JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 BROKEN ARCS. A Novel. 1911 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. A Study. 1911 
 STUDIES AND APPRECIATIONS. 1912 
 
 A VISION OF LIFE, and other poems. 
 1909 
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME, and other 
 poems. 1911 
 
 QUEEN TARA. A Tragedy. 1913 
 
JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 A CHRONICLE OF A LIFE 
 
 In Five Parts by 
 DARRELL FIGGIS 
 
 Author of " Broken Arcs," etc. 
 
 LONDON TORONTO 
 J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. 
 
 1914 
 
All Eights Reserved 
 
 THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 EDWARD JOSEPH DEAN, 
 
 WHO WAS ALWAYS STRONG IN 
 COURAGE AND STRONG IN LOVE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 LOVE AND LIFE - - yg 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 A TRAGIC COMEDY . . . jg2 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 IRELAND .... 286 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 AN EXPOSITION OF TRAGEDY - . . 347 
 
Jacob Elthorne 
 
 ACT I 
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 I 
 
 THE LETTER 
 
 I was named Jacob, it seems, after my uncle. It is quite a 
 good name, there is no fault about the name that I know, yet 
 it was the bane of my life as a boy, with not a little of awkward- 
 ness attaching to it thereafter. I have never, it is true, been 
 able to summon my soul to any overpowering admiration for 
 the most notable wearer of that name. Nor can I think that 
 his personality was so overpoweringly undesirable that all 
 others whom an unkindly parentage have given to bear the 
 name should thereby be compelled to find it a shirt of Nessus 
 about their shoulders. 
 
 The selection of this fortuitous opprobrium is the more 
 difficult to understand as neither of my parents seem to have 
 been at all that kind of person. To a superficial observer 
 my mother might have been the responsible agent. She may 
 possibly have been so. But from my memory of her, that 
 dear soul was quite a different sort of person. She had, it is 
 true, a religious zeal of an absorbing order ; or rather, not a 
 religious zeal so much as an ecclesiastical activity, which is 
 not quite the same thing : but this was the only outlet for an 
 exuberant personality, where other and less harmless activities 
 might have been turned to. Nevertheless, her Sabbath Day 
 observance, her stoic attendance at innumerable services, her 
 steadfast committal of the benefit of these to notes that were 
 
2 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 never looked at after, her many and complete abstinences, were 
 only superficial things, worn from without like a cloak. In 
 herself she was bright, coquettish and affectionate, and the 
 very last person in the world to choose for any son of hers so 
 unromantic a name as Jacob. 
 
 As for my father, I have vivid, enticing memories of a tall, 
 handsome man, full of vivacity and charm of manner, a little 
 melancholy withal, but bursting out continually, like a gay 
 brook, into an effervescence and irresponsibility that, I well 
 remember, my brother and I used to look forward to like 
 sea bathing. He certainly never chose the name Jacob for 
 me ; unless, that is to say, it was done in a splitting, irresistible 
 freak of humour, for he was an inveterate practical joker. 
 It is the more mysterious since neither of my parents could have 
 been considered to be warm admirers of my Uncle Jacob. My 
 father used to scoff his great, inimitable scoffs at him, and 
 burlesque his mannerisms and family life in such a way as to 
 keep my brother and myself in one continual giggle of merri- 
 ment and admiration. At this my mother would break out 
 a half -protesting " Michael ! " and at once become convulsed 
 with laughter. At the time, as boys, we had a dim suspicion 
 that my mother secretly enjoyed my father's humour the more 
 as she had had many earnest discussions on how best to cir- 
 cumvent the said Uncle Jacob's lean soul. 
 
 I have never been able to take my memories back beyond 
 Saggart, a little place outside Dublin, between which two 
 places my father used to journey twice daily by the aid of a 
 toilsome and noxious steam-tram. Prior to Saggart I under- 
 stand all four of us, my mother, father, and brother, used to 
 live in London Suburbia. In London he had had charge of 
 one of the departments in a certain well-known commercial 
 house in the City, finally, with a great shout of joy, he being a 
 Dublin man, to be drafted to the charge of the Dublin branch 
 of the same house. 
 
 It was thus we came to Saggart, the four of us. Thinking 
 backward I cannot pick up any event earlier than my ninth 
 year ; and there is more than whimsical irony in the one 
 event that should stand out as it does, an oasis of memory in 
 a desert of forgetfulness. 
 
 My father was one of those men who, while regarding all his 
 letters as inviolate, would raid my mother's mail in quite an 
 
THE LETTER 3 
 
 indiscriminate fashion. Nor, if the letters were from England, 
 had she any remedy. For there was never a mail from 
 England delivered at the house when my father was not at 
 home. Her only method of ensuring the privacy of her 
 letters was by being astir first ; and I imagine that in this 
 way many a letter was unseen by my father. In fact, I 
 rather more than imagine, for my mother was of a confiding 
 nature, she was one who found it impossible to contain 
 anything, and since by the nature of things she could not tell 
 out her delight to my father, she would make cryptic confi- 
 dences to my brother and myself, or to stout Maurya our 
 domestic. But there was one matter where my father was 
 never permitted to transgress, nor, which is a far more 
 wonderful thing, did he ever to my knowledge attempt to 
 transgress. That was when any letter came from my Aunt 
 Mary. I believe that some time in the past there had been a 
 pitched battle on the question. I know nothing of it, not 
 even by rumour, but it is possible to read the past in the 
 present, and I am quite convinced that no man would have 
 stood as my father did on the hearthrug, inquisitively and 
 persistently eyeing a solitary letter from my Aunt Mary lying 
 on my mother's plate at the breakfast table, eyeing it with 
 evident longing to know its contents, and yet doing no more 
 than eyeing it, had it not been in his memory the sign and 
 symbol of some episode in his past in which he had been 
 worsted. As I say, I do not know what the episode was, 
 but it must have lain between him and my Aunt Mary. 
 She was a good deal younger than my mother, and a beautiful 
 woman, while my father never fell out with beauty. Beauty 
 and he, I am convinced, never disagreed, unless beauty was 
 unkind, when it lost its title to its name, in his eyes. 
 
 It is out of this that my first memory arises. I was waiting 
 for breakfast. Since then breakfast has had an odd habit of 
 waiting for me, but in my boyhood apparently it was other- 
 wise. My brother Frank and I were kicking our heels about 
 the dining-room, or rather, I was kicking my heels and Frank 
 was glowering out at the gay sunny day, when my father 
 burst into the room rubbing his hands briskly together, as 
 his manner was. The first thing his glance went over to, and 
 alit on, was a solitary letter, lying beside my mother's plate, 
 that Maurya had only a few minutes previously brought in. 
 
4 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 At once he went over to it and gazed down at it ; but inasmuch 
 as he never even handled it, we knew whence it had come. 
 
 " Emily ! " His voice rang out through the open door. 
 
 A musical response floated up from the kitchen, where my 
 mother was giving assistance with the preparation of the 
 breakfast. 
 
 " Here is a letter from Mary." 
 
 Another musical reply entered the room, but with no 
 representative to follow it. Nothing was ever able to with- 
 draw my mother from the sacred charge of one of her experi- 
 mental dishes or one of our favourite dishes, for that was 
 the same thing to her. 
 
 At this my father turned to the two letters that awaited 
 him. One went straight into the fire. I assume it was a bill. 
 The other was glanced at hastily and thrust into his breast 
 pocket. Then the morning paper was requisitioned as in the 
 ordinary course of events. But it did not seem to demand 
 the customary absorption, for he would let it fall every few 
 minutes, in order that his head might appear over the top of 
 it for his glance to make a lightning travel over to the grey 
 envelope lying on the white table-cloth. Then he frowned, 
 and his eye sought the open doorway as though it wished to 
 travel the passage down into the kitchen to discover the cause 
 of this strange delay on my mother's part. His fine face 
 could look particularly malign when he was vexed. Several 
 times this happened, and each time he returned to his paper 
 with more of determination and less of good temper. Each 
 time his eye sought out the offending envelope his glance grew 
 fiercer, his eyes shone more wildly, and each time they returned 
 to the news columns he frowned more heavily in his attempt 
 to confine his attention to them. At length he broke out. 
 
 " Emily ! " There was indignation and expostulation in 
 his tone. 
 
 The soft answer that floated back did not suffice to turn 
 away his wrath, I remember. 
 
 " Do you know that I am waiting for my breakfast ? " His 
 tone implied that she did not. It was even obvious to my 
 young mind that his concern was not primarily with his 
 breakfast at all, though this might well have been an additional 
 grievance. I myself was overpowering! y hungry. 
 
 When at last my mother appeared,' followed by a dish-laden 
 
THE LETTER 5 
 
 Maurya, my father was near the limit of exasperation. But he 
 confined his attention to his newspaper, seeming actually not 
 to notice my mother as she took up the letter and opened it. 
 Then as she read on, saying nothing, a dawning radiance 
 thawed his anger, and he cried out almost gaily : 
 
 " Well, what has Mary got to say for herself ? " 
 
 My mother's reply at first was a brow she puckered at her 
 letter. Then she spoke in the soft, reluctant voice she always 
 adopted when she spoke of her sister with my father. 
 
 " She wishes to know if it is convenient for us to have her 
 here for for a fortnight or so/' All the time she spoke her 
 eyes kept to the letter. 
 
 " I should say certainly only too glad to have her/' The 
 latter part of his reply was said as though it were meant, with a 
 deliberate emphasis. Young though I was I know it always 
 interested me, puzzled me indeed, to hear them speak together 
 of my aunt. It was the only subject that I knew my father 
 to be tentative upon. It was the only matter that occasioned 
 him to relinquish the magnificent manner his presence gave 
 him. I stood, I remember, by the half -opened French 
 window that led to the tennis-lawn, puzzling at the address 
 of him at that moment. Cleanly, athletically built, some six 
 feet and more of stature, well formed and regular features, a 
 fiercely twisted moustache, and with his hair trimmed close in 
 military fashion, finely showing a well-shaped head, he made 
 an excellent figure of a man. But now his ineffable distinction 
 of manner, that was helped by, though independent of, his 
 physical beauty, seemed damped by a halting diffidence. 
 He was like a hawk checked in career by a suspicion of danger. 
 
 My mother was shorter than he by some six inches. Her 
 face was full oval, and her habitual expression was one of 
 extreme vivacity eager for affection. But I cannot speak 
 in detail of my mother. She is to me too tender a memory 
 for analysis. I know only that that morning she made a 
 winsome picture. Clad in brown, with her brown eyes, brown 
 hair, and a touch of brown in her complexion, she made a 
 dream of brown when that colour is at its softest. The 
 excellent soul doubtless thought it was puritanical ! Her 
 ayes lifted from her letter as, after a brief while, she replied : 
 
 " She and Jacob, I mean." 
 
 " Oh! " The introduction of my uncle's name dashed a 
 
6 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 shade of annoyance over his face, and checked him. At the 
 same time I gathered, as I looked at him, that the strange 
 tentativity that had marked him hitherto had also been 
 swept away by the same agency. And so it happened in the 
 event, for after a moment or two of obvious vexation, he 
 rapped out : " Drat that man, Emily ! Whatever made 
 your sister take up with him passes my comprehension. He 
 irritates me beyond measure." Swiftly then, and with no 
 halt in his voice, he swept to an imitation of him. He minced 
 over to my mother with an odd gait and with bent shoulders, 
 saying : " Mary, my dear, I think I shall be able to snatch a 
 few days' holiday next week ; I really cannot be spared, but 
 it must be managed somehow, if only to fit me up for the 
 autumn's work. So it occurred to me you know, as a 
 passing thought that it would be very nice to see dear 
 Michael and Emily again. It is long since we have seen 
 them, and we must keep in touch with our own. Eh, dear ? 
 Eh, dear ? " With that he clawed my mother over the 
 shoulder with a gesture that purported to be affection but 
 was truly rather vulpine. 
 
 It was all admirable, and I fell into the large arm-chair in 
 a veritable shriek of giggles. I had no memory of my uncle, 
 and therefore could not have said how accurate the caricature 
 was ; but that it was inimitably funny was to say that it was 
 done by my father. 
 
 My mother's response was the inevitable, half-protesting 
 " Michael ! " that broke its way out with difficulty from 
 rippling laughter. 
 
 " Michael, you are too unkind to him," my mother pro- 
 ceeded to say, when her mirth had subsided and my father 
 had resumed his magnificent stand before the fireplace. 
 
 " Fuh ! unkind ! " snorted my father. " It's impossible 
 to be unkind to a Croesus. Besides, men like that ought to 
 be put in a box and under the good earth. They spoil the 
 sunlight." 
 
 " But what shall I say ? " my mother asked, extending the 
 letter as though in expostulation. 
 
 11 Oh, we'll have the sugar and hang the physic. Besides, 
 we may get a little fun out of the physic : who knows ? 
 Anyway, ask 'em ! Now boys, brekker ! Step into your 
 stirabout like men. Come on ! Ask 'em, anyhow, and 
 
MY UNCLE JACOB 7 
 
 chance the ducks ! Who's going to be first through the 
 stirabout ? " 
 
 II 
 
 MY UNCLE JACOB 
 
 The house in which we lived at that time was ideal in all 
 ways. It was no more than a big cottage, though it was 
 obviously schemed for more pretentious dwellers. It lay 
 back from the road, shielded in front by an enormous box 
 hedge, on the right by a strong copse of firs, and on the left 
 open to green fields. The situation and accompanying scheme 
 were as deftly chosen and employed as a battle site by a 
 crafty general. For the roadway came down from the right, 
 having swept away from the farther main road on which the 
 steam-trams coursed and snorted, and curled quickly away in 
 front of the house. In fact, the house lay at the branch of 
 the curve, continuing somewhat beyond. Thus from the 
 windows it was impossible to see any roadway at all. The 
 firs and box hedge shut it away to the right and in front. 
 There it curled away, so that it was possible to see a far 
 stretch of country away in the direction of Bray Head while 
 at the same time enjoying a privacy that was almost a 
 seclusion. 
 
 In this seclusion my father gloried. The copse of firs lay 
 outside our garden fence, and continued past the back of the 
 house, where, with the house itself, it framed an angle into 
 which with difficulty, and at the cost of flower-beds, a tennis- 
 lawn had been fitted, hidden thus from a perplexing, westering 
 sun at such times as my father fought his evening fights. 
 Such times, I may say, were frequent. Tennis was his summer 
 absorption, and, I think, his winter melancholy. Nearly 
 every day he returned from Dublin early and played till dusk 
 would permit no more. Neighbours, cousins, friends and 
 acquaintances were drawn upon to feed his lust : with whom 
 
8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 he regularly lost liis temper, and regularly toasted in whisky 
 in the end of all. 
 
 His two cousins were both of them men who lived near 
 Dublin. One of them we never saw, save, that is to say, on 
 very rare occasions. The other lived at Bray. Being a subor- 
 dinate to my father in the business, it was he who was chiefly 
 called upon to step into the breach when there were no others 
 to provide the necessary game of tennis. He was no unwilling 
 victim, to be sure. He and my father were continually 
 quarrelling, quarrels that swept upon them with the sudden- 
 ness of land squalls, and with similar intent to work irrevocable 
 disaster too, it would seem, passing off, however, as swiftly 
 as they came, leaving a half-apologetic perturbation in their 
 train. They were very similar in personal appearance, my 
 father deriving from his mother's side and my cousin from his 
 father's. Indeed, they were generally taken for brothers, 
 my cousin Basil being like a small and daintier edition of my 
 father. Despite their quarrels, however, or perhaps because 
 of them, they were frequent companions, being boon col- 
 leagues in mischief. He was unmarried, and lived at Bray, 
 so that if he and my father kept talking together too late, and 
 he felt disinclined for the ride home, he would put up in the 
 spare room. When this happened my brother and I were 
 mad with delight. My mother when calling us the following 
 morning would inform us that Cousin Bas had stayed the 
 night, and that we were free to proceed to wake him. Forth- 
 with an avalanche of nakedness and nightclothes would 
 precipitate itself along the passage to the little room at the 
 end, there to fling open the door and plunge on to my cousin's 
 bed, pummelling him right merrily to test the muscles that he 
 boasted were like steel. 
 
 " Ah, would ye be leaving me alone now ! " (I can hear his 
 voice to this day, crying out as he lifted his head from beneath 
 the clothes.) " Would ye now, with a man not yet had his 
 beauty sleep at all ! " And then, as we persisted in pum- 
 melling him, and laughing at his sleepy eyes, he would sweep 
 us up in his arms and thrust us half-smothered to the bottom 
 of the bed, where he would hold us down with his feet till we 
 cried for mercy. 
 
 rc Do ye promise not to be doing it again ? " he would say 
 down to us, putting his head beneath the clothes. 
 
MY UNCLE JACOB 9 
 
 " Yes, yes/' we would respond. " Not till the next time," 
 when we had emerged to daylight, would we say in giggles, to 
 be plunged down again with a : 
 
 '' Then back again to the Black Hole of Calcutta till ye 
 learn to respect your elders." 
 
 Then we would set to biting his toes : he would let out a yell 
 and leap from the bed, crying : " Its murtherers you've set 
 on me, Emily ! " whereupon my mother's voice would be 
 heard outside the door, saying : 
 
 " Now, boys, come out and get on with your dressing. 
 And you, Basil, mind you're not late again for breakfast, 
 or you'll miss your bacon." 
 
 At this my father's morning yawn would echo from his 
 room beyond, and his great form in pyjamas would sail 
 down the passage, and, taking one of us bodily under each 
 arm, bear us down to the bathroom to go through our dumb- 
 bell exercises under his direction, while he derided our puny 
 arms. 
 
 All this, we knew, would be over so long as the anticipated 
 Uncle Jacob remained in the house. Inasmuch as these 
 gaieties were of far less frequent occurrence during the months 
 of winter, it was therefore with more than a little foreboding 
 that we looked forward to his visit. Having no memories 
 of our life in London, his coming was, to Frank and myself, 
 like the coming of a stranger of whom we had heard more ill 
 than good, and whom therefore we had every reason to dislike. 
 Even my aunt, who from all accounts had had a career of 
 charm and conquest, was wrapt up in a mysterious unpleasant- 
 ness, owing to the tacit avoidance of overmuch mention of 
 her that seemed to prevail between my mother and my 
 father. 
 
 Thus when the destined day arrived my brother and I awoke 
 with rather chill forebodings. This may have been thrown 
 over us as a kind of mantle from my father, for at the break- 
 fast-table he seemed already as though he had assumed a 
 defensive hostility, which he was first practising on us, the 
 innocent, in order that he might become familiarised with it 
 for the real issue ahead. 
 
 " What time do you think they will be here ? " he asked my 
 mother. His head had been bent over his plate, and he 
 lifted his eyes as he spoke, keeping his head in the same 
 
io JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 position, looking at her as though she had done him some 
 dire injury. 
 
 Flickering amusement played about my mother's diffidence 
 as she made her reply. 
 
 " Well/' she said, " they said they would have breakfast 
 in town on their way up/' She went through some calcula- 
 tions with her finger-tips on the table-cloth for awhile, with 
 her brow ruffled in perplexity. " I should say that they 
 would be here about ten or eleven. But what time will you 
 be back ? " 
 
 " Oh, I shall bring Bas up for a game/' 
 
 " Not to-day ? " 
 
 " But why not to-day ? " In the manner of his putting this 
 c uestion the defensive hostility was very manifest. 
 
 " It will seem so discourteous." 
 
 " Oh well, I am not going to be put off my game for old " 
 
 He struck a slouching attitude over the table that was clearly 
 an imitation of someone, and my mother quickly suppressed 
 a quivering laugh. 
 
 " Michael, it would be better not to have asked them if 
 
 you . Besides " I did not miss her eyes as they took 
 
 my brother and myself in a vivid glance, nor did I miss the 
 implication that they carried to my father. 
 
 " I shall play the game, never fear ! I am not a child, 
 Emily, that I stand in need of reminder/ 1 
 
 Irascibility on the one hand and expostulation on the other 
 parted the rope of conversation between them, and no more 
 was said on the subject. 
 
 The result of all this was that when finally the wheels of a 
 car were heard crunching down the road, to stop opposite 
 our gate, my brother and I fled upstairs in fear and dismay. 
 From there, peeping through the open windows, we saw 
 mother run down the path and excitedly hail my aunt. 
 
 Enquiries after her health and happiness, comments on her 
 appearance, apparent health and maturing charms, joy at 
 seeing her again, sorrow that she had not seen fit to bring her 
 babe, with general exultations and solicitations, all flowed 
 out in a torrent of emotional speech ; and when at last she 
 found time to turn to Uncle Jacob, whether because of 
 emotional exhaustion, or whether, as I think, because of 
 dignified defence, she was quite formal though sufficiently 
 
MY UNCLE JACOB n 
 
 cordial. My mother, like most warm-hearted people, had a 
 reputation for gush, but her gush only followed her affection ; 
 it was no fountain to be turned on at will for all and sundry. 
 In fact, when she took a dislike she took it decidedly, and not 
 all the arts of heaven or earth could conjure it away. Which 
 is as much as to say that her gush might have been exaggera- 
 tion, but it was certainly not insincerity. It was an emotional, 
 not a social, commodity. It was a coin whose currency was 
 rather in heaven than in hell or the earth between. 
 
 When at last we were hailed, and the hails became too many 
 and too imperious to be safely neglected, we shuffled downstairs 
 like a couple of culprits. In the hall we were greeted by Aunt 
 Mary with an effusiveness that was obviously a younger sister 
 to my mother's gush. I can only hope that the praise of us 
 was merited. She went through the wearisome formula of 
 declaring me to be my mother's son with a strong dash of my 
 father, and my brother to be clearly his father's son with a 
 lesser dash of his mother. Having exulted over us afresh 
 on the strength of this discovery, she then passed us over for 
 her husband's cordialities. He was far more aloof ; probably 
 because we were to him a strange family. He kissed my 
 brother, to his marked disapproval, but released me with the 
 formality of a handshake. 
 
 It was some time before I could detach myself sufficiently 
 to take stock of them. When I did so, with all the instinctive 
 curiosity of a child, I found my aunt to be decidedly a beautiful 
 woman. Her hazel eyes had a flash and fire in them that lent 
 vivacity to her face. Her cheekbones inclined to be high, 
 but the actual effect of this was to add a certain dignity to her 
 features, and so raised to the rank of beauty a face that might 
 otherwise have only been pretty. They bespoke a hardness 
 of disposition, however. She was evidently one who could 
 be on occasion bitter of tongue and vehement of manner, 
 but she seemed to be making a continuous effort to control 
 this in the direction of a hard dignity. 
 
 As for my uncle, the first thing that struck me with regard 
 to him, and which I retain to this day vividly as my first 
 impression of him, was his exquisite complexion and the 
 extraordinary lustre of his dark eyes. The latter had a 
 roving, restless quality that bespoke many things, one of 
 them being an insatiable hunger for the sensation of living. 
 
12 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 He was, like my aunt, of under middle stature, and lean of 
 frame moreover. His mien was somewhat slouching and 
 careless, making him to seem as though he stooped. He wore 
 a beard, full and untrimmed, very glossy, and so dark as to 
 seem black. It was not so thick, however, as to hide from view 
 his very sensuous lips and mouth, or his stubborn chin. 
 
 It did not need a very mature perception to see that he had 
 been attracted by the sensual beauty of my aunt, whereas 
 she had been chiefly won by the fact that he was wealthy, 
 and therefore a man who could provide her with all that 
 the eye delighted in and the body desired. His attitude 
 towards her was sentimental to the point of being maudlin, 
 whereas she was to him almost cold and hard. 
 
 I suppose that I, from my corner of the hall, had been gazing 
 somewhat raptly, not to say rudely, at him, for he exerted a 
 spell on me that chafed me. At any rate, when my mother's 
 glance feel on me, she asked me promptly if I was not glad to 
 see my uncle and my dear aunt. I replied that I was. Where- 
 upon, as though this were a preconcerted signal, my mother 
 at once exclaimed : " Now you would like to come and see your 
 room, wouldn't you ? " leading the way upstairs. 
 
 Ill 
 
 MERELY A GUST 
 
 " Ah, Jacob, so glad to see you ! How are you ? Well, 
 this is a pleasure ! Had a good crossing ? " 
 
 After all that had happened, I was amazed as I stood by and 
 heard my father greet my uncle thus, bending over him with 
 a courtly manner and a smile that had never been known to 
 fail in its charm. I contrasted it with my mother's gush over 
 my aunt and the kindly formality with uncle. It had been a 
 genuine expression of her feelings. But my father had been 
 kindly and formal with my aunt, towards whom I knew he 
 inclined warmly, and he greeted my uncle in this way. We had 
 
MERELY A GUST 13 
 
 been seated on the lawn at afternoon tea, with the sun playing 
 about us, when he had entered through the house. 
 
 My uncle glowed in response. " It's very kind of you, 
 Michael. Yes, we had an excellent crossing, I am thankful 
 to say. What a very charming situation you have here ! 
 That background of firs gives such a glowing richness to the 
 house. And the lawn too ! " 
 
 " Yes, it looks well, doesn't it ? Ah, here is Bas ! " he said 
 as Cousin Basil came down from the house. " Let me intro- 
 duce my Cousin Basil to you ! I brought him down because 
 he has been so interested in hearing of you from us, afed had 
 over and over again expressed a desire to meet you." 
 
 I distinctly saw Cousin Bas deliberately tread on my 
 father's foot as he passed him to shake hands with my uncle. 
 Both their faces were as straight and as sober as judges'. 
 
 " How are you, sir ? Is this your first visit to Ireland ? " 
 
 ' Yes, it is. Lovely country ! " 
 
 " Well, I'll leave you two together/' my father broke in. 
 " Kindred minds, you know, soon find a variety of subjects to 
 talk about. First let me introduce you to my sister-in-law." 
 My aunt, who had been watching my father closely, rose at 
 this. When this formality was over, my father with indescrib- 
 able dignity swept Cousin Bas back to my uncle, taking the 
 seat beside Aunt Mary himself. " You'll find him, Jacob," 
 lie went on, as he sat himself, " a veritable fund of suggestive 
 comment on the use of Art in the household." 
 
 My Uncle Jacob, I may say, was a wholesale manufacturer 
 of wall-papers and chintzes, and so forth, for the house, that 
 purported to exalt and ennoble living ; and Cousin Bas, I 
 knew, knew no more of Art than he did of oceanography. 
 How the conversation went forward I could not say, for I was 
 not near enough to hear, but Cousin Bas came of a stock that 
 could be relied on to bear itself creditably in difficulty. 
 Certainly if one could judge from his rather excited manner 
 eoid his neglect of his tea, Uncle Jacob seemed to be delighted 
 with the intelligent agreement and comment he evoked as he 
 held forth his favourite theories. 
 
 Presently I saw Cousin Bas look suddenly and intently 
 under my father's chair. A subdued gleam came into his 
 eyes, though his face never for a moment gave over its aspect 
 of grave attention. My father was sitting on one of those 
 
14 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 green painted garden chairs, the seats of which are made of 
 ribs of wood with regular spaces in between. As I looked 
 in the direction of my cousin's glance I saw that one of the 
 ribs on my father's chair had somehow shifted a little, with 
 the result that through the wider space so caused a portion 
 of my father's trousers, with naturally what that trouser 
 held of skin and flesh, had bulged out. I saw my cousin 
 negligently stretch out his leg till his foot lay on the ground 
 immediately beneath my father's chair. All this while his 
 head was bent forward, his chin on his collar and his brow 
 furrowed as though in deep thought as he listened to Uncle 
 Jacob giving forth his harangue with heightened colour and 
 eager eyes. Then his glance travelled quickly round the com- 
 pany while he raised his foot and firmly pinched the pro- 
 tuberance. 
 
 With a roar my father leapt from his chair, scattering the 
 tea-things right and left, and upsetting a small table. 
 
 " Michael, whatever is the matter ? " anxiously asked my 
 mother, all solicitation at this extraordinary and unlooked- 
 for manoeuvre. 
 
 " What the? Who the ? " shouted my father, 
 
 spinning round, and holding on to the hindermost portions of 
 himself. 
 
 '/.Nothing the matter, I hope, Mike ? " asked Cousin Bas, 
 rising gravely and erectly as he put this question. 
 
 My father's face blazed with amazement and anger as he 
 faced Cousin Bas, who regarded him with round, wild eyes of 
 innocent query. It was a little terrific, yet it was inexpressibly 
 funny. I had seen the whole manoeuvre, and was now 
 shrieking with laughter. 
 
 ' You " began my father. Then his anger swept round 
 
 on me, and I received a cuff over the ear that sent me spinning 
 into the laurel bush. 
 
 " But what was it, Michael ? " said my mother, laying her 
 hand anxiously on his arm. 
 
 " Nothing, Emily, nothing at all ! " he said, in the short 
 peremptory way he had. Then to Cousin Bas : " Look here, 
 young man, what do you say to a game ? " 
 
 " But you are sure you are all right ? " Cousin Bas was 
 clearly not content to let him down so easily. 
 
 " Don't be an ass ! Go up and change your things. And you, 
 
MERELY A GUST 15 
 
 Jack, go along and get Maurya to clear up this mess, there's 
 a good boy. Didn't hurt you, did I ? Anyway, it served you 
 right. Get along now." 
 
 " I'll have these things attended to," said my mother, as 
 my father and Cousin Bas went off into the house. 
 
 Presently from within the house we heard my cousin giving 
 out peal on peal of his high-pitched laughter. The bath- 
 room window of the house faced on to the lawn, and from it 
 we could hear my father's voice call out soon after : 
 
 " But, my dear chap, it has raised a huge weal." 
 
 An approaching voice then said : " Let's have a look at it." 
 
 " No, I'll be hanged if you do," came the reply. " Get out 
 of it ! No more of your larks ! " 
 
 No reference was made to this intercepted fragment of 
 conversation when both of them came down presently clad 
 for their game, although when it had floated down to us my 
 mother and my aunt had exchanged significant smiles with 
 each other. With Uncle Jacob, however, the whole episode 
 seemed to have been like a rain-storm to a gull. He had 
 started up surprised at the amazing outset, only to wander 
 off without a word among the bushes at the bottom of the 
 garden. While I had picked myself up from out of the laurel 
 bush, and caressed my ear, and endeavoured to bring Frank's 
 to the same degree of redness for laughing at me, and receiv d 
 my mother's tender condolences and my aunt's would-be 
 sympathetic mirth, and having considered myself a spartan 
 hero for having resisted the inspiration to tears, and having 
 eaten not less than three of the largest pastries in quick suc- 
 cession under cover of my mother's absence and my aunt's 
 false sympathy he had disappeared, and I could but see his 
 bearded head between tree above and bush beneath against 
 the farther fields. And later, when I had undertaken to scout 
 the balls for Cousin Bas, in opposition to Frank, who had 
 already received his usual delegation from father, in the 
 intervals of duty I saw him examining the variegated petals 
 of sweet-pea bloom, and smelling their perfume, with an 
 expression that struck me as being quite curiously ecstatic. 
 He amused me rather ; he perplexed me even more ; and he 
 produced in me a strange feeling of fear at times, so that I 
 could sympathise with my father's irritation with him. 
 
 But when two sets were over, and my father returned to the 
 
i6 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 ladies very well pleased with himself, having won both sets 
 without the necessity of pushing either beyond ten games, I 
 was considerably surprised to see Uncle Jacob return from his 
 botanising at the bottom of the garden and proceed straight 
 to father with the query : 
 
 " I hope, Michael, that you feel very much better/' 
 
 What he had thought was the matter, I cannot to this 
 moment imagine. From his manner one gathered that he 
 seemed to consider that only the demands of courtesy could 
 atone for the indelicacy of his query. 
 
 My father, who was in the act of drawing his chair beside 
 Aunt Mary's, looked sharply over his shoulders at this question ; 
 but there certainly was no hint of humour in the figure that 
 stood so courteously beside him. 
 
 " Oh yes, thank you, Jacob ! How very kind of you to 
 enquire after me ! But I find these villainous attacks very 
 distressing/' 
 
 " Ah," broke in Cousin Bas, " but you should hear him, sir, 
 when these afflictions come on him properly. Terrible ! 
 terrible ! " 
 
 But my uncle clearly did not propose to continue the subject. 
 Moreover, mother's frown at Cousin Bas checked the foolery 
 that was obviously in brew on the other side. 
 
 IV 
 
 I FIGHT MY FIRST FIGHT 
 
 That night when we had been dismissed unwillingly to bed, 
 I undressed myself with unwonted alacrity, and, leaping into 
 bed, cried gaily out to Frank : 
 
 ' Your turn to put out the light." 
 
 Frank was shorter than myself, though more heavily built. 
 His clear, sandy face suddenly reddened with rage as I made 
 my remark, and he stood four-square, seeking to control himself 
 as he spluttered out : 
 
I FIGHT MY FIRST FIGHT 17 
 
 " It isn't ; you know it isn't." 
 
 " Yes it is, and mind you make haste/ 1 
 
 " It isn't, and you know it isn't." 
 
 " You are red." 
 
 Frank grew purple as he faced me. Then quickly flinging 
 off his clothes he leapt into bed too, and, turning his back on 
 me, drew the clothes over his ears. 
 
 This looked like a simple stalemate. Yet I felt as though 
 thereby the issue had gone against me. For one thing, my 
 brother had a quicker, more irascible temper than I, and, there- 
 fore, more of an overbearing mind. Moreover, he was the 
 moral master of the situation : I had violated the rules of the 
 game. Had I then got out of bed and done my duty, the 
 moral situation would have been mine, for he would have been 
 made to appear a churl. But these are not the sort of things 
 either men or boys do. The fact that the moral issue had gone 
 against me, touched me to something more, and less, than 
 anger. 
 
 " Get up and put the light out," I cried out furiously. 
 
 " Put it out yourself ! " came the reply, proving to me that 
 the clothes over his ears did not prevent his hearing. 
 
 " Put it out ! " There was no movement in the opposite 
 bed. " Just the sort of mean, low thing you would do, isn't 
 it ? " Still there came no answer. ' You who always go 
 and curry up to father : scouting his balls." 
 
 " I didn't curry up. He asked me to do it." There was 
 no movement in the bed. These words were merely deliber- 
 ately uttered by a mouth that appeared over the bed-clothes. 
 
 " Yes, you did. You always do it." For a long time there 
 was silence. ' You know you do." 
 
 " Jacob ! " The head merely turned over to permit the 
 lips to spit this word at me, when the original position was 
 stolidly and deliberately assumed. 
 
 Like a flail the word hit me. I sat up in my bed, furious, 
 with the sudden resolve to let my fury pass beyond control. 
 Then I threw the clothes off me and leapt from my bed to his, 
 seizing him by the throat. The force of my leap carried me 
 forward on to the floor beyond, and since I had had time to 
 grip him by the neck he was dragged after me, each of us 
 falling with a heavy thud. There we lay for a moment, 
 glaring at each other, he with amazement, I with fury. Then 
 
 c 
 
18 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 as his anger rose to match my incoherent rage, we clutched 
 each other fiercely and rolled to and fro. The chair beside 
 his bed was swept away and upset by our legs as they kicked 
 and writhed to and fro in the effort to grip each other, or to 
 avoid the grip. We dashed against the washstand, and I 
 heard a tumbler fall to the ground with a loud crash. 
 
 How long this would have lasted I do not know, and what 
 its result would have been it is impossible to divine, for we were 
 both inchoate with fury. I was not easily roused to anger, 
 and when it came, on the chance of an unconsidered occasion, 
 it came with uncontrollable fury, till I almost revelled in it ; 
 whereas Frank was naturally choleric. But my mother 
 burst on to the scene. I remembered afterwards having, as 
 on a far shore of the mind, heard her voice, as she came up the 
 stairs, crying out : " Boys, boys ! " It had had no effect, 
 and when she actually was in the room, even then we did not 
 cease our furious wrestle. She had the utmost difficulty in 
 separating us. " Boys ! boys ! Jacob ! Frankie ! whatever 
 is the matter ? " she cried out, half in grief, yet all in anger. 
 But we struggled on, gurgling angry sounds at each other. 
 
 At last, rather by dint of blows than by persuasion, she made 
 us cease, and we stood facing one another, breathing heavily. 
 
 " Whatever was the cause of this disgraceful scene ? " she 
 asked, standing between us. 
 
 Suddenly on the two of us shame swept. Yet we were 
 obstinate. And between the pull of these two we were brought 
 to a sullen silence. 
 
 " What was it ? " 
 
 Still a stubborn silence held us. For my part, I hung my 
 head, fearing to look either at Frank or mother, and I suppose 
 Frank did the same. 
 
 " What was it ? Tell me, Jacob ; you, as the elder ! " 
 
 Not a word came from me. 
 
 " What was it, Frank ? " 
 
 Still not a syllable. 
 
 " Very well, then, we must go into this to-morrow. Go to 
 bed now, each of you, and don't let me hear a sound from 
 either of you." 
 
 There are certain transgressions so out of the way of nature, 
 that to punish them seems like an insult to the transgressor. 
 It is as though there is something about them to which punish- 
 
I FIGHT MY FIRST FIGHT 19 
 
 ment would be an impertinence. And indeed, with such 
 manner of transgressions it would be true to say that punish- 
 ment could have no other effect than to deep-grain the evil 
 by ranking it as petty ; whereas the royal way of free acquittal 
 would be to recognise the perversity, and so reduce the 
 transgressor to a natural shame, purging and clarifying his 
 emotion. At any rate I know that neither in my mind, 
 Frank's, nor mother's was there ever at any time any thought 
 of punishment. A certain cane that my mother always 
 wielded, because father in his one use of it had nearly killed 
 us, never came into any of our minds. Mother went down- 
 stairs, we went to our respective beds ; none of us was happy ; 
 yet I think in each of us there was the strange feeling of an 
 end gained. Prior to the scene it had always been possible ; 
 having occurred its repetition seemed almost certainly and 
 finally dismissed. One stroke of the cane, however, would 
 have brought back that possibility, and almost made it a 
 certainty. 
 
 No further reference was made to the subject till the follow- 
 ing morning at breakfast. Then, in the midst of other con- 
 versation, father suddenly said : 
 
 " Well, boys, what was the cause of the trouble last night ? 
 Eh?" 
 
 At once confusion wrapt us. I felt Uncle Jacob's eye on 
 me. 
 
 " Come on, what was it ? It's no use the two of you look- 
 ing like that. Let's have it." 
 
 Father was a man of a fine, alert brain, and a quick sense for 
 a situation. I felt from the way his eye came on me that he 
 had divined the fact that, whatever the provocation, at least 
 the attack had come from me. 
 
 " Well ? " he said, looking at me steadily. 
 
 I shifted under his gaze ; the table-cloth seemed suddenly 
 to have come up unaccountably near my eyes. Moreover, it 
 was wrapped about in strange vapours, like mists over snow- 
 driven fields. Then I looked up at him, and his cold, clear 
 eye steadied me. The memory of the wrong done me brought 
 anger and indignation to my aid, and, I am sure, put defiance 
 into my face and voice. 
 
 " He called me Jacob," I said. 
 
 There had been silence prior to my reply, but the silence 
 
20 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 that followed upon it seemed to be as distinct and as different 
 as a vacuum is from air. It had an extraordinary quality 
 all its own. I felt it chill me, although I could no more under- 
 stand it than I could appreciate the cause of it. But I saw 
 father's eye almost guiltily seek my mother's, and then take 
 a quick travel round the table. 
 
 How the conversation was resumed, or who resumed it, I 
 do not know, save that it was resumed, and that neither of us 
 ever heard anything of that fight thereafter, from mother or 
 father. 
 
 All that day mother, Aunt Mary and Uncle Jacob were in 
 Dublin. They set off early, immediately after breakfast, and 
 did not intend to return till dinner. I suppose my mystifying 
 remark at the breakfast-table was the cause that neither Frank 
 nor myself were of the party. Or the cause may have been 
 simpler by far ; for I seemed to sense an atmosphere of anti- 
 pathy towards children, or at least antipathy towards their 
 too frequent presence, in Aunt Mary. 
 
 From what I had gathered at breakfast I thought father was 
 to have joined them early in the afternoon. Consequently I 
 was surprised to see him return later in the afternoon accom- 
 panied as usual by Cousin Bas. I was relieved too : as may 
 have been expected, Frank and I were not much company for 
 one another, and my eyes had become weary of reading even 
 as my imagination had become weary of fighting against 
 troops of redskins. So, immediately they emerged clad for 
 tennis, I ran to greet them with a loud cry of : 
 
 " Cousin Bas ! " 
 
 He punched me on the ribs, and then looking closely at me, 
 said : " So you don't like to be called Jacob, eh ? " 
 
 I hung my head, the spirit gone out of me. But it puzzled 
 me to think what he should find strange in my repugnance. 
 
 " Well, you need not look so down about it. If anyone 
 ever calls you Jacob, you punch his head. You are Jack, 
 aren't you ? " 
 
 " Here, drop that, Bas ! " my father broke in. " We have 
 had quite enough of that, God knows/' And with that drew 
 him off. 
 
 Later on, as they gulped hurried cups of tea between two 
 sets, I heard Cousin Bas say to father : 
 
 " But what did the old buffer say when he heard it ? " 
 
OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 21 
 
 " Say ? My Lord ! You could have cut the silence." 
 
 Cousin Bas went off into shrieks of his high laughter, then 
 said : " But what did he look like ? " 
 
 " His eyes got like sharp points of light, and he just stared 
 at the boy. I say, that chap has got the deuce of a lot of 
 energy in him. I saw it in his eyes. That is why I cut out 
 of it this afternoon." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Well, Emily can generally run me off my legs. She and 
 Mary together, my dear chap ! Then throw in that restless 
 old buffer. Phew ! " 
 
 " A man of your size ! " Cousin Bas looked over his cup 
 at my father's splendid figure. There was contempt in his 
 voice, but there was admiration in his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, strength isn't all. It's something more than strength 
 is in that man. It's something that irritates me till I could 
 knock him down. Why don't you rag him at dinner, Bas ? " 
 
 " Why don't you ? " 
 
 11 After breakfast ? " 
 
 Cousin Bas went off into peals of laughter again. 
 
 OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 
 
 It was one fine June day, some two years after this, that 
 father came back from Dublin soon after midday. He wore 
 a curious expression on his face. No sooner had he entered 
 t lie house than he called out : 
 
 " Emily ! " 
 
 " Mother is in the vegetable garden," I said, going out to 
 him. It was Wednesday, and a half-day at school with us. 
 
 " Run and tell her that I want her." 
 
 I ran. There was something in his manner, a subdued 
 dignity, a perplexed exultation, that excited me considerably. 
 
22 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 When mother appeared, he handed her a letter, saying 
 simply : " What do you think of that, dear ? " 
 
 She read it once ; she read it twice ; and with each reading 
 her face became more distressful. I looked at my father, and 
 I noticed that a shade of annoyance passed over his face at 
 seeing my mother's distress. 
 
 " Michael/' she cried, " you're not thinking of accepting 
 it?" 
 
 " I don't see that I can do anything else. You seem to 
 forget, Emily, that it's a rise for me. And an honour too ! " 
 
 " But we are very happy as we are." 
 
