
 A faint shudder seemed to pass through the flower, 
 the red tongue bent towards me, and under my fingers 
 some movement in the warm, white blossom. Edith 
 snatched at my arm. 
 
 " It's alive, it's alive," she gasped ; " come away, come 
 away." 
 
 But the flower did not, as I half expected, follow my 
 hand with its devouring white mouth. It sat upon its 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 237 
 
 green throne like a sultana on a green couch, whose, eyes 
 do not condescend to consider the creature that must 
 be her victim. 
 
 I would not move. 'The passionate scents oozed into 
 my brain. 
 
 " Look," I murmured ; " this is not England, this is the 
 earth. I smell the scents of the forests that grow in the 
 water, and there are snakes in the moss, poisonous insects, 
 plants which it is death to touch. Look, they're alive, 
 all of them, fighting for life — r-" 
 
 "Lucien!" 
 
 "... fighting for life, crawling and struggling and 
 climbing, and snatching earth and gorging themselves 
 with water, drinking one another's blood ! .It's India, 
 Borneo ! And look, how they embrace and roll, how 
 they kiss as they. kill. You — you're a begum — there's 
 jasmine in your hair. Where are your brass armlets? " 
 
 I. seized her wrist. She stared at me, and her skin 
 was the colour of cream, all the rose had fled from her 
 cheeks. My eyes, mechanically watchful, told me that 
 we were hidden by the bamboos. I threw both arms 
 about her, and as I drew her to me there was no violence 
 in my grasp, but a slow, resistless pressure, as if my arms 
 u, green streamers, cast about some ready prey. 
 As I kissed her warm, pallid lips, my nostrils were filled 
 With the steamy scents that rose about us, swathed us 
 in warm veils. As we kissed the jungle enfolded us, 
 niotio',1 ss and yet latently, violently alive. 
 
 Ih seemed to sway in my arms, did not reply when 
 
 I told her to . My bead began to swim, and I 
 
 in t face, I saw a white blur like the pale 
 
 mouth on the stalk. Then I saw her eyes dark as 
 
 th<-<e pools, and I saw them as I bent down to kiss her 
 
 i. As we ehmg together I moved, and something 
 
 touched my neck. I Leaped aside and, though it 
 
 was only a f. I bad brushed me, found that 
 
 I . Shuddering. 
 
 44 Take me away," Edith whispered. " I'm fainting— I 
 must go." 
 
238 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 IV 
 
 If I could have stayed with Edith in the jungle the 
 spirit of England could not have touched me. The 
 jungle would have been too primitive, too insidiously- 
 sensuous to allow any gross nationalism to thrive. But 
 we had to struggle, in our delighted fear, away from the 
 seduction of the universal earth, to go back to roaring 
 London, to make of the jungle an episode. For I did 
 not see Edith very often, and then only for a few minutes 
 alone, or for longer periods under the eyes of those 
 strangers, her family. Indeed, in that year of our engage- 
 ment, we only escaped three times into the country, on 
 Saturday afternoons when Edith came to me, staggering 
 under the weight of a lie, an Eve driven out of Eden 
 and carrying her shame. But those few afternoons ex- 
 plained her to me, her harmony and her variety. For 
 me Kew had stated together her romanticism and that 
 of her race. 
 
 Edith had been afraid of the hothouse and its silent 
 inmates, while they woke in me a peculiar appetite ; that 
 which to me was acrid was to her merely terrifying; she 
 saw life as a beautiful rolling plain (the life of every day) r 
 with high blue mountains in the distance (the life of 
 romance), but she was disturbed if she met angry rocks, 
 red with the blood they had lost as they forced their 
 way through the, earth, or torrents that respected not 
 their banks. She wanted, as I did, adventure, not the 
 adventure of the wild beast that snuffs its prey and, 
 panting, hunts it down, but stately adventure, knights 
 and ladies, sacrifice, heroism, verse, song and tears. 
 Thus it is not wonderful that there was between us a 
 clash, for I am not romantic : I am lyrical ; I do not 
 want beautiful things to make me glow, I want to glow 
 when I see common things. But Edith's romanticism 
 was very beautiful to me. It was the romanticism of 
 Rossetti, or Burne- Jones, the romanticism of Dumas, 
 Lamartine and Walter Scott. It was cold, but cold as 
 are snowy mountains because they are high. Edith's 
 coldness was her purity, and often I lay abased before 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 239 
 
 that purity — though I loved it as a foreign, an impossible 
 ideal. For it cleansed me when I touched it; after I 
 had spoken to her I was absolved. Purity, which is so 
 seldom informed by charity, so often narrow, ignorant, : 
 harsh, intolerably cruel, caused her not to turn away 
 from pitch lest she might be defiled but to assume such 
 an attitude that she did not know the pitch was there. 
 Her quality was one of aloofness; it was the thi-ngs she 
 did not do which mattered, things that were not done 
 by her people. Edith was Edith first of all, but she 
 was also the English girl, and like other English girls 
 she shrank from lies, from deceit, from boasting; she 
 did not deny her Creator, she respected the things that 
 are, except those which hurt. For her hands were open 
 bo the world. She was of her people, calm, sober and 
 .nt, yet tender and ready to love, because, like them, 
 she placed love upon a pedestal. 
 
 " Why do you love me ? " I asked her. 
 
 " How can I tell? " Her happy smile said she did not 
 want to know. 
 
 M I know what I love in you — I've told you." 
 
 M Tell me again," she whispered. 
 
 " I will— always," I vowed ; " but tell -me too." 
 
 M Tc 11 me," she repeated, like an obstinate child. 
 
 I bent over her, whispered to her the eternal love poem, 
 
 full of the anxious cry of the desirous body, the greedy 
 
 <>ur for a blending of souls. But I, too, wanted to 
 
 hear her voice raised for me. I wanted my song of songs. 
 
 " I don't know wi; . ."" the said at length. " The first 
 time I saw you I hardly dared talk to you, but I loved 
 
 Your black eyes." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 glowed—1 was frightened — I'd never seen eyes 
 
 • 
 I :Iy my eyes, thent " 
 Sh me a shy glance. " No, of course 
 
 not. It W8fl the things you said, things one didn't expect. 
 And you talked about pictures, books — people hadn't 
 talked to me lik< f hat befon 
 
 "I was ctift ? I aid, greedily. 
 
240 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Yes, you seemed to care for mc — that was different." 
 As I closed my hand over hers I think I understood 
 her and with her all those Englishwomen who are always 
 seeking for something different. Noble Englishmen, I 
 love you, and you are not quite unworthy of your women, 
 but you don't love them enough. You don't tell them 
 often enough that you love them, you don't tell them 
 they're beautiful, you don't analyse and appreciate 
 them' as you do fine horses. Because you don't, inch by 
 inch, praise them, because you cannot value every colour 
 in their eyes, every shadow in their skin, because you can't 
 see that their hands are like sprays of fern, because you 
 can't even tell them that they are pure, gentle, devoted, 
 they droop.' The plant of love must be watered with 
 praise, with flattery. The Englishwoman withers because 
 you don't love her enough, and then, as Edith, she seeks 
 romance, the new, the strange : if it does not come to 
 her she dies without having ever known what she wanted. 
 Edith, like her sisters, wanted romance : vows that might 
 be false but were beautiful, high hopes doomed to disaster 
 and high endeavour to achieve the impossible. Her soul 
 cried out for wings, and because it thought I had wings 
 it came to me. 
 
 Perhaps I had wings, but I was also of the earth. I 
 confess without hesitation that the loftiness of my love did 
 not transmute me into a new being. Though intolerably 
 ashamed of past adventures, because they lacked the 
 fineness I had come to know, the very quality of my love 
 still urged me to the sources of further shame. An obscure 
 sybaritism drove me towards the coarse, so that I might 
 have contrast in my mind* when Edith stood before me 
 in her remoteness from all that is ugly; and on those 
 heights of undefined idealism the air was rarefied : I had 
 to come down to earth. If I had not loved Edith I could 
 have looked at no other woman, and I attempt no paradox 
 when saying that love inclines the Jieart to universality. 
 I loved her, was so saturated with her that I radiated 
 love. She became the intermedium between womankind 
 and me. 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 241 
 
 If I loved Edith as a stranger, I loved her more as 
 she became a familiar thing, as her mind responded to 
 my efforts. I had guessed at its reserves, and now it 
 began to unfold, for I had %o win her trust to gain it. 
 She was not expansive ; her confidences were not akin to 
 a li<;ht woman, whom any man may approach, but to 
 some sleeping princess between whom and the knight a 
 thick forest interposes. And now I began to see her, 
 for I had ridden through the forest, climbed the castle 
 stairs. It was July. We sat in the shadow of a hedge 
 in a field between Harrow and Pinner. The rutty little 
 path, broken by stiles, ran across the field, so that the 
 many who passed, working men looking for a place to 
 sleep in, hurrying daughters of the farmers making for 
 home from the Harrow shops, and young couples, arm- 
 in-arm or hand-in-hand, saw us only as a blotch of light 
 blue and light grey. It was hot, the sun sat high, and 
 over the hedges I saw that the sky was like a slate, for 
 was England where a little mist always refines the 
 brutal brilliancy of the air. So we sat limply, our warm 
 hands touching but too listless to clasp. I noted details 
 round me, the ugly railway bridge, a few fields away, and 
 Jittering snakes of the railway line; the hedges 
 with flowering blackberry brambles; daisies, 
 little blue and mauve flowers ^ v a beetle struggling 
 ick, and the lighl patches of sunshine in tht 
 i about us; the patch of light winch gave Edith one 
 ie red eh 
 " It is hot," I murmured. " How many miles to 
 r? " 
 litfa did not reply at once; she played with a blade 
 . 
 
 v- many miles to Babylon ? 
 ! t<-n. 
 Can- we get there by candle-light? 
 Yes, and back again." 
 
 I made no comment. It was not the first nonsense 
 
242 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 rhyme I had heard, but it stirred me, for the French have 
 no nonsense rhymes, and this peculiar English form of 
 poetry always struck me as wistful; it held the vague 
 idealism of the North, it meant to me that here was a 
 soul struggling with a brain. And then I found I was 
 forgetting Edith, that the North was on me — Andersen 
 — the red shoes — the North came to me out of the mist, 
 wooing me with melancholic grey eyes before which my 
 bold black ones shamedly closed. 
 
 " What are you thinking of? " she asked, and now was 
 smiling. "Do you think that silly? " 
 
 "No. It's 'wonderful — it's like rain upon a' loch." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 "No more do I. But what does it matter ? We feel." 
 
 "We feel," said Edith, dreamily. 
 
 I took her hand, drew her down ; we lay side by side, 
 our heads pillowed on a grass -grown hillock at the base 
 on an oak. When I spoke again I was inconsequent. 
 
 " I have done it again," I said, " and I don't care. It's 
 too hot." 
 
 " What have you done again ? " asked Edith. 
 
 " Put my feet in the dish. I mean-^oh, of course, you 
 laugh. I've put my foot in it." 
 
 Edith apologised for having laughed. " It was so 
 French," she said. Then she begged to be told what I 
 had done with those idiomatic feet of mine. 
 i " I've offended your family again — I always shall." 
 
 " Cheer up. But what did you do, anyway ? They 
 aren't sulking, so it can't be much." 
 
 "Last Sunday your mother was there; she wore a blue 
 silk dress and a large hat with a curling biue feather. 
 She looked so pretty with her rosy cheeks and those 
 triangular eyes — well, you can laugh, they are triangular, 
 like Muriel's." 
 
 " I suppose mine are triangular," said Edith. 
 
 " No." I took her chin, turned her face to me. " They 
 are just sapphires ; you haven't got that narrowness on 
 one side between the eyelids which makes the triangle. 
 They're sapphires, my delight — don't be shy, don't hide 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 243 
 
 them even with lids as delicate as roseleaves." I kissed 
 her eyes, one after the other, gently, as if afraid to bruise 
 the roseleaves. But my mind was filled with my mis- 
 behaviour. " Triangular, yes. But I didn't tell your 
 mothe'r her eyes were triangular; I don't know what she 
 would have said if I had. What I did say was, * What a 
 beautiful frock, >frs. Lawton ! I'm sure you must dress 
 at Worth's.' " 
 
 " Well, what did she say ? " Edith was serious^ She, 
 too, did not like my remark. 
 
 44 She hardly said anything. She said, ' I'm glad you 
 like it,' and at once talked of something else, the Eton 
 and Harrow match, I think. She didn't seem displeased, 
 but then she never does, and I felt — I don't know quite 
 what I felt, but what Fdo feel with English people — a 
 sort of draught." ♦ 
 
 " Oh," said Edith, lightly; "you're making too much 
 of it. Still " 
 
 44 Still what ? " I looked her full in the eyes. " Come, 
 tell me." 
 
 " She mayn't have liked . . ." said Edith, reluctantly, 
 44 You see, something like this. She may not want to 
 be criticised." 
 
 44 Yes," I grumbled, 44 I suppose I ought to know that 
 by now." 
 
 44 And then you spoke of Worth. Well, she can't afford 
 Worth, you must know that " 
 
 44 I know, but how was I to express what I meant? " 
 
 44 She didn't want you to express it. And perhaps she 
 u r ht you were making fun of her when you spoke of 
 Worth." 
 
 44 Edith ! " This idea shocked me. Make fun of Mrs. 
 Lawton I And the attitude was incredible unless I 
 pted that in Law Ionian circles peaks of conceit rose 
 up from a morass of humility. 
 
 t Edith went od talking, not very lucidly, for she 
 was trying to defend her people and her family without 
 attacking me and mine. She tried to translate feelings 
 into words, failed because English people have no chance 
 
244 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 to practise this art; but I think I understood, because 
 prepared by experience, the humility that lies behind 
 English pride, the chronic belief the English hold that 
 you don't really think much of them. The North ! I 
 thought of Murchison, one of^Barbezan's clerks, a York- 
 shireman, of his customary reply when congratulated : 
 "D'you mean it?" The English soul holds two St. 
 Pauls, the unregenerate and the converted. 
 
 As we lay there side by side and gazed into the hot 
 heavens, I was just conscious of the burning glow in 
 Edith's sunlit hair, for I thought of yet another recent 
 scene. I had been talking to Muriel on the balcony, on 
 Sunday afternoon. We were friends, we two, for a 
 sexlessness had come to part us and was joining us as 
 if we were boys. As she sat on- the parapet she played 
 with a little black bag, tossing it in the air and catching 
 it. Once she nearly missed it. 
 
 " You'll lose it," I warned her. 
 
 " It doesn't matter, it's so old. I must buy another 
 to-morrow, and I'm as broke as broke." 
 
 " How much do they cost ? " 
 
 44 I think sixteen and six." 
 
 " Sixteen and six ! t know where to get one like that 
 in the City for ten shillings net." 
 
 " Indeed ? that's cheap." Muriel did not seem in- 
 terested. 
 
 44 If I were you I'd come down to the City. It's worth 
 it." 
 
 y There was a silence and I felt guilty, for I had not br( n 
 able to repress the " If I were you " against which Edith 
 had warned me. 
 
 " Oh, I might. Still, it's too much fag " 
 
 " Let me get you one," I volunteered, eagerly. 
 
 44 It's very kind of you, but don't trouble " 
 
 44 It's no trouble. I'll get you one to-morrow." 
 
 44 Oh, it doesn't matter " 
 
 ' 4 That's all right. I'll leave it here for you." 
 
 I did buy the bag and it was certainly an excellent 
 bargain. But when I told Edith, winch at last I did, 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 245 
 
 while I averted from her my uncertain eyes and gazed 
 at the blazing brick walls and shimmering spire on Harrow 
 Hill, she said : 
 
 44 I suppose Muriel wanted to buy it herself." 
 44 But why ? why ? when I could get it at half-price ? " 
 44 She. wanted to buy it herself," said Edith, obstinately. 
 I stuck to my point, reminded Edith that there was no 
 ■I ion of choosing a bag, that Muriel wanted one exactly 
 like the one she had. 
 
 44 She didn't want to trouble you." Then, in a rather 
 rate tone : 44 She wanted to do, — to manage her own 
 affairs." 
 
 ^, that was it, I had an impotent little outburst, 
 fox I was moving in a crazy circle, one day offending 
 ish pride, and the other disturbing English humility. 
 Edith did not defend her sister; her attitude was dis- 
 approving and I knew that she was against me. Truly, 
 thicker than marmalade. Atjast she said : 
 l " Don't let's xpiarrcl, darling." She took my hand. 
 u It's lovely here with you." 
 
 The touch of her hand turned my thoughts from bitter 
 
 to sweet. I drew her into my arms, kissed her softly on 
 
 ilu n. just belrind the car. The spell of her 
 
 and her purity acted upon me incomprehensibly 
 
 in tl D light. To me, the passionate, the adven- 
 
 . like getting drunk on spring water. But 
 
 I could not be content, I had to kill the thing I 
 
 I aid. 
 
 SI) up at me, smiling, but did not move. I 
 
 slipped my arms round her so that they were under hers. 
 
 •• EpM me — you haven't sine, thai night at Hambury." 
 
 I raise (1 my anus so as to lift hers; 
 
 d to the movement, though I had to initiate; 
 
 lands clasped gently round my neck, and my 
 
 kissed, and there was no 
 
 : in the i it delicious, calm content. I still 
 
 I e in my arms, pillowed against my raised 
 
 . 
 
&6 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 . " Why don't you kiss me yourself ? Don't you want 
 to?" 
 
 She blushed. " Yes — I do — but, I'm afraid somehow. 
 You might think me forward." 
 
 " My darling ! " I laughed at the phrase which recalled 
 the much more equivocal French : * Comme vous allez me 
 miyriser ! ' " No, I want you to be forward, as you 
 say — I don't want you to be afraid of anything. Now 
 you shall do more ; you shall not only kiss me, you shall 
 ask me to kiss you." 
 
 " Oh, Lucien, I couldn't " 
 
 " Do you want me to ? " 
 
 " Yes, but " 
 
 " Then ask." 
 
 She hesitated, and my mind flew back to the dingy 
 room, in St. Mary's Terrace when I had failed to make 
 Maud say " I love you." But at last Edith closed her 
 eyes and murmured her request. As I kissed her I knew 
 the savour of conquest; but she did not understand why 
 I demanded tribute. What more did I want than her 
 caress? Why should I wish to hear her say that she 
 loved me ? Why should I need to know that she wanted 
 my kisses ? Was it not enough that she should yield ? 
 
 Poor little English girls — of course, for too many 
 centuries your men haven't cared to know whether you 
 loved them. They wanted you, not your love. They 
 seldom wondered whether you loved them. Indeed, if 
 the idea occurred to them, I think they set it aside as 
 unladylike and repulsive, that they believed with Squire 
 Western that marriage is well founded on a little aversion. 
 It was this strange inquisitiveness in me appealed to 
 Edith while it frightened her, and yet it drew her out, 
 for she had begun to feel that I would tolerate in her 
 the things I did not understand. As we slowly walked 
 towards Pinner, stopping at times to clamber over stiles, 
 when I averted my eyes so that the exposure of her ankles 
 might not make her ashamed, she talked. She talked 
 more than I did, for I was glad to let her bare her 
 soul. It was broken, this little speech, but precious. 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 247 
 
 " You know, Lucien, I'm two people, I think. There's 
 one of them longing for excitement, for things to happen. 
 You know what I mean, you call it adventure; but then 
 there's another one, who's clinging to rules and principles, 
 all that sort of thing. The first Me wants to be bold- 
 it wouldn't be afraid to say anything, to say — There, I 
 can't say it." 
 
 44 What can't you say, darling ? " 
 
 44 I can't say " Edith hesitated, then, with the air 
 
 of a diver poising his body on the edge of the plank, " I 
 can't say * I love you ■ — the first Me wanted to, but the 
 second was too shy." 
 
 44 1 love you both," I murmured. She pressed my hand. 
 
 44 I'm afraid ; I've got no courage, no candour — oh, I 
 won't tell lies; no, I just say nothing. I can't talk. 
 Even with you, though it's easier. You know it's some- 
 how more difficult to talk to you than to the others, though 
 it's easier. What I mean is, you say odd things, and 
 I'm afraid because you aren't afraid; I'm afraid because 
 I feel you're so obstinate, inflexible; you don't care for 
 conventions. I'm like a child with a box of matches." 
 
 " My darling, if I asked you to run away with me and 
 work for your living, you would. Wouldn't you? You 
 wouldn't mind what they said? " 
 
 There was a lon^ pa 
 
 44 I couldn't," said Edith, in a very low voice. " I'd 
 
 want to, but I couldn't. Oh, Lucien, you won't see it. 
 
 \c pain to my people, even if I knew they 
 
 wrong. If one of them were ill I'd have to stay at 
 
 horn. .,nd be their eyes and ears and arms and legs." 
 
 44 What about you — and me? " 
 
 44 Tv go1 tO—gOt to " 
 
 Got to play the game?" 
 M Y »erately; "I've got to. Oh, I 
 
 want love and beauty as much as anybody, but there's 
 Duty's the only brave thing to do. It's no use 
 kicking against the pricks; oik's gol to stand them, and 
 one does unless one's spoiled. Of course, I know I'm 
 silly, narrow " 
 
248 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " My darling, you're wonderful." 
 
 I drew her to me, kissed her rather feverish lips, but 
 she had more to say. 
 
 " I care for all the little things. When we marry I'll 
 be happy, I'll be so glad, but I'll miss father and mother, 
 and Ilugh and Muriel too — and Fiona " 
 
 " I'll buy you a Taulldog." 
 
 " A new dog," she said, slowly, " and a new house, and 
 a new — well, you know what I was going to say, but 
 there it is. It '11 all be so new, and the past '11 be dead ; 
 and I did like it, and all the other little things — parties, 
 birthdays, and Christmas presents. Though it'll be so 
 good, Lucien; you don't know how unhappy I was before 
 you came — lonely. In Brussels I used to wish there was 
 a man in love with me, anywhere, in Canada or China, 
 even if he never wrote, just to feel some one loved me." 
 
 " Yes," I said, gently, " one can be warmed by a distant 
 love as one is warmed by the incredibly distant sun." 
 
 She, pressed my arm, began again. "I was afraid I 
 wasn't pretty enough — or clever enough. I was so lonely, 
 I wanted a friend " 
 
 " And now you have a lover." 
 
 " Yes — it's good — but I wanted a friend above all. 
 Somebody to encourage me, to listen to me. That's 
 why I'm so grateful when you make me talk, though 
 I'm frightened. I know it's weak to tell you things; it 
 may bore you — yes, it's all very well, but it may, and 
 it isn't right to unload worries; it's cowardly, selfish. 
 But yet I'm grateful because you love me, while you 
 might be amusing yourself, getting on. I wanted it so 
 badly that Oh, I couldn't tell you." 
 
 I pressed her with questions. At last came the stumb- 
 ling avowal that, when she was sixteen, a Mr. Egerton, 
 a married man, had kissed her, that loneliness lay so 
 heavy over her that she had not resisted. 
 
 44 Oh, it was dreadful," she said, hurriedly; " it felt so 
 disloyal — I couldn't help thinking of what his wife would 
 say, how it would hurt her. Poaching) And now — now 
 that there's you, it's worse." She squared her shoulders, 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 249 
 
 raised her head and looked me full in the eyes. " I 
 thought you ought to know." 
 
 Some seconds elapsed before I realised that Edith had 
 thought she ought to confess this scandalous portion of 
 her past : the English girl is the lover's surprise packet. 
 Though nervous, she looked happy; her conscience had 
 been troubling •her. I managed not to laugh when I 
 thought of the absurd exaggeration — but then it was no 
 more absurd to her than would have been to me the 
 catalogue of my own episodes. Then it seemed pathetic 
 and I was stirred when I said : 
 
 " What does the past matter? Here we are, we two." 
 As we walked on, silent and glad, I saw Edith more 
 clearly, her passionate desire for love and friendship, 
 were for her almost synonymous. Lonely in her 
 heart and her spirit, she held out her hands, begging that 
 they might be filled. To love and be loved, two necessi- 
 ties. But she had never told me this before; she had 
 not dared, and she was ashamed because she could not 
 stand alone. Weak, she hated to be weak among the 
 strong. Taught not to cry out when hurt, she despised 
 herself because her soul cried out. And thus she was 
 tortured on two sides, by her desires and the shame they 
 entailed upon her; the things she wanted she feared: if 
 she thoiijfht of passion at all she shrank from its effects, 
 oal and social. Not once during our engagement 
 we use the word sex : I knew it was not for her cars, 
 that it would frighten though it delighted her, and that 
 raid have been cruel to frighten her thus, though 
 I longed to 'frighten 1 1 some chivalry bade me 
 
 :i from using OD her an inlluence whieh she together 
 <1 and welcOD 
 When, in r< . taint hint, I confessed 
 
 : been other Edith did not say, as 
 
 I hoped, as II : " Whit docs it matter? Here we 
 
 OH tiling much 
 more touching: 
 
 I»w they mu you left them." 
 
 I gripped het hand hard. She should not Buffer, I -, 
 
250 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 swore. And I loved her because she had questioned me; 
 that had been frank. 
 
 Yes, she was frank now. Frank as might be a violet 
 if it reared its head through moss and then looked round 
 in horror, saying : " Oh, what have I done ? " 
 
 VI 
 
 We had tea in a little inn at Pinner, at an oak (table 
 surrounded by Windsor chairs. There was a grandfather's 
 clock that ticked against the oak panels ; the white walls 
 were decorated with copper warming pans, blue willow- 
 pattern plates. The landlady had smiled discreetly upon 
 us as she laid down the rough-cut bread and butter, the 
 jam into which some negligent farmer's daughter had 
 put more stones than fruit. Then she had shut the door 
 with much ceremony, after gloating over us : she was 
 stout, very red-faced, and her crossed arms were enormous ; 
 she was one large gloat. We laughed when she tried the 
 door from the outside to prove that it was quite closed, 
 and we laughed when Edith dipped her finger into the 
 jam and I insisted on kissing the finger clean. We were 
 practical, we decided the conduct of the " campaign," 
 the " operations " during the holidays, for we were both 
 fond of military metaphors ; we proposed to " tell " if 
 it were announced that changes were to take place at 
 Barbezan's in view of Hugh's marriage in October. But, 
 though we were practical, the charm of enlightenment 
 hung over us. I looked at Edith, smiling over the teapot, 
 so wifely in that attitude, formulated : 
 
 THE CREED OF A YOUNG ENGLISH GIRL 
 " I believe I must tell the truth, obey my parents 
 and love them. I must conform to the rules of my 
 caste, hold such ideas as it allows its women ; I must 
 respect, in order, my father, my eldest brother, my 
 mother, my sisters ; I must be kind to my grandmother, 
 to my other relatives, to friends and servants : that 
 is, be kind to those whom I do not respect. I believe 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 251 
 
 in the Almighty as stated by the creed I have been 
 taught to profess. I believe in courtesy, in good 
 clothes, which must be neither much ahead nor 
 much behind the fashions, and such as befit my 
 age. I believe in baths, clean linen. I believe that 
 false hair, rouge, face powder are sinful. I believe 
 that I must like, in order, music, books and pictures, 
 but my liking for them must not be hysterical; also 
 I must see to it that all my reading be not light. I 
 believe in love and that, in the name of love, providing 
 my conscience tells me it is holy, I may transgress 
 certain of my rules; but I believe that love must 
 be pure and noble, that it must be steadfast and 
 true; I believe that it comes but once in life and 
 that it must be sacrificed if it threatens the eventual 
 happiness of the loved one. I believe that I must 
 not tell the loved one that I love him but that I 
 must wait his pleasure. ' All this I must not tell. I 
 believe that I must wait for success, for love, for 
 death, and that I must not complain in the waiting. 
 I believe that I must listen, not speak; obey, not 
 command; respond, not exact. I am a pure young 
 English girl; my life is not my own. I believe thai 
 my business is to find its master." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 
 
 Working with all those abstract English forces was 
 another, and curiously enough it was embodied in a man. 
 I was surprised that this should happen, for I had not of 
 late years found much use for men. At the higher com- 
 mercial school three youths, Gobot, Luzan and Lavalette, 
 had occupied my mind and stirred my emotions, but even 
 then I knew that they were merely the channels of least 
 resistance which my mind and emotions followed because 
 they were the channels of least resistance. Some of our 
 friendship was made up of youth's passionate desire to 
 express itself, and thence sprang the antagonism of our 
 views; we did not in fact differ, but we had to differ in 
 order to force out of ourselves anything that might be 
 there ; we shouted, we snatched words from one another's 
 mouths. It was good, but it was not what I wanted. 
 Woman alone could give me that : thrilled sympathy, 
 some admiration and gratitude for my condescending to 
 think her worth talking to. I loved woman because she 
 responded, because her mind leapt up to meet mine; 
 and I hated man because he was my rival, demanded of 
 me those things which I wanted myself. I tried, and a 
 little because " it was done " in England, to make friends 
 among men, and I succeeded in walking with Hugh 
 Lawton, lunching with Barker; I managed to be interested 
 in Bell and his slum boys, in Archie Neville, though I 
 thought him too vapidly good ; I let Mcrton take me to 
 a football match, I asked Kent to smuggle me into a 
 moot at Gray's Inn. But nothing availed : I do not like 
 
 252 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 253 
 
 men ; there is no thrill in their speech ; no passion lights 
 their eyes when I speak. I am a Frenchman, I cannot 
 be parted from women, I love them; I am uneasy when 
 I love no woman, when no cheeks flush as I enter a room. 
 Even if she love me not she must be there; I must see 
 her gracious lines before me, hear the music of her high 
 voice, the rustle of her skirts. Woman is the ozone of 
 my atmosphere. <I am a lover. When I am too old to 
 be a lover I will be friend, confidant, match-maker, so 
 that I may still be near her. When I die I hope that my 
 soul will reincarnate into the body of a chocolate pom . . . 
 or of any beast woman fancies at that time. 
 
 And yet the man came. Charles Stanley, one of the 
 
 departmental heads of the Chinese and Peruvian Shipping 
 
 Company, sat rather rigidly at his desk between glass 
 
 walls beyond which I could see the clerks, somejperched 
 
 on high stools, some standing to write at their desks. My 
 
 business was rather intricate. . We had, acting for a client, 
 
 chartered the Company's steamer, Ning-Po, whose 
 
 activities were, as a rule, confined to the Chinese seas, 
 
 while she lav at Liverpool on an empty bottom, to carry 
 
 rolling-stock which she was^to shed at Colombo, Singapore 
 
 and Shanghai ; at Shanghai the Ning-Po Was to load 
 
 up an arranged consignment of raw silk, land it at San 
 
 cisco and terminate her journey at Panama, where 
 
 would be delivered to the agents of the Chinese and 
 
 i.t'i. It was an admirable plan, for it converted 
 
 •Po from a necessary carrier into a speculative 
 
 rhile (.Mr clients escaped the risks of tramping. 
 
 Unfortunately, on that morning the ship was steaming 
 
 north from Singapore and the capiain did not know that 
 
 mtaining the raw silk had been burned 
 
 did not yet count com- 
 
 <>f instructing him to call 
 
 UQlla and Canton on the chance of booking American 
 
 •f ion threatened t<> end disastrously, 
 
 for the Ntflg-Po might have to ! Panama in ballast, 
 
 prying of a large cazg 
 
 foods, then lying in the Chinese and 
 
254 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Peruvian's charge, according to our cable advices, at 
 Yokohama. 
 
 I explained so much of the facts as was politic, for it 
 did not do to reveal, when biddings for freight, that the 
 ship would probably have to travel in ballast to accom- 
 plish her journey within the term of the charter-party. 
 Stanley listened to me to the end, nibbling his penholder. 
 He was tall, very thin, rather bald; deep-set in his dark 
 face, every feature of which was irregular, his grey eyes 
 seemed extraordinarily passionless and acute. He fixed 
 upon me so concentrated a gaze that I seemed to lose 
 my nerve, to grow voluble ; my trained bass voice threat- 
 ened to revert to its high pitch. At last, when I had 
 finished my long speech, splashed with the sonorous 
 names of quite irrelevant Eastern ports, he ceased to nibble 
 the penholder he held in his strong, knubbly brown fingers 
 •and,' after a pause, said : , 
 
 ** \\ T hy do you want us to charter our own ship? " 
 There' had* been no hesitation. The essential question 
 had corm * ou ^ ano ^ I wondered by what devilry this man 
 had guess* e d our weak point. I began once more my 
 involved s\ ~>eech, mixing up " Canton . . . possibility 
 of accommov bating you . . . Yokohama. " I struggled 
 to keep him in ignorance of our casualty : if he found out 
 he would offer a freight rate which barely covered our 
 expenses. But & s soon as I stopped Stanley was on me, 
 swift as a boxer when his adversary gets up from his 
 knees. 
 
 " You've no freigh *t at Shanghai ? " 
 " We might . . ." . J faltered. 
 
 " The Ning-Po will ti ^ ave * to Panama in ballast. That 
 is so ? " 
 
 His question was hardl> r a q uest i° n 5 Jt was a piece of 
 information, and the grey t T es held mine as the ma g nct 
 holds iron. 
 
 " There may be no cargo," 1 growled, " or not enough." 
 "Ah. Now we're Well, we haven't fixed 
 
 ese cotton goods from Yoko 
 at twenty-five shillings a ton. 5 
 
 ... un^. 
 these cotton goods from Yokohatt m * You can havc them 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 255 
 
 I pretended to cry out in despair. It was preposterous^ 
 It would not cover our expenses. It would ... I 
 shouted, I pleaded for thirty-five shillings, but Stanley' 
 nibbled on, made not the slightest effort to interrupt me. 
 When I stopped he said : **• 
 
 *' Twenty-five shillings. Or take her into Panama in 
 : 1 St." 
 
 " We can pick up freight at Manila or Canton," I said, 
 truculently. 
 
 Stanley did not reply. He opened The Shipping 
 Gazette, ran a brown finger down a column. 
 
 " Steamer Ning-Po. Sailed from Singapore for 
 Shanghai 14th. She's not calling at Canton or Manila." 
 I remained silent. 
 
 " You've got no freight at Shanghai. You thought 
 you had, but now you're not sure. Something's happened 
 to your cargo." 
 
 '* How do you know? " I asked, angrily. 
 
 " Oh, something has happened? " A very faint smile 
 
 ed the thin lips. ■" What was your cargo? " 
 " Silk," I snarled. I felt now as a man must feel 
 who is slowly being dragged from a music-hall by the 
 chuckers-out. 
 
 Silk, was it? Burned? " 
 lt Yes," I said, wearily. " How did you tell ? " 
 un no direct reply; then quickly: 
 Well, take your chance at Shanghai. You may 
 lit . . . but don't wait too long there. If the 
 h Panama on the date, it's fifty 
 nds a day." 
 
 I sulkily at my feet. When I looked up, humbly 
 1 kinder but siill unflinching. 
 "It's a deal at twenty-five shillings then?" said 
 
 M HI t r 1 1 th ,. f cant aceepl myself." 
 
 "Right oh. w airily; "and tell them we 
 
 put down our price SUCpei r." 
 
 It was terrific-; and when I left the office I was over- 
 whelmed by my defeat at tin hand man who had 
 
256 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 gone straight to the heart of the business. Nine-tenths of 
 the interview had been taken up by my conversation, my 
 evasions and verbal nimblenesses, one-tenth by his series 
 of intuitive stabs. He had guessed everything, our empty 
 hold, the ju-jitsu lock laid upon us by the fact that we 
 had to render up the ship on a given date; he had even 
 guessed that our cargo was burned. I do not know how 
 it is done ; Stanley says it is elimination, that in the case 
 of the cargo he saw at once we would not have chartered 
 the ship unless we knew there was return freight; ergo 
 the cargo must have disappeared; a shipload of silk 
 couldn't be stolen; ergo it was fire or water; no floods 
 in the papers, ergo fire. May be, but -certainly Stanley 
 eliminates the unlikely as fast as a mechanical drier 
 expels water. 
 
 II 
 
 We became friends. Stanley held out his hand to me 
 the same day, when I returned in the afternoon to agree 
 abjectly to hfs terms on behalf of our client. Wliile he 
 telephoned the cable room to make sure that the Yoko- 
 hama cargo was still open, I studied his face; it was a 
 monkish countenance, very long and emphasised as to 
 length by the recession of his dark hair; his bent brow 
 seemed enormous and was furrowed by a great number 
 of horizontal lines; there was a break in his nose, a 
 humorous twist in his thin mouth. His clothes were 
 very dusty and seemed to have been made for a much 
 bigger man; he had never been manicured. When he 
 looked up at me I was again flooded by a sense of clarity 
 rather than power. 
 
 " That's O.K.," he said. 
 
 I was dismissed, but something held me back. As he 
 looked at me I saw at once that he knew it, that he was 
 analysing . . . eliminating, I suppose. It was intoler- 
 able ; I was being vivisected. 
 
