CHAPTER VIII.
THE CAREER PREVAILS.
There is an interval of two years and a half and the story resumeswith a much maturer Mr. Lewisham, indeed no longer a youth, but a man,a legal man, at any rate, of one-and-twenty years. Its scene is nolonger little Whortley embedded among its trees, ruddy banks, parksand common land, but the grey spaciousness of West London.
And it does not resume with Ethel at all. For that promised secondletter never reached him, and though he spent many an afternoon duringhis first few months in London wandering about Clapham, that aridwaste of people, the meeting that he longed for never came. Until atlast, after the manner of youth, so gloriously recuperative in body,heart, and soul, he began to forget.
The quest of a "crib" had ended in the unexpected fruition ofDunkerley's blue paper. The green-blue certificates had, it seemed, avalue beyond mural decoration, and when Lewisham was alreadydespairing of any employment for the rest of his life, came amarvellous blue document from the Education Department promisinginconceivable things. He was to go to London and be paid a guinea aweek for listening to lectures--lectures beyond his most ambitiousdreams! Among the names that swam before his eyes was Huxley--Huxleyand then Lockyer! What a chance to get! Is it any wonder that forthree memorable years the Career prevailed with him?
You figure him on his way to the Normal School of Science at theopening of his third year of study there. (They call the place theRoyal College of Science in these latter days.) He carried in hisright hand a shiny black bag, well stuffed with text-books, notes, andapparatus for the forthcoming session; and in his left was a bookthat the bag had no place for, a book with gilt edges, and its bindingvery carefully protected by a brown paper cover.
The lapse of time had asserted itself upon his upper lip in aninaggressive but indisputable moustache, in an added inch or so ofstature, and in his less conscious carriage. For he no longer feltthat universal attention he believed in at eighteen; it was beginningto dawn on him indeed that quite a number of people were entirelyindifferent to the fact of his existence. But if less conscious, hiscarriage was decidedly more confident--as of one with whom the worldgoes well.
His costume was--with one exception--a tempered black,--mourning putto hard uses and "cutting up rusty." The mourning was for his mother,who had died more than a year before the date when this story resumes,and had left him property that capitalized at nearly a hundred pounds,a sum which Lewisham hoarded jealously in the Savings Bank, payingonly for such essentials as university fees, and the books andinstruments his brilliant career as a student demanded. For he washaving a brilliant career, after all, in spite of the Whortley check,licking up paper certificates indeed like a devouring flame.
(Surveying him, Madam, your eye would inevitably have fallen to hiscollar--curiously shiny, a surface like wet gum. Although it haspractically nothing to do with this story, I must, I know, dispose ofthat before I go on, or you will be inattentive. London has itsmysteries, but this strange gloss on his linen! "Cheap laundressesalways make your things blue," protests the lady. "It ought to havebeen blue-stained, generously frayed, and loose about the button,fretting his neck. But this gloss ..." You would have looked nearer,and finally you would have touched--a charnel-house surface, dank andcool! You see, Madam, the collar was a patent waterproof one. One ofthose you wash over night with a tooth-brush, and hang on the back ofyour chair to dry, and there you have it next morning rejuvenesced. Itwas the only collar he had in the world, it saved threepence a week atleast, and that, to a South Kensington "science teacher in training,"living on the guinea a week allowed by a parental but parsimoniousgovernment, is a sum to consider. It had come to Lewisham as a greatdiscovery. He had seen it first in a shop window full of indiarubbergoods, and it lay at the bottom of a glass bowl in which goldfishdrifted discontentedly to and fro. And he told himself that he ratherliked that gloss.)
But the wearing of a bright red tie would have been unexpected--abright red tie after the fashion of a South-Western railway guard's!The rest of him by no means dandiacal, even the vanity of glasses longsince abandoned. You would have reflected.... Where had you seen acrowd--red ties abundant and in some way significant? The truth has tobe told. Mr. Lewisham had become a Socialist!
