A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 13
IV
I
It was four days after this, a Wednesday as I see, that I awoke at about half-past eight in the morning and found that there was a letter with my cup of tea. After a while I summoned up sufficient energy to pull the letter somehow from the table on to the bed, and then must have fallen off into a dose again; for I remember that the writing of the envelope that must have been just under my half-closed eyes, was wound with some other writing in and out of a fantastic sort of a dream-space from which I suddenly started, with the recognition that the letter was Rayne's.
With all my soul in my eyes, I stared at it. A large white glaring envelope with
'B. Leicester, Esq.,
'Glastonbury School, Glastonbury.'
in Rayne's hand, in the middle, the last three words lined through, and below in a thin scrawly hand:
'5, Dunraven Place,
'Piccadilly, London'
These details realised, I took the envelope; ripped it up at the back; produced the thick white folded double sheet inside, and opened it. This is something like what I read:
'My dear Bertram,—We are in London for a short time—three or four weeks, before going north to spend the summer at Kirkory, my husband's family seat, or I should say home. I have wondered a little at hearing nothing from you. You are, at the least, two letters in my debt. I do not even know where you are, and address this at random. I need not say, dear Bertram, how pleased I should be to see you again; but I am afraid you have quite forgotten me. Why, it is—how long is it, since you last wrote to me? I last heard from you at Montenotte in the autumn of—! How long ago is that? You ought to be ashamed to think!
But here is time and space and patience all exhausted. I must end, as usual, in a hurry. Write to me and tell me what you are doing. You know that, if for no other reason than because you were loved by what I loved best in the world, you are and always must be dear to me: and so let me write myself down as being what, I trust, I always shall be,—Your friend, Rayne Gwatkin.
I lay still for a time and thought about what I had read, and then re-read it, and thought of the past that concerned all this strange present, and of my whole life. And so at last I got up and went to my small polished-oak box (a small box in which I kept certain things that were, or had once seemed, precious to me), and, having opened it, found a letter, which began:
'My dear Bertram,—'It is a wet and tempestuous afternoon, and therefore I consider it a fitting occasion to answer your long and with difficulty decipherable epistle.'
Through this letter I glanced, till I came to words that stopped my glancing and steadied it:
'… Rather a tempest going on outside, and so I am going to try to dodge my dear old daddy and Sir James, and get out my boat and enjoy it.—By-the-by, I had forgotten to tell you that an old friend of ours, Sir James Gwatkin, has been staying with us this last week. He is a most amusing mondain en villégiature, with a marvellous French and Italian accent, and altogether a very amusing companion to the father, and myself at times. He knows what seems to me a great deal about…'
And I folded up the letter and put it into the box, and relocked the box, went back to bed; and lay thinking for another half-hour, when I got up and dressed.
At breakfast I reconsidered the matter:
The news amounted to this: Rayne had married the amusing mondain en villégiature, and was here, in London, for a short time—three weeks or so, before going north to spend the summer at Kirkory, her husband's family seat or home. Where was Mr. Cholmeley?
I started:
'Dead!'
'That could not be.… And yet' I took out her letter and considered it. '"You know that—if for no other reason than because you were loved by what I loved best" (Nay, that may be nothing: or only mean that she loves her husband best. And there is no black edge on this white sheet.) "by what I loved best in the world,—you are and always must be dear to me: and so let me write myself down as being, etc., etc."'
All at once I exclaimed:
'She oughtn't to have married that man!'
'… Why?' asked the faint voice of the air and the room.
I answered to myself: 'I wish she hadn't.'
'… Why? ' said the same faint voice.
I considered a few moments, and then rose, a little viciously. Some of the viciousness was expended in the sharp putting of my chair directly in front of my plate; the rest in my casting myself into the arm-chair in the window, my hands at my mouth, scraping my lower lip with my upper teeth.