 "Look here," I blurted, "that's all right. But this 
 morning I tried to bounce you." 
 
 " Ti your duty. Besides, you enjoyed it." 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 257 
 
 " I did," I said, rather wondcringly ; " how can you 
 
 11 Sheer intellectual pleasure. Just like chess, you 
 know. Do you play chess ? " 
 
 " Yes." I did, not very well, but then in the City one 
 has to play chess if one hates dominoes. 
 
 " Come and have a game with me. What time d'you 
 
 get out to lunch ? One ? I go later ; still, I can manage it. 
 
 To-morrow at the Graccchurch Street Mecca ? Right oh." 
 
 I went and was so nervous that Stanley fool's-mated 
 
 me, then beat me in less than twenty-five moves, giving 
 
 me pawn and move. There was no sport in those games 
 
 which we now played at lunch three or four times a week, 
 
 the gravy on our plates clotted into grease, but they 
 
 d a good purpose. Stanley confessed this to me. a 
 
 little lat 
 
 " I like your spirit; you never give in. Of course 
 you're a silly ass, and you make it a rotten game by 
 ing to it and exchanging until I get down to king 
 and rook or something . . ." 
 M I never give in," I said, sulkily. 
 
 •• 11 •:* not? I thought Frenchmen didn't stick." 
 
 don't," I said. " But Englishmen do, and that's 
 why I stick." 
 
 e," Stanley persisted, "but then 
 
 that's your way. It's like the day you came and tried 
 
 the old Ning-Po ; you came at me 
 
 with a r ' of words. You said the same thing 
 
 tngling and tangling. Yes, you came at mc 
 
 witd 
 
 M Wi ill) a rapier." 
 
 rue. Stanley's mind worked like a sword; 
 1 likr the in-! of tin- retiarius, but I was going 
 
 ick " ; the l^i 
 
 had they wanted by "sticking." 
 
 raliy subtle, I often tried to combine subtlety with 
 
 «.i,st lish bull is obstinate. Our relation 
 
 contain idox : the Frenchman liked the 
 
 lishman for his quick Latin mind; the Englishman 
 
 K 
 
258 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 liked the Frenchman for his artificial English grit. The 
 friendship was anti-natural, but it prospered, for Stanley 
 did not refuse himself as do most Englishmen; th< 
 born in Northumberland he was not suspicious; rather 
 he did not deign to be suspicious, as his Northern pride 
 told him that his mind was so keen that no despised 
 Southerner could injure him. Soon, therefore, I discovered 
 him to be a human being, a rare species of Englishman. 
 He still played cricket and was generally right when 
 he gauged the chances of teams; he read enormously, 
 economics, philosophy, verse, novels and newspapers; 
 he never liked a very bad book, though his taste was not 
 quite developed enough to keep him from the second- 
 rate : he saw, but he did not feel very keenly, and for this 
 reason could not love the greatest. He was very gentle,, 
 a little sentimental under the cynical varnish, and 
 worshipped his absurd little wife. 
 
 I was taken down to dine at his small house at Esher. 
 His wife, whom he overtopped by a foot, leapt at his neck 
 in the hall. She was fair, plump, round. She had round 
 wrists, round blue eyes, a one-year-old baby, the roundest 
 baby boy I had ever seen. Stanley called her delightful 
 and insulting names : " dumpling," and " toadstool," 
 and " roly-poly." Though he had been married two 
 years he still persisted in asking her whether she had 
 come in handy at school when the teacher wanted to 
 illustrate the use of globes. 
 
 " Isn't he silly, Mr. Cadoresse ? " she asked (round- 
 mouthed), " with his dumplings ? You silly old hop-pole ! 
 Do you come in handy as an alpenstock ? You . . . hayfork ! " 
 
 She was no fool. Their conversation seemed to touch 
 everything from religion to the rise of coal prices, and 
 she was nimble enough, knowing his elimination methods, 
 to " fox " him when he tried to guess her opinions, 
 
 "Ha," she would cry, triumphantly, "1 knew you'd 
 think I wanted a new bonnet for baby because I said his 
 was shabby. Well, I don't; he's done with bonnets . . . 
 he wants a hat. Got you ! " 
 
 But Stanley persisted in mental analysis. He even 
 tried it on the dog, an Irish terrier. 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 259 
 
 " I see your game, Pat," he said, severely. " You're 
 
 ng for your dinner because you know the meat 
 
 isn't up yet. Therefore you think you'll get a bit of sugar 
 
 to keep you quiet. Wrong, Pat, wrong. There is no 
 
 sugar." 
 
 " It's you who are wrong, Sherlock Holmes,'" said Mrs. 
 Stanley. " He's begging for the cat who's sitting on the 
 back of your chair. " 
 
 I loved them. Nothing told me that I was going to 
 need them, but a bridge was being made. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I was going to need the Stanleys, as I was going to need 
 
 wn st refigl h. the power of my optimism and my love. 
 
 re the end of that month of July, when Edith unveiled 
 
 her soul, an atmosphere which I felt in the making began 
 
 to define itself. Mr. Lawton was courteous to me in the 
 
 office, but cold ; he seldom now added general conversa- 
 
 tion to commercial instructions; he did not tell me, as 
 
 '1 done before, where the family was going 
 
 i that I might come down for 
 
 ad. He did worse: Hugh was going abroad 
 
 nth in August and I, as second to him, expected 
 
 ave charge of the Exports. Mr. Lawton, however, 
 
 d course. 
 
 "Oh, Ca(^<>ITss(^' , lie s;iid, "I'll attend to things while 
 
 !i is aw;. 
 
 I replied, and there must have been 
 thing aggressive in my tone, for Mr. Law 
 
 !>: w " I .mi— - do — that." Then, as if a 
 lit f I ful, v * I'm ii"l too busy." 
 
 . but I could read 
 
 I aw merely a verj 
 
 I fifty, a y unruffled as to hair 
 
 And hi ll-cul mouth told me 
 
 DOthi i veil hung in front of his 
 
 But, in later weeks, my impression was confirmed : 
 
 ■ l out, bul I v.. 'is not being 1-. I in. 
 
 triving a; tnething which did not yield, 
 
 something which suggested, though it I .id, "Oh, 
 
260 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 leave this to me, Cadoresse," or " You must ask Mr. 
 Purkis for instructions." But what was it? what? 
 suspicion of my relation to Edith ? a hint that I could not 
 hope for preferment ? Who can tell ... in England ? 
 
 And the atmosphere thickened still more in September 
 when the Lawtons returned. There was a coldness in 
 the air ; I called but was not asked to call again. Muriel, 
 when reminded that she was to teach me to play golf, 
 pleaded vague engagements. Hugh did not again walk 
 home with me; he had "a man to meet at the Club," 
 or he had to go to the tailor's. 
 
 It was three months since the last of our queer, intimate 
 little talks, which were for me rather like a game with a 
 tortoise : one incautious touch, and in went the head. 
 We had gone to his club for a drink before dinner and, 
 very warily, I had drawn Hugh away from memories 
 of Winchester towards his theory of schools. 
 
 " Of course they don't get swished very often," he said 
 when I attacked corporal punishment, " but one has to 
 have a cane about. Just for the look of the thing." 
 
 " Like the classics ? " 
 
 We had a long, formless discussion, Hugh defending 
 Latin and Greek on the plea that they trained the mind 
 (which mathematics or English literature couldn't do) 
 and taught one to understand one's own language (much 
 better than German, even though English was German 
 rather than Latin). Hugh was going to^ maintain the 
 classics, as a sort of introduction to Shakespeare. 
 
 " Do you read Shakespeare ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well . . ." He hesitated, then, confidentially : " I 
 do rather -like Shakespeare, but . . . one can't talk about 
 him, that would never do. . . . Side, you know, all that 
 sort of thin^." 
 
 I delighted in these revelations, and I missed them, 
 but Edith could tell me nothing, for nothing had been 
 said; we were afraid, so afraid that we almost decided to 
 tell, to end the tension. 
 
 " There's something up," I said, M somebody suspects. 
 The maids smile at me when I come . . . your mother, 
 she's cool. Even Fiona ... oh, laugh if you like, but 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 261 
 
 a few minutes ago, when we sat on the sofa, she came and 
 sat down between us, looked at us each in turn with that 
 idiotic, sentimental air of hers. It sounds mad, but 
 she's been different to me since you and I . . ." 
 
 " You're absurd," said Edith irritably. The some- 
 thing was beginning to tell upon her. 
 
 Four days later we were caught at St. Bartholomew's. 
 We stood hidden by the side of an enormous stone pillar, 
 hand in hand, very happy. Suddenly I saw Edith 
 stiffen ; she grasped my hand so hard that her finger-nails 
 hurt me. Her oilier hand, raised, stopped my exclama- 
 tion. Two yards off passed a couple, Bessie Surtees and 
 a middle-aged woman in country tweeds. 
 
 " Did they see us ? " Edith whispered, tensely. " I'm 
 not sure Bessie didn't." 
 
 " We Were in the shadow of the pillar," I said. 
 
 We made light of it, though I had to hold down in Edith 
 a terror that struggh d like a weasel in a gin. 
 
 " I can't bear it . . . we must tell . . . we must tell. 
 Oh, if we were caught, it'd be dreadful. It's bad enough 
 iving them . . . but to be caught. . . ." 
 
 I comforted her, kissed her in the dark, silent church, 
 
 pointed out that we must wait a few weeks, for Hugh was 
 
 married in November, the wedding having been 
 
 d, and we needed to know whether he were going 
 
 to be made a partner. Edith clung to me, trembled, 
 
 but the afternoon was spoiled, for now we knew 
 
 thai some accident must happen if we waited; the struggle 
 
 Qg to begiu. 
 
 Ii began, but not at our own time. On the fourteenth 
 of October I was asked to dinner; I had not been invited 
 to II I >r three months and now wondered whether 
 
 I ha : 1 the tension or whether the Lawtons 
 
 merely doing the decent tiling. By a private 
 arrangement with Edith I arrived at ten to eight, was 
 
 empty drawing-room, into which she 
 tiptoed, breathlest as I be maid was out of the way. 
 
 ran into my arms like a little, frightened animal, 
 lay, quivering,while I covered with impatient 
 r mouth, her eheeks, her soft, white neck. 
 
2G2 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN • 
 
 " Oh, Lucien, it's been so long, so long ... a fort- 
 night." 
 
 " My darling, my darling, have courage ! Soon we shall 
 be together, soon. Kiss me. Ah, kiss me again." 
 
 I crushed her against my breast. I hurt her, I wa'hted 
 to hurt her, and she laughed weakly as I relaxed the 
 pressure but still held her in my arms. For a moment 
 we remained, eyes gazing into eyes. Then we heard a 
 sound, parted as suddenly as the strands of a broken 
 rope. In the doorway stood Hugh. 
 
 IV 
 
 For three or four seconds the silence was quite per- 
 ceptible. The air of the room seemed to have acquired 
 an extraordinary, blanket-like quality. Then there was 
 a change; I heard with extreme distinctness a motor-car 
 pass the house and stop a little further up the street, and 
 the maids in the basement, laughing noisily. But the 
 sounds, clear though they were, seemed foreign to the 
 scene, as if they came from another plane, while we three 
 stood in a plane all our own. 
 
 tlugh had closed the door as he came in, stood against 
 it, his face expressionless, a tall, rigid body. Edith had 
 retreated to my right and clutched the settee so tight 
 with both hands that on eveiy one of her finger-nails 
 I saw a red zone surrounded with white. And her eye- 
 brows were comically twisted in the middle over her 
 strained eyes. I knew that my fists were clenched, that 
 a stream of blood had rushed up into my head, burning 
 my ears, and pains in my teeth told me that my jaws 
 were hard jammed so that the bones stood out. 
 
 The seconds passed and we did not speak. A stranger 
 who lived in my brain cried out that this was a stage . . . 
 the West End stage ... he cast the three characters 
 without hesitation, picking out well-known actor- managers 
 and the latest ingenue. . . . 
 
 Hugh moved, very slightly. The play producer 
 
 bed and a trainer shouted tips at me : " Don't look 
 
 at his hands . . . watch his eyes . . . get him on the 
 
 point with your left and bring the right over the heart." . . . 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 263 
 
 At last Hugh spoke, and the effect was that of an 
 unexpected pistol shot, though his voice was absolutely 
 normal : 
 
 M Edith," he said, " you'd better go up to mother for 
 a bit." 
 
 He .opened the door and stood aside to let her pass. 
 
 For a moment she had met his gaze, still clutching the 
 
 settee, but his rigidity mastered her and she ran past 
 
 him. I heard her draw in a great gulp of air as she ran. 
 
 Hugh, closing the door, turned towards me, and I 
 
 realised that I was a fool, that there would be no fight. 
 
 as too cool. I was glad, for I was a little afraid of 
 
 tied man who could give me three inches and at 
 
 a stone, and I was sorry, for the excitement of the 
 
 inter was such that, to allay it, 1 wanted to leap at 
 
 tear, bite, scratch. But Hugh, still collected, spoke 
 
 tly. 
 
 *" Well have to talk this over, Cadoresse. The others'll 
 
 be here in less than a minute and we'll want more than 
 
 Til find an opportunity after dinner. Is that all 
 
 ?" 
 
 Yes," I said after a pa' 
 The dr>or opened to let in a laughing couple, Muriel 
 and Ixuisa. 
 
 _\ you two? " asked Louisa. 
 II lantly at the flushed face, the dimpled 
 
 little chin. 
 
 liking of golf. Cador it's too much 
 
 nk-s and that he's going in for" 
 I 
 
 " J hall have to take you on. Mr. Cadorr a 
 
 I didn't keep my pro: 
 But take us down to her club, 
 
 the pton; I have to manage with clay, worse 
 
 luck, wh i. Now in October, when 
 
 ,-t " 
 
 I listened with ion to a nKrrifully 
 
 expanded as 
 
 Iked into it ion on made links, on bunkers, 
 
 on hard lines. While I listened and managed an occasional 
 
204 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 appropriate comment on the game, my mind worked 
 round and round, like a goldfish in an aquarium : " What 
 was going to happen? What would Hugh do? What 
 should I do ? No reply. Then, the other way round : 
 "What should I do? What would Hugh do? What 
 was going to happen ? " . . . 
 
 " Oh, yes," I said in a high voice, " you'd better help 
 me buy my clubs." 
 
 But I felt giddy. More people came in, Mr. Lawton, 
 Edward Kent, Mrs. Lawton, apologising for being late, 
 and then Edith, behind her, with two flaming patches on 
 her cheeks, a metallic gleam in her eyes and a quivering 
 mouth. I could hardly bear to look at her. And other 
 people, the two Bennings, and a man with no face, and 
 a woman who, when she laughed, made a sound like a 
 cockatoo's screech and . . . 
 
 Damnation ... I don't know who came, what they 
 wore ... I don't know whether the dinner happened 
 at all. I remember only an atmosphere, paradoxes 
 somewhere, near Kent I suppose, and the cockatoo laugh, 
 and Edith, just her face, red and white, not a face at all, 
 but a painted carnival mask, and my voice, harsh, high . . . 
 some dogmatic views, some laughing, ah, plenty of that, 
 and champagne, plenty of that too and the sear of it on 
 my palate. At last the women gone, and Hugh's voice, 
 clear as a flute : 
 
 " Oh, Cadoresse, you wanted to see that new gun of 
 mine. Come up to my room and have a look at it." 
 
 V 
 
 " Well, said Hugh. 
 
 Before I answered him I took in a few details. His 
 was a large room, the third floor front. Rose-bud wall- 
 paper; good silver fittings on the dressing table; on the 
 walls prints after Cecil Aldin and Tom Browne; above 
 the bed a large photograph of a football t< -am ; in a corner 
 a cricket-bat, golf-stieks. These objects marked my 
 mind without my knowing it, for I remembered them best 
 a few days later. My brain was busy with his " Well? " 
 He had spoken almost lazily, as if the tragedy bored him. 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 265 
 
 Apollo was languid and was evidently doing his duty 
 because it was the thing to do; evidently too he cared, 
 or he wouldn't have bothered, but his ease exasperated me. 
 "Well what?;' I said. "It's for you to talk. Go 
 on. Tell me what you think of me. Call me a black- 
 guard. Say I've come behind your father's back to steal 
 his daughter . . . say I've played you all a dirty trick. 
 ... Go on, don't be afraid." 
 
 " I wasn't going to say anything of the kind," said 
 Bugh. " I wasn't going to say anything. It's for you 
 hat you're going to do about it." 
 " What do you want me to do about it? " 
 M My dear fellow," said Hugh, blandly, " you really 
 must see that there's only one thing for a man to do when 
 he's caught kissing a girl." 
 
 " Oh ! " His case continued to annoy me, but I did 
 not understand him at 'once. Then, suddenly I under- 
 stood : Hugh meant to suggest that I might not intend 
 to marry Edith, but that now I was caught and must 
 ask for her hand. That cast such a vileness over the kiss 
 1 surprised t hat, for a moment, I could not find words-. 
 Ai last I said, hoarsely : " Do you mean to say that you 
 
 I don't want to marry her? Do you dare ? " 
 
 *' My dear chap," said Hugh, as he raised a deprecating 
 
 te don't say ' do you dare ' ; this isn't the 
 
 phi and if isn't done, it really isn't done. You'll 
 
 aging me to fighi a duel, like you did Farr . . ." 
 
 Ili- I worried. 
 
 to drag that up," I replied, 'savagely. " Say 
 what you have to say." 
 
 14 Well," Hugh went on in his tired voice, "it's simple 
 
 as if you wire L r <>ne on Edith, and, mind 
 
 lon't sec anything against chat; she's a d 
 
 kid. I si 1 1 (o marry her: then 
 
 king to <i ;ms willing; you've 
 
 got to go to my lather and ask for his consent." 
 
 hat I forgot to be annoyed 
 to my " being gone n on Edith, 
 
 "a decent little Edith 1 ... a decent little kid! 
 
 I • understand was the co<>' 
 
 k 2 
 
266 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 with which he received the fact that I, an unrecognised 
 suitor, had kissed his sister without having beforehand 
 gained a right to pay my addresses to her. I knew that 
 this was the English way, but knowing did not make it 
 much less wonderful. 
 
 " Dp you mean to say you don't mind ? " I asked. 
 
 " Mind ? Why should I mind ? Edith's got as good 
 a right to marry whom she likes as I have." 
 
 My mind flew back to his father, the Churchman, 
 pleading for the rights of the Nonconformists. This tall, 
 rather commonplace fellow suddenly seemed splendid. 
 
 44 1 say," I remarked, rather wonderingly, 44 it's awfully 
 decent of you. You see, I thought there would be 
 difficulties; I haven't much of a position " 
 
 44 Nothing to do with me," said Hugh. 44 If Edith 
 wanted to marry the cobbler round the corner I mightn't 
 like it, but it'd be her look-out." 
 
 44 Ah, so you don't like the idea," I cried, my pride at 
 once scenting insult. 
 
 44 Don't be a silly ass-; I wouldn't have you up here if 
 I minded. But I'm not going to take sides ; if my father 
 agrees that's good enough for me. You can have her 
 if you can get her, but things have gone far enough in 
 a hole-and-corner way; you've got to finish them off fair 
 and square." 
 
 "Well, I will tell him. Of course I'll tell him; I've 
 wanted to for months." 
 
 44 Oood. Let me see, those people won't stay long; 
 they know there's something up. Oh, yes, they do; the 
 talk was pretty jerky at dinner; not one of themH stay 
 later than eleven. Not one. You'll have an o] 
 tunity then ; I'll see to it." 
 
 44 But — but " I gasped, 44 you don't want me to 
 
 tell him to-ni^ht? " 
 
 44 Why not? " 
 
 44 It's so sudden— I " 
 
 44 You'r to tell him soon. You may as well 
 
 do it to-niglr 
 
 Wecros and 1 realised that Hugh, having decided 
 
 without much consideration that I was to settle the matter 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 267 
 
 that' night, would not budge. He might know he was 
 unreasonable but then he was English : he had started 
 and must go on. Then I reflected that it did not suit me 
 to speak that night ; it was important that I should know 
 whether there would be changes in the firm. I thought 
 of confiding in Hugh, but. prudence held me back; if I 
 mentioned business he would think me mercenary : the 
 English know, but never like to think that marriage has 
 anything to do with money. 
 
 " I shan't," I said. " Not to-night. Soon, but not 
 ht." 
 
 "Why? "saicj Hugh. 
 
 " I can't tell you. I'll ask him soon, but not to-night." 
 
 " 1 can't agree to your putting it off, Cadoresse." Hugh's 
 voice was jH)lite but a little hard, and some wrinkles 
 appeared between his eyebrows. 
 
 '" 1 shan't do it to-night," I replied. 
 
 Tht : a pause during which we measured each 
 
 other's powers. Vaguely I knew that the cool one was 
 winning because he was cool, but I could not regain my 
 composure. 
 
 said Hugh in a low voice. 
 
 "I must? Oh ... 1 understand, you mean that if 
 I.don't go to-night you will, that you'll " 
 
 " Chuck it ! " He was angry. I had scored a point 
 
 tfo, though; Hugh did not raise his voice much, 
 
 • n in it. " I'm not going to give you 
 
 away. I'm not a sneak, CadoTesse, though you choose 
 
 1m think so. Wha1 I mean is that I can't have a man 
 
 hanging round my .sisler and making love to her wit limit 
 
 bia having the pluck to do it openly. V to break 
 
 way you'll get a run for your m 
 II, go and ask for her, don't beat 
 li. dmi'! hide, or squirm when it com. 
 • the thing out, and if you do get whi 
 your lid 
 
 q and his p . that 
 
 quatifica- 
 
 iCh lias less h nd in it than fchi re is in a battl- 
 
268 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " Well, suppose I won't ? " I said. 
 
 He ignored my answer. 
 
 " You will," he said suavely. 
 
 "Willi? How do you know?" 
 
 " You will, Cadoresse. You're going to play the game. 
 Oh, I know, you wouldn't have done it four years ago . . . 
 and even then I'm not sure, but anyhow, now you've been 
 here four years you know what I mean. You're going 
 to bell the cat to-night because it's the thing to do, the 
 decent thing. I'm not going to give you away, of course ; 
 I couldn't, but if you don't do it I'll put it into the mater's 
 head that Edith's looking peaky; I'll have her sent down 
 to Brighton; I'll set Louisa to keep an eye on her; you 
 shan't write to her either; I'll grab the letters first post; 
 and if you do manage to get hold of her again I'll tackle 
 her and make her tell. . . . It's the decent thing to do." 
 
 I listened, less angry now than amazed. Here was a 
 brother ready to torture his sister, to spy on her, to have 
 her persecuted by others, briefly to do the rotten thing 
 because he wanted her to do the decent tiling ! And 
 apparently it did not matter what Edith suffered provided 
 nobody sneaked and everybody did the decent thing. 
 He was for the letter of a gentleman's law. 
 
 A spasm of anger stirred me. 
 
 "Damn the decent thing !•" I shouted. "Why, 
 there's no decent tiling, not in love . . . you all say 
 that * all's fair in love and war.' " 
 
 He hesitated, for he trusted proverbs and quotations 
 as much as he doubted epigrams. He withdrew into 
 the keep of his obstinacy. 
 
 " The decent thing is the decent thing, and you know- 
 it." 
 
 " I don't, I don't pretend to know what's the d< 
 thing; or at any rate it isn't bullying and persecuting a 
 young girl and making a man do by threats a thing he 
 thinks undesirable. Th e decent thing isn't a live thing, 
 a real thing; it used to be, v.hni it was invented, but yo 
 let it get out of date. Good heavens, LawtOa, the decent 
 thing you talk about came in with the Crusaders. It's 
 . dried up; it's a mummy." 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 269 
 
 " It's all the better for having come in with the 
 Crusaders," said Hugh; " if it's still going on that shows 
 there was some good in it." 
 
 I had an unwonted attack of Frenchness, raised my hand 
 in despair. I had touched the rock bottom 'of England, 
 her conservatism. It was all over, I was beaten, I felt 
 limp, and I did not mind, for here was a splendour of sorts, 
 this attitude of narrow purity, senseless honour. I knew 
 that he had won as he came at me with those simplicities 
 which stirred me like fine music, those splendid English 
 views which are as unimaginative as a cask of English 
 beer and tig : 
 
 " Even if you think it may not do the trick, play fair. 
 I've go nothing against you and I tell you this : there's 
 only one right way of doing anything; all the others are 
 wrong. There's the straight road, and a hundred crooked 
 If you want anything go and ask for it, that's 
 tho straight road. If you can't get it like that, you've 
 got to take it, that's the next step on the straight road. 
 Let it all be fair, honest fighting, with no dodgy ways 
 and no messing with the rides; let it all be fair and square, 
 so that if you are licked you may feel you did your best. 
 And you're going to do that because you're a decent sort 
 of chap " 
 
 II (altered, for his last words made him shy. Then he 
 went oh. " You will; I'm not going to take sides, and 
 
 lier you win or lose I won't take sides, for it isn't 
 
 my b It's yours and Edith's and my father's. 
 
 But I can put my father up to it before you see him; 
 
 1|> you, though, mind you, I shan't take sides 
 
 All I'll do is to wish you luck. Shall I 
 
 ! the cat to-night?" 
 
 I b smiling; never had he looked so 
 
 handsome, so rably stupid and v< i splendid. 
 
 J] right," I said rather gloomily, M I'll bell the trick." 
 " BeUtl illy fool," Hugh roared as he opened 
 
 the door and pushed DM out; and again, as he smacked 
 me on tlu- shoulder i 
 
 14 Not the trick ... the cat ! " 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 
 
 " What's this I hear about you and Edith ?" a 
 Mr. Lawton. 
 
 Hugh had prepared him, then. I, did not at once 
 reply. I stood, one hand upon the corner of the dining- 
 room table, looking past Mr. Lawton's well-brushed head 
 at the clock which said ten-past eleven; I was nervous, 
 and, as he leaned against the mantelpiece, the whole 
 scene of our first meeting in my mother's empire drawing- 
 room passed through my mind. I saw myself as a small, 
 bare-legged boy, inquiring and confident, much more 
 confident than at this moment; and "young Lawton," 
 who had not changed so very much. An immense 
 interval of time seemed to elapse while I looked at him, 
 described him to myself as a very well-groomed man of 
 .fifty, with fair, straight hair streaked with grey, regular 
 features, a firm mouth and eyes as unflinching, as blue 
 as those of his son. He seemed immensely tall, and 
 his absolute immobility was impressive. Why did he 
 not roar at me ? I wondered ; surely the occasion 
 justified it. 
 
 " It's true," I said at length. Then, defiantly, " Quite 
 true. I'm in love with your daughter Edith." 
 
 44 Oh — hem " He was embarrassed ; I guessed 
 
 that " in love " Was too stagey for an Englishman, 
 that I ought to have said : " I want to marry your 
 daughter Edith." 
 
 " Well" he said at length, " what do you expect me 
 to say to that? You can't expect me to say that I 
 
 270 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 271 
 
 approve, give my consent to your marrying her. I 
 suppose that's what you mean." 
 
 " Yes, I want to marry her, and I ask for your consent." 
 Mr. Lawton did not move. Suddenly I wanted to 
 make him angry; it was proper he should be angry 
 if he refused his consent. 
 
 44 I'm going to marry her," I said, defiantly. 
 "Oh?"' lie remained perfectly calm. "You say 
 you are going to marry her ? Without my consent ? " 
 
 44 I did not say that," I replied, more cautiously, 
 addressing the head of the firm. 
 
 M You suggested it. Still, I will let that pass, though 
 
 I may as well tell you that Edith will refuse to marry 
 
 you if I forbid it. Let that be quite clear." 
 
 i h; d doubts as to his power, but said nothing. 
 
 " I. : it also be perfectly clearthat I do not consent. You 
 
 will want to know my reasons. They must be obvious 
 
 to y«.!. In the first place I think Edith is too young 
 
 pry just yet ; she is only twenty, and she is too young 
 
 ■ hildish ■" 
 
 ."'I interrupted. Edith too childish ! 
 
 "One miii 1 allow me to give my , opinion of 
 
 I whom I have known rather longer than you have. 
 
 h is a child; Bhe is not very strong; she is full of 
 
 . and I'm sure that that's why she — 
 
 Well, anyhow, 1 understand from what &lgh said 
 
 . . . attached to you ..." 
 
 ■• i - -ri stumbled on for ;i few sentences. Obvi- 
 
 <d to talking of love ! he soon 
 the subject. 
 
 -•:<• will g young girl passes through 
 
 Hi , kind of affair, so I'm not blaming her. You. 
 
 . I blame. You're not very old either, but 
 
 I happen to k: 'thing about Frenchmen; a 
 
 ichman of twenty-five " 
 
 44 T 1. 
 
 " V x, is at least as old as an Englishman 
 
272 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 of thirty. The sort of life Frenchmen lead . . . But 
 I'll let that alone, you know what I mean. Therefore 
 you must have known perfectly well that as I was not 
 likely to let you marry Edith you were not entitled to 
 make — to propose tb fcer." 
 
 " I did not know that," I said. 
 
 " You did not ? What position have you to offer 
 her ? " 
 
 " It is a rising position." 
 
 Mr. Lawton smiled, and I could not help liking lum 
 because he was so calm in tragic circumstances. He had 
 not yet taken his hands from his pockets. 
 
 "Rather a tall thing to say to the senior partner, 
 Cadoresse. Still . . . yes, I see what's surprising you ; 
 it's that I've said senior partner, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Well ! " I said. 
 
 " This is hardly the place to discuss the matter, but 
 I want you to understand that I have nothing against 
 you in general, and for that reason I will tell you, in 
 confidence, that my son will become a junior partner 
 next month, before his marriage. As for you, as I have 
 said, I appreciate your services ; you will take Mr. Hugh's 
 place, and we're going to raise you to three hundred 
 a year at Christmas." 
 
 " Thank you," I said mechanically. But my mind 
 at once set aside this good news. Edith alone occupied 
 me, and I was trying to adjust my ideas as to this man 
 who could be so judicial, blame my private behaviour, 
 and yet promote me according to my commercial merits. 
 English gentlem p ! 
 
 " That, however, has nothing to do with the business 
 we're discussing. W r hat makes you smile ? " 
 
 " Nothing," I said. I could not tell him that I was 
 not English enough yet to look upon our difference as 
 " business." 
 
 " As I say," Mr. Lawton went on, " it's got nothing 
 to do with it. You cannot marry Edith on three 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 273 
 
 hundred a year, nor on four, and there's no idea of giving 
 you four. You know the life she's been used to ; to 
 marry her on three hundred a year would be preposterous. 
 Edith's not the girl to rough it in the suburbs with a 
 _:rl." 
 " How much do you want ? " I asked. 
 
 "How much 1^— ? What ?" My bluntness 
 
 about money disconcerted Mr. Lawton as much as his 
 awkwardness about love disconcerted me. V You mean 
 how much do I think you need ? Say a thousand a 
 year. Eight hundred at least." 
 
 BO much as that," I said, but I felt he was 
 right; I was summoning courage to say boldly: "Make 
 me a partner then, I'm as good a man as Hugh," but he 
 interrupted inc. 
 
 " Every halfpenny of it. The business can't afford 
 that — and besides, there are other reasons." 
 
 This time there was a long pause. My bold phrase 
 
 and receded into the back of my mind, while 
 
 jured up the other reasons. Black eyes and blue 
 
 nut now with a more dangerous air. 
 
 " Other reasons ? " I said, politely ; " would you 
 
 " I had much rather not, Cadoresse. It's quite un- 
 it iy answer; I decline; though, 
 we nothing against you." 
 
 to spare me, to do the tiling 
 >"w. 
 I, "you must tell me, Mr. Lawton. 
 
 I had chosen my last words with intention. An 
 . ill do anything if you can make hind believe 
 r " to do it. I w 
 • I donM know about it's not being fair, Cador 
 
 I don't want you to think ell 
 
 unfairly treated, I will tell you. I don't want Edith 
 to marry a foreigner." 
 
274 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I don't want Edith to marry a foreigner," he re- 
 peated, obstinately. " If you really want to know why 
 I'll trjr and tell you. I've got nothing against foreigners, 
 but they're different, they're fundamentally different, 
 they're . . .foreign." 
 
 " Oh ! " I said, very angry but quite cold, " I under- 
 stand. Foreigners are foreign, and because they're 
 foreign they're foreigners." 
 
 " Don't be so damnably* logical," said Mr. Lawton, 
 testy at last. " That's* just it, Cadoresse, that's just 
 like the foreigner ; you've got to have sentences made like 
 razor-blades, and you're angry if you cut yourself with 
 them. There ! I'm making epigrams now ; as if I were 
 a foreigner myself; it's catching, I suppose. But look 
 here, just try to understand a little. Here you are, 
 a Frenchman; you've been four years in England. 
 That's right, isn't it? You've done pretty well, but 
 you're still a Frenchman." 
 
 " I'm sorry " I began. He interrupted me. 
 
 " There's nothing to be sorry about. There's no harm 
 in being a Frenchman; I've met lots of them — your 
 father, a very fine fellow, and lots of other intelligent, 
 honourable, sober people, but they were French. Now 
 just try and think how different you are from us. They 
 educate you differently, in a way better; they cram you 
 with all sorts of things we never hear of, even at the 
 'Varsity, things like European history, and science 
 mixed up with translations of the classics. That's 
 one of the things ; in England we don't go in for mi.\1 1 
 a man's a classical scholar or he's been on the modern 
 side. You may not think it matters, just becau 
 can't be sure of the meaning of the inscription on a coin 
 though I gave Latin sii^ years- but it docs." 
 
 I looked at him. Did it? Perhaps. These people 
 '•cialise. 
 
 "That means that you don't grow up like us; oh, 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 275 
 
 I know, plenty of people say we run in a groove, but that 
 nothing to do with marriage. You may be better 
 m*.n. but what does matter is that like must marry like. 
 :e streets ahead of a Kaffir, but you'd make a 
 ;• girl a bad husband." He smiled. " I'm putting 
 the case rather strongly, but I'm trying to explain; 
 re too different. Especially, you don't play 
 
 games " ^ 
 
 "Excuse me," I said, "we did, and especially at 
 Bordeaux. I played tennis when — — " 
 
 .is ! " said Mr. Lawton, and his scorn %vas 
 immense. " Again you give yourself away, Cadoresse. 
 Tennis doesn't come in at all, except for girls. By games 
 we mean football and cricket." 
 
 play other games," I said aggressively. 
 " Yes. And we like a man to be handy with an oar, 
 a racket or a golf-club, but those aren't the real games. 
 ball and cricket have made us, and again, I want 
 you to see that we may be nothing much, but we're 
 diffe illy I thirds games have made us a 
 
 ;ion. They've taught us courage, discipline, 
 ci.lly they've taught us to be 
 a." 
 " I ; puzzled- 
 
 d Rugby and had passed to 
 anoti with which you were racing to the 
 
 . given up your chance to score so that your side 
 ;e — you'd know." 
 
 : . I toped his gubject, 
 
 though I haken in my determination to gain 
 
 Edith, he famed ODOU DM the fact that I was differ 
 fundamentally. A new misery crept, over me, for I 
 I 1 loved Edith; It was 
 
 • ■iily my education estranged me. 
 
 14 'I'ln I her things," said Mr. Lawton. "You 
 
 don't dress as we do, even if you try. Your pleasures 
 
 i ' rent; you go in for art, not in reason as we do, 
 
276 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 but in a funny way; you won't mind if I call it a 
 bit neurotic. Your ideas — your standards — they're all 
 different." 
 
 Misery turned to anger. 
 
 " Then," I cried, " all this means that you don't think 
 me good enough, apart from^money." 
 
 " I did not " , 
 
 " Would you consent if I had a thousand a year ? " 
 
 " Well, that's hardly fair. I might, but I shouldn't 
 like it." 
 
 " Then it is true I'm not good enough. You wouldn't 
 like it. That is to say that because I'm different I'm inferior. 
 Oh, yes, it does mean that ; if difference meant superiority 
 it would not bar me. You despise the foreigner. But — 
 but what am I to do ? How can I cease to be different ? 
 I'm more English than I was, for I've tried, I've wanted 
 to ; you don't know how fond I am of England and the 
 English, that I want to settle here, to live here, to be an 
 Englishman." There was a shake in my voice, but 
 I repressed a desire to weep, which would have been most 
 un-English. " It isn't right, it isn't fair. You let us 
 come here, work here, settle here — and then you won't 
 recognise us as human beings, you won't have us as equals. 
 You'll eat and drink with us, and play with us, and have 
 us in your clubs — but you're only tolerating us, looking 
 down on us all the time. It's horrible, it's making 
 outcasts of us — pariahs." 
 
