"Give her something," he whispered in panic. I was afraid. Then suddenly getting a florin from my pocket, I stiffened my nerves and slid it into her palm. Her hand was soft, and warm, and curled in sleep. She started violently, looking up at me, then down at her hand. I turned my face aside, terrified lest she should look in my eyes, and full of shame and grief I ran down the embankment to him. We hurried along under the plane trees in silence. The shining cars were drawing tall in the distance over Westminster Bridge, a fainter, yellow light running with them on the water below. The wet streets were spilled with golden liquor of light, and on the deep blackness of the river were the restless yellow slashes of the lamps.
Lettie and Leslie were staying up at Hampstead with a friend of the Tempests, one of the largest shareholders in the firm of Tempest, Wharton & Co. The Raphaels had a substantial house, and Lettie preferred to go to them rather than to an hotel, especially as she had brought with her her infant son, now ten months old, with his nurse. They invited George and me to dinner on the Friday evening. The party included Lettie's host and hostess, and also a Scottish poetess, and an Irish musician, composer of songs and pianoforte rhapsodies.
Lettie wore a black lace dress in mourning for one of Leslie's maternal aunts. This made her look older, otherwise there seemed to be no change in her. A subtle observer might have noticed a little hardness about her mouth, and disillusion hanging slightly on her eyes. She was, however, excited by the company in which she found herself, therefore she overflowed with clever speeches and rapid, brilliant observations. Certainly on such occasions she was admirable. The rest of the company formed, as it were, the orchestra which accompanied her.
George was exceedingly quiet. He spoke a few words now and then to Mrs Raphael, but on the whole he was altogether silent, listening.
"Really!" Lettie was saying, "I don't see that one thing is worth doing any more than another. It's like dessert: you are equally indifferent whether you have grapes, or pears, or pineapple."
"Have you already dined so far?" sang the Scottish poetess in her musical, plaintive manner.
"The only thing worth doing is producing," said Lettie. "Alas, that is what all the young folk are saying nowadays!" sighed the Irish musician.
"That is the only thing one finds any pleasure in--that is to say, any satisfaction," continued Lettie, smiling, and turning to the two artists.
"Do you not think so?" she added.
"You do come to a point at last," said the Scottish poetess, "when your work is a real source of satisfaction."
"Do you write poetry then?" asked George of Lettie.
"I! Oh, dear no! I have tried strenuously to make up a Limerick for a competition, but in vain. So you see, I am a failure there. Did you know I have a son, though?--A marvellous little fellow, is he not, Leslie?--He is my work. I am a wonderful mother, am I not, Leslie?"
"Too devoted," he replied.
"There!" she exclaimed in triumph--"When I have to sign my name and occupation in a visitor's book, it will be, '--Mother'. I hope my business will flourish," she concluded, smiling.
There was a touch of ironical brutality in her now. She was, at the bottom, quite sincere. Having reached that point in a woman's career when most, perhaps all, of the things in life seem worthless and insipid, she had determined to put up with it, to ignore her own self, to empty her own potentialities into the vessel of another or others, and to live her life at secondhand. This peculiar abnegation of self is the resource of a woman for the escaping of the responsibilities of her own development. Like a nun, she puts over her living face a veil, as a sign that the woman no longer exists for herself: she is the servant of God, of some man, of her children, or maybe of some cause. As a servant, she is no longer responsible for her self, which would make her terrified and lonely. Service is light and easy. To be responsible for the good progress of one's life is terrifying. It is the most insufferable form of loneliness, and the heaviest of responsibilities. So Lettie indulged her husband, but did not yield her independence to him; rather it was she who took much of the responsibility of him into her hands, and therefore he was so devoted to her. She had, however, now determined to abandon the charge of herself to serve her children. When the children grew up, either they would unconsciously fling her away, back upon herself again in bitterness and loneliness, or they would tenderly cherish her, chafing at her love-bonds occasionally.
George looked and listened to all the flutter of conversation, and said nothing. It seemed to him like so much unreasonable rustling of pieces of paper, of leaves of books, and so on. Later in the evening Lettie sang, no longer Italian folk songs, but the fragmentary utterances of Debussy and Strauss. These also to George were quite meaningless, and rather wearisome. It made him impatient to see her wasting herself upon them.
"Do you like those songs?" she asked in the frank, careless manner she affected.
"Not much," he replied, ungraciously.
"Don't you?" she exclaimed, adding with a smile, "Those are the most wonderful things in the world, those little things"--she began to hum a Debussy idiom. He could not answer her on the point, so he sat with the arrow sticking in him, and did not speak.
She enquired of him concerning Meg and his children and the affairs of Eberwich, but the interest was flimsy, as she preserved a wide distance between them, although apparently she was so unaffected and friendly. We left before eleven.
When we were seated in the cab and rushing down-hill, he said:
"You know, she makes me mad."
He was frowning, looking out of the window away from me. "Who, Lettie? Why, what riles you?" I asked.
He was some time in replying.
"Why, she's so affected."