 " We can't stand still, can we ? " 
 
 " Why not ? If we are happy." 
 
 ' You women are all so unreasonable." He spoke in 
 peremptory irritation. " Of course we must better ourselves 
 when and where we can. I should have thought that was 
 obvious." 
 
 " But we won't be bettering ourselves." 
 
 " Of course we will." He stared at her a minute, divining 
 her meaning. " I wish you wouldn't put contrary meanings 
 on to all my words." 
 
 " But what shall we do with the boys ? " 
 
 " I had thought of that. They'll have to be put to school." 
 
 " Michael ! " There was pain in her voice and tears in her 
 eyes. " Do you mean to say you will like that, Michael ? " 
 
 " Of course I won't. What is the use of asking useless 
 questions ? But it will be best in the end." 
 
 " In what end, dear ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, oh dear ! " wearied irritation sang in his voice. 
 Then catching sight of me standing by he ventured it on my 
 head. " Now then, run along, Jack. Don't stand there 
 listening to your elders. Go into the garden ! " 
 
 I went into the garden with a heavy sense of ill, and very 
 miserable. Presently my mother came out there with red 
 eyes, as though she had been weeping. 
 
 " What is it, mother ? " I asked, running up to her. Frank 
 was with me by that time. 
 
 " Your father and I have to go to Ceylon, Jack," she said, 
 caressing my forehead sadly. A bulbous blot of land that was 
 falling off India into the ocean as a blot of ink falls off a new 
 pen into the well, came before my eyes as she spoke. 
 
OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 23 
 
 " And us too ? " I asked, my heart misgiving me. 
 
 "I am afraid not. You and Frank will have to go to 
 boarding-school . ' ' 
 
 At this Frank started leaping about gaily. " I want to 
 go to boarding-school/' he cried. " That's just what I do 
 want. All the other chaps go to boarding-school. I say, 
 Jack, isn't it topping ? " 
 
 His tone was infectious. It conveyed almost a feeling of 
 jollity to me. It certainly won me over to him and away 
 from my mother's obvious melancholy at the prospect. But 
 when it came to the actual moving even the excitement of 
 a change did not suffice to keep us from private, quite private, 
 tear-droppings. Cousin Bas was in and out the whole time 
 (he was, we understood, to take father's place in Dublin), 
 and from him an infectious gaiety, if therewithal a spurious 
 gaiety, was imported into the scene. But the man that came 
 in to take stock of the furniture, the outlandish and strange 
 furniture that was brought into the house and stacked with 
 ours, all with lot numbers on them ; the actual leaving of the 
 house, when my father himself was not immune from the 
 prevailing redness of eye and snuffling of nose ; the night in 
 a Dublin hotel ; the journey over to London : all these live 
 in my memory as melancholy landmarks never to be erased. 
 
 In London we went to stay with Uncle Jacob for awhile. 
 There we were introduced to our cousins, one but newly arrived 
 into the joy of life, and the other a boy of five. Father's irrita- 
 tion at being in the same house continually with Uncle Jacob 
 was painful to see, and it needed all my mother's tact to keep 
 him from flying into an open rage. For Uncle Jacob in his 
 own house was by no means the docile person he had been two 
 years previously in Saggart. He flew into intractable rages 
 that even tried the patience of my mother, which is to say 
 much indeed. She, in her desire for peace, even permitted 
 father quite openly to be more than friendly with Aunt Mary, 
 and this, I suspect, was frequently the cause of Uncle Jacob's 
 rages. But Aunt Mary aided mother in her efforts for peace. 
 It was masterly the way she did it. Uncle Jacob may have 
 been overbearing with others, but he did not meet much suc- 
 cess with her ; and I saw, thus, the reason of her habitual 
 aloofness of manner. 
 
 On one occasion, I remember, he professed to find the coffee 
 
24 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 too cold after dinner. It was quite shameful to hear the brutal 
 way he shouted at the maid. From the way he looked at him, 
 I thought father, who sat nearest him, was about to strike him. 
 His hand twitched on his knee as though it was without his 
 power to control it. Aunt Mary, however, was before him. 
 She rose stiffly, and going at once over to her husband, she 
 took the cup from him, replacing it on the tray the maid held. 
 
 " We won't be having any coffee this evening, Bella. Col- 
 lect up all the cups, will you ? Emmy, Michael, let us go into 
 the garden. The boys can come too." 
 
 Her manner was quite cold and unapproachable, although 
 afterwards in the garden she was quite vivacious. Had it 
 not been so, she could never have accomplished the manoeuvre. 
 As we went out, leaving Uncle Jacob in the room by himself, 
 it was clear to see with whom the command lay, although I 
 did not notice till long after what the effort for command was 
 costing her in paleness of cheek and thinness of frame. It was 
 wearing out her vitality not less than if she had actually been 
 the conquered one. 
 
 Over one thing or another such rages were only too frequent, 
 and both Frank and myself began to be quite in terror of our 
 Uncle Jacob. It was necessary that peace should be main- 
 tained. Save for that necessity father, I know, would posi- 
 tively and physically have attacked Uncle Jacob over and 
 over again. For we were to be committed to the keeping of 
 Aunt Mary. Father was at that time discussing final details 
 with the directors of the firm he was to represent in Colombo. 
 Mother was not to follow him till October, thus to arrive in 
 Ceylon at the height of the cold season, so as the more gently to 
 work into the heat. When they were both gone the immediate 
 and practical oversight of us two was to lie with Aunt Mary, 
 to whose house we were to be invited for holidays. The more 
 I think over it now the more amazing does the arrangement 
 seem. 
 
 But at that time the only person who gave any earnest 
 consideration to the question was mother. She bore us 
 over London, buying us an adequate stock of clothes. She 
 drew up lists of clothes for Aunt Mary to purchase for us when 
 we had duly outgrown our present stock. On matters of 
 clothing and health she drew out for us earnest counsel. 
 She was full of advice as to how we were to comport ourselves 
 
OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 25 
 
 during holiday times at Uncle Jacob's : advice which I very 
 much doubt if we even heard. Aunt Mary, too, was taken 
 through the process, bearing it, it must be confessed, with 
 very ill grace and much impatience. Poor, dear mother ! 
 how her heart must have fluttered with concern at leaving us 
 to the untenderness of others. And to what end was it all ? 
 What a commentary on the commercial conception of getting- 
 on ! 
 
 It was so the days passed. Cousin Bas had come over and 
 was staying at some or other hotel. He and father were 
 continually at father's old business house, discussing the 
 future conduct of the Irish branch of the business, which 
 now lay in Cousin Basil's control ; or else father was with 
 the directors of his new firm arranging details for Ceylon. 
 Mother was fleeing hither and thither, agitatedly attending 
 to our needs. Aunt Mary accompanied her, more for the 
 sake of company than because of any interest in us. Henry, 
 our little cousin (who was never, under any penalty, to be 
 called Harry), accompanied us always when Aunt Mary came 
 with us, but Frank and myself dismissed him as of an age 
 beneath notice. As for Uncle Jacob, all these things seemed 
 scarce ever to impinge on his intelligence. Sometimes they 
 discovered him (he, be sure, never discovered them), when 
 he would pour out an energetic theory on the relation of 
 parents and children, children and parents, education and life, 
 and schools and discipline, with flashing eye and red-flushed 
 cheek, to my father, till the latter would look at him out of the 
 side of his eye with such manifest malignity that I wondered 
 how Uncle Jacob could possibly miss noting it. 
 
 " Yes, Jacob, bless you, man, I know all this/' father would 
 mutter irascibly. " And even not to know it would not, to 
 be sure, leave a man much the poorer." 
 
 " There again I disagree with you, Michael. Of course I 
 have my ideals and schemes, which others blame me for, but 
 which I have steadfastly held all my life, and which become 
 more to me now than ever they were ; but it does seem to me 
 that we should be much concerned with the smaller influences 
 of life, the little influences that pass into the alembic and are 
 worked up into character/' 
 
 " You mean education ? " 
 
 " In its wider connotation." 
 
26 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " I don't believe in education/' 
 
 " Eh ? " 
 
 " No, I don't ! Believe it's all fiddlesticks." And with 
 this, father's eye would gleam malignly, although there would 
 not be lacking a suspicion of high-hearted humour with it all. 
 
 " But you are going to have Jack and Frank educated." 
 
 " Oh, that's Emily's notion. I'd like to send them out to a 
 South American ranch. Ox-tongue business, you know." 
 
 " Ah, yes ! " 
 
 " Or else slaying and killing ! " 
 
 ' Yes, but you see " 
 
 " Good, honest, manly work ! " 
 
 " But education is necessary " 
 
 " Carcases ! Well, shall we join the ladies ? " 
 
 There could not have been conceived two persons who were 
 less fitted to discuss together matters worth discussion. And 
 yet they both had acute and penetrating minds. Neither of 
 them had any basis of exact knowledge, although uncle had 
 read a great deal more than had father. But they both had 
 quick, keen, intuitive intelligences. Yet with them con- 
 versation always led to disaster. Father had the stronger, 
 fiercer will of the two, and so Uncle Jacob was never able to 
 rise to one of his rages with him ; but Uncle Jacob had the 
 more restive and insatiable an energy, which consequently 
 compelled some admiration from father. Yet they could 
 never meet. 
 
 Thus the day arrived at last when father had to leave for 
 Ceylon. How I remembered the scene, and each detail of 
 the day ! He had elected to go by way of Brindisi, catching 
 his boat at Port Said, and this enabled him to leave his 
 journey till the night boat from Dover. Cousin Bas had not 
 yet left to return to Dublin, and as he was to go down with 
 us to Dover he came over to Hampstead, where Uncle Jacob 
 had his house, for the final meal. It was really an extra- 
 ordinary meal. Father and Cousin Bas kept their quips 
 and cracks passing freely to and fro, and from us boys and 
 Aunt Mary, in consequence of this, laughter was winging 
 freely through the air. And yet I am convinced that the 
 veriest stranger at that meal would have quickly discovered 
 deeps that were dark and tragic, trembling with tears. 
 
 Going down in the train it was the same. Frank bubbled 
 
OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 27 
 
 with merry laughter ; I chuckled through tears ; mother 
 remonstrated with periodic ejaculations of " Michael ! " but 
 kept grave and stoical on the whole, notwithstanding ; and 
 father and Cousin Bas kept up the merriest foolery all the way. 
 At every station they rushed madly about the platform asking 
 the name of it from every porter. At one of the stations they 
 pompously summoned the stationmaster, and when that 
 said functionary had appeared carrying himself and an 
 ungainly girth with incomparable dignity, they asked if it 
 were or were not a fact that this train was going to Charing 
 Cross. Fierce excitement at once seized this dignitary at 
 the request, and he summoned his hirelings to get out the 
 gentleman's baggage at once, as he was going in the wrong 
 direction and the train was about to set off. When this had 
 been done father courteously offered him a cigar with the 
 casual information that his real destination was in fact Dover. 
 A little more excited countermanding of the original order 
 followed upon this, while father and Cousin Bas moved about 
 with a dignity that defied reproach. , Their gravity was 
 impeccable. 
 
 On our arrival at Dover all gaiety was suddenly dismissed, 
 and not only dismissed, but so as to take a strange quality 
 of falsity in the dismissal. It so happened that the boat by 
 which father was to proceed and the last train back to London 
 left within so short a time of one another that it was impossible 
 for either of us to see the other off. Yet since our departure 
 was by some minutes the earlier, father came to the little 
 platform, outside the station, at which our train stayed on its 
 journey round the coast, instead of our going with him to 
 the pier. I shall never forget that scene. Cousin Bas had 
 withdrawn himself from the rest of us ; Frank and I stood 
 snivelling, watching our parents ; mother and father stood 
 close together, and, very rarely, spoke softly to one another. 
 At last Cousin Bas drew his watch out and said, as though 
 in reference of nothing : 
 
 ' This train's late. And what time does the boat go ? " 
 
 " I mustn't be late," said father. 
 
 Then quickly he shook Cousin Bas by the hand, kissed 
 Frank and myself, embraced mother several times rapidly in 
 succession, and went off down the long, glooming station with 
 rapid strides and shaking shoulders. Our little platform was 
 
28 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 out beneath the stars beside the open mouth ui the station, 
 and we could see him stride down the ill-lit, long distance so. 
 He did not look round ; I felt he dared not, or he would have 
 thrown the whole business over, and stayed. His head was 
 bent, his shoulders were shaking, and his magnificent height 
 and presence were gone. 
 
 " Poor old Mike ! I knew he'd take it badly," said Cousin 
 Bas. Mother was the coolest of us. As for myself, I had 
 never somehow had much in common with father, but it 
 seemed to me as though the sun were never going to shine 
 ahead. Frank was more in possession of himself than I. 
 
 It was my first real bite of sorrow, and looking back on it 
 now I can see that it showed me to be one more open to 
 emotional devastation than most. To this moment the 
 memory of our dismal journey back in the train harrows me. 
 Frank slept heavily ; mother dozed fitfully ; Cousin Bas 
 rolled himself in his coat, and either slept or thought with 
 closed eyes, being rigid in either case ; but as for me, as we 
 plunged through the night, or drew up painfully at every 
 station, it seemed to me as though life had left me no incentive 
 to make its continuance worth while, save the luxury of an 
 immitigable melancholy ; that colour had been struck for 
 ever from the skies and that I must tutor my soul to black- 
 ness. It was a terrible journey for me. 
 
 Five weeks after, we were borne to school. It was a bright, 
 sunny day, with just a pinch of coming autumn in the air. 
 There was nothing acutely to depress us, I suppose, since 
 mother was returning in a fortnight or so to see us once again, 
 prior to her journey, for we certainly were in no way depressed. 
 We were even hilarious and gay. The school that had been 
 chosen for us with infinite care, and on the strongest personal 
 recommendation, was at Hove, and the sight of the sea under 
 sunshine is always one of gaiety. Moreover, mother was 
 disposed to disperse the kind of largesse that we most 
 appreciated. Cornucopias of puffy pastry, stuffed to repletion, 
 as it seemed, with cream, were set before us, not in ones and 
 twos, but a full, fair dozen right at the outset. That was a 
 sight to glad our eyes. We soon discovered that those 
 particular cornucopias were fraudulent, and so began to eat 
 them from the narrow end, so as to work up to the heaven of 
 heavens above. Then we leapt and rejoiced along the front, 
 
OUR HOME IS BROKEN UP 29 
 
 mother between us somewhat sadder than we were, until 
 we begged her for another visit to the pastry shop, and one 
 more cup of chocolate apiece. Which was not denied us. 
 
 Then we were taken back to Hove again, to be left under 
 the charge of Mrs, Pennell. 
 
 " Have you had a happy afternoon ? " asked that worthy 
 woman. " Well, now we must let mother go back home 
 again." She was thin and slight and wizened a little, but 
 with kindly blue eyes. 
 
 Suddenly, on an instant, gloom rushed on us. Tears began 
 to flow. What had seemed a glad holiday, such a holiday, 
 only on a more magnificent scale, as mother had sometimes 
 given us in Bray, now quickly narrowed to tragedy. 
 
 " Why, Jack, I'll be back in a fortnight. Frankie, it isn't 
 as if I weren't coming back again to see you soon." So 
 mother attempted to cheer us with brave words and laughing 
 gaiety of tone, she who, I divine, had come to the blackest 
 moment of her life hitherto as her next words were to show. 
 " You'll take great care of them, won't you, Mrs. Pennell ? " 
 Her question quavered on her lips. " And make them 
 happy ? " 
 
 Then she was gone ; and we were led, not in tears but 
 tearful, and wondering most of all, to a large schoolroom 
 brightly lit. As we entered the babel of voices ceased 
 suddenly, magically, and it seemed to us as if a thousand 
 eyes became fixed on us. 
 
 " I don't expect Mr. Pennell will want you to do any prep, 
 to-night," said our guide. " But he'll be in presently to see 
 you and decide. In the meantime you'll make yourselves at 
 home, won't you ? " 
 
 Make ourselves at home ! What an expression ! The 
 door clicked behind us telling us she was gone. One or two 
 of the voices began speaking again, but the majority still 
 stared at us, as we, I with Frank's hand in mine, went for- 
 ward and found a form to sit on. There we sat, on the 
 very edge, I with a feeling of eldership mingled with a 
 strange kind of pity towards Frank. Then at last, after what 
 seemed an interminable length of time, a boy came up to us 
 and said : 
 
 " You're the new chaps, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," said I, as the spokesman, defiantly. 
 
30 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Oh, what's your name ? " came next, as the prelude to a 
 shoal of questions from the increasing number that ringed us 
 round. 
 
 VI 
 
 SCHOOL 
 
 It was our first adventure out into life. We had not 
 finally and absolutely cast loose from our moorings. Mother's 
 promised visit in a fortnight's time, on the day prior to her 
 leaving from Tilbury Dock, was a cable that yet held us. 
 But we were loose of the pier, and the roll of the waters was 
 beneath our keel with- the usual result. Some time prior 
 to father's departure, mother had written Mr. Pennell a 
 lengthy letter in description of our several characters. This 
 he had asked for, and sealed himself a pedant at once. What 
 mother's reply consisted of, I cannot say, but I very well 
 knew some of the items of it, for they were carefully recited 
 to us one night as we lay in bed. I know there was the painful 
 confession that we were mischievous : what mother was 
 charmed with in father she seemed to dislike in us in its 
 immature form. But the main matter was that she did not 
 think that we appreciated one another as brothers. What 
 precisely the dear soul expected us to do so as to demonstrate 
 our appreciation it would have been interesting to discover. 
 I suppose she thought our fighting angry and furious 
 fighting was a proof of our lack of appreciation, instead of 
 its being, as I am sure it was, absolute proof in the contrary 
 direction. The sapient reply that the pedagogue made to 
 this was the suggestion that we should be placed in separate 
 bedrooms, with strange boys. This, said the worthy man, 
 would teach us to love one another. It did not interest me 
 much when I heard this piece of wisdom read out : I felt 
 quite overjoyed at the thought of being rid of Frank for awhile, 
 
SCHOOL 31 
 
 and I am sure he reciprocated the emotion. But as I look 
 back on it now, it is certainly amazing to remember the 
 extraordinary approbation that greeted this piece of 
 wisdom. 
 
 " He understands the handling of boys/' said mother. 
 
 " That shows him to be a thinking man who studies the 
 little subtle things that get caught up into our alembics and 
 are refashioned into character. Yes, I should call him a 
 
 subtle thinker ; and a subtle thinker " So spake my 
 
 uncle. He never seemed to think that subtlety could be 
 subtle twice so much, and yet never once take a grip of 
 truth. He would, however, have continued indefinitely, 
 had not Aunt Mary cut him short with : 
 
 " Do the boys good ! " 
 
 It was only father that sympathised with us. " Rather 
 rough on the poor beggars, don't you think, and we miles 
 away ? " he said. " Still, as you like. You know more 
 about these things than I do." 
 
 So the sickness that came on us had no alleviation at all. I 
 had a bedroom with only one other boy. As I sat ruefully 
 undressing on my bed my thoughts were not of him opposite 
 me, but of father on the ocean or in Ceylon, of mother at 
 Uncle Jacob's, and of Frank in some bedroom at the far end 
 of the house. For the first time I was cut away from them 
 all. A good quarrel with Frank would have been homely. 
 I suppose Mr. Pennell would never have thought of a con- 
 sideration of that kind. I was wrapt in melancholy, with one 
 sock on and one sock off, when a voice suddenly broke in on 
 me : 
 
 " I say, your name's Elthorne, isn't it ? " 
 
 ''' Yes," said I. He was gazing fixedly at me. 
 
 " Mine's Cartwright Frederick William." 
 
 " Mine's Jacob," I flushed red at the mention of it. 
 
 " Jacob ! Oh my aunt, what a name ! " 
 
 I was silent : confusion added itself to my unhappiness. 
 
 " Still, a chap can't help his name, can he ? " he went on. 
 His philosophy warmed me to him ; it had a magnificence that 
 could rise above circumstances, however unpropitious they 
 might seem to be. I felt he was the kind of fellow to grow up 
 a debonair free-lance and a true Bohemian. I hurried to 
 agree with him, when he proceeded: "Though what made 
 
32 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 your father choose a name like that ! Still, it wasn't your 
 fault. How old did you say you were before prep. ? " 
 
 " Twelve nearly." 
 
 " Oh, you're quite a youngster, aren't you ? I'm thirteen. 
 I'm only a new chap too, you know ! " 
 
 Here was fresh proof of his largeness of mind. He could 
 quite easily have imposed on me as a high-standing, well- 
 approved, old boy, at least until my proof to the contrary 
 could have availed me not at all. I warmed to him more and 
 more. I asked him how long he had been there. 
 
 " Only a week/' said he, " since the beginning of this 
 term." 
 
 He began then to tell me what- the school curriculum was 
 when the prep, master came in to put the lights out. Left in 
 darkness I heard him thump on his knees, and in the darkness 
 saw his body lying across his bed ; and so I took the oppor- 
 tunity also to dismiss my devotions, knowing that now he 
 had begun to be friendly he would resume his recital the 
 moment he was finished. Therefore I hastened my devotions. 
 I was not wrong in my surmise, for immediately he rose he 
 at once swept into a free criticism of " the old man," meaning 
 Mr. Pennell thereby, whom as yet I had not seen. His 
 criticism began to grow somewhat disjointed when he had got 
 into bed ; and presently, after a lengthy, painful wait on my 
 part, his heavy breathing gave me to know I was to hear no 
 more. Then my loneliness began to assault and oppress me. 
 I could not control myself. Lest Cartwright should hear me, 
 I drew my clothes right over my head, and, having purchased 
 secrecy thus, sobbed long and bitterly. 
 
I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 33 
 
 VII 
 
 I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 
 
 The following morning, we, being of the junior school, were 
 called at seven o'clock. A gentle jostling of my shoulders 
 fetched me out of tearful dreams to see a kindly face bent over 
 me. I was asked if my name were not Elthorne. On my 
 replying that it was, the master said kindly : " I must remember 
 that," and went out. He was clean shaven, with deep-set 
 and kindly blue eyes, a strong Roman nose and a firmly 
 modelled chin. But what struck me most about him was his 
 erect bearing, the dignity in his manner and the distinction in 
 his every gesture. He attracted me wonderfully ; I asked 
 Cartwright who he was. 
 
 ' That's Warner/' said he, " junior 'class' master." 
 
 " Don't you think he's rather fine ? " I ventured. 
 
 " Oh, Warnerdugs is a decent chap. He's quite the best 
 of the crowd." So said Cartwright ; and I remember won- 
 dering if I should have so supreme an old boy manner in so 
 short a time as a week. 
 
 It was required of us that we should be down by half-past 
 seven, and, Cartwright informed me, for every minute of 
 lateness after that time there was a regulation " impot " of 
 thirty lines. I was to mount up many impots in my time ; 
 but that morning I was down and in the schoolroom within 
 ten minutes. An almost painful desire to see Frank possessed 
 me, something that was truly a yearning. When I entered 
 the room there was only one person in it, and that was 
 Frank. The sight of him warmed me with a extraordinary 
 joy, and his face flushed to mine. 
 
 " Hallo, youngster ! " I said, " sleep well ? " 
 
 " Who're you calling youngster ? " he growled. 
 
 Then we sat down on the same form, quite close to one 
 another, but each with stoic unconcern. 
 
 At twenty-eight minutes past seven we were still the only 
 occupants of the large schoolroom, which was divided into 
 three main divisions by an arrangement of desks. Between 
 that time and the half -hour an increasing flood poured into the 
 room, till it was almost impossible to make oneself heard, such 
 was the din, Cartwright came over to us with the information 
 
 D 
 
34 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 that ' ' Warnerdugs was a decent kind of a chap, and always 
 had a whip-up just on time ; fellows were rather brutes to 
 be late with a chap like that/' At any rate, the result was 
 that I noticed no delinquent that morning, although I could 
 not help but notice a boy near me surreptitiously fastening 
 his braces beneath his closely buttoned coat. Then Cart- 
 wright suddenly turned round on Frank. 
 
 " Is this your minor ? " asked he. 
 
 I admitted that it was. 
 
 " Oh, good ! " said he ; then suddenly, and curiously, 
 stopped. His confidence seemed strangely to have gone from 
 him. I was not long to remain in doubt as to the reason for 
 the collapse of his rather splendid assertion splendid, that 
 is, on the basis of only a week's standing because at that 
 moment a hand fell with quite unnecessary heaviness on to my 
 shoulder. I turned sharply about to face a tall boy with an 
 open, frank face marred somewhat by greenish, untrustworthy 
 eyes. 
 
 " Well/' said he, " what are you rubbing your shoulder 
 for ? " 
 
 ' You hurt it," I said aggrievedly. 
 
 " Look here, don't give yourself airs, or you'll get into 
 trouble," he said brusquely. " Isn't your name Elthorne ? " 
 
 I made no reply. I was unaccustomed to representatives 
 of the Deity in long trousers or short. 
 
 " Is it ? " he said again, following up his question with a 
 grip on my arm that made me writhe. 
 
 " Don't do that ! " I demanded. 
 
 " Hoity-toity, eh ? We'll soon show you how to be hoity- 
 toity in this part of the world. Won't we ? " This last 
 question was put to another boy who had come up, shorter 
 than the first by a head, slighter in build, and with a delicate, 
 treacherous face. 
 
 With his advent the grip on my arm caused me such pain 
 as almost to make me cry out. So I made a quick bite at 
 his hand ; I missed it, because he released my arm. Which 
 was the result I wished to attain. 
 
 " Frenchy tricks, eh ? " went on the first, seizing my hand 
 and twisting my arm behind my back. He seemed to think 
 that I had broken some code of honour in using my natural 
 weapons of defence against an assailant twice my size. His 
 
I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 35 
 
 opinion, I suppose, was confirmed when I kicked out back- 
 wards at his shin, nearly sending myself on to my face and 
 dislocating my arm, of which he had fast hold, in the process. 
 However, he had no opportunity of expressing it, for I heard a 
 step behind me, and an authoritative voice addressed my 
 assailant. 
 
 " What are you doing, Britain ? " 
 
 Being released, I turned and saw Mr. Warner standing there 
 with a gleam in his eye that meant trouble. 
 
 " He cheeked me, sir ! " 
 
 " I didn't ! " I protested. 
 
 " Didn't he, Pole ? " 
 
 " Rather ! " 
 
 The code of procedure at such schools is a strange one. Had 
 I not added my protestation there is no doubt that Britain 
 would have received some or other impot. Moreover, with 
 Pole on the field there were two testimonies against my one, 
 and so he got off with no more than a warning. Yet, though 
 it looked like it, this did not, in fact, mean a victory to me. 
 For that morning as we went out for our walk in which all 
 lorms beneath the fifth were bound to participate while I 
 was walking with Frank away from all the rest, Britain and 
 Pole came up to us. A small set of the junior school had 
 gathered round Mr. Warner while he spun them a story. He 
 had an extraordinary gift in that direction, and I had at 
 first joined that circle. But it was soon evident to me that 
 the story in question went on morning after morning. Con- 
 sequently, it could have but little interest for me, as already 
 it had been in progress for a week. I envied the manifest 
 excitement of those who were listening. But that very 
 excitement was only an aggravation over and above the initial 
 annoyance of knowing neither the characters nor the plot ; 
 and so I drifted away with Frank, having heard enough, 
 however, for me to be able to identify the kind of tale with an 
 author of adventure much beloved by myself. Knowing 
 none of the boys, and, in our misery, not being particularly 
 desirous of knowing any of them, we were thus wandering by 
 ourselves in moody silence when Britain and Pole came up. 
 
 " Now you chaps/' called the first : " let's play leap-frog. 
 You go down." 
 
 Reluctantly we went down, and some three or four others 
 
36 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of equal age with us were brought along to form the line of 
 which I was the last leap. First Pole came along, counting 
 us as he leapt. Then I heard Britain coming after him. But 
 he seemed to halt when he came to myself ; and bent down as 
 I was, I knew not why. Then I received a violent kick that 
 shot me forward on to my nose. I was maddened with pain, 
 and cried out loudly. 
 
 " Now then, stow it ! " said Britain. " None of your baby 
 tricks here ! " He gripped me again by the arm, digging his 
 thumb fiercely into my muscles. " That'll teach you how to 
 sneak. And if you sneak about this, I'll punch your head 
 into a mash/' 
 
 I was crying with the pain of his kick. I heard a voice 
 beside me say : " Old Britain's a fair brute, that's what he is," 
 but nothing gave such consolation as Frank's hand on my arm 
 and Frank's voice bursting with rage as he said : " I hate 
 him ; I'd like to kill him." I think either of us would have 
 killed Britain and Pole at that moment with the keenest of joy. 
 
 Nevertheless, however evil and unpropitious this may 
 have seemed to us then, it worked us this much of benefit, that 
 it procured us the friendship of a good many others of Britain's 
 victims. It appeared that his object in coming up to me 
 had been to compel me to do some of his lines for him. Most 
 of the boys in Frank's bedroom had had lines freely appor- 
 tioned them, which they were under necessity to give 
 Britain that night, for Britain to render to his account the 
 following morning under pain of being stopped-in from 
 football. All of these resolved then and there to strike as a 
 protest. I do not think they succeeded in putting their 
 resolve into effect, however. 
 
 After breakfast we were apportioned to our places in the 
 various forms : I to the fourth and Frank to the third. 
 Breakfast was the one meal that the " head's crowd " shared 
 with the school. It took place in the long room beneath the 
 schoolroom, and was comparatively a subdued affair owing 
 to the family circle at the top of the room. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Pennell, a long and thin male Pennell, a short and thin male 
 Pennell, of about Frank's age, a tall and somewhat massive 
 female Pennell, and a short, fair and frail female Pennell with 
 a sausage-like roll of hair along the top of her head, sat round 
 an oval mahogany table, chatting freely among themselves, 
 
I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 37 
 
 but throwing an unhappy spell of subduedness throughout 
 the room. Leading down from that august and awful circle 
 three long deal tables ran, with a master at either end of each, 
 culminating in the nether regions of the junior school. 
 
 From where we sat at the end I was not able to take much 
 stock of Mr. Pennell, although a small boy at my elbow incited 
 me to see in him an arch-fiend indeed. But when prayers 
 were over our names were called out by Mr. Pennell, and the 
 general stampede swept past us to the schoolroom upstairs. 
 We were introduced to the Pennell family ; Mrs. Pennell 
 said she was sure we were quite happy now ; we replied that 
 indeed we were (I had sat down all through breakfast in a 
 state of discomfort not easy to describe) ; the elder of the 
 female Pennells, who seemed to be the eldest of all the Pennell 
 family, stroked Frank's hair, and said that he was rather a 
 pretty kind of boy, whereat Frank turned turkey-red and 
 looked profoundly uncomfortable ; and, after other tortures 
 of this kind, including a sudden interest of the sausage-curl 
 Pennell in Frank, resulting from her sister's remark about 
 the prettiness, we were at last borne off by Mr. Pennell to his 
 study. 
 
 After a half-hour's searching interrogatory we were told 
 that our knowledge was quite creditable, but that we had yet 
 much to learn ; and I bore away with me the picture of a man 
 somewhat above middle-height and sturdily built. His hair 
 was coarse and plastered immaculately, clearly with the aid 
 of much water. His thick brown moustache was clipped 
 along the mouth line, giving me a curious sense of precision in 
 his speech. I was shortly to hear a confident opinion among 
 the boys that he beat his wife. Which of course was foolish. 
 But I do very well remember how it confirmed my impression 
 of him as a man to whom tenderness and love were things 
 that he had effectually drilled out of himself. In fact, his 
 perfection of drilling was all that he had. As I see it now, 
 .he had drilled himself into being a schoolmaster, although he 
 had no training and held no scholastic degree, and could 
 therefore not even have acquired the position of assistant 
 master to himself ; he had drilled himself into conceiving this 
 Junction as a charge from God, as he could have drilled himself 
 into conceiving it as a charge from the other person ; he had 
 drilled himself into taking two large houses in Hove, knocking 
 
38 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 them into one, and filling them with some hundred and twenty 
 boys ; he had drilled himself into holding his shoulders square 
 and his head erect ; he had drilled himself into despising the 
 cold and not wearing an overcoat ; and in the process he had 
 drilled out of himself whatever he may originally have had 
 of those virtues that make a man lovely and lovable. In 
 the final product he was not a man at all, but a well ordered 
 machine, that had by some odd chance, before the success of 
 the process probably, married and begotten children. 
 
 All this was not in my mind as we trod with even an acuter 
 misery up again to the schoolroom. But the basis of it was 
 there, for I remember that my emotion was not that of fear, 
 but rather one of cold dread. That night I asked Cartwright 
 what he thought of Mr. Pennell. 
 
 " Oh, Bertie ! Bertie's a brute, and a corking brute ! 
 You know, I would like to get at Warner's real opinion of 
 Bertie. I'll bet you anything you like that Warnerdugs 
 would just like to kick him sometimes/' 
 
 " I suppose Warner hates him," I said, my mind hard at 
 work on the suggested difference between Mr. Warner and Mr. 
 Pennell. 
 
 " I don't suppose Warnerdugs hates anybody, he's not 
 that sort," said Cartwright. " But you should see him some- 
 times when Bertie comes over to watch him get us through 
 Latin ! Oh, I know old Warnerdugs," he went on authori- 
 tatively, " and one of these days he'll get ill over Bertie. 
 Either that or he'll get the push." 
 
 I was about to speak further about Mr. Pennell when Mr. 
 Dixon, the prep, master, came in to turn out lights. He had 
 been very good to me that day. Mathematics had always 
 been a plague to my wits, and he had that morning been 
 entrusted to the task of leading me through its futile intricacies 
 in common with the remainder of Form Four. I had irritated 
 him more than once or twice, to judge from the light scarlet 
 flush that suffused his fair face. But he had controlled 
 himself and been patient. He was a slight, small man, and 
 it seemed to me once or twice that his patience was probably 
 a result of his hesitation and nervousness. I was confirmed 
 in this afterwards when I saw the way in which the boys, 
 especially Britain and Pole, took advantage of him. Just 
 before afternoon school I had noticed them almost bullying 
 
I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 39 
 
 him, but Mr. Warner had come up, ostensibly to ask him some- 
 thing, but as it seemed to me, with no other object than to 
 throw off Britain and his confederates by the fact of his 
 presence. 
 
 When Mr. Dixon had put out the lights and gone, with a 
 half-shy but kindly " Good-night ! " to each of us, Cartwright 
 at once said : 
 
 " Oh, I say, how does Dicky strike you ? " 
 
 " He's a decent chap, I think. I like him ! " 
 
 " Frightful mug ! " 
 
 M Is he ? " 
 
 " He's an awful soft. You can do what you like with him, 
 and I've got no use for that kind of chap/' 
 
 Now I needed no summoning to combat. " Why," said I, 
 *'' should a chap be the worse for being soft ? I wish I could 
 play as well as he does at footer, anyhow." 
 
 " Oh, he's all right at footer, come to that ! But a mug's no 
 earthly as a master. Pooh ! " 
 
 " Not with beasts under him, I suppose." 
 
 There was a long silence after this. I could hear, and dimly 
 see, Cartwright as he moved about his bed arranging his 
 clothes. He seemed unduly contemplative about it. 
 
 " The chaps mostly are," he suddenly said, and with that 
 sweeping condemnation he plunged beneath the clothes, the 
 bed creaking and groaning as he made himself comfortable 
 in it. 
 
 " Well, hang it all !" I began again, after a further lapse 
 of time, prepared to continue in the defence of an over- 
 sensitive Mr. Dixon, when a steady breathing from the 
 direction of Cartwright 's bed arrested me. " Are you asleep, 
 Cartwright ? " I said timidly in the darkness. No answer 
 came to me, and with the knowledge that he was asleep a 
 terrible loneliness fell about me, and again I put my head 
 beneath my bed-clothes the more freely to sob bitterly. The 
 human soul, I suppose, longs for company that is nearest and 
 most possible. The memory of a father and mother far 
 removed from me made me long not for them but for 
 Frank. I thought of the stretch of darkness that separated 
 me from him as something immense and inviolable, like 
 interstellar space, and my thought rose in rebellion against it 
 because, immense though it was, it was yet not so immense as 
 
40 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 to be removed beyond protest. I do not know how long I 
 lay so, in a misery that no sleep would assuage. Finally I 
 summoned a desperate courage to my soul. I drew myself 
 noiselessly out of my bed and tiptoed very gently across the 
 room. As noiselessly, with every nerve strung tightly like a 
 sharp fiddle-string, I drew open the door, and, setting it ajar 
 behind me, stood out on the landing in the night that lately had 
 appalled my thought. A gas-flame flickered on the landing 
 above the one I stood on, turned low, sending a murky yellow 
 light on to the old varnished wall-paper, and so down the iron- 
 rimmed flight of stairs. From the room beside ours to the 
 right of me a continued whisper came, and I knew that the 
 boys there, fifth form fellows all of them, were still talking 
 together in the dark. But this light and this whisper, being 
 like ghostly suggestions of their prototypes, only appalled 
 me the more, and I shivered with fear. Yet I held to my 
 resolve, and began slowly to go up the stairs, stepping well 
 within each separate stair so as to avoid the cold iron rims 
 with my bare feet. 
 
 Steadily I mounted the stairway and made my way along 
 the landing above ours. Here all was silent. At the end 
 of the landing I turned to the left and stood opposite the open 
 doorway that had been cut between the two houses. I had, 
 as I knew, to enter this other house to make my way up two 
 more stories before I came to the dormitory that Frank shared 
 with four others of his own age. I had up to now framed no 
 course of action, acting on impulse only, but now the 
 difficulties of my adventure assailed me. What would happen 
 when I actually had achieved Frank's dormitory ? Would I 
 enter ? What would the other boys think ? What would 
 Frank himself think ? Would they wake ? 
 
 But I thrust these questions down unanswered, and held to 
 my resolve. It appalled me to notice that the other house 
 was in darkness. The opening before me loomed like a cave. 
 On tiptoe, and with all my muscles hardset, I entered it, 
 however, and found that up the well of the staircase a bright 
 light shone, illumining nothing but the midmost air. It 
 seemed as though the staircase wound up the walls, cased in 
 pitchy darkness, round a central pillar of light. To assure 
 myself that the light had indeed an actual and definite origin, 
 so phantasmal did it seem, I trod over to the banisters and 
 
I MAKE SOME FRIENDS 41 
 
 looked down. The tesselated flags of the hall shone far 
 beneath me, under a lamp that was hidden from me by the 
 ironwork twining about like serpents. These were Mr. 
 Pennell's private quarters I saw. All was silent and deathly 
 still. 
 
 Suddenly I heard a door open and a voice call out something 
 loudly ; it was Miss Pennell's, I remember. A loud laughter 
 rang piercingly up the stairs, the door closed with a bang, a 
 step rang sharply out upon the hall flags. It all occurred 
 suddenly, even violently, and completely unstrung my 
 tightened nerve. I stood awhile with thumping heart and 
 shaking limbs, and then fled in fear. I half-ran, half-fell down 
 the stairs, and slamming my own bedroom door behind me 
 threw myself into bed and pulled the clothes over me. 
 
 " What's that ? " I heard Cartwright say, and his bed 
 creaked as he sat up in it. All was quiet again for awhile, 
 and then I heard him get out of bed and come over to me. 
 
 " Elthorne, are you awake ? " he asked again. I said 
 nothing, and sought to make no move. " Elthorne ! " he 
 said once more, as though sure that I could hear him. 
 
 " I went to see if I could find my brother/' I said rapidly, 
 thrusting my hand out from beneath the clothes. 
 
 " Well, you are a rum chap ! " His tone emphasised his 
 words. 
 
 " You won't sneak, will you ? " I asked him timidly, still 
 full of fear. 
 
 "As if I should ! " There was indignation in his note. 
 " But you take the fair cake ! " he went on as he philosophic- 
 ally re-entered his bed, to fall asleep soon after. 
 
 It was not till near morning that sleep came to me. 
 
42 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 VIII 
 
 OUT UPON THE WATERS FINALLY 
 
 The morning that mother was to return for her final farewell 
 to us was not one on which either Frank or I showed our best. 
 We were both in the big schoolroom, I remember, the fourth 
 form in the centre and the third to the left. A fair distance 
 lay between us, and by a device of screens our respective 
 masters (Mr. Warner for me and Mr. Dixon for Frank) were 
 hid from each other, so procuring the privacy of the classes 
 as a whole more surely than one would think to have been 
 the case. We were each of us at our favourite subjects, 
 those, that is to say, in which we were most proficient : I at 
 Latin, Frank at mathematics. But we neither displayed 
 much prowess that morning. His glance was continually 
 wandering over to mine, as mine to his. 
 
 Once I heard Mr. Dixon call out sharply : " Elthorne minor, 
 will you pay attention ? " his fair face flushing hot-red. At 
 this Mr. Pennell, who was taking the fifth form in English 
 to our right, scowled down the length of the room over his 
 spectacles. But I do not think it made much difference. 
 Each little sound caught our attention and caused our hearts 
 to beat. Mr. Warner to me was far more kind. He had 
 learnt from me that morning whom we were expecting, and 
 my heart warmed as I saw him time upon time pass over 
 obvious delinquencies of mine. In sheer gratitude I tried 
 to fasten my attention on to proceedings, futilely however. 
 
 At last I caught the far echo of a bell rung, and it was ten 
 minutes after the time when mother's train was due to arrive, 
 as my watch bade me know. At once my eye caught Frank's, 
 and his sprang to mine. How we bore the next quarter of an 
 hour I do not know. We hated Mrs. Pennell for her long 
 tongue of civil exchanges that caused this terrible delay. 
 When at last the door was opened, and Mrs. Pennell's voice 
 outside was heard to say, " Jacob and Frank Elthorne/' we 
 sought to leave as decorously as might be. With what 
 success I cannot tell. I did not even notice the " Jacob/' 
 
 Never so long as I live shall I forget that morning. Mother 
 was dressed in her would-be puritanical, but really exquisitely 
 coquettish, brown dress. A muff of darker brown lay in her 
 
OUT UPON THE WATERS FINALLY 43 
 
 lap as she sat in the bay of the Pennells' window, bathed and 
 illumined by the delicate autumn sunlight. I had not time 
 to take the details of the picture when I entered, but it 
 must have eaten its way into my mind as on the chemicals of a 
 photographic plate, for my mind held a perfect picture im- 
 mediately thereafter and ever onwards. It lived so in my later 
 recollection. At the time both Frank and I, without further 
 waiting, threw ourselves into mother's arms sobbing wildly, 
 while she protested gently, fondling us the while, and Mrs. 
 Pennell, with less wit than I gave her credit for, stood by and 
 remarked that this was indeed a strange way in which to show 
 our joy at seeing our mother. Her kindly wish, too often, 
 was marred by an officious instinct. 
 