 I stopped, breathless, wet-eyed now in spite of my 
 efforts. An idea began to gnaw at me: Edith? Did 
 she too look down upon me, though carried away by a 
 passing fancy ? Mr. Lawton was speaking again, beg 
 me not to exaggerate, pointing out how — foreign that 
 I hardly listened, in my new misery. Now it 
 my nominal faith he attacked. 
 
 " You're a Roman Catholic," he said, " now " 
 
 " I'm an atheist." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know, an agnostic. But still you've been 
 
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 277 
 
 brought up as a Roman Catholic ; we're Church people, 
 and you know very well that I think a man has a right 
 lieve what he chooses. There are lots of Roman 
 Catholics in England, and I don't know that I like 
 mixed marriages, not only on account of the children 
 but . . . but, I hardly know ..." 
 
 Mr. Lawton hardly knew, but, little by little, his tangled 
 nces managed to convey his meaning to me because 
 my mind had become as sensitive as a raw wound. 
 Better than he did himself, I grasped the hidden fear and 
 •d the Protestant Englishman feels for Rome, the 
 its, the sumptuousness of the mass. It was a plea 
 for simplicity, for freedom from theocracy, for demo- 
 cratic government. Through the mouth of Mr. Lawton 
 spoke the ancestor, two hundred and fifty years dead 
 who had shouted " No Popery ! " and marched to New- 
 bury with the Parliament men, or sailed on the Mayflower 
 to escape the Stuart — the popish, foreign Stuart. Religion, 
 nominal, was vital. He believed in the imprint 
 )ine. lie thought that it must have made me sly, 
 3 -. He thought it must have filtered into my moral 
 irds. 
 " You don't live as we do. Your attitude to women 
 — well, I don't set up to be a saint, but still you know 
 what I mean. It's not my business to inquire how you 
 . but you'll not deny that Frenchmen generally 
 f entangled, lose respect for women ..." 
 1 tried miserably to make him sec how my love for 
 h had opened my eyes to the meaning of purity, the 
 thing, the decent thing; how I had made 
 f chivalry and honour, and would uphold them 
 because I had adopted them at a mature age. He dis- 
 
 miv plea; I fell thai he doubted me, suspected 
 
 that at bottom he did not believe a foreigner could 
 
 '• ' i to tell the truth, to refrain from sharp 
 
 oman, to play the game — all kbit 
 
 • wa i a foreigner. 
 
278 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 ii 
 
 No," he wound up, " you'll see one day I'm doing 
 you a good turn. You wouldn't be happy." 
 
 " What ! " I cried. 
 
 " You wouldn't. Edith would displease you because 
 she's not so keen, so assertive, so . . ■ . showy as the 
 Frenchwomen. And you'd jar on her, oh, for all sorts 
 of reasons — your accent — your clothes. If you boasted, 
 you don't do it often now, but sometimes, she'd shiver — 
 and there's other things, being faithful — well ! " 
 
 I did not reply. It was all over, from his point of view. 
 
 " Don't let us say any more about it," said Mr. Lawton, 
 kindly enough. " I've spoken plainly, but you would 
 have it, and perhaps it is best to understand one another. 
 Of course you can't come here for a time. You see that ? " 
 
 * Yes." 
 
 " Later on, when Edith is more sensible. And don't 
 let it interfere with business; we're -very pleased with 
 you there. Now promise me that you will not try to 
 communicate with Edith in any way." 
 
 " I can't do that." 
 
 " Oh, you must." 
 
 There was a mental tussle ; we were nran against man 
 for a moment, no longer employer and clerk. Mr. 
 Lawton was too generous to use his advant; 
 
 " No," I said at length, " not unless she says so." 
 
 Mr Lawton thought for a moment. Then — 
 
 " Very well. I don't mind. I will give'you an oppor- 
 tunity ; I shall tell her I forbid it and she will obey." 
 
 I looked defiance at the fathers Oh, I could rely 
 upon the Dresden Shepherdess; she was not strong, 
 but armed with my love I trusted her. 
 
 "Good-night," said Mr. Lawton; "have some whisky 
 before you go." 
 
 book my head* !i was past midnight. Mr. Lawton 
 opened the do< the wAll opposite, 
 
 rigid, still in her Edith stood, her face 
 
 Hushed, her eyes downcast. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 
 
 We remained all three as motionless as a tableau 
 if. I was in the hall, face to face with Edith; 
 id me, in the doorway, I could feel Mr. Lawton. 
 ils crowded upon me, Edith, as rigid as if she had 
 been petrified, in a gown of white muslin, with little 
 knots of roses circling the hem — the flowered wallpaper 
 — the big, modern Lowestoft bowl full of visiting-cards. 
 Then Mr. Lawton spoke. 
 " Edith ! what are you doing here ? " 
 She did not reply. 
 
 44 Go up to your room at once." Mr. Lawton spoke 
 in low, hurried tones, and a diabolical pleasure fdled me 
 as I realised that the fear that the servants had not gone 
 to bed hung heayy over him. But, then, we were in 
 ; the first thing to do was to avoid a scene, 
 
 h was not. on her part, o make a scene cither; 
 
 she looked up and said, quite calmly, in a strained wice : 
 "I wanted on, father, BO 1 came down. All 
 
 the others are in \ 
 
 44 You can Bee me to-morrow morning," said Mr. 
 !y. 
 i n I joined in. A sense almost of the theatre 
 d me to i tter oul a1 6nce. 
 
 e c Mr, Lawton/' I said, "we both know 
 
 lh knew t^-it I was asking ] 
 
 to mairy her: down to know your deci 
 Then iderful in that* Well, I 
 tell fuses. He does not 
 
 think me good enough " 
 
 '- 
 
280 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " I have told you that that is not the point, Cadoresse, 
 but I'm not going over it again. Now, Edith, go to 
 your room." 
 
 Anger filled me, and I spoke quickly, fearing that 
 Edith would obey : she might, for most English girls 
 have been kicked into the gutter by their fathers and told 
 by their mothers that it is ladylike to sit in it. 
 
 " No, Edith, don't go. Let's have it out. Your 
 father refuses his consent, and I have refused to accept 
 that as final. I said that I would take my dismissal 
 only from you. Come, let us both go into the dining- 
 room — and if you tell me it's over — very well." I 
 turned to Mr. Lawton, and I think my tone was ironical : 
 " I promise I won't make a scene." 
 
 " Impossible at this time of night," said Mr. Lawton. 
 " I said I would give you an opportunity, and I will. 
 Be here to-morrow morning at ten and you shall have it. 
 Now, good-night. Edith, go to your room." 
 
 " Don't go, Edith," I said. 
 
 The girl looked at us in turn. Ah, my spirit fainted : 
 she did not go, but she did not look like a rebel ; her 
 father's will and mine held her motionless as the hand- 
 kerchief in the middle of the rope when there is a tug-of- 
 war. I might win, but, if I won, would I win ? 
 
 " Go upstairs, Edith," said Mr. Lawton, rather louder. 
 
 " Edith, stay," I murmured, in the low voice of which 
 I knew the power. 
 
 " Don't you defy me, Cadoresse," said Mr. Lawton, 
 with at last a hint of the theatre. 
 
 " I am not defying you, Mr. Lawton. All I say is 
 
 this: our engagement has been discovered to-night. 
 
 I have had it out with your son. J have had it out with 
 
 you. Now I am going to have it out with Edith, and we 
 
 ! know the. end as well as the beginning. I refuse 
 
 I have a right to know. It is not fair . . . 
 
 (ah, faint flicker of hesitation, Englishman !) — to con 
 
 i Edith and me to a night of . . . well, to suspense. 
 
ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 281 
 
 We have done no wrong, it is not fair we should suffer. 
 Now, Mr. Lawton, allow us to go into the dining-room 
 for half-an-hour. When we come out, if Edith sends me 
 away for ever, I'll " — (my lips twisted into a wretched, 
 wriggling smile) — " I'll take it like an Englishman." 
 
 Mr. Lawton hesitated for a moment, looked at me so 
 angrily that I felt he would not have hesitated to throw 
 me out of the house and to carry Edith upstairs, but 
 for the probable scene. Then he gave way. 
 
 " All right," he said. " Perhaps you're right. Go in, 
 
 you two, and I'll sit here and wait. Take your time — 
 
 it shan't be said you didn't have your chance, Cadoresse; 
 
 put on your coat and take your hat : when^you come 
 
 out of that room I don't want to speak to you again 
 
 to-night." He stepped away from the door, held it 
 
 open after we had entered the dining-room. " Edith, 
 
 understand this : I forbid you to marry Mr. Cadoresse. 
 
 I forbid the engagement, I forbid you to communicate 
 
 with .Mr. Cadoresse ;ifter to-night. I have legal rights 
 
 h I will not use, and other weapons which I will 
 
 i ther. All I tell you is that I forbid the engage- 
 
 (1 order you to break it off at once. Now you 
 
 can give Mr. Cadoresse his answer." He closed the door. 
 
 r some moments we did not speak. With downcast 
 
 1 each other, as if we already knew that we 
 
 joined in an incomprehensible battle. And when 
 
 at last I up I found in Edith's face a rigidity 
 
 which n-.v. !• <1 fear rather than excitement; though my 
 
 pl< usurably is when I am going 
 
 . . . with Fortune, I tOO was not without fear, 
 
 for I was looking upon the girl who loved me, who was 
 
 still affianced to me- -end I could not know whether, 
 
 in a f<w minutes, she would .still be mine. Perhaps 
 
 i did not speak, bade the moment tarry 
 
 and. insl at up to her, took her in my arms. 
 
 i did ii with a sudden move- 
 
 both arms round my neck and clutched 
 
282 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 me to her, silent and trembling, and pressed her body 
 against me, burying her face upon my shoulder, all taut 
 with an anxiety that increased my own. As she grasped 
 me, and as my hands knotted about her, as I felt her 
 fingers, cold as any stones,*upon my neck, and the burning 
 of her cheek upon mine, the whole essence of us blended, 
 and a formless, passionate prayer came out of me that 
 I might absorb this girl I needed, that we might be made 
 one, henceforth dwell in the same body. During that 
 moment I believed in God, threw myself abased before 
 One who might give me my desire. $, 
 
 We stood, close-locked, and our breathing was heavy, 
 heavy with sobs rather than longing. And, truly enough, 
 the sobs were very near. Edith's breath came quicker 
 and quicker; she choked a little, faint sounds rose from 
 the back of her throat, horrible, repressed little sounds 
 that tore at me, brought tears to my own eyes, for I 
 knew she was trying to be brave and finding it difficult, 
 then impossible. Now she was crying, almost silently, 
 but as if she would never stop; I could feel her tears 
 upon my cheek, and, as I half-led and half-carried her to 
 the big leather armchair, my eyes were dimmed by my 
 own tears. There I held her upon my knees, until her 
 weeping became less violent, remembering bitterly that 
 once before only had I held her upon my knees, that 
 night when I told her my love. At last her tears ceased 
 to Bow; with an uncertain hand she made a movement 
 which showed she wanted her handkerchief; I gently 
 i her eyes, while she lay in my arms, exhausted, 
 her head thrown back on my shoulder. When I had done 
 she gave me a little cheerless smile and said : 
 " My dear, you must let me go. We must talk.** 
 " No, no," I murmured, and clasped her closer. In- 
 stinct told me that if I loosed her I lost her. I was 
 right, for she struggled to her' fed, and at once the sense 
 of nearness, of fusion, was no longer there. Without 
 ict we were not one, but two. Edith also felt it, 
 
ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 283 
 
 wanted it so, refused me her hand, as if she guessed that, 
 hand in hand with me, she would not be free. Indeed, 
 it is hard to reason when hands are linked. 
 44 Do you still love me ? " I asked. 
 " Can you ask ? " she replied. 
 
 4. made as if to seize her, but she put out her arm ; at 
 that distance, now that we stood in front of each other, 
 she already seemed lost. 
 
 44 N lid, 44 wait, Lucien ; we must talk. We must 
 
 hat to do." 
 But if you love me," I said, 44 there is nothing to 
 i ! you, I can't do without you 
 
 . . . I'll wait for you all my life if I must " 
 
 44 i :<lith. softly, ' 4 I'll wait, Lucien." 
 
 "Ah — my darling — yes, we must wait; oh, not long, 
 I hope. You will tell him you can't give me up, that 
 you'll marry nobody else — you will tell him you'll wait 
 
 for ever " 
 
 44 Yes, Lucien," said Edith, gravely, 4 ' I'll tell him. 
 
 -but you know what he said — he won't let us be 
 
 — " 
 
 " 11<- won't let us be engaged ! Well, what does that 
 
 matter? We are 1, we remain engaged until — - 
 
 iy (billing, my love, you're not going tb give me up? " 
 
 '■ I cm.':." said Edith, weakly, "you've got me. But 
 
 ed if father won't let us." 
 
 Qh, but v must. You can't be trodden 
 
 flown like this, you will be twenty-one in a few months; 
 
 then you can marry whom you please. Fou won*! need 
 
 You will, my darling, you will?" 
 
 44 1 « id Edith, and she shook ho- head. 
 
 M f cant defy father. I ean't. I'm not — 
 
 oh. i good, bui Pm afraid — I can't." 
 
 •" \ if you I.,. 
 
 44 Oh, don't hurt me like that, Lucien. I can't — 
 I ean't ' Qg that will happen if I do that. 
 
284 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 leather will be angry, and mother will be on his side, 
 Muriel too — she'll say you haven't got enough money " 
 
 " I shall, don't be afraid." 
 
 " Oh, that's not what I mean. I know it's weak of me, 
 but I can't think out whether they're right or wrong, 
 I just can't stand their all being against me — I know 
 father doesn't understand us, no more does mother, 
 she's forgotten all about love — and I know Muriel's 
 hard, and that Hugh doesn't care — but they'd all be 
 against me, and I can't bear it. I can't live here like 
 that " 
 
 ** Don't live here, my darling, come with me. Promise 
 me you will, and to-morrow I'll leave the firm, find 
 another billet, marry you. Oh, it won't be long. You 
 love me, don't you ? you wouldn't want me to earn 
 much?" 
 
 " It's not that, it's not that." Edith shook her head 
 wearily. " You know I love you, Lucien ; you know 
 I'd marry you and live in one room, but I can't. Oh," 
 she added quickly, " I know what you'll say : if we go 
 away together soon it won't matter their being against 
 me, for I shan't live with them, but they'd still be against 
 me, and I'd know it : it'd be almost the same thing." 
 
 I did not reply, for no concrete argument avails against 
 the imponderable. I was frightened, too, for this 
 heightened my sense of difference : no French girl could 
 have thought such a thing, have been . . . mystical. 
 
 " You see," Edith went on, " I can't disobey father. 
 It would be wrong." 
 
 " Wrong," I cried, " but, Edith, when one loves ..." 
 
 " It would be wrong," she repeated, obstinately. 
 " Perhaps he doesn't understand, but he's my father. 
 Besides, he's so fond of me. Oh, Lucien, you don't 
 know how fond he is of me. When I was at school he 
 used to write to me every week, to send me extra pocket- 
 money hidden in the lining of ties, because we weren't 
 allowed to have much — and it's still me he likes to take 
 
ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 285 
 
 out alone. He's so fond of me, I couldn't hurt him, 
 I couldn't ..." 
 
 44 He's being cruel to-night." 
 
 44 Yes — but he thinks he's doing his best for me . . . 
 it's because he's so fond of me. Oh, Lucien, don't make 
 me hurt him." 
 
 44 But it's me you're hurting," I cried. I seized her 
 hands, clasped her against me. " You're hurting me, 
 don't you see that ? I love you, I want you, my love, I 
 need you . . . and you want to give me up. Oh, yes, you 
 do, you wouldn't obey if you didn't. No, it's not true, 
 forgive me, my darling, forgive me." I pressed kisses 
 upon her bent neck. 4t No, I know you love me, and 
 it's only because you're full of the sweetness, the tenderness 
 I love, that you think of giving me up. But you 
 mustn't, you mustn't ..." 
 
 sping her hard in my arms I covered her face with 
 
 es; in broken phrases I begged her to cleave to me, 
 
 fy the world for me; I strained to give her some of 
 
 my own energy, to exasperate, to inflame her; I was 
 
 all artifice and yet all my artifices were spontaneous, for 
 
 I was trying every door as may, without much thought, 
 
 i who is seeking for an outlet from a burning building. 
 
 She lay passive in my arms under the hot stream of my 
 
 too weak to cry, to respond to my passion. 
 
 Desp 1 me, for I realised the quality of her love 
 
 ne. It was absolute, would shrink from no agony 
 
 nf waiting, but it had no activity, no courage. It could 
 
 rything, but do nothing. It was all yield, devoid 
 
 Edith would love me all her life, but, 
 
 . by education and tradition, she might be lost 
 
 me. 
 ■" \ii, Edith," I murmured, "don't give in. Fight 
 
 '• I lit," said Edith, in a low, tired voice. 
 
 11 Bui you must, you must. Everybody must fight." 
 d my hold of her, retaining only her ha 
 
286 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " You must fight, that's life, or die. Fighting is the 
 destiny of man, and nothing good ean be had of 
 unless you fight for it. You are born with everything 
 against you, the law, your parents, your family, 
 ventions, fashions; there's the law telling you what you 
 mustn't do, your parents telling you what to do, your 
 family asking you to consider their feelings, and con- 
 ventions saying that they must dominate you because 
 they are there. Oh, don't, don't," I cried, passionately, 
 " don't give in. It's nothing but a conspiracy — it's 
 a fraud — it doesn't exist. You only think it exists, 
 all that. If you say you won't obey it all falls down. 
 The world doesn't want to*' give you the good things; 
 my darling, there aren't enough good things for every- 
 body, and if you want them you must take them. Oh, 
 don't give me up ; be bold, be free. Take your happi i 
 my darling, take it by force. Force is the only way, 
 force is the only thing that makes you fine. Until you've 
 fought you're no good, and it's better to have fought and 
 lost than not to have fought. Fight for me, light for 
 
 love, and you'll win, you can, you can " 
 
 " I can't fight," said Edith, miserably. " I can't." 
 There was a long pause. I dropped her hands, looked 
 with new eyes at her white face, her downcast 
 round which were appearing shadows which would, on 
 the morrow, be purple ring.-,. My plea for contest had 
 excited me, and an impersonal fury seized me when 
 I thought of the soft people of the world who could not 
 or would not fight. For 1 am a fighting-cock, and I 
 se the barn-door fowls; I know that the barn 
 
 do not think mueh of me, call me braggart, and 
 
 <>f bombast, and <>f brabbles, but that 
 
 not trouble me : I know that I am made of h 
 
 p stuff. And, as I looked upon myself in hateful 
 
 complacency, my impersonal fury l> onal, 
 
 for the softness of Edith galled me. Ah, J had wanted 
 
 that softness when I was strong; now that victory 
 
ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 287 
 
 seemed less certain I wanted to find in Edith a useful 
 hard] 
 
 What do we want of women then? Vanity that is 
 humble, courage with a hint of cowardice, purity soaked 
 with passion. It is too much to ask. And now I, who 
 had stretched out hungry lips for honey, raged because 
 s no vinegar in the precious store. She could 
 not fight for me. Ah ! then she would not. She did 
 not love me. I was no lover of hers, but merely a school- 
 dream. Cadoresse, you strutting gallant, you had 
 thrown yourself away. 
 
 " You can't? " I said in an unexpectedly harsh voice. 
 
 n't? Indeed. Then you do not love mc.# . .*. 
 
 ih did not reply, but sat down in the armchair 
 
 and hid her face in her hands. I was too angry to care; 
 
 I wanted to break my Dresden Shepherdess, as a mis- 
 
 ms child, untaught by experience, smashes a toy 
 
 whether there is anything inside-. 
 
 " You do not love me," I repeated. " You have not 
 
 got the faculty. You are like the rest of your people, 
 
 you do not know what love means. Answer," I cried 
 
 ly, after a pause, " but no, I suppose you won't 
 
 You're like the rest of the English — you're 
 
 not goin^f to defend yourself — you're too afraid of making 
 
 a scene. Oh, I know you now, you and all the rest, 
 
 and your damned discipline, your damned hypocrisy. 
 
 don't feel much, and what you feel you'll hide — 
 
 you'll Id what I like, but you'll keep your temper 
 
 — you'll hurt rue 1 too proud to speak — and 
 
 you'll hurl if because you're toe proud to cry out. 
 
 i1 human beings at all, norn: of you — you've 
 
 it fogged out of you; y<.u c . and cry 
 
 tid bung> 
 ll gone, .-ill the humanity, .-ill the One beastlin< 
 man. d-up, mummified. Where's your 
 
 l \ ... or did you go to 
 ter with Hugh 
 
288 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Edith's hands trembled upon her face. 
 
 " I see, you won't speak. I suppose it isn't all pride 
 and education then. Perhaps it's not worth while? 
 Perhaps you see, after all, that I'm not good enough — 
 too different, as your father says. , Perhaps you won't 
 fight because you don't want to, because I'm not worth 
 fighting for. I see now — I understand. North is North 
 and South is South, and never the twain shall meet. 
 I ought not to have left my country, and the women who 
 are like my mother " 
 
 Edith's hands dropped into her lap, but my anger had 
 given way to a bitterness so cold that the twist of her lips, 
 the dilation of her eyes inspired in me no pity. Indeed, 
 her pain filled me with an incomprehensible delight. 
 I had hurt her, I must hurt her again. 
 
 " I suppose you think I'd better go back to them," 
 I sneered. " Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're giving 
 me good advice. Well, I am going. I am, I am " 
 
 Edith's features did not move ; they were set in their 
 strained lines, but I heard her whisper : " Lucien ! " 
 
 " Too late," I said, sombrely. " It's good-bye." 
 
 I seized my hat and coat, and, before turning to go, 
 looked at her again. She did not rise, but held out her 
 hands : 
 
 " If you come back, Lucien," she murmured, and a 
 knot of furrows formed between her eyebrows ; " if ever 
 you come back " 
 
 " If I come back ! " I cried. " Oh, indeed, if I come 
 back " 
 
 I can hear myself laughing as I opened the door, 
 laughing as I did not know I could laugh. 
 
 , 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 
 
 I do not remember very well what thoughts occupied 
 
 me as I went down the steps of the house at Lancaster 
 
 . except one : " I shall go home, back to France." 
 
 here to do, now that I knew 
 
 ■lish to be marshalled against me in phalanx? 
 
 And though I did not actually go back to France for 
 
 time, though I preferred to go to the dovil, the 
 
 thought clove to me. For home-sickness insists. In 
 
 L »fblt, they would know me, understand me 
 
 so weil as to take no notice of me : and I did not 
 
 be noticed just tjhen. I wanted to slink away 
 
 into a corner where I should see nothing, where noth- 
 
 ; I did not want to read English 
 
 with Englishmen, to interest myself in 
 
 : I wanted rest, mental sleep, as if my 
 
 1 been exhausted T>y its three terrific bouts. I 
 
 for it comes aJl too readily to the young 
 
 who lives in furnished rooms ; he has but to abandon 
 
 effort him, as a publisher who 
 
 circulation fade a* 
 d me the door of my bedroom, 
 ,11. • :is instiiielivclv as <]• 
 
 of r< lief. Th< 
 
 i to fee] nay defeat, even to 
 
 Edith i 1 was numbed; I pulled off nay clothes, 
 
 which f<l< heavy and complicated, threw mv-.eif on the 
 
 bed, too tired to | i > pyjamas; I must then have 
 
 rled under th<- bedclothes, for, when I 
 
 woke up. late next day, I found I had slept in my under- 
 
 L 289 
 
290 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 clothes, leaving the light switched on. I made no effort 
 to go to Barbezan, allowed my landlady to think me 
 unwell and to bring me my lunch in bed. I was still 
 torpid, and when I tried to think, while the setting sun 
 fell on my window, I could not pull together any mental 
 threads. I was contented, contented as one is when the 
 surgical operation is over and pain has not yet come. 
 
 It was in the night I decided to go back to Barbezan 
 the next day. I found in myself no hatred for Lawton 
 and his son ; my work waited and I saw no reason why 
 I sriould rebel against it. Indeed, I think I surprised my 
 masters when I returned, coolly excusing my absence 
 by a plea of illness which they had, tactfully enough, 
 forestalled on my behalf. Neither commented on the 
 happenings of the fourteenth. Mr. Lawton handed me 
 a sheaf of bills of lading, so that I might apportion them 
 among the available Lisbon boats ; later in the day he 
 sent for me to reprimand me for having arranged an illegal 
 deck cargo from London, which should have been taken 
 at Antwerp; and Hugh began to settle with me the 
 details of the transfer of his work to me, which was. to be 
 made at the end of the month. We did not discuss our 
 private affairs; we did not want to, and I think the 
 Lawtons were so relieved by my attitude that an unwonted 
 courtesy born of remorse stole into their speech. 
 
 That is all I remember. In the olFice I seem, for a 
 fortnight, to have gone about my duties as efficiently as 
 usual, subject to the errors into which my imagination 
 precipitated me from time to time. Out of the office I 
 lived my ordinary life : occasional games of chess with 
 Stanley, long walks at night (purposeless now and proof 
 against temptation), evenings at theatres or music-halls; 
 on one of the Sundays I sculled all alone from Hampton 
 Court to Staines and back; I was so calm, so ordinary 
 that I deceived Stanley, at whose house I went to dine. 
 ] did not quite deceive him, for he said : 
 
 " Don't know what's up with you, Cadoressc ; you're 
 quieter than you were. I suppose you're turning into 
 an Englishman after all." 
 
 That stab should have roused me, but the time had not 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 291 
 
 come : my emotional chord had been strained and did not 
 vibrate. It needed time to recover its sensitiveness, and, 
 little by little, I found it did, that grief was stealing upon 
 me, slowly as a cloud across the moon on a light wind. 
 I did not yet suffer acutely, but I began to feel an atmo- 
 sphere, a peculiar one, for it affected me in the office. 
 Perhaps Barker first stimulated me when he asked me, 
 elaborately casual, whether I'd been to the Lawtons' 
 lately. I replied by a curt negative, but I was put on 
 my guard; soon I discovered that I interested the staff, 
 that Tyler and Merton came to talk to me of "life in 
 the West End" in a way which suggested impalpable 
 raillery; Farr, who seldom addressed me, took the trouble 
 
 11 me that there was nothing like a decent country 
 giil. When asked to define "country" he fell back on 
 tlit- girls "down his way." I managed to hold myself 
 in, but I realised that all this was not fortuitous, that 
 they knew something, if not everything, that the facts 
 of my struggle had leaked out. How? I shall never 
 know, for facts leak through crevices as small as those 
 which, on board ship, will let out steam. From Mrs. 
 I in a friend, from her to some husband in the 
 
 rice to his head clerk and on to our own . . . 
 I was not sure that the clerks knew, but 
 
 pected that they did, and I began to hate them, 
 
 .r them as a weak thing fears a strong one that may 
 hurt it, and to hate th< in more because I feared them. 
 The : . strong alkali which made me 
 
 wine- I me; by bating I began to regain my 
 
 But, because I did not know. 
 
 lish did not boldly come out and laugh 
 
 at me, I could not have the rough-and-tumble I needed 
 
 tke me active again. 
 Then the thing came. One morning, as I sat down 
 at ii, ; found a sheet of paper pinned on nay blotter; 
 
 Bfc <>d : 
 
 OINQ OO, 
 
 ksse, a Knight just so. 
 But the Enolish Hose said ■ oh, no, no* 
 To Cadoresse, the Kniuht just so." 
 
292 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 I think I read the doggerel five or six times to make 
 quite sure of its application to me. I felt my face burn. . . . 
 Yes, they knew, , not everything, for they evidently 
 thought it was Edith had refused the Frenchman. A 
 spasm shook me, a spasm of rage so violent that, had I 
 not then been alone, I should have fallen on the first 
 man I saw and tried to tear^out his windpipe. But }t 
 was early, and I was able to contain myself when Barker 
 came in, to say nothing to the others, though I covertly 
 glanced at their faces to surprise in them the irony which 
 would expose their guilt. They remained impassive, sol 
 English in their attitude of aloofness that I had to repress j 
 my desire to go to each one of the staff and suddenly show 
 him the rhyme, asiing him : " Did you write this? " I, 
 did not do it, for l was now English enough myself to | 
 shrink a little from scene's ; to this day I do not know 
 who the author was, for there was no clue. The doggerel 
 was typed on one of our machines and on our own paper ;, 
 it might be the work of any one of the staff of thirty, for 
 nothing proved that my affairs did not interest those 
 with whom I did not associate every day. 
 
 For several days Hived with the thing; having learned 
 it by heart I found myself repeating it to myself over 
 and over again, some other self forcing it upon my sentient 
 self and repeating it to me, insistently, monotonously, 
 maddeningly. A little tune composed itself and a demon 
 began to sing it to me as I walked ; even when I stopped 
 my ears with both hands and concentrated so hard that 
 sweat started from my forehead ; sometimes the demon 
 became fanciful, introduced variations : 
 
 * " A FliOGGY WOULD A WOOING QO, 
 A WOOING GO, A WOOING GO, 
 A PSOOOY WOULD A WOOING GO, 
 
 ilKIGll EO ! SAI!) Kl)IK . . . 
 
 A ( a Kmoit just so, 
 
 A Knight just so, a Knight just so,' 
 is not a man quite com ms il i 
 Quite comms il faut, quite comme il waux . . ." 
 
 I could not get rid of it. It rumbled at me from the 
 wheels as' I rode in the Tube, it tinkled out of barrel- 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 293 
 
 >rgan tunes, it screamed itself out of the wind . . . and 
 when I woke in the middle of the night, it came, low and 
 )bstinate, out of the innermost Me. It was at night I 
 earned to bite my pillow so that I might not shriek out 
 I was beginning to believe : " I'm going mad . . . 
 am mad. . . ." 
 
 One effect of the rhyme was notable. My hatred of 
 he clerks did not fog my brain, but cleared it; I ceased 
 o see them as magical Englishmen, began to watch and 
 nalvse them, to find a queer, malignant pleasure in seeing 
 be Ugly where I had once seen the splendid. Fair gave 
 ne the first indication by suddenly asking me to come 
 o Homsey and see his wife, the most wonderful woman 
 the world, his son Norman and the roses of his garden 
 vhile they were still blooming. 
 
 i ouil find it all right," he said, "in the Edgerley 
 
 1 Fairfield ' is the name of the house." 
 
 I refused, almost rudely, for I suspected that this sudden 
 
 outburst of friendliness from my old enemy meant that 
 
 i<- wanted to gloat over my downfall or that the most 
 
 onderful woman in the world wished to find out all 
 
 bout it. lie explained that he had called " Farr- 
 
 ield " after himself when the house was new and name- 
 
 1 99 him and his class. I watched him and his 
 
 <1 them in conversation so that their acci- 
 
 1 confidences might swell the total of my hatred; 
 
 •.■thing that waa despicable and snobbish in them 
 
 heered me, for il convinced me that my race was not, 
 
 fter all, inferior to theirs. I know with what delight I 
 
 that Barker reproved the new office-boy for 
 
 rig two halfpenn} tter instead of a 
 
 it look well,'' said Barker. Dull, 
 
 r ""l . . . as if it mattered to a free spirit! 
 
 it was Tyler, who wis about to be married, 
 
 while 1 I hat he was going to have 
 
 Turkey carpet . . . thai minster Turkey; and a 
 
 no . . .an upright grand. I smiled as I pre- 
 I tailed more broadly as Tyler bo 
 to be, for the latter was quite the gent, 
 
294 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 a medical student . . . dental. Whether it was Farr 
 suspecting Mayfair of every vice and kneeling at Hornsey 
 in idiotic adoration of Regent's Park, or old Purkis 
 expressing disapproval of a system which paid Harry 
 Lauder a wage superior to that of the Prime Minister, 
 but accepting the situation when he found that his wife 
 appreciated the comedian, I felt surrounded by a hateful 
 group of snobs, frauds, men of the villa breed. So much 
 to the good : if I could not be an Englishman, at least I 
 was no suburban. 
 
 But the emptiness grew round me as my aloofness 
 increased; I paid the penalty of the new status I was; 
 acquiring in my own mind. Unable to call on the LawtonsJ 
 shunning the Raleighs, the Kents and their circle, afraid 1 
 to go to Stanley lest he should vivisect me, I fell back 
 upon myself, upon my bitter loneliness. Neither work, 
 nor the facile pleasures of the London streets, from which 
 too often I now returned unsatisfied, availed me. For 
 I could not drink; the third whisky stupefied instead of 
 exhilarating me, and I was unwell the next day; and 
 thejight flirtations of omnibus tops and London parks 
 had been spoiled for me by my great adventure. 
 
 Edith had reconquered me, and now I suffered as I 
 had never suffered before. Her light, graceful body* 
 her clear laugh, the soft look of her eyes when they rested 
 upon me, her voice, suddenly low when it spoke of love, 
 everything of her rose up before me now that I had lost 
 her, more precious and rarer than ever before. Too 
 desperate and too proud to resume in Lancaster Gate 
 the sentry-go of my early .gallantry, I was not able to 
 resist looking anxiously into the faces of girls as I p; i 
 them in the street, hoping a little it would be Edith 1 
 saw, and fearing that it might be Edith, and hoping too 
 that something, the arch of an eyebrow or the cur 
 a lip, would recall her to me. Sometimes I tried to drive 
 the image away, reasoned with myself and told myself 
 I was sentimental, neurotic, that I must forget her and 
 make another life; but I reacted very soon from thosw 
 moods and, leaning back in some comfortable chain 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 295 
 
 gave myself up to a day-dream with a delicious sense of 
 ad guilt. Whether I loved her then, lam 
 not sure, for so much hatred mingled with my passion, 
 but certainly she occupied and filled me as she had never 
 done before, and often she called to me, faintly and wist- 
 fully; sometimes my mind clothed her in a white pannier 
 skirt, all flowered with pink roses, dressed her hair high 
 and powdered it, set a patch upon* her delicate painted 
 cheek and then bade her curtsey to me as an actual 
 
 <len Shepherdess dethroned from her pedestal. In 
 other moments she was neat and shirt-waisted, in others 
 yet, all languid, in gold-flecked gauze, upon a bank of 
 peonies. And often I ended by weeping, by digging my 
 into my palms be cause I did not want to weep : 
 for the joy one has not had turns to bitterness ; it may be 
 that St. Anthony suffered more after than during the 
 temptation. f 
 
 never came to me, a dream of reconquest. 
 Edith had fled back into the ideal land whence I had 
 
 I her to me; no longer Edith, she had rejoined the 
 phantom I girls among whom I had thought to 
 
 my mate. In those days she seemed, in her dream- 
 
 . to belong to another world, to live in some Eden 
 from which I had been driven, never to return, because 
 
 g foreign I was unclean. And yet I longed for her, 
 
 needed her; deepei and deeper I sank into gloom 
 
 and isolation, and I wanted her with a more insistent 
 
 me does not heal a wound when both heart 
 
 and i : thai is too great a complication. I 
 
 . wi II knowing that whosoever hath 
 
 drunk shall i be thirsty, but resigned myself to 
 
 everlasting thirst. 
 
 II 
 
 The year was flying. Hut four days before, on Christ- 
 mas Eve, I had been handed an envelope in which, 
 ther with B Christmas box, was a typed notice to 
 .12 " thai his salary was raised to three hundred a year, 
 
296 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 for Barbezan & Co., who wished to allay jealousy among 
 the staff, concealed from the typists the names of those 
 fortunates who benefited by rises. And now, gloomily 
 enough, I was substituting pleasures for happiness; I 
 had been to the theatre, in the stalls, as I could afford 
 a stall on three hundred a year, and now sat before some 
 cold chicken and half a bottle of Moselle in a big Strand 
 restaurant. I had thought to find there gaiety, and there 
 gaiety lived indeed, for the air was filled with excited 
 babble, with the band's impartial selections £rom " La 
 Boheme " and " The Country Girl." Much light, a red 
 glow about the velvet seats, glitters on the gildings of 
 the' walls and about the crystal of the chandeliers. A 
 general impression of movement, easy and fleeting adven- 
 ture, and for me a feeling of scparatcness, almost dis- 
 embodiment. I had not felt my loneliness in the theatre, 
 but I felt it bitterly in this room where everybody had 
 come in twos or in groups, where such as came singly 
 nodded carelessly to friendly suppers-parties and wandered 
 oh to some appointed table. I had no appointed table, 
 sat at my own as a dog before its platter, and a sourness 
 filled me as I looked at the couples, the dozens, the scores 
 of couples, the parties of four which were only duplicated 
 couples. Young Englishmen in perfect evening clothes, 
 with girls who were not of their class, but lovely in their 
 excitement ; swarthy foreigners showing London to hand- 
 some London girls and ignorant of the contempt the 
 English felt for them; middle-aged men^ some with 
 beaming, some with irritable wives, and some with the 
 obvious unwed, divided in their allegiance between woman 
 and wine, I hated them all. I hated their gaiety, their 
 freedom from care, the security of the English, the ignor- 
 ance, boldness of the foreigners; I hated them because 
 they were not alone, because they had at least the illusion 
 of love, because the bubble of their self-esteem had not 
 been pricked. And in the horror of my solitude I felt 
 ready for any expedient, for any ad venture, however low, 
 if only I might be gulled with pretty speeches, hold some 
 falsely friendly hand ... if only I could cease to be 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 297 
 
 alone. . . . And still the double door revolved in its 
 glass case, hiding and revealing these ghosts that went 
 in and out endlessly. Ghosts ! yes, they -were ghosts to 
 me, ghosts whom my touch would dispel. . . . 
 