I sat in the small, close space and waited.
"Do you know--?" he laughed, keeping his face averted from me. "She makes my blood boil. I could hate her."
"Why?" I said gently.
"I don't know. I feel as if she'd insulted me. She does lie, doesn't she?"
"I didn't notice it," I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her shuffling of her life.
"And you think of those poor devils under the bridge--and then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy--"
He spoke with passion.
"You are quoting Longfellow," I said.
"What?" he asked, looking at me suddenly.
"'Life is real, life is earnest--'"
He flushed slightly at my good-natured gibe.
"I don't know what it is," he replied. "But it's a pretty rotten business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself, and all the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils rotting on the Embankment--and--"
"And you--and Mayhew--and me--" I continued.
He looked at me very intently to see if I was mocking. He laughed. I could see he was very much moved.
"Is the time quite out of joint?" I asked.
"Why! "--he laughed. "No. But she makes me feel so angry--as if I should burst.--I don't know when I felt in such a rage. I wonder why. I'm sorry for him, poor devil. Lettie and Leslie'--they seemed christened for one another, didn't they?"
"What if you'd had her?" I asked.
"We should have been like a cat and dog; I'd rather be with Meg a thousand times--now!" he added significantly. He sat watching the lamps and the people and the dark buildings slipping past us.
"Shall we go and have a drink?" I asked him, thinking we would call in Frascati's to see the come-and-go.
"I could do with a brandy," he replied, looking at me slowly.
We sat in the restaurant listening to the jigging of the music, watching the changing flow of the people. I like to sit a long time by the hollyhocks watching the throng of varied bees which poise and hesitate outside the wild flowers, then swing in with a hum which sets everything aquiver. But still more fascinating it is to watch the come and go of people weaving and intermingling in the complex mesh of their intentions, with all the subtle grace and my
stery of their moving, shapely bodies.
I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George looked also, but he drank glass after glass of brandy. "I like to watch the people," said I.
"Ay--and doesn't it seem an aimless, idiotic business--look at them!" he replied in tones of contempt. I looked instead at him, in some surprise and resentment. His face was gloomy, stupid and unrelieved. The amount of brandy he had drunk had increased his ill humour.
"Shall we be going?" I said. I did not want him to get drunk in his present state of mind.
"Ay--in half a minute," he finished the brandy, and rose. Although he had drunk a good deal, he was quite steady, only there was a disagreeable look always on his face, and his eyes seemed smaller and more glittering than I had seen them. We took a bus to Victoria. He sat swaying on his seat in the dim, clumsy vehicle, saying not a word. In the vast cavern of the station the theatre-goers were hastening, crossing the pale grey strand, small creatures scurrying hither and thither in the space beneath the lonely lamps. As the train crawled over the river we watched the far-flung hoop of diamond lights curving slowly round and striping with bright threads the black water. He sat looking with heavy eyes, seeming to shrink from the enormous unintelligible lettering of the poem of London.
The town was too large for him, he could not take in its immense, its stupendous poetry. What did come home to him was its flagrant discords. The unintelligibilty of the vast city made him apprehensive, and the crudity of its big, coarse contrasts wounded him unutterably.
"What is the matter?" I asked him as we went along the silent pavement at Norwood.
"Nothing," he replied. "Nothing!" and I did not trouble him further.
We occupied a large, two-bedded room--that looked down the hill and over to the far woods of Kent. He was morose and untalkative. I brought up a soda-syphon and whisky, and we proceeded to undress. When he stood in his pyjamas he waited as if uncertain.
"Do you want a drink?" he asked.
I did not. He crossed to the table, and as I got into my bed I heard the brief fizzing of the syphon. He drank his glass at one draught, then switched off the light. In the sudden darkness I saw his pale shadow go across to the sofa in the window-space. The blinds were undrawn, and the stars looked in. He gazed out on the great bay of darkness wherein, far away and below, floated a few sparks of lamps like herring-boats at sea.
"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.
"I'm not sleepy--you go to sleep," he answered, resenting having to speak at all.
"Then put on a dressing-gown--there's one in that corner--turn the light on."
He did not answer, but fumbled for the garment in the darkness. When he had found it, he said:
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
I did not. He fumbled again in his pockets for cigarettes, always refusing to switch on the light. I watched his face bowed to the match as he lighted his cigarette. He was still handsome in the ruddy light, but his features were coarser. I felt very sorry for him, but I saw that I could get no nearer to him, to relieve him. For some time I lay in the darkness watching the end of his cigarette like a ruddy, malignant insect hovering near his lips, putting the timid stars immensely far away. He sat quiet still, leaning on the sofa arm. Occasionally there was a little glow on his cheeks as the cigarette burned brighter, then again I could see nothing but the dull red bee.
I suppose I must have dropped asleep. Suddenly I started as something fell to the floor. I heard him cursing under his breath.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I've only knocked something down--cigarette-case or something," he replied, apologetically.
"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm coming," he answered quite docile.
He seemed to wander about and knock against things as he came. He dropped heavily into bed.