 Mother had considerable trouble in quieting us, but at 
 last she did so, and Mrs. Pennell left us, saying that at mother's 
 wish the rest of the da}/, till mother left, was to be ours to 
 spend with her. This she announced with the manner of one 
 who conferred a considerable favour. We had never expected 
 anything else. When she left mother dried our eyes saying : 
 
 " It will never do to go out with red eyes like that ! But 
 whatever made you cry so ? Aren't you glad to see me ? " 
 
 I blurted out : " Mother, that Cartwright is not a nice 
 chap. I don't like him. Couldn't I be put in the same room 
 as Frank ? " 
 
 This was, I knew too well, grossest treason to Cartwright, 
 whom I liked well. But the atmosphere of the school was about 
 me, and I had already begun to feel that to get any one thing 
 it was necessary to ask for it on some ground that, personally 
 speaking, had nothing to do with it. To feel an objection to 
 Cartwright would, to Mr. Pennell, have seemed a far more 
 intelligible if not worthy thing than to have yearned for my 
 own brother. And mother, I knew, would have to put my 
 request before Mr. Pennell. 
 
 " But," said she, " I thought you liked him, Jack ? " 
 
 " Yes/' I answered, " I do, and I don't. He's not a nice 
 chap. He doesn't pray." Why could not folk regard a request, 
 a desire, as an excellent thing in itself, without reason to it ? 
 
 " Doesn't he ? But Mr. Pennell told me his people were 
 nice Christian people." 
 
 " Oh, but mother, may I ? I don't want to be with Cart- 
 wrght ; I want to be with Frank." To be compelled to speak 
 
44 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of my preference for him in Frank's own company seemed to 
 me an untold ignominy. 
 
 " And so you shall, Jack," mother assented heartily, seeing 
 me on the verge of tears again, though it was clear that she 
 was far from understanding me. " I shall speak to Mrs. 
 Pennell about it, and it shall be done. Now, let us go out ! " 
 I think she herself felt the oppressiveness of the place. 
 
 As the day when she first brought us down, the sunlight 
 shone, with the delicate lustre proper to it in early autumn, 
 on the waters of the sea that was whipped into gaily leaping 
 waves by a steady south-west wind that blew. The scene 
 was bright and gay, and the beat of the waves on the shingle 
 was exhilarating, being neither so mighty as to be terrific nor 
 so gentle as to lull the mind. Everything, as we walked down 
 the front towards Brighton, made for a serenity of joy. The 
 very elegance of the dresses the women wore, and the culture, 
 if false and languid culture often, of their faces, tended in the 
 same direction. It was just a day as should have made a 
 reunion a rich, enfolding experience. But there was not much 
 joy in it to us. Speech itself, the coverlet of sorrow, failed us, 
 although mother made painful efforts to whip it into existence. 
 When she urged it so, it rose into being with better intention 
 than success, soon to relapse into moody silence. 
 
 So it was all that afternoon, as we sat in a seat on the front 
 and looked across the sea. Mother asked about our scholar- 
 ship ; sought to know of the friends we made, how we liked 
 Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, and so forth ; gave us news of father 
 and his doings ; told us that it would not be long before he 
 and she would be back again to see us, while we caught the 
 misgiving in her own brave words ; and generally sought to 
 make us forget, what we could not forget, the underlying 
 sorrow in it all, because she herself was as much oppressed with 
 it as ever we were. When she finally rose to return to the 
 school, and we knew that we were now within appreciable 
 distance of the final parting, it seemed to me that no torrent 
 of tears could adequately express or assuage the fierce and 
 terrible pain of that moment. I could have sold the whole 
 world, I would have sold my soul and future happiness (that 
 my instinct and training had not made light things to me, young 
 though I was), and thought nothing of it, to have kept my 
 mother at that moment. 
 
OUT UPON THE WATERS FINALLY 45 
 
 So great was my pain that even now it is almost intolerable 
 for me to write of it. The futile platitudes at school over, we 
 went to the' station to see mother off. She herself was silent 
 now. What was the stupid irrelevant addition of gain to my 
 father's annual income beside all this ! How incalculably 
 wrong-eyed and foolish men are in their outlook on life ! 
 Mother would never even have taken into a first, much less a 
 second, consideration the Colombo offer. At the station she 
 caught us to her with something of a wild, hopeless tenderness, 
 and the tempest of our grief tore our bodies. To this moment 
 I can recall her waving handkerchief and her dear face as the 
 train curved away out of the station, leaving us two solitary 
 units on the platform. It seemed to me then that we should 
 never meet again. Sorrow is strangely prophetic sometimes. 
 I put my arm about Frank's shoulder, and he did not resist 
 me, as we trailed out of the great, gloomy, busy station. 
 
 It was Mr. Warner who came to our rescue as we entered 
 the schoolhouse that evening. 
 
 " Well/' said he, his fine face lighting up into a dignity of 
 kindliness that Mr. Pennell, I fear, would have thought most 
 unprofessional, " it's not a nice business, is it ? " And he 
 put an arm about each of our shoulders. 
 
 His sympathy broke down again the self-command that we 
 had been at such effort to achieve. 
 
 " Look here, you chaps had better go straight to bed. I'll 
 put the rest right." I simply looked up at him. How swiftly 
 he divined my thoughts ! " And you, Elthorne, would 
 like to have your minor in with you to-night, wouldn't you ? 
 I'll arrange with young Cartwright for you to change beds 
 to-night. You go and get your things down, and I'll tell 
 him to get his things out. You leave all the rest to me." 
 
 What a man he was, as I look back on him now ! I hope 
 I have done some kindly deeds like that ! 
 
 In a week's time, by mother's arrangement, I was removed 
 to Frank's dormitory. Cartwright, to my great joy, came with 
 me, one of the fellows already there being moved to make 
 room for us two. We two became the eldest members of that 
 dormitory, and though he at first took the leadership of it 
 I seem to remember that I soon supplanted him in this. 
 There was no contention in it. He accorded it as naturally 
 as I seem to have taken it. 
 
46 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 IX 
 
 I BEGIN TO FIND MYSELF GENERALLY IN PEOPLE'S WAY 
 
 When school broke up that term, Frank and I mixed freely 
 in all the gaiety and excitement of the occasion. That is to 
 say, we were to share in all the pomp and ostentation of the 
 procession, as it were, holding fiercely on to that because we 
 knew well that its inner reality was lost to us. These others 
 were all gay because mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, 
 awaited them, to love and quarrel with, forbear with and dis- 
 approve of ; they were excited because Christmas festivities 
 were before them, festivities in which they had a right and 
 title, which they might very well find not at all up to their 
 expectation, which they might very well be disgusted with, 
 presents and all, but in which their disgust and expectation 
 was not an impertinence. Any one of their realisations of the 
 event might arguably be as disappointing as ours was to be. 
 But they had their right to disappointment. We had not. 
 They had a certain proprietary that we could not claim. We 
 had to look forward to an aunt who somewhat repelled us, 
 and an uncle who alternated between wild concern and utter 
 disregard, and who irritated us in one as he caused us to feel 
 subdued in the other ; we had to look forward to pale, some- 
 times hectic, festivities at which we were guests, and at which 
 the real proprietary was loudly asserted by our cousin Henry, 
 whom we both dubbed an unconscionable prig, and of whose 
 future as a man we, as we confided to one another, shuddered 
 to think. Moreover, and this was the poignant note that raised 
 irritation to tragedy, this was our first Christmas away from 
 home. Behind the figures of a restless, lean, black-bearded 
 Uncle Jacob, and a cold, austere, pale and handsome Aunt 
 Mary, loomed, as by way of bitter contrast, our tall, handsome, 
 vivacious, practical-joking father, who was always annoyed 
 if others did not take his practical joking in good part, and our 
 winsome, lovely and self-denying mother. Behind the exquis- 
 itely furnished house in Hampstead, conceived throughout 
 with the eye of an artist, shone the homely house in Saggart, 
 the mist on the dark hills, the two favourite robins, the pale, 
 fitful December sunshine, the musical richness of the voices 
 of the people, the sense of freedom and homeliness, the shops 
 
IN PEOPLE'S WAY 47 
 
 in Graf ton Street, and, above all, mother's bustling and 
 mysterious activity, her round, great, splendid puddings, the 
 mystic threepenny bits therein that roused us, father most of 
 all, to such excitement, Cousin Bas with his high-pitched, 
 infectious laughter, and father's own irrepressible high spirits 
 and vivacity, his interminable gaiety and jokes both with us 
 and with Cousin Bas, his spending money with both hands on 
 this great occasion of the year, and his fecund wit for games 
 in which he, Cousin Bas, Frank and myself, and often mother, 
 played like uproarious children of an equal age, till Maurya 
 would exclaim in a mixture of wonder and laughter : " Ah, 
 did ye ever now ! And if master isn't the one ! " 
 
 Behind the lean prospect all this exceeding richness shone, 
 and caused me many heavy broodings. I wondered what 
 Maurya was doing, she who had come so strangely to seem part 
 of the household, in a sense that cannot surely happen out of 
 Ireland. Particularly I wondered what Cousin Bas would do, 
 who had sent us several wonderful and extraordinary epistles 
 (letters they cannot be called) during term. It seemed to my 
 instinct then, and I approve it most heartily now, that these 
 had a claim on father that lay far nearer beauty and sanity 
 than any advancement in his commercial career. All this 
 depressed me. It drove me into the caves of melancholy, 
 where, if the lights are sombre, many beauties lie. Never- 
 theless, the bustle and activity about me, the general buzz of 
 anticipation, and the eager comparing of hopes, fetched me 
 out as often as I went in ; and both Frank and I took our 
 healthy part in the excitement that went forward, though 
 its occasion lacked in us. Even the wild joy of the train 
 journey where my top-hat got sadly crushed in a confined 
 game of leap-frog, and was pushed out and carefully smoothed 
 over by each of the fourteen boys in the compartment save 
 Frank, rather to the worsening of its already dilapidated 
 appearance was shared by both of us. 
 
 But the following year even this was denied us. The stream 
 went by us, and left us gazing at its turbulence. Something 
 had gone wrong somewhere, the nature of which I can only 
 guess at now, with the result that Mr. Pennell informed us that 
 he had " not been able to receive a satisfactory letter from 
 Mrs. Mueler, and that until he did so we would have to continue 
 at <:he school." So we gloomily watched the boxes being 
 
48 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 packed, and the hopes and anticipations being exchanged, 
 knowing ourselves to be outside of it all. For a time no one 
 paid any attention to us. It was scarcely to be expected that 
 they should, for had they not their own great absorptions ? 
 But it was just the note that sufficed to turn grim misfortune 
 into suffering. At last, however, Cartwright and Ransome, 
 who were my own especial cronies, came up to me. 
 
 " I say, you know, it's rotten, this is," said the former, 
 sitting beside me and surveying the toes of his boots as he 
 thrust out his legs. 
 
 " What's rotten ? " I said, with an affectation of grim 
 unconcern. 
 
 " Why, your being stuck up in this hole of a place," broke 
 in Ransome, in his quaint, excited way. " I say with Cart- 
 wright, it's rotten, and it ought to be stopped." 
 
 " Oh ; who's going to stop it ? " 
 
 " Somebody ought to. It oughtn't to be allowed. Hang 
 it, it's not the game ; and I'm shot if it is." 
 
 " Watching us gas about our people, and pack up, and all 
 that sort of thing," explained in Cartwright. 
 
 " Well, I suppose we've got to shove through with it." I 
 spoke with a stoicism I was far from feeling. 
 
 " I say, what do you say to going down town ? " Cartwright 
 said suddenly. 
 
 " Can't." 
 
 "Why not? " 
 
 " Haven't got leave for one thing, have we ? " 
 
 " That's all right. Cartwright and I have just asked 
 Bertie. Let's go to Patrioni's." Patrioni was famous for 
 his cream tarts, and some of the sixth form fellows had 
 already gone there. 
 
 " Don't mind." It would have been bad form had I shown 
 any signs of the eager joy that lit up in me at the prospect. 
 " But what about the minor ? " 
 
 " He's going with some fourth form chaps." 
 
 " Oh, I can't." I remembered suddenly that a bunch of 
 keys, one penny and two halfpennies, was all the wealth my 
 pockets held. I wondered, too, as to Frank. 
 
 " Bosh ! " said Cartwright. " We're standing treat in this 
 Ransome and I." 
 
 " Thanks awfully ! " 
 
IN PEOPLE'S WAY 49 
 
 " Look here/' broke in Ransome hurriedly, " let's get, 
 or we'll be frightfully out of it. Your minor's gone, you 
 know." 
 
 I caught their purport, and saw in it a wider scheme than 
 at first it had seemed to be, for Frank's exchequer was in no 
 better state than mine. It moved me curiously as I went with 
 them. 
 
 The morning on which school broke up we awoke to discover 
 a snow-mantled bright world, and glee winged high. Vivacity 
 became twice as vivacious, and to expectations no bounds 
 could be set. Frank and I were exhilarated not less than the 
 others, but as, after breakfast, we trod our way with the 
 fellows to see them off at the station, I must admit (at least 
 for myself) that the snowballs I flung were shot with some 
 bitterness at my opponents. And as we turned back presently 
 alone, along the roads that lately had rung with our voices and 
 laughter, we sought to pick up snowballs against each other. 
 But it was a miserable failure. 
 
 When we returned to the schoolhouse we discovered that 
 a magnificent project was afoot for the general entertainment. 
 Miss Pennell and the elder of her brothers, abetted eagerly 
 by the two junior members of the family and a friend of hers 
 that had arrived the previous day to spend Christmas with 
 them, had drawn out the large school toboggan. It would 
 have been dangerous to have used it, I imagine, for it had a 
 seating capacity for eight people. We anticipated excite- 
 ment, and were stirred accordingly. After lunch, however, 
 we were made acquainted with the unrivalled splendour of 
 the project, and from two to five o'clock, while the rest of 
 the household (save Mr. Pennell, who did not suffer himself this 
 relaxation from the habit of discipline) in warm furs sat upon 
 the vehicle, Frank and I nearly broke our backs, and utterly 
 broke our winds, drawing the merry party about the town. 
 
 Yet it was on the following day that the bitterness of it all 
 rose to a pitch that was almost too acute to be borne. As on 
 the previous day, when tea was over we took our way up to the 
 big schoolroom. One of its three chandeliers, and one of 
 its two gas stoves, were lit for our especial benefit, with the 
 result that we were in the radius of a small glow of light sur- 
 rounded by a profound and appalling darkness. Moreover, 
 this outer darkness assailed our lighted region with its cold, 
 
50 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and we were compelled to sit almost upon the stove in order 
 to get the smallest sensation of warmth. I occupied myself 
 with reading one Boy's Annual, and Frank another. We 
 each, to be sure, had tracked everv serial in them to its con- 
 clusion more than once, and had read and re-read all the shorter 
 tales ; but it was a question of a third reading or school 
 primers and we chose the third reading. It is easy to see 
 that interest of this kind cannot very properly be spoken of as 
 absorbing, and the result was that after a while I fell a-musing. 
 My mind turned back two years to the old days at Saggart, 
 that were already becoming dim and distant. The dark- 
 ness that lay around me, into which I saw rows of desks 
 disappear, from light yellow to dim grey and so on into sug- 
 gestion, like steps into infinity, seemed a proper background 
 for such memories, fair and wondrous as they were, fading into 
 distance. So, by mutable pictures, I passed to wondering 
 what manner of homes the other fellows had. I tried to 
 imagine what they might be doing at that moment of time. 
 I tried to imagine it as something unreal, as something I might 
 have read of in the great book I clasped on my knees, when 
 it came on me with a shock of wonder and pain that it was not 
 something unreal at all, that they at that moment actually 
 were living and breathing, maybe laughing and bragging, 
 certainly enjoying themselves. Involuntarily I spoke out. 
 
 " Minor ! " 
 
 For answer he let fall his book and looked over at 
 me. 
 
 " What do you think the other chaps are doing now ? " 
 
 For a minute he did not reply, then : " Shut up ! " he 
 snapped, and returned to his book somewhat determinedly. 
 
 I do not think he achieved much reading. For me, I know, 
 reading was a thing out of the question. A train of imagina- 
 tion having been set up, it would not be denied. After a 
 long silence I said again : 
 
 " I expect just about now they're putting up the holly and 
 mistletoe/' It was the day before Christmas Eve. 
 
 " Oh, I say, do shut up," Frank broke out in a storm of 
 protest at once, letting me know that his thoughts too had been 
 on the subject. " Isn't it rotten enough to be like this with- 
 out ? " He did not finish his sentence. His voice 
 
 thickened on his last word and he stopped himself quickly. 
 
IN PEOPLE'S WAY 51 
 
 What would have happened to his emotion I do not know, 
 for at that moment " Gentle Sue/ 1 the school servant, came 
 in with our supper on a tray, two cups of cocoa and four hard 
 biscuits apiece, " dog-biscuits " as we called them. 
 
 " Here's your supper/' said she, and added, " I expect you 
 find it lonely, don't you ? " 
 
 Frank scowled at her. 
 
 " Don't ! " I said. " But if you're very good, Gentle 
 Sue, you can sit down and talk to us." 
 
 Admirable " Gentle Sue " ! She did so. And I think, if 
 I remember rightly, before she fled hastily to escape the 
 " missis goin' on," she caused me to thrill with music by giving 
 me my first love-kiss. 
 
 It was not for me to blame the Pennells. I did not blame 
 them then. Indeed, I imagine I defended them against 
 Frank's querulous complaint. They had their circle complete, 
 and we could only have broken it. They left us outside because, 
 from their point of view, our proper place was outside. In 
 some ways, miserable though we were, we were yet less miser- 
 able than we would have been had we been admitted to the 
 circle. For we held Mr. Pennell in positive dread. I had 
 once won the estimation of the fellows that I was a brave, 
 bold hero because, on an instinct of courtesy, I had ventured 
 to point out to him that he had a dent in his bowler hat : 
 such was the petrifying fear he had cast on us. And no holi- 
 days could have dismissed that fear. For Mr. Pennell holi- 
 days demanded more discipline than school-hours, since the 
 temptations to relaxation were more. Only that afternoon 
 he had allotted us some or other imposition for some or other 
 recalcitrancy. Impots. in holidays ! It violated all our sense 
 of honour and decency. I had pointed this out with some 
 indignation to Frank. " What's decency got to do with 
 Bertie ? " came his growling and suggestive rejoinder. 
 
 But we had our meals with the family. And when, the 
 following morning at breakfast, I saw a letter for me in Cart- 
 wright's handwriting, and discovered it to contain an invita- 
 tion from that stout friend, one from him and a confirmation 
 from his mother, for both of us to spend Christmas at his place. 
 I bit hard on my tongue to hold myself from startling the 
 assembled Pennells with a loud shout of joy. It was a full 
 five minutes before I dared permit myself to speak, for fear 
 
52 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of showing an eagerness that he would have deemed it his duty 
 to discipline by withholding his permission from the accept- 
 ance of the invitation. He himself was reading a letter when 
 I ventured to address him. 
 
 " Sir ! " 
 
 For answer he pulled his spectacles down to the tip of 
 his nose and looked over at me. 
 
 " Sir, Cartwright has written asking if Frank and I can go 
 to spend the holidays with him to go to-day. Can we, 
 sir ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid not/' he replied, with a smile that with him 
 indicated that he thought he had made a humorous remark. 
 
 My whole being sickened at his words. Such pure malignity, 
 however, seemed inconceivable, and I returned to the charge 
 with a tone that suggested that to me so painful a matter was 
 no occasion for cold jokes. 
 
 " But he has written to ask us," I said, holding out the 
 letter. 
 
 " I am perfectly well able to understand English, Elthorne, 
 and I heard you say that before/' he said, leaving me to with- 
 draw the letter dismally. 
 
 All the whole heavens became dark and gloomy to me. I 
 looked gloomily on the letter that lately had seemed so fair 
 and now seemed so useless, and there was weeping done 
 somewhere though my eyes were dry. I drooped before the 
 eye of my tormentor. 
 
 " You spoke a little too soon/' went on his cold, unvarying 
 voice. " I have a letter here from Mrs. Mueler, in which she 
 says that she wishes you to spend Christmas with her. You 
 are very fortunate to have so kind an aunt." 
 
 Aunt Mary, to us, was a prospect very little fairer than 
 school. Hampstead was not to be weighed in the balances 
 with Cartwright's home in Hampshire. 
 
 " But we would rather go to the Cartwrights', sir. Wouldn't 
 we, Frank ? " 
 
 Before Frank could answer, however, Mr. Pennell had broken 
 in : 
 
 " You ought to be ashamed of expressing such a sentiment, 
 Elthorne. You deserve a severe imposition for it. After 
 your kind relatives are willing to upset their domestic arrange- 
 ments for you ! " The horror of the thing passed his expres- 
 
IN PEOPLE'S WAY 53 
 
 sion. It even brought a little warmth into his voice. The 
 phrase clung to me though, for I seemed to catch in it an echo 
 of Aunt Mary's own words, and it put so violent a distaste 
 into me against going to a house where Frank and I mani- 
 festly were not wanted, that it even drove me into the courage 
 of a fresh attempt. 
 
 " Mayn't we go to Cartwright's, Mr. Pennell ? " There 
 was in my voice the suggestion of a courage that was pre- 
 pared to take the bit in his teeth, and the " Mr. Pennell " 
 was the sign of it. 
 
 It caused Mr. Pennell to prick up his ears. He threw himself 
 back on his invincible coldness. 
 
 " Get your boxes packed immediately after breakfast. 
 You will be going before lunch to-day. " 
 
 To my immense surprise who should be waiting for us at 
 London Bridge station but Uncle Jacob himself. Aunt Mary 
 was not even there. Nor was the hated Henry. The sight 
 of the solitary uncle so amazed Frank and myself that we 
 were futilely trying to realise the situation when he came tip 
 to us. 
 
 " Well, well, boys, and here we are ! Another Christmas 
 come round again, you see ! And we're all growing older, 
 aren't we ? " All this f riskiness, too, was a strange thing from 
 him to us, though not strange from him to certain friends of 
 his that wrought designs and schemes for his business. " We'll 
 just get along now. You are both looking very well. That's 
 good. Excellent." 
 
 So he talked on, continually, in his breathless way, as he led 
 us to his cab that awaited us. 
 
54 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 X 
 
 I FIGHT A GREAT FIGHT, WITH A SAD RESULT 
 
 Some have called me an egoist. Probably the epithet is a 
 correct one, but it is only fair to say that such egoism has a 
 very real humility for twin. Egoism, like most labels, is a 
 meaningless phrase that masks a mass of emotions both evil 
 and good, and good not less than evil. 
 
 I recall that immediately the novelty and strangeness of 
 school life had worn off me, I had begun to take the lead in 
 most things when the lead lay open to me, and hungered for 
 the lead whenever it was denied me. I had always taken the 
 lead with Frank, and most surely then when he most grumbled 
 at it. I had at once taken the lead in the dormitory, although 
 Cartwright was older than I, taller than I, and stronger than 
 I. He had most loyally supported me in my self-assumed 
 leadership, except in wayward moments of satiety and rebel- 
 lion. The bullying of Britain and Pole, fiendish, cruel, and 
 persistent as it was, galled me not so much by reason of the 
 pain it gave me as by the fact it dimmed my sense of leader- 
 ship, and injured me in the eyes of my fellows. And when 
 one day at football Pole sought to dribble past me, and I 
 flung myself at him in a furious charge that bore us both to the 
 ground, although the shock left me with a headache for the 
 rest of the day (it left him with a limp for a week) my joy was 
 unqualified, for it caused me to be deleted from the carefully 
 chosen list of victims that he and Britain practised their craft 
 upon. This had opened to me new fields of conquest, which 
 I had not been slow to enter. 
 
 My conquests never managed to overtake my ambitions, 
 however. In Ireland we had not played football at all, and 
 my first ambitions at school had been directed towards a place 
 in the first eleven. A loftier or more remote ambition at that 
 time could scarcely have been conceived. It took me a year to 
 achieve, and a year at that time of life is as a thousand. Mid- 
 way through my second autumn term I had been asked by the 
 captain to take my trial in a match. Our captain, I may say, 
 used at times to play for Hove, and my pride was corres- 
 pondingly a significant matter. I had played three or four 
 such games during that term, but had not yet won my first- 
 
A GREAT FIGHT 55 
 
 eleven cap, for which I lusted. I never doubted myself as 
 worth it. I used to lie awake at night, and alternate dreams 
 of football matches in which I played surpassingly well, with 
 eager arguments with the captain that demonstrated to him 
 finally that odd and spasmodic match-play was no test of a 
 fellow's game, that continuous fine play drew out fine play, 
 that it gave tone to one's play, to say nothing of the important 
 effect responsibility had on any fellow really worth his salt. 
 
 But when, after our return to school from Hampstead, 
 where Uncle Jacob had maintained his initial jollity with 
 extraordinary success, and Aunt Mary had had hardly a kind 
 word to throw on us, the captain had called me into one of 
 the smaller class-rooms and told me that I was to receive my 
 cap and that my name would appear in the team for the first 
 match, and so regularly onward, I could almost have wept 
 with a joy that was humiliating in its intensity. I felt uplifted 
 with a heavenly nobility. It needed no command then to 
 forgive my enemies. I forgave them one and all freely. I 
 could have given all my worldly goods away unstintingly, 
 I felt as though I really wished to do so, so as to approve myself 
 worthy the honour. For I recognised it as an honour, 
 although I felt that I was worthy of it. We had had a strangely 
 awkward and unhappy time on our holiday. Uncle Jacob, 
 with his new and mysterious desire to please us and make us 
 at home, was only present during the evening. Aunt Mary 
 had been frigidity incarnate, and it had been impossible to 
 give the incorrigible Henry the thrashing that we both decided 
 was the only thing that could save his soul. Moreover, a new 
 trouble, by the name of Mary, had by now arisen to power and 
 turbulence, with whom, and her nurse, we had often been left 
 while Henry and Aunt Mary went out for the day. But all 
 these weighed as nothing with a velvet cap, mauve and yellow, 
 silver tasselled, in the opposing scale. They were less than 
 nothing. Indeed, they were a proper introductory discipline. 
 
 So I felt then. And when the following Saturday, after 
 school, the captain presented me with the velvet honour, and 
 when, later on, I stepped on the spongy turf with it capping 
 my head, I felt humbled to tears. Honour has always attuned 
 me to itself. I played that afternoon with such vigour and 
 keenness that the captain openly thanked me in the pavilion, 
 before the whole team, when the match was over. 
 
56 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Out of this trouble arose. For, while my position in the 
 field was left-half, Britain was centre-half, and thus colli- 
 sions came. Like most bullies he had a mean soul, and my 
 initial prowess in the field angered and embittered him. He 
 tried to spoil my play by encroaching on my side of the defence. 
 I protested to him, but he only told me to mind my own 
 business which, as is clear, it was my wish to do. However, 
 I soon had an opportunity of settling accounts level. For 
 once when he intruded on to my play, the ball was quickly 
 put into the centre of the field and a very dangerous rush 
 developed. How it quite came about I do not know : I 
 suppose a sort of instinct had sent me round to the exposed 
 gap, for no sooner had the rush developed than I leapt in, 
 foiled it, and sent the ball up the field again thus doing 
 Britain's work while he poached on mine. In a loud and 
 clamorous tongue, as his way was when annoyed, the 
 captain abused Britain roundly, and passed me a hearty 
 compliment. 
 
 I knew that several of the fellows thought Britain had been 
 unjustly treated in this, but the superiority of my position 
 I think must have got into my blood, for I paid little attention 
 to it, save one discussion with my cronies Cartwright and 
 Ransome. During the following week, one day immediately 
 before afternoon school, as I sat preparing some or other 
 subject that till then I had not looked at, I heard Britain 
 stride into the schoolroom and immediately proceed to give 
 the arm-screw to one of the second form fellows. He always 
 did this, and it was generally submitted to in silence, for fear 
 of greater evils. But this time there was a yelp. 
 
 " Oh, you bully ! " 
 
 " Hullo ! What's that ! Cheeky, eh ? " came the reply, 
 with a further twist of the arm. 
 
 " Yes, you are. And you're going to be dropped out of the 
 team next match." 
 
 " What do you say ? " The twisted arm was released as 
 Britain seized the youngster to turn him round for his question- 
 ing. There was amazement and alarm in his voice. I, too, 
 pricked up my ears. 
 
 " Yes, you are." 
 
 " Who told you that ? " 
 
 " Young Elthorne," 
 
A GREAT FIGHT 57 
 
 " Oh, did he ? " saying which, Britain strode out of the 
 room. 
 
 I sprang up at this. " Did the minor tell you that ? " I 
 asked Britain's late victim as he nursed his arm, and I could 
 see from his face that it was a lie he had told to distract his 
 tormentor's attention. So I fled out of the room in a white 
 heat of anger to find where Britain was going. 
 
 I had not to go far. For in the hall downstairs I saw Frank 
 excitedly undertaking an exchange of stamps with another 
 fellow, while between him and myself Britain was slowly and 
 deliberately advancing on him. We all faced the same way, 
 so that Frank neither saw Britain, nor did Britain see me. 
 
 " So I'm to going be chucked out of the team, am I ? " 
 
 Frank cried out in surprise and pain as Britain gripped him 
 by the hair, and, putting his knee into the small of his back, 
 drew him suddenly backwards. Immediately I flung myself 
 upon him, with the result that, slipping on the flags, the three 
 of us slid forward and fell in a heap in the vestibule beyond, 
 considerably to the astonishment of the youngster with whom 
 Frank had just been bargaining. 
 
 When Britain picked himself up he was furious. So was I. 
 He had eyes only for Frank. I had eyes only for him. 
 
 " I'll teach you," he said, seizing hold of Frank's arm. 
 
 " Stop it ! " I cried out stridently. 
 
 " Oh, it's you, is it ? " he said, turning round on me. " You'd 
 better clear out of this." 
 
 " Not till we settle this," I said, my sudden flame of anger 
 passing to a fierce obstinacy. It had to come to this, and 
 it had best be done with. Not for a long time would I find 
 myself so prime for it as now. 
 
 " Get out ! I've got to settle with your minor." And he 
 seized Frank's arm again. 
 
 I flung myself at him again, and the struggle that ensued 
 was interrupted by the sound of steps coming up from the 
 basement. It was Mr. Warner. " Now then, come along, 
 school ! " he said, waving us before him as he made his way 
 to the gong. 
 
 " Half -past four in the boot-room, young Elthorne, and 
 I'll smash your face," Britain said to me as we went up the 
 stairs. And I gave him my assent, and braced myself to 
 the thought of it. 
 
58 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 The boot-room was the scene of all deadly encounters. 
 And half-past four was generally the hour chosen for such 
 matters, because immediately after afternoon school Mr. 
 Pennell retired from our sight to the bosom of his family. If 
 one of us had ever breathed a word reflecting on him or his he 
 would have attacked us mercilessly with birch or ruler, 
 attacked us till a cry of pain, if the anguish in it was sufficiently 
 poignant, satisfied his wounded honour. But he was the only 
 person who was suffered to take such reprisals. If he attacked 
 his defenceless insulters, that was punishment. If any of us 
 defended our honour, and gave our opponent an honest 
 fighting chance withal, then that was broiling and seeking to 
 deface the image of God. Such was the code that he had 
 arranged for his own satisfaction, and, knowing it, we fought 
 our affairs of honour when and where he was least likely to 
 disturb us. 
 
 It made an ideal place for a fight. Lined round on three 
 sides by rows of lockers, and tiled with stone, it made a fall 
 so serious a matter that each pugilist fought with terrible 
 desperation long after his strength was spent. On the fourth 
 side of the room was the sink where we washed on compulsion 
 after football, and gave our silk hats the famous water-shine 
 on Sundays and a low cupboard, on which sat the privileged 
 spectators. I remember the brass handles and keyholes of 
 the white lockers shining in interminable rows round and 
 above me as I stripped and stood to face Britain that after- 
 noon. He was half a head taller than I, and bigger all over in 
 proportion, and so I bit on my lips to rouse myself to such a 
 Berserker rage as I had read of and heard Mr. Warner tell of. 
 This had been Cartwright's advice to me. He and Ransome 
 were my seconds ; Pole and another fellow (I forget who) were 
 seconds for Britain. Frank was amongst the chosen half- 
 dozen spectators on the cupboard. 
 
 " Stand your ground, and lead him on a bit," said Cart- 
 wright to me. 
 
 " Don't be an ass ! You go straight for his eye and plug 
 it up ! " whispered Ransome excitedly as they both pushed 
 me into the arena. 
 
 Ransome's words rang in my ears, and touched a necessity 
 in my soul, as Britain and I stood facing each other circling 
 round and about each other. I slipped forward quickly, and 
 
A GREAT FIGHT 59 
 
 leaping impetuously above Britain's guard, struck wildly at 
 his eye. I missed it, and my knuckle fell on his cheek-bone 
 instead, leaving it flushed and angry. It was a miss, but it 
 was a glorious miss. The spectators on the cupboard took 
 me at once within their favour, while Ransome and Cartwright 
 called on me to keep at it. Writers may say what they will 
 about fighters fighting better when they fight cautiously. 
 That blow on his cheek made Britain fight cautiously and 
 with care at once, thereby robbing his fight of half its sting. 
 My opening success may have made me careless, but it gave 
 me devilry, which was the main matter. 
 
 But Britain had length of arm and weight of muscle. He 
 was brawny, whereas I was slight. So, as we surged to and 
 fro, if he landed fewer blows on me than I on him, the total 
 effect was that the advantage lay with him. Yet the spec- 
 tacular effect was mine, and this gave me a substantial advan- 
 tage in the cheers that backed me. To and fro thus we surged, 
 stepping and edging round the brass knockers, each of which 
 gleamed with uncanny brightness in the flaring gas-light. 
 There was no cessation. It had been decided that we should 
 observe the rule of the school, and fight through. And we 
 stood finally, blown and weary, for a breather. 
 
 Suddenly then, as we stood so, breathing heavily and glaring 
 at each other, Britain leapt at me with his fist drawn back for 
 a mighty blow. I threw up my arm in an attempt to ward it 
 off, with the result that it fell on my forehead and threw me 
 violently against the lockers, very nearly stunning me. He 
 was not slow to make the utmost of his advantage, for he 
 rained blows on me, beating me to my knees. Then one of 
 those strange things happened that so often in life make 
 misfortune the very basis of recovery. Looking up, with my 
 arms raised above my head to ward off his blows, I saw his 
 face (I see it now), saw along it rather, in three-quarter per- 
 spective, smiling malignly. I jumped to my feet, right within 
 his guard, so that my head forced its way between his arms 
 and struck his chin. He fell over, staggering to the floor. 
 Yet, though Cartwright and the excitable Ransome called 
 on me to " plug him/' I was too sick with his blows to do 
 anything. I let him rise to his feet, and we stood glaring at 
 each other. 
 
 It was clearly impossible for either of us, under the 
 
60 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 circumstances, to demand a " best " of the other, and the 
 whole field hung irresolutely when our spy fled into the room 
 crying : " Cave, Warnerdugs ! " He was none too good a spy. 
 I suspect his attention had been chiefly within the room, 
 for hard upon his heels came Mr. Warner himself, and we 
 all stood, trapped and defiant. Straight and upright he stood 
 there by the door, his clear eye taking in each detail of the 
 situation. It last rested on Britain and myself ; he with 
 blood dripping from his mouth, I with certain bruises on my 
 face and arms. I almost think he smiled, but it was hard to 
 tell when Warnerdugs smiled. His mouth was always firm : 
 it was his eyes that gave his smile. 
 
 " Oh, it's you two, is it ? " he asked, almost as though he 
 had expected it. " What about the rules, eh ? " 
 
 We none of us spoke, but glared only. 
 
 " Now stay just as you are. I know all of you here, and 
 you, none of you, move till I come back." Saying which he 
 abruptly left the room. 
 
 No sooner gone was he than a chorus of conjecture arose as 
 to the cause of this strange disappearance. Britain and I 
 even forgot our enmity as we exchanged our conjectures, 
 while the fellows on the cupboard thronged the floor with 
 their questions. None of us, however, thought of flight : 
 Warnerdugs was a law to us, based on the respect he had won 
 from us. 
 
 " I know what he has gone up for/' said Cartwright suddenly 
 and with conviction. 
 
 What then ? " asked we all, sceptical. 
 All right, disbelieve me then. But I know for all that. 
 He s gone up for his gloves." 
 Rot ! " said Britain. 
 
 How did you know he has gloves ? " I asked. 
 Seen them. He has shown me. And he has taught me 
 boxing too." 
 
 And there came floating on my mind sundry advice he had 
 called out to me as Britain and I had fought, couched in 
 curiously professional language. 
 
 His words rang conviction, and immediately Britain and 
 myself squared off again in an attitude of opposition, and the 
 spectators rushed back to their rank. The affair was now 
 going to be a matter of dignity and order. 
 
A GREAT FIGHT 61 
 
 Dignity and order, however, are seldom the parents of 
 interest. Cartwright was accurate in his suggestion. Mr. 
 Warner returned to the scene soon with gloves altogether too 
 large for either Britain or myself, which we nevertheless 
 were compelled to wear. But with their advent and the 
 advent of all that they connoted, the whole proceeding was 
 bled of reality. To be true, Mr. Warner did not interfere with 
 our rough and tumble too much, his advice was impartial, 
 and was given when we rested panting at each other, but it 
 introduced formality, and formality is the death of vitality. 
 We fought heavily, rather blunderingly. Whenever we 
 rested from sheer exhaustion Mr. Warner asked us in turn if 
 we gave the other best, an attempted seduction of manhood 
 that was sturdily resisted. How long it lasted I have no 
 conception. It seemed an eternity to me. At every renewal 
 the gloves doubled their weight, and they finally were 
 impossible to lift, so imponderable had they become. So Mr. 
 Warner compelled us to shake hands, and dissolved the 
 assembly, while each of us gathered to our adherents and 
 proved conclusively that the issue had clearly gone against 
 the other. 
 
 Yet the fight ended the matter for us. It did not bury the 
 enmity : the nature of the case made that unlikely : but it 
 made a renewal of hostilities improbable because both 
 Britain and Pole withdrew all attempts, henceforward, to 
 molest rne or my friends one of the results of which was 
 that a regular gathering of devoted adherents grew around 
 me. 
 
 It did not end the matter for others, however. For two or 
 three days after the fight I noticed Mr. Pennell eyeing me 
 closely. With him to eye closely was to eye malignly, and 
 I could not imagine with what new vindictiveness he was about 
 to honour me. I was not long to remain in ignorance. 
 About a week after that he came in after supper was finished 
 and said he wished to see me in his study 
 
 "" Is it true you have been fighting, Elthorne ? " he asked, 
 as he faced me in his dimly-lit room. 
 
 " Fighting, sir ? " I asked, with the usual attempt to gain 
 time while my heart beat a rataplan on my ribs. 
 
 ' Now don't attempt to prevaricate, sir ! " he burst in 
 mercilessly. " Don't add sin to sin ! " 
 
62 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 It was plain he knew much, though how much I could not 
 say. I fell back on brevity. " Yes, sir ! " I said. 
 
 " Who with ? " 
 
 " I had rather not say." 
 
 " You shall say/' He was a man devoid of all honour, or 
 honourable instinct. 
 
 I remained silent. 
 
 "Was Mr. Warner there? " 
 
 The whole issue suddenly narrowed to a sharp point. It 
 became tragic and intense. I had no time to think things 
 out, and the whole situation seemed to me full of peril, and 
 the only thing to be done seemed to me to deny all the possible 
 danger. 
 
 " No, sir ! " I said frankly, my face raised to his, like a 
 champion of the innocent. 
 
 He took me by the shoulders at this, and shook me 
 ferociously. I held my ground firmly : would not admit 
 any of the questions he put to me, without respect to their 
 truth or falseness. I would have lied with the best or worst, 
 I have no doubt. But at that moment it was not my wish to 
 lie. I was not untrue. I was holding to the higher truth, and 
 wished only, as I firmly believe, to deny all implication in 
 a dishonourable position. But Mr. Pennell was not the man 
 to see this. In what he, no doubt, genuinely considered to 
 be righteous, moral anger, but what was no more than splenetic 
 rage in being baulked of the attempt to vent the unhealthy 
 humours the years had gathered in his mind, he seized a 
 heavy ruler off his desk, and, holding my left hand closed 
 (always the left hand, for the disablement of the right meant 
 a holiday) he struck on it again and again. To have cried out 
 on an ordinary occasion would have been undesirable but 
 permissible. On such an occasion of honour as this to have 
 cried out would have been discreditable weakness, and I let 
 no sound break from me, though the pain was intense, and the 
 tears ran down my cheeks. To cry out, to yell with pain, 
 was a recognised method of halving one's punishment with 
 Mr. Pennell. I think he yearned for that yell. Consequently 
 I was nearly in a state of collapse before he stayed his hand, 
 and when he did so, he rated me soundly for having sullenness 
 added to my numerous other wickednesses. 
 
 The fellows were sitting up in the dark waiting for me when 
 
A GREAT FIGHT 63 
 
 I entered our dormitory. I could not trust myself to speak, 
 but lay on my bed moaning with the pain which they thought 
 great fun, till its continuance made them realise my pain was 
 not a prank. Then they held an indignation meeting, and 
 when I told them that I had been put " to Coventry " for 
 lying and fighting they made a circle and, with many formulas, 
 swore they would not regard the " Coventry/' that they 
 would continue to speak to me though they were expelled for it. 
 
 The following morning I discovered that Britain's knuckles 
 were whole and sound as the result of a violent yell on the 
 second blow, and that his " Coventry/' was only to be for a 
 fortnight. But the chief thing that interested me was to 
 discover how Mr. Warner had fared. A grip of his hand on 
 my shoulder told me he knew the position of affairs. But I 
 wanted to talk to him. The opportunity for this soon came. 
 As it lay to him to enforce the decree of " Coventry " I was not 
 permitted to walk with any of the fellows in our morning 
 walk, so he broke his tale-telling, tale-hearing band and 
 walked with me himself. 
 
 " You shouldn't have lied, Elthorne," said he. 
 
 " No, sir," said I. Reproof from him was not a thing to be 
 questioned. 
 
 " Still, you meant well, and that's a great thing." 
 
 Boy-like, I glowed with affection for him. Yet I wanted to 
 know how he fared, and I did not like to ask him. It was not 
 necessary. 
 
 ' You see," he went on, " he knew all the time. He and 
 I had had it out already." 
 
 " But how did he find out ? " 
 
 " One of the chaps told Jim." Jim was Mr. Pennell's 
 youngest son, a kind of general spy in the school. 
 
 14 He's a dirty little beast of a sneak." 
 
 " Well, never mind him ! Anyway, I am going at the end 
 of this term." 
 
 " Oh no, sir ! " There was a ring of pain in my voice, and 
 I looked up at him with large distress on my face. 
 
 <c I should have been leaving next term in any case," he 
 continued resolutely, " because, you see, I have got my 
 divinity examinations to go in for. So a term here or there 
 doesn't matter much." 
 
 We walked on in silence for awhile. " Let's talk of 
 
64 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 something else," he said then, feeling, perhaps, that my 
 emotions were heavily charged. So we talked of something 
 else. 
 
 Then it burned on me that only the previous morning I 
 had had a piece of news by the mail that transcended all 
 incidental troubles. 
 
 " I say, sir/' I burst out eagerly, " do you know that 
 the mater and pater are coming home at Easter ? " 
 
 " Yes, I did know ! " he said. 
 