 Two £irls seemed to have forced themselves into one 
 
 compartment of the door, for there was laughing and shrill 
 
 giggling u£~ they bundled together into the room. I 
 
 d at them carelessly, hating them too because they 
 
 laughed. But one of them interested me. Her clothes 
 
 held my attention, for their fashion had anticipated the 
 
 of London, recalled a picture I had seen a day or 
 
 two before in a French paper. She was small, slim, 
 
 wore a Nattier blue coat and skirt over a white lingerie 
 
 blouse which ended in a large jabot; her hat was just 
 
 • than anybody else's, and its Nattier blue satin 
 
 (1 out like enormous wings ; as she came towards ' 
 
 Mowed by her friend, who was taller and 
 
 ed in more commonplace khaki. I recognised her, 
 
 and my heart began to beat as she walked down the aisle 
 
 between the marble-topped tables. Just before she 
 
 d my table our eyes met and, for a moment, she 
 
 incredulously, and I had time to see warm 
 
 colour rise in her clucks, her blown eyes sparkle. Then 
 
 she took two quick* steps forward and, smiling broadly, 
 
 held out her hand. 
 
 I. " it's old tea-caddy. Fancy meeting 
 
 • 
 
 I took her hand, Which was bare and warm and, as I 
 
 held it, recognised the familiar breadth of the palm, 
 
 the pointed fingers ; the red mouth, 
 
 r than in the past, for it v. uHy painted with 
 
 Ive, smiled over the perfect teetn, and there was' 
 
 ,l>ou! the biown hair, now done in a 
 
 most defiant, but 
 
 • . and as 1 smiled at her 
 
 I kn< i ' mo longer alone. 
 
 She 1 urned to her 
 
 44 Allow me to i unly, " Miss 
 
298 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Serena P. Huggins, of Chicago, where the pork comes 
 from . . . Mr. Cadoresse." 
 
 44 Pleased to meet you, Mr. CaDOR'ess," said Miss 
 Huggins. 
 
 I smiled as we shook hands, for this was the first time 
 I heard the American accent, and to be called CaDOR'ess 
 amused me. 
 
 Also Serena was very attractive, much taller than I 
 had realised at first, slim but absolutely straight; her 
 perfect tailoring exaggerated her length of bust and limb ; 
 on her long neck she carried a small, aggressive head, 
 round which were coiled endless plaits of thick, glittering 
 black hair. A mat skin, warmed with pink and some 
 yellow, a thin, defiant mouth, so dark red as to appear 
 brown, unflinching black eyes and almost straight black 
 eyebrows, all this was so pronounced, so assertive that I 
 thought of Diana, the fierce huntress, as I said : 
 
 " I too am charmed, Miss Huggins ; indeed, if anything 
 could increase the pleasure of meeting Miss Hooper again, 
 it would be making your acquaintance." 
 
 44 There ! Serrie, old dear," said Maud. " What did I 
 tell you? There isn't another can tell the tale like him. 
 But don'tcher care, Serrie, he told it to me before he told 
 it you and it's the same ,old talc. Still, I'm not going to 
 be hard on you, Caddy; you can stand us supper and we'll 
 kiss and be friends . . . that is, if you're all on your lone- 
 some." 
 
 44 Yes," I said, 44 I'm alone. Sit down, both of you, 
 and order what you like." 
 
 44 What I like ! " said Maud, staring at me. 44 My, 
 you're up in the flies, Caddy. What'd you say if I made 
 it fizz?" 
 
 44 I should order fizz." 
 
 44 Well, I never ! Have they made you a bloomin' 
 partner ? or what ? " 
 
 fore 1 could reply Serena had interposed : 
 
 44 Say, Maudie, what's the matter with fizz, anyway?]! 
 We ain't on the water wagon, either of us. What's the}) 
 good of makin' a poor mouth about it? " 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 299 
 
 As I called the waiter I swiftly contrasted the humble 
 attitude of the English girl with the cool, proprietorial 
 tone of the American. But I had little time for analysis, 
 as Maud, who seemed to have forgotten the quarrel on 
 which we parted^ had a great deal to say; having to 
 explain me to Serena while she gave me some account 
 of her last year's history her conversation was a little 
 miM 
 
 41 Well, no, I'm not exactly on the halls. I did do a 
 
 turn, eccentric dancing and, my word, it wasn't half 
 
 eccentric, and I was on the road for a Kit after I gave 
 
 Bert the chuck. You remember Bert, don't you, Caddy ? 
 
 Oh, don'tcher care, it's all over, absoballylutely. You 
 
 soe, Serric, this is my long-lost fiasco and love of my 
 
 youth; he got the pip because of Bert, and as I wasn't 
 
 Mg any of his old buck we said a tearful farewell, I 
 
 don't think. . . . Oh, yes," she replied to my question, 
 
 it was pretty rotten, being on the road, but a shop's 
 
 a shop and don't you forget it. I got the bird one night 
 
 Bud that's what put the lid on it . . . though if you 
 
 : to know it was the boss. What d'you think he 
 
 night, the. ..." I was enlightened as to the 
 
 of managers in general. M Fetched him one 
 
 on the koboko," Maud summed tip, "and hoo.ked it. 
 
 ! am I doing now? Nothing extra, walking on in 
 
 cond line; it ain't all 'oney, eh, Serrie? " 
 
 a rotten dope," said Serena, fiercely. " Two 
 
 . sixteen changes, an' ninety-four steps to 
 
 climb each change. I'm goin' on the jag next week. 
 
 Look' she added, as Maud protested that drink 
 
 wouldn't mend matters, M this show don't go on; do you 
 
 know tli* Mr. CaDOR'css ? Ten dollars a week, 
 
 an 1 tl dollar for the agent, an' a shillin' for the 
 
 C€ f«>r the eallboy, an' sixpence for the 
 
 do you get me, Steve J " 
 
 Mv explanation that my name was not Steve was 
 
 with shrieks of Laughter, during which Serena 
 
 >f her gri little by little, as I learned to 
 
 iris' extraordinary language, I gained 
 
300 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 an idea of Maud's adventures. She had " eloped " with 
 iiert Burge a week after I left St. Mary's Terrace, and she 
 did not conceal that the word ** marriage " had never been 
 pronounced. She had gone on the halls as an eccentric 
 dancer and singer, had been the partner in a knockabout 
 with Bert ; then, tiring of him or deserted by him (I never 
 found out the truth), she had gone on tour with a third- 
 rate musical comedy company. After the episode of the 
 bird and the smack on the manager's s koboko, provoked 
 by. her faithfulness to her temporary companion, the low 
 com., she had been out of a shop for two months. There 
 was a little break in her story which I did not try to 
 bridge. Then she came to London, made friends with 
 Serenk in a teashop, and was through her engaged in the 
 variety theatre where a mongrel entertainment, made 
 up of singing, dancing, acting and parading occupied her 
 twice a day. Now she was happy enough, could count 
 on thirty-four shillings a week, and lived in freedom 
 with Serena at Harewood Avenue. She had come into 
 the restaurant on the chance of " getting off " with " one 
 of the boys." 
 
 All this came out swiftly, with a metallic rattle of gaiety, 
 sprinkled and spiced everywhere by the theatre-Cockney 
 ironies of " tain't so likely " and " never let it be said." 
 Maud was gay, fiercely, defiantly gay, and fiercely, defiantly, 
 cynical. Also her language had changed : here was no 
 longer the mild slang picked up at Mother Tinman's, but 
 a blend of the vilest Cockney phrases and of theatrical 
 tugs, sprinkled here and there with oaths; I had yet to 
 that no words were too foul now, when Maud was 
 angry : the Mile End streak ran right through her. She 
 vulgar, and became vulgar, vital, in a way which 
 clashed with her cynicism, ma$e me think of those sophis- 
 ticated hot omelettes in whose heart is coin n ice. 
 That night cynicism was in 1 he ascendant; curls, paint, 
 the " pussy-cats " of make-up which still stuck in the 
 corners of her eyes, accorded with her new attitude, her 
 new name, " Devon." I asked her^why she had 
 adopted it. . 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 301 
 
 " Fetches the boys," she said, "least I hope it will; 
 got a newspaper chap in Dudley to put me in as ' Matidie 
 D.' It'd be worth twenty quid a week to be Mordedee . . . 
 and I can't get a line in this show," she added, viciously. 
 
 Serena did not speak much. She ate and drank voraci- 
 ously, replying only by short sentences to the remarks 
 de to her out of politeness. I wanted to talk to 
 1, who attracted me now more than ever, perhaps 
 se the good looks of the girl had turned' into the 
 brazen beauty of the woman, perhaps because in my 
 loneliness and misery my heart was as susceptible to 
 temptation as is a weakened body to disease. And Maud's 
 frankness, her aggressive boldness, fascinated me; the 
 nee with which she dropped hints of her various 
 1 1 ships ; her tierce and open taste for a good time, 
 all this was so easy after the reticences of another class 
 that I found myself sliding, and gladly. Maud told me 
 in plain words that she had gone to the devil because I 
 didn't care for her, and when I publicly took her hand, 
 . Apparently she didn't care what happened. 
 "Say, honey," Serena remarked, yawning as if the 
 (1 her, " it's twelve-thirty ; we've got to beat it. 
 
 DOR'esS, and that's 
 on '11 drive us 1k.uk- in a taxicab." 
 
 tjed as ihey wheedled. In 
 
 he Amei • inviting 
 
 d. And Maud, I 
 
 • that spo< -R-P-H, wph, allowed me 
 
 as the full lights 
 
 of PiccadUly ( ed into tin- cab* 
 
 III 
 
 What did 1 fed) I Won the cab took me to 
 
 1 .bridge Street. I often a>k<<i myself that question 
 
 hip with the tw<» girls grew closer, and 
 
 1 it difficult « . »n, lor I had emerged from my 
 
 ten ' l)ility without having thoroughly 
 
 .icily for introspection: BOme of it, had 
 
 a<d to me after t. rhyme, for I had 
 
302 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 been stung, but I was not yet a sentient animal; those 
 mental chords were still strained. I had a vague idea 
 that, after Edith, I needed not k lover, but a soul into 
 which to pour my soul, a woman with whom to mix tears. 
 And yet I knew that I was glad of the girls' society, that 
 their curious talk pleased me, and that I could be amused 
 by stories of what Gwendolen Harcourt said to her boy, 
 by descriptions of the "bucketing" Tozer gave his 
 company at rehearsal, and the perpetual spicy stories 
 which found their way " behind " from Throgmorton 
 Street. It was easy, for these girls were used to the 
 foreigner, the rich Brazilian and the German Jew, dis- 
 tinguished little between the Honourable John Helbert 
 (the candidate for Serena) and old Mosenberg, who cast 
 over the whole of the chorus a favourable eye ; here were 
 no insults for the Frenchman ; so long as he had a decent 
 coat to his back, money to pay for a supper or a cab, and 
 was not too dull company, the Frenchman was just a 
 man. 
 
 That was good. I could fall into gallicisms now, and 
 merely be called a " date " ; there were no more imper- 
 turbable disapprovals, no more classifications. So, as I 
 let myself .slide, surrendered myself to Maud's heady 
 charm, I felt as happy as a criminal who has confessed, 
 for I was not pretending any more ; I was myself, a lover 
 in search of facile adventure. It came, for I found that 
 Maud had preserved something of the faint taste she had 
 had for me; g&fted on those remains, on the senti- 
 mentality which inclined her towards me because she 
 had known me a very long time and in other surroundings, 
 was the boldness and the looseness which had come to 
 her as she draggled her way from sordid, mercenary 
 companionships to complaisances dictated by policy, and 
 to indulgences in which sensuousness played a lesser j 
 than indifference. 
 
 Maud was a creature born again ; she had seized her 
 politic morals and hurled tlicm behind her. She was 
 abandoned, not because she wanted to be such, but 
 because she didn't care. One evening I was to fetch her 
 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 303 
 
 at the stage door at six, to take her to dinner and bring 
 - her baek in time for the evening show. I waited some 
 minutes under the porch of the theatre opposite, for fine 
 rain was falling. With me was a little crowd ; there were 
 two obvious mothers, elderly, tired and wonderfully 
 vigilant, as if they feared that their girls would be kid- 
 napped at the door, several " boys " in fancy waistcoats 
 and birthday boots ; there was also somebody's girl pal, 
 h and still powder-flecked. Every time the door 
 opened, to disclose in a cube of light the doorkeeper, who 
 sat in his box, and to let out a stage hand or some principal, 
 i slight stir in the crowd. Hungrily they 
 watched the theatrical folk, the dressers, members of the 
 id smart girls who furled their skirts and ran under 
 the drizzle. But the tenseness of it amused me, showed 
 me how little I mattered now, for nobody seemed to 
 with what member of the chorus I might be 
 entangled; the f was purely individual. There 
 
 ody now to criticise me, my morals, manners or 
 Indeed, the attitude went further than I 
 thought, for the door was opened suddenly to show me 
 md spangled bodice, beckoning to me to 
 com 
 
 I crossed the alley, followed by the envious eyes of the 
 
 with hesitation the cube of light. It 
 
 B dingy little place, no more than a corridor between 
 
 e staircases that rose to the right and left. 
 
 host ili a look that, in re- 
 
 • ink from Maud. I handed him a coin, half-a- 
 
 * 
 
 "Th. am"! allowed," be grumbled j " 'urry up." 
 
 in and drew me two' paces away, 
 but I did not notice hex fii ces, so striking did she 
 
 appear in her full m;ike-np. II. ; s mafcked with 
 
 led and lines whieh made her look like 
 
 a do th hex upper eyelids were painted deep blue; 
 
 she had mo mouth into a bow with thick red 
 
 salve, while everyone of hex bed With 
 
 black grains at the base, Shi wore pink tights, and a 
 
304 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 close-fitting shell entirely covered with gold crescents and 
 multicoloured paillettes ; glittering wire and gauze wings 
 stood out from her shoulders, and smaller wings rose from 
 her piled brown hair. 
 
 " Couldn't let your youthful heart get sick with hope 
 deferred, old dear," said Maud. " We've had a call to 
 put a new girl through. * Old Pinky-Gills gave Dora 
 d'Esterre the sack this afternoon to put in a new girl he 
 picked up at a night club. That's the third call We've 
 had this week to please his lordship. You wouldn't 
 think he was a thing of the past, the " 
 
 " Maud, darling ! " I protested, for another couple stood 
 whispering at the foot of the second staircase. 
 
 " Oh, don'tcher care. Anyhow, I can't go out, and I 
 can't stop." 
 
 " Can't you say you're unwell ? " 
 
 " Rush of brains to the feet ! Tell that tb old Pinky- 
 Gills ! No, I'll meet you at the Bank to-morrow, at half- 
 past twelve, as per use, and you can take me to lunch. 
 Now don't be sulky." ^ 
 
 I looked down at Jier, and vividly realised that the 
 little creature was charming, that she was tovely. The 
 tights moulded her slim limbs, and the shell, cut very low, 
 leaving her arms and mobile breast bare, revealed by 
 suggesting more than it hid. And, curiously enough, she 
 was gentle. •; 
 
 " Must go," she murmured. Her hand was still on my 
 arm. "Frenehy mustn't be sulky. Baby frightened." 
 Four yean streamed away as I remembered those words, 
 spoken before our first kiss. Was there magic in them? 
 Perhaps, for Maud laughed, threw a glance towards the 
 doorkeeper's back and the whispering couple, then coiled 
 a warm, bare arm round my neck and, drawing my head 
 down, kissed nie swiftly but so violently that the scent 
 and taste of the grease paint still clung to my lips when I 
 woke up next day. 
 
 " Ta-ta. Be good," she said, and ran up the stairs. 
 
 I went out, stood in the drizzle, and observed, im- 
 personally, that the others still waited, that two llashy, 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 805 
 
 Jewish-looking men had joined their group, that a motor- 
 stood at the end of the alley in readiness for the star. 
 As I walked away I pondered a good many questions, 
 did she love me? Did I love her? I think in 
 both o si b I answered " No." She had melted to me, as 
 she had done a score of times before. And I ? I could not 
 tell, for one may love and despise; but I knew that I 
 d not drive her image, from me, her fierce, aggressive 
 . ;md the fumous intoxication of her. Soon, too, 
 I was to know myself a little better. Maud did not at 
 once melt to me again ; when, next day, we lunched at 
 the stately Great Eastern Hotel, she said that she didn't 
 know why she had kissed me, and that after she'd done it I 
 . us if I were going to have a fit on the mat. Her 
 hard surface had formed once more. 
 
 She was still hard over a week later, on Sunday night, 
 we dined at the Trocadero, anxious only to point out 
 the well-known of her world, to catch and return smiles and 
 , to talk loudly to me so as to show that she had a 
 man. And hard again, when she took me with her to the 
 r de Lis Club in a small street off Shaftesbury Avenue, 
 mto which we wei I by the Honourable John, who 
 
 with Serena, slowly drinking himself into stupe- 
 faction. \V' a little party, to which were added 
 Sterry, .d bro ken umbrella 
 mare, the immensely long, fair and 
 against the target into which 
 I his unerrio b. The Fleur 
 ly a drinking club, though per- 
 funcl look place on the 
 as bul few members wen- allowed to pass into 
 I BUspept there was also a 
 fcr, but as the place 
 led I cannot be sure. Mostly 
 le sat in . I twelve; newcomers 
 
 Oven d without dilliculty 
 thai man or worn* □ old friend. 
 
 al lb li>- it\ table we became isolated, 
 for . v :ig to say to us; leaning against 
 
806 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Rhoda's thin, white shoulder he spoke to her in the low, 
 thrqaty tones that were worth a hundred a week'. Serena 
 had few words for us. She smiled and said : 
 
 " Gee, you're some style in that gown, Mordcdee ; I 
 wouldn't be seen with her 'cept in a tuxedo, Mr. 
 CaDOR'ess." 
 
 The Honourable John gave me a fishy look, and weakly 
 ordered the waiter to give me a whisky and soda and to 
 bring him another. 4 
 
 " Listen right here, Jack," said Serena, seizing his arm, 
 " this show don't go on. You've had four now, and I'm 
 not stayin' here for you to get a bun on. See ? That's 
 all there is to it." 
 
 " Waiter, another whisky and soda," said the Honour- 
 able John, ponderously. " I'm all right, Serrie." 
 
 " I've a hunch you ain't** said Serena. " Waiter, 
 you're the cutest thing, you'll bring the gentleman ginger 
 ale." 
 
 And, strangely enough, the Honourable John accepted 
 the ginger ale, and disconsolately sipped it in spite of the 
 party's delighted chaff. Serena held him, played with 
 him; I think he liked to be bullied by her, to find himself 
 first encouraged to stroke her thin, dark arm while he 
 told her a story she voted " cunnin'," and then suddenly 
 to be repulsed, fiercely told to " put a lid on " and assured 
 he was wrong if he thought he was the goods. 
 
 Meanwhile Maud picked out for me the celebrities of 
 the Fleur de Lis : Walstein, owner of Walstein's Royal 
 Halls, and Puresco, the Roumanian conductor, whose 
 friendship with a middle-"agcd duchess was by now too 
 stale to be worth diseussing in detail. " That's Hopp," 
 she said, pointing to a monstrously fat man, who sat 
 between two shrimps out of some ballet, " and there's 
 Sarah Mallik; she used to do a Sheeny turn with Sam 
 Davis, down Mile End way. Now she's rolling. That 's 
 her man there, just come in, Bobby Mornington, Lord 
 Mornington's son. D'you know what he said the first 
 time he saw Sara ? He looked her in the eye for about a 
 minute and said : 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 307 
 
 * My name is Bobby Mornington, 
 So Sara hurry up. 
 For when I grow Lord Mornington, 
 Your little game is up.' 
 
 Not bad, eh? She was on him . . . like a bird." 
 
 All the evening, and it was nearly two before we thought 
 
 of leaving, Maud gave me the biographies of the members, 
 
 the history of their alliances and .appearances in the 
 
 divorce court, also an inventory of the women's jewels. 
 
 I had, mixed with disgust, an extraordinary sense of ease 
 
 as I surveyed these people, English and foreign, equal, 
 
 careless, more or less disreputable; this queer cosmos 
 
 inside the cosmos, where the peerage and the wealth of 
 
 management drank, jostled and grossly flirted with the 
 
 chorus and the aged but skittish stars. One had to shout 
 
 to be heard, for forty people were all talking together; 
 
 ah, what an easy world, for the quality of the speech didn't 
 
 matter; if one shouted one was heard. And we could 
 
 do v. hat we liked. Sterry had drawn upon his knees the 
 
 !«ss Rhoda Dclamare, and was telling her in a loud 
 
 voice a story he could not have told on the stage. Hclbert, 
 
 who had outwitted his keeper and was intoxicated, was 
 
 laughing the feeble, childish laughter of the sot as Serena, 
 
 Oool and hard, but pleased because he had promised "her 
 
 a ruby rinu, described for his private information a new 
 
 il fun; " with which she was next day going to 
 
 t . Maud, too, had ceded to the ambient 
 
 back in 1 he crook of my arm and let me kiss 
 
 oft neck, merely remarking at intervals : " Stop yer 
 
 ticklin', Jock." But as I held her I was pleading with 
 
 i by the cast ( ,f ihe atmosphere, all my 
 
 hivalries and purities had slipped away from me. 
 
 lid, I didn't care 
 
 '■ M ad, my darling," I murmured. I tried to tell her 
 r, that 1 had always loved her and still 
 
 lo\< (1 1; 
 
 44 Tell me Booth aid, lazily. But still she let 
 
 me e i away by the power of the place, 
 
 half aphrodisiac, half drunken. Round us the scene 
 
308 THE^ MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 ■ 
 
 was orgiastic. Helbert, giggling and hiccuping, was 
 trying to force champagne on Serena, who played on him 
 the trick of seizing Rhoda round the neck and guiding 
 the drunken man's hand toward the other girl's mouth. 
 Rhoda swallowed the champagne as if she were too lazy 
 to resist, while Helbert glared at the girls and remarked 
 at intervals : " Funny thing, Serrie . . . you got two 
 heads . . . ver' funny . . . mus' have had too much. 
 Sterry laughed so uproariously over this joke that his face 
 had become purple. I, too, had had too much to drink 
 for my weak Southern stomach, and it was in a mist I 
 saw Hopp with the two ballet-shrimps on his knees, and 
 an enormous crowd, thousands of people, men in tweeds 
 and evening clothes, and^vomen in red, green, purple low- 
 cut gowns . . . and smoke, torrents of tobacco smoke. 
 
 I gripped Maud by the wrist. " Let's go," I said, 
 thickly. 
 
 She obeyed, carelessly, as if Her brain were soddened 
 with alcohol and tobacco. In the cab, against the 
 windows of which the rain spattered and flowed in silvery 
 sheets, I clasped her to me, desperately, hungrily, and she 
 did not reply to my rhapsodies, to the heady, broken 
 phrases that came to me ; but she did not resist me, and 
 at times laughed. I remember the high ring of her laugh- 
 ter,' the "Who oares?" of her . . . and the beating of 
 the rain on my face as I stood on the doorstep at Hare- 
 wood Avenue . . . the black void of the hall . . . and 
 then, in a dream, the harsh seduction of the voice as she 
 said : 
 
 "Come in, then, you silly kid." 
 
 IV 
 
 Riot ! Nobody cared. Not Serena, the immaculate, 
 the juggler, the mysterious one who could touch pitch 
 and not be defiled; nor Helbert, vapid when he v.as not 
 drunk; nor those others, the Sterrys, the IIopps, the 
 Rhodas, accomplices and partisans of mine; nor Maud; 
 nor I. Serena stood ns the perpetual goddess of " Who 
 Cares?" or, as "she put it, of "Don't give a damn." 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 309 
 
 Fierce and pure, she had the art of giving nothing for 
 
 thing, of tempting and exploiting the Helberts v of 
 
 her world, and preserving, in the midst of its foulness, 
 
 the pride of her own purity. Serena could not fall, for 
 
 her insolence held her up,* served her as dignity; the 
 
 strangeness of her beauty allowed her to draw behind her 
 
 an unending trail of lolloping men-rabbits, for there were 
 
 no weaknesses in her mind, no little windows through 
 
 which a man might reach at her heart. Serena was on 
 
 the make; trained to look upon man as a purveyor of 
 
 candies, novels, ice-cream and flowers, she gave nothing 
 
 because she had nothing to give. No man 'touched her 
 
 because, in her sexlessness, she wanted no man to touch 
 
 when she condescended to let Helbert take her 
 
 hand, if he tried to kiss her she eluded him, thrust her 
 
 hair si raight at his face ; to court Serena was like making 
 
 a hedgehog. 
 
 So Serena watched unmoved the progress of our 
 
 affairs, had DO word of approval' or condemnation when 
 
 sh«- found me with Maud at hoars evidently ill-timed for 
 
 ena had no views on morals; she toler v 
 
 ftted everything that did not affect her evilly, nothing 
 
 did. In her view Maud was my bestest girl, and 
 
 ; there was to it. 
 
 In Maud I found a peculiar sweetness* wayward moods 
 
 Id suddenly seize my head with both hands, 
 
 and feverishly caress me, and then repulse me, try to 
 
 me, while the whole vocabulary of the streets flowed 
 
 np to hex lovely lips. And I 'loved my shame, shouted 
 
 if down when I asked : " Me that 'avc been wot 
 i . . . what's going to become of you?" In 
 i I found something thai responded to mydespe 
 
 !. delirious moments when Bhe actually loved me, and 
 
 "l allure of inertia; splendid, drunken mo- 
 
 ;iL r . as we danced, the ditty of the day, 
 
 i a great, golden film hung over the world; and 
 
 ttul moments of reaction and savagery when we 
 
 quarrelled and found word-, thai out, when I shook her 
 
 frail body as a t« : d mouthed at her 
 
810 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 insults lately learned, when my fists clenched and my eyes 
 became blurred by a terrible, seductive picture of her face 
 when she screamed under my blows. . . . 
 
 And all through, for six long weeks, it was riot. My 
 day was naught but a somnolence, a round of duties 
 carried out with mechanical efficiency. The hours be- 
 tween Maud's shows alone counted, when we walked the 
 streets, or ate and drank, made love and fought at street 
 corners; and the hours at night clubs, and those others 
 when we were half lovers, half enemies. She dragged me 
 behind in her careless course, defiant, head in the air, 
 into public-houses, into the waiting-rooms of agents, on 
 Sundays to Brighton and its hotels, into the scented reek 
 of the week-end trains ... I followed, drugged, narco- 
 tised, half-intoxicated, for my head was stronger now, and 
 I knew how to drink without becoming drunk. ... A 
 pantomime was taken off in the South of London, and 
 there I was in the syren's wake, at the supper on the 
 stage, . . . lobster salad, I remember, and cold fowl, and 
 flat beer . . . the fat chairman, the personification of 
 a grin, toasting " the lidies, bless their little 'earts," and 
 breaking down when the career of Walstein's Royals was 
 alluded to, weeping drunkenly when cheers were given 
 for y ole Bill and 'ole Jim. . . . Faces float up, like a 
 " movie," as Serena said when I tola* her what they 
 looked like, a great nosegay of faces, bloated male faces 
 over the wrong collars, painted, haggard, women's he/ids 
 with yellow hair in their eyes, and pretty, round, baby 
 faces with pouting lips. They rise in the mist of alcohol, 
 and there rises, too, the memory of me, sodden and 
 resentful, my soul still struggling with me as I repeated 
 again and again, " Me that 'ave been wot I've been . . ." 
 but I was too far from the past and the splendour of its 
 ambition. Cast out by those others, the charm did not 
 touch me. • 
 
 For I hated myself in the degradation of which I was 
 the more conscious as I plunged deeper. Ten weeks, and 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 311 
 
 the slough up to "my neck. March, green buds pricking 
 their sharp points into the freshness of spring, but dull 
 pains in my head and bones, spots' before my eyes, liver 
 blotches upon my cheek. The round of drink and dull 
 orgy amid the coming of spring. Maud held to my lips 
 no cup of elixir : the draught was either fiery or dulling, 
 as suited her fancy, but never rich in hope or life. We 
 lived for the day and by it. For a month she was out of 
 a shop, as her next engagement, at a North London hall, 
 did not coincide with the end of the current one, and 
 during that month I seemed to saturate myself with the 
 emanation of her gay, base, and harsh personality. She 
 found in me, the new me, exactly what she wanted, a 
 shrill, cheerful despair; she liked me when I broke into 
 the oaths she had taught me, admired me when I found 
 to tell that made even Sterry uneasy, loved me when, 
 of nights, at the Fleuf de Lis, with my dank, black 
 hair plastered over my wild eyes, I could sneer at the 
 holir: 
 
 " Cheer up, we'll soon be dead." 
 
 So said ;;11 of us. And I didn't care who knew. Sunken 
 
 in my in, I wanted everybody to know I was en- 
 
 thralled; I boasted oi Maud at Barbezan's, showed her 
 
 photograph to the clerks, so that they might reprove me 
 
 and i and despise me, and yet be subtly drawn to 
 
 ask d I made her come to the City to lunch, 
 
 who always went where somebody else 
 
 e out of the theatre, 
 
 where I ad on pay-day, in the crowd under 
 
 the verand . h are rested upon me the 
 
 oi a theatre-paxi 1 and Mrs. Raleigh, Mrs. 
 
 Law) ould tell Edith. Well, let 
 
 J hem teD in their gu .1 openly took Maud's 
 
 : 1 smiled, I strutted, and 
 
 bje pain shot through me as I 
 
 benl down with my face close to 
 
 es of sup rland, for 
 
 out. I knew those English; they 
 
812 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 were not a nation, but a caste, and I no longer wanted to 
 enter it : Brahmins of the West who would not have . me 
 save as a pariah, I'd not trv to be aught to you. English 
 who despise Europe, whom 3 mistaken Europe envies, I'd 
 have the luxury of despising you. I knew what your 
 virtue9owere : English virtues were not virtues but voids ; 
 instead of fine,, ruddy vices the English had nothing. 
 Their tolerance was indifference; their fairness was 
 convention; their calm was coldness, their aloofness, 
 stupidity. I drew Maud closer, crushing her to me. 
 
 " You French devil," she said. But now I minded no 
 adjectives. The acidity of our love-making served me 
 well enough, even when Maud refused herself to sweet- 
 nesses for which my buried self sometimes clamoured. 
 She was hard. If I wanted to take her home aft^r 
 dinner, to sit with her for long hours, and to hold her 
 hand, unconsciously to seek quietude, she did not ! she 
 wanted to go to a music-hall. Always Maud had to be 
 active, to laugh, weep, clap or h.iss, to see plays and turns, 
 to drink, to smoke and to talk. In April I took her up 
 the river, but%he tired of Shepperton in an hour. 
 
 "One-eyed sort of place," she said; "let's go to 
 Skindlcs." l 
 
 And it had to be Skindles, Maidenhead, Boulter's, the 
 sunny* crowded lock and the transferred blare of the 
 town. Maud could not dine save among a hundred 
 others, take her pleasure save with others, talk except 
 against a restaurant band; hostile to the community, 
 she needed it, was held by it, as if her envies and her 
 hatreds linked her with her fellows more closely than 
 would have her loves. 
 
 I was like her, wanted so to be, for now I carried my 
 insolence, and now the inevitable crisis was coming. I* 
 had become a hero at Barbezan's, a person to whom 
 juniors came timidly to 1 ell tales, before whom they stood 
 light village beaux before Don Juan. Not a word 
 had been said by Hugh or Mr. Lawton, for no fault had 
 been found with me . . . or I had been tacitly excused 
 because of thc.things that had happened. They were not 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 313 
 
 going to be unfair to me, I think, and for that reason were 
 . y to be unfairly lenient. They knew in what atmo- 
 sphere I lived, for I cannot believe that Farr, my enemy, 
 and the others, my envious friends, omitted to enlighten 
 them. But nothing was said, and I hated them the more 
 for their tolerance. " Damn your tolerance," I thought, 
 much in the spirit of the proud beggar who says : " Curse 
 your charity." Their tolerance jangled my nerves. 
 
 One morning I went into Hugh's room. He looked up 
 at me, faintly smiling, and for one second I was stirred 
 by tl. of him, young, beautiful and sp emphatically 
 
 Idenly felt an impulse to pour out my flood 
 of pain and desire before this creature, so splendid and 
 akin in its motionlessness to a statue of Apollo. But, as 
 lied, and rage filled my soul, for I was 
 swift to ' ow, and I had found insult, subtle, 
 
 biting insult : Hugh had sniffed. 
 
 hat are you sniffing att " I asked, angrily. 
 
 I me with a very little surprise in his 
 
 *• I suppose you smell scent," I said. " Well, you do . . . 
 
 and yj.u know where it comes from. It's not I who use 
 
 . it's the company I keep . . . it's Maudie* D., 
 
 a. You know how I stand with her, don't 
 
 " [t's ;;<> DU mine " Hugh began! 
 
 ■■ No business of yours ! " I shouted. "Ah, here it is 
 
 our damned tolerance, your damned Liberalism . . . 
 
 < . ou don't condescend to care, like the rest 
 
 n may go to the dogs, I suppose, if 
 
 don't live in your kennel. You're not goinu r '- : > 
 
 . to help a man '.' 
 
 d Hugh. 
 
 •• I'm : ng you to do anything/ 1 I snarled, 
 
 though I knew thai I ache^ for somebody who would 
 
 thing; " I a condescending help. 
 
 I you wanted to, for England's heart 
 
 ;s in cold i -lings, 
 
 mi where f .'. Ii keep their passions, 
 
314 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 yon keep a slide-rule. I don't want help, I don't want 
 sympathy. I just want you to respect my personality, 
 I want to be recognised as a man." 
 
 " I'm sure I recognise all that," said Hugh. 
 
 " You don't. In France we value a man for being 
 a fine man; in England you value him for being an 
 Englishman. Oh, I know what that sniff means. You 
 smell scent, you suggest I use scent, that I'm effeminate, 
 disreputable — foreign. Why don't you tell me that 
 I'm on a level with the barber, the waiter, the musician 
 in the band ? with the rest of the dirty foreigners as you 
 call them, when you . don't use a stronger a'djective. 
 Why can't you be frank about it ? why can't you massacre 
 the giaour, like the Turk ? or torture him as the Chinese 
 do the foreign devils ? Tolerant Englishmen, you're 
 only barbarians, xenophobes " 
 
 " You do use long words," said Hugh, lazily, as he 
 inspected his finger-nails. " What do you mean by 
 xcno . . . what's its name ? " 
 
 Then I lost my temper. The original little insult of 
 the sniff receded, and it was indicative of my state of 
 mind that such a trifle should raise such a storm — unless 
 it be*always the trifles that matter. I told Hugh what 
 I thought of him, his fashion-plate clothes, his superior 
 Pall Mall club, his futile, brain- wasting golf, his liking 
 for musical comedy, his sham Liberalism, his stupid 
 satisfaction with the material world, his suspicion of 
 art and letters, his dull, smug public-school standard. 
 As I ranted, I hated him, and I hated myself because 
 a devil in me made me shout and gesticulate, because I 
 was a Frenchman, because, like Kipling's big beasts, he 
 wasn't going to notice the monkey. And I ranted on 
 when Mr. Lawton came in from the next room to sec what 
 was the matter. I turned on him, charged him with 
 being as his son, with having conspired with England to 
 make his son like him, like his father, like his father's 
 friends, so that all of them, caste, class and nation, they 
 might sneer at different men. 
 
 " I hate your society of convention and artifice, I 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 315 
 
 hnte the boat-race, the meet of the Four-in-Hand Club, 
 tL< Cup-Tie Final, the Academy. I hate your bourgeois 
 dinners, your salmon, your saddle of mutton and your 
 port. I hate your big police and your stupid life- 
 
 * Is men — we'd have made short work of them, my 
 nent. I hate youT paid soldiers and your slavish 
 
 worship of aristocrats and monarchs. I hate your sham 
 lair play, which is only a habit. I hate everything that's 
 English, and I'm going to leave it ; I'm sick of it, sick 
 
 ou, sick of your stupid, romantic women and your 
 dumb, bloodless men; I'm sick of you all, sick of all 
 
 think and like, and I'm going back to France, going 
 
 • *g°i n £ a ^ once " 
 
 They looked at me with calm, faintly surprised faces. 
 
