I wondered why I had ever despised these things, why they had once seemed pitiful and absurd. I wondered why the placidity of a home seemed necessary to me now, and why I no longer yearned for the turmoil of a ship upon the sea.
Once there had been a path across the mountains, and restlessness, and an urge to fight, and a dream of many women, and now there was a home that was my home, and peace, and relaxation, and no dreams but the reality of one woman. I did not know if it was I who had changed, or the world that had changed about me, but so it was, and I could not call back the dreams that had gone from me.
I stood on the doorstep of No. 33, Lower Bedford Street. I was shown into a room, where there were pictures on the wall and books on the table.
I felt shabby and wretchedly immature with my MS. under my arm, wrapped up very hurriedly in brown paper. This was where my father would stand perhaps, leaning on his stick, glancing about him at the prints, but supreme in his self-confidence, and then walking slowly to the other room where Grey would seize him by his hands, saying: ‘They surely did not make you wait?’
I waited, though, unimportant, rather foolish with my brown-paper parcel, and in ten minutes the door was opened and I followed a man along a passage to another room.
Grey was standing with his back to me, stooping a little, warming his hands at the fire. He turned round as I entered, he smiled, and I saw he had not changed.
‘Well, Richard,’ he said.
I went forward and shook his hand.
‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ I said.
‘No, no, I was glad to get your letter. A little astonished, perhaps, but glad. Sit down, won’t you?’
I did so, and was silent. I was not sure whether I should speak or he.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ he said.
‘I’ve lived in Paris now for over a year,’ I said, ‘but before then I travelled a bit, I saw round Scandinavia, I went on a ship.’
‘Quite an experience, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I haven’t been to Paris for many years,’ he went on - ‘I dare say it’s all very changed now. Americanized and so on.’
‘I like it,’ I said.
I wondered why there was a need for this conversation.Wasn’t he going to ask me about the book?
‘Scandinavia I don’t know at all,’ he said; ‘it must be very wonderful, of course. Yes. The fjords and the midnight sun. Did you go very far north?’
‘Not as far as the Cape,’ I said.
‘Oh! you ought to have seen the Cape. So now you’re back in England again. How long are you going to be here?’
‘Well, it rather depends. . . .’ I began.
‘Have you been home at all?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘They don’t know you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘I was down there a few months ago.Your father was looking a little tired, I thought. Been overworking himself.We’re bringing out his new book this week.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Finest thing he’s ever done, in my opinion. It’s an epic poem, you know, very long, quite different from his shorter pieces. There is a strength and a beauty in it that leaves you breathless. I had no idea he would produce something of this sort, at his age. His grasp of psychology is astounding and his understanding of human nature. He has called it Conflict.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘We’ve included three or four shorter pieces as well. There’s a lovely little thing, a description of a summer evening after rain, which literally gave me the impression of stillness, of silence, and the drip of water from an avenue of trees. I wish I had a copy up here.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘He’s the biggest man in the world of letters today, Richard. He’ll go down to posterity as the poet of the century; we all know that.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He sat for a few minutes, staring before him, his thoughts busy with my father. I said nothing, I looked at the carpet, hugging my brown-paper parcel on my knees. Then he broke himself away, he smiled, he reached for a cigarette, and turned to smaller things.
‘Well, Richard,’ he said, ‘and what’s all this about your writing a book?’
It seemed to me I could see the vision of my father slipping away, remote, impregnable, on some far-distant plane, and here was I, humble and obscure, running hither and thither on the silly earth.
I stammered and hesitated, searching for words.
‘I brought it with me. I wondered perhaps . . .’
He nodded encouragement, he watched me kindly, the kindness of somebody old to somebody young.
‘Is it a novel?’ he said, and he spoke gently, too gently.
‘Yes,’ I said, and the words fell from me now, tumbling over one another. ‘I’ve worked on it, off and on, most of the year. I was terribly keen, I couldn’t leave it at times, and then of course there were breaks, going away and the summer. But I’ve been over and over it, time and again; I don’t think there’s anything superfluous in it now. It’s difficult for me to judge, but I have worked hard and hope it’s good. I think it’s different in a way from the ordinary novel; I’ve tried to see things from a new angle.’
I stopped, breathless, searching his face. He flicked the ash from his cigarette into a tray.
‘And the play?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you say something in your letter about a play, too?’
‘Yes,’ I went on, perhaps he would return to the book later. ‘Yes, there is a play. Of course I realized that it needed an entirely different technique. I wrote the play first. I think the book is the better of the two; it’s a little more human, it deals with people from an outsider’s point of view - seeing into them, as it were - but the play is lighter, more cynical - I - it’s rather difficult to explain.’ ‘I see,’ he said.
I wondered whether he would ask me to read some of it to him then. I cleared my throat in case.
‘Well, Richard,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I will do. In the ordinary course of events, your MS. would be handed to one of the readers, and he would make his report in a week or so. But I have a great regard for your father, Richard, and because you are his son I will ask you to leave your package here with me, and I’ll take it back and glance at it this week-end. How does that suit you?’