 For a moment or two the significance of the reply did not 
 shine on me. Then I suddenly saw its strangeness. 
 
 " You knew ? " I asked, looking up at him as he smiled 
 down on me. When he smiled, his firm, somewhat protruding 
 chin seemed to protrude yet more, with the result that his 
 strong face never looked more strong than when he smiled. 
 
 " Your mother wrote and told me/' 
 
 " I say, do you know the mater ? " 
 
 " She wrote to me, and we have corresponded since/' 
 
 Other things began to dawn on me. 
 
 " It wasn't through you we went to Uncle Jacob's at 
 Christmas ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I wrote and told your mother that you 
 seemed likely to spend Christmas at school." 
 
 " Thanks awfully. It was brickish of you, sir ! " 
 
 " Was it ? I don't think so." 
 
 " But I say, how ripping to think you know the mater ! " 
 
 The sun seemed to shine anew as we walked beside the sea. 
 The earth was a good place after all. Even bandaged 
 knuckles and the coming month of " Coventry ' ' were forgotten. 
 And with his familiar gesture Mr. Warner's hand came down 
 and gripped my shoulder. 
 
HEAVY NEWS 65 
 
 XI 
 
 HEAVY NEWS 
 
 When a schoolmaster employs the institution of " Coventry " 
 against a boy he at once provides a test whereby his truth 
 may be judged. Truly the institution is not his at all, it is 
 one of the weapons of his craft : it was originally invented by 
 the boys themselves, to be put into operation by themselves 
 against one of themselves. There is a certain distinction 
 and dignity about it that is supreme. It is like the with- 
 drawing of hands from a polluted thing. The withdrawal of 
 an interchange of words is not only a punishment, it is the 
 refraining from contamination. Consequently it is seldom 
 put into operation by the boys themselves, and when it is 
 employed by them they are nearly inevitably right. There is 
 a certain soul of honour in them that is a safe court of appeal 
 in weighty issues, and even though they may err in fixing 
 responsibility their sense of abhorrence or indulgence moves 
 along right lines. Consequently if I heard of a school- 
 master who " put " a " Coventry " into operation against a 
 boy that the boy's fellows refused to recognise, other things 
 being equal I should be quite prepared to judge that school- 
 master as being unhealthily minded without meeting or 
 knowing him. 
 
 For example, I cannot conceive of Mr. Warner " sending " 
 a boy " to Coventry/' and that edict not being recognised. 
 Similarly I cannot conceive of Mr. Pennell making that edict 
 with any effect. I only know of two occasions on which he 
 did promulgate such an edict, and on each occasion the effect 
 was to raise his victim in the eyes of his fellows. Certainly 
 it was so with me. Under fear of his cruelty the cruelty 
 that rectangular, professed and avowedly rectangular, minds 
 have always bathed in with delight they were compelled to 
 regard his edxCtk when he was present, or whon it was certain 
 he would learn of it, as when his sons were present, but on all 
 other occasions no difference was made in their attitude 
 towards me, save that of increased respect. Even Mr. Pennell 
 felt it, which is saying a very great deal. Once, on one of his 
 customary prowls about the place, he came into the boot-room 
 while some or other discussion was being hotly waged, and 
 
 F 
 
66 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 in which I was taking part. Everybody feared him ; but this 
 seemed sunk for a moment as the whole room-full of boys 
 turned and faced him. Fight and challenge were in the air. 
 The moment was electric. So much so, indeed, that he 
 turned and went out of the room as softly as he came. Nothing 
 was ever said about it, but more than one noticed that for 
 two or three days afterwards the maximum penalty of 
 impots. came my way from him. 
 
 Consequently when one day as my term of imposed silence 
 was drawing to a close Mr. Pennell entered the class room 
 where I and others were befogging an Italian nobleman, who 
 had undertaken to teach us French, with a myriad of cross 
 questions, and said that he wished Elthorne major to go to his 
 study and await him, a thrill of anxiety ran through most, a 
 wonder as to what next evil had been devised for me. As I 
 passed out Cartwright kicked my ankle for sympathy, and 
 left a bruise that remained for weeks. Sundry others hit 
 and punched at me, and I felt a rise of sympathy behind me. 
 
 To my surprise Mr. Pennell remained behind in the room 
 while the Italian nobleman with an instinct of courtesy closed 
 the door after me. As I remained a moment outside the door 
 I heard Mr. Pennell start to address the class, and I felt it 
 was a characteristic meanness on his part to attempt to 
 prejudice my fellows against me before I had even heard of 
 my sin. 
 
 In Mr. PennelFs study, to my considerable surprise, I found 
 Frank, who had just arrived there. Apparently Mr. Pennell 
 had adopted the same course with him as he had with me. 
 
 " What do you think he wants, Jack ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know, the beast ! 'Tany rate he can't impot. 
 me any more. I've got more on now than I can get through 
 this term." 
 
 Presently " the beast " came in. He was fluttering a 
 telegram in his hand, and a preternatural gravity gave an 
 added harshness to his face. He placed his hand beneath his 
 coat as he addressed himself to speech. His coat was always 
 buttoned by its top button, and a characteristic gesture of his 
 was to insert his hand just beneath this button, with the thumb 
 showing on the outside over the button. It was with him a 
 sign that he was on his dignity. 
 
 " Elthorne major and Elthorne minor/' he began, " God 
 
HEAVY NEWS 67 
 
 has been pleased to deliver you a blow." Having said this he 
 looked from one to the other of us as though to impress on us 
 the fact that no less an authority than God Himself had now 
 joined him in the matter of blows. For ourselves, this 
 uncanny beginning perturbed us but left us in the dark. As 
 this was probably the effect he had wished to produce, he 
 drew himself erect and went on with his half-threatening 
 mystification. " You are young yet the two of you/' it 
 is quite likely I may have bridled a little at the soft im- 
 peachment, " very young. As you will find when you grow 
 older, He never punishes us except for our good/' This 
 ancient tag broke the spell, and we began to fidget on our feet, 
 and to look away from his gravely glittering eye. Then he 
 waved the telegram at us. " I have just received this telegram 
 from your aunt. You are, both of you, to go up to London at 
 once. God has been pleased to take to Himself both your 
 father and your mother/' 
 
 If he had meant that his strange telling of the news should 
 be as a buffer between us and its shock, he certainly was 
 successful, for Frank and myself looked at one another dry- 
 eyed and unmoved. Ordinarily the thing would have been 
 inconceivable enough, but told as it was, in the way it was and 
 by that erect, hard figure inevitably linked in our minds with 
 cant speech and brutal despotism, it was like one of his rare 
 jokes that always hurt somebody and left the rest uncom- 
 fortable. To have sniggered in his presence would have been 
 unthinkable folly, in view of the pains it would have called 
 on us. Except for that I think we would have sniggered. 
 
 The peaceful receipt of his dread news aroused his utmost 
 indignation. 
 
 " Are you utterly shameless and unfeeling ? " he said, 
 turning on me with his hard eyes glittering in his anger. 
 " Have you no natural love in you ? This is terrible. I 
 know no boy in this school, Elthorne major, that more needs 
 the grace of God than you. I have tried, God knows ; I have 
 not spared you punishment. You have no conception of the 
 truth ; you are the ringleader of mischief in your dormitory, 
 leading the other boys astray ; you broil and fight ; your 
 work is always behindhand ; and here, when God has been 
 pleased to take from you both your parents in one blow, you 
 stand there and face me as though it were the most ordinary 
 
68 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 occurrence in the world. What is to be done with you, boy ? 
 If He can't reach you, how is it to be expected that I will ? 
 And you, Elthorne minor, I am afraid your brother's influence 
 has corrupted you, but you are little better. How many 
 lines have you to do ? " 
 
 " I don't know, sir." 
 
 " And how many hours in ? " 
 
 " I forget." 
 
 " There you are ! " He turned to me again. " You, I 
 know, can have no time left to yourself for the rest of the term. 
 I have even thought of having you put out of the team, but 
 Jameson has persuaded me not to." My heart fell at this : 
 Jameson, I may say, was the captain's name. " Well, it is 
 useless my saying more at the moment. Go to your room, 
 the two of you, and Mrs. Pennell will come and pray with 
 you." 
 
 Surprised, and relieved, to think that we were to be let off 
 with so short an interview, we went upstairs to the cold 
 bedroom more like the victims of punishment than the 
 recipients of sympathy. The chief matter that occupied my 
 thought was not the sorrow that had come to me, that seemed 
 strangely remote and unreal, but rather the few hard words 
 with which Mr. Pennell had touched upon my delinquencies. 
 It struck the raw, and left it smarting, to be told that I was not 
 truthful. There was colour for the remark, as I know : there 
 was something not straightforward about me, something 
 that preferred the turning of a flank to a frontal attack, until 
 the moment when my temper and doggedness were aroused ; 
 and this, I know, this sensitiveness as I felt it to be, often 
 appeared as a falsehood, although my very being cried out 
 that it was not wrong, that it was a thing that might work 
 wrong or work right, but in itself was a thing not undesirable. 
 And then his reference to me as the ringleader of the dor- 
 mitory ! I certainly was emphatically its leader, but how 
 did he know ? 
 
 In fact, both my self-conceit and my desire for a privacy in 
 leadership had been struck, and I sat on the edge of my bed 
 exchanging one bitter thought for another. Then it flashed 
 on me suddenly that, whatever Mr. Pennell did or did not 
 mean by his enigmatical talk, this much seemed clear, that 
 neither father nor mother would be able to come home as they 
 
HEAVY NEWS 69 
 
 had promised to do. It brought my galloping thought up- 
 standing as with a lassoo. 
 
 " I say, minor ! " I said. 
 
 " Hullo ! " 
 
 " That means that neither the mater nor the pater will be 
 able to come home." 
 
 A long silence followed this unpalatable, but seemingly 
 undeniable, fact. Then Frank spoke. 
 
 " I say, Jack, do you think the old beast was getting 
 at us ? " 
 
 " He is a fair beast ! " 
 
 " He's a fathead ! " 
 
 Still the thing seemed as remote as ever, despite that 
 recognition of the one outstanding, unpleasant feature. How 
 much nearer we should have got to it cannot be told, for shortly 
 af terwards Mrs. Pennell appeared on the scene. She fondled us, 
 she commiserated with us, she wept over us, and she prayed for 
 us. Finally by one means and another she reduced us to so 
 lachrymose a condition that we dared not look at one another 
 for very shame. Yet not one of our simpers was for grief, 
 or because we had come to a realisation of our loss. It was 
 merely that Mrs. Pennell had, by her various assaults on 
 our emotions, thoroughly depressed our vitality. At any rate, 
 when she left us presently, we were whimpering and indignant 
 as she was pleased and triumphant. 
 
 In the afternoon of that day as we stood in the hall while 
 the porter brought down our boxes, one or two of the fellows 
 passed us on their way upstairs, and they looked at us so 
 oddly and so strangely that we felt more and more as though 
 we had done some felony. We began to feel thoroughly uncom- 
 fortable, and of nothing so desirous as the fresh air and the 
 sunshine. Just as we were going out, as we stood in the 
 doorway, and Mrs. Pennell, her offices completed, had returned 
 to domestic management, I heard a clatter of feet down the 
 stairs, and before I could turn about to see who it was, a hand 
 fell upon my shoulder and a voice in my ear said : 
 
 " I have just got the old moke to let me out for a shake. I 
 say, you know, I'm jolly sorry, and all that kind of thing. 
 It's a beastly shame, isn't it ? Hope the moke didn't preach 
 you about it. Bet he did though ! But I say, you're coming 
 back, aren't you ? " 
 
70 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 It was Ransome, impulsive Ransome. He made me feel 
 human again. 
 
 " Rather ! Tany rate, I suppose so." 
 
 " I say, rotten if you don't." 
 
 " Rotten isn't in it." 
 
 " Look here, I say, I've got to cut back now, old man, or 
 the moke'll begin to sniff. Write us ! " 
 
 " Rather ! " 
 
 From half-way up the stairs he stopped to call back : 
 
 " And, you know, I'm beastly sorry." 
 
 His bullet head looked over his thin shoulders for a moment, 
 then his bony legs sped up the stairs again two at a time. 
 And, as he went, for the first time a sense of our loss struck 
 me like a buffet of wind across my face. Yet it was not till 
 we sat in the train, as it sped towards London, tjiat we first 
 truly realised the significance of the news that hacj/feo upturned 
 the order of things for us. 
 
 The afternoon was a dull one, and the low windows of the 
 carriage diminished yet further the light that was abroad. 
 The carriage was dirty, the upholstery was dim and faded, 
 and the smell was stuffy and noxious. Presently there came 
 a gleam of sunshine that flashed across the carriage. Im- 
 mediately, by some unaccountable fitting-in of things, my 
 mind went over the years. I smelt the same stuffy cushions, 
 I saw the same ray of sunshine, I realised the same depressing 
 carriage, I saw Frank and myself sitting as we sat before; 
 but with it all I saw the figure of mother sitting as she sat 
 then, so sweetly troubled and responsible, gently protesting 
 at our uproar as though she knew so much better than we the 
 sorrow that was in store for us all in that hour of our first 
 parting. I drew in my breath sharply, so identical did the 
 scene seem, and so vivid was the memory. Then it flashed on 
 me that the figure, so anxious and lovable and pretty, was 
 never to be seen again. I bit on my lips again and again, but 
 it was no use. Like a sudden storm a torrent of tears 
 broke from me, and I hid my face in my arm on the window- 
 ledge. 
 
 Quickly Frank was at my side. " I say, Jack ! " was all 
 he said. 
 
 I think there must have been something like horror of 
 realisation as I said to him : 
 
HEAVY NEWS 71 
 
 " Mother ! We shall never see mother again as she was 
 here that day ! " 
 
 Certainly his answering look to mine was one of horror. 
 
 " Nor father/' said he, which was characteristic. And 
 we both fought against our tears, without any too great 
 success. 
 
 We were red-eyed when we reached London, and shrank 
 from venturing out on to the platform of the station. Aunt 
 Mary met us, and never before have I known her so warm- 
 hearted and kind. 
 
 r ' You poor boys/' was all she said, as she found us and took 
 us to the cab. 
 
 That evening we learnt that on the previous evening, after 
 dinner it startled us to think the time was so near, the 
 distance being so far father had been stricken down with 
 cholera, so the brief cablegram ran, and mother even as she 
 nursed him had caught it too, with the result that the following 
 morning the very morning of the day we were on, so strange 
 it seemed they had both been buried. I, as the elder, had 
 the cablegram handed to me, and I fingered it with a strange 
 sense of awe and responsibility. There was something about 
 the very way in which both Uncle Jacob and Aunt Mary 
 addressed me that made me feel as though I were no more a 
 schoolboy but a person of some responsibility and account. 
 So much so, indeed, that I choked down my tears, and asked 
 a number of questions, which were no doubt ridiculously 
 inapplicable to the circumstances, but which were useful 
 inasmuch as they declared my right to ask them. 
 
 How little we know how one circumstance not only leads to, 
 but positively makes, another. To-day's exultation may be 
 the very cause of to-morrow's lamentation. The catastrophe 
 that lays the earth in ruins at our feet may be the very agent 
 of the fairer structure that shall succeed. I believe it was 
 that very assertion, that proud and, what I fear will be called, 
 bumptious assertion of myself that put a thought into my 
 uncle's head that was to change the whole course of my life. 
 I know the following day I saw him and Aunt Mary in very 
 earnest conversation together, a conversation that was 
 punctuated by repeated glances at me where I sat, as they 
 thought, intently reading. All my curiosity was at once 
 awake. I could catch a thought that floated in the air more 
 
72 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 quickly than most, at all times of my life. I was not intro- 
 spective enough at that time of life to analyse myself, and 
 therefore I will not obtrude an analysis now. Yet I knew 
 that something important was being discussed as regards 
 myself, and I was irritable and distressed to know what it 
 was. I watched everything keenly, and noticed that the 
 following two days two telegrams arrived. That is to say, 
 they were brought in in the ordinary way as telegrams, but 
 I saw that the colour of the envelopes was different, that they 
 were similar to that which had conveyed the cablegram I 
 had seen. And I wondered what further news had come from 
 Colombo. I wondered, too, when we were going back to 
 school. 
 
 Also, both Frank and myself began to realise the meaning 
 of the loss that had come to us. There was a harrowing, 
 indeed, from the conscious atmosphere of mourning that per- 
 vaded the house, an atmosphere that was materially affected 
 by the copious black with which Aunt Mary decked herself, 
 and the black bands with which our arms, hats and necks were 
 bound ; but our realisation of tremendous loss was quite 
 independent of, ran by the side of, the effect this pageant 
 had on us. One depressed us, the other made us feel blind 
 and groping and pathetically helpless. This, joined to the 
 uncertainty of what was being discussed, produced in me a 
 sense of strain during the following few days that could scarcely 
 be borne. 
 
 Yet I was not long to remain ignorant of the talk concerning 
 me. Before a week was full, and after Frank and I had 
 repeatedly expressed each to the other our yearning to get 
 back to school, impots. and all, one evening after dinner 
 Uncle Jacob called me into his study. I went, knowing that 
 something critical was being breathed, and with Frank's 
 merciless pinch on my arm to wish me success whatever the 
 matter was. 
 
 Uncle Jacob's study was a room built out from the house 
 into the vegetable garden. It had double windows and double 
 doors, and all appliances necessary to shutting out noise. 
 A thick carpet over all the floor maintained the silence he 
 had so won. It was a large room, and two sides of it were 
 stacked with books from the floor to the ceiling. A third 
 side, where the grate stood, was hung with original sketches 
 
- HEAVY NEWS 73 
 
 and paintings, while the fourth side was almost a continuous 
 arrajr of windows. It was on this side he had his desk, with 
 tables of the same height on each side of it strewn with various 
 drawings and designs. 
 
 On a flash I saw it all unforgettably as he opened the door 
 and signed to me to enter. I had only been in it once before : 
 on our first visit to London. Then I had thought upon its 
 luxury, and felt on the whole somewhat contemptuously 
 towards it and its owner. How different the thing had become ! 
 Now there was no father to stir such contempt by his fine, 
 debonair defiance of the slightly bent figure with the richly 
 coloured cheeks and flashing eyes. Now I had been passed 
 under the power of that irritably dominant will dominant 
 by reason of its own strength and also because of the hazard 
 of a superior position. I was afraid of him, and that great, 
 comfortable room loomed before me with an aspect almost 
 sinister. 
 
 There was also an active reason for this. As Uncle Jacob 
 opened the door and signed to me to pass him, I felt on an 
 immediate instinct that a change had come over him. 
 It was not till we were both well inside the room that I felt 
 this strongly enough to give a name to it. As he stood by the 
 fire I saw that I had not to deal with a man, but a machine. 
 His black hair and beard were now grey. His smirking smile, 
 that had once looked as though its owner sought for favour, 
 was now hard, conscious of its strength, and, as the lower 
 jaw drew down pulling the cheek with it, actually cynical at 
 times. His hands fidgeted with papers on the mantelpiece ; 
 his eyes as they sought mine flashed with fire, out of which 
 a strange look of benevolence sometimes came a something 
 that one called benevolence in spite of a strong instinct that 
 it was not so ; a benevolence, if benevolence, that lurked on 
 the borders of spitefulness, to smite with the latter if the former 
 failed to lure. As he looked on me, I felt almost as though he 
 had subdued my will to his, sought to employ my personality 
 in his favour, actually before he spoke a word. All the week 
 he had treated me kindly as a nephew. He had even taken 
 notice of me, which he did not usually do. Then he had seemed 
 like a kindly, certainly well-intentioned if decidedly irritable, 
 old man. Now he seemed like a falcon. He had taken up his 
 business attitude. Previously he had treated me like a human 
 
74 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 being, now he was about to treat me like one of his 
 clerks. 
 
 " Well, Jack, now we have to think about you, eh ? " 
 So he began, looking quickly at me, and then looking back 
 again on the papers that he fingered. 
 
 I made no reply. What reply was there for me to 
 make ? 
 
 " I have cabled to Ceylon/' he continued, " and I learn 
 that your aunt and myself have been appointed executors 
 for your father's will, with the trust of your brother and your- 
 self. The sum of money for that purpose (your father was not, 
 I fear, much of a thrifty man : still !) should provide two or 
 three years longer at school for Frank, with his keep for that 
 time, and some of yours, maybe, too. These are details 
 that you probably will not very well understand ; still, as 
 they are important, you may as well be told them/' 
 
 He said this in a deprecatory manner, as though to tell me 
 what he at the same time withdrew from me. I had no means 
 of contradicting him, and so had to accept what he said, 
 thinking hard all the time as to what the upshot of all this 
 should be. Having allowed sufficient time for the effect of 
 his indulgence to pass and be forgotten, he proceeded : 
 
 " Now there is yourself ! Have you thought what you would 
 like to be ? " 
 
 Poor me ! I did not at that time understand the signifi- 
 cance of foregone conclusions, so I said eagerly : 
 
 " Yes, I should like to be an orator ! " 
 
 Uncle Jacob looked at me with wide eyes for a moment. 
 Then he snapped : 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 The tone of his voice made me feel a good deal less certain 
 of my choice. But I did not give in. I put as much truculency 
 into my voice as I replied. 
 
 " I should like to speak. I should like to influence people." 
 
 Either what I said, or the attempted note of assertion, 
 irritated the old man, for I saw his beautifully pink cheeks 
 turn a fierce red at the cheek-bones. 
 
 " Don't be a fool, boy ! " he broke out. " And when you 
 speak, do so more respectfully. 1 ' 
 
 It was not what he said, but something about his way of 
 saying it cowed me. It was as though virtue had gone out of 
 
HEAVY NEWS 75 
 
 me. A long silence ensued ; as I had nothing to say, he went 
 on : 
 
 " What kind of a calling is that : an orator ? My boy, 
 you don't think. What do you mean by being an orator ? " 
 
 It was for him, I thought, to help me out with the interpre- 
 tation of my ambition in terms of modern society. All I 
 knew was that in my day-dreams, and in my fancies as I lay 
 awake in bed, mingling with scenes of football fields where I 
 was the hero of both sides, there had come vivid pictures of 
 myself holding an audience spellbound with a power of words, 
 where the eloquence swept a host off its feet while my chain of 
 reasoning convinced them that it was proper so to be swept. 
 What it was I said, or what were the subjects on which I 
 discoursed, I did not know. What did such trifles matter ? 
 The great thing was the speaking, not the subject one spoke 
 upon. I remembered once or twice defending or denouncing 
 great criminals according to the effect their personality had 
 on me. But these were of little consequence. I even knew 
 my gestures where I did not know my subject. And how was 
 I to tell all this to Uncle Jacob ? I doubt if I could even have 
 told them to mother, had she lived. So I merely murmured 
 inarticulately about " my ambition/' and " swaying people," 
 with other disjointed phrases of that ilk. 
 
 Then Uncle Jacob smiled ; and his smile was worse than his 
 irritation, for there was a triumph almost malicious in it. 
 
 " You don't know, Jack, what it is you do want," he said. 
 
 Having crushed my mind by the weight of his, he went on 
 v/ith timeworn phrases. " When people, especially boys, 
 don't know what they want, they need other people, wiser 
 than they, to make up their minds for them." At this sally 
 of his, his eyes smiled maliciously, while his jaw dropped and 
 moved forward in an odd manner of racket movement, as 
 though he would not make too much of his own joke, it being 
 a little obvious. " Don't you think so ? " 
 
 I could feel him forcing me to say yes : so I said it. 
 
 " I am glad you agree with me, laddie, because, though the 
 responsibility of your care is now in my hands, I would not 
 like to do anything against your will. You will be surprised 
 to hear that your Aunt Mary and myself have already dis- 
 cussed this question. We have decided that the best thing 
 for you is that you should come into my own business for a 
 
76 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 short time, in order to gain some business experience. Then 
 I should have you under my own care, and you would be 
 learning as well as making yourself useful. Now, don't you 
 think that a good idea ? " 
 
 I felt just as though I had been thrown into a cold pond 
 with all my clothes on : cold, clammy, helpless and half- 
 terrified. He stood there, looking at me to increase my feeling 
 of helplessness. 
 
 Then a horrible thought struck me. " Not now ? " I 
 said. 
 
 ' Well, since you have decided, the sooner the better/ 1 
 ' Shan't I go back to school ? " 
 
 ' In any case, that's out of the question." 
 
 4 Rotten ! " 
 
 ' What do you say ? " 
 
 ' I want to go back to school, uncle." 
 
 Uncle Jacob's eyes hardened a little, and his jaw dropped, 
 at this. He looked at me for a moment or two, then replied : 
 
 " What is being decided is for the very best." He waited 
 a further moment or two, then went on : " I'll take you down 
 myself in a few days, but you need not start regularly till 
 Monday week. Frank will go back to school before then." 
 
 Not much more was said, and I remember stepping out 
 of that soft carpeted room into the long passage that led back 
 to the main building with an utter feeling of loneliness, such 
 as even the mingled emotions of resentment against, and fear 
 of, Uncle Jacob could not displace. The passage was dark, 
 and I felt as though I were walking along a gloomy channel of 
 eternal tears. Even those daydreams in which I imagined 
 myself as the inspired leader of throngs failed to come at my 
 bidding to succour me. Not knowing why, a nameless horror 
 of working under Uncle Jacob came upon me. It only weighed 
 me down hopelessly. There was only Frank I could turn to. 
 He was the sole thing left to me, and it was salutary that I 
 should have to discipline myself in order to be able to address 
 him in the recognised code of speech. I found him in the 
 dining-room, drawing. 
 
 " Hallo ! What are you at ? You're always messing about 
 drawing things." As I spoke I flung myself into a big chair. 
 
 " What had Uncle Jacob got to say ? And don't talk so 
 much." 
 
HEAVY NEWS 77 
 
 " He's just about as big a pig as Bertie. Worse, because 
 he does call himself an uncle, and t'other chap is only a moke/ 1 
 
 " What's the matter ? " 
 
 " I'm not to go back to school." 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " There was a wail of trouble in his voice, 
 
 " I've got to go into his business, straight off." 
 
 " He's a beast." 
 
 So we had tried to commiserate with one another. And so 
 we faced the situation with words. But it was not to be put 
 off with words. 
 
ACT II 
 
 4 
 
 LOVE AND LIFE 
 I 
 
 THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 
 
 Thus at the wise age of fifteen summers I undertook the 
 mature business of helping to earn my living. I wasted my 
 time at school. Mr Pennell had not the remotest idea as to 
 what education was though in that, to be true, his ignorance 
 was ably assisted by the majority of schoolmasters in England. 
 Within two years, all I had ever been told was utterly for- 
 gotten. I remember the very word " logarithms " puzzling 
 me when I read it in a paper, and only when I turned it up 
 in an encyclopaedia did I recollect that for nearly three weary 
 terms it had been the terror of my thoughts. I do not so much 
 mind that, but there is one matter that has often caused me 
 bitterness. For Virgil, beyond the idle memory of his name, 
 became completely effaced, and I have never had time in my 
 life to recover the lost key to that world of magical speech. I 
 had even enjoyed him at school, which is to say much, for 
 the rich cates of his poetry had been made as nearly like brick- 
 bats as was possible. All I knew of Greek was the hideous 
 memory of wandering for ever in the interminable labyrinth 
 of the verb, with Mr. Pennell's detestable figure at every bend 
 to make confusion worse confounded. German, too, vanished, 
 the only memory being of wandering with a vague sense of 
 discomfort down a long alley of a sentence in the dim hope 
 of finding a verb that should make all things plain. It was 
 
THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 79 
 
 French I chiefly remembered, and that, I believe, was because 
 the impecunious foreign nobleman who bore the charge of 
 teaching us this language had not as yet fallen into the English 
 methods of mystification. Our f lessons with him were not 
 lessons in the ordinary meaning of the word. They were 
 romps, in which we would help him out with his English almost 
 as much as he would help us out with our French. The result 
 was that we did not learn, we achieved, and we not only 
 achieved, but we became familiar, even to the extent of know- 
 ing quite naturally some of the most elliptical idioms. 
 
 Had only our work-hours been affected, the trouble might 
 not have been so grievous. Our whole days had been affected 
 by this incubus. Because our healthy minds ejected with 
 scorn and loathing the whole masses of undigested matter 
 poured into them, impositions were showered on us for having 
 failed in our duty. Because our healthy bodies were irked 
 by the unnatural restraint imposed on them, further imposi- 
 tions were scattered abroad. Beyond the first three weeks 
 of a term I had never known what it was to have a moment 
 unfettered by impositions. It was with the utmost difficulty 
 that our captain could manage to maintain inviolate our 
 football practice. It must have seemed comic to an outsider 
 (it assuredly was not comic to us), to see our leisure hours 
 slipping away, slipping away, under a gathering accumula- 
 tion of impositions, an accumulation the first start of which 
 began with the first day of school. It was, we knew, of no 
 avail trying to reduce the pile. It would, in any case, gather 
 more quickly than we could reduce it ; and by an inviolable 
 code, each term was reckoned as closing its account with itself. 
 
 The only true education I remember meeting was the making 
 of one or two worthy friends and, above all, Mr. Warner, and 
 the memory of him. All the rest was chiefly waste, though 
 by no means agreeable waste, which is the only sort of waste 
 that is tolerable. Yet I think that the waste of those years 
 is not comparable with the sheer wastage of the years that 
 followed. During the two days after Frank left for school, I 
 was so utterly miserable and disconsolate that I was only too 
 glad when the following Monday morning came round, and I 
 was led up by Uncle Jacob to business. He had large ware- 
 houses in Thames Street at the back of Queen Victoria Street, 
 at Which offices he presented himself daily with unfailing 
 
8o JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 regularity not later than nine o'clock of a morning. All the 
 way up in the train he neglected his daily paper in order to get 
 my nerves into a jangle by informing me of the responsibility 
 and importance of the step I was about to take. He continued 
 this even as we walked through the great swinging doors into 
 the artistically decorated vestibule showroom. Then he flew 
 into a towering rage because the clerk who had the charge of it 
 could not be found. A little, pale, elderly man, with a 
 moustache nearly as large as his jaw hiding half his face, 
 appeared at this, and sought to mollify him. 
 
 " But where is Tozer ? " Uncle Jacob asKed in a half -scream 
 of anger, his face even to his forehead flushing hot-red. 
 
 " I don't think he's up yet," faltered the little man, in a 
 very paroxysm of fear. " 111 go and see, sir." 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Tonson ! " The little man, who was pre- 
 paring to leave the stricken field, was held back by this. Uncle 
 Jacob looked on him as though he would have struck him. 
 The little man's state was pitiable to see. Having held him 
 thus, Uncle Jacob then went on : " Not up yet ? What do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 As this was clearly a difficult question, the little man 
 merely said : 
 
 " Yes, sir ! " 
 
 " Why isn't he up ? " 
 
 " It's it's not yet nine, sir ! " The little man pulled out 
 his watch as he spoke, as it were in corroboration, in spite of 
 the fact that a large ornamented timepiece hung on the wall 
 over our heads. Moreover, a hard, red line across his forehead 
 was evidence of the fact that he himself had barely arrived. 
 
 " Not nine yet ! What has that got to do with it ? If I 
 can be here by five to nine, can't my staff do the same ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir ! You are a fool, Tonson." 
 
 How long this unprofitable dialogue would have continued 
 if left to itself, I cannot say. The little man was getting ashier 
 and ashier of hue, the perspiration standing on his forehead, 
 while Uncle Jacob was getting redder and redder. It was as 
 though one were feeding on the other. But at that moment, 
 Tozer, the subject of discussion, walked in. 
 
 He was a tall, shock-headed, red-haired boy, with a com- 
 plexion like a girl's, and a nose thrust forward at one, as it 
 
THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 81 
 
 were, in continual contempt, showing the nostrils. He was 
 like a Gael, and was in fact a Gael, dropped unceremoniously 
 into an orderly London business world, giving it the lie in 
 every one of his gestures full of health. His tweed suiting 
 suggested heather ; and his silk orange tie had been crookedly 
 pulled up with a scant respect for the City of London. He was 
 about four years my senior, and was loose of limb but easy 
 and swinging of gait. 
 
 [< You're late, Tozer," said Mr. Tonson with a sudden 
 revival of authority, and an accompanying slight revival 
 of colour. 
 
 " I'm not," said Tozer peacefully, secure in the knowledge 
 of his right, pulling out his timepiece, and looking up at the 
 clock, in double confirmation of it. It was addressed, however, 
 not to Mr. Tonson, but to Uncle Jacob. 
 
 " Dear, dear me ! No rule and discipline in this place at 
 all." Saying which, Uncle Jacob plunged off on the way 
 upstairs to his room, leaving us, a group of three, neither of 
 whom had any conception of the next thing to do. As he 
 disappeared through the door leading to the stairs, the memory 
 of us seemed to strike him, when he turned about and as 
 quickly came back again. " What are you wanting here ? " 
 he said at once to Mr. Tonson in a voice full of righteous indigna- 
 tion, as though that little man had of set design sought to 
 waste his time. 
 
 " Nothing, sir ! " replied Tonson, very distressed and 
 worried. 
 
 " Then, for goodness' sake, haven't I got enough to do ?" 
 
 What the new crescendo was that was a-wing cannot be 
 said, for its cause was happily removed by Mr. Tonson hurry- 
 ing from the room in great fear. Whereupon Uncle Jacob, 
 as suddenly forgetting him, turned to Tozer and said : 
 
 " Tozer, this is my nephew, Jacob Elthorne. Find him 
 something to do about the showroom for to-day, while I 
 think of a department for him." 
 
 No sooner had Uncle Jacob gone than my tawny guardian 
 bore me across the room, and, opening a large parcel that leant 
 against the wall there, displayed before me a sketch finished 
 in great detail. 
 
 " What do you think of that, eh ? " he asked me, with a 
 note of triumph ringing in his voice. 
 
 G 
 
82 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Looks like a fireplace/' I ventured. 
 
 " It is a fireplace/ 1 There was rebuke as well as triumph in 
 my tawny friend's voice. 
 
 " Yours, I suppose/' I said, affecting great unconcern in my 
 voice, as though I were in the confirmed habit of meeting 
 artists. 
 
 " Mine ! Good heavens, I wish it were ! I can't draw for 
 nuts/ 1 And he stood back and gazed on it approvingly, his 
 head a little to one side. 
 
 This frank avowal made it difficult for me to understand his 
 strange enthusiasm, but it left the field open for a frank 
 expression of my opinion. 
 
 " I say, it has got to be a decent-sized room to take it." 
 
 " Yes/' came his slow, deliberate answer, as though even so 
 much of a disparagement of his idol was to be deplored. " But 
 then, you see, it's not to be a cheap thing." 
 
 " But if people had a room large enough to take that, don't 
 you think it would be ever so much better to have one of those 
 fireplaces you can get right inside of ? They are ever so much 
 jollier, I think." 
 
 " But you mustn't say that." 
 
 It took me a short while to understand the full meaning of 
 his sudden expostulation. Then I said : 
 
 " Why ever not ? " 
 
 " This is by one of the boss' favourite artists." 
 
 " Oh ! " I said. The news left me cold, but it certainly 
 distressed me considerably to find that the fear with which 
 Uncle Jacob had imbued me some ten days previously, was 
 the general state of affairs here, and in twice as acute a form. 
 It drove foreboding into my thought. Moreover, the terror 
 produced by that sudden rage of his, perplexed and baffled me. 
 I had seen him attempt them at Hampstead, but then Aunt 
 Mary would immediately withdraw everybody from him, and 
 a lusty fury in an empty room is a tiresome proceeding at 
 best. Up in Thames Street they seemed to sweep through the 
 building like a tempest. It did not occur to me then that in 
 Thames Street men were dependent on his whim for bread and 
 butter, whereas at Hampstead they were independent of him. 
 The law had imposed certain arbitrary obligations in the one 
 case that it had declined in the other. 
 
 While Tozer was showing me various matters of interest 
 
THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 83 
 
 about the place, Mr. Tonson burst in. His face was pale, his 
 manner was energetic, and there was evidently some trouble 
 about. 
 
 " What do you mean by being late this morning ? " This 
 he threw out at Tozer before he reached him, as a kind of 
 advance-guard, while he followed it up in person as with heavy 
 cavalry. 
 
 Tozer wheeled round to meet him. " I wasn't late/' he 
 said, " and I told you so." 
 
 " In a most insolent way, too." 
 
 " Insolent ! I like that." 
 
 Tozer looked even more tawny as he stood long and large in 
 rebuttal of this charge. But Mr. Tonson was the most interest- 
 ing figure. He had no presence and was of little significance. 
 But what he lacked in substance he endeavoured to make good 
 in vehemence. It was quite obvious even to me, an outsider, 
 that he imitated Uncle Jacob. What Uncle Jacob wrought 
 on him, he sought to wreak on those beneath him. The 
 print of the man he imitated was large all over him, and 
 those under the direction must have suffered a continually 
 unhappy time, I thought. But he did not seem to have much 
 effect on the tawny one. 
 
 " Don't answer back," he cried. 
 
 ' Then what do you ask me questions for ? " 
 
 " I shall report you to Mr. Mueler." 
 
 " Oh, don't be silly ! " 
 
 Unprofitable, and therefore endless, dialogues seemed to be 
 much in favour in the firm of Jacob Mueler, Ltd., as far as I 
 could gather. They seemed to go on, with short pauses between 
 question and answer for the further accumulation of venom, 
 till something quite exterior to them rudely interrupted them. 
 That something on this occasion was the ringing of a small 
 telephone in a corner of the room. 
 
 ' That's the boss," said Tozer as he sprang to answer it. 
 
 After a short colloquy at it he turned and said to Mr. 
 Tonson : " He wants you, and he's in a frightful paddy about 
 something, so you'd better look out." 
 
 The transformation in Mr. Tonson was pitiable to see. All 
 his pugnacity vanished with such colour as the years had left 
 to him. He looked right and left nervously, as though expect- 
 ing someone to leap out on him. He was like a bladder caught 
 
84 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 in the very attempt to swell to twice its fit size, and pricked 
 to flatness. Then he hurried off to get some papers for his 
 interview with Uncle Jacob. 
 
 Although Uncle Jacob's discourse to me in the train had 
 irritated and wearied me (an effect he never failed to achieve), 
 it had none the less influenced me, apparently. At least, I 
 know that when, later in the day, some kind of regular task 
 was apportioned me, I was chagrined beyond measure to 
 find that it consisted of addressing envelopes, attaching stamps 
 to those whose distance won them that distinction, and deliver- 
 ing the rest myself. Time-worn maxims about the responsi- 
 bility of little things would only have angered me the more as, 
 under the direction of the youth whom my coming was to 
 release from that odiously little task, I addressed, sorted, 
 stamped, and arranged for delivery the following morning 
 the correspondence and the invoices as they began slowly to 
 filter through in the early afternoon. 
 
 " This part o' the job ain't much, I will say," explained my 
 instructor. " Sticking stamps is no job for no one. But you 
 wait till the morning comes ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " I said non-committally, half in youthful loftiness, 
 half with my imagination far afield in scenes where I was the 
 digit to events, not a mere cypher delivering letters. 
 
 " Yus ! Not that I won't say on a wet day it's rotten, but 
 on a fine day to be able to go out and fool about's a bit of all 
 right. A good mike just suits your 'umble, that I will say ! " 
 
 This pellucid explanation of the joys of my task affected 
 me little. A " mike " is an excellent and admirable thing, as 
 all will agree, and it would have just suited me no less than it 
 suited Tim Larkin, whom I was to replace and uplift to better 
 things. But at the moment I was chiefly impressed with the 
 thought of making a figure in the world. Even the wish to 
 return to school had been burnt away in that flame. The idea 
 of an office was but a very frail second best to the moving 
 spectacle that lay under the eye of an orator. But even it 
 could yield importance. And it was for importance I lusted. 
 I grudged every minute sorting letters. I was willing to toil 
 early and late, to spend and be spent, had I prodigious responsi- 
 bilities on my shoulders, and great things flowing from my 
 every decision. Some subtle wand had struck me, and the 
 boy who had burned to be first in the football field, and then to 
 
THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 85 
 
 efface himself in the knowledge of his own greatness, had 
 become the boy who yearned to be first in the City of London. 
 I was but little conscious of this at the time : it was less evident 
 in itself than in the distaste it created in me of the work in 
 hand, and I was still dreaming over other things when Tim 
 Larkin again broke in on me. 
 
 " No peachin'," he said, looking round at me. 
 
 " I'm not a sneak/' I repudiated hotly. 
 
 " Not you ! " he said, quizzing round at me sharply. " Still, 
 you know, you're something to do with the boss, and I will 
 say . Well, what about the stamping ? " There was such an 
 adroit, yet profound, implication in his pause awhile, and rapid 
 change of subject, that I began to observe him a little more 
 closely. His flaming-red hair was cropped quite close, and 
 gave to his round, small head something of the urgency of a 
 cannon ball. His mouth was small, it might even have been 
 considered delicate except that when he smiled (and when he 
 was not smiling he seemed as though he were about to do so) 
 he pursed it up, giving him a remarkably rat-like look an 
 effect to which he added by screwing up his eyes. He was 
 freely freckled, but unlike most people who are freckled, his 
 cheeks were rosy-red. There was something quite kindly 
 about him ; something, too, quite unaccountably shrewd. 
 This was added to by the fact that both his coat and waist- 
 coat were much too large for him. 
 
 He had said nothing, but as he turned quickly away and ran 
 a long line of stamps along the wetter, I found myself blushing 
 hotly. The memory of our hatred of Pennell minor because 
 he had been intelligence department to his father, seized on me, 
 for I thought that I was like to be considered the same here. 
 At all costs it was necessary for me to clear myself of any 
 possible implication. So I broke out impetuously : 
 
 ' ' I say, you needn't think I love the boss any more than you 
 do, If you're thinking that, you're jolly well mistaken." 
 
 ' I don't s'pose," was all he said, as, with a deftness that 
 seemed to me incredible, he laid down his line of stamps on 
 a row of 'envelopes he had already formed out, and broke 
 away each envelope with its stamp from the rest. 
 
 1 certainly understood this reply to suggest doubt of my 
 sincerity, and was correspondingly reserved with him and dis- 
 satisfied with myself. Either I did him an injustice, or the 
 
86 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 night gave him confidence, for the following morning he greeted 
 me warmly. 
 
 " What oh, here we are ! " said he. " Nab hold of those 
 envelopes, and let's nip out before the jackdaw gets a sight 
 of us." 
 
 The jackdaw was Mr. Tonson, and I did as he bade me, 
 although I did not realise the perils of letting him get a sight 
 of us. Larkin explained, however, as he hurried us out of the 
 house. 
 
 " The jackdaw's a fair cop for dropping work on you. And 
 he does nothing himself only fuss. I copy my elders in that, 
 I do barring the fuss, as I will say. He's a sort of tin god 
 on wheels, is the jackdaw, except when the boss wants him, 
 and then he looks as if he'd bin through a mangle. What do 
 you think of the Highland Sodger ? " 
 
 " Who is the Highland Sodger ? " I asked. Certainly I 
 began to find something lovable about Larkin. 
 
 " Ole fuzzy out in the shop ! " 
 
 "Oh! Tozer?" 
 