 44 Can't you speak ? " I shouted ; " can't you defend 
 
 your country and yourselves? No," I said bitterly, 
 
 ou don't condescend to say what you think, 
 
 or perhaps, you can't because you've never learned to. 
 
 Wi 11. I'm going now." 
 
 I turned as I opened the door and said : 
 44 I give you no notice; you can keep my month's 
 v. You can have the money: nation of shop- 
 you understand that.* 1 
 Then I slammed the door. 
 
 VI 
 
 Hatf-an-hour later I was at Harewood Avenue. Maud 
 
 till in bed. She was awake, though^ and reading 
 
 a halfpenny picture paper; on the little tabic by her 
 
 ■ 1 the remains of her breakfast, the skin 
 
 of a kipper of which the whole room reeked. But her 
 
 brown hair, tumbled DpOfl the pillow, proved that it 
 
 f orally, and her skin, devoid of rouge or powder, 
 
 -1 warm pink, like the most delicate 
 
 y. I Bung myself down on my knees, snatched one 
 
 of hei 
 
 44 Hulk) ! what's this l,l,,wn in? ' ed. 
 
 "Maud, my darling," I said, fervently, 44 I'm going 
 to take you away with n, 
 
316 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 \ 
 
 " Oh, my godfather ! You're going to take me away, 
 I don't think." 
 
 " I am, I'm going to marry you." 
 
 " Well ! things were cheap ! But tell us some more ; 
 let's hear all about this rush o' brains at eleven in £he 
 morning. Has your long-lost uncle come back from 
 America, or what ? " 
 
 " Maud," I said, solemn now, " you don't understand. 
 I've had enough of this country, I've had enough of 
 those people. I want to go back to France, where there 
 is sunshine, and Howers and wine. I want to go back 
 because the people there say what they think, and mean 
 what they say, where it's all simple and easy because 
 people don't judge you by what you pretend to be, but 
 by what you are. I want to go back, and I want you to 
 marry me and come with me, because you're the only 
 woman in England who has understood me, who has been 
 kind to me. I want you because I love you — and you, 
 my little Maud, you love me, you do love me ? Don't you, 
 darling? It's been the real thing, hasn't it, all these 
 months ? " 
 
 Maud looked at me with distended eyes which -showed 
 that she did not in the least understand me. Her hand 
 struggled in mine, for I was crushing her rings into her 
 fingers. " Ouch, yer hurtin'," she said, and continued 
 to stare at me. While I went on to explain that I had 
 left Barbezan, that I was going home, that I would take 
 her to Bordeaux, or rather to Paris, and make a good 
 life for her there, I knew that I was struggling for her 
 sake too, trying to overcome some meanness in her, 
 because she was the least mean of those English'. I was 
 clinging to her, pitifully, because she had loved me in 
 her fashion, and because I could not face the idea of 
 going back lonely to a place where I would be alone. 
 I filled my greedy eyes with her beauty, tried to believe 
 that I loved. her, and that she loved me, for it was neces- 
 sary we should love; if I had to go alone I thought I 
 would commit suicide. 
 
 " Well, I never \ " she said again. Then, mechanically : 
 " Do it again, Ikey, I saw dimonds ! " 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 817 
 
 I restated my case, and Maud took it in. She freed her 
 
 up, ravelled her curls and looked at me with an 
 
 <>f pity. * 
 
 " You are a cough-drop," she said. " Why, you must 
 
 barmy, chucking up a good' job like that, and I'm 
 
 blowed if I know why. Oh, yes, you needn't go over it 
 
 q, you've been chewing the rag long enough. I take. 
 
 •u're going home on spec, that you haven't got a 
 
 job over there ? No, of course not — and you come along 
 
 and ask me to marry you when you may be on your 
 
 uppers next month ! Well, 'ere's me love to you, and 
 
 it ain't a business proposition, as old Serric' say$." 
 
 " Do yon mean that you won't marry me? " I asked, 
 
 dulously. 
 
 "' Oli, sit on a tack," said Maud. 
 
 44 But I love you,* I said, with pathetic obstinacy. 
 
 44 Hwrybody loves me . . . nearly," sang Maud. Then, 
 
 sly : M Look here, you old tea-caddy. , You've 
 
 ong 'mi if you think I'm going to throw in 
 
 my little all with you, and walk out .with you * 'and-in- 
 
 i nl o the crool 'aid world. 1 I didn't ask you to 
 
 marry me when I took up with you? No fear, I knew 
 
 what I was up to; s'pose I was gone on you, and then 
 
 you v iy to give me a good time, but marry you — 
 
 tain't so likely. I'm not going to marry anybody. Oh, 
 
 I know, ydu say you're going to get on, and all that, 
 
 but that's Your version of the part. Take it. from me: I 
 
 t in;rrry you, and if you don't like that you can hop it." 
 
 1 did not take up the challenge Sung down by her 
 
 ; I knew now whal 1 had only sus- 
 
 '! had never loved me, that she had 
 uld have into those of any man 
 who i d time. She I 
 
 > BgM .'is not to 
 I ! oh. 
 i nut it 1m f. m can eilOO lish 
 
 lint I w 
 nit<(l w; W\ into the sheltering 
 
 a unkind. So I took up, 
 faltering, the tale of my to 
 
318 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 "Oh," cried Maud, at last, " you give me the fair 
 sick." She glared at me, and suddenly the flood of 
 truth rushed from her lips. I understood that she had 
 played with me for her own pleasure, exploited me and 
 flattered me to keep me in a good temper, that she had 
 never loved me, looked upon me as aught save a diversion, 
 that she didn't want me, indeed, that she wanted to be 
 rid of me, that she was glad I was going, and the sooner 
 the better. 
 
 " Serrie, Serrie," she screamed, " come in and have 
 a look at this nutty prawn. Serrie, Serrie ! " 
 
 Serena came in from the next room, severe and beau- 
 tiful in black. In a few sentences, broken by spasms 
 of laughter, Maud explained the position. 
 
 " It ain't a business proposition, Mr. CaDORess," 
 said Serena. 
 
 "What did I say!" cried Maud, triumphantly; 
 " marvelooze ! " 
 
 " Say, honey," Serena remarked to me, " you're a 
 four-flusher, ain't you You've got no money an' 
 you've got no job, an' you want to marry Mordedee. 
 That's getting down to brass tacks, ain't it? Wal, 
 I figure out she can please herself, but if she says she won't 
 that ain't enough to start you walking." 
 
 " What d'you take me for ? " asked Maud angrily. 
 " Think I'm going to be your skivvy ? or d'you want 
 me to keep you ? I'm not so stuck on your face as all 
 that " 
 
 Each in turn the girls shot their arrows at me. First 
 it was Serena, languid and polite, conveying to me in 
 that most concentrated form, American sarcasm, that, 
 equally with Maud, she had no more use for me now that 
 I was not likely to be able to give any girl a good time. 
 Then it was Maud, more direct, spatterdashing her speech 
 with disjointed music-hall Cockneyisms, invigorating it 
 with adjectives. While Serena leant against the wall 
 in an attitude which suggested that she would have put 
 her hands in her pockets if she had had any, Maud leant 
 forward, resting on her beautiful bare arms, her brown 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 319 
 
 curls tumbled about her face, her shapely lips spitting 
 insult at me. The American flicked me with a whip, 
 the English uirl used a bludgeon. In collaboration they 
 painted the picture postcard versions of love and marriage. 
 A man drinking too much beer, a wife sitting with a 
 poker in front of ajclock set at three a.m., twins howling 
 in the night, a flirtation with the lodger : marriage. 
 A dandy girl (according to Serena, a " Fluffy Ruffles "), 
 sitting at a little table before a bottle of champagne, 
 a* man " detained by pressing business," with a typist on 
 his knees, six feet of femininity, firelit, " thinking of you," 
 and a couple falling into acquaintanceship on the rink : 
 love . . . 
 
 ** No, I'm not taking any," Maud panted, " not if 
 
 they make you a bloomin' Duke. So " — she broke off 
 
 ^and sang : — " so, good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you " 
 
 " Say, honey," Serena^egan again, sweetly, " you've got 
 
 to take your medicine. I'm just crazed about you myself, 
 
 but it's dollars to doughnuts we couldn't get fixed without" 
 
 you had the ooftish, as me friend Mordedee says. You 
 
 'a nothin' doin' here " 
 
 " That's right, Seme," Maud shouted. Then to me : 
 " Get out. Hook it. I'm fed up with you, fed up with 
 your French ways and your high and mighty 
 <-h talk. Hook it. I OX " 
 
 A rid flood rose to I .Her trembling hand 
 
 fumb For two or three 
 
 !y. But she did 
 not I ife. I tui ;nd too numb 
 
 tosuffer. 1 Left the room and walkel? downstairs. For 
 son.' d in the street, 1 i>stracted, and 
 
 a butt for little Cockney boys. Now I was quite alone. 
 
 VII 
 
 For the next seven days, wh< n I stayed in my sitting* 
 i, among those pretty chintzes that Fxlith had 
 
 . I | I riven out 
 
 into :it to thi in seeking variety, society, 
 
 that is, the sight of my fellows, as I could not have their 
 
320 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 friendship. I was alone. I ate with extreme regularit) 7 " 
 at a restaurant in Soho where I could talk French to 
 the waiters, bought French papers at the Monico v French 
 cigarettes in Coventry Street. I did all this without 
 violence; by natural reaction I was slipping back to 
 France; with a new coldness, which was only French 
 cynicism, I even allowed r myself to be drawn into an 
 ugly, unemotional adventure because the unseductive, 
 seducing voice addressed me in French. 
 
 But these 'pale flickers of France did not warm me. 
 I was uneasy, rather than suffering, and knew that my 
 discomfort came from my loneliness. When again I 
 » began to wander the streets at night, seeking companion- 
 ship, or to sit long hours in the parks, watching the 
 children at play, ^and the business of the waterfowl, 
 I knew that loneliness it was I carried upon my shoulders.. 
 Adventure did not call me : it had lost its thrill ; I 
 thought of drink, but I had drunk so much during the 
 past three months that my stomach turned from the 
 idea. One night I thought of drugs, but the chemists 
 refused me laudanum, cocaine and veronal : I was not 
 clever enough to go to a doctor and complain of insomnia, 
 and thought myself inspired when I decided to have an 
 orgy on tobacco, to smoke a hundred cigarettes before 
 I went to sleep. 
 
 I did' not do that, but my loneliness appears to me to-day 
 when I remember what I did : with a crafty smile I 
 decided to buy my cigarettes at ten different shops in 
 packets of ten, so that I might talk with ten men. 
 
 But the end of that period is marked by something 
 else, by an uncanny clarity of mind. Now that I was 
 idle, had hours in which to think, and no woman to occupy 
 my mind, I saw the English even more distinctly than 
 I had done in my earlier fury. I saw them dispassion- 
 ately, which does not mean I did not hate them, but I 
 hated them calmly, as a judge may hate an atrocious 
 criminal whom it is his duty to hang in proper legal 
 form. The deathly London Sunday lay heavy on me 
 now, for no houses' were open to me, and the streets, 
 wet or sunny, repelled me because they led me nowhere. 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 321 
 
 I found the Sabbath out, dissected it into its simple 
 components : conventional 1 worship, Church Parade, 
 roast beef, sleep, "a large tea, nothing, cold supper, 
 nothing, then sleep. For the impious, a little bridge. 
 No billiards anywhere. Public-houses open long enough 
 for the nation to get drunk. Also sacred concerts and 
 more love-making than usual. 
 
 Drink hung heavy over England. I saw that the rich 
 drink to kill time, the poor to kill care. 
 
 I thought of politics, and suddenly remembered Gobot. 
 ! liow many years ago that was ! when I thought 
 English so fine. I cc%ld see (Robot's fat, red face, 
 his loud voice as he shouted : " Who stole Canada ? 
 lisft Did the. English help Poland? Did the 
 help the Balkan Christ inns, or did they give 
 , to the Turk? Did not the English fight China 
 to maintain the opium traffic ? Hypocrites, liars, Bible- 
 mongers " Good old Gobot, you were not a fool. 
 
 I thought of the splendid figure of John Bull, of whom 
 
 I had been so fond at Ifainbury. lie appeared in a 
 
 different guise : John Bull became a dull, offensive 
 
 ! the aggressive bridge of his high nose, 
 
 lunch under lu> red waistcoat, his hairy 
 
 top-boots, and his general air of lumbering 
 
 ii. 1 fell that no idea would ever get into that 
 
 1 though there was certainly room enough 
 
 inside The - "f the fellow was, I now knew, 
 
 : .John Bull was always letting 
 
 er — until the lire went out. I hated the 
 
 grandiloquent way in which he addressed his colonies, 
 
 the i on with whidh he treated them to an army 
 
 Imperialism, forsooth I Rather Imperial 
 
 out(' r . I think I hated «him deeply beC&Uft 1 
 
 had much* ED 1 could nol have felt the 
 
 : d in the Dutch song Qucridn quol 
 
 the 
 sli cone ca : 
 
 men and children, see them lie, 
 
 ■lie ! 
 Come, let us spit upon England's name ! " 
 
322 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 My personal rancour vanished, and this song rang in 
 my ears, expelling the terrible little bit of doggerel which 
 had told me what I was. No longer was it "A Froggy 
 Would a- Wooing Go " — held me, screamed out of the 
 wind or rumbled out of the railway tracks, but this new 
 song, this four-line summary of English beef-beer-and- 
 blood-fed savagery. I knew what lay under the coldness 
 and the polish ; it was sheer, sullen brutality, unredeemed 
 even by the subtlety of cruel China, the glorious, sunny 
 ferocity of Spain. 
 
 Big counts, little counts, all added to the indictment 
 of this country where parks had to be closed at sunset 
 to arrest the grossness of the people, where no man 
 might drink in the open c air because the skies were of 
 water and soot, w T here no flowers grew, where no fruit 
 matured, as though the hateful coldness of the islands 
 were such that even trees and shrubs acquired nationality. 
 English daffodils, and English lilac, you bloomed in 
 vain that April, for I knew the first to be Dutch, the 
 second to be French. And English women, you flaunted 
 in vain in the fresh, salt wind, the cream and roses of 
 your cheeks; I saw your cheeks no more, your red, 
 smiling lips that had smiled upon me with such tolerance ; 
 I saw only your imloveliness, your cheap beads, your 
 machine-made lace, your soiled white gloves, your ill- 
 cut stays, and the tragic draggling over your boots of 
 the torn, muddy edges of j/otir petticoats. ' 
 
 I was going home. In vain Stanley had come to me 
 with a startling piece of news. I had seen very little 
 of him during the last five months of misery unci orgy; 
 instinctively I had shrunk from his inquisitive eyes, 
 knowing that he would soon discover my secrets, drag 
 into his mental limelight the story of my love and its 
 wilting, force me to see as it was my following shame. 
 I had not been back to the little house to hear the round 
 wife call him affectionate, abusive names. Now and 
 then we had played chess, and I had resisted scrutiny 
 by feigning a new absorption in the game; I must have 
 deceived him, on the whole, for I did attain such ab- 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 323 
 
 sorption as to beat him now and then by moves which 
 he did not think me capable of, but F discovered suddenly 
 that I had not deceived him throughout. He arrived 
 at Cambridge Street early one Sunday morning, when 
 I still lay A in bed. I would have refused to see him if 
 the landlady had not shown him straight into the sitting- 
 room. He came in and sat down near my bed. 
 
 " In bed at eleven ? " he said, cheerfully. " Had 
 another thick night? " 
 
 " I don't have thick nights," I said, emphasising my 
 actual su^kin- 
 
 " Oh, you'vr reform* d then ? I thought you would." 
 
 I threw him an interrogative look, and, as I met the 
 unflinching grey eyes, knew that, he knew, wondered 
 whether he knew every detail. I pressed my cheek into 
 the pillow and let out a faint sound. 
 
 " Cheer up," said Stanley, gmvely. " Cheer up. It's 
 r too late to mend, old chap. I know all about it. 
 Oh, yes, more than you think." • 
 •" I don't care," I said. " I'm going back to France." 
 
 'ou ? Well Anyhow — listen to me first. 
 
 I'm not going to talk about your affairs — it's none of 
 my " 
 
 II Don't say it, don't say it," I m as I started 
 up; not his business — no Englishman's business— their 
 
 1 couldn't bear it. Then s heavy blanket of 
 indif d inc. " Go on," I said. 
 
 •• I wonM say it," Stanley w is he mistook my 
 
 1 t. You had a hard time and 
 
 you went on the bust. No one can blame you, but it's 
 
 all over, and you want to begin again. Don't shake 
 
 i : you do. If you didn't you'd have drowned 
 
 yourself." 
 
 '" I p» I ty ix .uly did." 
 
 vou jugt didn't. Hud Old fool Schopenhauer 
 would tell you tli.it you didn't 1 vou still saw 
 
 g in life; still, never mind Schoj 
 
 I to say's just this : I'm leaving the C. and 
 P. end June, because I want to set up for myself; I'm 
 
324 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 thinking of doing some shipbroking and chartering, 
 same as Barbezan. I've saved a bit of money these ten 
 years, enough to start the thing properly and run it for a 
 year or so, and I've got a few pals who'll enable me to 
 pay" expenses if th<?y give me all the work they promise. 
 Now will you come in as my partner ? You'll get a good 
 shalre, bar the capital interest, of course." 
 
 I looked at him curiously,, wondering why the oppor- 
 tunity did not thrill me, but it did not. 
 
 " I'm going back to France," I said. 
 
 Stanley stuck to his point, said frankly that he, thought 
 I had push and that the sort of bounce I had tried on 
 him would often come off. He gave a still better reason 
 for wanting my help: — namely, that the word Cadoresse 
 still counted in the Port, and that he had an idea it might 
 count in Bordeaux too; I was to have is 11 the French 
 business, and wasn't thatms good as going home*? " 
 
 " I'm going back to France," I said. I made no 
 effort to tell him I was broken and spiritless, that I 
 wanted only to shake free from England. I was too 
 broken to explain. In vain did he re-state his scheme, 
 break through his English reserve and try to make 
 me see that my wounds might be healed, assure me again 
 that it was - not too late to mend. 
 
 "It's too late," I said. " I'm going back to France." 
 
 " Well," he said at last, after an hour had elapsed, 
 " 1 shan't start for two months, and I shan't ask anybody 
 else. If you think better of it . . . " 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 YIU 
 
 The English Channel — oh,, no, not that, but " La 
 Manche." The Dieppe cliffs and, behold, a lesser green- 
 ness above them than in the land of everlasting rains; 
 the billowy fields %of Normandy . that dried into still 
 paler green as we entered the He de France. All, it 
 was good, Paris, the clatter of the carts and cabs on the 
 eobbles, the queer " oaty " smell, but it was better the 
 next day when the rapide hurled itself towards the South. 
 
 n-o 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS vx 325 
 
 For here were Orleans and Tours, and now Poitiers — here 
 were soldiers wearing my old uniform, and there went 
 a postman in a linen blouse — of course, it was hot ; this 
 was not the weak English May, it was French May, 
 live as English" July. Faster, faster towards the South, 
 Angouleme and the , cathedral on the hill, and Coutras, 
 red and white, sun-glowing Coutras — and suddenly the 
 burnished blaze of th^e Gironde waters — Bordeaux, 
 my town, the good sweat on my North-paled brow, the 
 good, heavy sun. 
 
 IX 
 
 I had a fortnight of happiness. Frigidly received by 
 
 my mother, who considered that I had disgraced her as 
 
 well as myself by leaving " the house," after proposing 
 
 without her consent to a girl who had no dowry, L found 
 
 that I was JviL r li-h enough not .to mind very much 
 
 whether she disapproved of my behaviour. Besides, we 
 
 fettled our new relations on the morning which followed 
 
 my arrival. We stood in the drawing-room, which had 
 
 :i no part;' five years, I against the black 
 
 ce, my mother near the Empire^ couch, her hand 
 
 lie spoke her mild-severe 
 
 aw that she had not. changed either, thai no 
 
 grey appeared in her tight black hair; I 
 
 Mint of view had not alter* d, that 
 She spoke of her disappointment, 
 blain. (i n* before I left London,' 
 
 thai \ had wrecl life, inquired by 
 
 I did what I chose. 1 think I would fa 
 
 m the i espectfu] English way, but I 
 
 • mother, wondering whether. 
 
 in the cllest of (h .till Were the little high- 
 
 :r the black silk 
 "f the gfl was the use of < |i i.i mil i U g 
 
 With the I I . the full br« ;.<lth 
 
 of it — for did not the POOm ugc, 
 
 familiar smell of < , d me no 
 
 I went to the window, threw it Open and was rebuked. 
 
326 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 But my mother became more precise, wanted to know my 
 intentions. 
 
 " At present, none," I replied, curtly. ** Later on 
 I will look for a position here. I shall not cost you 
 anything ; I will pay you a hundred and fifty francs 
 a month " 
 
 " I did not ask for money," said my mother, crossing 
 her small hands on her black frock. 
 
 " I have some. I have saved about two thousand 
 francs." 
 
 My mother did not reply for some time, but she was 
 impressed, for eighty pounds is a large sum in the South, 
 and she liked my having been thrifty. What would she 
 have said if I had told her how much more it might have 
 been if Maud and I had not sometimes spent ten pounds 
 in a day and night. 
 
 " Very well," said my mother, " since you can afford 
 it ... " She was plainly relieved to see that the prodigal 
 son had brought home a calf. Then she requested me 
 to be secretive as to my affairs, which should be de- 
 scribed as healthy, so that I might not injure Jeanne. 
 
 " We have had difficulties, great difficulties," she said. 
 " Mademoiselle is, not easy to please^ and she has only 
 twenty thousand francs. It is not as if she were very 
 pretty, and she has ideas — excentriques" 
 
 I pitied my little sister : it is hard in France when you 
 are excentrique. 
 
 " She has had some good opportunities, and she has 
 not taken them. There was Monsieur Vachol, the 
 engineer ; of course he had an old affaire, but that could 
 have been arrange*. And Monsieur Corzieux, you 
 remember his son at school " 
 
 " Old Corzieux must be fifty," I remarked. 
 
 " Oui, out — still, he was very fond of her." My mother 
 sighed. " She is twenty-three. We must see, we must 
 really see ..." 
 
 Something displeased me in the interview: the drawing- 
 room in which was no comfortable seat, the formality 
 of it all. But outside was pure joy; I could look out 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 327 
 
 o! the dining-room window and see the street that led 
 to the Quinconces, the sun gleaming on the white tables 
 of the cafe at the corner. And I liked to hear Jeanne, 
 in the drawing-room, practising Chopin, Mozart, occasion- 
 ally breaking out into Lalo or Faure. Jeanne gave me 
 nothing; we had never had much in common and, as 
 soon as she found that I would not tell her anything 
 about " low life in London," of which she had made 
 a mental picture from Les Mysteres de Londres, she joined 
 my mother against me. What her wild ideas were I 
 r found out; I suppose the ideas of English girls 
 so unmaidenly that I had lost my sense of wildness. 
 me went alone once a week to a course of French 
 ature at the Faculte. It may have been that; I had 
 to drag myself back to the view that young girls should 
 not go all on their lonesome, as Maud would have said. 
 . the joy of that first fortnight was outside the house. 
 There was the sun ever and fiercely glowing; the black 
 shadows with the purplish penumbra lay across the white 
 blaze of the paths when I went into the park to see the 
 magnolia. It was just blooming, and its flowers were 
 n small ; not one was yet as large as the big, fleshy creature 
 upon which I had pressed the kiss of a lover. " Wait," 
 • said the magnolia. "This is your city and your sky; 
 i I will bloom, arouse your old, wild passion." 
 I found some of my old friends. Lavalette had £one 
 Paris, and was now a barrister, a great success in the 
 hlif of the town. Gobot I saw only two or three 
 times, for he lived some twenty miles up the river, on 
 vine-clad hills; but Luzan, who worked 
 in a bank, I met every day at half-past five. Together 
 we sat under the awning of the Cafe de la Regence, in 
 front of a vermouth, watched the local dandies pass and 
 smile at the spruce, dark work-girls with the ugly faces 
 the splendid figures. My old friends did me good, 
 for ed out of the "Do you rememb 
 
 conversation into a review of more actual things; I told 
 
 them my story, colouring it up a little, shedding over 
 
 If Wertherian glamour (when I spoke of Edith), 
 
328 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Byronic gloom (when I told the way in which the Englisn 
 had treated me). And I made up as Don Juan when it 
 came tcyMaud. 
 
 Gobot was kind ; he was stouter and redder than ever; 
 he was married, had one child, intended to have two, 
 to drink a good deal of claret, to sell a good deal more, 
 to become maire of his commune, grow older, yet stouter, 
 jollier, and to save his soul in the nick of time. Gobot, 
 you're nothing but Pantagruel r. you jolly brute, I love 
 you. But Luzan helped me more, for Gobot was not 
 exactly the listener a broken-hearted young man wanted. 
 When you are miserable you need to be made still more 
 miserable ; then you . touch bottom, reboimd and feel 
 much', better. That is wheTe Luzan came in; he was 
 now so cynical, so gay a sceptic, so d&void of illusion 
 as to success, woman and salvation that it was good to 
 tell him my story. He laughed, vowed that my imagina- 
 tion would play me the same old trick : that is, I would 
 love again. He almost made me believe that Edith had 
 never loved me. His talk seared me, cauterised me. 
 
 Edith ... I thought of her when I was, alone, when I 
 looked favourably upon my bold, broad-liipped country- 
 women. I swore I would love them, turned away from 
 the frail ghost of the Dresden Shepherdess. I cursed the 
 ghost and its gold hair, the gleam of which was in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 I won, for the sun was in my bones. I loafed along 
 the wharves, smoked immensely, played billiards in the 
 evening with Luzan, read a number 'of light novels. 
 I did not look for work. I was settling dov 
 
 X 
 
 As I have said, the first fortnight was happiness ; then 
 came a fortnight of disqmet. This was so vague that I 
 only realised it at the very end, decided that I wanted 
 occupation, began to seek it. I did* not find a post at 
 once, though I should have if I hvd not been nonchalant, 
 as my qualifications were- high; but salaries were lower 
 
AFTER, THE ENCOUNTERS 329 
 
 # - 
 
 land, and I disliked the idea of living on a 
 reduced scale ; besides, I had money enough to keep me 
 for a year : there was no hurry. Yet the disquiet 
 . and I felt offended; accustojned things grated 
 upon me : I looked at them again, and found them 
 normal ; then they worried me again. 
 
 I began to look for work more feverishly and found 
 
 :ice a post as foreign correspondent in a very good 
 
 firm, at the high salary of three hundred and fifty fr.ancs 
 
 a month? Enough to marry on, I thought, bitterly. 
 
 why not? I added. I began to consider the idea 
 
 much as one may consider absolutely painless suicide. 
 
 But I was not to commit suicide, nor was I even to 
 
 occupy the post of foreign correspondent. I could 
 
 mental processes of those two months — 
 
 hut what for? It is a chronicle of the dead, or the tale 
 
 of t In" slow setting of a broken limb. Rather will I say 
 
 r-(l, chafed, and put down the revolution 
 
 to accident. The accident was simple. One afternoon, 
 
 up the stairs, I crossed Monsieur and Madame 
 
 •i, be in a frock-coat and silk hat, she in modisli 
 
 :i •velvet. We smiled, exchanged comments on 
 
 the f but I guessed by their clothes and Madame 
 
 miles, thai they had been on a solemn errand. 
 
 .1 she would have tossed me if We had not been 
 
 on tl: 
 
 I found my mother in her black silk frock, smiling and 
 
 ry demure and self-conscious. 
 
 i (1 wh.n informed I bat her hand had 
 
 • moon been granted to Luzan, more ex. 
 
 twenty thousand francs had come together 
 
 with a salary of twelve pounds a month, and a parental 
 
 allowance «>f forty pounds a yen-. The fortunes having 
 
 ■ l. it bad been decided thai the young people 
 
 id go through tli.- formality of marriage* I con- 
 
 dated J< ber and my moth r, went to 
 
 my room. The 'affair sickened me; I liked Luzan, hut 
 
 be had undeo to bis id that 
 
 lie liad an old aft bad never been alone 
 
330 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 with Jeanne. Love her ? absurd. Then I called myself 
 a fool, an English fool. Then I swung back and decided 
 to have it out with Jeanne. 
 
 I found her calm, cynical even. 
 
 " I do not dislike him," she said. " What more do 
 you want ? " 
 
 I mumbled something about love. 
 
 "'Oh, well, that would be charmant. Still, one cannot 
 have everything." 
 
 I went on, found she did not think it disgusting that 
 she should be sold in marriage; all that she could see 
 was that Luzan was much nicer than Vachol and old 
 Corzieux. Marriage was a contract, and she was twenty- 
 three. I looked in vain for sweetness in her small, 
 dark face, her splendid black eyes ; there might be passion 
 there, if those heavy eyebrows and the faint down on 
 the upper lip meant anything at all, but not love. Still 
 I pleaded. 
 
 " Oh, well," Jeanne suddenly spat out at me, " love 
 played you nice tricks." 
 
 For some seconds I could not speak. Once, when 
 I tried to learn to box, I was hit over the heart : it was 
 like that. Then a cold rage seized me. 
 
 " It did. It will play them on you. I suppose you 
 intend to marry without love — and to make up for lost 
 . time after." 
 
 We looked at each other with clenched teeth, hating 
 each other. She was livid, and I suppose I was too. 
 
 XI 
 
 I saw the French as they were, now, for Jeanne had 
 torn me out of my dreams ; I saw them, hated them. 
 With English eyes I saw the big, vulgar sun, the men's 
 absurd, tight clothes, the mongrel dogs; I saw the 
 painted) simpering, sensual, lying women; I found the 
 ach furniture uncomfortable, the French table ap- 
 pointments fit for a prison. I went now oppressed by 
 the stuffiness, the closed windows in summer, by the 
 sensation tliat these people did not take baths. 
 
AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 331 
 
 I went into the park. But near the magnolia tree 
 were two young men in flashy clothes. They laughed 
 and talked Very loud. Then one of them ran, leapt 
 a three-foot railing, alighted with an air of triumph; 
 him look at the nursemaid he was fascinating by 
 his nimbleness, at me, to see whether I was admiring 
 him. 
 
 Showing off ! said my English mind. 
 
 And France did not pretend she was going to take me 
 back. 
 
 Through the mouth of' a cabman who stopped his 
 horse in front of the little table^ where I moodily sipped 
 absinthe and tried to drive out of my head the thought 
 of whisky and soda, she shouted at me. " Hi, Angliche ! " 
 cried the cabman, and in broken English offered to drive 
 me round the town. I smiled bitterly and said'nothing, 
 while this Frenchman drew conclusions from my clothes 
 and my silence. 
 
 The cabman was not alone in his opinion. My mother 
 quarrelled with me, because I had sniffed at Jeanne's 
 conveyance, I mean marriage. It was a mean, pro- 
 vincial little brawl, when my mother flung at me in lieu 
 of argument a stranger mixture of French social theory 
 and financial fact. Stung by my silence, she said at 
 
 "Weill Have you nothing to say? .No, I suppose 
 
 i do not talk much nowadays. I suppose you 
 
 lishman." Quickly she added, as 
 
 if sli i interrupt her : " One has only to 
 
 von, at your broad boots, that, ridiculous hat 
 
 , and to smell your clothes. 
 
 Pouahf" !, pointing at my tweed coat; "you 
 
 11 like a fin when the wood is damp." 
 
 I did not r-ply; I pulled at my pipe and thought that 
 
 I h •-■ ed anything s< king as this French 
 
 . I am oo1 I iman, 
 
 what th< den] am I among all these things that 
 gall me ? " 
 
 in the rtreeta, how you made the old cabs 
 
3S2 THE 31 A KING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 rattle behind the wretched French horses ! Trams, how 
 you roared ! And people too, how you roared, wrangled 
 and boasted ! I hated you, hated you — mean, avaricious, 
 petty, boastful people; overfed, sensual, brutal people — 
 hated your cynicism and your hedonism, hated you be- 
 cause you had no illusions and no ideals— I?was rejected 
 of the French. I rejected them. 
 
 Away, away — anywhere — or where the buds are fragile, 
 the blossoms tremulous, the air blue. 
 
 Stanley wrote, asking me to come back. . . . 
 
 To England, yes, to England, anywhere, only to get 
 away. 
 
 ' XII 
 
 I stood at the peak of the steamer. The cliffs of 
 Dover slowly ro^se upon the skyline, swathed in grey 
 mist. My face was wet with soft English rain. 
 
PART IV 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 
 
 1 leant back in the office chair that swung under my 
 
 weight, looked out across Gracechurch Street. January, 
 
 rain spattering on the windows, rain, rain, and above 
 
 the glistening roof opposite, a blade of yellow-white, 
 
 ked sky. Behind me the fire spat and crackled, 
 
 and there was a little crunching rumble as the lumps of 
 
 coal crushed down the burning wood. I was idle, looked 
 
 at the brilliant cuffs that protruded from my well-pressed 
 
 i was pleased with myself, with the sleek back 
 
 of my head when I stroked it. Still interested in my new 
 
 posse 1 looked at my roll-top desk, its choked 
 
 ling cabinet against the wall and its 
 
 is marked "Forward Shipments," "Outward 
 
 freight," "L.C. Private." It was " L.C. Private" 
 
 i mc; behind its label was my all-important 
 
 11, junior partner in what 
 
 Bat id] I not yet. I drew myself 
 
 It is a queer little scene. Miss Condon 
 
 com* by my desk, very quiet and 
 
 ..n my mon« . She is 
 
 brown b ded over her ten: 
 
 know wh< 
 grey, blue, llow. But noblesse oblige 
 
886 TIIK MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 been carved out of yellow wood, seamed with hundreds 
 of criss-crossing wrinkles, and a toothless mouth closed 
 very tight. Alone in the dead face of the old man, who 
 was, I think, nearly ninety, the eyes lived, luminous and 
 pale as water. 
 
 " So you're young Cadoresse," he said. " Young 
 Cadoresse." He said this £even or eight times. " I 
 knew your father very well. Let me see, if he had lived, 
 he would have been ..." ; 
 
 He could not remember, and I tried to help him, but 
 at once his mind wandered, and he began once more his 
 aimless " So you're young Cadoresse . . . young Cador- 
 esse . . ." He lived in .the past ; his stories were of my 
 father as a shipmaster, and most of the stories were 
 unrepeatable, for they showed what a " frightful rip " 
 the old merchant had been ; he had not noticed the Boer 
 war, but he remembered very well consigning foodstuffs 
 to Paris after the surrender to the Germans, and his Paris 
 still had its Emperor, its Taglioni. The luminous old 
 saw far beyond me, into an England devoid of Board 
 schools; further yet, beyond even 1832 and the Reform 
 Bill agination . . . they were still talking of Boney and 
 rloo when he was a~little boy. 
 But he gave me business. " I couldn't have refused 
 your father," he said. "Heavens! how funny he was 
 ag his ship in a frock-coat and a top-hat — tea-caddy 
 (I to call him ..." , 
 
 illed with tears. Oh, heredity, that you- 
 
 siiould have chosen such an instrument as Maud to brand 
 
 . father's son ! The old man introduced me to 
 
 ded ' l beys," who treated him a little- rudely, 
 
 they knew he did not matter in the office, where he 
 
 behind a newspaper and gazed at the wall 
 
 ms of the chief clerk. 
 
 manufactured and affected nothing, 
 
 he old i : them with immense, coi 
 
 trated interest, in the midst of respectful silence. This 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 337 
 
 time he decided we should be given a show, and we were, 
 for his sons liked our methods. , 
 
 This was not very wonderful, for my mind was French ; 
 that is to say, I was hard, logical, punctual and con- 
 temptuous of no detail ; I was very sharp and ready to 
 take advantage - of anybody, to bluff and to lie over a 
 deal ;• but once the terms were made and my word-given 
 my quondam antagonist could be sure that I would not 
 fail him and that I would carry out my contract to the 
 letter even if I were bound' only by word of mouth. I 
 despised the kindly 'old merchant, the stupid English 
 sentimentality that made him promise us a show because 
 he had known my father, and I respected but little more 
 who allowed their suspicions to be overcome by 
 amiability. But that did not concern me; I 
 took the order and,* by aggressively flaunting before the 
 African & Asiatic Steamship Company a non-existent 
 cheap rate quoted by the London and Burmese, which 
 I knew these careless Englishmen would not trouble to 
 « cut a rate that we completely captured 
 Lsiness. 
 Our rates went up i had caught them, and I 
 
 do not think Stanley quite liked my methods. 
 