‘Thanks terribly,’ I said.
He stood up, he held out his hand.
‘I’m afraid I must send you away now,’ he said; ‘I’ve got a great deal of work on hand at the moment. I’ll write to you after the week-end, and we’ll see what can be done. Good-bye. I’m glad to have seen you again.’
Once more I was walking along the passage, and out of the door, and so into Lower Bedford Street, hoping that the man passing would see me standing carelessly on the steps of the great publishing house and would wonder who I was, and I strolled slowly down the steps, smothering a yawn, acting to myself, but deep in my heart questioning what I should do for a whole week until I heard from Grey again.
Whenever I picked up a paper I seemed to see a notice of my father’s poems. There was a whole column devoted to him in The Times, his picture flared up at me from the Telegraph, and when I passed a book-shop there in the window stood the small slim volume in its pale grey wrapper, and ranged behind it the collected edition of his works.
I wondered if any younger and impetuous writer would seize his chance and launch forth some virulent attack, but there was no suggestion even of this; it was as if my father stood on his little pinnacle above the rest of mankind, secure and supreme. ‘His mastery of the English language is unequalled among the writers of today,’ I read in one paper. ‘The exquisite symmetry of his phrasing, his intimate comprehension of the beauty of sound are rare qualities belonging only to genius. His depth of psychology. . . .’
I threw the paper aside and laughed. Psychology. There was a father who had a son, he had not written a poem about that. ‘Conflict,’ I read, ‘deals with t
he dual nature of a man, and the continuous struggle for supremacy in a living soul. The poet’s insight into the unchanging spirit of humanity. . . .’ ‘Insight’ was a good word. My father was great on insight. I had lived with him for twenty years and I ought to know. ‘His intimate understanding of the deep unspoken desires that lie sleeping in the breast of every one of us. . . .’ So the papers said. I thought of him turning his eyes upon me in the dining-room at home: ‘Yes, Richard must bicycle into Lessington.’ Intimate understanding, and I pedalling down the hard main road. What a lot of insight that turned out to be!
I left the papers in the lounge at my hotel, bought a copy of Tit-Bits and laughed at the jokes. I then saw a picture at a cinema in the Euston Road, where chorus-girls tickled old gentlemen below the waist, and there was a tart beside me who fumbled with my knee. I let her fumble - and it was all great fun - and I hoped my father would continue to write his bloody poems, for why should I worry?
But though I strolled along the street afterwards with my hat on the back of my head I was not happy. I went into a shop and bought the book, and so upstairs to read in the room of the hotel alone. And as I read I saw that all that the papers had said of him was true; it was no use standing out against him, for here was beauty bare, and the meaning of dreams, and anguish and ecstasy, and all that I had ever wanted and all that I had ever known. Here was the tremor of life itself, the wonder and the pain, the voice of a lonely soul lost in the wilderness, and he called out to me from his desert places not as a father and a man, but as a spirit kindred to me, ageless, one of my kind, and I knew him then as I could never know him in the flesh, reaching down to me from some impossible summit, bringing me to his side.
And he had written this alone in his dark library, and I had sailed in a ship, and lost, and loved, and we would not come together and speak of these things, but because of his poem we were near to one another and we understood.
Somehow the week passed, in seeing things, in walking, in thinking of Hesta, in reading. I came to lose my dislike of London, for there was something tender in it and strong. Behind the sullen grey barrier, unfriendly at first and hard, there was a purpose more forceful and deep than the clatter and jingle of Paris. I felt there was a continuity in this place that would never be disturbed; there would not be blood and thunder, laughter and tears, but a solid belief in the normality of men and women; there was tradition here, and age, and beneath the exterior of cold indifference a certain restfulness and peace. I thought I would have to talk to Hesta about London. . . .
During the Sunday I pictured Grey at his home with my MS. in his hands, I saw him turn the leaves, I saw his lips move as they registered the phrases. First he would scan the book, and then the play. Would he understand why I had written this and that, would he see what I had seen?
Perhaps he would not be in the mood most necessary. He would have friends to lunch, and bridge afterwards, then yawning, fling himself into a chair saying: ‘I suppose I must glance through this fellow’s stuff.’
I wanted him to be grave, to be silent, to read slowly, deeply, to sit late over a sinking fire careless of time and then to call to his wife: ‘I think I have made a discovery.’ I would not build too many fancies in my mind.
On Wednesday there came a letter from him - his own handwriting. My heart beat very fast and my hands trembled. He said: My dear Richard, Would you be able to lunch with me tomorrow, Thursday, at 1 o’clock at the Savoy? Ring through to my secretary if this is all right.
Yours sincerely, Ernest Grey.
I wondered whether I should wire to Hesta. It was better to wait, better not to make a fool of myself. I arrived at the Savoy on Thursday at five minutes to one. He came in alone; he had not brought anyone to meet me.
‘Glad you were able to come,’ he said. I did not tell him that there was no other possible engagement I could have had, that all the week I had lived only for this moment.