 " Yus ; and what a name to be struck on ! He had to 
 dance me round, like I'm dancing you. Laugh ! I fair split. 
 Why I knew the whole journey first round ; I ain't a mug, but 
 I made him trot me round for more'n a fortnet, till he nearly 
 got ill on me, he was so savage. Don't think he knew the round 
 himself at the end o' it, he got so tied up explaining it to 
 me." 
 
 The very conjunction of Tozer and Larkin made me see the 
 humourlessness of the former vividly. 
 
 " He ain't meant for London : not chaps like the Highland 
 Sodger. He's the sort that ort t' be lookin' after sheep." 
 All this eager confidence was being given me, as we threaded 
 in and out of buildings, and through bewildering short cuts, 
 delivering letters. " But he's all right, if he doesn't trip 
 over himself ! Smoke ? " 
 
 This sudden question made me turn round to see him pro- 
 duce an enormous briar pipe from his pocket, which he pro- 
 ceeded to fill with shag tobacco. Presently clouds of smoke 
 were emerging from his pipe, his nose and his mouth. 
 
 " What are you laughing at ? "he asked, seeing me wreathed 
 in smiles at the picture of him. With that pipe he looked as 
 if he might have been any age. 
 
THE DIFFICULTY OF FINDING MY FEET 87 
 
 " You look such an odd fish with that pipe/' 
 
 " I'll have to chuck it after this week of a morning, I s'pose. 
 Still Have a fag ? " 
 
 " I haven't started properly yet, but I may as well." 
 At this he produced a well-stocked cigarette case, which 
 seemed perplexingly incongruous with his none-too-clean 
 collar and his suit that looked as if it had been handed down to 
 him by a previous wearer of larger build. " No, I won't 
 though." 
 
 r ' Why, what's up ? Make you ill ? " 
 
 " Rot ! But I'm not going to smoke just because you are, 
 in a sort of follow-my-leader way. Not much ! " 
 
 " That's why most people do." 
 
 " Do they ? " 
 
 " I don't care, I may say. Fags cost cash, and the old 
 sweep's none too free with his dibs." 
 
 " How much do you earn ? " 
 
 " Eight bob a week." 
 
 " It's not much, is it ? " 
 
 " It's more'n I earn, anyhow." 
 
 This sudden candour silenced me, which evidently made 
 him feel there was something to explain. 
 
 " I give chaps what they give me, and that's my religion, 
 that is, as I may say. Now if the old sweep'd come down 
 'andsome and give me a quid a week, I'd see he didn't lose 
 for it. But eight bob a week ! that's no cop for no one, 
 that isn't. So I take care he loses on it. Me with a mother, 
 too ! " 
 
 " What about your father ? " 
 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 " I say, you don't mean you both live on eight bob a week." 
 
 " Something like it with a bit o' sewin'." 
 
 " I say, that's absolutely rotten. I think Uncle Jacob's 
 a swine to let a thing like that be." I had no conception 
 of what living on that sum might mean ; I only knew that I 
 had been promised it as my wage, and that it had to pay for 
 ties, collars, gloves, fares and luxuries in the terms of Aunt 
 Mary's careful category. I know I was in flaming anger, 
 little though I realised its meaning, at the thought of Larkin 
 and his mother living so while Uncle Jacob could maintain 
 the state and splendour he did. 
 
88 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " What oh ! " sang Larkin. " What price chestnuts ! " 
 And he put up both hands as though to warm them at my 
 face. 
 
 " But it's not fair/' I said, brushing his hands away, for 
 passers-by were beginning to take note of us. 
 
 " Let's go and have something to eat/' So he said, though 
 there was no need of much " going " to be done, seeing it was 
 a distinctly dirty Italian shop opposite us that had raised the 
 thought in his mind. 
 
 " I'll pay ! " I said, feeling very large and important, and 
 possibly not a little philanthropic also. 
 
 " Rather ! " said he. " Won't you ? I don't s'pose." 
 
 That night as we sat at dinner at Hampstead dim and vague 
 thoughts concerning the complete artistic comfort surround- 
 ing us floated through my mind. But they soon floated away. 
 
 II 
 
 LIFE IS READY TO TAKE SHAPE 
 
 In this way three years passed. It was in fact they who 
 passed, for I stood still. Things about me, and even on me, 
 changed truly enough : that is to say, for instance, my speech 
 passed in tone from the treble to the bass (to my infinite 
 satisfaction), and in temper from the inquisitive to the pert ; 
 my clothes changed from the boyish-careless to the dandiacal 
 and complete ; my airs changed from the ingenuous to the 
 assertive ; and so forth. But so far as any true growth in 
 me, any growth in spiritual significance, was concerned, I 
 stood at nineteen as I had stood at sixteen, and thus my early 
 years in the City were even more of a waste than my fruitless 
 years under Mr. Pennell for there, at least, Nature had in 
 some sort had its way. There had intervened no change in 
 spiritual import ; what change there was, was merely a matter 
 of geographical alteration. 
 
 Certainly there was this geographical alteration, and chiefly 
 
LIFE IS READY TO TAKE SHAPE 89 
 
 in my environment. For example, the City has at last 
 conquered the tawny Tozer. The tweeds of freedom and 
 healthy odour had gone down the winds of yesterday, and he 
 now wore each and all of the official badges of serfdom 
 immaculate white collar, well-creased trousers, black tail-coat 
 and silk hat. He still, it should be said, had the decency to 
 look out of place in them, but that would pass, and he would 
 become one of the herd. His showroom had passed out of his 
 hands, but he bore with him his precious sketches to make a 
 separate department for their care. I myself, through an 
 insatiable restlessness, alike at the control of others and at 
 tasks that I thought to be petty and unimportant, had 
 managed to reach a small department that had the great 
 advantage of bringing me into touch with most of the artists 
 that designed for the firm. This task pleased me as much as 
 anything, inasmuch as it compelled me to treat as equal in 
 age men who were vastly my senior, and as equal in position 
 those whose skill in design had made their names appear 
 often in the glory of print. 
 
 It is easy, very easy, to scoff at, or to snub, young men who 
 are called bumptious upstarts. Honestly and truly I may 
 say that whatever I took in hand to do I did well, at that time. 
 I may have readily tired of it, but this was only because I had 
 not found the thing that was to me more than myself, and to 
 which all my powers were therefore due. I made very few 
 friends, I know : scarce any, indeed. Larkin, by a trans- 
 position, had become my assistant, my sole assistant, in my 
 department, and with him I fraternised because he was strange 
 and odd, and devoted to me. Beyond him, I do not think 
 there was one to whom I unfolded my thoughts. I had 
 friends of a sort ; fellows of my own age, with whom I used to 
 smoke and talk and eye girls of an evening along the Heath 
 Road, but as I look back I can but vaguely recall their faces, 
 I cannot recall their names, and they drop out of all signi- 
 ficance in the lot of my days. 
 
 Periodically I was lectured by Aunt Mary because of what 
 she termed my bumptiousness. Her complexion was now 
 parchment-pale, her face was thin, but there was a high 
 masterfulness in it that made me fear her, and keen to get 
 away from her. Indeed, everyone in the house feared her, 
 including Uncle Jacob. 
 
9 o JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " One would think, to see the way you behave, that you 
 owned the whole earth/' If she had said this to me once, she 
 had said it a score of times, and I was weary of it. I knew 
 there was truth in it, yet I knew it was mainly wrong. I 
 wished to fill a place, it was true, and was it not right that I 
 should ? Did I wish the conditions of that place to be 
 mitigated for me ? Then what was the use of speaking so ? 
 " And you'll please to understand/' she would continue, 
 " that you don't own the whole earth. I want a few less sour 
 looks when you are asked to do something you don't like. 
 You're not going to have things all your own way in life, and 
 don't you think you are." 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to retail further excerpts from her 
 regular diatribes. They are of a sort only too familiar. I 
 knew she was wrong, and often I would go away muttering to 
 myself, in a habit of soliloquy that (let your wiseacre dramatic 
 critics say what they will) I have always had, in common with 
 many, many men : 
 
 " Just because she wants her way, and can't get it, she calls 
 me bumptious. And just because I want my way, she calls 
 me an upstart. Why can't I have my way as well as she ? 
 What's she more than I, I'd like to know, except a cantanker- 
 ous old cat that has learnt the trick of sitting on Uncle Jacob ? 
 I shall have my way, if we fight all the week for it." 
 
 I was more right than I myself knew. For I have since 
 observed that if an elder calls a younger bumptious, that 
 elder was nearly inevitably just like that younger at his own 
 age. And if two of an age exchange that term, then they 
 attest their remarkable similarity in that fact. It is only the 
 pushful that are termed bumptious, and it is only the pushful 
 who think of employing the term. There need be no oppro- 
 brium on either side, but what opprobrium there be, is not 
 on one side more than on the other. And this irrespective of 
 age. There can only be one test, that of adequacy. If a 
 man be adequate to lead, he is worthy to lead whatever his 
 age. 
 
 I was called sulky too, I who am, as I truly believe, the 
 least sulkily disposed of men. This was, I suppose, because 
 when I was rebuffed it was to me like the striking of raw 
 flesh. The merest slight, fancied or real, would cause me to 
 withdraw into myself absolutely for a long spell. And as 
 
LIFE IS READY TO TAKE SHAPE 91 
 
 Aunt Mary of set design, and Uncle Jacob from restive 
 irritability, were always striking the raw of my soul, I appeared 
 to them as often churlish as otherwise. With Uncle Jacob 
 the result was, for me, admirable. For, being beyond his 
 reach, as it seemed, I was therefore not beneath his assured con- 
 trol, and he was uncertain of me. Instead of harrying me as 
 he did all others, he was watchful of me. In point of fact, 
 so great was his power, the very sight of him sent fear into 
 rny soul. But he never knew this, and consequently did not 
 take advantage of it. This gave me a reputation in the firm 
 as being the only one who could stand up to him, and in order 
 to live up to this reputation, I induced myself even to be a little 
 defiant, which further increased my power or fancied power ; 
 and to a young man a fancied power is soon apt to become a 
 power vested in character. We grow like the image we gaze 
 upon. 
 
 Yet there must have been something of truth in it all. 
 For it is undeniably true, as I have said, that I had but few 
 friends. I would return from my day's work in the City, 
 and, after my evening meal, either read some light novel, or 
 attire myself beyond a question of immaculateness in order to 
 join a certain band of fellows who considered it the last word 
 in rakishness to accost strange girls, who had come out to be 
 accosted, and laugh and talk loudly with them. I must admit 
 I take it as a credit to myself that I found their conception of 
 pleasure a tame one. Some eight or nine of them would 
 surround some two or three girls, and talk in loud, devil-may- 
 care voices with them for an hour at a stretch, free of their 
 cigarettes the while. This seemed to please them well. It 
 pleased me little. I would, by attraction or device, edge one 
 of the girls off, and with her, in quiet places, give myself to 
 the utter abandon of being truly and everlastingly in love. 
 It would be terrifying to count the occasions on which this 
 happened, and I am to hope that all my vows everlastingly 
 given (and everlastingly received) have not been everlastingly 
 registered. They are mothers and old maids, and even mayhap 
 grandmothers, now ; but at any rate, if others with flash canes 
 and cheap cigarettes dared no more than look at the ocean, 
 v/e plunged our skiffs well upon it, even though it were true 
 that we soon returned. At least, we were not mean-spirited. 
 
 Here again I emphasised my alienation from my 
 
92 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 companions. But there was one companion who never tired 
 of me, who would never let me tire of him. This was Tim 
 Larkin. His flush was less and his freckles appeared more, 
 but apart from this he had changed no whit. Even his 
 speech was the same. The pronunciation, to be true, was 
 better, but the syntax differed in no degree, and it was in his 
 syntax he uttered himself. His knowledge of London's 
 intricacies was amazing, and we would sometimes of an 
 evening walk westward instead of returning home, and have 
 a ridiculously cheap dinner at some ridiculously dirty 
 restaurant he had discovered. This always meant a tempest 
 on my return to Hampstead, but as I knew it was to come, I 
 endured it in stony silence, and escaped to bed. 
 
 So my days sped, and so they might ever have sped, save 
 for one supreme event that befell me. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I STRIKE ON A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS 
 
 Among the number of my friends there was one I have not 
 mentioned. In my department, if department it may be 
 called, I had all the dealings with printers with regard to 
 proofs. From the acceptation of a design till the moment 
 when it was finally passed for press (I refer only to such designs 
 as needed execution on cloth or paper) its whole negotiation 
 was in my hands. Daily I had to see Uncle Jacob and submit 
 proofs to him that had come to hand. The alterations he 
 wished in them, I had to see executed, and so submit, and 
 re-submit, till the printing could be completed. In this one 
 of those curious movements happened that have so often 
 occurred in my life, when a tendency that began in weakness 
 ended in power. For with a wholesome, or rather an un- 
 wholesome, dread, I feared those daily interviews. If a 
 printer failed to emphasise what he considered the particular 
 strength of a design, or chanced to blur its lines or diminish 
 
I STRIKE ON A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS 93 
 
 its colours, his rage would not only be violent, but would 
 recoil on me. His language was a revelation to me as to what 
 a man can say and yet avoid profanity. There was no denying 
 it, he would become as drunk on rage as any violent dipso- 
 maniac on liquor. Once (and once only, be it said !) he 
 struck me across the face with a ruler. I think I would have 
 done him permanent bodily injury, except that he sprang 
 to the other side of his desk when I leapt to my feet in anger. 
 He never attempted that again, though he often pretended 
 that his desk was my head, smiting at it lustily instead. Yet 
 he made those interviews such a matter of dread for me that I 
 began to revise the proofs for myself, only showing him the 
 final product when I considered it would have passed his 
 approval. Whether he knew I did this or not, I cannot say. 
 Latterly, from the implication in some of his remarks, I 
 gathered that he did. But the result was that I was the only 
 one in the whole house who dared do anything without his 
 investigation from end to end of the transaction. This gave 
 me a dignity with the rest of the staff, and, in so far as he knew 
 of it, it gave me weight with him. Thus I gained real power 
 from a movement that sprang up in weakness : from fearful- 
 ness arose a kind of fearlessness. 
 
 But this led to other things. If I were in much doubt as to 
 a proof, I wrote a letter to the artist in the name of the firm, 
 asking him to call upon " our Mr. Elthorne " ; and I not only 
 made the acquaintance of many of them so, but I gained 
 distinction with them. Some of them treated me with lofty 
 condescension, and them I voted prigs, taking no more care 
 over their work than I need. The majority of them, however, 
 were kindly and well-disposed, and I would look forward to 
 their visits with keen interest, as providing interesting con- 
 versations on a range of matters, and a corrective on my 
 slowly formulated ideas of colour combinations and line 
 balances. But there was one who was more than all this, 
 towards whom, indeed, I grew to an affection that was 
 strangely mixed with something almost like pity. 
 
 His name was James Ramsay. His quiet, strong face, 
 decorated with an imperial beard that he always wore very 
 neatly trimmed, his grave grey eyes, his lofty forehead, with 
 his hair brushed well back always kindled in me a warm feel- 
 ing of trust as he appeared through the doorway of my room. 
 
94 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I had at first chiefly noticed his hands. They were strong 
 by suggestion, although they really were thin and long. His 
 fingers had the infinite suggestion of nervous power in 
 them. In attire he was always negligently clothed in soft 
 fabrics, even to his shirt and collar. 
 
 He made a figure picturesque enough, but what attracted 
 me chiefly to him was his curious mixture of calm, strong 
 self-reliance and utter helplessness. There was no man I 
 would rather have been with in the extreme of danger or 
 difficulty, and yet the prices he commanded from the firm for 
 his work were ridiculously out of all relation to their worth, 
 as another man would not have been a week in discovering. 
 He did a great deal of work for the firm. Indeed, I had a 
 shrewd thought that all his work was done for the firm. 
 
 The conversations I had with him extended over a wide 
 range of subjects ; and I loved him, humanly enough, because, 
 from his forty years to my nineteen, he always treated my 
 opinions and thoughts as of equal value to his own. I even 
 ventured to suggest to him sundry radical alterations in his 
 designs, and although I do not remember his having altered 
 one of them in accordance with my suggestions, he always 
 justified them as against an equal point of view. Once, in a 
 burst of appreciation of thankfulness at meeting the one man 
 who did not always treat me as bumptious, I stumbled out an 
 expression of gratitude at this. 
 
 " But, my dear boy," he said, in a tone of calm surprise, 
 " you are quite right. You perfectly express your point of 
 view. In fact, if I may say so, I have never known you 
 venture any suggestion that was not a just expression of your 
 point of view, and that, let me tell you, is a very great deal 
 in a world where the majority of people are content to herd 
 themselves in thoughtless masses taking some other's direction. 
 Look at this design, for instance ! Your criticism is the way 
 you see it, is your point of view. I only want to satisfy 
 myself that it isn't also a criticism of the way in which I have 
 executed my point of view. If it does extend so far, then I 
 must give proper heed to it. Only I don't think it does, in 
 this case, and if that is so, then I am entitled to my point of 
 view as you are to yours, and entitled to it at the selfsame 
 moment that you are to yours. It's all a question of per- 
 sonality. The more various the personalities that there are at 
 
I STRIKE ON A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS 95 
 
 work, the nearer we are likely to get to the synthesis of 
 truth. I only wish some of the muddle-headed critics would 
 see so simple a thing as that." 
 
 " Yes, but when I say things most people call me bumptious 
 that's the word they throw at me. Even the people I like, 
 after a while drop me." As I spoke, the accumulated bitter- 
 ness of it came before me, and I think showed itself in my 
 voice. 
 
 " Quite right of them. So they do me. It's their self- 
 protection, that's all. Otherwise we should convict them of 
 sin as the Bible puts it ; the sin, the most truly beastly of all 
 sins, of mental sloth. Don't you let it fret you, my boy. 
 Always remember that those who live in darkness love not 
 the light because their deeds are evil. And, by the way, it's 
 just as well to know a few of those texts, because it's what 
 the old 'uns rely on." 
 
 Listening to him was like breathing wind blown from off salt 
 waves. It did not, as I certainly know, exalt me ; it humbled 
 me as it helped me. I had no necessity to fight for my own 
 hand with this man, and consequently I was mellowed, I 
 was encouraged, I became cooler and less impatient. My 
 soul leapt up to see itself recognised, and thereupon resolved 
 to win itself worthy of that recognition. 
 
 ' You know, I wondered about you," he said. 
 
 " About me ? " 
 
 " I thought you weren't finding yourself ! I see you are. 
 But you're not finding yourself in the healthiest possible way 
 which is scarcely your own fault. Never mind about that ! 
 1 want you to do me a favour." 
 
 " I'll do anything you like, Mr. Ramsay," said I, and so I 
 v/ould have, to the slaying of Uncle Jacob. 
 
 Out came his hand without a word and I placed mine 
 in it. 
 
 " Right then ! I'll send you a book I want you to read. 
 Let me see, this is the third of the month. I want it read 
 t-mce by the third of next month. It'll be tough work for 
 you just now, but never mind ! Read at lunch, in trains, 
 and at all times. Then, at the end of the time, you come up 
 to my rooms, and tell me what you think of what it says. 
 Good-bye ! " 
 
 So he was gone. If anything were wanted to induce me to 
 
96 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 carry out my promise, it was just that thought of going to see 
 him in his own rooms. But before I could even reflect on it, 
 a voice sang out : 
 
 " Crikey ! But that's a man, as I will say. I say, if we 
 had a chap like him in the sweep's place, eh ? What oh ! 
 Wouldn't the wheels go wound ? " Larkin and I had the room 
 to ourselves if it can be called a room that was only an alcove 
 shut off by wainscoting from the passage it formed part of, 
 and he stood up with his eyes flashing with pleasure as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " He's one of the best, is Ramsay. It's simply shocking 
 the prices he gets here for his work." I knew both from the 
 cashier and from Ramsay what those prices were. 
 
 But at this moment all further parley on the subject was 
 cut short by Mr. Tonson's entry, with : 
 
 " Larkin, I want you to go out for me." 
 
 " Go to mamma ! " 
 
 " No ! Go out, I said." 
 
 What exactly Tonson had in mind I do not know, but 
 Larkin let off a peal of derisive laughter at this. There were 
 few men who could have made mere, wordless laughter cut 
 like a flail as he did, and Tonson darkened angrily. I say 
 darkened advisedly, for he possessed no colour, and where 
 other men flushed red, he changed from yellow-white to a 
 colour like that of lead. 
 
 " Look here ! I want none of your insolence." It was a 
 phrase frequently on Tonson's lips, and with as frequent 
 occasion. 
 
 " Oh, go to mamma ! Besides, he's my boss, not you ! " 
 
 " I shall then report you." 
 
 " Oh yes, I don't s'pose ! I can see you trapsing in for 
 more than one bottle-washing in the day, I can. That's a 
 thing you rather love, that is. You take care you don't fall 
 over yourself going in. I'll bet you level odds he'll chuck 
 the inkwell at you for your pains. Oh yes, I may say 
 Look out ! Here he is ! " 
 
 It was. One needed only to have seen Tonson's face to 
 have learnt that uncle had entered the room. It resumed its 
 perennial ashiness while his eyes took a hunted glance right 
 and left. I myself was not a little perturbed, for it was an 
 unusual thing for Uncle Jacob to search me out in my room. 
 
I STRIKE ON A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS 97 
 
 My heart took up its sledge-hammer beat that he generally 
 managed to awaken. 
 
 "Is it true that Mr. Ramsay has been here ? " he began 
 as he entered, glaring angrily at me. 
 
 " Yes, I believe so. That's to say, yes, he has/' 
 
 " How is it he has been here without my seeing 
 him ? " 
 
 " Well " 
 
 " It's not for you to see him. It's for me to see him." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " What did he come about ? " 
 
 " About this proof of his." 
 
 " Which proof ? " He snatched it up as he spoke. " What 
 is this ? I haven't seen this yet. Why haven't I seen this 
 yet ? " 
 
 " I was just going to bring it down to you." I was not, in 
 fact. I was at work on it, and it would have been days ere he 
 had seen it. But I dared not say that. 
 
 " When did it come ? " 
 
 " This morning." 
 
 " Why didn't you bring it down to me this morning ? " 
 
 " I forgot it." 
 
 Then he caught sight of Tonson endeavouring to sidle out 
 of the door. It was unfortunate for Tonson, but it relieved 
 me at an awkward moment. 
 
 " Tonson, what are you doing here ? Dear, dear me ! 
 Dear, dear me ! What do you mean, sir, by not answering 
 me ? " 
 
 ' Yes, sir ! " said Tonson. 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Tonson." 
 
 " Yes, sir ; I came to ask Mr. Elthorne about something, 
 sir." 
 
 '' Oh, go out ! Can't I have a moment's peace from 
 you ? " 
 
 Tonson needed but little encouragement to make his exit. 
 When he had gone, Uncle Jacob with a quick, keen, almost 
 falcon-like glance, looked over my desk, and gathering up 
 each and all of the proofs that lay on it, made off out of the 
 room with them, to my complete consternation not to say 
 my fear also, for there were but few of them that he had 
 seen. 
 
 H 
 
9$ JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 When he had gone, Larkin, who had all this while been 
 studiously bent over his desk, writing even as though he had 
 had the whole room to himself, suddenly looked up and 
 said : 
 
 " His head." 
 
 " What about his head ? " I asked sulkily. 
 
 " Why don't you bang it against the wall, eh ? " 
 
 " I believe I shall one of these days/' I felt exhausted and 
 irritable always after seeing Uncle Jacob. 
 
 " Chap of your size, too. You should do Mohawk Indian 
 with him. I believe he'd never get over it." 
 
 As I went out to my lunch, I found that Mr. Ramsay had 
 left a packet for me in the showroom. Curiously I undid it, 
 and discovered it to be a cheap and strong edition of " Sartor 
 Resartus " I have it now before me as I write. I may or 
 may not have glanced into it before, but now I was to read 
 it. Moreover, it was actually to be the first book of any 
 account that I was, of my free will, to read in my life. Novels 
 from the perdurable shelf of English prose I had read, and I 
 need scarcely say that, apart from the divine air of poetry, 
 the novel I account as of considerable significance in the 
 ranks of art, if it may only shed itself of its tendency to 
 mere reproduction as distinct from creation. But I had 
 skipped in novels if the millstream of the plot had not run 
 strong. And now I was about to read differently. I dis- 
 tinctly remember putting the book in my pocket, and stepping 
 forward into Queen Victoria Street with a new thrill and 
 determination to think that it lay there. 
 
JAMES RAMSAY 99 
 
 IV 
 
 JAMES RAMSAY 
 
 Alas ! the rosy peaks, as rosy peaks will, grew dim and pale. 
 The thrilling flush of a momentous resolve faded away, and 
 the discouragement that has a sneer for smile took its place. 
 At lunch that day I read the preliminary, and was immeasur- 
 ably stirred by some of its passages, being as immeasurably 
 confused by others. That evening I struggled with more of 
 it, but somehow, strangely, found myself presently in the 
 night-air, with heart beating high, thinking to find some girl 
 with whom to taste of the sweetness of new love in love's 
 caravanserai that is also a sample-room. The following day 
 saw no advance, and a week later saw but little advance. 
 
 Then I fell back on my doggedness. I clung to my task 
 with fierce tenacity, pushing through the pages even though I 
 left understanding far behind. As the month grew on, I 
 used to stand in my room leaning against the bedpost and 
 reading, lest even sitting should send me to sleep. I adopted 
 all kinds of methods. I did on more than one occasion drape 
 a towel over my shoulders, and, dipping my head into a basin 
 of water, read on so, with my hair dripping wet, and my head 
 cold. But the month had nearly passed, and I had not yet 
 finished the first reading. I walked to and fro my room 
 reading passages aloud to myself, till Aunt Mary came up to 
 ask me if I had taken leave of my senses. By that time, 
 for some reason hard to elucidate yet powerful in fact, having 
 heard her coming, I had hidden the book and so I appeared 
 all the more a lunatic. 
 
 Moreover, other matters had distracted my attention. 
 For on the day following his visit Uncle Jacob summoned me 
 into his room, and asked me how it was that so many of the 
 proofs had been marked for correction that yet had not been 
 seen by him. I stammered out some faulty reply, which he 
 quickly cut short. 
 
 "I'm not going to have it. You're both shifty and un- 
 scrupulous. I shall have this thing stopped. May I ask who 
 you are that you should arrogate this to yourself ? Every- 
 thing must come through me. Everything, you understand ? 
 Everything. I am the alembic for this firm." 
 
ioo JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I was hot and flushed. I was furious with anger, and 
 confused. 
 
 " I only tried to save you work," I said, in an anger that 
 yearned against the bars of its cage, but dared not do more. 
 
 " You did nothing of the kind. Don't tell me lies. You 
 only wished to assert yourself in your offensive way. If it 
 weren't that you are my solemn charge from the hand of the 
 dead " 
 
 I was angry, as I have said, flamingly angry, or he would 
 have struck me. As it was, he sufficed himself with tearing 
 up some unanswered letters and hurling his pen across the room. 
 
 " Go out of the room ! " As I went he called out : " I 
 am writing to the printers to-day, telling them they are to 
 receive no proofs for alteration unless with a letter signed 
 by me." A moment after, as I went up the stairs, I heard 
 him in gracious and silken accents greet an artist into his 
 room. 
 
 The deliberate degradation, as I read it, conveyed by his 
 last words wounded me where few things could have done. I 
 could have cried in my sensitive pride as I thought of it. I 
 felt as though I could have fled, have done anything, rather 
 than face the printers and the artists again with what had 
 seemed to be a power proved to be no more than an arrogation. 
 Such was the effect on me that for two days I could do no 
 work. I sat at my desk brooding hotly on it, while the discreet 
 Larkin took no notice of me. At night I strode out in long 
 heavy walks thinking on it. I believe even Aunt Mary was 
 impressed, for she did not even question me when I returned 
 back several nights running with the hour towards midnight. 
 Certainly reading was not to be thought of. Yet, as I have 
 said, I held on to it tenaciously. Indeed, the very wounding 
 of my pride in a measure aided my reading. It drove me into 
 myself, it made me resolve to be dependent on myself for 
 company, and consequently, when at home (for I had come 
 to call it home) I kept to my room, and being there, struggled 
 with my reading. The two things began to be associated 
 together, which was an obvious preparation for their 
 becoming the obverse and reverse of the same thing. 
 
 Also, arising out of this same matter, I discovered something 
 else that was to have a considerable influence on my life when 
 it had fully ripened itself. In my deeply-set fury at Uncle 
 
\ 
 
 JAMES RAMSAY 101 
 
 Jacob I began to assume an attitude of avowed militancy 
 against him. Previously I had been fearful of him, or at 
 times won to a strange affection for him, for he had a subtle 
 power of riding over the earthworks of a previous combat 
 and taking his seat in the citadel of one's affection, winning 
 by a play on the emotions what he could not achieve by a 
 straight fight. He had even made me feel sometimes that it 
 was a great pride to myelf, a considerable favour done me, 
 that I should deny myself, inconvenience myself, and even 
 pain myself in his interests without reward or emolument. 
 But now I set my mind in enmity against him. I determined 
 to hold no truck with him, whether of fear or of affection. 
 When I went in to see him at the office I would, before entering 
 the door, brace my mind to repel him. Immediately I entered 
 the door I grappled with him ; I and he, though neither spoke, 
 even before we looked on one another, wrestled as it were in 
 spirit together. It was not my desire to defeat him ; that I 
 scarcely aspired to ; all I wished was to throw him off, to 
 refuse his advancing spirit dominion over me, and to hold 
 my being inviolate of him. This I only did because I felt he 
 had insulted me ; but I began to notice (what I did not for 
 a long time really think deeply upon) that when I left his 
 presence, instead of feeling exhausted and crumbled as had 
 once been the case, I was as strong as I had been before I 
 had seen him, and even sometimes stronger. 
 
 As I have said, this did not then find a place in my thoughts. 
 But it had a marked influence on the general tenour of my life. 
 My reading, even as I struggled with it, took a new significance. 
 Even when it defeated me it did not discourage me, for my 
 mind had become more resilient and alert. 
 
 Yet my time was nearly complete, and I had not even read 
 three-fourths of the book. Consequently I was not overjoyed 
 when one morning Mr. Ramsay came in. He did not say 
 anything for a moment or two, but just looked quietly at me. 
 
 ' Well," said he, at length, " at any rate it's a grand book/' 
 
 ' I haven't done as you asked/' 
 
 ' I know." 
 
 ' I've not even read it once through." 
 
 ' I wondered about that, but I wasn't sure." 
 
 ' You know, it's not always easy to read." 
 
 ' Not till you catch the hang of it, then it's easy enough. 
 
102 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Its clothes fit the matter well which is as it should be, seeing 
 the nature of the book indeed. Maybe it's strong meat for 
 you, but it has had its effect, I see/' 
 
 I did not catch his meaning and looked puzzled. 
 
 " Look at your eye/' he explained, " look at your chin even, 
 not to say the hold of your head. Oh, we're all right, my 
 boy ; I pronounce you a good case. When can you come up 
 and have a chat with me ? Saturday ? " 
 
 " I should like to very much." 
 
 " Very well then ! By the way, what does this mean ? " 
 And he produced from his inner pocket Uncle Jacob's letter. 
 
 It was the only one of the letters I had seen. The others 
 had had their effect, so efficaciously indeed that I had not 
 even seen them. It was written in a tone of kindly con- 
 descension, as of an uncle who was pained because he had to 
 inhibit his nephew's possible irresponsibilities. I burned as I 
 read it. Even with Mr. Ramsay I could not speak freely about 
 it, but he gathered from my hints the general nature of the 
 case. 
 
 " I did not think it was like that," he said. " I am sorry." 
 Then seeing my somewhat crestfallen, not to say bitter, 
 expression, he added : " But don't you let it discourage you. 
 I won't say your criticisms on the general conception of a 
 design are any way near his. That would be too absurd, you 
 know. His grasp of Art in its application to practical 
 domestics, large and small, is masterly ; it is, strictly, genius 
 of a high and irresponsible order. I don't suppose there are 
 two other men in Europe to equal him. But for your purpose 
 your criticisms were more than adequate, and always fresh 
 and luminous. Don't you be put off, my boy ! This letter 
 came from the heart and instinct of a bully. Look here, can 
 you come up to my rooms to-night ? " 
 
 I leapt at the proposal. I expected it would occasion 
 trouble at home, but this was, to be true, rather an incentive 
 than otherwise to me then. 
 
 So that evening I made my way westward to Sloane Square, 
 near where Mr. Ramsay lived. It was the early spring, and 
 there was all the merit of surprise about the blue light that 
 flushed the evening sky. The streets seemed to be lit by some 
 unacquainted inner illumination as I set out to walk the 
 greater part of the distance. The walk I reckoned would 
 
JAMES RAMSAY 103 
 
 happily fill up the time, and still more happily save my purse. 
 I did not take Larkin with me. I think he a little felt the 
 slight, for it was not often I went westward without him ; 
 but there was an inner illumination springing up within me, 
 similar to that which lit the streets without, as mystical and 
 incommensurable, that I wished to nurse and enjoy to the 
 full. So I pretended to make busy while he waited about, 
 and it was not till he had disappeared, with clouds of smoke 
 trailing over his shoulders from his phenomenally large pipe, 
 that I myself went out. When he and I went together we 
 usually went by way of the Embankment, but now I had a 
 strong secret desire to go up through Fleet Street. It 
 depressed me as I trod it, I admit ; the bright illumination 
 that had made me mount St. Paul's steps in order to feast 
 my eyes in silent and profound joy on the blue that was 
 everywhere, the blue that even came between me and the 
 nearer houses, in which the street lights swam like floating, 
 detached jewels, or like gleams of phosphorescence in a sea 
 of mystical foam, had faded out in Fleet Street, crushed out, 
 as it were, by the near, drab houses that pressed towards each 
 other across the street. In the Strand it was better ; but 
 there night was growing thicker, and I had to turn into my 
 own thoughts more for solace. 
 
 Ignorant young snob that I was, I was quite chagrined, on 
 discovering the street in which Mr. Ramsay lived, to find that 
 it was a blind slum alley. Children were playing about the 
 street. It was badly lit, and there was an unhappy odour of 
 grease about the air. When I found the number I wanted, I 
 saw that it was an old, black, chipped and charred door between 
 two shop bay-windows, in one of which boots were exhibited, 
 and in the other, fried fish. I was distinctly depressed and 
 set back as I pulled on a large bell-handle. I was still more de- 
 pressed when, following on the clang I set up, a woman with 
 bare arms and in a sacking apron appeared. 
 
 " Mr. Ramsay ? " I asked. 
 
 " That's 'is bell," said she, jerking her finger at the other 
 side of the door and swinging it violently in my face. 
 
 Looking where she had pointed, I saw a small electric bell 
 with James Ramsay's name painted on the woodwork above 
 it. I pressed it and waited, although I felt far more like 
 returning to Hampstead than remaining. Mr. Ramsay's 
 
104 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 appearance, however, dispelled a good deal of my depression. 
 His eyes kindled, and he stretched out both his arms in 
 welcome, with yet no lapse from his simple gravity. 
 
 " Good, good ! " said he, " come along ! " 
 
 I followed him wonderingly up wooden, uncarpeted stairs 
 and between greasy, ill-smelling walls. When we reached the 
 second floor landing, however, I saw another door facing us, 
 which he opened with a small key. As I followed him within, 
 a sudden transformation greeted me. A simple carpet 
 covered the stairs, but what my eyes turned to at once were 
 the walls, which were covered with a large number of original 
 sketches, most of them signed by their respective artists. 
 They were so numerous as almost to be pieced in together. 
 It was so all the way up to the next stage, and so all round 
 its walls. There were three doors here, and opening one of 
 them he led me into a fairly spacious room well lined with 
 books. 
 
 " You are well shut away up here, aren't you ? " I 
 said. 
 
 " ' But I, mein Werther, I am alone with the stars/ Do 
 you remember it ? " 
 
 I glowed with the memory of it. 
 
 " By the way/' he continued, as on a sudden thought, " I 
 didn't ask you to a meal for I usually have my more important 
 ones outside. Have you fed ? " 
 
 " I had something on my way down/' 
 
 " Good ; there are cigarettes there, and that's my tobacco 
 jar." 
 
 As he spoke he re-lit his pipe and sank back into a very 
 large wicker-chair, leaving me to its pair opposite it. A lively 
 fire danced in the grate, and a shaded electric light shed a 
 subdued light through the room. We sat and smoked 
 in quiet peace for a long while before either of us spoke. Nor, 
 I imagine, was I free of a little side-glance of satisfaction at 
 the picture we presented thus. 
 
 But there was something I had resolved to say, and, lest 
 it should be crushed out in our later conversation, I deter- 
 mined to say it now. In a quiet, even tone of voice, gently, 
 as one would thrust a skiff on to a lake without disturbing 
 its waters, I began, without so much as a glance at my 
 companion : 
 
JAMES RAMSAY 105 
 
 " Mr. Ramsay, there's something I have very much been 
 wanting to say for some time. Except that I don't want to 
 intrude " 
 
 " My dear boy ! " 
 
 " It's about the prices for your designs/' 
 
 " Well ? " I felt something in that word that told me I 
 was intruding, but I held to my resolve doggedly. 
 
 " They're not nearly enough." 
 
 He was perfectly silent, and I felt a tenseness in the air. I 
 doubted my wisdom in mentioning the subject. I much 
 regretted having done so, but having embarked on it I had to 
 go forward. 
 
 " Uncle Jacob's fleecing you." How I cursed myself as I 
 went onward ! 
 
 " Oh well," he said, in easier tones now, " we are all trying 
 to fleece one another maybe we are, maybe we're not 
 only some of us certainly don't succeed." 
 
 " No, I don't mean that." 
 
 He just looked steadily at me, not unkindly. I determined 
 to pluck boldly at what I wished to say. My very sense of 
 awkwardness produced a feeling of desperation. 
 
 " I mean, the thing's going on steadily when it needn't." 
 It was easier to determine than to achieve. " I say, why 
 should it ? why should a thing like that go on when it can be 
 stopped ? why should one man, and a jolly rich man, rob 
 for that's what it is rob another man who's not rich, when 
 you can stop it by just sitting down hard ? I don't see it. I 
 think it's horrible." 
 
 I think Mr. Ramsay saw that my very genuine desire to 
 befriend him was not so much the incentive in itself as the 
 occasion by which a brooding, half-articulate sense of injustice 
 could vent itself and come into the field of its own self-recogni- 
 tion, for he sat forward in his chair at this, and making a 
 gesture with his right hand that was always the prelude to a 
 kindliness of speech that expressed itself in a low, vibrant, 
 even tone, he simply said : 
 
 " And how are you to stop it, lad ? " 
 
 " By just sitting down hard." 
 
 " And in the meantime ? " His gesture included by 
 implication the room in which we sat and the flat of which 
 it formed part. " One must live, you know, Jack." It was 
 
io6 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the first time he had called me by the familiar name, and I 
 thrilled to it. 
 
 " Yes, I know. But you take my word for it, he wouldn't 
 do without your work at twice the rate/' 
 
 " You know of course that I have put a higher grade of 
 return to him several times, and he has always said you 
 know, lad, with the customary throwing about of furniture 
 and heaven-protesting tempers that the present is the abso- 
 lutely fullest possible limit of payment." 
 
 " Which is a lie. But why ask ? Why not just say it 
 has been happy to work together, and all that kind of smarm, 
 and that you've got the chance now of twice the pay, which 
 you must take in justice to yourself. Don't ask, just with- 
 draw, and I bet he'll be after you like knife. And it's right 
 too. Both Smithsons and Perkins would give it to you like 
 a shot if they only knew that nearly all Mueler's decoration 
 designs were yours." 
 
 I had never known Mr. Ramsay laugh. His eyes kindled, 
 a flicker hovered about his lips like light in water, and that 
 was generally all. But now he threw himself back in his 
 chair, and, with his legs in the air, laughed ; great Homeric 
 laughter. 
 
 " My boy," he said, sitting upright again, " it shall be done 
 as you say. It's worth it, if only as a great humour to 
 see how a curmudgeon reveals his soul. I was to see him next 
 Monday with some designs. I won't take them, Jack. I 
 shall I shall what's your word ? smarm, that's it I shall 
 smarm instead." 
 
 I was going to be such a fool as to spoil a good thing by 
 further talk, in very elation at having won my point, but he, 
 with a fitter sense of climax than I, and a firmer will to enforce 
 it, sprang out of his chair in intermission of further conversation, 
 drawing me after him in order to learn how the very best coffee 
 in London should be made. 
 
 Each detail of that ritual was carefully attended to by myself, 
 for already there were thoughts brewing in me of a life bohe- 
 mian for myself. The two boilings, the drawing-off of the fumes, 
 the addition of the salt at the precise moment, all these, and 
 more also, I memorised for future use. I could not, however, 
 discover from him how much salt it was necessary to add. 
 He could only tell me that this was a matter of instinct, it 
 
JAMES RAMSAY 107 
 
 was merely done aright, as irresponsibly yet as inevitably as 
 the few dashes or dots that make a suggested gauze texture 
 stand away from the flesh of a figure in a drawing, and none 
 could say why or how. I determined to see if I could not 
 by some means get practice for myself in the art. The 
 same cause that had led me to make my way through Fleet 
 Street, in this sympathetic atmosphere touched me to dreams 
 on dreams. My month's strenuous grapple at reading had had 
 its effect. Those intangible yet stirring day-dreams of sway- 
 ing vast masses, convened in some ill-recognised yet sufficiently 
 mystical way, by the spell of oratory, had been changed, or, 
 more truly, had taken a new direction, and I had begun to 
 conceive of an outlet for soaring ambition that could definitely 
 be grappled with and subdued. 
 
 Therefore, when we returned to the fireside and our wicker- 
 chairs, I was ripe and ready for a discussion on the subject 
 of my reading. How luminous things became under his 
 reading ! Nay, how self-revealed many passages stood, that 
 had defied me, under the simple inflexion of his voice as he 
 read them ! I saw then, what I have never forgotten to this 
 day when I have in some ways perhaps wandered far from 
 Carlyle, how absolutely his style bore the weight, stress 
 and relief of the speaking voice of that tempestuous great 
 soul. 
 
 " It is useless/' said Mr. Ramsay to me after a long spell of 
 it, " saying anything to any man who does not in his soul 
 know it already. There are some men to whom I would just 
 as soon think of speaking as I now speak as I would think of 
 leaping a precipice. They are outside it that's all. We 
 ea.ch of us can only speak to our own sibs, you know. And it's 
 because I have seen your consciousness struggling to catch 
 and express your soul, that I speak to you like this why, 
 in fact, I, in the first instance, gave you ' Sartor ' to 
 read. After that, I'm going to ask you to go through 
 Wordsworth." 
 
 " The poet of simplicity ! " I broke out, in a tender pride 
 of having gathered so much one way or another. 
 
 But my-Soaring pride of equality was soon winged by the 
 steady, bemused glance with which my companion looked on 
 me. I tried even to challenge him by holding his glance with 
 an aspect of firm self-reliance, although in truth I felt far from 
 
io8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 that in myself. Which probably was why he did not spare 
 me. 
 