 " Y<m work (ike an American trust," he said. " Biuff, 
 BOWK a loss, cut it, capture the market — and when 
 
 it." 
 yell? \ 
 
 •id Stanley, laughing, 
 that Otranto 
 f 
 fefcy w( 11 every ton of coal Morri- 
 
 i the 
 bit if we chance 
 
 •• Tir y will find ftley. k ' <>m: of l 
 
 e not cutting rates so line as 
 
338 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 11 They won't," I said, confidently. " Englishmen are 
 careless 6i detail ; if I were a merchant I'd put my business 
 out to tender. But not they; they're English. Lazy 
 brutes." 
 
 Stanley did not mind my abusing the English. " I'm 
 not English," he sometimes said, " I'm a mathematician." 
 His attitude was one of indifference to trifles that involved 
 no philosophic generalisations ; his role was to collect 
 facts and sift them; he made himself a master of the 
 movements of ships all over the world; he knew who 
 sailed in ballast and bluffed that it was timber ; he knew 
 who quietly took in guns and ammunition for the coast 
 of Tripoli and Somaliland; he knew what master drank 
 and what merchant would place an order with a white 
 man and kick a Bengali clerk down the steps of the 
 verandah ; who it was could not forget tiny Sariti and her 
 little paper house at Yokohama, and he knew why 
 there was a sound Irke broken glass and a strong smell 
 of spirits when the Emilys Mary had a funeral in Boston 
 roads and reverently lowered the cofiin while a guileless 
 American gunboat dipped its 'pennant. 
 
 iiiley looked upon the shipping trade as an exercise 
 
 in psychology, a game of chess where you played with 
 
 men (and a little with women); by that queer, Sashing 
 
 procos of deduction of which I had once been the victim 
 
 Ik- discovered exactly what a man keenly wanted, but hid 
 
 behind a mask and a cigar, and he knew how to 
 
 strnl g, to stab jealousies to the quick. It was I, 
 
 <^h, generally went out into the offices, to bluff, to 
 
 Strut, and kick the weak, to fawn before the 
 
 strong. I loved it, I exulted in it. I did not want to 
 
 know my man, as did Stanley; I liked to come at him as 
 
 •d, to cheat him, to buljy him — until it was all 
 
 I; my contract in my pocket, I shook hands with 
 
 my ai l and decided to treat him fairly. 
 
 " I go in for honour," I said to Stanley; "it pays." 
 
 It did, for our eilieiency was terrific, and we Haunted 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 339 
 
 it. I made a practice of never fixing appointments for 
 
 41 eleven" or "three"; no, I fixed "ten past eleven" 
 
 or " twenty to three." And I was there exactly on time, 
 
 for I always arrived a little too early, and waited outside 
 
 until I had only thirty seconds to climb the stairs. We 
 
 drilled Baring and Miss Condon to make out documents 
 
 " while you wait " ; we always, in presence of some mer- 
 
 cbant, wanted some undefined (but agreed) paper, so that 
 
 og might find it on the card-index in fifteen seconds* 
 
 "Fifteen seconds," we would say, proudly, to the impressee. 
 
 But if our efficiency was terrific, so was our labour; every 
 
 letter and document was checked four times ; wc refused 
 
 ke information from the Shipping Gazette, but com- 
 
 i it with Lloyd's Weekly Index. We took nothing 
 
 on trust ; if we had needed Greenwich time we would have 
 
 correlated it with Paris time and cheeked by measuring 
 
 the difference in minutes on the map. In seven months 
 
 lid not make a single mistake — but for the first three 
 
 wc stayed a1 the office every night up to eleven o'clock,. 
 
 :>t Sundays, when we were lazy and left at nine. 
 
 Once Miss Condon came, on a sweltering August night, 
 
 frit faint : I threw her a sovereign and told her 
 
 to her machine, " slick." England had a 
 
 and all through it we worked, canvassing 
 
 terviewing hundreds of people, marketing 
 
 ii a little into marine assurance), struggling 
 
 for obnoxious trade such as guano and explosives. And 
 
 when other men had Hosed th.-ir offices, when some of 
 
 them were ill bed, there we sat, the four of us, Stanley 
 
 I fed by tin- fury of our young ambition, Baring and 
 
 and dole ; there wc were, circularisr 
 
 plying insolently for contracts that would have 
 
 filled the 1'. & O. fleet, shouting (in English English) 
 
 thai wc \\( ■:■■ goods, planning, 
 
 It v., wonderful, it was romantic, this fierce crcat 
 Out: bun: mo wretched child which wc would allow 
 
338 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 41 They won't," I said, confidently. " Englishmen are 
 careless of detail ; if I were a merchant I'd put my business 
 out to tender. But not they; they're English. Lazy 
 brutes." 
 
 Stanley did not mind my abusing the English. " I'm 
 not English," he sometimes said, " I'm a mathematician." 
 His attitude was one of indifference to trifles that involved 
 no philosophic generalisations ; his role was to collect 
 facts and sift them; he made himself a master of the 
 movements of ships all over the world; he knew who 
 sailed in ballast and bluffed that it was timber; he knew 
 who quietly took in guns and ammunition for the coast 
 of Tripoli and Somaliland; he knew what master drank 
 and what merchant would place an order with a white 
 man and kick a Bengali clerk down the steps of the 
 verandah ; who it was could not forget tiny Sariti and her 
 little paper house at Yokohama, and he knew why 
 there was a sound Irke broken glass and a strong smell 
 of spirits when the Emilys Mary had a funeral in Boston 
 roads and reverently lowered the coffin while a guileless 
 American gunboat dipped its 'pennant. 
 
 Stanley looked upon the shipping trade as an exercise 
 
 in psychology, a game of chess where you played with 
 
 men (and a little with women); by that queer, flashing 
 
 process of deduction of which I had once been the victim 
 
 he discovered exactly what a man keenly wanted, but hid 
 
 behind a mask and a cigar, and he knew how to 
 
 strol lousies to the quick. It was I, 
 
 gh, generally went out into the offices, to bluff, to 
 
 strut, to advance and kick the weak, to fawn before the 
 
 strong. I loved it, I exulted in it. I did not want to 
 
 know my man, as did Stanley; I liked to come at him as 
 
 •d, to cheat him, to buljy him — until it was all 
 
 i. my contract in my pocket, I shook hands with 
 
 my antagonist and decided to treat him fairly. 
 
 " I go in for honour," I said to Stanley; "it pays." 
 
 It did, for our efficiency was terrific, and we Haunted 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 339 
 
 it. I made a practice of never fixing appointments for 
 
 "eleven" or "three"; no, I fixed "ten past eleven" 
 
 or " twenty to three." And I was there exactly on time, 
 
 for I always arrived a little too early, and waited outside 
 
 until I had only thirty seconds to climb the stairs. We 
 
 drilled Baring and Miss Condon to make out documents 
 
 " while you wait " ; we always, in presence of some mer- 
 
 ehant, wanted some undefined (but agreed) paper, so that 
 
 og might find it on the card-index in fifteen seconds* 
 
 "Fifteen seconds," we would say, proudly, to the impressee. 
 
 But if our efficiency was terrific, so was our labour; every 
 
 letter and document was checked four times ; we refused 
 
 a- information from the Shipping Gazette, but com- 
 
 d it with Lloyd's Weekly Index. We took nothing 
 
 on trust ; if we had needed Greenwich time we would have 
 
 ted it with Paris time and checked by measuring 
 
 inference in minutes on the map. In seven months 
 
 we did not make a single mistake — but for the first three 
 
 we stayed at the office every night up to eleven o'clock,. 
 
 ;>t Sundays, when we were lazy and left at nine. 
 
 Once Miss Condon came, on a sweltering August night, 
 
 y she felt faint : Ithrew her a sovereign and told her 
 
 to her machine, "slick." England had a 
 
 and all through it we worked, canvassing 
 
 terviewing hundreds of people, marketing 
 
 wl b little into marine assurance), struggling 
 
 de such as guano and explosives. And 
 
 when other men had closed their offices, when some of 
 
 then bed, there we sat, the four of us, Stanley 
 
 the fury of our young ambition, Baring and 
 
 -id doles : there we were, circularise 
 
 insolently f«>r contracts that would hare 
 
 filled the 1\ & O. fleet, shouting (in English English) 
 
 there with (Ik- goods, planning, 
 
 !<rful, it was romantic, this fierce creal 
 
 Out \j no wretched child which we would allow 
 
340 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 to grow ; no, we were going to bring it up in the forcing- 
 house, feed it on some Wellsian " Food of the Gods," 
 made out of our brains and bodies. Stanley saw the 
 romance of it. 
 
 "Here we are," he said, " with our fingers at the 
 throat of the world, shaking it to make it pay up. All 
 the world . . ." He indicated the big Mercator map on 
 the wall. " Shanghai, we're sending creosoted sleepers 
 there on that old tub the Urmiah . . . and Cardiff ; coal — 
 coal for the Port. It's we who 're handling it, thousands 
 of tons of it — we'll handle millions of tons — -cranes, baskets 
 — hear it, Cadoresse? Hear it rattle down the chutes, 
 millions of tons, to cook the Lord Mayor's dinner and 
 warm the slippers of Mr. Thirty-Bob- A- Week at Clapham. 
 And New York City — Bombay — the whole blasted ant- 
 heap— Good Lord ! " He breathed heavily, as if awed 
 by the globe enormously spin^jng within our walls. 
 
 But I did not see it like that. Enough romance, I 
 was too old for that silly game. . I was out for money, 
 revenge. The English wouldn't have me ? That was 
 O.K., I'd not have a nationality at all, I'd be a cosmo- 
 politan, Pd drip with gold in every European Hotel 
 Metropele, I'd have three cars at my door, and cars for 
 my servants that the English-' peerage couldn't afford; 
 and I would travel — to the fiords on my yacht, to the 
 East with my caravan, my armed escort, my camels and 
 my dancing girls; and if I liked I'd be an Englishman as 
 a pastime, buy mysdf ten thousand English votes, the 
 right to make laws for Englishmen, a scat in the Cabinet 
 if I had to double the party funds. I'd be rich enough 
 Bull's shirt and turn him, naked, out of his 
 island . . . And h . in the principality which was 
 
 an em] ,1-elad and gloating 
 
 trial balance-sheet. "The first six months showed a 
 profit, capital expenditure entirely written off. It was 
 not i firm brought (hat off; but that was 
 
 hing : lei 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 341 
 
 III 
 
 And so we rushed onwards, urging our little business 
 to b' y week the accord it had established seven 
 
 before and succeeding, pound by pound, so deter- 
 mined were we to win, so ready to ship anything between 
 a historic mansion for re-erection in New York State and 
 a halfpenny packet of pins. Between us Stanley and I 
 -rd a code of daring, a sort of samurai gospel which 
 bade us shrink from nothing. One morning we were rung 
 uj) by the Lea Ironworks; they were put through to 
 Stanley and said : 
 
 " Can you " 
 
 V Yes," said Stanley, interrupting. 
 
 The audacious interruption went the round of the 
 
 docks : Stanley, Cadoresse & Co. did not need to know 
 
 what it was people wanted them to do, asked no ques- 
 
 to place or date, did not care whether there was 
 
 yellow fever in every port and a dock strike in the bargain. 
 
 No, they just said " Yes." And the joke served us well. 
 
 ing into the oflice of Alston Brothers 
 
 ; a starred A for a new client. 
 
 M I cloiKt know you," said the manager. " And I 
 
 know your prineipal. Don't care for that sort of 
 
 .*' 
 mas Alston came into the office, a paper in his hand, 
 at once Che man. . more truculent, so as to 
 
 show his chief what a sound man lie was. 
 
 growled. " People come. along 
 
 y with twopence and think they can do what 
 
 iik.' with our boats— mesa up the hold with leaky 
 
 ito trouble with half-a-dozen 
 
 • tjone. 
 B6 & Co. play the game," I 
 quite as truculently. 
 
 »li. ifl tli, if who yon arc I Thomas Alston. 
 
 >oked at Miked a cunning grey 
 
342 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 eye. " You're the people who always say * Yes,' aren't 
 Give the babies a chance, Mr. Marston." 
 We chartered the ship and she made an excellent 
 voyage. Two months later Thomas Alston rang up 
 *' the babies " to know whether the^ would like to look 
 out for freight for his new Tunisian line, in which case 
 he might break a rule and give them a monopoly. 
 
 , .." The babies " boastfully replied that they would charter 
 the ships themselves, and they filled them every one, 
 for they went the round of the exporters' representatives 
 protesting they already had the monopoly : as a result 
 they got it. Once only did we come down on a rash 
 speculation, for one of our hired vessels was held up 
 somewhere in the West Indies, by an accident to the only 
 crane that could lift our goods, for four days beyond the 
 lay days. I remember Stanley's anxious face when he 
 came in with the cable that told us we were already liable 
 for two days' demurrage at sixpence a register ton. A 
 hundred pounds ! v 
 
 . " Gosh ! " said Stanley. " Ten days '11 all but break us." 
 Then he impartially damned the authorities, the makers 
 of the crane and the wretched niggers who had put it out 
 of gear. 
 
 On the third day I sent an expensive cable telling the 
 dock company we would sue them, for damages, which 
 was idiotic, as the company had an Act of God and accident 
 vered it; but the cable relieved me so much 
 that, on the fourth day, I was almost cheerful when Stanley 
 and I talked over our pipes of filing our petition and 
 camping in Carey Street. 
 
 The crane was restored on the fourth day and we scraped 
 siili a fine of two hundred pounds; the money 
 ted, for it taught us that a young firm must 
 not speculate. I do not think we chartered a ship again 
 for two years, except once or twice when we knew that 
 somebody was in the market, slipped in and re-sold him 
 the charter-party with a pront of a few pence per ton. 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 343 
 
 We recovered some of our self-esteem over the great 
 rat case. We had shipped eight cases of Cheddar cheese, 
 i ned for India, where Englishmen insist on English 
 fare when the temperature is- 108. Two of the cases were 
 so badly stowed that the lids worked loose; as a result 
 rats entered the cases and, when the goods were landed 
 at Bombay, it was found that every one of the hundred 
 cheeses had been nibbled. I can see our client now, 
 cable in hand ; he was a very fat, very red little German, 
 whose legs were so short and whose voice was so high that 
 I had to hold down my laughter by force ;he was so exactly 
 like " the dying pig" in indiarubber that the hawkers 
 were selling outside for sixpence. 
 
 44 Shpoiled ! " he squeaked ; " every plessed cheese 
 shpoiled. I make you reshponshible. I make de captain 
 reshponshible. I go to law. I prosecute." 
 
 We pointed out that the stevedore 
 
 44 Damn dc shit \ c <lore," he screamed, waving the cable. 
 " Dis is cheek you talk. You shpoil my cheese. You — 
 you take de biscuit." 
 
 The little German burst out of our office some seconds 
 
 later, jamming his silk hat on his square head, vowing 
 
 he would " prosecute." But we could not stop laughing; 
 
 the association of cheese and biscuits was too much for 
 
 not liable, being merely agents; 
 
 all we risk* (1 \vj,s the 1<>^s of a small client. Still, we had 
 
 for our en dits sake to see what could be done; the case 
 
 seemed unpleasant, as inquiry showed that the ship had 
 
 ~carri I had given up hope when Stanley came 
 
 i my room Qearfy five weeks later with an expression 
 
 on his i that made him look like a monk who 
 
 has caught a cai rening. 
 
 lkm<: alxjut eats," he said, and Stopped to grin. 
 44 Cats: 
 44 i I eheese. You remember?" 
 
 41 on 
 
 44 Well/' -ligently, 44 I just thought 
 
844 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 about it a bit. Slack lot of cats tsn that boat, don't you 
 think ? Six cats ought to have watched those two cases." 
 
 44 Oh, do say what you mean. This isn't a missing 
 word competition." 
 
 "I thought," repeated 'Stanley. "Then I cabled to 
 our-pcople : ' Any cats on board ? ' The reply was, * No.' " 
 
 k " Xo," I cried, " but they shipped " 
 
 " They did. Therefore the cats had vanished. I 
 waited, met her at Tilbury, went on board, got hold of 
 the cook " 
 
 " Why the cook ? " . - 
 
 44 He was likely to be interested in cheese. I told him 
 a story of a musical cat I used to have — and a story about 
 how my brother-in-law's dog ran away, suggested canaries, 
 kept the conversation zoological. By the time I'd done 
 he was sick of hearing me talk and was just bursting with 
 animal anecdotes. He told me four, including one about 
 
 a pet chimpanzee, and then " The thin, dark face 
 
 became as sly as that of a fox. 44 Then — well — the ship 
 did take six cats at Tilburj', but they all ate some stuff 
 that disagreed with them or something felinicide happened. 
 Anyhow, they slung the last of them overboard off Dover, 
 absolutely dead." 
 
 I took it in. The owners were caught and must pay 
 compensation; of course, they had no chance against a 
 firm conducted like Scotland Yard. 
 
 Great days ! Now we have our own fleet and our own 
 quite a jolly flag, a white S and a red C on a blue 
 ind, will) a yellow edge. But we're so great that, 
 . the days. are not so great. 
 
 IV 
 
 I do not suppose any better cure could have been found 
 
 for my bruised soul than this successful creation of the 
 
 firm. When the first of July and flic first .-mniversary 
 
 round, I discovered that ;i little of my harshness 
 
 had -gone. I was not rich yet, could not hope for much 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 345 
 
 rriGre than two hundred pounds or two hundred and fifty 
 
 that year, but I was my own master and, every month, 
 
 doing that little better which meant we were 
 
 going to do very well. The hard work had saved me, 
 
 prevented me from brooding, saved me from dreams 
 
 and almost from regrets, for a man does not every night 
 
 of thre* months collapse as he gets into bed and yet find 
 
 time to think of the girl who passed. After three months 
 
 habit does the rest. Edith ! I did not think of her every 
 
 day t hen, for my business was my love. When I did think 
 
 of her I ached, but the pain was bearable, and soon some 
 
 commercial anxiety ousted it; Kdith had become ghostly, 
 
 :• the girl Moved but a faint memory, like 
 
 the pretty chime of a church bell that one remembers, 
 
 or a scent of lavender. I had not seen her once since that 
 
 night of encounters; I had seen none of her friends and 
 
 was just beginning. to have time for new ones. Once or 
 
 twice I had met- Miv Lawton, who nodded distantly; I 
 
 ipoken to Hugh In the street and received with cold 
 
 kg his good wishes tor our success. Edith had not 
 
 mentioned, and oft en 1 liked to tell myself that I 
 
 had forgotten her, that I loved hex no more. 
 
 A little for that reason, I think, and a little because I 
 
 ome freedom when we increased our staff, by 
 
 Mortimer, who superseded Baring, and by an office-boy, 
 
 pay "Id I ■ ' ; urned to me. 
 
 Edity, M.-nal. the others, had 
 
 : 1 was hard, and my gaiety, my pleasures 
 
 hard. But — I despised myself a little— success was 
 
 Ding me; I was doI quite as hard as I had been, I 
 
 :i to see once mo* grace of 
 
 i hose who 'served my 
 
 Id me st. tOoK my name. Once I talked 
 
 Shell ion. 
 
 I pulUd myself up, told mysell this would nevei do, 
 
 melting, melting likeao iceberg that drifts south. 
 
 ip Iped me, and its summer girls, but it did 
 
MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Stanley too, and Mrs. Stanley, were in the conspiracy. 
 Now I often went to the little house at Esher to dine and 
 talk. Mrs. Stanley had been given a full account of my 
 adventures, knew that my engagement had been broken 
 off and that I had subsequently lost my character; at 
 first she was a little inclined to treat me like a convalescent, 
 to receive my remarks on the weather and the London 
 and South- Western railway with a sympathetic air, to 
 suggest that I had suffered but should through her be 
 healed. Soon, however, as she mistook my cynicism for 
 gaiety, she resumed her inconsequent, clumsy and subtly 
 delightful airs; she never, and it must have cost her an 
 effort, alluded to my romantic past, but she took great 
 pains to show me that she thought none the less well ot 
 me on account of the scandalousness of that past. She 
 even discussed free-love in an obtrusive way which 
 amused me very much. 
 
 " I don't think it would work," she said, confidentially. 
 " You see, it's, all very well when women are young and 
 pretty, but when you get tired of us what's to become of 
 us ? I suppose you'd send us to the workhouse." 
 
 " You're too subjective in your theory," I said. 
 
 " I don't know what that means, but you must look 
 
 upon it from the woman's point of view. 'Mind you, I 
 
 I it matters a bit if it's going to last; the 
 
 i rai and the vicar — after all, they're only details." 
 
 nicy and I both laughed, for Mrs; Stanley w&s quietly 
 
 pious and a little ashamed of her fondness for a ni 
 
 bouring chapel-of-ease : but then a sweet woman will 
 
 generally be quite immoral if she is required to cheer a 
 
 man up. Her simplicity, her transparence, the bird-like 
 
 agility with which she leapt from polities to domesticity 
 
 by's teeth, to eugenic segregation* 
 
 the broad jollity of her, all contributed to crack wherever 
 
 it touched the hard < i my cynicism. When we 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 349 r 
 
 ed together from the City she would rush into the 
 hall, and while Stanley was being kissed I could hear her 
 iloquise to him : 
 
 " Baby's been very naughty. What d'you think he 
 did ? lie stole all the tape out of my work-basket, tied 
 it to Pat's neck and hauled him about the floor, shouting : 
 Puffer ! And Pat was 1 aking it like an angel, but he's 
 been sick. That was just before Mrs. Hoskin came in;" 
 Do you know her brother's going to. put up for the Dis- 
 trict Council ":' I'm sure I don't know why unless it's 
 use he's a builder. Which reminds me : Did you 
 
 telTBenetfink that " 
 
 " I told Benetiink," said Stanley, laughing as he freed 
 • -If, "and, the other topics are adjourned. New 
 curtsey to Mr. Cadoressc, if a dumpling can curtsey." 
 
 She curtseyed, shook hands as she apologised for not 
 having seen me, her .eyes round and gay, her mouth 
 pou' use she was mildly snubbed.- 
 
 *• W Mich a lot to talk about, old three-yards 
 
 and I." she said. 
 
 They did "have a great deal to talk about, this incon- 
 
 ' tuple, and they sandwiched it with rather startling 
 
 leading questions, tactfully designed 
 
 out on my own topics; Indeed, the con \ 
 
 , lion at dinner resembled nothing so much as a shower 
 
 of shoot i . so rapidly did subject after subject fall 
 
 into our midst : if . Stanley started them pne after 
 
 th<- otto i red us by frequent^rushes into side-issues 
 
 when the crash of crockery or a wail 
 
 from tb hing was happening 
 
 in 1 1 Stanley £ ./.< d at her with 
 
 I but u; : when he had stared long 
 
 f him, usually by in- 
 flating 1: |OUth and shutting 
 
 WcD, is that a good melon for you, you old BO 
 
 runner I " 
 
Tlfi: MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Stanley too, and Mrs. Stanley, were in the conspiracy. 
 Now I often went to the little houst at Esher to dine and 
 talk. Mrs. Stanley had been given a full account of my 
 adventures, knew that my engagement had been broken 
 off and that I had subsequently lost my character; at 
 first she was a little inclined to treat me like a convalescent, 
 to receive my remarks on the weather and the London 
 and South- Western railway with a sympathetic air, to 
 suggest that I had suffered but should through her be 
 healed. Soon, however, as she mistook my cynicism for 
 gaiety, she resumed her inconsequent, clumsy and subtly 
 delightful airs; she never, and it must have cost her an 
 effort, alluded to my romantic past, but she took great 
 pains to show me that she thought none the less well ot 
 me on account of the scandalousness of that past. She 
 even discussed free-love in an obtrusive way which 
 amused me very much. 
 
 " I don't think it would work," she said, confidentially. 
 " You see, it's, all very well when women are young and 
 pretty, but when you get tired of us what's to become of 
 us ? I suppose you'd send us to the workhouse." 
 
 " You're too subjective in your theory," I said. 
 
 " I don't know what that means, but you must look 
 upon it from the woman's point of view. 'Mind you, I 
 that it matters a bit if it's going to last; the 
 I car and the vicar — after all, they're only details." 
 nicy and I both laughed, for Mrs-. Stanley was quietly 
 pious and a little ashamed of her fondness for a neigh- 
 bouring chapel-of-easc : but then a sweet woman will 
 generally be quite immoral if she is required to cheer a 
 man up. Her simplicity, her transparence, the bird-like 
 agility with which she leapt from politics to domesticity 
 and then, via the baby's teeth, to eugenk segregation, 
 the broad Jollity <>f her, all contributed to crack wherever 
 it touched the hard coating of my cynicism. When we 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 849 
 
 arrived together from the City she would rush into the 
 hall, and while Stanley was being kissed I could hear her 
 soliloquise to him : 
 
 " Baby's been very naughty. What d'you think he 
 did ? lie stole all the tape out of my work-basket, tied 
 it to Pat's neck and hauled him about the floor, shouting : 
 Puffer ! And Pat was taking it like an angel, but he's 
 been sick. That was just before Mrs. Hoskin came in;* 
 Do you know her brother's going to. put up for the Dis- 
 trict Councif? I'm sure I don't know why unless it's 
 because he's a builder. Which reminds me : Did you 
 
 telT Benetfink that " 
 
 " 1 told Benetfink,* 1 said Stanley, laughing as he freed 
 
 if, " and t the other topics are adjourned. Xfiw 
 
 curtsey to Mr. Cadoresse, if a dumpling can curtsey." 
 
 She curtseyed, shook hands as she apologised for not 
 
 rig seen me, her .eyes round and gay, her mouth 
 
 pouting because she was mildly snubbed.- 
 
 M \\ ■ have such a lot to talk about, old three-yards 
 and 1. id. 
 
 They did "have a great deal to talk about, this incon- 
 •uple, and i hey sandwiched it with rather startling 
 leading questions, tactfully designed 
 it on my own topics; Indeed, the conversa- 
 nt dinner resembled nothing so much as a shower 
 of shooting stars, so rapidly did subject after subject fall 
 
 .lev started them one after 
 
 the other, nd us by frequent^rushea into side-issues 
 
 when the crash of crockery or a wail 
 
 Erom th< ag was happening 
 
 d at her with 
 but ui ■ : wheil he had stared long 
 
 be would make b face at* him, usually by in- 
 flating hi OUth and shutting 
 
 Well, is that I i for you, you old se. 
 
 r> 
 
350 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 They were ridiculous, adorable. Mrs. Stanley's pretti- 
 ness, her white skin, blue eyes, fair hair, the completeness 
 with which her body concealed her bones, made to me such 
 an appeal that my harshness had always gone before the 
 evening's end. I never thought of making love to her, 
 which I could have done in her husband's presence, for 
 he would not havo. understood ; but I don't think she 
 would have understood either. Besides, her mixture of 
 simplicity and originality baffled me; sweet, languid 
 women, and fierce, wild women — I knew how to manage 
 those, but intellect informed by innocence was beyond me. 
 lie ides, I was a sort of Englishman now, and the code 
 of respect weighed heavy upon me. 
 
 1 1 think, though, I was happier when alone with Stanley 
 after dinner. Then, slowly sucking at our pipes, we 
 could discuss interminably the chances we had of captur- 
 ing an order from some exporter, consider whether certain 
 expenses could be cut down or some others profitably 
 incurred. Or, deciding we must not talk shop, we would 
 te some political question. I was still a Had i en), 
 with a touch of the Anarchist, for I detested the organised 
 Utopia of the Socialists, but Stanley called himself a 
 Tory Democrat ; that is to say, held a licence to consider 
 himself more progressive than my own party while 
 lading the Crown, the Church, the landlord and the 
 publican. Also he was a vigorous tariff reformer and 
 converted me regularly once a month, for I fortunately 
 d from his attacks as I read my morning paper, 
 lie was very - iingand quite as dishonest as I \ 
 
 iderablc light was shed upon the value of our argu- 
 ments when we found that, in one of those interminable 
 debates on Protection, we had both quoted from the same 
 table of world wages — only I had selected the countries and 
 trad. rov.d I'm: Trade England most bountiful, 
 
 (1 the wretched condition 
 of the British working man. I did not care for those 
 dry economics; but Stanley had his flights. 
 
STANLEY, CADORESSE AND CO. 351 
 
 " You know," he said once, pointing at me a knubbly 
 brown finger, " all this sort of thing, politics, it's a rotten 
 game. Sort of street row. You shout black, and I 
 shout white, and it's grey all the time. What we want is 
 something to chuck all the ideas into until they get mixed ; 
 a sort of intellectual melting-pot." The piercing eyes 
 became dreamy as they gazed at the red wall. " All that 
 talk of sending the L.C.C. kids to Paris for a week, and 
 having four hundred German boys here . . . showing 'em 
 Paul's and the chute at Earl's Court % . . rot, all that. 
 They haven't got any ideas. They only do what Cam- 
 bridge and Harvard tell them. We've got to mix up the 
 people who've got a chance to get ideas, not only those 
 haven't. The Carlton Club ought to swap a hundred 
 members every year with the Reform — or why shouldn't 
 the Reichstag let English M.P.'s make a law or two for 
 the Germans ? Mix it all up, that's the idea. Scotch 
 for bishops . . . male charwomen . . . Swiss 
 toreadors . . . give the navy vodka instead of rum." 
 
 \v friends, too, came into my life ; Hoskin, the builder, 
 who filled his fancy waistcoats to bursting, and Mr. Shep- 
 herd, who thought, probably because I was not an English- 
 hut merely a Ix-nightcd foreigner, that he ought to 
 win i from Rome. Their wives, their daughters, 
 
 direel people of the tweed and stiff collar type, people 
 who I ; heard of the Stage Society, but were willing 
 
 to play tennis with me or to risk a wetting when I punted, 
 i found a new England where nobody pretended, 
 body was busy doing simple, muscular 
 the women were neither urban nor suburban; 
 bank, En h. and When an occasional flirtation 
 involved me, I found a new pleasure in rapid, innocent 
 which there lingered in my nostrils neither 
 
 I was becoming human. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 RECONSTRUCT! O^k 
 
 Early in that year I had rejoined the Liberal Club. 
 less because politics called me than because I found myself 
 lonely; I rejoined .in a cynical mood, telling myself that 
 I didn't care what became of the rotten country, but that 
 I might have some fun in the rough and tumble. In my 
 earlier enthusiasm I had been righteously angry when 
 the Lords rejected the Education Bill, the Plural Voting- 
 Bill and the Licensing Bill, "though I had little liking for 
 religious education in any form and was individualist 
 enough to think a man had a right to be drunk if he chose ; 
 after my emotional disaster I do not think that for a 
 year I read a single political speech; the Small Holdings 
 Act, which should, have fired my imagination, went 
 unperccived by me through the Upper House, and it 
 was only later, when human desires and human interests 
 n once more to grow round me that I realised politics 
 as likely to amuse me. 
 
 - I think it was the new spirit of Liberalism attracted 
 
 Within seven or eight months of the general election 
 
 1 had sneered at the Liberals because they showed no 
 
 inclination to tackle the Lords; I had even, in the face 
 
 hocked club, likened Sir Henry Camphell-Bannerman 
 t<; the celebrated commander who marched his sol: 
 
 II and marched them down again. But, in the 
 
 1908, I discovered in the Liberal papers 
 
 distinct signsof ai hat, faced with so " game*' 
 
 ably as the Lords, the Liberals would eventually 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 353 
 
 have to do something, if only because a noisy minority 
 of the rank-and-file wanted something done. I har- 
 boured no illusions as to the voice of the people ; I had 
 heard it at Hambury shouting more or less beerily, more*, 
 or less aitchlessly, and generally talking the most obvious 
 nonsense ; I knew too that the mandate the people gave 
 its elect was on the whole to make the other fellows sorry 
 they spoke, and that the mandate would duly be reversed 
 when the people thought they would like new bread 
 and especially new circuses ; I knew that elections were 
 decided less by alternative convictions than by alternative 
 regrets : if I had not held the business of politics cheap 
 I should not again have taken it up, for I wanted an 
 
 ement, not a religion. As I saw looming in the near 
 future a great row with the Bishops and the Lords I 
 decided to be in it : for a Frenchman loves a row as much 
 as an Irishman, particularly when the opponents are 
 prelates and aristocrats. 
 
 It was in this contemptuous, defiant and pugnacious 
 spirit I appeared before Cloggie. The old man held out 
 both hands to me, and I guested that he would have kissed 
 
 f he had been a Frenchman. He looked no older, 
 for years are nothing after the seventieth; his white hair 
 was as thick; his blue eyes were as benevolent and bright 
 under their Bhaggy white eyebrows. "Good boy, good 
 boy," he remarked a large number of times as he held 
 my hand. " Thought you'd never come back again, 
 i been uptol Sowing wild oats? Well, well, 
 1 been through it too. / know. 'J Cloggie winked at 
 me as one gay dog meeting another. " Do you kriow," 
 he said, confidentially, "they Ufed to call me the Girls 1 
 Own, at Dudley, hack in the 'sixties. That was before 
 
 • Him,*' he added, hurrn dly. u He made a newman 
 oi ma, did William Ewart. Did I ever tcJl you about 
 
 night in '74 when He spoke at Bradford and I held' 
 EBieoat?" \ 
 
854 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 I let Cloggie describe the scene again, displaced this 
 time some dozen years and located in a new town. As 
 he spoke, telling, I suspect, the plot of a dream, I liked 
 him more than I cared to think. Old Cloggie stood with 
 one arm outstretched, imitating the great man, with a 
 glow in his eyes and something of the tempest of Glad- 
 stone's phrases in his voice. I understood that his leader 
 was Cloggie's god, that his speeches were his creed ; 
 sustained by a sentimental passion the old Whig soared, 
 was splendid, was a tribune when he roared in William 
 Ewart's rolling tones the message to all the Smiths in 
 Wolverhampton. And, as suddenly, he was human 
 again : 
 
 "Do you know," said Cloggie, "I remembered you, 
 wondered what'd become of you. Once I thought ... no 
 ... I never did, Mr. Clogg ; you're quite wrong, Sir — I 
 said that these times were funny times, Mr. Clogg; not 
 a word more." 
 
 He communed with the shade of Mr. Clogg and I sighed, 
 thinking of Hambury and Edith. Then I shook him by 
 the arm, for the altercation with the ghost was becoming 
 violent. " I never said he'd gone over to the Tories. 
 
 No, Mr. Clogg, you've got no right " I was just in 
 
 time to save him from blasphemy, from telling the ghost 
 of the pious founder of our library that he lied. Cloggie 
 looked at me with mournful eyes. " I never said you'd 
 gone over to the Tories," he protested. 
 
 " No, no, of course not," I said, soothing the old man. 
 * l I was busy, making my own business. Down with the 
 Lords ! " 
 
 " Ah," sighed Cloggie, rapturously. Then he glared 
 at me in a purposeful way, censorious, and a faint North 
 Country accent crept into his voice. " That's all very 
 well shouting * Down with the Lords,' lad, but tha must 
 g»rd up thy loins if tha want'st to light the good fight . 
 pardon, Sir ? . . . Yes, Mr. Clogg, certainly " 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 355 
 
 He conferred with the shade, then solemnly : " What 
 do you say to Progress and Poverty for a beginning? " 
 . I pressed one hand upon my heart : the first book in 
 my political education — Hambury — Edith. . '. . Curse 
 you, weak heart ! what's this. to start you a-beating? 
 • Fes," I said weakly, " I'll have that." 
 I took the dirty old book away. And I was very near 
 when I found a note on page 8 : " Ward Four 
 c.r. 6.30." Little dream girl, whom I had loved and won 
 amid the dust of that election, you suddenly became the 
 one reality in a dirty room papered with posters, littered 
 with leaflets, crowded with canvassers, list-checkers, 
 lope addressers. . . . But I fought the dream and 
 1 it : away with sentiment, and up with the 
 struggle for life, the splendid anodyne. 
 
 II 
 
 Happy in his enterprise is the man free from love. 
 Unburdened of tin delicious load, his mind occupied by 
 ht save his ambition, he can march undeflected to- 
 wards his goal. Because he does not love he spares no 
 man, and if he no longer hopes to love he stops at nothing; 
 his brain is elear, he sees without feeling, and because he 
 nothing he understands everything. Sympathy is 
 ;s draught, but you cannot hold the cup to the 
 erf others unless you too have drunk; and the potent 
 pity thai heals another p. rvades you, softens you; 
 ordained in the priesthood of sorrow your brain struggles 
 against your heart; you arc drugged, you are beaten. 
 
 I was not going to be beaten, for 1 was not going to 
 thrill. I would make a greal business, love no woman, 
 
 iv, and I WOUld make a toy of Parliaments. 
 
 ly. then, I chose the Liberals because tin; chances 
 
 of the rich City man iter with them than with 
 
 :\es; (hat was just a question of numbers. 
 