"Are you sleepy now?" I asked.
"I dunno--I shall be directly," he replied.
"What's up with you?" I asked.
"I dunno," he answered. "I'm like this sometimes, when there's nothing I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and nobody I want to be near. Then you feel so rottenly lonely, Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum, with a pressure on you, a sort of pressure of darkness, and you yourself--just nothing, a vacuum--that's what it's like--a little vacuum that's not dark, all loose in the middle of a space of darkness, that's pressing on you."
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, rousing myself in bed. "That sounds bad!"
He laughed slightly.
"It's all right," he said, "it's only the excitement of London, and that little man in the park, and that woman on the seat--I wonder where she is tonight, poor devil--and then Lettie. I seem thrown off my balance.--I think really, I ought to have made something of myself--"
"What?" I asked, as he hesitated.
"I don't know," he replied slowly, "--a poet or something, like Burns--I don't know. I shall laugh at myself for thinking so, tomorrow. But I am born a generation too soon--I wasn't ripe enough when I came. I wanted something I hadn't got. I'm something short. I'm like corn in a wet harvest--full, but pappy, no good. I s'll rot. I came too soon; or I wanted something that would ha' made me grow fierce. That's why I wanted Lettie--I think. But am I talking damn rot? What am I saying? What are you making me talk for? What are you listening for?"
I rose and went across to him, saying:
"I don't want you to talk! If you sleep till morning things will look different."
I sat on his bed and took his hand. He lay quite still.
"I'm only a kid after all, Cyril," he said, a few moments later.
"We all are," I answered, still holding his hand. Presently he fell asleep.
When I awoke the sunlight was laughing with the young morning in the room. The large blue sky shone against the window, and the birds were calling in the garden below, shouting to one another and making fun of life. I felt glad to have opened my eyes. I lay for a moment looking out on the morning as on a blue bright sea in which I was going to plunge.
Then my eyes wandered to the little table near the couch. I noticed the glitter of George's cigarette-case, and then, with a start, the whisky decanter. It was nearly empty. He must have drunk three-quarters of a pint of liquor while I was dozing. I could not believe it. I thought I must have been mistaken as to the quantity the bottle contained. I leaned out to see what it was that had startled me by its fall the night before. It was the large, heavy drinking glass which he had knocked down but not broken. I could see no stain on the carpet.
George was still asleep. He lay half uncovered, and was breathing quietly. His face looked inert like a mask. The pallid, uninspired clay of his features seemed to have sunk a little out of shape, so that he appeared rather haggard, rather ugly, with grooves of ineffectual misery along his cheeks. I wanted him to wake, so that his inert, flaccid features might be inspired with life again. I could not believe his charm and his beauty could have forsaken him so, and left his features dreary, sunken clay.
As I looked he woke. His eyes opened slowly. He looked at me and turned away, unable to meet my eyes. He pulled the bedclothes up over his shoulders, as though to cover himself from me, and he lay with his back to me, quite still, as if he were asleep, although I knew he was quite awake; he was suffering the humiliation of lying waiting for his life to crawl back and inhabit his body. As it was, his vitality was not yet sufficient to inform the muscles of his face and give him an expression, much less to answer by challenge.
CHAPTER VI - PISGAH
When her eldest boy was three years old Lettie returned to live at Eberwich. Old Mr Tempest died suddenly, so Leslie came down to inhabit Highclose. He was a very much occupied man. Very often he was in Germany or in the South of England engaged on business. At home he was unfailingly attentive to his wife and his two children. He had cultivated a taste for public life. In spite of his pressure of business he had become a County Councillor, and one of the prominent members of the Conservative Association. He w
as very fond of answering or proposing toasts at some public dinner, of entertaining political men at Highclose, of taking the chair at political meetings, and finally, of speaking on this or that platform. His name was fairly often seen in the newspapers. As a mine-owner, he spoke as an authority on the employment of labour, on royalties, land-owning and so on.
At home he was quite tame. He treated his wife with respect, romped in the nursery, and domineered the servants royally. They liked him for it--her they did not like. He was noisy, but unobservant, she was quiet and exacting. He would swear and bluster furiously, but when he was round the corner they smiled. She gave her orders and passed very moderate censure, but they went away cursing to themselves. As Lettie was always a very good wife, Leslie adored her when he had the time, and when he had not, forgot her comfortably.
She was very contradictory. At times she would write to me in terms of passionate dissatisfaction: she had nothing at all in her life, it was a barren futility.
"I hope I shall have another child next spring," she would write, "there is only that to take away the misery of this torpor. I seem full of passion and energy, and it all fizzles out in day-to-day domestics--"
When I replied to her, urging her to take some work that she could throw her soul into, she would reply indifferently. Then later:
"You charge me with contradiction. Well, naturally. You see I wrote that screeching letter in a mood which won't come again for some time. Generally I am quite content to take the rain and the calm days just as they come, then something flings me out of myself--and I am a trifle demented:--very, very blue, as I tell Leslie."