 " That's what I call the average critic-foolery, Elthorne. 
 But you'll shake free of it. Look at the way you're beginning 
 to shake free of your uncle, which is no small feat ! No, no ! 
 The poet of flaming, soul-shaking mysticism, if you like. 
 That's why I say come to him after ' Sartor,' although they 
 seem so odd a mixture. But I won't spoil your own finding. 
 Let me read you a few things." 
 
 And then he read. What he read I do not remember; 
 I only remember being turned out by him at a very late hour 
 and going home in a vision. Time had been banished for me. 
 By no reckoning has the clock-face of Time any reality. Its 
 hours have each a different value, and in the few hours that 
 had intervened between my leaving the City, more had trans- 
 pired in me than in almost the three years of my business 
 life. I think if someone had reminded me that the day was 
 yet the same as that in which I had transacted a round of 
 dreary, wasteful routine at Thames Street, I should have con- 
 tradicted him sharply, indignantly. Ages had passed since 
 that drab, inauspicious labour ; I was finding myself, and I was 
 full of a grave exaltation. In truth, Mr. Ramsay had saved 
 me years, maybe, of blundering, stumbling self-discovery, 
 and in the sudden swiftness of my advance I was looking round 
 on a new wonderful country that filled me with a joy I could 
 scarcely contain. It intoxicated me, and I knew nothing of 
 the way in which I found myself home. My various ganglia- 
 centres fulfilled their automatic functions while my soul 
 gazed round in wonder at the new horizons within which it 
 had been suddenly advanced. 
 
FRANK RE-ENTERS IN A NEW R&LE 109 
 V 
 
 FRANK RE-ENTERS IN A NEW ROLE 
 
 It is not so easy to make good an advance as to make the 
 advance, as any military tactician will be able to attest. 
 That I did not know then, or did not realise it properly, for 
 it was a great chagrin to me in the days following to find that 
 all the glory had gone and that patience and labour had to 
 ensue. It was like nothing so much as my first visit to the 
 Grindelwald. The evening I arrived the sisterly peaks stood 
 round, near and majestic and wonderful, hanging right over 
 the balcony of the hotel with crests that changed from gleam- 
 ing silver to a pale flush of rose as the sun sank away and dark- 
 ness wrapt the valley. I went down to dinner as in a dream. 
 I had conversed with earth in her majesty and received her 
 unutterable secret into my soul. I was like one caught away 
 to a height where timeless communications flowed about me, 
 and the conversation of those I sat amongst struck on me and 
 fell back unanswered. I had afterwards fled out beneath the 
 stars as in a trance. The following morning I had awoken 
 early, thinking to see those peaks stand up mighty and sudden 
 and shining in the glory of a sunlit world, but I had leapt out 
 of bed and advanced to the balcony to see it all blotted out. 
 A mist stood in the valley, the mountains were gone, and 
 all that was to be seen were the green fields that it did not 
 need a journey to Switzerland to see. 
 
 But in one case as in the other my very disappointment was 
 a proof of possession. I was in the country of wonder, and 
 I knew of it. The very day after my visit to Mr. Ramsay's 
 rooms, I drew out a goodly portion of the little moneys I had 
 managed to save and began book-purchasing. My nightly 
 labour began now to draw itself into the small hours of the 
 morning, and I used to drape an ancient pair of trousers 
 along the bottom of the door lest Aunt Mary, seeing a gleam 
 of light, should either upbraid me for wasteful extravagance 
 cr as incontinently enquire into the reason of my late hours. 
 
 The whole of my doggedness was upcalled now. But a 
 new difficulty arose, and one that I scarcely knew how to 
 circumvent at first. For at the end of that week Frank 
 returned from school, and it had been resolved that on the 
 
no JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 following Monday he should commence business in a firm of 
 stockbrokers in Broad Street. He himself was not too elated 
 at the prospect, but seeing that it meant his sharing my room, 
 I scarcely knew how to contain my chagrin. I had usually 
 welcomed him back with glee as my one friend in a house of 
 enemies, but my joy was so dashed with disappointment that 
 I imagine Frank thought I had brought our old callous code 
 to a refinement that was beyond all admiration. His manner 
 toward me was quite abashed. And when I picked a quarrel 
 with him on the first evening, retired to our room, and read 
 with the full light on till two o'clock in the morning, he, think- 
 ing it all part of the refinement, made no protest, but only 
 responded by gruffness. 
 
 But this could not be done every evening. I repeated the 
 dose on the second evening, and again on the third evening, 
 till he began to think that, code or no code, the thing was 
 getting beyond the limits of forbearance. That evening (it 
 was a Sunday evening) we had a prodigious quarrel, a quarrel 
 that I, exasperated to find the mists still around, and exasper- 
 ated at being hindered in the attempt painfully to strip them 
 away, aggravated to the full, I fear. This brought Aunt 
 Mary in to separate us. The cold austerity she habitually 
 adopted toward Uncle Jacob became with us a fierce strength 
 that was not a little terrifying. 
 
 " What do you mean by it ? " she cried out as she entered 
 the room, " upsetting the peace of the whole house in this 
 way ! " Her very voice had an e dge on it that cut like knives 
 when she was angry, and her first words hushed our wrangle. 
 " You, Jack, who like to think yourself a man, and give your- 
 self such airs and graces, can't you realise that it would be a 
 little more to the point if you didn't squabble so much ? " 
 Her carefully chosen suggestions writhed about my sensitive- 
 ness like so many whips. " Is your head so swollen that you 
 can't even abide your brother ? I thought you two held your- 
 selves together against us ! " That beast of a cousin of mine 
 must have borne our very words to her ! "I can plainly see 
 that I must separate you two and put you in separate rooms ! " 
 
 Neither Frank nor I had a word in reply to her. My very 
 anger had disappeared in the pain she inflicted by seeking 
 carefully out all my raw sensitiveness and whipping on to it. 
 
 It was always her plan of diabolical campaign, to arrive 
 
FRANK RE-ENTERS IN A NEW R6LE in 
 
 first with a volume of words, and not to cease till, by one 
 device or another, she had reduced her opponent to a secure 
 silence. Then she would promptly withdraw, with the same 
 terrific velocity and dignity, as she had arrived. She did 
 this now, leaving us to crawl into bed in silence and in dark- 
 ness too, for she had celebrated, if not enforced, her victory 
 by turning off the light. 
 
 Unlike my usual self, who generally slept more heavily 
 than healthily, I lay awake long that night thinking over things. 
 Aunt Mary's closing words had raised a thought in my mind 
 that would not let me go. A fire had been raised in my soul 
 these days that subdued all things to itself. I had glimpsed 
 visions that seemed to me, even though I but half knew them, 
 more than life itself. It seemed to me, not that nothing should 
 stand in their way, but that nothing could stand in their way. 
 Earthly relationships were as nothing beside them. And when 
 Frank's presence in my room hindered their realisation, and 
 when Aunt Mary threatened, on a renewal of the trouble, to 
 remove the presence, it seemed to me that there was only one 
 thing that could be done. It was an undesirable thing, it 
 was even a brutal thing, and I would neither look firmly at 
 it nor as firmly resolve upon it but I knew that it would come 
 to pass. 
 
 I should probably have set about it forthwith except that 
 the following day was Frank's first day at business, and on 
 my calling for him at his office in Broad Street he seemed (to 
 my mature experience of City affairs !) so helpless and so 
 obviously mystified and bewildered that all my old feeling 
 of the elder brother and protector revived in me. Even the 
 momentous matter of finding my own soul and learning the 
 power that lay in that discovery, seemed to me to lapse by 
 order of right, if only for awhile, before that responsibility. 
 In addition to which, another matter came to my knowledge 
 that caused me untold, if secret, elation. For at dinner Uncle 
 Jacob took it upon him, as both Frank and I knew he would, 
 to congratulate Frank on his first day of business experience, 
 to speak nothing of the advice sure to follow thereon. 
 
 " If you are honest, and work hard, and seek to please those 
 that are above you, you are sure to get on and prosper," said 
 he, knowing full well, of course, that seven-tenths of the City 
 of London exists in flat contradiction of this hereditary cheap 
 
ii2 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 wisdom of employers. Indeed, the amount of prevarication 
 he indulged in was extraordinary, for, vicious though he was, 
 he was yet one of the acutest of living brains, and could divine 
 the truth of a situation with bewildering accuracy with the 
 least possible facts before him. So he said : " Always keep 
 your eyes and wits open for new ideas that shall extend the 
 sphere of your master's business : nothing repays like that ; " 
 although if he knew anything he must have known that if there 
 is one thing above another the average English employer de- 
 sires, it is that he shall be allowed to pursue his ancient habits 
 unmolested, and that if there is one thing above another he re- 
 sents, it is that his employees should dare to suggest that there 
 is anything under the sun his ripe experience does not know 
 full well. He himself was only a partial exception to the rule. 
 For he, when I suggested new proposals to him, would scoff 
 at them and me, and then in a month or so produce them as 
 examples of his own insight and sagacity. But it is an instinct 
 in most men to defend their own caste, and seeing that Frank 
 had just joined the ranks of employees, even so shrewd and 
 independent a mind as Uncle Jacob's could not resist the 
 temptation to pour the usual employer unction over him. 
 
 So it was little wonder if neither Frank nor I gave close 
 hearing to the tide of words that flowed forward as dinner 
 progressed. But there came a break in it, and the mention of 
 a certain name, that startled my dreaming thoughts into 
 immediate attention. He had been saying to Frank : " Never 
 miss an opportunity, always try and turn disaster into victory 
 by holding firmly on : in all my long life I have never given in, 
 however bad things looked, and by holding on and hard work, 
 and by cleaving cleaving, that's it to my ideals, in the good 
 hand of fortune defeats have always come out to be victories 
 in the end : " when he suddenly broke away : 
 
 " Mary, my dear, I nearly came to losing Ramsay to-day/' 
 
 " Oh ! " said she, half hearing what he said, and half watch- 
 ful that she should not lose the upper hand of the conversation 
 that was to ensue. 
 
 " Nearly, but I was one too many for them ; " and he 
 chuckled with satisfaction while I grew strained and anxious. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " Her words rang crisply out, and 
 there was the suspicion of the crack of the whip in them. 
 
 " Smithsons, I think, had approached him, though how 
 
FRANK RE-ENTERS IN A NEW R6LE 113 
 
 Smithson knew it was he worked for me I do not know. But 
 Smithson is one of those pushing, officious men who would 
 never have the honour to recognise that it was I who made 
 Ramsay. Quite an unscrupulous man, Smithson ; the rising 
 up of men like him is spoiling all the old happy relations 
 between artists " 
 
 " Is there anything you want, Henry ? " Henry, too, was 
 home for the holidays, and this was Aunt Mary's method of 
 intimating to Uncle Jacob that he had better get to the point 
 and cease his digression. It was tolerably obvious to all of 
 us, and I felt quite sorry for him as I saw him flush crimson, 
 his eyes glaring angrily but futilely at her. 
 
 There was a moment of strained silence, and I almost 
 expected to see him foam up in one of his blind rages. But the 
 memory of the futility of previous displays combined with the 
 urgency of what he wanted to say to restrain him. 
 
 " He came to me to-day/' he began in a surly way, " and 
 said he could not show me any more designs, as it was 
 likely he might be working for other people. Not for a long 
 time could I get him to say what his other offer was. But I 
 got it out of him/' His manner grew warmer as he became 
 more elated. " Yes, yes, I got it from him. He didn't 
 say outright, but I could declare I was right in suggesting 
 twice as much. I suggested less first, but that doesn't matter : 
 Smithson's an unscrupulous and dishonourable man, and I was 
 compelled to barter for things of beauty." Aunt Mary's 
 warning eye arrested him quickly in the threatened digression. 
 " Twice as much ! Think of that ! It's simply ruin. But I 
 had to spoil Smithson. I had to. That goes without saying. 
 So I told Ramsay it was his duty to me I who made him 
 to let me close with him at the terms of his offer. He wouldn't 
 at first, simply wouldn't reply : momentary success, as I say, 
 always ruins an artist's morals. But I forced him to. It's 
 simply ruin, but I couldn't afford to let him go." 
 
 I could scarcely restrain a cry of joy as this recital went 
 forward. Lest the shining joy I felt in my soul should show 
 its glory in my face and betray me, I bent down over my plate 
 as I ate. I felt glad, too, that my natural instinct of secrecy 
 had made me leave Aunt Mary to infer that I had been on one 
 of my occasional evenings with Tim on that celebrated night 
 in Mr. Ramsay's rooms. 
 
 I 
 
H4 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I went away upstairs after dinner glad to be free of restraint. 
 Frank came up after me wishing to know what was the 
 matter, and I had not the heart to pick a quarrel with him. 
 Yet, as I knew, and as it depressed me to know, the quarrels 
 with him would have to be undertaken and undergone. It 
 was as though a necessity of Fate had been laid upon me. I 
 never thought of questioning it, even when I least liked it, 
 and postponed it. 
 
 VI 
 
 TIME, TIM LARKIN AND MYSELF 
 
 Tim Larkin, both in his name and in his personality, was of 
 that range of human beings that one terms characters in order 
 to distinguish them from the less interesting rank. They 
 change, as all life must change, but the change in them never 
 serves to take direction. The changes in others, in the rank 
 of men, are the result of growth, but the change in Tim was 
 like the hazard of circumstance. He was timeless, like Jack 
 the Giant Killer. It does not matter if Jack be at the top of 
 the Beanstalk, at the bottom of the Beanstalk, or the middle 
 of his climb up the Beanstalk, sitting at home discontented or 
 slaying the giant : in one and all of his occupations his age 
 was, and will ever be, the same. So it was with Larkin. It 
 was no more than an irrelevance (however important that 
 irrelevance might be to his salary in Mueler& Co., Ltd.) that 
 he paid a better regard to the cleanliness of his collar, that he 
 dispersed his assortment of aspirates with happier accuracy 
 among his words, or that he wore his red hair longer, and for the 
 first few hours of the day succeeded in displaying a painful 
 parting in it. I believe these were the result of my influence 
 on him, and that if my presence had been removed he would 
 have discarded these attempts to please me as unpicturesque 
 uniformities of conduct that no longer had any justification. 
 
TIME, TIM LARKIN AND MYSELF 115 
 
 But not only did he not grow, he even sometimes forcibly 
 protested against my labour to grow. During the years we 
 both, of course, changed; but the change in me took a 
 forward and upward direction, while the change in him 
 circled and gyrated round itself ; and he tacitly recognised 
 this by crying out upon it. 
 
 " Always muggin' at a book, you are, nowadays, as I may 
 say," he exclaimed once, in tones half of injury, half scorn. 
 " Think you'll choke your brain-pan with a lot o' good, I 
 don't s'pose ! You mind you don't get yourself into a knot 
 you can't untie. Oh yes ! " 
 
 " Do you good if you read a bit too/' I replied, may be 
 sententiously enough, but I believe with kindly intention. 
 
 " Oh yes, I don't s'pose ! " 
 
 " So it would ! " 
 
 " I'm not a fancy bird, to get my neck into a knot, if you 
 are, I may say." He wriggled his neck in his collar as though 
 1o emphasise the point. " What's the book now ? " 
 
 " Philosophy and Faith," I said. 
 
 " That's what you call a rhyme, I s'pose ! " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Philosophy and Faith." 
 
 " You mean alliteration." 
 
 " Crikey ! I don't s'pose ! You go on, my son, you do ; 
 and may I tell you what'll 'appen ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " You'll trip yourself." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Yus ! And your head'll hit the old sweep's tummy, 
 and then it'll be you or 'im ! " 
 
 " Think so ? " 
 
 " Wish I knew the Derby winner sure as I know that, I do ! 
 Oh yes, I don't s'pose ! Anyhow, better that than a bit of 
 old mother's washing like the jackdaw, I may say. It's a 
 bit more o' God's promise, it is. Oh yes, don't you split 
 yourself, I'm watching." 
 
 At such times I seemed to catch a note almost of envy in 
 Tim's manner. It might have been no more than my fancy, 
 it might have been my self-esteem seeking sustenance, for it 
 certainly comforted and fed it. Those who remember me 
 at that time might scoff at the remark, yet I needed such 
 
n6 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 comfort and sustenance. My very assertiveness was a proof 
 of that, though it brought me many enemies. For I notice 
 that self-esteem, in young men anyway, is not often offen- 
 sive save when its cause is denied. Mr. Ramsay, I know, 
 thought highly of me, and he never found me assertive. 
 With him, indeed, I was enabled to recognise myself ; and 
 I was almost crushed with a sense of the thing in me strug- 
 gling for expression. He recognised it, and enabled it to 
 thrive in a curious and almost overwhelming sense of 
 humility. Others denied it, were even supercilious of it, 
 with the result that it arose in fierce challenge and it could 
 not be surprising if others found that challenge offended 
 them, for they had first offended me. 
 
 Yet however much I was kindled to Tim by the note of 
 envy that flickered through his cries of protestation at my 
 pangs of growth, I am frank to say I had need of such kindling. 
 And I had need of such a note of envy from him. He and his 
 mother at Shepherd's Bush may have had to live near the bone, 
 but there was a spirit of deep contentment in him. He 
 remained the same whatever came, with his odd ways and 
 shrewd poetical mind. His only perturbation was his periodic 
 protestation against myself. And that was symbolical, for 
 he was a stranger, both by nature and by hazard, to the pangs 
 that had afflicted me. As I look back upon those days I am 
 stirred to a wonder at myself. Tim would set off towards 
 the Embankment each evening with the clouds of smoke 
 from his newly-lit pipe streaming like wings over his shoulders, 
 while I would take my way to Hampstead to my reading, 
 weary of it, but dogged, anxious almost to burke it, and setting 
 myself to begin without fail at the precise moment of a quarter 
 to eight. For Tim and I, I have since thought, are almost as 
 much of two wholly different orders of beings as Man and the 
 Spirits that inhabit the secret places of Nature. It seems to 
 me a primitive piece of folly to assume that all men are of 
 the same hierarchy of souls because their bodies present the 
 same appearance. 
 
 It was not as though I had elected to behave as I behaved. 
 It was rather as though it had been thrust upon me. My 
 very struggle with Frank to secure my soul's privacy in the 
 struggle I underwent was viewed by me with positive aversion, 
 and yet proceeded with unflinchingly. He, I could see, 
 
TIME, TIM LARKIN AND MYSELF 117 
 
 was puzzled at me. We had had our quarrels, but we had 
 always stood by each other with a loyalty that overrode all 
 personal disagreement, and here was I seeking to be rid of 
 him, and that, moreover, in a house where we regarded our- 
 selves as in an enemy's country ! Little wonder it puzzled 
 him ! Happily half my struggle was dispensed with. I 
 would have struggled to the end, I know, but after no more 
 than a week of quarrelling, when Aunt Mary one morning 
 was upbraiding me and causing her deft whip of words to 
 writhe about my naked soul, Uncle Jacob, in one of his rare 
 moods of kindly toleration and keen perception, intervened : 
 
 ' They're too old to be together in one room now. They 
 should have separate rooms/' 
 
 A light flashed across my soul at the word. But Aunt 
 Mary was not to be baulked of her prey. 
 
 11 There's less excuse for Jack than for Frank. He likes to 
 be considered a man." 
 
 She paused as on an interrogation, but I said nothing. 
 
 " Do you hear me ? ; ' 
 
 Still I did not reply. What had I to say ? 
 
 " You had best not be morose and sulky as well." Her 
 eyes were fixed on mine as I endeavoured to flash back my 
 defiance. 
 
 " Frank could have the spare room overlooking the tennis- 
 lawn/' went on Uncle Jacob, picking up the matter where he 
 had left it. 
 
 Envy leapt in me as he spoke, for the room mentioned was 
 larger and far better situated than mine. But I held my 
 peace, for greater issues, I felt, were at stake than a matter of 
 rooms. 
 
 So it came about that I kept my room to myself, which is 
 to say that I kept my soul to myself, and maintained its 
 defence in the hour of its great adventure. Aunt Mary would 
 have been speechless with horror at the thought of the few 
 pence extra expenditure a week, had she known that I kept 
 my light on till the small hours of the morning always. But 
 I saved her that unhappiness by my judicious use of the old 
 pair of trousers. 
 
 It was not all reading I did. Manuscript paper had been 
 bought, and I, as years stole onward, nightly wrote out my 
 soul in straining and chaotic essays. These I showed to none, 
 
n8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and spoke of to none. Not even Mr. Ramsay. Every 
 month I would go down to his room and we would talk. At 
 first we talked of my reading, but we were not long before we 
 passed that period and discussed independent subjects as 
 might two equal souls. His frank acceptance of equality, 
 not to say his undisguised and instant attention to some of 
 the things I said, won me to a mood that was all the more 
 adventurous because it was conceived in humility as though 
 it must thrust further on the sea that quelled it with its 
 vastness and magnificence. But I never let him see my 
 writings. These were often developments of what I had been 
 fired into saying when with him (I never, I am glad to know, 
 merely developed what he said), but I shrank from displaying 
 them before him, nevertheless. I shrank even the more 
 because they meant so much to me. My dreams altered, and 
 I began to crave for authorship, for literary expression of my 
 growing soul, with a lust that was insatiable. It slowly and 
 inevitably began to devour the whole semblance of the earth 
 for me. 
 
 It was partly this, I think, induced the better portion of 
 my book purchases. My reading was often a painfully slow 
 matter, but yet I purchased without any abatement of zeal. 
 Books I could not find time to read it was good to see stand 
 with an aspect full of pride on my shelves. Moreover, though 
 I could not read them (stout, portentous tomes, some of them !) 
 it is incredible the amount I derived from browsing continually 
 through their pages. At any rate, I added steadily to their 
 stock. 
 
 Aunt Mary's tongue was not slow in finding this new raw 
 flesh to whip on. I know it puzzled her to think where the 
 money came from for their purchase. But I had had a rare 
 assistance. Mr. Ramsay had devised what I cannot but 
 consider a most deft way of expressing his thanks for my 
 small hint leading to the doubling of his earnings. He had 
 introduced me to his bookseller, who, when Mr. Ramsay had 
 gone, had informed me that I was, for the next two years, to 
 have what books I wished at half-price. My thanks Mr. 
 Ramsay would not have, but I was touched deeply. And 
 when one adds to that the fact that I never bought new ties, 
 that I dispensed with gloves, that I purchased cheaper 
 clothes and denied myself more than the barest luncheons, 
 
LOVE 119 
 
 the mystery is partly expounded. But nothing of this did 
 Aunt Mary know, and so, knowing little, she whipped the 
 more keenly and assiduously. 
 
 Tim knew. I told him nothing, and he asked nothing, but 
 he never seemed to fail in knowledge. Of course he knew 
 nothing of Mr. Ramsay's wonderful gift, but he knew of our 
 friendship, and he knew of my willing self-denial. 
 
 " Nice stuff this, eh ? Brown's a bit of all right, what's 
 say ? " he asked once as he stood clad in a new suit. 
 
 I concurred simply, for I knew what he meant, and I knew 
 his shrewd, rat-like eye was on me. 
 
 I knew, too, that he who never changed, whatever his 
 habiliment, years or company, he who was the same as on the 
 first morning I had met him and received my first instructions 
 from him, implied a criticism of me, a criticism that was con- 
 ceived in perplexity. And yet it was he who threw open the 
 door that made urgent the realisation of all that was gather- 
 ing together its strength in me. 
 
 VII 
 
 LOVE 
 
 The progress of a soul has its own laws, and to say that a 
 thing has laws is, though few see it clearly, not an explanation 
 of it, but its reference to a definite and active governance. 
 Here had I, for months, been through a tense soul-struggle : 
 that is the only phrase for it, for the ordinary expressions of 
 education and learning are demonstrably, even foolishly, 
 inadequate : and the result in me was not so much a change of 
 myself (if one may distinguish superfinely) as a further weight- 
 ening of my potentiality. And that potentiality could not be 
 said truly to exist until something occurred to strike on it and 
 convert it into the flow of Life from the stuff of Being to 
 
120 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the flow of Life. For that impact I was waiting, and so 
 surely as the preparation for it had come about, so surely 
 would the impact occur. It was in the divine order and 
 destiny of things. 
 
 Let me change the figure. The language of Art differs 
 from that of Science chiefly in being comprised of metaphor as 
 distinct from category ; in, that is to say, dealing with the 
 oneness of things as opposed to the distinctness of things. 
 One is occupied with Life, the other with Death. Enough 
 of that. Anyway, that being so, the whole value of Life, in 
 its widest significance, depends on a truth of metaphor for 
 metaphor is either the one and only truth, nothing else being 
 true, or absolute falsehood. So when the word " subliminal " 
 was chosen to express a profound and unintelligible sphere of 
 Being, a whole department of knowledge was suddenly arrested 
 at that choice, and perverted, because of a fundamentally 
 false vision. To say that that mystical portion of a man's 
 Being that feeds him with such thoughts of might and beauty, 
 and acts for him with such strange power, is beneath him, is 
 beneath the threshold of his reasoning intelligence, is pro- 
 foundly to misconceive. It is even derogatory. If anything, 
 that portion of being is above and not below consciousness ; 
 it is superconscious, not subconscious. But the whole vertical 
 conception suggested by the metaphor is bad because it is false. 
 It is not a matter of up and down, above or beneath. It is 
 rather that the consciousness is the nucleus (perhaps only the 
 present nucleus, but the nucleus) of our Being. Outside the 
 limits of that nucleus, Being is astral ; within those limits, 
 mundane. The knowledge acquired outside those limits 
 transcends, and is too wide for, the function of language, for 
 language is the mundane invention of that nucleus. Such 
 ultra-conscious knowledge, such astral intimations, when 
 conveyed to the intellectual pivot of being, can only be 
 rendered in the metaphors, imagery and emotional rhythm 
 of Poetry. In fact, as I now admit, this is the distinction 
 between Poetry and Prose : Poetry being astral and significant, 
 Prose mundane and reasonable. 
 
 I am at some pains to explain all this that seems to me so 
 clear, for I have come to a point in my life that I cannot make 
 intelligible without an intelligent appreciation of it. A 
 considerable part of the business of Art is to build up in the 
 
LOVE 121 
 
 terms of consciousness this ultra-conscious knowledge. To 
 the artist who makes it, and in a lesser degree to the soul that 
 appreciates it, it passes the centre of being through violent and 
 intense crises, the results of which are to bring more and more 
 of ultra-consciousness into understanding, and so build up the 
 temple of personality. In so far as it achieves this, it is an 
 end in itself, and the term didacticism loses its meaning. We 
 cannot deny Life, even if we would : the denial of Life is the 
 only insanity, whether it be the vile, commercial worship of 
 mundanity on the one hand, or the far more conceivable 
 desire to cancel the conscious being. And this, it seems to 
 me, is Life : to build up a vast and splendid temple of per- 
 sonality by bringing more and more of the astral self into 
 conscious and spontaneous unity : by, in fact, making the 
 nucleus an epitome of the whole Being. This can chiefly be 
 done by the ritual and spiritual discipline of Art, though it 
 may be achieved by independent soul-cataclysms and soul- 
 struggles. 
 
 Now it was some such thing that had happened in me. I 
 had been driven forward impetuously along this line of 
 development. The new worlds within which I had been 
 advanced were the worlds of my own ultra-conscious self. 
 Or, as I would rather put it, spasms of Life were passing over 
 my whole Being, and I, becoming aware of them, sought to 
 bring the whole field I felt, and knew not, into conscious 
 control. Night after night I had struggled and wrestled, 
 either reading, when much that I read was valueless to me, 
 being beside the point, or writing, which was far more 
 satisfactory, however formless the result may have been. I 
 had been in the pangs of labour. Now I had reached a point 
 when all the accumulation of the ultra-conscious that had 
 been gathered within my intellectual being needed to be 
 educed by some need for action before it should be dissipated 
 or slip away again. It needed only to be thrilled and trans- 
 muted into the terms of my conscious, though yet and 
 always spontaneous, being. It needed some kind of action, 
 or it could not be said to be. 
 
 And, as I have said, it was the immovable Tim Larkin, of 
 perhaps a different order of being, who, in the irony of things, 
 brought me the inevitable appeal from the world in which 
 this life is cast. 
 
122 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Our visits to Soho to dinner still took place. I could not 
 spare much time for them. I had my treasured visits to Mr. 
 Ramsay, that nothing could abrogate, but that yet took up as 
 much time as I could afford. Each day seemed important 
 to me now, especially when it be remembered that I had 
 virtually only my evenings to myself. I say " virtually " 
 advisedly. As no one who knows anything of " business " 
 life needs to be told, the amount of time wasted is simply 
 colossal. My hours were officially from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 
 p.m., a good third to a half of which time was immortal waste. 
 So it is everywhere. But such waste, in the struggle I was 
 undergoing, seemed to me a sacrilege as, truly, it is. There- 
 fore I used to take up my book, and get through many a page 
 on the quiet at the office. I honestly believe Uncle Jacob 
 would have considered this a dishonest waste of his time, 
 instead of the vile system with which he thumbscrewed his 
 staff being an immortal and irreparable waste of theirs ! I 
 used to make a note of soul-important passages (I abhor 
 marking books : why should the pangs of one hour's growth 
 be made a groove for all time ?) and re-read these at home. 
 
 Yet the nervous tension would sometimes be too much 
 for me. Often of an evening, on a pretext of going out to 
 post a letter, I would fly out in wild excitement to find some 
 girl I knew, or some other whom I knew not but who was 
 willing to remedy that defect with me, " to sport with Amaryl- 
 lis in the shade " of some dusky walk, " or with the tangles 
 of Neaera's hair " in discreet seclusion. They thought me an 
 odd boy, I know, and would regard me askance at first, 
 thinking, I suppose, that a boy who chose such strange 
 subjects for conversation, and spoke with such queer affec- 
 tations, might or might not be as sane as he should be, but was 
 clearly not of their set. But after the first quarter of an 
 hour my impetuousness wore them down, and at the risk of 
 a show of insufferable egotism, I must confess there were many 
 broken hearts as a result of my nocturnal amorousness, I do 
 not laugh at it ; I am, and have often been, thoroughly grieved 
 at it ; for in one or two cases I have been borne in a memory 
 of pain for years, as I had to discover. But what was I to 
 do ? It was not that I was not in earnest. I was in deadly 
 earnest. Only that earnestness was not of the marriage sort, 
 if I may express it so. I was deeply touched, but not in the 
 
LOVE 123 
 
 right place. In two cases, of more than ordinary significance 
 to me, the fault was chiefly a matter of rough hands and 
 inaccurate aspirates. 
 
 Apart from these spontaneous outbreaks, my visits to Mr. 
 Ramsay, a very occasional theatre, and a still more rare visit 
 to Soho for dinner with Tim, were all that I knew of dissi- 
 pation. Friends I had none, and as Frank soon began to 
 gather together a company of warm friends in the neighbour- 
 hood, I became lonelier and lonelier. Sometimes it afflicted 
 me keenly, but usually I did not mind it. There were very 
 few who liked me at first flush, and as there were few who 
 bothered about proceeding further than the first flush, I 
 began to gather an unenviable reputation a reputation that 
 Aunt Mary sedulously fostered. While I throve, or attempted 
 to thrive, on my chosen way, this passed me unscathed, but 
 when I stayed awhile, wearied and perhaps depressed, it 
 stung my sensitiveness as salt on a wound. At such times I 
 turned to the faithful Tim, and we went to Soho to dinner, 
 where I exchanged for four courses and a bottle of wine rather 
 more than the value of a half-crown. 
 
 The invitations for such occasions were usually left to me, 
 and Tim would acquiesce as though he expected it when it 
 came. Latterly, indeed, I think he actually, uncannily, did 
 indeed expect them. Once he himself suggested it. 
 
 " What about to-night, I say ? " he asked after having 
 chewed the top of his pen contemplatively for some time. 
 
 Now he must have divined it. I had been struggling on 
 that question the whole morning, longing for a rest, and yet 
 begrudging it. 
 
 " Don't mind/' I replied nonchalantly. 
 
 ' You're a cough-drop, I may say." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 Our questions and answers were like slow droppings in 
 water, clear and sharp, with long silences between. 
 
 " Well, ain't you ? " 
 
 " Foh ! " 
 
 " Your's head's altering." 
 
 This news struck a strange elation in me. It encouraged 
 me somehow. 
 
 " Oh ! " I said, non-committally. 
 
 " It's a better shape, I will say." This he said slowly and 
 
124 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 very grudgingly. " Much better shape, oh yes ! But 
 what it's like inside, God knows ! Fair messed up, I should 
 say. Stirred up, with leavings, like Giorgio's soup." Giorgio 
 was the patrone of our usual Soho restaurant, and the soup 
 that Tim had in mind was a wonderful and bewildering con- 
 coction. "And only twenty-three," he went on, though how 
 he learnt of my age and doings I never could discover. " What 
 it'll be like soon phew ! And why you can't come out, 
 wanting it, without scratching your head over it, and getting 
 your works tied up for two days on end, I can't think for one, 
 I will say." 
 
 I suppose I had been fretting for it for some days, but I 
 had not been aware of it. It was seldom Tim grumbled with 
 me. He was habitually almost taciturn nowadays, having lost 
 much of that gaiety with me through which his originality 
 flashed. I presume it was owing to my increasing habit of 
 reading during office hours. Twice he had heard Uncle Jacob's 
 step, and warned me when I had caught nothing, and such alert 
 hearing struck me as being due to a habit of watchfulness. 
 The two things, I think, must have been obverse and reverse 
 of the same coin of his mind. The coin, I may say, was but 
 of a recent mintage. 
 
 So that night as we set off he seemed to take charge of me 
 as though responsible for me, until I became aware of the 
 situation and took the lead with forced gaiety. A kind of 
 plethora of material had gathered in my soul, coagulating its 
 fluids, stopping its ingresses and egresses, and crying out for 
 the word of action. I must have seemed dulled and stupid. 
 It is in such moods that men seek vice from a healthy instinct, 
 as though instinctively recognising the need of some kind of 
 violence. 
 
 Giorgio hailed us gladly. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Elthorne, you are the stranger. Mr. Ramsay, 
 he was in yesterday, and he have asked for you." 
 
 It was just such a night as February in London can give. 
 Our walk had well warmed us, and therefore we were less 
 inclined to notice it, but the interior of the Turin recalled 
 it to us. The evening journals told of blizzards in the north 
 of England and spoilt skating in the east, but all that day, 
 in London, instead of snow, a driving sleet had fallen, until 
 the evening had wrought the accumulated discomfort to the 
 
LOVE 125 
 
 actual point of misery. It was, in fact, just such a night as 
 drives a certain portion of London's inhabitants to seek an 
 adventitious pleasure in the haunts of Soho. Some of the 
 more restless of the suburban inhabitants were of that number, 
 but it was chiefly comprised of those who house in solitary 
 lodgings of sorts. In the long, thin, white-painted room that 
 Giorgio was endeavouring to lift into fame, we could see men 
 by themselves, men with one another, men with wives, both 
 obvious and not so patent, and men with companions of the 
 gentler sex that had clearly been acquired not much earlier 
 in the evening for a more or less prolonged consorting. There 
 were also not a few women by themselves or with one another. 
 Altogether the restaurant was quite full, and Tim and I were 
 momentarily chagrined at not being able to get our customary 
 table for two. So we sat ourselves at a corner table where one 
 of the gentler sex was having her dinner in solitary estate. I 
 tried to get Tim to sit opposite her, a ruse that was quickly 
 divined by him, and as repugnantly baulked. I suppose, he 
 thought himself an object of ridicule to women; at any rate 
 he could not tolerate their presence if they were at all stylishly 
 attired, as this one was. 
 
 " Rotten, I call it," he whispered to me as we sat down. 
 
 " What is ? " I asked. 
 
 " Full up like this." It was obvious he was in discomfort, 
 and it amused me a little. That we were hot after the walk, 
 and the entrance from the cold air, did not help him. 
 
 " Fudge ! I like it. It makes things a bit gay." 
 
 " I don't s'pose." 
 
 " So it does. You're too devilish touchy." 
 
 He said something rude. 
 
 The wine, always, was my charge, and I ordered the usual 
 bottle of Beaune while Tim was wriggling about in evident 
 discomfort, and with more than a tendency to be quarrel- 
 some. 
 
 " I say, let's hurry, and get out for a walk," he whispered 
 again. 
 
 " On a night like this ! You go to Bath ! " 
 
 11 Well, it's rotten, as I may say." 
 
 " Rotten yourself." 
 
 What happened next, I cannot quite say. I heard the gentle 
 and gratifying gurgle of the wine into Tim's glass as he sat to 
 
126 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the left of me, and, as I helped myself to some olives, I saw the 
 black reflex of his arm push itself out. Then a crimson- 
 purple tide swept into my line of sight, and, like a small wave, 
 leapt the edge of the table into the lap of the lady opposite. 
 
 I jumped to my feet. 
 
 " I say, Tim, this is a bit thick ! I'm frightfully sorry, 
 madam. I say, Tim. Here, take this serviette ; never mind 
 your handkerchief. I'm awfully sorry." 
 
 A quick colour of annoyance possessed the girl's face for an 
 instant. Then as she looked across at my manifest concern 
 it seemed to pause in abeyance. In the swift passage of that 
 one glance I remember it travelling across me and over my 
 shoulder, when a smile came into her blue eyes and wrinkled 
 her cheek. I was too concerned with mopping up the wine 
 from the cloth, while Giorgio concerned himself with the girl's 
 skirt, to pay much heed to this at the time, but I think now 
 it must have been the picture of the crestfallen and helpless 
 Tim that wrought that smile. It was not unkindly. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," she said, " it will wash." 
 
 " Will it wash ? " I asked anxiously and dubiously. 
 
 " I suppose so. But it can't be helped. It was an acci- 
 dent." The last words were said to Tim, who stood sheepishly, 
 with his fingers plucking at his trousers. 
 
 The meal was a silent and abashed affair. Even I felt as 
 though the whole of the restaurant were watching us, while 
 Tim's awkwardness was so complete that he had not a word to 
 say for himself. I need not say that this was a rare thing for 
 Tim. 
 
 Therefore I was not altogether surprised when, after his 
 fruit, instead of pulling out his great pipe as usual, he fumbled 
 about for a moment or so, and then said : 
 
 " Think I'll go. Coming ? " 
 
 " No, I think I'll stay on a bit." 
 
 I felt his reproach, but I had certain reasons for staying 
 moving uneasily about me. 
 
 " Well, so long ! " 
 
 " You'd better stop on as ordinary." I wonder if I would 
 have said that had I not been certain he was resolved on 
 going ! He had, in fact, risen, and was standing above 
 me. 
 
 " No, I'm going/' There was still invitation in his voice, 
 
LOVE 127 
 
 but I held firm. " So long ! " he said resolvedly, even 
 defiantly. 
 
 " So long ! " I responded. 
 
 " See you to-morrow, s'pose ? " 
 
 " Expect so." 
 
 Not that there was ever a doubt of it, but men throw 
 stones into a pond for no assignable reason. 
 
 When Tim had gone, I drew my book out of my pocket and 
 pretended to read it. It was, I fear, but a pretence, for my 
 eyes were as frequently over its edge in attendance on the girl 
 opposite me. She was stylishly, not modishly, dressed, as 
 though she had not too much money to dispense, but yet with 
 her little could manage to hold her own somehow with those 
 whose coffers were full of plenty. A certain air of indepen- 
 dence, too, she had, that gave distinction to her bearing, 
 combining with a nervous fire in her motions. She was thin, 
 over-thin for her build, and looked clever in an alert way. 
 Her hair, so much of it as I could see, was light brown, and 
 her eyes, I remembered from that quick glance of hers, pale 
 blue. 
 
 So much I took in as I watched her. Presently she looked 
 up from a paper-backed novel she was reading. My heart 
 beat a violent rataplan on my ribs as I firmly held her gaze 
 with mine. She smiled slightly. 
 
 '' I am afraid my friend spoilt your dress/' I said quickly, 
 lest she should look away again, and a fair reason for a remark 
 be lost. 
 
 " I had forgotten it," she said, looking down at her dress. 
 
 ' c Does it show a stain ? " I asked, leaning over. 
 
 " A bit, yes/' she replied, displaying it. 
 
 As I had leaned over I had caught the scent of her clothes, 
 with the result that my pulse became a most uneven affair. 
 Nevertheless, an opening for a conversation had occurred 
 that could not be neglected nay, it was even imposed on me. 
 So I passed, awkwardly at first, and then more naturally, 
 into more general themes, and so back again to more particular 
 themes, of conversation. I offered her a cigarette, which she 
 duly smoked. I noticed that she had nothing to drink and 
 offered another bottle of wine. This she refused but took a 
 Benedictine instead. I had, I should say, allotted a certain 
 sum- of money for my outing, and even this had meant the 
 
128 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 postponement for a month of a certain book I coveted. But 
 such considerations had no weight now. They were not even 
 irrelevant, for they were not thought of. I had plunged into 
 the stream, and intended, willy-nilly, letting the bountiful, 
 life-giving tide have its way with me. 
 
 At last she started drawing on her gloves. " I must really 
 go now," she said. 
 
 Again my blood began its furious course in my veins. 
 
 " Where do you live, may I ask ? " I spoke quickly. 
 
 " Why do you want to know ? " she said, smiling across 
 at me. 
 
 " I just do," I said, encouraged by the smile, though not 
 less resolved to discover. 
 
 " Kilburn way," she said, fencing with me. 
 
 " I've got to go that way," I said. 
 
 " Have you ? " It was wonderful the musical doubt she 
 put into her voice. 
 
 " Really." 
 
 " That's nice for you." 
 
 " It is, for I'm going with you if I may ? " 
 
 " But you're not coming now ? " 
 
 " At once." I rose as I spoke. 
 
 " But you really mustn't." 
 
 I made no reply but reached down my coat from its peg, 
 while the waiter rushed to help me. 
 
 " One bill," I said maybe defiantly. I had a sovereign 
 in my pocket, and that, and that only, was the limit to my 
 venture. 
 
 " No, no ! " she said. 
 
 " But you see, we spoilt your dress, spilt the wine, you 
 know," I stammered, clutching at the first excuse that came 
 into my mind. 
 
 " It's really very sweet of you," she said, and again her 
 smiling music made my brain to flutter. 
 
 It was no more than an adventure in my mind the whole 
 time, though an adventure on more resplendent heights than 
 could be afforded by Heath Road. It was the more exhilarat- 
 ing for that, but no more permanent. 
 
 Outside the sleet still drove along the streets. It was 
 bitterly cold coming out of the Turin with raw winds laden 
 with what looked like small rain yet stung the cheek fiercely. 
 
LOVE 129 
 
 " Which way do you go ? " I asked, for my geography of 
 London was of the baldest. 
 
 " By bus/' she said, and I caught the shiver in her voice 
 on the imagination of a dark, damp, lumbering horse-bus up 
 that long, wind-swept road. 
 
 " Let us have a hansom ! " I cried bravely. 
 