 A] bo I decided to he extreme, a little because I liked 
 
356 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 violent language, a great deal because I saw that the richer 
 I became the more noble I would seem if I fought against 
 wealth. I reappeared,, in the Club debates as an amazing 
 and suspected figure, as elaborately dressed as possible, 
 never more informally than in a frock-coat ; I wore fancy 
 waistcoats, scented my handkerchief; sometimes I came 
 in evening clothes. The little group of tradesmen and 
 workmen hated me, I think; and my airs, but they could 
 not withstand the acrid violence of my speeches. I 
 was happy in their midst because I was playing a part, 
 strutting- as a fop and mouthing words that would have 
 satisfied the I.L.P. 
 
 Soon I had my party, about ten members out of sixty. 
 We always occupied the same chairs and ostentatiously 
 conferred with one another when the chairman stood up 
 to put a resolution. My party comprised Cloggie, two 
 railwaymen on the edge of Socialism, a gas-fitter, one of 
 thtf-most intemperate temperance men I have ever met; 
 also a secularist elementary school teacher, three "shop- 
 keepers called Lewis, Evans and Lloyd, and an extra- 
 ordinary person, Mr. Misling, who had rebelled against 
 mete Liberalism because the Admiralty refused to try 
 vegetarianism in the Navy. We were the cranks, the 
 dangerous people ; we followed our parliamentary favour- 
 closely, noted their speeches and their votes. 1 had a 
 fancy for Palissy, the Radical potter; the school teacher 
 quoted Mr. Beam?' questions with relish. There was 
 Ponsonby too, we liked him, and the member for Totten- 
 ham* while Mr. Misling periodically suggested that Mr. 
 lit rnard Shaw should be asked to contest our division, 
 mably in the lentil interest. We were absurd, but 
 I knew what I was doing. I was making the hetero- 
 geneous homogeneous by harbouring myself all the 
 oddities and all the discontents; I was extreme so as to 
 collect Hi*.' extremists, but I was going to use them, not 
 to serve them* In March I was elected to the Executive 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 357 
 
 aud signalised my entry into the governing body by calling 
 tl\e Prime Minister weak-kneed and a traitor to his 
 , r es. 
 I think this was a happy period of my life ; I led, I was 
 followed by the few and viewed with undisguised be- 
 wilderment by the many. I enjoyed the posturing, the 
 game, the unreality of the business ; like Stanley I played 
 psychological chess. I had the keenest sensations of 
 pleasure when I led my little group to the attack of an 
 We speaker who had come to us from the Temple 
 lie was a young barrister with ambitions, who 
 intended to do everything a gentleman could do to get 
 the L.C.C. ; he was very round, so shaved and so 
 lack and so white, so smiling, so bland, so 
 archly (hiring, that our Radical group had begun to growl 
 and shift its feet long before he was half through his 
 I young barrister had come to explain the 
 Small Holdings Act, a subject calculated to rouse an urban 
 Liberal Club, for it afforded the townsmen a chance of 
 that they could interfere with the agriculturalists. 
 " Vnu s< ••-,"' said the young barrister, " almost insuper- 
 able difficulties stood in our path. Faced on the one 
 by the crying needs of the people who were deprived 
 to the land, on the other by the legitimate claims 
 
 of the landowners " 
 
 A f Shocked protest of the Chairman; 
 
 ■'\\r were * compelled t<» pro g ress with moderation 
 and < ition for the interests involved." The 
 
 etly 'it my Hushed faer and at 
 
 iiis elega he unrolled his periods, 
 
 excu tg, Tory County Councils, 
 
 by liniit.it ions had been imposed 
 on com] illed me for a 
 
 mon :' thai urbane youth ns the con- 
 
 I I to do as little as might 
 
 rd with pledges, to shehei behind a convenient 
 
358 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 syllogism, a dilemma, an anecdote or a joke. " Little fat 
 brief-fed, I loathe you," I thought. Quite honestly 
 I wanted a leader with blood in his body as I leapt to my 
 feet With the group when questions were called for. It 
 was a queer little scene. The chairman sat framed be- 
 ii his funereal whiskers, horribly shocked, by the side 
 of the bland Temple Clubber, who still smiled. The 
 portraits of Cobden, Sir William Harcourt and the pro- 
 spective Liberal candidate for our division stared from 
 the walls at "the little Radical group which had stood up 
 en bloc. 
 
 All together we shouted and shook our fists at the mild 
 Danier. 
 
 " Why don't you nationalise the land ? " roared the 
 first railwayman. 
 
 " Why don't you nationalise the land ? " repeated the 
 second railwayman. 
 
 " Will you provide houses ? " asked Lloyd, who owned 
 a country cottage. 
 
 " Gentlemen ! gentlemen ! " protested the Chairman. 
 
 Evans demanded a national loan guaranteed on ducal 
 estates. The temperance gas-fitter behaved so violently 
 that some one shouted he was drunk. 
 
 Amiable and urbane, the young banister took us up 
 each in turn, explaining the Act with affected simplicity, 
 as if addressing a Socialist Sunday School; he assured 
 the railwayman that one day, by and by, eventually 
 (and so forth) " the taxation of land-values would operate 
 in the direction indicated by their remarks "; he assured 
 Lloyd that rural housing preyed on the governmental 
 mind; he took quite seriously the vegetarian grievance 
 of Mr. Mislin^- and assured him that in the Navy a potato 
 allowance was traditional. 
 
 And then I was on my feet, speaking, so hot with rage 
 that I do n<»t remember exactly what I said. Phrases 
 remain : " Playing and tinkering with abuses — juggling 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 359 
 
 with words — foregoing omelettes to save the eggs — " 
 I think that I clamoured for revenge, for the break-up 
 of the ducal estates, for minimum wages and State agri- 
 cultural banks — I spoke to the music of hisses and cheers, 
 and as I spoke I had a vision of a new, a wonderful land, 
 a hotch-potch of Garden City and Merrie England — 
 bath-rooms all round and maypoles on the village greens. 
 Sturdy yeomen, farmers' daughters — farmers riding to 
 hounds (subject to the right to shoot foxes). And big 
 towns with laboratories, institutes, free libraries (that 
 banned no novels) — athletics for clerks — morris dances 
 in the slums, no, ex-slums, for I dropped rent into the 
 bottomless pit. 
 
 I found myself shouting for a new Enclosures Act. 
 
 a Enclosures Act ! No more filching of the 
 
 land by the rich, but an enclosure of ducal land 
 
 with the dukes outside — and then you'll have an island 
 
 where it'll be good to live under the Union Jack." 
 
 The young barrister glibly congratulated me on my 
 
 and assured me that however distant 
 
 millennial ideas mighl be the Liberals would embody 
 
 of Parliament. I hardly listened to him: 
 
 - 1« .oking into my soul. What was this treachery 
 
 to myself? Why had I so genuinely glowed when I 
 
 ired the great England that would arise, thrilled at 
 
 tli.- words k - Union Jack "t Was I going to be false to 
 
 my hatred? to my revenge? No, no. But, very faintly, 
 
 ' bing wins]). : 
 
 •• It la Much, Laden Cadoresse. Do you know that 
 the \ shyly clustering on /the steep, moist banks 
 
 in rutted Kn^lish lanes? 1)<> yon nol r< -member the 
 women with skins of milk? and the young Apollos, 
 their brothers, with the delicate months and proud, 
 
 sh<»?- d, calm, gentle-eyed as a 
 
 heifer, and as strong; alien, do you not love her?" 
 
360 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Ill 
 
 Such was the disaster that befell my hatred, came piling 
 on my success in the City, on Stanley's friendship, on those 
 balms for my wounds. At first I refused to acknowledge 
 the mysterious process, told myself that I hated England, 
 that I would make sport of her customs, butts of her men 
 and toys of her women. I fought for my foreign air, 
 availed myself of the summer to accentuate the colours 
 of my socks, waistcoats and ties; I affected affectations 
 until affectation seemed to be nature; I tried to be a 
 Frenchman .because I could not bear to be an English- 
 man, to feel the suck of the English morass. I did not 
 want to be cold, reserved and dogged, I wanted to be 
 ebullient, cynical, gay, outrageous; I wanted to tell 
 stories that were subtly improper rather than coarse; I 
 wanted to love and ride away. 
 
 But England turned towards me her courteous face, 
 took no notice of my clothes ^and my airs ; she asked me 
 to dinner and smiled at my stories ; her women returned 
 for the aggressive insistence of my glances the beautiful, 
 tender gaze of the English maiden. It was the general 
 had captured me and made me accept the particular. 
 
 Politics, I think, played the chief part in this new birth, 
 and 1 associate the political emotions of that year with 
 the Old Age Pensions Act. Bathos? No, that is not 
 bathos, for idealism is a god of itself and can live in any 
 shrim . 1 had laughed at the Bill when it was introduced; 
 made jokes of the il five bob a week when you're /dead " 
 kind ; 1 had spoken in its defence at a couple of open-air 
 tings, rejoicing rather in my contempt for the brief 
 I held and in tin dexterity with which I parried questions 
 than in the merits of my case; I liked to fee] master of 
 my crowd, to cheat it. When a man called out " Rot ! " I 
 didn't want to make him see it wasn't got; I preferred to 
 say : " The gentleman is a judge of rot," or " That man 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 361 
 
 knows all about rot, he talks it," or give him some such 
 successful, drivelling answer from the electioneering store. 
 I wanted to dominate. 
 
 But the summer came and I was stung into fury by the 
 attempt of the Lords to kill the Bill ; I went to Folkestone, 
 returned charmed, my memory haunted by the gracious 
 shapes of English girls, by the innocent gaiety of .England 
 at play. The Bill became an Act, and I joined in the de- 
 light of my party, perhaps because I wanted something 
 to delight me, for I was alone. Stanley had gone abroad 
 with his wife, my few friends were scattered, I had a little 
 time to think. And I found that I was thinking of this 
 Act ! Absurd, but a sentimental flood carried me away. 
 1 had visions of millions of old men and women freed at 
 from fear and want; in vain I told myself that the 
 age limit was too high, the allowance too low, that the 
 reduction of the pension for married couples was mean 
 and its maintenance at the full scale for irregular alliances 
 f i limy. I tried to think in detail, and scoff, but I failed : 
 ;an to think in principle. 
 In principle 1 Something had happened to my view 
 of English politics. Notwithstanding my experiences 
 at Bambury, and though I knew that our election was 
 like a game of poker than a St. Qeorgian contest, 
 English politics had a material basis, 
 more than a mean little private wrangle*; I saw 
 that the 1 unwillingly p< -rhaps, were doing some- 
 
 igland was determined they should do 
 thing. 1 education, control of the 
 
 liquor trade, democratic government, all these -were 
 ! with an air of deflnitenesi if not of r< so- 
 lution ; the I did intend to open up the fallow 
 
 make a better country, and it did not matter 
 
 h that tli wrong-headed, limited, int olerably 
 
 ; d, for th more than a quality of move* 
 
 im nl : ii . And those others, the Tories, 
 
 N 2 
 
362 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 whom I abused so gaily, they too had something to do. 
 That tariff of theirs, a ridiculous scheme to me who was 
 born in a protected country and knew that a tariff mattered 
 about as much in daily life as a speed limit for motor cars, 
 it was action too. I liked the intensity of conviction 
 that fired Mr. Chamberlain when I heard him at the 
 Albert Hall, the stress he laid on the fact that two and 
 two are four; and the others, the young bloods, Brown 
 of Wolverhampton, Lord Algernon Cust, fated to die m 
 .the last ditch, I enjoyed their enjoyment and upon their 
 resolution sharpened my own energy. 
 
 An obstructive veil was drawn away by an unseen hand. 
 Politics remained a game, yet a game played, not for love 
 as in my own country, but for high stakes. The French 
 had not, in my time, done aught save persecute their 
 Church, had not tried to do anything else, had endlessly 
 called one another names, made and unmade cabinets 
 so quickly that not one had been able to realise a plan. 
 Oh, talk, talk, perpetual French talk ! talk of income-tax, 
 talk of civil service reform v talk of industrial assurance, 
 and nothing done, nothing save stupid reiteration that 
 the country stood by the immortal principles of 1789. 
 
 Revolutionaries ! that's all the French were. They 
 could break anything an($ could make nothing; they were 
 noisy drones, and here in. England were the sturdy bees 
 hiving the honey. Behind the futile marionettes of the 
 Palais-Bourbon ana of Westminster stood two very 
 different peoples : the French occupied with love-making, 
 egotist art and private economy ; the English, determined 
 that the peasant should have land, the workman wages 
 and security, the child training. They were building j 
 and at the steady glow of their will I lighted the ever- 
 ready beacon in my own sou*. Almost at once I saw 
 the English as I had seen them, saw them better, perhaps, 
 for I was rid of stupid, old John Bull and his riding- 
 breeches; I saw the English I had dreamed ten years 
 before, the English determined to achieve, to make their 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 363 
 
 dreams materialise, to establish in every corner of the 
 globe the Pax Britannica, to cut roads, build bridges ; I 
 saw England sending out messenger swarms to conquer 
 the black and the yellow, to guide and illuminate with 
 splendid common-sense the less steadfast white. 
 
 I was intoxicated. Once more I faced London, and 
 
 the city showed me its soul under its throbbing body, 
 
 tne great business of itself. As I walked its interminable 
 
 streets, leagues from east to west, and from north to 
 
 south leagues too, and as I watched from the bridges the 
 
 [uid history towards the Pool, out towards 
 
 the sea and the world, I knew that I was at the hub of 
 
 the universe, for here was something more than culture, 
 
 than . than art : it was purpose, it was life. 
 
 I was drunk with life, born again. And as if England 
 
 planned to reconquer me her skies poured clown 
 
 i me in those? August days the droughty heat in which 
 
 I live best. Swollen were, the flowers in the parks and 
 
 luxuriant th< : the women of the orgiastic town 
 
 burst into maturity hung their heavy heads upon 
 
 nder bodies like peonies over-rich in sap. I 
 
 - myself upon London as if I wanted to embrace it. 
 
 Of my adventures, common again now, I remember 
 
 Her name was Laura Filton, a tall girl whose 
 
 slim form, when leaning against the warm wind, seemed 
 
 to bend as a blade of grass. Her close, pleated blue dress 
 
 and her peekaboo while blouse hid little of the gracious- 
 
 "f her; her»lang ck was wearied by 
 
 the weight of a head laden with light-brown hair, dn 
 
 and in a score of eurls. of her enormous, ll.it, black 
 
 trimmed with red roses. I had made friends with 
 
 her win-hair near the Hound Pond, and then 
 
 with her ;i1 b o, and hei air is archaic? her hat 
 
 and pleat* aN of the dead, but Laura niton, idle trades- 
 man's daughter, stands before me now, calm, sedate and 
 alluring, with all the grace of England in her long hands. 
 She was irremediably stupid, and I remember little of 
 
804 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHiMAN 
 
 her conversation. We had exhausted the habits of her 
 dog; she looked at me with calm, blue (yes. 
 
 " Have you seen the Salome dance ? " she asked. 
 
 I had, and suggested its costume must be delightful in 
 August. 
 
 She laughed, stated she didn't fancy it for herself. 
 
 " 1 do," I said boldly. " Come, dance it now — or be 
 a dryad. Here are the trees of the Gardens to shelter 
 you." 
 
 She looked at me as if wondering whether I was serious, 
 and the memory has an air of unreality, for about us little 
 children play the ancient game of diabolo, and I hear a 
 nursemaid humming the forgotten ditty, " I wouldn't 
 leave my little wooden hut for you." 
 
 " You are silly," she summed up at last. 
 
 Laura Filton had nothing to say, gave me no mental 
 satisfactions, nothing save an ineffectual acceptance of 
 caresses she did not desire, and yet I have put her among 
 the great in one of the niches of my heart; she had no 
 quality, but I gave her the quality of England. The 
 first to attract me since my re-enchantment, she figures 
 as the dove of peace flying towards me, ambassadress of 
 the women of the isles. I think I tried to express to her 
 something of the delight that was in me, to tell her that 
 when I loved her I loved her people, her splendid, con- 
 (jii< ring people, loved her as the daughter of the pioneers. 
 Sh« Listed d while I ranted of London town and, at last, 
 said : 
 
 " Yes, it's a fine piacc, isn't it? And those new motors, 
 the taxis, they're the latest. Have you been in one of 
 them yet ? " 
 
 I laughed, pri ssed her slender arm, told her that she 
 
 had missed her mark, that these new-fangled carriages 
 
 were French. But 1 loved her guileletsneas, would have 
 
 had her more innocent still, so that she might be yet more 
 
 ie, serene as England the Conquering. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 365 
 
 IV 
 
 To Stanley also I showed my new madness, and he 
 smiled. 
 
 \t it again ! I thought you'd find out we weren't 
 so bad, after all. To tell you the truth I saw it coming 
 in March when you took up politics again; when you 
 began abusing my side I knew that in a few months you'd 
 be falling in love with your own." 
 
 " I've fallen in love with both of them." 
 44 Evidently. You never do things by halves. Tell 
 you what, Cadoresse, you'll have no peace until you make 
 an end ol your ambitions and take out your naturalisation 
 
 . 
 
 I stepped back, stared at this tall, untidy person, who 
 
 1 to think me funny because I had lost my heart 
 
 nation. In that moment Stanley was more repre- 
 
 of his people than ever before; that he was 
 
 articulate while they were dumb did not affect my sense 
 
 of his Englishness, for here he was, saying tremendous 
 
 things and treating them as trifles. Careless of the 
 
 piled so heavy upon him by his birth on English 
 
 ood, leaning against the mantelpiece, shifting 
 
 from one tool to the other. His eyes gleamed wickedly, 
 
 as if he were analysing me, observing the emotions that 
 
 have been passing over my all-too-expressive 
 
 tcnance. This \> ol being .'in Englishman, 
 
 ody knows anything about it except the foreigner. 
 
 I plunged thai very day and, in the evening, 
 
 '• o many times that I ended in know- 
 
 1 1 : though they thrilled, they 
 
 me a little, to I tnd did not throw herself 
 
 at mj 11 alxmt me, all about 
 
 my fs i k and my behaviour; trusting me very 
 
 little, she wanted tour Englishmen toallirm in a statutory 
 
 ration that I was respectable and loyal; and having 
 
366 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 captured me, England hinted that she would never let 
 me go but wished me to reside in the United Kingdom. 
 
 For a whole fortnight I struggled with intolerable 
 complexities. It seemed as difficult to be born again as 
 it is to be born actually. I spoiled my memorial on a 
 Saturday afternoon and languished, in a state of suspended 
 nationality, until the Monday. Then I had to find a 
 referee who had known me for five years and had to submit 
 with as good a grace as I could to a cross-examination 
 by Barker, whom I asked out to lunch for the purpose. 
 He consented, but put an unfortunate idea into my head : 
 
 " What d'you want to naturalise for, you silly old 
 josser? You're chucking your five pounds away, any- 
 how. They won't have you : not respectable enough." 
 
 He laughed, and his agreeable face seemed malevolent. 
 " What about that affair of yours ? That was' a bit of 
 all right, but if it comes out — what oh ! " 
 
 The idea preyed upon me ; long before my papers Went 
 to the Home Office I realised what a man feels like who is 
 " loitering with intent to steal." I passed policemen 
 very fast and stiffly, expecting one of them to come up 
 to me and say : " Hi, you, the Frenchman. What d'you 
 think you're up to trying to become a bloomin' Briton ? 
 What about Maud Hooper? And what's that you said 
 
 last year about the old Queen ? And what about ? " 
 
 In those moods I mentally ran away without listening 
 to those other and formidable " what abouts ? " for I knew 
 there we] t many more, that I had accumulated 
 
 a good deal of disloyalty in the year of disillusion. But 
 I set my nd decided to go on. 
 
 The chief statutory declaration was made by Barker, 
 and others followed from Stanley, Purkis, doggie (I 
 mean Smith) and Mr. Hoskm. These men shocked me, 
 for they did no1 seem to realise the importance of the 
 affai pg, for he delivered a lengthy 
 
 speeeli on human brotherhood, ending on an inference 
 
RECONSTRUCTIO N 367 
 
 that England was the eldest of the family. But Barker 
 refused to sign until he had drunk a " small port," the 
 only intoxicant he allowed himself as a teetotaler; and 
 old Purkis sent me a jocular message to say that he had 
 a new rose which he would name the " Cadoresse Britonii," 
 while Stanley persecuted me with theories as to the 
 intuitive qualities of the police. 
 
 A fortnight elapsed. These were anxious moments, 
 for a plain-clothes called at my address and told the 
 landlady casually that it was " all right at Cambridge 
 Street " : that meant the creature was taking his business 
 seriously, that he had called at St. Mary's Terrace too. 
 What had Mrs. Hooper said ? Perhaps she had laid upon 
 my not altogether guiltless shoulders her daughter's ruin ? 
 But I was fervent, I told myself to try to be braye. I 
 idiotic, and vet the whole affair Mas about as hue 
 as being converted. Then, one. morning, I found on my 
 breakfast tray a notice informing me "that my desire 
 me and requiring me to take the oath of 
 
 The commissioner for oaths behaved very badly. He 
 
 v dirty little old man whose office smelled like 
 
 a du : while I read out, Holy Book in hand, my 
 
 i,n pledge of loyalty to th<- King, he persistently 
 
 tched the placg where his skull-cap chafed him. While 
 
 he remarked : " Half a crown." 
 
 ought to have happened in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 I had a fancy for red velvet, no. for "imperial " purple 
 
 1 "' blue — and there ought somewhere to have 
 
 a lion and a unicorn, ai d to play " Rule 
 
 ... I Oaf as a marriage before 
 
 tor the commissioner did not - 
 
 wish ■ j happii 
 
 i for a niona nt on the •landing, Jpay i 
 
 mechanically g the words on the dirty ochre 
 
 dte in if' 
 
868 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Disposal Co. Ltd.," my heart was beating fast and I 
 was swollen with pride. An Englishman at last — born 
 again. . . . 
 
 I can now guess what a man feels when he has just been 
 knighted. 
 
 *' You are becoming intolerable," said Stanley, good- 
 humouredly, a fortnight later. " Since you wasted five 
 pounds you go about as if the place belonged to you " 
 
 " I belong to the place," I said, in a fervid voice. " Do 
 you know, Stanley, it's true; I cant keep it to myself 
 and it's funny how little it seems to matter to other 
 people." 
 
 " One's affairs never really matter to other peoph . 
 
 " No — but such affairs ! I told Gladys, you know, 
 the red-headed girl at the ' Yemen.' I told her I was a 
 naturalised Englishman, and all she said was : * Who'd 
 have thought it ? ' " 
 
 " I'm not surprised," said Stanley, " if you will roll 
 several capital R's in the middle of ' naturalise.' " 
 
 For several sorrowful moments I reflected that it was 
 rather a pity no Pentecostal, naturalising fire could descend 
 upon my head. But soon I thought : " Anynow, I'm in." 
 And then : " After all, you need a jolly good R to say 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LAST LAP 
 I 
 
 I walked quickly along Piccadilly, hugging my heavy 
 coat against my body, for a fierce wind blew in my back 
 from the east and, at every corner, split itself into eddies 
 in which danced dust and pieces of paper. I liked the 
 harsh January day, was conscious of my wind-stung 
 and of the warmth of wool upon my chest. I was 
 ore alive than a man, alive as a young horse. 
 In the sharp air all things seemed unusually definite, 
 up of angles and lines; and every noise was multi- 
 clear came the ringing of the bells of the modish 
 the trample and bit-champings of the horses, 
 ties and backfirings oi those new-fangled motor- 
 bove all I heard the tap-tap of the feet, 
 i distinguish the clatter of a pair of little high-heeled 
 from the duller, regular sound the big soldier in 
 lug. Hen and women, all in a 
 hurry, by the wind, thousands of them, millions 
 
 all round them. And the imperious demand for alms 
 of | Mmd man's stick. 
 
 I gl the shops, the pageantry of tics, the high 
 
 framing like minarets the brown girl 
 
 who rolled th m, the clustering chocolates, the loud 
 
 on their dummies, the leather, the gold and 
 
 silvr, the perfumes in their bottles, so abundant that 
 
 I fancied I could sum 11 them. 
 
 Then Devonshire II e behind its prison gates, and 
 the plunge into dandydom, frock-overcoats and grey- 
 # 
 
370 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 topped boots. I stopped to look at the Ritz, which 
 seemed very staring and new, and for a while watched 
 the midday tides of traffic surge past it, blotting out the 
 Green Park, all save the empty heaven above, which 
 suggested vastness, for the gaunt sky-scrapers of 
 Westminster wore very far away. I saw the scene as 
 part of my life, felt strong, successful, free ; I was making 
 money, making power, and this scene would soon be 
 my setting. A rough balance-sheet told me that I could 
 depend now, not on two hundred and fifty but on five 
 hundred pounds in the coming year. Success ! And 
 freedom : here was I, at two o'clock in the afternoon, 
 able to walk Piccadilly because such was my mood. 
 I. had been to see the manager of one of the big Atlantic 
 companies in Cockspur Street, the Rudyard or the Red 
 Sun, I forget which, and could afford a walk to Hyde Park 
 "Corner : you do not know how wonderful is Piccadilly at 
 two o'clock unless you work in the City from ten to six. 
 
 But the icy wind drove me on, past Bath House and up 
 the hill, towards the clubs and the growing solitudes. 
 I liked to look at the women, little furry animals with 
 half-muflled faces, at the men, the ruddy and stout in 
 check trousers, the indolent clean-shaven, and those 
 others in rather old clothes whose faces showed the 
 sunburn of India. All the world was a toy for me, all 
 its people, and that short, plump young man who stood 
 Jighting a cigarette, on the step.-, of a club. 
 
 i I glanced at him, and at once knew 
 him. It was Edward Kent, but I did not want to speak 
 to him, I had done with his pari of my life; to see him 
 mad Hut Kent did not share this feeling 
 
 of mine lie. too, had r nd now .came 
 
 ing down the steps. As we shook hands I was 
 tilled with a sense <<f liis absurdity. I could judge him 
 better now, understand his irrelevancy in an ordered 
 scheme. II is jauntiness, his flow of polite platitudes 
 and mild epigrams ex; - me. 
 
THE LAST LAP 371 
 
 " It's ages since I saw you," he said, blandly. " Where 
 have you been all this time? Making pots of money, 
 I suppose, from what I hear." 
 
 " What have you heard ? " I asked. 
 
 But Kent did not answer me, having forgotten his 
 own remark. 
 
 " I've just been in here for a chop — though sometimes 
 I chop and change. I've been having lunch with 
 Tortini. the musician; I'm thinking of joining his 
 quartette. Of course it'll be rather hard on my golf, 
 not that that's up to much. The other day I went round 
 in " 
 
 I listened, seemed to listen for many minutes, for 
 had a loose abundance of conversation, a taste for 
 elegant unreality that maddened his audience. Not 
 only did he produce a Hood, but he perpetually turned 
 on and then off taps marked anything between " Latest 
 Poli* da] " and "^Socks." At last I interrupted 
 
 him. said I must hurry on. 
 
 "• Where are you off to? I'm going to Burlington 
 to meet my sister, Mrs. Hugh Lawton, you 
 remember. Louisa's infected me with a taste for 
 sociology." 
 
 •• \ id, holding out my hand: 
 
 K nt on speaking. 
 
 Hid Muriel are great pals. Muriel's engaged, 
 by the wi 
 
 M li • d, my hand still outstretched. 
 
 " , \ . got hold of quite a decent chap, a Bap] 
 
 . and when he marries Muriel he'll 
 go over »<» the Lib rail and be almost complete." I 
 
 t le with. with him- 
 
 I think he hardly realised he Bpoke his next 
 
 aloud: "I never thought she'd ^ r ct man 
 
 but I su i ching now that Edith's as good as 
 
 accepted that fellow .ae^whn's been dangling 
 
 round her for 
 
372 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 I knew that I did not blink, that not a muscle of my 
 face moved, but I heard my teeth crunch together. I 
 remained impassive, almost at attention, while Kent 
 told me the chestnut of the barrister and the pickpocket 
 who 'ad a bit o' luck in the Strand. 
 
 Well done, Lucien Cadoresse, England had at last 
 given you something of the bulldog. 
 
 II 
 
 When the ship has gone down she does not suck under 
 all the little matters she carried ; hen-coops, life-belts, 
 spars, a litter of domestic furniture float most obviously 
 upon the waves. As I sat at home, an hour later, an 
 impersonal self wondered why my eyes were so interested 
 in trifles, in the row of books and pamphlets upon my 
 writing-table, notably the flaring red " Liberal Year 
 Book," in the polished brass inkstand, the woodcuts of 
 old London upon the green distempered wall, and the 
 muddy golf -sticks in the corner. But these little things 
 are not little except against the broad background of 
 life; when the loves, lusts, hatreds, the ambitions, the 
 fears and delights have suddenly been shrouded, then 
 the little things become important : for they survive 
 disaster, they never die, and sometimes by their perman- 
 ence they link. 
 
 I accomplished a 'number of mechanical acts in the 
 hours that followed; I trimmed my moustache," made 
 many idle drawings on my blotter; I sorted my books, 
 all the red ones together, all the green ones, and so forth; 
 and I sharpened with great steadfastness a whole packet 
 of pencils. v 
 
 I do not think my mind worked true, during those first 
 hours; its concentration upon the futile lasks was purely 
 automatic, self -protective perhaps, and the hollowness of 
 my purpose showed through my business, for I found 
 omething else to do as soon as I had 
 finished with one trifle. While I was idle my brain 
 
THE LAST LAP 373 
 
 1 1 in a state of continuous, nervous whirl, in a 
 condition akin to fitful half-sleep, through which there 
 perpetually intrudes an undefmable but oppressive 
 preoccupation. I remember wondering whether I were 
 going mad. 
 
 I expect I was very near it. 
 
 Dusk. I had been sitting for a long time in the arm- 
 chair, rather stupefied now, and therefore more content, 
 rd the housemaid come in, put a match to the fire, 
 h on the lights. She asked me whether I wanted 
 I said, " No," without turning round. Then I 
 listened to the fire crackling, got up to tend it, for habit, 
 petrified fruit of instinct, reminded me that the grate 
 ill-built. But as I knelt in front of the flame, 
 it to grow by shuttering it with a newspaper, 
 rid that the sound of a human voice and the perform- 
 ance of a duty which was not futile had worked some 
 cleared my brain of fumes. The realisation 
 lowly that it must have been some time 
 occupied the whole of me, for I managed to 
 build up a good fire without killing it. When I at last 
 Walked to the window. I knew that I was no longer feeling 
 as an animal, but thinking as a man. For a minute or so 
 I repeated, " Edith engaged . . • Edith engaged . . . " I 
 paused, then said it again with an air of finality. I did 
 not stop to analyse the relation Kent had implied, to 
 wonder whether ihe wai actually engaged. 1 I accepted 
 the fact. Then I d myself what it meant to me. 
 
 At first it meanl nothing at all, nothing more than 
 Mur one of the eight hundred and 
 
 ,tv-f<>ur nuts which came about in the 
 
 py day. 
 I I d al my own statistics and, for a while, found 
 
 on in m But I was not yet 
 
 all conscious, fox to the writing-table, 
 
 thfl drawer in whieh 1 kept Edith's 
 re about thirty I krst of all 
 
8*4 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 written just before the Hambury election, the last, an 
 appointment on a half sheet; there were two picture 
 postcards from Fowey; I found also a programme 
 headed " Empress Rooms," on which my initials figured 
 seven times, the menu of Mahomed's Hindu restaurant 
 with an intricate pattern of E.L.'s on the back. No 
 photograph, not- a lock of hair, or a fan, or a ribbon. 
 Nothing but these letters, and yet— I had kept the meanest 
 of them, the most formal, the unsigned commands to be 
 at a given time at some Underground station. I had 
 kept everything. 
 
 I flung myself back in my chair, my hands on the papers, 
 and knew that I was sane after all, for here was aching 
 regret shot with flashes of agony. I bent forward, 
 ordered the letters as well as I could, began to read them. 
 The first one, its childish round writing and underlined 
 words, yes, here was Edith, slim, outlined against the 
 her fair hair streaming on the wind. Some appoint- 
 ments to meet at Hambury — in ward four — and I thought 
 of the young Liberals, of Chike, the progressive grocer, 
 of Edith when the hood fell from her head. . . . 
 
 A pain I had never known before went' right through 
 me as I remembered the falling of the hood, the fair head 
 pillowed on my shoulder. . . . 
 
 I read all the other letters ; some more appointments, a 
 picture postcard saying that the weather was -lovely at 
 Fowey, and that they were going by boat to Land's End ; 
 a long letter, too, very tender and very shy : 
 
 ' . . . But how can I write what you ask? I am 
 not like you, I am afraid to say what I think, it all 
 seems so strange and so wonderful that you should 
 care for me at all. That is why I can't tell you how 
 much 1 love you; I seem cold, I know, but I'm not, 
 I'm not. Oh, my darling. . . ." 
 
 I closed my eyes, gripping the letter. " Go on," said 
 
 instinct. 
 
THE LAST LAP 375 
 
 "... you must know that I love you, that I've 
 never loved any one else. I couldn't, and I'll always 
 love you, always, always, whatever you do, I'll 
 always love you. . . ." 
 
 I read to the end, mastering the grief that rose in me, 
 
 thinking to dominate it, to succeed in being a man. But 
 
 I was not prepared for the last line; she had signed 
 
 lith," and, as a postscript, written : " Is this a good 
 
 letter?" 
 
 The manliness went out of me. Edith, tender, devoted, 
 shy, had broken down her reserve, had forced herself 
 to write a love-letter because I demanded one, and when 
 it wsts written had suddenly asked for appreciation, for 
 c, as a child begs for full marks. She had given me 
 all she could give, then raised towards me the blushing 
 flower of her face that she might read thankfulness in 
 mine. 
 
 A bitter shame was in me while I wept, uncontrollably, 
 
 endli * ; hands elasped over my eyes, I felt myself 
 
 shaking all over; for a long time mine were 'terrible, dry 
 
 that tore at my throat, v pu lied and jerked my 
 
 shoulders ... it was later only the tears came, and then 
 
 renched from my eyes . . . and later again 
 
 silently, painlessly, until I sank face down 
 
 st the table and found that everything about me 
 
 growing 'Inn, receding. With every minute ex- 
 
 haustion gained upon me. I was vaguely conscious of 
 
 the growing cold as night came and the fire went down, 
 
 of a i lzing me, pressing down upon me. I slept. 
 
 I woke up to hear the clock strike four. I rose to my 
 
 and found that I staggered as I walked about the 
 
 on my cramped limbs recovered, though I 
 
 ted with cold. I went to the sideboard, pdSired out 
 
 a third of a tumbler of whisky and swallowed the stuff in 
 two gulps. Then, as I sat by the side of the cold grate, 
 
876 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 I felt better, stronger; and I was peculiarly lucid, as if 
 the exhaustion of my body had freed my brain. Indeed, 
 I hardly felt my body, I had the sensation of severed 
 limbs that is gained from several doses of absinthe. 
 
 For a long time I thought, and it seemed as if some 
 obscure mental process had taken place within me while 
 I slept, as if I had gone on thinking during those hours of 
 torpor. This I knew because I did not awake to weak 
 misery : I awoke in reaction, physically exhausted, but 
 mentally calm. I recapitulated the points of the case, 
 told myself without any passion that I loved Edith, had 
 always loved her, must have her. I did not doubt that 
 she still loved me, that she was preparing to marry the 
 other man only because I had forsaken her. . . . 
 
 Yes, I had' forsaken her. I had not understood her, 
 given her time. For some minutes I bitterly reviled my 
 own impatience, my intolerance, my sensitiveness, my 
 precipitancy; I had brutally asked her to choose between 
 her father and myself, and had not given her many 
 minutes to make up her mind ; unmoved, I had seen her 
 tears flow; I had tried to bully her, I had sacrificed her 
 on the altar of my self-importance ; I had trampled on 
 her sense of duty, sneered at her delicacy, despised her 
 scruples; I had seized a butterfly and broken it upon a 
 wheel. . . . 
 
 " Brute . . . brute . . . fool ..." I whispered. 
 
 And I found intense pleasure in this vilification of 
 If. While I once had seen no side other than my own, 
 I now saw mine no longer; I hated myself and enjoyed 
 the punishment, as if I were split into judge and criminal, 
 so that one part of me could rejoice in the retribution 
 which overtook the other. Testimony of my love, also, 
 I delighted in my abasement, for the true lover has no 
 pride, but cries out to his beloved : " Oh, most beautiful, 
 oh, priceless one, deign only not to avert your eyes. ... I 
 am worthless, soiled, despicable . . . there is no good 
 in me save that I love you. So put your heel upon my 
 
THE LAST LAP 377 
 
 neck, beloved, and tread, tread hard. . . . Ah, that pain 
 
 ret, the pain you give. . . ." 
 
 Soon I saw my life as it was, a life of hard, perpetual 
 
 contest. I had struggled to become an Englishman, 
 
 struggled to become a free, rich man, now I must struggle 
 
 to win my woman. Oh, it was struggling did it after all, 
 
 less toil,, endless resource, unflagging, dogged energy. 
 