Then:
'What is the matter with me?' I said to myself; and, after a pause: 'I don't know! Is there anything, then, in the whole world would make me happy? I don't know. I don't think so. I'm just weary of it all! What of that new soul's life of mine, produced before Starkie, and believed in then? What have I done? What shall I do? What do I believe in? What do I doubt about?—Doubt about? Everything; even doubt!'—I let my thoughts rest for a moment.
Then once more:
'If I only knew something! If I only loved something! Oh, is there not a woman in the whole wide world who would take me as I am, and help me to be what I want to be? A woman—to save me? Oh, God, God, God, God, I would I had never been born!—Nay, is it not strange that, in an hour of weakness like this, the only thing I cry out to for help is what I have always thought I despised as being itself incarnate weakness—woman! I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm not myself. Virtue is gone out of me. This must be a passing humour. I shall be strong again, as I used to be. Or was it that I did not know my weakness? … I don't know! ' A complete sense of loneliness and purposelessness seemed suddenly to grow like a great grey-cut chasm in me. I could struggle no more to find out what was the matter with me. I turned and let the current take me where it would.
From that depth of weariness I raised myself a little to take up a book off the table beside me and read it. It was no good staying stretched on the bottom of that dark submarinity in that way. Better kill myself at once; and that most certainly I would not do.… Why not? I was afraid of death? I didn't know. I had not thought about it. I would not think about it. A piano-organ was playing outside.
I looked out into the sunshiny day; for some little of the sunshine had entered me even then. I would go out for a walk. Nay, I would go and see where Rayne lived. Why not?
Away I went, and out for my walk—out and away to beautiful summer Hampstead, fresh and green from the late showers, in the soft lights of the early day. I did not think much of Rayne. I do not remember what I thought of: probably of hundreds of unconnected things, passing in a fairy-procession in the yellow-gold light before my eyes. I wandered about happily till about one o'clock, when hunger made itself perceptible, and I went off in the pursuit of bread and fruit and milk. Followed a Pythagorean feast on the grass, with delightful half-dreams as in the old time; till it occurred to me to return home and read. Accordingly, after a little trifling with resolution in the shape of dawdling about in hollows, looking at a small stream's meandering water, or the serried grasses and the earth, I fairly set off.
After a little, it occurred to me again to go and take a look at Rayne's house. So I asked the next policeman I saw where Balmoral Street was, and learnt that that it was on this side of the Park, and, more particularly, close by Lancaster Gate, for which I had better ask. That was all I wanted at present. I set off again, and was in Maida Vale before I was aware of it. I had no idea of going to see Rayne to-day: I only wished to look at the house.
I went on seriously enough, and began to think about Rayne—Where she was now and what she was doing?—somehow as if I had wondered thus about some other woman some time and somewhere; till a faint far-away tremulousness entered into me and was perceived.
I came sharply round an area-railed corner, and beheld … a low carriage, two horses, two footmen, the pillars of an exit into the street, a lady just out of the open door—passing to the top step—descending—Rayne! I stood still.
Some one followed. Rayne was on the pavement, making for the low carriage door, now held open. She stopped a moment, half turned. And the some one following was in her view and mine. It was the mondain en villégiature: I knew him at once. But Rayne's face was all to me; and yet I could not see it properly. Then our eyes met.
Somehow or other I was moving to her with my hat in my hand, and she had said: 'Bertram!' and I had stood still again.
Her face seemed to me, as it were worn, but filled with the light of steadfastness, and her eyes were quiet and deep. I had seen, not her face, but her face's form, and, as it were the light of it, before, and this memory was on me now almost as in the dim low distance. I cannot say what either she said, or he or I for a little; not that I was bewildered by their presence and its thoughts within me, but that this memory of the likeness to the light of her face kept me from them.
At last I had shaken hands with the mondain, and she was sitting in the carriage and we two, standing by the low opened carriage door, were talking together.
'It was, indeed, a surprise to see you in London,' she was saying, 'I thought you were … In fact I did not know what to think, for you did not answer either of the letters I sent to you'
'Letters?' I said. 'I received no letter from you, excepting this morning, since November—two years ago.'
'I am a witness to the writing of at least two,' said he, looking at me with a little smile round the corners of his mouth.