 " All right/' said she, and began looking about. Then she 
 burst out : " But aren't I taking you out of your way ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," I answered stoutly. 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Quite ! " 
 
 The bleakness of the night necessitated the enclosing of the 
 hansom, and I therefore, a little over-eagerly, demanded it. 
 Thus we were secure from observation, and again my blood 
 began its violent music. Her hand touched mine beside me, 
 but before I could secure it, she had slipped it again within her 
 muff. I was a little at odds, not quite sure how to proceed 
 on these more resplendent heights of adventure. But pre- 
 sently the lurch of the hansom threw me up against her, and, 
 for the shave of a minute, I stayed there longer than was 
 necessary, then, turning quickly, I kissed her on the cheek. It 
 was swift and instinctive. 
 
 " Now, now, now ! " she cried warningly. 
 
 The tone in a voice is all ; and on the ring of her voice I 
 threw my arms round her and, drawing her to me, kissed her 
 passionately. Kiss upon kiss I pressed on her lips thus, and 
 it seemed to me that she responded. It must have been 
 minutes ere I released her. 
 
 " You're all right, aren't you ? " she said, settling her hat 
 and tidying her deranged hair. 
 
 " Am I ? " I asked contentedly, putting my arm about 
 her and drawing her to me again. 
 
 ; ' You're a saucy boy, you know." 
 
 "It's good to be saucy sometimes." 
 
 " I'm not so sure about that." 
 
 " I am." 
 
 Further conversation was hindered by another long series 
 of kisses. It was plain to me that she enjoyed them not less 
 than I. We drew away to look into one another's faces, and 
 then went to it again as to an irresistible fascination. 
 
 We were now driving up the long, straight, gleaming road, 
 
 K 
 
130 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and the sleet was driving up against the wind-guard with a 
 long, sharp hiss. The guard was opaque, so covered was it 
 with the sleet. 
 
 " Come on my knee ! " I said. 
 
 " What, for all the people to see ? " 
 
 " Who can see through that ? " I pointed to the guard. 
 
 " Oh, but there isn't room ! " 
 
 " We'll soon make room/' 
 
 We did, and as she sat upon my knee, I leaned back, 
 drawing her after till we had our fill of kisses. Then I said 
 suddenly : 
 
 " But I don't know your name." 
 
 " What do you want with my name ? " 
 
 " But I must have it." 
 
 " Must you ? " 
 
 After the usual questionings and submissions to the cus- 
 tomary ritual of guessing (at which I was a little surprised, 
 seeing this was a matter of the resplendent heights) I learnt 
 that her name was Rhoda Ermott. Then, in the intermissions 
 of kissing, to her considerable amusement, I passed through 
 an interrogatory, and discovered that she was a private secre- 
 tary, that she lived in rooms with a friend who had some 
 position in the post-office, or something connected with the 
 post-office, and that she was twenty-four, a year or so older 
 than myself. 
 
 " Now have you finished, Mr. Inquisitive ? " she asked. 
 
 " Quite," said I. 
 
 As she sat on my knee and looked in my face, in the dim 
 illumination of passing lights, she bewildered my brain as it 
 had never yet been bewildered. As she told me of the struggle 
 that she had had, and that she had only one relative, an aunt, 
 a great gush of tenderness came over me, and an infinite hunger 
 and nostalgia. I felt that to return to Hampstead would be 
 impossible, and yet horrible in that it was inevitable. A 
 great yearning and melancholy overcame me, and I pressed 
 her to me as though Life were an unbearable pain. Its 
 whole round of business and circumstance surged before my 
 mind, and frightened me. To have driven so in that vehicle 
 to the end of time, with her upon my knee, with light or earnest 
 talk between us in the intermission of kisses that had become 
 somewhat more than sensual pleasure, seemed to me to have 
 
LOVE 131 
 
 become suddenly the authentic order of things for us, and 
 the fact that every yard of progress we made was a nearer 
 approach to an end, instead of a mere passage in eternal 
 continuance, appalled me, drove pure despair into my soul. 
 
 " What are you so solemn about, Mr. Inquisitive ? " she 
 suddenly asked, breaking in on the terrible pictures of my 
 mind. 
 
 ' We're going to see a lot of one another." 
 
 ' Are we ? Who says so ? " 
 
 ' I do." 
 
 ' But I don't even know your name yet." 
 
 ' I suppose you ought to." 
 
 ' Of course ! I told you mine." 
 
 ' Jack Doherty," I said. " Like it ? " 
 
 1 Why, you're Irish ! " 
 
 ' Absolutely." 
 
 ' How do you spell it ? " 
 
 ' J-a-c-k ! " 
 
 ' No, silly, the other ! " 
 
 ' D-o-h-e-r-t-y ! " 
 
 ' But what a funny way you pronounce it ! " 
 
 ' Yes, the ' h ' should be hard." 
 
 She took off my hat, and stroked my hair back. " You're 
 rather nice," she said. 
 
 " Why then, we shall see a lot of one another ! " 
 She laughed merrily and easily. " Perhaps. But not just 
 now, I think." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " I asked, quailing suddenly with 
 iear. 
 
 " I'm nearly home, dear boy ! " 
 
 It was not what I feared, but it was almost as desolating. 
 
 " Oh, why can't we go on like this ! " I cried. 
 She caught the drift of my emotion, but turned away 
 from it. I caught her to me for a long kiss in a sudden aching 
 of heart. 
 
 ' You silly boy ! " she said, sitting upright, and replacing 
 my hat decorously on my head. 
 
 Then, as the hansom turned out of the high road, she moved 
 off my knee, despite my protests, and began to array her some- 
 what disordered hat and hair. I watched her in silent admira- 
 ton, and something moving secretly within me gave me to 
 
132 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 know that this had become more than an adventure, or 
 rather, that it was an adventure of a new order, whose con- 
 clusion was shrouded in the days to be. That shrouding 
 appalled me. A wild joy possessed me, but it was a joy 
 everywhere mixed with a melancholy of desolation. It seemed 
 to me terrible that I should go from her alone to that house in 
 Hampstead ; but more, far more, it seemed to me terrible 
 that she should be alone to combat in the world, without me to 
 bulwark and aid her, though she would doubtless have laughed 
 merrily at so strange a notion. 
 
 Despite the blizzard we hung long again on one another's 
 lips before we parted. Then, when she was gone in, I realised 
 it was long past midnight, and that I had no other course 
 than to tramp to Hampstead. And when I tiptoed into the 
 tall, dark, cold house, and crept into a chill bed, it was not the 
 cold that kept me unwontedly awake long and late. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE OPENING OF A HOPELESS WAR 
 
 The following morning as I came in, late as usual, to my 
 breakfast, Aunt Mary held me with her eye. Uncle Jacob 
 had already departed, and I could feel I had been the subject 
 of conversation. 
 
 " What time were you in last night, Jacob ? " 
 
 " Oh, after twelve ! " I said. Breakfast was always a 
 scramble for me, and I used this as a cover. My eyes were 
 full of sleep, and I felt drawn and tired, facts that had not 
 even been shaken out of me by my cold tub, and which I knew 
 were testifying against me. 
 
 " But what time ? " To my infinite relief she accepted the 
 hour as being only usually late for such occasions, and chose 
 
THE OPENING OF A HOPELESS WAR 133 
 
 to tight the customary issue on that understanding. It gave 
 quite a lift to my spirits. 
 
 " I don't know. I went straight to bed, and didn't look 
 at the time. I caught one of the last busses/' I threw her 
 this admission so as to keep her off the further lateness. 
 Better a very black sheep than an actual goat, I thought. 
 
 There was silence for a moment, then she rang out : " Why 
 don't you tell me the truth ? " 
 
 I had come down cold to the bone, but at her words my 
 coldness became far more than merely a physical matter. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " I asked, bending over cold coffee. 
 She never bothered about keeping breakfast warm for me. 
 
 " You're going to say you took your friend Tim to dinner." 
 
 " And I did," I flashed out. Unalterable truth rang out 
 in my voice, and I had sufficient of histrionic instinct to rise 
 from breakfast as I spoke. I could see Aunt Mary was im- 
 pressed, therefore I did not much heed her when she said 
 sturdily : 
 
 " I don't believe a word of your lies." 
 
 Her violence did not hurt me, for I knew it meant that she 
 was beaten on the issue and strengthened herself artificially. 
 But as I hastened out of the room her departing words did not 
 fail to catch at me with fear. 
 
 " I shall have to get your uncle to treat with you." 
 
 I crept past Uncle Jacob's room at the office, which meant 
 that he did not know, nor would be able to find out, that I 
 was late. But when I was called in to my morning interview, 
 something in his eye and manner made me know that all was 
 not well. This fact, roving in the air as it was, and picked up 
 surely by me, made it impossible for me to fight his dominance 
 as I had been in the habit of doing, with the result that for 
 the first time for many days he bullied me ruthlessly, and 
 finally drove me out of his room in a devouring flame of anger, 
 flinging my papers after me. 
 
 " Idle whelp ! " he roared out. " Crass fool ! Here, take 
 your papers ! Don't leave your stupid rubbish with me ! 
 There's nothing done right in this house except I superintend 
 it. Everything comes on me. Here, go, go ! Pick up your 
 papers, you fool of a boy, and get back to your idling." 
 
 The whole house could have heard him, and Mr. Tozer's 
 face, coming up the stairs to see him after me, was a picture 
 
134 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 in its misery of anticipation. I was insulted and angered, 
 without the spirit to rebel. I was tired, and the thought of 
 what Rhoda Ermott might be doing or thinking (whether she 
 was thinking of me, or had heartlessly put me out of mind) 
 tormented me. She had said we were not to meet till the 
 following week, and when I got to my small office I occupied 
 the rest of the morning with writing her a long, impassioned 
 letter, begging her to meet me somewhere for the Saturday 
 afternoon. 
 
 My state may be imagined when I say that it was not till 
 the Monday I received any reply from her. My visits to the 
 post-office where I had asked her to address my letters had, 
 in those days between, been pilgrimages of a torment of hope 
 and fear. When I at last received her letter I bore it away, 
 trembling, to a tea-shop to read it. It bore a Midland post- 
 mark, a fact that filled me with torturing imaginations. But 
 the letter was brief and neatly phrased. She said that she 
 had received my letter, and that I was a silly boy. She was 
 sorry she could not meet me on the Saturday, but that her 
 employer had had to go on some business to the Midlands, and 
 that she had had to accompany him. (The very thought of her 
 being with another man drove my thought into a frenzy : I 
 do not know what evil I did not imagine, and picture before 
 my eyes, with torture to me.) She went on to say that she 
 did not know how long she would have to be there, but that 
 she would write to me letting me know which meant that 
 our appointment for that week was cancelled. 
 
 If there was one thing needed to make my passion of an 
 eternal die it was this. I do not think that for one consecu- 
 tive period of five minutes during all that week she left 
 my thoughts. The desolation and pain of it was scarce bear- 
 able. She haunted me, and I always, in an intensity of fond 
 tenderness, imagined her as over-pressed with the burthen of 
 living, when probably she was gaiety itself, and would have 
 been vastly amused at my imaginings. Yet so it was. It 
 was her I thought of, her and her life ; never, as I am com- 
 pelled to say for myself, merely or primarily my satisfaction 
 or joy in her, though that was of course indissolubly mixed 
 in it. 
 
 In the meantime other matters were afoot. All things 
 seemed, strangely, to be chancing together. The very night 
 
THE OPENING OF A HOPELESS WAR 135 
 
 after I had first met Rhoda, while the picture of her face as she 
 had sat on my knee was yet before my eye, fired by my imag- 
 inings of her struggle in life and stung by the recognition of 
 my helplessness and dependence on Uncle Jacob, I had des- 
 patched my first attempts to get into print. I had sent an 
 essay to a weekly paper, and a short story, of a mystical sort, 
 to a magazine. The night of the day on which I received her 
 letter I sent off two more. Such were, as it were, my first 
 attempts to spring into a world of self-dependence, which was 
 also the world of my hopes and ambitions. Then there came 
 also the application of the prick behind. 
 
 How I remember it ! It is vivid as it were yesterday. On 
 the night following my second hopeful despatch of manuscripts 
 that were the flame of my soul, as we sat at dinner, some topic 
 of political importance was started. I have a dim remembrance 
 that it was a general election time. Henry, who had grown to 
 be quite friendly of late, made some statement in the course 
 of conversation that I took exception at. He was now in the 
 business, filling my old post in charge of the despatch of samples 
 and proposed designs to intending customers, which accounted 
 partly for our better friendship, and also for his acquaintance 
 with my political opinions. I imagine his remark, therefore, 
 was thrown out, in no ill spirit, to draw me. It certainly did 
 draw me. I crossed his opinion, I fear, emphatically and 
 somewhat energeticalty. Politics are seldom a matter of 
 reason. Their convictions spring from temperament, right 
 or wrong, moral or non-moral, beautiful or ugly : their right- 
 ness or otherwise must therefore date from the worth of those 
 temperaments, and so I did not, could not, reason a case ; 
 I stated it, and doubtless stated it with that kind of assurance 
 that Mr. Ramsay was kindly and tender with, even respected 
 and attended to, but which was gall to Aunt Mary. While I 
 spoke, I thought of none, but when I ceased, I felt suddenly 
 awkward and diffident and self-conscious. There was a 
 moment's silence. Then Aunt Mary spoke. 
 
 " So, Jacob/' she said coolly, " you are going to be a great 
 literary man ; is that so ? " 
 
 The effect was electrical. Uncle Jacob, who had been dream- 
 ing at the head of the table, sprang instantly to attention. 
 Frank and Henry, from each side, turned quickly on me. And 
 I well, first I turned red, and then, as I knew and felt, 
 
136 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 turned ghastly white, trembling in my limbs and grieving 
 in my spirit. 
 
 " Oh yes/' went on my tormentor. " I know ; I've seen 
 the reams and reams of writing in your drawer. There's not 
 so much there now. Been sending some off ? " 
 
 It was a worthy ambition, was it not ? Yet here was the 
 whole table looking on me as though I were a mixture of 
 buffoon and criminal ! 
 
 But I was staggered and confused. This discovery, with the 
 treachery it implied, made all the earth insecure to me, wholly 
 apart from the eyes of bewilderment and amusement that were 
 turned on me. I thought I had been tunnelling beneath the 
 earth, for my works not to appear till I had reached my destina- 
 tion, then to be only manifest in their achievements, not in 
 their tentative efforts ; and now the earth had ruthlessly been 
 broken away, and I was blinking at the day, with curious eyes 
 gazing amusedly down at me. The blow aimed at me had 
 struck me deeply, it had struck the tender secrecy of my soul, 
 the sensitive raw of my spiritual progress and ideals. And 
 my whole being quivered. Words cannot express my sense 
 of humiliation and defeat. 
 
 What passed during the rest of that meal I cannot say. 
 After it was over I fled to my room, and, taking all my manu- 
 scripts, the pangs in labour of my soul, I shut them down under 
 lock and key in my old school trunk. Then I fled out into the 
 night. As I went softly out of the front door, closing it after 
 me gently with the latchkey in the lock, I heard Uncle Jacob 
 enquiring after me. But I had gone. 
 
 Soft faces and reluctant lips could not tempt me that night. 
 I walked and ran alternately till I was weary. And I called 
 aloud on Rhoda Ermott, not blind to the fact that she had 
 doubtless abolished me from her mind long since. 
 
 The following morning two long envelopes awaited me on 
 the breakfast-table. They were my first returned manuscripts. 
 I endeavoured to look oblivious of Aunt Mary's scrutiny as I 
 slipped them nonchalantly into my breast pocket. 
 
 Later that morning Uncle Jacob took advantage auto- 
 matic, instinctive advantage, be it said of my listlessness to 
 hale me to and fro as I do not suppose even Mr. Tonson had 
 ever been. I was still the same man as had for some two years 
 forced his conquering, dominating spirit back upon himself, 
 
THE OPENING OF A HOPELESS WAR 137 
 
 and compelled him firmly to desist from tyrannising unduly over 
 me, or else I think my feebleness would have tempted him to 
 strike me. As it is he flung harmless papers at me. But his 
 insults had now all a double edge, and it was this that gave 
 him the marked ascendancy over me. I quivered at his new 
 references to my waste of time, for I knew now what further he 
 had in mind when he said it, and I had no answer to his 
 insinuations of my total incapacity for business and its com- 
 mon sagacity, though I knew, and knew that he knew, their 
 deliberate untruth. 
 
 If I was listless before I saw him, I was thoroughly depleted 
 after. I looked disconsolately over the hideous chimney-pots 
 at the back of my room that civilisation has erected as its 
 adequate temple of praise, where in the near distance I could 
 see glimpses of the Thames as it glided like lead beneath a chill 
 February sun. 
 
 :< You look fair washed out, son ! " I heard a voice. 
 
 " Feel like it," I said. 
 
 " Rough crossing ? " 
 
 " Damn and blast him ! " 
 
 11 Everybody does who sees the enemy, I may say. Look 
 fair washed out, I mean. Proper washed out and thin. 
 Huh, he makes me creep. Glad I don't have to see him." 
 
 I did not pay much attention to his words, but he com- 
 forted me. 
 
 " S'pose if I saw him he'd sneak my pink too. Couldn't 
 be worse if he proper sucked you, I may say. Huh ! " 
 
 A blinding light swept on my brain as he spoke. It dazzled 
 and horrified me. And almost before I had seen it it was 
 gone again. 
 
 " My God ! " I exclaimed, staring across at him. 
 
 " What's the matter, eh ? " 
 
 " Nothing ! " 
 
 " Look as if you'd seen a ghost, son ! " 
 
 " I believe I had," I said. 
 
 He said nothing, but looked oddly at me ; but I had seen 
 something that gave me a puzzled, if horrified, interest, and 
 as I had seemed beaten and broken all ways, this brought me 
 help, for it gave my thought something to work upon and 
 follow out. I determined to watch Uncle Jacob, and to watch 
 myself when with him, in our future interviews ; and it made 
 
138 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 me resolve, grimly and determinedly resolve, not to cease to 
 oppose him mentally with all possible doggedness, whatever 
 my defeat or depression, for I felt, blindly as yet, that 
 immeasurable and incommunicable issues lay hinged on that. 
 
 In the evening after dinner he summoned me to his study. 
 I went in somewhat fearfully, yet doggedly determined not 
 to be fearful. Half-knowing what I did, I looked with horrible 
 fascination on his glossy hair, his glistening eye, his full red 
 lips and his richly-coloured complexion (all in the setting of 
 a not indelicate profile), and so I was distracted from the main 
 purport of the interview, of which I was fully aware directly 
 he had spoken to me. 
 
 "Why do you distress me in this continual way, boy? " 
 he began in a voice that seemed to whinny. 
 
 I heard him. I did not answer or say anything, for at 
 first my thoughts were far afield ; and then, when I brought 
 myself to the occasion, I held myself in silence for the greater 
 strength. 
 
 " Always you cause me some anxiety, and it is too much 
 for me. What's this now I hear from your aunt ? " 
 
 Still I held myself in silence. It was a thing he never 
 reproached me for : his method of attack was that of bitter 
 complaint or terror, in sharp contrast to Aunt Mary, who 
 relied on speech from the other side till her moment came. 
 It was chiefly this that gave her the ascendancy over him. 
 She loved being the effectual styptic ; he loved being the 
 effectual torrent. 
 
 " Is it not enough that I have taken you up, in kindness, in 
 a desire for kindness, at least, and put you into my own firm, 
 when there was no necessity for me to have done anything, 
 without you wasting all my efforts in this foolish, this wicked, 
 way ? I don't pretend that now it is only kindness, for 
 you have now a value in my firm, and I am glad, very glad, 
 to give you that tribute/' This was his way of saying, I 
 suppose, that a pound a week was a fifth of what he would have 
 had to pay a stranger to do in my place ! " But now see 
 how you go and spoil all the value of what you do ! What do 
 you mean by it, boy ? It is a great worry to me." 
 
 At this pause he seemed to expect an answer, but I did not 
 give it to him. 
 
 " It is not for me to say that a literary career is not a worthy 
 
THE OPENING OF A HOPELESS WAR 139 
 
 one. No, no, don't think I mean that ! But what chances 
 of success have you ? Are you going to say you have talent 
 or genius : are you ? You know, and it pains me to say it, 
 you have altogether a false notion of yourself. Your aunt 
 finds your manners most unbearable, and you have offended 
 many others. You are, I am afraid, egotistical and bombastic, 
 but if you go and run away with a false notion of yourself in 
 a conceited, swollen-headed way, you will not only pain us all 
 but you will wreck your whole life. Believe me, I know what 
 I am talking about. I am much older than you, and I have 
 watched things for myself. My life has thrown me into a 
 specially advantageous position, and I have met a great many 
 men of the highest eminence as well as a great many men who 
 have spoilt their lives, and the lives of others, with a false 
 conceit of themselves. For one thing, are you prepared for 
 the years, perhaps a lifetime, of penury and actual starvation 
 it might mean ? Besides all this, you must recognise that 
 you receive a salary from me for your work, and I cannot 
 have you spending your efforts, and tiring and fagging your- 
 self, and not giving your true work, your best self. It is your 
 duty to do so, and I must very firmly stop all this/' 
 
 There lay the true fault, thought I. Still I did not 
 reply. 
 
 " What is all this writing your aunt speaks of ? " 
 
 " I don't understand what she means/' I said. I had had 
 time to collect myself during his harangue. " Some of it 
 was French exercises, and others passages from Ruskin's 
 essays on Art/' 
 
 This made him fall back on himself, I could see. He began 
 again warily : 
 
 " Let me see them ! " 
 
 " I burned them yesterday." 
 
 He eyed me suspiciously. " Are you telling me the truth ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Uncle ! " I exclaimed. I must have had histrionic pos- 
 sibilities, for it was excellently well said. 
 
 And there was genuine indignation in it too ! There are 
 lies that are perversions of truth, but there are also lies that 
 are the protection and maintenance of the soul's proper 
 privacy, which is itself of the essence of truth. I will never 
 sell a secret of my soul at the price of lip-service to a code. 
 
140 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 It was iny only means of holding off a soul-robber. I used the 
 means and held him off. 
 
 " Well, I am very pleased to hear it. I like you to read 
 Ruskin. He will be very useful to you, though you must 
 beware of his tendencies to decry much that is very beautiful. 
 Some parts of him are very dangerous. But that you can 
 work out for yourself/' 
 
 It was curious to notice how he interpreted everything in 
 terms of the profit of Messrs. Mueler, Ltd. But I did not then 
 object to that : I was congratulating myself on having escaped 
 certain most dangerous shoals and endeavouring to continue 
 to look aggrieved and not pleased. 
 
 " Will you have a cigarette ? " 
 
 He had some excellent Turkish cigarettes at his hand, 
 but he went to his desk to produce a box of cheap Virginians. 
 I took one, with thanks to him, and lit and smoked it as 
 though I had not some of his own brand of Turkish in my 
 pocket. 
 
 When I reached my room Frank was there. While we 
 smoked together he endeavoured to find what my interview was 
 about. But my hand was against everybody, and I let him 
 gather that it was only some trouble in the business. At 
 last he went, and I reached down a book to read. Then he 
 stood in the door again. 
 
 " I say, Jack, I got a rise to-day. From the first of March, 
 it begins. Two quid a week ; not so dusty, eh ? " 
 
 I thought of Rhoda, and I sickened at the thought of our 
 contrast. 
 
 " Good for you ! " I said. " Perkins is a good chap/' 
 Perkins was his chief. 
 
 "I'm terribly bucked. We must have a lunch on it." 
 
 " I'm glad," I said, and I fear I lied. " Congratulations ! " 
 
 " Well, good-night, old chap ! " 
 
 " Good-night, old man ! " 
 
 Before I turned in to bed I covered my stipulated five 
 pages, but I do not think I read one line of them. 
 
RHODA ERMOTT 141 
 
 IX 
 
 RHODA ERMOTT 
 
 I remember once playing at the royal and ancient game of 
 chess when a most interesting situation arose. My queen was 
 threatened, and my opponent's queen was also threatened, 
 ungallantly, by my knight. He had ripened a strong move- 
 ment on my king, a movement that was dependent on his 
 queen, while I could deliver a swift attack on his king, an 
 attack that should have checkmated him in four moves, as 
 I reckoned, with my knight, by moving it away from his queen. 
 The attack would have been like nothing so much as running 
 quickly along a ridge with a precipice each side, but it should 
 have been successful. There is no doubt that had I only been 
 unaware of the subsidiary complications I would have brought 
 off the main movement, but I was aware of too much, thought 
 of too much, and failed in all. 
 
 It was much like this with me now, with this difference, 
 that my central concern so absorbed my whole emotional 
 life that all the auxiliary complications arising on every hand 
 either made no impression on me or became only as fuel to 
 feed the essential fire. Ordinarily on the discovery of my 
 literary ambitions I would have fled down to Mr. Ramsay, 
 given him the confidence that was bound to be his sometime, 
 and sought his advice. Indeed it occurred to me. But it 
 was forgotten again in the burning hunger for Rhoda. 
 
 I was aware of the fact that my passion for her was as 
 yet unrequited. Nor did it disturb me in the least. There 
 was not a pin point of doubt in me that I could win her to 
 respond fully in due time. The assurance, however, did not 
 make me patient ; it filled me with the most violent and 
 intolerable impatience. Actual cries of pain would be 
 wrung from me when I thought of her away from me and not 
 thinking of me. Once Tim caught such a cry of mine. It 
 had risen to my throat in an absent dream of pain, to be held 
 and throttled there only half-effectually. The noise must have 
 been an odd one, and I felt him looking at me so queerly 
 that I sprang up and went out forthwith to lunch, to his 
 considerable and increased astonishment. 
 
 What evils I imagined for her I do not know. All that 
 
142 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 horrible fear that our modern vile, commercial system has 
 driven into the hearts of men, blasting their daily happiness, 
 and blighting their souls ; the fear of the future, of dismissal, 
 of want, of poverty that is a shame and generally leads to a 
 deeper and more real shame, possessed me on her behalf. 
 To be true, it was as near to me as to her, but it was of her 
 I thought. She was alone and a woman. So it ramified 
 abroad and ate my days in the maw of its melancholy. 
 
 Then came the liberating stroke ! It was on the Saturday 
 of the week thereafter. I had left the office and, before 
 going home, made my daily pilgrimage to the post-office near 
 handy. I had given up sneaking in like a self-conscious 
 criminal, for now I had all my correspondence addressed to 
 that office, leaving nothing to Aunt Mary's capricious honour ; 
 and therefore, in an assortment of divers handwritings, my 
 love was secure from the conjecture of post-office girls. 
 
 " Nothing ! " said the girl, but as I turned heroically away, 
 her companion said : " Just a minute ! I think there's a tele- 
 gram just come ! " 
 
 A telegram ! I snatched it open outside and read : 
 
 " Returning to-day. Will write to-night about next week. 
 
 " RHODA." 
 
 My movements were swift and prompt. The telegram, I 
 saw, had been despatched from the Midland station of the 
 town she was at : obviously she was then on her way back. 
 I dashed to my bookseller's close by and borrowed a time- 
 table. There I saw that a train to London left ten minutes 
 after the telegram had been sent, and was due to arrive in two 
 hours' time. I immediately telephoned to Frank and asked 
 him to notify at Hampstead that I would not be back till 
 later, as I was going to the theatre. 
 
 " Do you think it wise ? " said he. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, you know you're in a bit of hot water about some- 
 thing or other, and well, you know." 
 
 " Oh, blow them ! Why should I be tied by them ? " 
 
 " You do what you think best, of course." 
 
 It was a discreet and perceiving caution of Frank's, but 
 it failed, as such cautions are often apt to do, because it 
 
RHODA ERMOTT 143 
 
 disregarded the dominant law abroad in me. There was 
 plenty of time for me to observe all leisure, but I snatched 
 a hasty lunch and fled up to St. Pancras station. Then I 
 strode up and down the platform till the train came in. 
 
 As the people flowed down the platform I scanned them 
 eagerly. But they floated away like a mist and no Rhoda 
 was to be discovered. I read her telegram again and assured 
 myself of the station. Then I asked a porter of the next 
 train. I would wait every train of that day, if need were, I 
 said to myself. In three-quarters of an hour another train- 
 load of passengers swarmed on the platform, and thinned away 
 like a mist. With an overwhelming feeling of disappointment 
 I waited on so till after six. Grimness and doggedness had 
 taken the place of hope. 
 
 When, soon after six, another train came in, I tried to con- 
 vince myself that this would no more hold her than any of 
 the others had ; that, in fact, she must have already arrived 
 by some other route. But, as it passed me, I saw her face in 
 a forward window. When she stepped out on to the platform 
 I was acutely disappointed. Instead of her imagined loveli- 
 ness, I saw she was thin, even perhaps a little sharp. Even 
 her prettiness seemed less so to me who had thought of her as 
 all beauty. Yet, with all my disappointment, I would have 
 freely chosen her at that moment before all the loveliness of 
 the world, and the choice would not have sprung from loyalty 
 but from inevitability, I was disappointed ; but I yearned 
 for her, hungered for her. It was she I wanted, though I 
 could have wished her nearer the substance of my dreams. 
 
 There was a man with her, tall, thin, and with an air of 
 distinction. I hated him on sight. 
 
 She had not seen me, nor did she see me till I deliberately 
 placed myself before her line of sight. Then her look plainly 
 intimated that I was to take no notice of her as yet. So I 
 waited till the man had gone to attend to their luggage, 
 when I ran to her side, 
 
 ' Rhoda ! My dear ! my dear ! " 
 
 ' My dear boy, you shouldn't have come here/' 
 
 ' I've been here over four hours ! " 
 
 ' The more fool you ! " 
 
 ' Rhoda ! " 
 
 ' No, I don't mean that. But I can't see you now." 
 
144 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " But you must, you must. We must go and have dinner 
 together." 
 
 " I can't. He'll want to see me home/ 1 
 
 " Oh, curse him ! Rhoda ! " 
 
 I suppose she must have seen the pain on my face, for in a 
 sudden gush of pity she put her gloved hand on my arm and 
 said : 
 
 " Yes, I will. Under the clock in ten minutes' time. Now 
 go, quickly, he's coming back." 
 
 I saw him come up to her with an air of proprietary, and I 
 heard him address her by her Christian name. It made me 
 furious. They walked together down the platform, and near 
 the gate they remained long in discussion. He seemed to be 
 endeavouring to get her to bow to his will, such was his 
 insistent manner, and I gathered the nature of the discussion. 
 Then they went off together. 
 
 X 
 
 STILL RHODA ERMOTT 
 
 My heart failed in me when I saw them disappear together 
 round the bend of that dirty, red-brick wall. Nevertheless, 
 in a manner of blind hopefulness, I slowly made my way round 
 to the clock, and waited there as she had bade me do. The 
 ten minutes at last passed by and changed to fifteen, but 
 yet she did not appear. They passed to twenty minutes, and 
 to twenty-five, and I still clung desperately on, scarcely know- 
 ing why I did so, save that to do anything else was impossible. 
 
 At last I gave a great cry of relief, for with a flutter of skirts 
 she was beside me, her hand on my arm and her face looking 
 up into mine. 
 
 " My dear ! " I cried out, " I thought you weren't coming ! " 
 
STILL RHODA ERMOTT 145 
 
 " I am sorry," she said, " but he wouldn't let me go." 
 
 " But what the deuce has it got to do with him ? Hang 
 him ! " 
 
 " Now don't spoil everything by getting angry ! " 
 
 There was appeal in her voice, and I was too full of joy 
 at having her at last with me to insist on a theme that never- 
 theless had taken possession of me. 
 
 In the cab, as it fled southwards, I insisted on a kiss. She 
 gave it to me, and had no thought, no more than I had, for 
 the people that doubtless witnessed it. She had begun to be 
 a little caught off her feet, I can see, and carried forward in 
 the torrent that already bore me in its flight. 
 
 " But what," said I then, as we rattled into more gaily 
 lit streets, " has that old fool got to do with it ? What has 
 it got to do with him if you want to come out with me ? " 
 
 " He doesn't know I'm with you ! Mercy me ! I dare 
 never tell him that ! Wouldn't his face be a picture ! " She 
 laughed at the thought of it. 
 
 " But why ? Why ? if you only type for him ? " 
 
 " My dear boy, he wants me to marry him ! " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Fact. And I believe he thinks I'm going to." 
 
 " Oh dear ; oh dear ! You're not going to, though ? " 
 
 " It certainly would be a relief for a lot of things. He makes 
 a lot of money, you know ; and he's not such a bad sort. But 
 fancy marrying your father ! Ugh ! If it weren't for 
 that ! " 
 
 " But but you don't care for him ? " 
 
 " In a way, yes ! He has been very decent to me, and 
 buys me lots of things. And when we go away together he 
 always does me well." 
 
 " Rhoda ! " I cried out. 
 
 " What's the matter ? Don't you like me talking of 
 him ? " 
 
 " When you go away together you don't ? " 
 
 " Don't what ? " 
 
 " Stay together ? " 
 
 " Thanks ! I'm much obliged to you, I'm sure." She 
 ha d grown suddenly cold and distant, which was her manner 
 of dignity. 
 
 " I'm sorry, Rhoda ! " I pleaded humbly. 
 
 L 
 
146 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " It doesn't matter/' Her tone implied that it mattered 
 everything. 
 
 " I'm a beast, I know/' 
 
 " I'm afraid you are. Still, it doesn't matter. Where 
 are we going to for dinner ? Or shall I go home ? " 
 
 " Forgive me, Rhoda ! " 
 
 " There's nothing to forgive. I suppose it's only natural." 
 
 " Oh no, it isn't. It was horrible of me, dear ! " Man is 
 a composite being. I was genuinely and humbly sorry. And 
 yet I would not have recalled it ; for somewhere in my being 
 a secret elation had arisen at the thought that my suggestion 
 would now make her wary of any complication with him. 
 
 Since our first meeting I had prosecuted enquiries regarding 
 certain restaurants I had heard of. The Turin was out of 
 the question. There I was known, and might easily meet those 
 who knew me. Besides, if possible I wished to be alone with 
 Rhoda, and I had heard of places where this could be achieved. 
 So I had asked at likely looking restaurants in the vicinity, 
 and it was to one of these we now went. 
 
 " I've never been in a place like this," she said, looking 
 around the small room, with the table arranged for two, the 
 couch, and flaming wall-paper, with monstrous red patterns 
 on it. 
 
 " There are a lot of them about here," I said, with a great 
 affectation of carelessness. 
 
 She looked suspicious : there was one thought in both our 
 minds, but we neither of us said anything. 
 
 All through dinner we spoke on light themes that mattered 
 nothing to me, and I was content to let it be so, for I had a 
 confession to make, and I was tense with the strain of it. 
 After dinner I drew her on to the couch, and, slipping my arm 
 about her, kissed her tenderly. 
 
 " You're a naughty boy bringing me to a place like this," 
 she said. 
 
 " It was our only way of being together, and alone," I said. 
 But I continued shamefacedly : " I've a confession to make to 
 you." 
 
 " Oh ! " said she. " Well, let's have it." 
 
 " You know when I told you my name was Jack Doherty. 
 Well, it isn't." She watched me as I spoke, quite quietly. 
 " In a certain sense it is true. I have some of my letters 
 
STILL RHODA ERMOTT 147 
 
 addressed to me in that name." I did not say that this was 
 only since our meeting, and to cover hers under that name. 
 " But it isn't that, really. It's Jacob Elthorne. I tell you 
 because you ought to know. I couldn't go on under a 
 misunderstanding. ' ' 
 
 " So you told an untruth to me ! " I winced ; and she 
 continued more kindly : " Didn't you trust me then ? What 
 did you take me f or ? " 
 
 " It wasn't only that, Rhoda, believe me ! I wanted rather 
 to be free of Jacob Elthorne, I think : it's tied up with such a 
 lot that I hate." 
 
 " But you did distrust me." 
 
 " I suppose in a way I did. But there was the other too. 
 It's all so mixed up together. I'm sorry, dear girl. I'd trust 
 you with everything now." 
 
 I looked earnestly in her face as I spoke. I bent and kissed 
 her on the lips. Then she smiled suddenly, and, slapping my 
 cheek, said briskly : 
 
 " In any case you told me now, didn't you ? And you were 
 a good boy to do that. I suppose one has to be careful. 
 Jacob Elthorne, did you say ? I like it. I like them both, 
 although the way you pronounce Doherty sounds funny. 
 But I'm going to call you Jack just the same." 
 
 " Most people do," I said. My manner was still subdued. 
 It was partly because I felt glad at having brought our relations 
 on to one of frankness. Moreover, somehow, it had wrought 
 a change over her. A new tenderness, an almost motherly 
 tenderness, was manifest in her as she sat beside me and drew 
 my hand between her two and caressed it. 
 
 " Never mind, dear boy," she said. " I've forgotten it." 
 
 Then a sudden resolve came into my mind. Leaving her 
 side I went over to my coat and drew out three of my abortive 
 attempts to enter into print. 
 
 " There ! " said I. " There's what nobody in the world 
 knows of besides myself and now you : not my brother, nor 
 my dearest friend. I vowed nobody should know. But I 
 want no secrets from you now." 
 
 She took them from my hand wonderingly, and looked 
 through them. 
 
 ' Why, Jack," she said, " you're a writer." 
 
 ' No, I'm not," I replied, half moodily, half awkwardly. 
 
148 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 "I've got things in me that I want to get said. But nobody 
 wants them." 
 
 " Read them to me," she said suddenly. 
 
 " I can't," I exclaimed, " I can't read out my own stuff ! " 
 I was crimson with confusion. 
 
 I watched her awkwardly, standing over her or moving 
 about, as she took one of the essays and read it. The ex- 
 pression of her face, as far as I could see, never changed as she 
 read, and I trembled a little to think what the result in her 
 would be. Then, after awhile, she looked up slowly at me 
 and said : 
 
 " Jack, this is fine ! " 
 
 God ! how it stirred me ! Any praise I would have 
 clutched eagerly, painfully, at. But there was a kind of 
 authority in her voice, and there was that which is so much 
 more than authority, there was emotion. It had kindled her. 
 
 " I'm glad you like it," I said. 
 
 " I I yes, I do like it." She was obviously afraid of 
 excess ; and that appealed to me most. " It's poetry." 
 
 It was a shrewd comment. My thoughts on the respective 
 values of a prose or poetic medium for the expression of a 
 poetic content have changed absolutely since. Then, in a 
 young man's arrogance, I claimed the greater suppleness and 
 freedom of prose for a man's vision. Yet, though I did not 
 know it then, my preoccupation was with a poetic content ; 
 it was entangled in all my work, essays or symbolical tales, 
 and it was this that had kindled her. It glowed in her eyes, 
 and I felt humbled to the dust. There was a splendid pride 
 in me, and I sat beside her with tears in my eyes. 
 
 " You dear girl," I said, " that's the first encouragement I 
 have ever had." I bowed my head before her. 
 
 We were silent for awhile. Then she spoke softly : 
 
 " Never mind, Jack ! It's bound to come ; you're bound 
 to arrive. Anyway, I like them. I'm going to take them 
 home and read them ; may I ? " 
 
I AM BRACED AND ENCOURAGED 149 
 
 XI 
 
 IN WHICH I AM BRACED AND ENCOURAGED 
 
 During those days I did no work ; I read persistently, it 
 is true, but mainty in the interstices of other occupation, and 
 my book purchases died away, for my meetings with Rhoda 
 not only drank all my money but actually invaded my small 
 savings. In fact, all the bent and intention of the past years 
 seemed to have been spilled in the sand. To myself, even, 
 it seemed so. But a man trusts most to his instincts in life, 
 and I had the instinct that a purpose was being achieved, that 
 all the potentialities that had been called in within the limits 
 of my mind from the region of the metaphysical self, were 
 being made real by their deployment in action and power, and 
 that the stream would yet, in consequence of all this, resume 
 its course, wider, fuller and richer. I knew nothing, thought 
 nothing, realised scarce anything, but my instincts were 
 alive and were leading aright. Even when I despaired most, 
 was most melancholy and these things sometimes sub- 
 merged my whole outlook I yet had no real doubt of the 
 eventual Destiny : I saw but a glimmer, but I did not doubt 
 whence it came. Above all this, I knew it was myself, 
 with the power of realisation in me, that was the agent and 
 the factor. The destiny was there, but it lay for me to hold 
 on and win it. And I say this for myself, that I never really 
 turned my face to right hand or to left. 
 
 There was no firm earth anywhere for me to tread on, and 
 my bed found me an earlier companion than it had for many 
 a day, as the only escape from my distractions. I used often 
 to go to Kilburn to see Rhoda, and my late hours drew Aunt 
 Mary's fiercest attacks on me. Both Rhoda and I (though I 
 could not understand it in her, she being free) seemed to take 
 special delight in proceeding surreptitiously with our love- 
 making. I was later to find out her reason, but my own 
 was only too apparent. Frank was puzzled, but he had made 
 h s own ring of friendship, and he said nothing beyond a few 
 hints as to the necessity of care on my part in view of Aunt 
 Mary's unveiled and relentless animosity. Henry, in his 
 fatuous, though innocent, way, made matters almost 
 
150 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 unbearable by asking all kinds of persistent questions when 
 we met for meals. I think Aunt Mary used him unknown to 
 himself. Uncle Jacob, out of business, summoned me to inter- 
 views that he tried to give a paternal air to, and that proved so 
 fruitless of information and so fruitful of rage on his part and 
 pale cheeks and flaming eyes on mine that they fell out of 
 practice ; and in business, where he had his lawful occasions 
 (or unlawful occasions, which are the same thing in that at- 
 mosphere), he terrorised and bullied me in pure fury so much 
 so, indeed; as to injure his business considerably, for, in order 
 to have his quarrel, he faulted some work from me that should 
 have been valuable to him. But I held my secret firmly, 
 and with no more falsehoods than were necessary to that just 
 end. 
 
 So Aunt Mary tried other methods of discovery. One 
 morning I came to breakfast to find a letter waiting in an 
 unfamiliar handwriting. The envelope had been opened. It 
 was only some or other bill, but its being open puzzled me. 
 It had been torn open quite undisguisedly. I looked up 
 towards Aunt Mary, and she, meeting my eye, said 
 coolly : 
 
 " I mistook it for one of mine, and opened it." 
 
 As I thought on it the incident struck me as altogether 
 significant. It was obvious why she had opened it, but it 
 worked out curiously. The fact that the handwriting had 
 been strange to me made me realise that she had opened it 
 because it was strange to her ; which meant, in its turn, 
 that she knew the handwritings that were not strange, 
 and whence they came ; which further meant that my letters 
 were being watched. The realisation of this distressed me 
 considerably. 
 
 Later, however, I made use of it for my own ends. I got 
 Tim to write me letters in disguised scripts. Only once were 
 these invaded, I will admit, but those that reached me securely 
 I left lying about my room, and I have no doubt but that they 
 were duly scanned. They explained my movements, by 
 inference, in a manner highly satisfactory to myself. 
 
 Meanwhile my manuscripts made as regular journeys back 
 to me as they were sent out by me. I felt so sickened and 
 disheartened that it required all my doggedness to send them 
 again on their journeys. They meant so much to me that it 
 
I AM BRACED AND ENCOURAGED 151 
 
 seemed an insolence to them to send them out to face, not 
 criticism, but scorn. It was like displaying one's wife 
 naked. 
 