That red tie was indeed but one outward and visible sign of muchinward and spiritual development. Lewisham, in spite of the demands ofa studious career, had read his Butler's Analogy through by this time,and some other books; he had argued, had had doubts, and called uponGod for "Faith" in the silence of the night--"Faith" to be deliveredimmediately if Mr. Lewisham's patronage was valued, and whichnevertheless was not so delivered.... And his conception of hisdestiny in this world was no longer an avenue of examinations to aremote Bar and political eminence "in the Liberal interest (D.V.)." Hehad begun to realise certain aspects of our social order that Whortleydid not demonstrate, begun to feel something of the dull stressdeepening to absolute wretchedness and pain, which is the colour of somuch human life in modern London. One vivid contrast hung in his mindsymbolical. On the one hand were the coalies of the Westbourne Parkyards, on strike and gaunt and hungry, children begging in the blackslush, and starving loungers outside a soup kitchen; and on the other,Westbourne Grove, two streets further, a blazing array of crowdedshops, a stirring traffic of cabs and carriages, and such a spate ofspending that a tired student in leaky boots and graceless clotheshurrying home was continually impeded in the whirl of skirts andparcels and sweetly pretty womanliness. No doubt the tired student'sown inglorious sensations pointed the moral. But that was only one ofa perpetually recurring series of vivid approximations.
Lewisham had a strong persuasion, an instinct it may be, that humanbeings should not be happy while others near them were wretched, andthis gay glitter of prosperity had touched him with a sense ofcrime. He still believed people were responsible for their own lives;in those days he had still to gauge the possibilities of moralstupidity in himself and his fellow-men. He happened upon "Progressand Poverty" just then, and some casual numbers of the "Commonweal,"and it was only too easy to accept the theory of cunning plottingcapitalists and landowners, and faultless, righteous, martyrworkers. He became a Socialist forthwith. The necessity to dosomething at once to manifest the new faith that was in him wasnaturally urgent. So he went out and (historical moment) bought thatred tie!
"Blood colour, please," said Lewisham meekly to the young lady at thecounter.
"_What_ colour?" said the young lady at the counter, sharply.
"A bright scarlet, please," said Lewisham, blushing. And he spent thebest part of the evening and much of his temper in finding out how totie this into a neat bow. It was a plunge into novel handicraft--forpreviously he had been accustomed to made-up ties.
So it was that Lewisham proclaimed the Social Revolution. The firsttime that symbol went abroad a string of stalwart policemen werewalking in single file along the Brompton Road. In the oppositedirection marched Lewisham. He began to hum. He passed the policemenwith a significant eye and humming the _Marseillaise_....
But that was months ago, and by this time the red tie was a thing ofuse and wont.
He turned out of the Exhibition Road through a gateway of wroughtiron, and entered the hall of the Normal School. The hall was crowdedwith students carrying books, bags, and boxes of instruments, studentsstanding and chattering, students reading the framed and glazednotices of the Debating Society, students buying note-books, pencils,rubber, or drawing pins from the privileged stationer. There was astrong representation of new hands, the paying students, youths andyoung men in black coats and silk hats or tweed suits, the scholarcontingent, youngsters of Lewisham's class, raw, shabby, discordant,grotesquely ill-dressed and awe-stricken; one Lewisham noticed with asailor's peaked cap gold-decorated, and one with mittens and verygenteel grey kid gloves; and Grummett the perennial Official of theBooks was busy among them.
"Der Zozalist!" said a wit.
Lewisham pretended not to hear and blushed vividly. He ofte
n wished hedid not blush quite so much, seeing he was a man of one-and-twenty.He looked studiously away from the Debating Society notice-board,whereon "G.E. Lewisham on Socialism" was announced for the nextFriday, and struggled through the hall to where the Book awaited hissignature. Presently he was hailed by name, and then again. He couldnot get to the Book for a minute or so, because of the hand-shakingand clumsy friendly jests of his fellow-"men."
He was pointed out to a raw hand, by the raw hand's experiencedfellow-townsman, as "that beast Lewisham--awful swat. He was secondlast year on the year's work. Frightful mugger. But all these swatshave a touch of the beastly prig. Exams--Debating Society--moreExams. Don't seem to have ever heard of being alive. Never goes near aMusic Hall from one year's end to the other."
Lewisham heard a shrill whistle, made a run for the lift and caught itjust on the point of departure. The lift was unlit and full of blackshadows; only the sapper who conducted it was distinct. As Lewishampeered doubtfully at the dim faces near him, a girl's voice addressedhim by name.
"Is that you, Miss Heydinger?" he answered. "I didn't see, I hope youhave had a pleasant vacation."