'Then you did not know—' she said, 'And I had wondered why you had not written to me…'
'That Mr. Cholmeley was dead—' I said softly, perceiving that her dress was of black. '… I feared so this morning.' What sorrow was in me for her was given in the words here.
'And where have you been all this while?' she said, looking up,—'if I may ask?'
I bowed my head.
'I left Glastonbury last February. I was in London for a little, and then in Paris for a little, and then in London again till now.'
'Perhaps,' he said, 'Mr. Leicester would go with you? You must have a great deal to say to one another after so long and so silent a separation?' I saw, or thought I saw, that she did not desire that I should go with her. Half-hesitation of hers was not enough to entice me. I said:
'I am afraid that, even if Lady Gwatkin should be so kind as to think of allowing me to inflict my company upon her, I should be unable to do so.' There was a surprise in this for him, perhaps for her: pleasure for me to find my nerves my own, and under the government of a Jupiter will in a serene heaven that might have seemed Olympus, if it hadn't seemed like a monkey-house on its good behaviour. She with some few gentle low sentences, bowed to or accepted my words' meaning, and then it was time for her to be going, and I drawing back with an apology to Sir James for being in the way.
Then came preliminaries of movement followed by movement, and her (and his) expressions of wish to see me again soon, and she (with him) had passed away, while I stood bareheaded, watching her as she sat, till the corner was rounded, and she was gone, and I alone with the streets and houses and all the dismal day-time.
The next morning I found a note from her, asking me to dine with them on Monday. I smiled, and, when I had had breakfast, wrote an answering note of acceptance. Then Strachan came in, and had a short talk with me. He had his doubts about the financial success of the Book, considering that I wished to have illustrations. I was in an absent humour, and simply echoed his remark—Yes, I wished it to have illustrations, maps, and everything of that sort.
'Of course,' said he, 'we have abundance of material; but I am rather inclined to doubt Brooke's accuracy in these matters, and, in short …'
'Has he taken it?' asked I, 'Parker, I mean.'
'No;' he said, 'he hasn't taken it—yet; but … Well, well—we'll talk about that later on! What are you going to do with yourself this morning? A walk; what do you say? I'm just going to the Museum for half an hour or so, to look at some bones Davies has got hold of. Will you come?'
'I'm very sorry,' I said, 'but I do my work in the mornings. I find that if I go out then, it ends in my doing no work at all.'
We made talk of this sort while he was nearing the door and at last had it a little open, when:
'Did you ever,' I said, ' hear of a man called Gwatkin? Sir James Gwatkin, a knight or a baronet, I don't know which.'
'Hum,' he said, 'Gwatkin? Gwatkin? I know the name somehow.—Oh yes, I know him! I met him down at Oxford at dinner at a don's—two years ago! One of the Culture people. He has written a book about Michelangelo. I remember him quite well now. The next day I stumbled upon him with Sir Horace Gildea'
'Horace Gildea?' said I, *I was at school with him. Do you know him?'
The Professor grimaced:
'Yes, a little. He did me the honour of seducing one of my maids.'
I laughed. The Professor proceeded:
'They're an odd lot, those Culture fellows. I don't believe in them myself. A—' (turning his eyes to mine) 'I hope they're not friends of yours, either of these two? If so, of course I'
'Nay,' said I, 'they're no friends of mine! I only wanted to know if you could tell me anything about Gwatkin—what books he 'd written, and that sort of thing. I happen to be dining at his house on Monday, and one likes to know something about one's host's particular line of thought, if he happens to have one.'
'Ah yes, just so, yes,' said the Professor, turning his eyes to and then away from mine. And on that we parted.
I came back from the closed hall-door into the library, and went to the window and stood looking out on the sunny day. A feeling of disgust at work rose in me. I sighed as I took down 'Antigone,' the Greek play I was then reading, and lexicon and translation, and bundled myself into the easy chair. Folly! and I knew it. None the less I intended proving it once more.