We sat down at a table by the window.
‘What are you going to eat?’ he said. I studied the menu, I did not care. He took some little time in the ordering of his food, and I chose what he had chosen. I smiled at him as a show of confidence, but the palms of my hands were wet.
‘I can’t stand this cold, can you?’ he said, glancing out of the window. ‘Now I should like to take a month off and live in the sun for a while down South. That’s the life. No worries, no business. Do you know the Riviera at all?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, but I should like to go.’ I kept forcing little pieces of hard toast into my mouth.
‘Oh! well, you’re young, there’s time for all things,’ he said, ‘and, anyway, you’re quite a traveller as it is. Tell me now, is Stockholm a very remarkable place?’
I saw there was no help for it; I saw I must make an attempt at conversation. Too anxious to please, fearful of seeming dull, I plunged into an account of the places I had seen. I remembered details I hoped would interest him, the colour of buildings I had not really noticed, a description of scenery that in reality had passed me by.
‘Most interesting,’ he said, ‘most interesting.’ And all the while the time was passing by, and he chewed his food thoughtfully, bringing in anecdotes of his own, stories of past things, so that I must laugh and seem amused. And then a break in the conversation, and his glance at the waiter. ‘Will you bring two coffees?’
I sat quite still, watching a little crumb on the cloth.
He lit a cigar, slowly, so slowly.
‘Well, Richard,’ he began,‘I looked over your things on Sunday, as I said I would. Tell me now, how long did you say you had been writing?’
‘About a year, off and on,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, I see.’
The waiter brought the coffee. I stirred it with my spoon, round and round, never taking my eyes off the cup.
‘I will explain to you, if I can, Richard, just exactly what I felt when I had read your book. It seemed to me, from the very first page, that you were dominated by the thought of your father, that his image was so constantly before you he was cramping your own personality, you could not escape from the idea of his greatness. Do you follow my meaning?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You were writing as though you wished to be his echo, as though you were stalking in his shadow, and the result was not the result that he obtains, but a false contorted version of his style, a grotesque resemblance, like a strange caricature. It was false, Richard, it was insincere.’
I went on stirring my coffee.
‘In the middle,’ he said,‘you appeared suddenly to change your mood.You were yourself, no longer a feverish imitation, but the self was not a writer, Richard, not someone who waits secure and alone guarding his talent for himself, but a young man, tossed here, tossed there, influenced by one mood, influenced by another, in love perhaps, uncertain, doubtful, a young man who forces himself to write, but was born without the gift.
‘I am telling you this, Richard, because I believe in telling the truth; I believe that life must be faced, by all of us, and you are your father’s son, you cannot run away.’
My heart was not beating any longer; I was steady, calm.
‘You mean it’s no good?’ I said. ‘You mean it’s useless going on.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to seem indifferent to you, hard.Whether or not in later years, after some little suffering, some little experience, you are able to write I cannot at the moment say. I think in time you will discover that the urge that came upon you to write during the past year was no more than an expression of extreme youthfulness, a phase that was necessary to you before maturity. It was only because of your father that you chose to write. If you had been born the son of somebody else, it would have been painting perhaps, music, acting, any of these things. And whatever you had chosen you would not have succeeded, because it could never have come first with you before your own personal inclinations.Your father sits alone, Richard, a genius, secure and safe in h
imself, caring for nothing and no one, while you live and love, and hurt yourself, and are miserable, and are happy, and you aren’t a genius, Richard; you are only an ordinary man; and though these words of mine are heartless to you now, one day you will be glad I’ve told you, one day you’ll understand.’
I heard the band behind the palm trees play a loud gay tune, and a woman passed in front of our table, laughing over her shoulder.
‘Yes,’ I heard myself say. ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘I’ll send your MS. back to your hotel. You will like to keep it, of course. I had a glance at the play too, Richard, but I am afraid we can do nothing with it. If I thought there was the slightest chance of the book making good I would suggest one of the smaller publishers, but I think even they would realize it falls short of what is required for even a moderate sale. Of course, it might be accepted because of your name.’
‘I should not care for that,’ I said.
‘No - I did not think you would. Now, Richard, tell me, have you any plans for the future?’
How should I have any plans?
‘I don’t know,’ I said; ‘I suppose I shall go back to Paris.’
He asked for my address in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, and I gave it him.
‘If you are ever in any trouble or perplexity I want you to let me know. Somehow I think you have had what you needed out of Paris. I think that London is the place for you,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
He called for his bill. He rose from his chair.
‘Where are you going now?’ he said.
To save him embarrassment I murmured something about an appointment.
‘I can drop you anywhere,’ he said. ‘I have a car outside.’
I said ‘No’, I thanked him very much.
‘Don’t let yourself be down-hearted at what I have told you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to feel that you have failed. I want you to look upon what has been as a phase, as a casting aside of your boyhood. You were made for other things, Richard, for other things.’ He smiled at me, and the commissioner opened the door of his car.