 To try, to be beaten, to try again, that was life, after all. 
 
 And a fine thing of its kind, adventurous because you 
 
 could never tell which way the contest would end, bracing 
 
 because you had to take the blows and come on for more, 
 
 and come on again, and again, and still come on, until the 
 
 enemy L r <»t tired of hitting, and then you won. . . . 
 
 The whisky in my body and the fierce metaphors in my 
 
 brain inflamed me, evoked in me a response, made me 
 
 grit my teeth together and clench my fists. They 
 
 thought they had beaten me, did they? They thought 
 
 could keep me out, keep me down. . . . We should 
 
 Edith loved me still,. had always loved me, and I'd 
 
 r if I had to kidnap her. In that hour 
 
 I was strong, much more than inflame d ; I swore that 
 
 nothing should keep me from her, that I would call her 
 
 back, and if, hardly possible to conceive, she loved me no 
 
 n her a w cond time. 
 
 It alone in the icy room, wailing for the dawn, 
 
 much that is my soul stood forth : a conviction that life has 
 
 e in its battles, that it .is a poor thing at best, 
 
 thai all its colour and its dignity come out of contest. 
 
 I. fe ifl in us only when We fighl ;, fighting makes life 
 
 .andifw. >ngh1 we begin to die. 
 
 I tree : when growth is arn sted decay begins. 
 I • i at the window, iii the greyhen the houses 
 
 med gho I unfamiliar. Then day 
 
 '. to dawn in the i 
 Their arc no good causes and no had causes. There are 
 only the causes that win. There is no dignity in en- 
 deavour, but only in victory. 
 
378 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Defeat is naught save the prelude to victory. 
 The dawn touched the roofs with rose and, fervently, I 
 repeated : 
 
 Defeat is naught save the prelude to victory. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ^Vith extreme care I made ready for the struggle. My 
 face was livid and there were purplish blotches under my 
 eyes, but my black hair lay very sleek, and my hand, 
 nerved by my purpose, had not shaken while I shaved. 
 Resolutely, too, I ate, though my furred tongue revolted 
 -from food and I wished only to empty the teapot : I was 
 going to want my strength. 
 
 . I stood at the corner of Lancaster Gate, watching from 
 a convenient point, and the old excitement rose in me. 
 I recognised the maid. Fiona, older, slower and fatter, 
 came trundling down the steps to snuff critically in the 
 gutter. The little dog gave me my first powerful emotion ; 
 Fiona, waddling cautiously down the steps instead of 
 clearing them at a bound, four paws outstretched, as the 
 hound of Artemis, was a horribly eloquent evidence of 
 passing time. I had left her young, and now, after little 
 more than two years, she was old. For some seconds my 
 ^throat contracted as I wondered whether Edith, too, had 
 grown old. At half-past nine Mr. Lawton came out, 
 walked away towards the Tube station. Still I waited. 
 She was coining : I knew it. 
 
 IV 
 
 For. some minutes I walked behind her; though my 
 heart beat so fast that I thought I must stifle. I was still 
 sybarite enough to want to look at her before I spoke. 
 I had not seen her very well as she appeared, for she had 
 turned sharply to the left and 1 had followed ; I had had 
 time only to see her hair blaze* vivid in the sunshine, and 
 now, as I cautiously suited my pace to hers, I found her 
 unexpectedly the same. She walked as quickly, as 
 
THE LAST LAP 379 
 
 springily as ever, and gaily she shook her little bag at 
 
 Fiona in the hope of making her leap at it. But Fiona 
 
 ild, and peacefully trotted. 
 
 If I saw no more than this it was, no doubt, because of 
 
 the tumult within me. I was overcome by unexpected 
 
 ations, subtle convictions of needs and, oddly*? 
 
 grafted thereon, a lust for conquest; I enjoyed this 
 
 careful following, was more than the wild beast tracking 
 
 od, was also the sportsman enjoying the chase. 
 
 But mixed with this feeling that must arise in any man 
 
 pursues any woman, after the manner of the male, 
 
 a transcendant, swoon-approaching joy, a sense of 
 
 fulfilment; she did not see me, but I saw her; I trod in 
 
 her footprints, and I had a feeling that was literally 
 
 sensuous when my foot crumpled a scrap of paper which 
 
 hen had touched. » 
 
 iiouslv I followed across the Bayswater Road, 
 
 gfa the postern and into the Gardens.' With her I 
 
 ed the patli fur the lawns, treading warily lest 
 
 the frosted <;rass should eriss under my feet. The wind 
 
 had fallen, and now the pale BUD threw upon the ground 
 
 the fine shadow-tracery of the branches : as she passed 
 
 he thin reflections fell across her, patterning 
 
 hex with light grey lines. Suddenly she stopped, seemed 
 
 S ke obelisk, and I knew that my hour had 
 
 [most alone; far away some nurse- 
 bulators along a path, and a few 
 
 little I men hurried towards the railway stations 
 
 and their business. I heard fche faint eraekling of the 
 
 he distant whistle of a park-keeper. And 
 
 ; I was so full of happiness, of redis- 
 
 ■ irtt I wondered whether I had not better be 
 
 = !id turn away. I \ 'lie Oriental 
 
 Id to a bowl already full of water. . . . 
 
 Tin- I aided a rose-leaf. Hut I shrank, 
 
 I shrank ; I was afraid. In spite of my aehute; desire to 
 
 ! feared what I might see in it. ... I half 
 
380 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 turned. But it was too late : Fiona, slowly trotting in 
 circles, muzzle upon the ground, drew near me in her 
 course, stopped, looked at me. She stared at me ( and 
 I wondered whether she hypnotised me, for we did not 
 move, either of us, but gazed into each other's eyes. I saw 
 something struggling in the beautiful brown depths, 
 recognition, doubt; Fiona knew me, was desperately 
 trying to remember where she had seen me, wanted to 
 remember. I saw the effort of her little brain. 
 
 Then a change came over her.v She cocked her ears, 
 opened her mouth a little, so as to show her- pink tongue 
 moving in slight excitement over her white teeth. And 
 very, very slowly, she came towards me, gazing at me 
 still, her tail agitated by a nervous quiver. She came 
 quite close, looked up at -me. and suddenly lay upon her 
 side, a front paw raised, her tail now beating sharply upon 
 the ground. ... 
 
 , I heard Edith cry out : " Fiona ! Fiona ! " saw her 
 flit towards me. 
 
 Then, quite unaccountably, I was looking at her and she, 
 one hand upon her breast, was meeting my eyes with hers. 
 
 I do not know how long it lasted. 
 
 In those moments I saw her collectively, as. an object- 
 devoid of details. Through the immediate sense -of my 
 delight ran a streak of terror, and even in that clasp of 
 s I felt the impulse to fly. But the film dissolved 
 and, suddenly, I saw Edith. 
 
 At first I thought her unchanged. Then I observed 
 subtle differences, hair dressed lower than before, a 
 
 roundness of figure new to me, a suggestion of wo; 
 
 But the blue eyes that held mine were tlie same, tilled 
 with wonder, some fear, some delight perhaps, as I had 
 so often seen them, and, dark in the pallor of her face, 
 they suddenly reassured me, told me that here was the 
 everlasting woman before me that defied the im perma- 
 nence of th# flesh. I took a quick step forward, holding 
 out both hands. 
 
THE LAST LAP 381 
 
 " Edith," I said, hoarsely. 
 
 Swiftly her rigid features relaxed. A heavy blush 
 stained her face to the forehead, and I saw her lips 
 tremble and twitch. Something that was hidden away 
 in me responded to those tremulous lips. I came quite 
 close, gripped both her hands. 
 
 41 Edith," I said again, so hoarsely that the word came 
 in a whisper. 
 
 She did not withdraw her hands, stood facing me, her 
 eyes meeting mine ; but the continuous quivering of her 
 hands told me that she too would gladly escape me, 
 that it was in spite of her disquiet her eyes were able to 
 meet mine. Our eyes linked us : we couldn't get away. . . . 
 
 \\\\h. this knowledge came a thrill of delight : Edith 
 Edith crying out my name might have pleased 
 me, but Edith powerless to free her hands from mine, to 
 lower her lids under a gaze which I knew must be hungry, 
 aroused in me all the savagery of the conqueror and the 
 inexpressible emotions of triumph. . , . 
 
 dine, mine, mine," t thought, and my love seemed to 
 increase with every repetition. What was this idea of 
 winning li»»r back? I had never lost her. And— 
 
 Hen . li . hers,*' shouted another voice; I, too, knew 
 that I could not withdraw my haiids, avert my eyes, t . . 
 She had never l<>st inc. . . . 
 
 I found I was walking with her across the grass, still 
 
 holding hex hands, v. »at down on chairs that faced 
 
 the polished black water of the Serpentine at the bottom 
 
 of the slope, and as I Leant forward I thought I had little 
 
 ay. 
 
 Edith . . . my darting . . .my,,,, beloved ... I 
 never thought I'd Bee y«>u again. 
 
 i-lv, but looked towards the ground. 
 a: 
 
 li had to come ... in London . . . accidents. . . ." 
 44 This is not an accident," I said. " I followed you." 
 threw me a quick glance full of inquiry. 
 
382 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 44 I followed you," I said, in a low voice. " I had to 
 you again, to tell you . . . because ... oh, Edith, 
 what's the^good of talking, my dear, my dear? ... I 
 want you, I want you. ..." 
 
 Her look was startled. Her -mouth contracted; 
 furrows appeared between her eyebrows. . 
 
 " Lucien," she faltered. 
 
 " Ah," I cried out, all afire with the tenderness of her 
 voice, " you still love me, you still love me. I've been a 
 brute, a fool, murdered your happiness and mine, and 
 you love me, you love me. . . . Say you love me, say you've 
 forgiven, forgotten . . . say you love me, do you hear ? " 
 
 Savagely I crushed her hands, leant towards her so 
 closo that I could feel her rapid breath upon my face, see 
 all the gradations of colour in her distended pupils. I 
 could feel a ring through my gloves and rejoiced to think 
 that I was grinding it into her fingers. 
 
 44 Say you love me," I repeated, In a still harsher voice. 
 44 I've never forgotten you, I've never loved any other 
 woman, I've never ..ceased to love you. I went away 
 from you with all my pride torn and with all my heart 
 bloody. I didn't understand, I wouldn't understand . . . 
 but yesterday I heard something that made me under- 
 stand that I couldn't give you up, that I couldn't let you 
 go, that I'm all — poisoned with you." I stopped 
 wondering why I had said " poisoned," then hurried on. 
 44 I heard there was another man. . . . Is it true ? " 
 
 She hesitated, then, with a brave lift of her head : 
 \o." 
 
 44 There could be no other man after me ? " 
 
 A long hesitation. A bold meeting of my eyes. 
 
 44 There could be no other man after you." 
 
 ' You will . . ."; about to say 44 marry," my tongue took 
 a quick, wise turn : 44 . . . let me go to your father? " 
 
 44 Yes." 
 
 44 1 love you. Do you love me ? " 
 
 44 I love you." 
 
THE LAST LAP 383 
 
 We did not think of considering whether we were 
 
 lied. Together, I think, we bent forward . . . and 
 
 her light hair was in my eyes, my mouth upon her mouth. 
 
 We did not seem to have to explain. In very few 
 rices I seemed to tell Edith facts that we both of 
 us knew to bo unnecessary. I told her that after losing 
 her I had passed through hell, faced loneliness, privation, 
 endless labour, and the everlasting need of her; I told 
 that my business was flourishing, that I could marry 
 her at once. 
 
 " What does it matter ? " she asked. " Isn't it enough 
 
 you have come back, that I said I would take you 
 
 if you came. I knew I would when ... oh ! Lucien, 
 
 how often I have cried " 
 
 My darling, my darling, forgive — ■ — " 
 ■ h. no, no." She laughed, and there was a shrillness 
 of excitement in her voice. " Don't say that. What is 
 there to forgive now that you've come back — still love 
 
 tone," I whispered. 
 Her face reddened, and she hall turned away. But 
 n she faced me bravely. 
 
 1 must tell you the truth. Mr. Shepstone asked me 
 
 his wife. He— he says he is in love with me, and I 
 
 him; 1 said I would answer him later. Oh, it was 
 
 " 
 
 " M I know, I too." 
 
 . . So lonely. And I couldn't believe you'd come 
 
 1 knew we should meet again, but I thought 
 
 .- ould be strangers. Or friends, much later, when we 
 
 old. Mr. Shepstone asked me so often . . . and 
 
 they said that you . . . that an actress " 
 
 44 Ah ? you heard that? It's true. 1 was mad when 
 I t you. I was ready for anything, anybody. 'I've 
 lived — abominably. I'm a beast, I'm low " 
 
384 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 " No, no " % 
 
 " Yes," I cried, as if anxious to enhance my triumph by- 
 self-abasement ; "low, despicable — not fit to be touched by 
 you." 
 
 " It's all over," Edith murmured. " What do I care 
 what you were ? " 
 
 I knew that she would not understand, but how splendid 
 was this disdain of the past. As she spoke the future 
 expanded, panoramic. 
 
 " You never forgot me ? " I whispered. 
 
 She smiled. "Never. I could not. I wanted to, 
 but . . ." 
 
 She freed her hands, suddenly pulled at a little gold 
 chain, drew a locket from her breast, opened it. In it 
 lay half-a-dozen crumpled white petals. 
 
 ' As I bent to smell -their faded scent, in which was a 
 hint of suede leather ; she whispered : 
 
 " The first thing you gave me, Lucien — from the almond 
 tree — you remember? " 
 
 VI 
 
 Little Dresden^Shepherdess, your eyes are pure as the 
 mountain torrent ; your hair is golden as honey, you lean 
 light as thistle-down against the wind. Sweet one and 
 brave, who has ho reproach for me, naught save gladness, 
 who will raise me, the iniquitous, the soiled from the 
 ground on which I throw myself abased, sweet one and 
 brave, forget my sin against the love you gave me for me 
 to cast away, destroy the foulness of sense and self-seeking 
 that has made me hideous, in the fierce, white flame of 
 your purity; with you, lift me from grossness" into that 
 region of innocence where you dwell, and let me dwell 
 there with you. Take my fceart between your slim white 
 hands, sweet one and brave, and hold it close to the 
 warmth of yours. 
 
THE LAST LAP 385 
 
 VII 
 
 I pause awhile before these terminations, so suddenly 
 do they come, and unlinked with the dragging length 
 of my older life. There is no detail in them, they come 
 too swiftly ; as white squalls they overwhelm me. I feel 
 that there should be gradations in their crises, forebodings, 
 then prolonged struggles, hopes deferred, marches and 
 countermarches ; one ought not to win or lose a woman 
 so simply; much time should elapse and there should be 
 much skilful play of wits. To stand, as we did, starkly 
 in front of each other, to avoid explanation, shirk apology 
 and absolution, it was — inartistic. 
 
 But then I was sincere, and there was no time for the 
 
 tic dallyings to which I am given when sincerity is 
 not there and I call upon its wraith. Life is not artistic : 
 its big adventures appear as you reach some appointed 
 
 . and they rush upon you as dragons that have been 
 lying in ambush, compelling you to fight, and at once, 
 
 you be destroyed. There are no slow adventures, 
 slow victories, slow defeats worthy of the name of adven- 
 
 : the deliberate is the dull, and no forlorn hope ever 
 
 d as it made for its goal. 
 Thus, and I remembered it as I decided once more to 
 try a throw with fortune, I had lost Edith within four 
 ight o'clock I had held her in my arms, 
 
 ed secure kisses upon her lips. By midnight I had 
 
 1 in fierce contest with her brother and her father, 
 family, with English society and tradition, with 
 
 i hoi.- phalanx of England, close-packed and ready to 
 receive the intrude! upon H ... I had lost her in 
 
 hours, and now I was going to win her in ten minutes. 
 
 •he dining-room at half-pOSt nine, as well- 
 
 grooi \ could he, assured that my shirt-front, shone 
 
 llliantly as any English shirt -front, that, my hair was 
 ruly and my jewellery almost invisible; also I was ready 
 
 Ir. Lawton, a little surprised at having been admitted 
 
886 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 into the house, and vaguely suspicious that I had been 
 admitted only to be insulted. , The maid went up to the 
 drawing-room to hand her master my card, for I had 
 refused to go upstairs, as I wanted a private interview, 
 and did not fancy a sensational irruption among the 
 assembled Lawtons ; I rehearsed the scene that was going 
 to take place. 
 
 Mr. Lawton would glare at me ; he would say : " What 
 do you want ? " I would say : " Your daughter." He 
 would tell me to leave the house, and I would reply : 
 " No, not until I have had my say?' Then, while he 
 ostentatiously turned aside to examine that most excellent 
 oil-painting on that most sumptuous red wall-paper, I 
 would state the position, in Saxon English flavoured with 
 idioms which would show I was an Englishman, and with 
 'Varsity slang that would prove me a gentleman. I 
 would make him see that Edith was mine until death us 
 do part (slight Adelphi excursion), that I was doing well, 
 and that I would never, never give in (let loose the 
 English bulldog). At last he would ungraciously give 
 his consent, and in a sporting manner I would hold out 
 my hand. Perhaps my beaten enemy 
 
 " Hullo, Cadoresse ! I'm very glad to see you. What 
 have you been doing all this time ? " * 
 
 Ridiculous ! Here was Mr. Lawton smiling at me, with 
 a friendly look in his blue eyes, and he was actually 
 holding out his hand. I felt he wa^not playing the game, 
 playing it as a French father would have, but I took his 
 hand, muttering that the pushing of a young business 
 
 " Oh, yes, I understand," said Mr. Lawton. " I hear 
 you're doing very well, that you're going to be much 
 bigger than poor old Barbezan by-and-by." 
 
 I had to smile, to protest we intended no harm to the 
 old firm; his interest in my affairs was frank : he asked 
 no questions, but received with evident satisfaction the 
 confidences I felt compelled to make. I struggled, but I 
 gave way under the pressure of his unobtrusive courtesy. 
 
THE LAST LAP 387 
 
 We seemed to talk about business, endlessly. Several 
 times I tried to close with him by alluding to his family, 
 as a beginning, but he interrupted me. That was some- 
 thing, in the land of " Thou shalt not interrupt." 
 
 "■ My wife is very well; you must come upstairs and 
 see her. They'll all be glad to see you." 
 
 I ventured to ask whether Muriel ... It seemed that 
 Muriel, too, would be charmed. ... I opened my mouth 
 
 to introduce Edith into the conversation 
 
 " You must have a drink," said Mr. Lawton, amiably. 
 
 I did not want a drink, I wanted to get to my work, but I 
 
 accepted, for Englishmen are always drinking whisky and 
 
 soda : one has to live up to one's naturalisation papers. Mr. 
 
 Lawton poured out the whisky, asked to be told " when," 
 
 and while he manoeuvred the syphon, managed to make 
 
 me tell him that I had taken up politics again, and 
 
 promise to come and hear him speak on the Budget later 
 
 in the year. But my opportunity arrived ; we both stood 
 
 in hand and, as Mr. Lawton touched the liquid with 
 
 :ps, I was upon him. As I spoke I was amused, for 
 
 I could see his nose through the glass that muzzled him. 
 
 Mr. Lawton," I said, quickly, " I've come to ask you 
 
 for your consent to my marriage with your daughter 
 
 lu" 
 
 No tell-tale expression crossed his face as he put down 
 
 u r lass. Indeed, his voice was almost cordial as he 
 
 replied : 
 
 dear fellow, we diseussed that two years ago. 
 know what I said." 
 
 . but. things have changed. I am getting on " 
 
 " It's not that, you know that perfectly well." 
 " It makes a difference." 
 
 41 > , you know that had nothing to do with 
 
 my i 
 
 A stream of rhetoric burst from my lips. I begged him 
 
 lei that time wa \ that we loved each 
 
 other, that his objections had once been well-founded, 
 
388 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 but that I had become a naturalised Englishman, had 
 acquired the habits, the standards of an Englishman. 
 
 " Now don't I behave like an Englishman ? " I asked. 
 
 " You've become more English, but you're not English." 
 
 I went over the whole field, asked him to acknowledge 
 that my hair was short, that my clothes were perfectly 
 unobtrusive; begged to be told whether I was noisy, 
 boastful " 
 
 " You boast about nothing except being an English- 
 man," said Mr. Lawton, slyly; " and yet you're a French- 
 man, a Roman Catholic, to the bone." 
 
 I went off on the religious question, and we had quite 
 a spirited little wrangle on the difference between French 
 and English Roman Catholics when they happened also 
 to be agnostics. Then I brought the argument back to 
 its base, and a heavy despair began to stifle me as I 
 realised that this man had made up his mind in the 
 English, bullish way, that nothing would move him : I 
 don't know why an Englishman never moves ; perhaps he 
 can't. 
 
 At last we faced each other, Lawton calm, and I rather 
 breathless. There was a moment of silence, and I won- 
 dered whether Edith would stand by me if I threatened 
 him; she had promised nothing, had merely agreed to 
 my once more going to her father ; all I could do was to 
 hope that she would help to carry out my threat. 
 
 " So you refuse to let me marry her ? " I said, harshly. 
 
 Mr. Lawton looked at me with an air of amazement. 
 
 " Refuse ? You did not ask for my consent." 
 
 " But — but — " I protested, and I was angry as well as 
 bewildered by this change of front. 
 
 " 1 have no consent to give." And as I stared he went 
 
 " Two years ago, or is it two and a half ? you came here 
 and asked for my leave to marry Edith. I refused, be- 
 cause it was my duty to refuse. Edith was under age, 
 and I had to protect her. Now she is twenty-two, she 
 
THE LAST LAP 889 
 
 will be twenty-three in April ; the position has changed. 
 I no longer come in. She must decide for herself." 
 
 " Mr. Lawton," I cried, suddenly thrilled, my tongue 
 thick in my mouth with excitement. 
 
 He raised his open hand, and it was the first time I 
 had ever seen him do anything so histrionic : 
 
 " She is free. I neither consent nor refuse. She has 
 her freedom and she has her responsibility. I will not 
 interfere, for — it is not my business." 
 
 Understanding irradiated my mind. Here was the 
 Englishman, the beau ideal of his type : his daughter 
 of age, was free, free to be happy and free to be 
 ched; the fate of other free individuals was not his 
 Less. And I wondered whether I loved this sumptu- 
 ous English freedom or hated its cold aloofness. 
 
 " Thank you," I said, unconsciously imitating his 
 attitude. 
 
 He did not reply, but as I turned towards the door, the 
 sportsman said, detachcdly : 
 
 " Don't go yet. Come upstairs and see them ; my wife 
 Id be sorry to miss you." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOME 
 I 
 
 Life has described a circle, as a preliminary, no doubt, 
 to describing another ; I sit at my knee-hole desk, con- 
 sider 'my regulation silk hat, then gaze awhile through 
 the window into the misty depths of the trees. Idly I 
 watch the traffic in Kensington Gore, motor-cars speeding 
 towards Richmond, Surrey, perhaps the West Country, 
 ponderous motor-buses advertising English soaps, plays, 
 oats; and v horses swiftly drawing the broughams of 
 Englishwomen to Dover or Grafton Street. This is 
 England, wealthy, easy England. And there is the 
 immense policeman at the gate of the Gardens ; near him 
 are two blues from Knightsbridge, who flirt with nurse- 
 maids in hospital garb. Handsome, well-groomed men, 
 dainty children, women whose clothes are six months 
 behind the Paris fashion, pedigree terriers — England. 
 
 And in this room, my study, are Morlands on the brown 
 paper; in the bookcase I read the names of the bigger 
 books : Macaulay's History of England, the Life of 
 Disraeli, a massive volume on the Pre-Raphaelites ; I 
 recognise the novels of Fielding and Thackeray, Bos well's 
 Life of Johnson ; and a playwright's corner, Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, Sheridan; there are no French yellow-backs. 
 On a bracket my well-beloved collection of Lowestoft 
 china ; on the mantelpiece Liverpool transfer. Comfort- 
 able chairs are covered with green-leaved black chintz; 
 a pipe-rack hangs over my piled golf-clubs. The Times 
 has fallen on the floor, littering the hearthrug, and John, 
 
 390 
 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOME 391 
 
 the bulldog, sleeps with his enormous head pillowed on 
 the loose sheets ; he snores, and as he sleeps he chokes and 
 gurgles. He is disgusting, he is delightful. This is 
 England. 
 
 I have not been to the City to-day, but shall drop in 
 for an hour at four o'clock, when I shall have finished these 
 memoirs. I must finish them, perhaps to begin them over 
 again one day, for I have not had the strength or the wish 
 to extend them over the last five years. Of those years 
 
 nothing now ; perhaps I have nothing to say, perhaps 
 
 1 obscurely that my alien life ended one morning, 
 when Edith and I faced each other across the little body 
 of Fiona as she squirmed in the rough grass. Yes, every- 
 thing conspires to give me that message. On the stairs 
 I hear voices raised in shrill protest ; I hear Marmaduke 
 
 ouring for sweeties and tiny Edna uttering, for 
 reasons unknown to me, scream after scream. Then 
 Edith's voice, very low, very sweet. I wonder why I 
 
 I those two " Marmaduke " and " Edna." Oh, yes, 
 I remember : there are no corresponding French names. 
 
 II 
 
 me lies a blue paper. Addressed to Lucicn 
 
 ton Core, it states that "By 
 
 f a Precept of the High Sheriff of the County 
 
 I am summoned to appear before His Majesty's 
 
 igned to hold the Assizes, there to 
 
 a Special Juror. Can it be that the recreant 
 
 h-born say "Damn" when they find such a blue 
 
 r in the post? It is amazing to me who am thrilled. 
 
 thing I may <1<> f«»r my country. With 
 
 in to decide the fate of 
 
 Englishmen in the stern, bill lofty presence of England's 
 
 Sc>f . ghost'lil nlniiniiaid comes in with 
 
392 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 the message that Mrs. Cadoresse would like to have the 
 car later on if I don't want it. I nod. No Frenchified 
 familiarities, discussions or pleasantries pass between me 
 and my servant ; I don't look at her, I am not sure that I 
 would know her in the street. Yes, I am an Englishman. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But what of these English, then ? Can they be under- 
 stood of me at all ? or only felt ? Ten years have gone, 
 and I seem to see the English only in flashes, as if some 
 psychic stage-manager made them leap across the stage, 
 leap so fast that my mental eye could gather of them 
 nothing but a post -impression. 
 
 They leap, the English, all different, all alike ; each one 
 has his passion or his equally amazing lack of passion, and 
 yet each one is somehow brother to his fellow. Let me 
 close my eyes, look at you one by one, as if you were 
 bacteria wriggling under a lens. 
 
 Here is Hugh Lawton, my brother-in-law. You play 
 a good hand at bridge, but you are not too good to be 
 mistaken for a sharper ; your golf handicap is six : you 
 will never be a plus man; you do not belong to the 
 Athenaeum, nor to an obscure club in a back yard of St. 
 James's. You are a fair average. You have married a 
 pretty woman, not a beauty, and, of course, you have 
 three children : it would be impossible to imagine you 
 with either none or fourteen. You are a moderate Liberal 
 —did you ever dream of Empire or of Socialism, once upon 
 a time? And now that you have told me so much, tell 
 me what is your passion. What ! you don't know. No, 
 I don't suppose you do : Hugh, you are not alive, you are 
 merely there — and yet you have life as has that queer 
 little animal which lives at the bottom of the sea, alive on 
 its mineral stalk. You are for the Broad Church, the 
 constitutional State, the "good" novels, the vote for 
 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOME 393 
 
 women householders ; you maintain, and some things you 
 
 tolerate — you will tolerate the intolerable when it is 
 
 established. For you are an Englishman; you want to 
 
 be neither too unhappy, for that is unpleasant, nor too 
 
 happy, for that is sinful; you want to earn enough 
 
 money, play your games, peacefully love your wife, 
 
 educate your children as yourself, work just hard enough 
 
 ant to play just hard enough and to sleep well, not too 
 
 ily, until you surrender your soul for the eternal rest. 
 
 You are in the middle; you are not among the very 
 
 good, not among the very bad; you and your million 
 
 brothers, you are always in the middle, and England — 
 
 is it because England is always in the middle that England 
 
 is the centre of the world ? 
 
 Yet, all of you, you are not like that. Here is Edward 
 Kent, an elegant figure, a Regency wit in a morning coat. 
 Are you England ? or only donnish Cambridge ? What 
 are these affectations of yours? What makes you say 
 M What race ? " when, on the greatest occasion of the year, 
 some girl decked out in light or dark blue ribbons tells 
 you that it's a fine day for the race ? -Kent, your revolt 
 list England is allegiance to England; your French 
 Is, your unashamed desire to shine in public, your 
 trim hands, your dislike of sport, all these are revolts you 
 are trying to engineer against the England that has got 
 will never loose you, that will force you to do 
 ■ t t liing on a battlefield if you are dragged there, 
 : t, if you get so far. I do not think 
 get into Court, for you will never want any 
 in badly enough to suffer because you take her, 
 ii you; like birth and religion it is not 
 the kind of thing a gentleman should meddle with, for it 
 involves complications, you know, the problem-play corn- 
 so sordid, unnecessary, so un] 
 Luxurious Kent, you would ring for 
 your pyj rtland gaol, but you wouldn't be 
 
394 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 luxurious if you Acre not trying not to be coarse — 
 English. 
 
 Others, Mr. Lawton, Under-Secretary of State, im- 
 possible to corrupt (save perhaps with a peerage by-and- 
 by); Colonel Raleigh, soldier, who believes in efficiency 
 and making Lord Kitchener Governor of every British 
 Colony. Gallant Colonel, you made Yorkshire smile last 
 year when you, a J.P., were caught in a quiet assembly 
 
 where cocks were fighting a main. . . . Dicky Bell I 
 
 like your round face, your short nose and bright eyes, your 
 devotion to the little slum boys whom you still drill. You 
 have some ideas of education. Games and classics, you 
 say, have gone too far in our country, but you're not going 
 to do away with them. And many more, the acute and 
 the dull, Stanley, Neville, pretty Muriel and her sapper, 
 Farr the abominable, old Purkis, the young Liberals of 
 Hambury, Mrs. Lawton, enjoying a quiet life between an 
 at home, a dinner and the supper that follows on the play, 
 the eighty-seven clerks of Stanley, Cadoresse & Co., and 
 all the others whose nameless faces crowd round me, what 
 are you doing ? 
 
 Living. That is enough. Asking no more. Just 
 wanting to keep the blinds down so that life may be 
 decently obscured. 
 
 England is busily engaged in not pulling the blinds up. 
 
 Living cleanly, without worrying about what will 
 happen next. You'd die well, most of you, if it came to 
 that : it's a good deal. 
 
 I love you, oh, not blindly as in Edwardian days. I 
 know you're not so nimble as the French, and that you 
 enjoy shooting ideas as much as you enjoy shooting 
 grouse. But I love your calmness in the presence of life; 
 I love your neutrality, your unobtrusive courage, your 
 economy of emotion, and the immense, sane generosity 
 of you. To the stranger within your gates you give bread, 
 and you give him your kindly heart too. Only the 
 
AX ENGLISHMAN'S HOME 395 
 
 stranger makes you shy if he lets you see that he knows 
 that. You are the dignity, the solidity of the world. 
 The French are its passion, you are its reason ; you are 
 the bearers of restfulness. 
 
 Englishmen, when I want to think of you all together 
 I think of Falstaff. You have lost most of his gaiety, 
 you no longer dance round the maypole of Merrie England ; 
 oppressed by cares and expenditures you stand aloof from 
 democracy and no longer respect aristocracy ; your rich 
 men cannot sit in the banqueting-hall where he rioted, 
 for it is tumbling about their ears. But the root of you 
 is Falstaflian : the poetic idealism of the Fat Knight still 
 
 re in your sons, his philosophic acceptance of good 
 and evil radiates out from the midst of you. The broad 
 
 mces of England, her taste for liberty and ease, her 
 occasional bluster and her boundless conceit, they are 
 
 .iff. 
 Falstaff embodies all that is gross in England and much 
 that is fine ; his cowardice, his craft, his habit of flattery 
 are no more English than they are Chinese : they are 
 
 ly human. But the outer Falstaff is English, the 
 
 ss root of him yet more English, for you hate the law, 
 
 obey it only because you make it in such wise as not 
 
 you. And he is your soul ; he is the Englishman 
 
 who conquered every shore and, a Bible in his hand, planted 
 
 among the savages ; he is the unsteady boy who 
 
 ran away to sea, the privateers man who fought the 
 
 ch and the Dutch; he is the cheerful, greedy, dull 
 
 Englishman, who is so wonderfully stupid 
 
 and so wonderfully full of common-sense. Falstaff was 
 
 r curbed by adversity : no more was the English 
 . like hin tin and too optimistic, too 
 
 rially bounded by its immediate Falstaff, 
 
 are the gigantic ancestor of I nerchanta 
 
 and soldiers who have conquered and held fields where 
 
 :■ floated the lilies of t] h or the castles of the 
 
396 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Portuguese. Too dull to be beaten and too big to be 
 moved, you were the Englishman. 
 
 IV 
 
 That is all I have to say, for I am born anew, and all m> 
 life lies before me, the past effaced. EnglancT has taken 
 me in her strong, warm arms, and I have pressed my face 
 to her broad bosom. Big, strong heart, I hear you beat ; 
 there come sorrow, famine, pestilence, and you beat no 
 slower ; and now fame and victory, there is no hurry in 
 your throbbing. Fold me close to you, woman with the 
 golden helmet, and hold your trident ready to keep danger 
 at bay : I was not the child of your body, let me be the 
 child of your heart, because I love you, my 
 
 I hear a soft footfall behind me, then a low voice : 
 
 44 Am I disturbing you ? " 
 
 I turn, and for a moment consider the young face, 
 unmarked of the fleeting years, the smiling, rosy mouth, 
 the gentle blue eyes. I clasp the slim, white hand, draw 
 towards me the form that so gladly yields. Edith sits 
 across my knees, laughs low as I kiss her neck. 
 
 44 Have you much more to write ? " she asks, at length. 
 
 " No," I murmur, " only one word." 
 
 " Let me write it," says Edith, and there is in her eyes 
 an appeal with which mingles security. 
 
 I whisper into her ear as she takes the pen : " . . . be- 
 cause I love you, my. . . ." Her left hand still in mine, 
 she bends forward, and I can see nothing save the pale 
 gold tendrils on her neck as she writes the last word • 
 
 44 . . . England." 
 
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 CHAINS 
 
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 TRILBY 
 
 By George I)u Maurier. 
 
 THE MAID-AT-ARMS 
 
 By R. W. Chambers, Author of 'The Fighting 
 Chance.' 
 
 PRISCILLA 
 
 By Mrs. George Wemyss, Author of 'The Professional 
 Aunt.' 
 
 PITY THE POOR BLIND 
 
 By H. H. Bashford, Author of 'The Corner of 
 trley Street.' 
 
 BORROWED PLUMES 
 
 By Sir Owen Seaman, Editor of ' Punch.' 
 
 FIGHTING LINfiS 
 
 Patr; M by Harold Begbie. 
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 By Hilaire Belloc. 
 
 / 
 
CONSTABLE'S SHILLING SERIES 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 
 
 By Mary Johnston 
 The Old Dominion 
 By Order of the Company 
 Audrey 
 Sir Mortimer 
 Lewis Rand 
 
 By Robert W. Chambers 
 The Fighting Chance 
 In the Quarter 
 The King in Yellow 
 
 By H. S. Harrison 
 Queed 
 
 By Mrs. George Wemyss 
 The Professional Aunt 
 People of Popham 
 
 By Maud Diver 
 The Hero of Herat 
 
 By Winifred James 
 Bachelor Betty 
 
 By John Fox 
 
 The Little Shepherd of 
 Kingdom Come 
 
 By Gustav Frenssen 
 Peter Moor 
 
 By F. A. Lutyens 
 Lost in the Post 
 
 By Mrs. W. K. Clifford 
 Love Letters of a Worldly 
 Woman 
 
 By Bernard Shaw 
 An Unsocial Socialist 
 The Irrational Knot 
 Love Among the Artists 
 Cashel Byron's Profession 
 
 By H. G. Wells 
 
 frew Worlds for Old 
 
 By George Meredith 
 Selected Poems 
 
 By Max Muller 
 
 Thoughts on Life and 
 Religion 
 
 By Roland Usher 
 Pan-Germanism 
 
 By George Gissing 
 
 The Private Papers of 
 
 Henry Ryecroft 
 Will Warburton 
 The House of Cobwebs 
 
 By G. S. Street 
 
 Ghosts of Piccadilly 
 
 By Lieutenant Sakurai 
 Human Bullets 
 
 By H. H. Bashford 
 The Corner of Harley 
 Street 
 
 By Clara Louise Burnham 
 Jewel 
 

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