I had last time stopped just before a Chorus. I began on the Chorus now. Such a delightfully corrupt Chorus; and here (in two nice close-printed note columns) was what Hermann thought about the first lines, and then what somebody else thought, and then what the present Editor thought, damn him! Finally I gave it up in disgust: got myself out of the easy chair and the books into it; and stood looking disconsolately out of the window. Then the idea of taking a steamer down the fresh breezy river came to me—to Greenwich, and go into the Park, or, first, to see the Painted Chamber, and then for a walk over the Heath to look at the old school-day places. Why not?
I went. It was a fair sweet morning on the river, somehow as I suppose my Italy to be, with the air so pure, like wine that had no fieriness in it. I got out at Greenwich: I saw the Painted Chamber again, my heart making its flutter felt as I passed along that coloured gallery where I had moved and dreamed in the dim sun-shot air of my boyhood.—Ah, here was Nelson, and here! And here the sacred relics of him! How long, how long ago it was since I stood looking at that pallid body going with its heroic message of 'England expects every man to do his duty' up to … Where? Somewhere where the pallid bodies of heroes, who have fought the fight and done that duty well, are taken by soft hands and laid in the quiet of the Eternal Fields.—And how I used to think that, in some simple way, although it seemed so vague and unreal, that body was my body and that duty well done was my duty, and this small child here, with eyes half-brimmed with tears, so saw the final requiem of its own manhood, the seal of death with which it had sealed life, the fight well fought, the duty well done, and the pallid body taken by soft hands and laid in the quiet of the Eternal Fields.'It is all changed now!'
I turned from it with the lump of tears in my throat and went out into the air, and away. And I thought in this wise: that the dreams of boyhood are for boyhood and are sweet, while the sights of manhood are for manhood and are bitter: and, that it is given to many to desire the well-fought fight and the well-done duty and the tender progress to the quiet of the Eternal Fields, but that few, the dwindling sacred few, achieve to it: and that it is very hard to learn this simple lesson, that I, this me, this only real existence that I know in Space and Time and Life, is one of the many.
As I slowly climbed up the hill, I noted the old tree in the middle of the path, against which I, dizzy and faint from the pernicious tobacco smoke inhaled in the shade of a gnarly oak while the small gentle deer fed round me, leant full of the nausea of this wretchedness, resolute never to incur it again! Then I came in sight of the haunted house, darksome abode of awe and wonder. Then there was the field on the brow of which I had lain with Wallace, playing some game at 'chuck' with clasp-knives, looking at times out over the dark, silver-twining Thames, and dusky, far-stretching London; till one unlucky throw of his spiked my hand (here is the scar on my right thumb still), and how I insisted that there was not the end of chuck for the day!
It is all changed now, the field in which we played that game or, lying along the grass, talked as we ate sugared compounds or the satisfying parkin. Even the school is changed. The brass-plate is gone from the gate. The house is freshly painted and enlarged, but empty. I see the top of the cherry-tree over the wall.
I turned from it and went down the little lane, passing many remembered spots and things, and down the hill and to the small boat pier. And as I stood I began to think of my future. There was something of Capua in my present case: not so much bodily, as spiritual, Capua, and yet I knew quite well that at the best it was not in either case a campaigning ground. It was time I took some steps towards the great object of supporting myself. Time? more than time! Why had I not thought of it before? This money of Brooke's—it was not mine. I had said that I would not take it: I had said that I could not devote myself to the Cause. Oh Jupiter and the other immortals, I should think not!. . . And yet, why such a decided not? Supposing I did devote myself? Well?. . . No, it would not do. I don't care about it. No: I won't do that. No! I couldn't take and keep the money. . . . God knows it's a poor earth enough, this earth; and where is belief in fire and brimstone being my reward for doing this—or any thing? But that's nothing. There is the tribunal of my soul—that ideal of myself, by which I measure the actual of myself, and do not care to find too great a difference between them.
'And yet,' I thought, standing up at the bow of the boat and looking across the river, 'I could wish that I was sleeping the sleep of death, under the earth—at rest!'