 Then I took a number of them down to Mr. Ramsay. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he. "I wondered. I divined this ; and that, 
 believe me, is already their justification. Men that look 
 prophets usually are prophets. And a man does not write 
 all this for fun." He bore them over to his desk and placed 
 them there. " I shall read them carefully, Jack, my friend, 
 and whatever I can do in any way, I will." 
 
 ' They've all been despised at least twice apiece." 
 
 " Poof ! That's no judgment. Editors usually take what 
 they can't avoid, and the unavoidable is usually, or, at least, 
 often, created for them by the aroma, of well-known names, 
 private friendships, lunches and dinners. Literature, that 
 great noble calling, has become such a trade that it almost 
 stinks. In fact it does stink. Men write for hire, as they 
 cheat for hire, lie for hire, sell men's hard labour and women's 
 dear honour for hire. By Christ ! it's horrible ; horrible. 
 I would like Him back for one week with His whip of cords 
 and His honest word ' thieves.' But they'd have Him up for 
 criminal libel and assault, and probably deport Him. You 
 
 know G s work ? " 
 
 ' Yes. That's to say, I know his name." 
 
 " Well, you may or may not have noticed that he has a 
 novel advertised for this spring. Cheap, strong and nasty, 
 his stuff is, as you doubtless know. Now I know the two who 
 are writing this. A girl-typist and a man-' devil.' Each of 
 them is doing different portions ; but he is in command. Now 
 for this they between them will get a little over thirty pounds. 
 
 G will alter a little here and there, add a little here and 
 
 there, choose a title and put his name to it, and get not less 
 than one thousand five hundred pounds down on account of 
 twenty-five or thirty per cent, royalties. That is Art, my 
 Jack ; that is the noble calling of literature." 
 
 " But," I stammered, " they can't ; they don't know his 
 style." 
 
 " It is no style. Their previous duty is to study his tricks 
 oi expression." 
 
 " But it's terrible." 
 
 " Precisely ! " He sat looking on me and anger had 
 
152 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 transformed his face. I had never seen him so. Anger 
 makes all men more or less like one another ; but his had a 
 clean, hard, direct character to it that bore the imprint of his 
 personality sharply and freshly. I guessed that he knew, and 
 had lately seen, the " devil " in question. " But let us leave 
 this/' he suddenly said, with a gesture of impatience. " And, 
 friend Jack Elthorne, are you content to enter these soiled 
 waters with the clean work of your brain for I make no 
 doubt, you see, that it is clean ? " 
 
 What had I to say to this ? He spoke as though I had 
 chosen, whereas the truth to me seemed as though I were 
 obeying laws and impulsions that were as inevitable as 
 undeniable. I said so. 
 
 " That's as it should be/' he said. " And, it being so, you 
 must cling to it though you starve for it : it's your honour. 
 No wincing. I'll help you all I can : that's my honour. 
 See ? " 
 
 " Yes," said I. He tuned me always as one might an 
 instrument. 
 
 " Good ! That's a pact not of our making, but of our 
 accepting. Quit you like men ; be strong : eh ? Great 
 God, there's some good stuff in that book, what do you say ? 
 But you're not thinking of leaving Mueler's, until at least 
 you have something to step to ? " 
 
 " How can I ? But yet it sometimes seems to me " 
 
 " In what way do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, in me and in Uncle Jacob. You see, he oppresses 
 me sometimes so that I think I must simply run from him. 
 At Hampstead my life is a hell ; I am like a hunted rabbit. 
 Then he keeps hinting at my uselessness, and holding dismissal 
 always over my head. It isn't so much that I fear dismissal ; 
 I don't know what the deuce I should do, but it would be a 
 bit of a relief, anyway ; but the way he puts it makes it hang 
 about in the air like an unknown terror. He uses it to bully 
 me with, I know, and I've had some rotten times of 
 late." 
 
 " He wouldn't dismiss you. He couldn't." 
 
 " Oh, I know that all the time, But there it is." 
 
 " Didn't your father leave you any money ? " 
 
 " What little there was, was spent on Frank's schooling 
 and my keep/' 
 
A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY 153 
 
 " Ah ! It would be well to tackle him on the subject 
 one of these days. It would only do harm now, I 
 fear." 
 
 XII 
 
 A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY 
 
 In fact, Uncle Jacob these days was beginning to have an 
 effect on me that could be only described by one word, and 
 that was the word I had used in my conversation with Mr. 
 Ramsay. He oppressed me. All the old fear I had of him 
 began to return, and encamp about me like a nameless foe 
 pitching his shadowy tents in the darkness. I thought I had 
 thrown it off, but I was in the adversary's country, and at 
 the least relinquishing on my side he was round and about 
 me again. I still struggled, still declared I would not cease 
 in the effort to hold my own soul, and throw off this hateful 
 domination, yet all the while I was possessed of a hopelessness 
 born of the feeling that beneath this ordinary struggle there 
 was something uncanny in it all. 
 
 For example, whenever I left his presence I felt depleted of 
 energy : often, indeed, I had a heavy headache, of a curious 
 nature and persistence, unlike those I incurred periodically. 
 After such headaches I would often have some kind of an 
 illusive picture floating through my brain, that I vainly sought 
 to realise and set out in orderly array. I used sometimes to 
 concentrate my whole imaginative effort in the attempt to 
 catch it, but that drove it away irrecoverably beyond the 
 margin of conception. 
 
 Then one day the wished illumination came. 
 
 In the morning I had had a violent passage with Uncle 
 Jacob, which he had begun by finding some inevitable fault 
 
154 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 with my efforts to realise his desires in some or other 
 chintz. 
 
 " Why do you never do anything right, boy ? " he asked, 
 looking over his spectacles at me with an evil gleam in his 
 eye. 
 
 " I do, and I did that right, and as well as any man could 
 have done/' I answered, in manifest irritation. 
 
 He scowled silently at me. It was not his way to reply to 
 a straightforward speech. He turned to some other piece of 
 work, leaving the first utterly alone, and made some other 
 equally bitter criticism, if criticism it may be called, with 
 regard to that. Again I held him firmly, and again he 
 scowled at me and passed the matter silently. 
 
 He continued in silence for awhile, passing one fabric after 
 another through his fingers, as it were contemplatively. 
 Then suddenly, with no warning, while I waited there holding 
 him off firmly, he exploded. A piece of blue and white fabric, 
 in imitation of old china, was flung at me, and fell, and hung, 
 on the lapel of my coat. 
 
 " Look at that ! " he cried excitedly. 
 
 I did not look at it : I looked at him, for the veins stood out 
 on his forehead. He had suddenly recovered the mastery, 
 springing, as it were, from the vantage ground of his authority. 
 I had firmly held him off, and the fear of him ; but now like 
 a tide it rushed in on me through the broken dykes. 
 
 All my vices were arraigned before him : my inadequacy, 
 my neglect, my carelessness, my presumption, my assinity, 
 my bumptiousness, my swelled head and obnoxious conceit 
 indeed, he was fairly aflow on the waters of my bad nature 
 and evil ways. 
 
 " I am sorry I ever burdened my hands and my days with 
 you, you whelp of folly/' He was wont, on such occasions, 
 to coin some wonderful epithets for the expression of his 
 contempt. " You will come to an evil end, I prophesy for 
 you, you obnoxious " he paused in the choice of his word 
 " youth " he gave it the emphasis of full contempt " with 
 your night-wanderings and your secret ways and your furtive 
 disposition. Go out of this room at once, and do as I bid 
 you ; do you hear me ? " 
 
 All this while he had stood over me and walked about me, 
 advanced toward me and passed me, and my skin was dry 
 
A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY 155 
 
 and cold, and I was weary, feeling as though I had been 
 whipped, and ready to weep in utter prostration, as I passed 
 out of the room. 
 
 I went out with the picture of his purple fury, and the first 
 thing I saw outside was Mr. Tonson and some other man with 
 pale, white faces, lustreless eyes, and shrinking, deprecatory 
 manner. It startled me, so marked was the contrast. I 
 stumbled up the stairs, angry, helpless, and broke in on 
 Tim with an oath. 
 
 " Damn and blast him, that true devil of hell ! " 
 
 " Ah, ha ! Eh ? What's say ? He's in good form to-day, 
 what ? " His rat-like eye quizzed me shrewdly and quickly. 
 
 Adequate objurgations defied my tongue. 
 
 " You look a bit pasty about the gills, I may say/' At 
 once, and with cruel meaning, the picture of Tonson's face 
 flashed before my eye. Tim must have picked it out of my 
 thought, for he said : " Well have you like the jackdaw in a 
 shake or two. Oh, my God ! What a jolly time we do have 
 in this place ! We do see life, any old way. But you used to 
 hold him off once. He didn't use once to make you look 
 fishy in the eyeball, as I will say. But why don't you biff 
 his snitch ? Wouldn't 'e look up, eh, what ? It's the only 
 way, son, with that sort of card. Hit him sudden, and hit 
 him hard, and run like a man ! " 
 
 I sank into my chair and hardly heard him. Yet I must 
 have heard him far more intently than I thought, for afterwards 
 his words came back to me, sentence by sentence with pointed 
 and deliberate insistence. 
 
 For that evening I sat in my room. Rhoda was away 
 again, on similar business to that which had taken her away 
 before, and I had collected myself to read. Yet my thoughts 
 were not on the book I had before me. They were seeking to 
 capture, and lay prisoner at my feet, a thought of which I 
 was only too painfully aware. Tim's words of the morning, 
 together with certain images I had only half seen, seemed to 
 crowd up into the heavens of my mind and drop a weary 
 dew on my brain. 
 
 Then as I sat there, rather weariedly relinquishing the effort 
 to grapple with my thoughts, in the submission of myself 
 to an orderless and melancholy brooding, my thoughts began to 
 array themselves into pictures. I saw my Uncle Jacob, with his 
 
156 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 rich complexion and black, lustrous eyes, sitting in his dark 
 room, hung with drawings and designs, and decorated in a 
 somewhat massive style, through the windows of which the 
 quick gleam of the Thames could be seen for one moment 
 between an avenue of grimy, evil, melancholy warehouses. 
 There he seemed to sit in restless, nervous energy of evil while a 
 stream of men passed fearfully into his presence, and passed 
 out again with agitated looks, trembling hands and pale 
 faces washed of all colour. The picture had become exag- 
 gerated, one might say morbidly exaggerated, from the 
 complexion of ordinary appearances, and yet it seemed to me 
 to have been exalted by that fact into its truer significance. 
 There he sat in the murkiness, out of which his rich flesh and 
 bright eyes burned, while men streamed in, and emerged 
 bled of their vitality ! 
 
 Then I started up with a low cry and clutched for my 
 support the brass knob of the bedpost that gleamed and shone 
 in the light that illumined the room. As clear as a plain 
 beneath me, from which the mists have rolled away, the whole 
 thing lay. 
 
 " Good God ! " I murmured. " The man's a vampire/' 
 
 The thought burst about me with a horror that no imag- 
 ination can conceive. The very house in which I stood and 
 lived seemed to me like a monstrous charnel-house. I feared 
 it, and feared it with something like trembling in my limbs ; 
 and yet a violent indignation possessed me, an anger so fierce 
 that I could have gone to Uncle Jacob's study and crushed the 
 life out of his throat on behalf of the men whom he had 
 wronged with a wrong for all eternity. It might have been 
 well had I done so. I remember I cried with the feeling of 
 my helplessness. Then the thing stank in my nostrils with 
 an obnoxiousness so violent that I fled out of the horror. 
 
 It was late before I returned, and my mind was calmer. 
 I lit my pipe and lay in bed determined to think this thing out. 
 The whole conception was so utterly foreign to any of my 
 thoughts on the relations of human beings one to another that 
 my reason revolted at it. I was not so foolish as to think that 
 a man can only have contact with another physically, nor 
 was I so inexperienced as to think that that strange, non- 
 physical contact was without its effects on the physical 
 system ; but the near connection of the two, with the malign 
 
A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY 157 
 
 possibilities it suggested, defied my reason. Yet I could not 
 deny the thing I had seen. It was what I had been hanging 
 on the margin of for months, and for good or for ill it was for 
 ever inextricably a part of me, as a man's own vision must 
 ever be a part of him where intellectual faiths may fade with 
 the passing of time. 
 
 One by one I recalled the instances that had puzzled me in 
 days of the past. I remembered Highland Tozer, with his 
 defiant, half-careless instinct of liberty, his brown tweeds, 
 and his fine, easy, manly way of walking, swinging his legs 
 free from the hips, with steady trunk and head thrown back, 
 the half-smile on his flushed face now in the black uniform 
 of the City, with pale, anxious face, hesitating manner and 
 shrinking way of walking. I thought of Tonson, and though 
 I did not know his tragedy I imagined him as he might have 
 been, and held before my eye the pale, shrinking, washed- 
 out man he was, with an ungainly long walrus-moustache 
 hanging over his lips for ever mumbling. I recalled others 
 who, in my own time, had come into the web at the centre of 
 which Jacob Mueler sat : I saw them come, one with rosy 
 face, another, a rather delicate lad with a bright eye and a 
 flush that ran quickly to his cheek, another, my senior, a 
 clean-limbed, athletic fellow of frank, engaging manner ; all 
 of whom now were pale and thin and not a little wearied. And 
 I recalled the one marked contrast to them all ; and I 
 shuddered. I lealised, with something like horror, that he 
 was probably only one of many, whom our modern commercial 
 system has put in the way of feeding their damnable and 
 abominable instinct, though I was content to believe that 
 his was maybe one of the extremer instances, being a dramatic, 
 because horribly picturesque, example of it. 
 
 Then I fell asleep to dream, not of this, but of figures that 
 were wild and strange and devilish. 
 
158 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 XIII 
 
 THE PANGS OF JEALOUSY AND A PROPOSAL 
 
 I was now, for the first time since meeting Rhoda, taking 
 up my work again, and taking it up, not more seriously, for 
 that could scarcely have been, but with a more definite 
 intention, giving it a more definite connection with her, 
 seeing she believed in it so earnestly, and hoping now actively 
 to win from it a livelihood sufficient to enable me to make her 
 my wife. I had not yet spoken of marriage to her, for I felt 
 she was not ripe for it. We were yet, in her regard, amusing 
 ourselves with one another, and she was, at times, a little 
 afraid of my impetuousness. But I had had encouragement 
 from Mr. Ramsay, and that fired me to think of bigger 
 things. He had written me a long letter, through which the 
 good cheer of courage rang even while he criticised me severely. 
 Let me quote a passage from it. 
 
 " Lastly, Jack, one caution. One of the supreme difficulties 
 of all Art, but especially in the Art of words, is to carry out 
 Keats' over-quoted principle of ' loading every rift with ore ' 
 without making the result unwieldy. He was, I think, 
 singularly unfortunate in quoting this precept to Shelley, 
 who loaded not less surely than he, though with a different 
 cargo. However ! But you either under-load, in a running 
 facility, or, in some sudden fury, so much over-load as to make 
 the result inchoate. But there ! I am only telling you things 
 you must find out for yourself, or fail in sincerity. You have, 
 let me affirm, something to say, and, let me add, something 
 that should be said ; and that is the absolute thing. I like 
 what others will all blame in you : your untutoredness and 
 adventure. Believe me, if a man matures before he is forty, 
 he has either gone astray or will have finished by forty. 
 Write as much as you will, the more the better, but 
 don't write in advance of yourself, and don't be one of the 
 calves who is afraid of not having found such and such 
 a piece of obdurate knowledge. The things you know, 
 know absolutely, and don't let the up-to-date young man 
 or the ossified old man brow-beat you out of; the things 
 you don't know, wait patiently for. Life's a grand ad- 
 
THE PANGS OF JEALOUSY 159 
 
 venture if we're willing to wait ; and the best of it is always 
 before us. 
 
 " Can I say more than this : fault or no faults, gaucheries or 
 no, I will not easily forget these things of yours, for they have 
 somehow helped and enriched my intellectual being; and 
 that is the grand spiritual fact of great writing." 
 
 The page I quote from has been well-thumbed in the 
 passage of time between. The day I received it was one on 
 which no work or reading could be done for joy, and I saw 
 lively hope in the promise which closed the letter, that he 
 would introduce me to one or two editors who might be willing 
 to look at my work more closely and help me. It was my 
 only grief that Rhoda was not in London, in order that I 
 might bear her the letter in the overflow of my joy. 
 
 But two days thereafter she was to return, and I bore the 
 letter with me to King's Cross, thinking to display it before 
 her. The first sight I saw, however, sent it spinning down the 
 wind and out of mind. 
 
 For some quite unaccountable reason I was late, and as I 
 reached the platform the passengers were already streaming 
 down it. So I stood beside the great, begrimed engine, on 
 which the driver and stoker were already at work releasing 
 the pressure, and scanned the crowd eagerly. Then my breath 
 caught and wildness rushed into my brain, for I saw my 
 tall adversary stepping down towards me with his arm within 
 Rhoda's. 
 
 She saw me, but she took no notice of me, and when she 
 had passed, I stood there as in a trance of despair, while all 
 the smoky atmosphere of the station surged in great clouds 
 before my sight. Then I slowly, as though a great age had 
 come on me, turned about and made down the long platform. 
 It was an ordinary week-end, and I had come up in my lunch 
 interval ; so when I reached the hideous telephone boxes, I 
 thought to telephone to Tim asking him to cover my traces as 
 I might not be back that afternoon. But I had not the 
 energy to take the decision, and wandered on in futile dis- 
 traction. In the street two men ran against me, swearing at 
 me;, and the noise of the traffic jarred on me, so I went back 
 into the station for refuge. 
 
 Again I stood helplessly, not knowing quite what to do. I 
 
160 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 had by appointment to meet her that evening. I swore I 
 would not do so though I knew well that I would. I swore 
 at her, cursed her and hated her. Yet I cried out with a 
 great cry of joy and happiness when her hand fell on my arm 
 and her voice sounded in my ear. 
 
 " Rhoda ! Oh, my dear ! " 
 
 " My dear Jack, I never expected you to come up at this time 
 of a week-day/' 
 
 " What was that beast doing with his arm in yours ? " 
 
 " Jack, don't be silly ! " 
 
 " Silly ? Oh, my God ! " 
 
 " I think I had better get home if you're going to spoil 
 everything/' 
 
 " Where can we go and talk ? " 
 
 " Of course we can't ! What about your work ? " 
 
 " Oh, hang my work ! " 
 
 I swept away her opposition, and a few minutes afterwards 
 saw us on the top of a lumbering bus being borne in the 
 direction of Hyde Park. I suppose my perturbed manner 
 attracted attention towards us, for I saw several glances 
 turned our way; but I paid no heed to them, and I think 
 Rhoda was being borne forward too swiftly to think any more 
 of them than I did. 
 
 " Does he always take your arm ? " 
 
 " Sometimes. Why shouldn't he ? if he wants to." 
 
 " Does he ever kiss you ? " 
 
 " Don't ask too many questions ! " 
 
 " He does/' 
 
 " Well, what of it ? " 
 
 " Oh God ! " I groaned in despair. The picture rose in my 
 mind of his stooping to kiss her, and was pure agony to me. 
 
 Silence fell on us to relieve the tension as the bus lumbered 
 through the depressing air of Marylebone. As she sat beside 
 me I felt rebellion rising in her. For myself, I had reached 
 the limits of pain, of pure self-torture, and I began to see that 
 I was losing in her the advantage that the weeks had gained. 
 In that craftiness of instinct that is yet a kind of perfect 
 sincerity, I turned to her therefore, and said simply : 
 
 " It pains me, dear, to think of any other man touching or 
 handling you." 
 
 " Well, it shouldn't, that's all I've got to say/ 1 Rebellion 
 
THE PANGS OF JEALOUSY 161 
 
 was still in her voice, but it was being quelled, as I could 
 hear. 
 
 " Don't you want me to care for you like that, Rhoda ? " 
 
 " Why should you ? " Her head was firmly held, with her 
 glance straightforward. 
 
 " Look at me, Rhoda ! " 
 
 Still she gazed obstinately ahead. 
 
 " Look at me, dear girl ! " I closed my hand upon hers, 
 and she did not resist. 
 
 " Dearest ! " I repeated. 
 
 Slowly she turned her eyes on me. There was an odd 
 mixture of hardness and softness in them. 
 
 " Don't you want me to care for you like that ? " 
 
 " Well, perhaps I do. But you go and spoil everything 
 when you act like that/' 
 
 " My darling ! " 
 
 " Do you know that people are watching us ? " 
 
 " Look ! If you met me walking with another girl, with 
 my arm in hers, would you mind ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think I should." 
 
 " Honest ? " I held her eyes with mine. 
 
 " Well, perhaps I should." 
 
 " Well 1 " I left my manner to imply the rest. 
 
 " But you see it's different with him." 
 
 " How is it ? " I felt the torture arising again, but I held 
 it down. 
 
 " But it is ! " 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Oh, well ! " Impatience cried in her voice, but it was 
 not an impatience I much objected to. 
 
 " It's really much worse with him." I waited awhile, lest 
 she should ask why. " Far worse ! Because, you see, you 
 said he was trying to get you to marry him." I waited again. 
 " Whereas " 
 
 " What ? " My sustained silence brought on her query. 
 
 " One of these days it's my name I have made up my mind 
 you're to have." 
 
 " Jack ! " Wondering astonishment stood erect in her 
 wide eyes as she faced round on me. 
 
 " Indeed it is. And I shall be very, very proud when that 
 day can be." 
 
 M 
 
162 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 There was the warmth of spring in the sun that beat on us 
 as we sat in the ensuing silence on that bus while it rolled 
 through Portland Street as over a murmuring sea. Then I 
 slipped my hand down beside me, and her own crept out of her 
 lap and pressed it with a soft, strong pressure that revealed 
 much to me. And the bus lumbered on into the West as we sat 
 so, hand in hand, while a glad, quiet joy lit up my whole being. 
 
 I longed then to consolidate, and at the same moment to 
 commemorate, the occasion. Slowly an idea resolved itself 
 in my mind. 
 
 " Have you lunched ? " I asked softly. 
 
 " No/' she replied, as softly, turning on me ; and added, 
 ' You're a dear boy." 
 
 Thrilled with that note we dismounted and found a tea- 
 shop. Then I left her for a moment, saying I would telephone 
 to the office to put up an excuse for my absence, and fled 
 swiftly to the nearest jeweller's. To him I explained that 
 I had no more than a few shillings on me, but that if he would 
 take my watch as deposit, I wished forthwith to choose a 
 ring. There was a little difficulty in that, for that watch 
 had been father's and was a handsome one. Then I hastened 
 back to Rhoda. 
 
 She sat in the dark corner we had chosen, awaiting me. 
 
 " Do what you wanted to ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said. " Let me sit that side, will you ? " 
 
 " Won't this side do, silly ? " 
 
 " No, it just won't." 
 
 A happy gaiety filled us both. 
 
 " Now are you satisfied ? " she asked, when I had effected 
 the change. A soft light shone in her eyes as she looked on 
 me. 
 
 " Partly," I said, taking her hand and caressing it. Then 
 I slowly and deliberately drew out the case from my pocket, 
 and, holding her fast by the hand, slipped the ring on to her 
 finger. 
 
 " Oh, Jack ! " she whispered, clutching fast hold, almost 
 a fierce hold, of my hand with hers, so that the jewels glistened 
 under my eye. Her eyes, too, were almost hard and fierce 
 as they looked in mine. Then she whispered, letting fall her 
 eyes : " Am I always to wear this ? " 
 
 "Please, dear!" 
 
THE PANGS OF JEALOUSY 163 
 
 " There'll be trouble about it." 
 
 " He won't sack you ? " 
 
 " Oh no, he's not that sort. But he won't like it. I'll 
 leave him if you want me to, Jack ! " She spoke this last 
 suddenly and earnestly. 
 
 " No, no ; I wouldn't have it at any price, dear." I longed 
 for it unutterably, but the splendid concession of it disarmed 
 me completely. 
 
 It was a silent and fragmentary meal we had ; the touch 
 of each other's hand was more to us than the eating of taste- 
 less, disordered food. And afterwards, at the far end of Hyde 
 Park, as we sat beneath the leafless trees and talked of many 
 things, I showed her at last Mr. Ramsay's letter. 
 
 To my surprise she evinced no enthusiasm over it. 
 
 " What do you think of it ? " I asked, a little disappointed. 
 
 " It doesn't take much reading of the things you showed 
 me to say that, I should think," she replied. 
 
 " I thought it rather generous," I said. 
 
 " It may be," said she, very confidently, " but it's no more 
 than right. You'll be a great man one of these days, greater 
 than Mr. Ramsay, Jack, although you may get disappoint- 
 ments a bit at first. That's only to be expected." 
 
 It must be confessed that she did not help me in quite the 
 intimate way of understanding that Mr. Ramsay did ; indeed, 
 her simple and perfect acceptance of my destiny rather 
 puzzled, if indeed it did not a little disconcert, me, even while 
 it encouraged. She did not make me feel as though a fight 
 had to be fought, and a hard war waged ; consequently her 
 acceptance seemed somewhat removed from sympathy. But 
 I warmed again when she declared she would herself type my 
 v/ork. It declared a comradeship in the fight to be fought. 
 
 Fate was kind to us that day. I was wary at dinner, expect- 
 ing attack. All passed away peaceably, however. And 
 the following morning I learned from Tim that there had not 
 even been an enquiry for me. I took it for heaven's blessing 
 on our eternal union ; heaven's pure augur that, whatever 
 trials might come from without, at least nought would come 
 to mar the inwardness of our perfect love. 
 
164 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 XIV 
 
 A SILENT AND SECRET CONFLICT 
 
 There was not a moment of my days, all this time, that was 
 not infested with the oppression of my conflict with Uncle 
 Jacob. Knowing what I had to contend with, for there was 
 not the fraction of a doubt in my mind as to the reality and 
 earnestness of the issue, I braced myself for the conflict. It 
 was as though I drew up my belt for a race. Yet that greater 
 fact brought a greater feeling of oppression, and consequently 
 a more severe and continued exhaustion. Sometimes, in his 
 presence, an intense conception of horror possessed me. At 
 other times the fight was set in deliberate, ordered array, and 
 there was a glory in it. But what harassed me most was that 
 I knew I was doomed to failure. I could, I felt, have beaten 
 him, or at least drawn out an equal fight, but that implied 
 certain conditions that were denied. 
 
 It must be remembered the place I was in. The discipline 
 of a commercial house is devised for the sake of effectiveness : 
 and effectiveness, in commercial terms, means monetary 
 success to repletion to the man or men at the crown of the 
 organisation, with as little of that success as can happily be 
 devised for the various agents and officers that constitute 
 the organisation. It is essentially an immoral state of affairs : 
 far more immoral than sensual vice, which is an excess largely 
 dispensed with on its exercise, whereas the other vitiates the 
 fraternity of the spirit of man. Yet so it is. And it can 
 readily be seen that, inasmuch as the crown of the organisation 
 is in a stupendous numerical inferiority, he exacts a servility 
 of manner as the only method by which he may maintain an 
 impossible state of affairs. 
 
 Consequently my only effective weapon was knocked out 
 of my hand. The very outrage of having to call a fellow-man 
 " sir/' with the implication that he was better than I by virtue 
 of his office, and not by the office of his virtue and the greatness 
 of character, destroyed all chance of equality. Now and then, 
 insidiously, I would quietly assume equality, or I would even 
 openly defy him, but he was quick to scent defeat in that, 
 and, on the instinct, he would destroy me. 
 
 " I'll trouble you, Jack, to remember to whom you speak," 
 
A SILENT AND SECRET CONFLICT 165 
 
 he would say. I remembered it only too well. I remembered 
 the horror of my night of discovery. 
 
 All the while I felt that I was alone in my struggle, and 
 that I must needs be so. I mentioned it to Rhoda, discreetly, 
 and she replied in her free and splendid way : 
 
 " Then, if you feel that, why do you stay with him ? I see 
 myself staying with a brute like that ! If you were to leave 
 you could soon get something better elsewhere, or as good 
 anyway, for he pays you shockingly, as I hope you recognise. 
 Leave him, dear, and take up your writing/' 
 
 And she meant it. Her courage sang in that : her fine, 
 indomitable courage. Nevertheless, I felt that she did not 
 quite enter into the horror of the thing for me. Hers was 
 excellent good-fellowship, but it was not sympathy. 
 
 I resolved, then, to keep the matter to myself, and to wrestle 
 in secrecy. But such resolutions are not often kept virgin, 
 and after an unhappy harrying one day at the hands of Uncle 
 Jacob, I went up to seek advice of Mr. Ramsay that night. 
 
 I could do so freely, for his was of that order of mind to 
 recognise that I was as likely to be right in a difference as he 
 though he did not recognise so freely the major right of a 
 discoverer to more than respect, to an attitude of faith indeed. 
 I stumbled as I told him, and was sorry I could not retreat 
 into secrecy, which are sure indications of an unreceptive 
 atmosphere. So I was not surprised when he said to me : 
 
 " But don't you think one does wisely to accept an explana- 
 tion that lies at hand rather than turn to one that is both remote 
 and complex ? You mean, I take it, that your uncle bullies 
 you an unfortunate fact that we know only too well and 
 that he thereby depletes your energy. Good, that's simple 
 and go-ahead thinking. But vampire ! Of course I know 
 well enough you are not thinking of those recondite tales of 
 vampiring that predominate in Central Europe, and other parts 
 of the globe. That's something more bizarre, and yet it's 
 curiously similar, when you come to think of it. It may or 
 may not be true, and it belongs to a different sphere of think- 
 ing. It is its own business, true or not as the case may be. 
 But this is altogether a simpler thing. You don't mean to 
 identify them, of course." 
 
 " But where does he get his lips and colour from, and his 
 energy ? " I blurted out, and saw immediately that I had 
 
166 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 struck on the very centre of the matter. But before I could 
 develop it, he interposed : 
 
 " Don't you think that's to enquire rather too closely ? " 
 
 " We want to enquire closely. I do. And haven't you 
 yourself said that so-called scientific answers to problems are 
 merely the same problems phrased otherwise ? You say 
 I have said to myself that he dominates me, and so oppresses 
 me, and so depletes me of energy. But what does one mean 
 by that ? " I paused on my question, but he did not reply, 
 steadily looking on me. ' You can't struggle without con- 
 tact, surely : not physically, anyway ; and how can you 
 spiritually ? Have you noticed how a number of people 
 almost seem to throw him off, with quick, rapid, nervous inter- 
 jections almost like physical gestures ? I remember father 
 used to do so. How do you account for that except on the 
 ground of some kind of contact ? I mean of course a contact 
 of spirit with spirit, or soul with soul, that portion of ourselves 
 that is not confined within this trunk and these limbs." 
 
 " Now I retort on you, what about his lips and 
 colour ? " 
 
 " Oh," I said, with a lothness to discuss matters that so 
 defied speech, " I don't know. How can I ? Only if there is 
 a contact, and one kind of rhythm subdues another, it is not 
 difficult to see how vitality may pass out from one person to 
 another. Look at his stupendous, inexhaustible energy and 
 the curious way in which he seems to feed it by clinging to the 
 office. It's his sustenance, he cannot abide away from the 
 places where human souls fill the air ; he never by any chance 
 takes a holiday at any rate, by himself." 
 
 " My dear Jack, you're positively horrible ! " Mr. Ramsay 
 cried out. 
 
 I hardly heard him, for I was myself obsessed with the 
 horror of it. It floated before my eyes like a vision, and I 
 passed into that strange mood that is more than all thinking ; 
 that is like the centre of knowledge, defying thought ; on the 
 borders of which thoughts lie like spoiled and abused frag- 
 ments of knowledge. It occurred to me afterwards what some 
 of these marred borders were. It was as though I had seen 
 the true enormous iniquity of vast cities, where the congestion 
 is such that soul learns to thrive unnaturally and unhealthily 
 on soul, instead of on the clean, direct effluence of earth and 
 
A SILENT AND SECRET CONFLICT 167 
 
 her spirits, and those notable hierarchies that sweep past on 
 their timeless destinies. 
 
 For years on years thereafter I fed on that moment of 
 vision. It opened up newer vistas of thought indefinitely, 
 and to this hour I develop it. 
 
 Inasmuch as I felt he did not follow me the matter had gone 
 too far for comfortable breathing. So I said : " Perhaps it's 
 only fantastical after all ; I don't know/' although I knew 
 well that it was not so. It is only thus one may preserve one's 
 spiritual privacy. And so we talked of other things. 
 
 It was my last attempt to seek understanding. I bore my 
 battle silently and in secret. At all turns I found uncanny 
 corroboration of its actuality, and the result was to make me 
 feel the impossibility that such a state of affairs should 
 continue. For example, I noticed now fully, what I had 
 dimly perceived before, how quick Uncle Jacob was to antici- 
 pate my thoughts, as though he knew the development of 
 my mind as well as I did whose concern was with it. So I 
 determined on an experiment : which answered splendidly. 
 Those just retorts I could not make under the charge of 
 insolence I began to think actively, while I myself remained 
 silent. 
 
 At first I was bewildered at the result. Whether it was 
 that I was stronger at first, or he more reluctant latterly, I 
 cannot say, but at first he scarce ever failed to respond, 
 though the method failed in power as time proceeded. Once 
 he rebuked me sharply for insolence, whereupon I mildly 
 retorted that I had said nothing, and he looked away with a 
 surly clench of his teeth. Once or twice he flushed angrily, 
 and I held my mind firm, knowing that so long as I was 
 strong he would not attempt to overpower me. But generally 
 his procedure was to raise my thought with a prefatory " You 
 
 might say " and proceed to defend himself against the 
 
 charge as though it were laid upon him. 
 
 I do not doubt that under level conditions I could have 
 held my own. I chafed at the notion of defeat from him ; 
 but what could I do ? The ridiculous conditions of what is 
 known as modern civilisation gave him an artificial ascendancy 
 over me, which he was not slow to use. At all times it 
 continued. Not only in the City, but at home he maintained 
 it. In a deep sense I was not my own, and I could not I 
 
168 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 felt, achieve my ambitions while this was so, for Art is the 
 flower of personality and the aroma of the closely guarded soul. 
 I even began to desist from work, feeling this was so. 
 Unrest ate its way into all my days and ambitions. Such 
 a state of affairs obviously could not continue, and so I 
 began to cast about for an escape. 
 
 XV 
 
 I RECEIVE AN OFFER, AND ACCEPT IT 
 
 There are intense and adventurous moments in a man's 
 life when the attainment of one desire shines before the eye 
 as its only goal and absorbs all the energies. But there do 
 not often come moments when several goals become inex- 
 tricably bound up as the result of one effort. At such 
 moments, bitter and stressful though they be, Life reaches 
 out to its utmost of effort, and wears the flush of ardour on its 
 cheek. 
 
 I was bitter enough at continued failure, but such an hour 
 had come to me. The chief thing that stood out as giving 
 centre to all the rest was marriage with Rhoda. 1 saw her 
 almost daily ; she shared all my hopes and ambitions, reading, 
 and often typing, my manuscripts ; and the passion to have 
 her as my wife wasted and wore me day by day. Uncle 
 Jacob, I knew, would have nothing to do with any thought of 
 my marrying. That could have been foreseen : he would 
 profess entire interest on my behalf, talk of my youth and his 
 greater wisdom in life, and forbid it absolutely lest it should 
 entail a possible monetary responsibility on him at a future 
 date. Moreover, he would find specific objection to Rhoda 
 because she had not previously been known to him even 
 as he would have found fault with any girl known to him because 
 
I RECEIVE AN OFFER, AND ACCEPT IT 169 
 
 he knew too much of her. He was not singular in that ; he 
 was only typical of a certain kind of parent, or some such 
 other person in the position of guardian. 
 
 Consequently marriage would have to be won outside 
 Messrs. Mueler, Ltd. And what other way so likely as the 
 pen that was to serve my ambition ? Thus my three chief 
 desires were intertwisted. And this joint appeal was so 
 powerful, and so absorbed all my attention, that the dislike 
 I was wont to meet from certain people increased the more 
 by my neglect of their mere existence. Even Frank and the 
 innocuous Henry grew to saying bitter things : the former, 
 now in no code of stoic indifference, but quite shrewdly, and 
 the latter in his foolish, lazy way. Which did not in any 
 degree lessen my desire to be out of it all. 
 
 Weary months saw no diminution of my steadfastness, and 
 Rhoda sometimes would undertake the despatch and receipt 
 of manuscripts, so as to save me the sickening blow of their 
 return. Once I had one taken, and in the joy of seeing my 
 name in print it did not grieve me that I received no payment 
 for its use. Others, too, the same paper took, at no higher 
 rate of payment than the joy of print. Afterwards I learnt 
 that these had been seen and noticed by some whose opinion 
 I came to value, but they seemed to win no attention now, 
 and I doubt whether they would have won any notice in the 
 end save for my own subsequent efforts. 
 
 Then one day I received a letter from Mr. Ramsay asking 
 me to go up to meet a friend of his who might help me. I 
 went, and found the friend to be a man who proposed starting 
 a cheap weekly literary paper. To oblige Mr. Ramsay, as it 
 seemed, he offered me the sub-editorship which filled me 
 fall of delight, a delight that was dulled a little when I learnt 
 that the salary was to be but a pound a week, less by ten 
 shillings than I now earned. It was pointed out to me, 
 however, with some energy by the editor-to-be, and with quiet 
 point by Mr. Ramsay, that my position should enable me to 
 purchase some kind of a hold in that editorial world where 
 1 terary work is a matter of arrangement and not the dis- 
 criminating selection of the best work offered. 
 
 When I mentioned it to Rhoda she was reserved and silent, 
 and I could see that the meagreness of the salary was in her 
 riind. Therefore I took to arguing in its favour, using the 
 
170 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 same arguments as Mr. Ramsay had employed for my per- 
 suasion, so proving to myself that, with all its drawbacks, 
 the idea was one of those predestined to existence. Neverthe- 
 less she supported me loyally. 
 
 " You will get on, dear/' she said, with that firm and almost 
 unenthusiastic faith in my powers and future that always 
 seemed to possess her. " I should take it, I think. You 
 must make a start in it, and this is your field/' 
 
 " It isn't much," I said deprecatingly, hoping she would 
 demolish the objection for me. 
 
 " No, it isn't," said she quietly, disappointing me. " You 
 do as you think best," she added. Then, seeing my depression, 
 and perhaps perceiving no less my inclination, she said : 
 " Take it, Jack. If it doesn't achieve anything else, it will 
 bring you out of the clutches of that old villain, your uncle." 
 
 She was as depressed as I at the prospect. But she seemed 
 as persuaded of its inevitability. 
 
 So I took my lot firmly in my two hands, and wrote accepting 
 the offer, asking when I should be called upon to begin. I 
 wrote also to Mr. Ramsay, telling him what I had done. 
 
 It was in the early days of summer, when an advance of 
 great heat had come like a trembling hush on to the woods 
 standing in their young and lucent green. Therefore it was 
 not by reason of the cold that I trembled at the prospect of 
 declaring my intention to Uncle Jacob. I put off the decision 
 from day to day in pure craven-heartedness. I stepped up to 
 his room, to the closed door of it, and after feebly knocking 
 and receiving no reply, turned back with a vast relief. Once, 
 as we sat smoking together alone after dinner, I addressed 
 him to that end, and, on his asking me what it was I wished, 
 proceeded to speak of some business that had transpired in 
 the day. 
 
 I have not precisely won a name for cowardice in my life. 
 Neither its general course, nor its details, would, I think, 
 tend to bear out that description of me. Yet my nerves 
 played me such tricks each time I resolved to approach him 
 that I scarcely knew myself. 
 
 At last, being stung to a great moment by a haunting lyric 
 that trailed across my mind as I fingered my books one evening, 
 I dropped my book, and burst in on my astonished uncle. 
 It was not his wont so to be interrupted. The sight of him 
 
I RECEIVE AN OFFER, AND ACCEPT IT 171 
 
 quelled me a little, and I think, in attempting to dare my 
 mood to pass, my air was jaunty as I said : 
 
 " Uncle, I don't think there's much chance of progress for 
 me at Thames Street." 
 
 The total effect of my sudden inrush, my defiant air, and 
 my quaint piece of information was to procure me a more 
 generally flabbergasted uncle than I had seen for many a day. 
 
 " Besides that/' I continued, " I want to get into literature." 
 
 His brow came down frowningly over an angry eye as he 
 stared up at me, but he was too amazed to say anything. 
 
 " In fact, you see, I've already got an offer of a sub-editor- 
 ship, and I'm thinking of accepting it." 
 
 This aroused him. He raised himself up, startled at this. 
 
 " Insolent boy ! " he cried. His face was purple as he rose 
 up opposite me. " What do you mean by coming in on me 
 like this ? Haven't I enough trouble during the day without 
 your breaking in on me with your conceited ways and your 
 bad manners ? Go out of this room at once ! " 
 
 I proceeded to do as he bade me, when he called me back. 
 
 " What is this I heard you say just now ? " he asked. 
 
 I squared myself before him as I replied doggedly : 
 
 " I'm leaving you, sir. I have had a. berth offered me on a 
 literary paper just about to be established, and I have accepted 
 it because it seems to me more the kind of thing that will give 
 my life a certain purpose and occasion. I am sorry to distress 
 you." 
 
 1 You leave my house, then ! " he cried out angrily. 
 
 " I had purposed to do so. It would be fairer to you, and 
 freer for me." 
 
 ' Preposterous fool ! " he shouted. " What amazing 
 knavery is this ? You shall do no such thing, do you hear 
 me ? You shall do no such thing, you dolt, you trickster ! 
 I forbid it : I forbid it absolutely. Shall I be defied by a 
 conceited whippersnapper like you ! You shall continue here 
 just as before, and, if you like, I shall in due time take into 
 consideration the possibility of advancing your wages, though 
 you get now far more than ever you deserve." Then his rage 
 seemed to pass to plaint iveness. "Is it for nothing I have 
 cared for you, and tended you all these years without any 
 reimbursement you and your brother Frank ? Why do you 
 throw it all back on me in this thankless way ? Have you no 
 
I 7 2 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 vestige of gratitude or obligation in you, boy ? But you 
 
 shall not go, you shall continue just as before ; do you hear 
 
 me ? Fool ! " 
 
 " I fear I have accepted it, sir, and it is irrevocable/' 
 
 " Oh, you fool ! You fool ! Don't stand there and defy 
 
 me. Do as I bid you. Go out of this room, sir ! " 
 
 I went quickly, and though he called me back I held 
 
 firmly on my way. 
 
 XVI 
 
 UNEXPECTED FUNDS 
 
 It was astonishing how the whole house seemed thrilled 
 by my piece of news. On my return to my room it had 
 occurred to me to fly out in order to escape the inevitable. 
 But this seemed cowardly, and I took a book, opened it, 
 and waited instead of reading. 
 
 Surely enough the influx began. First it was Aunt Mary. 
 She swept in with her thin, upright, stern figure and cold, 
 steady eye. I stood to receive her, watchful and dogged. 
 
 ' Your uncle has asked me to come and see you about this 
 mad proposal of yours. Why can't you be a bit more frank 
 with us, Jacob ? Here you hide this thing, and nurse it, and 
 secrete yourself, finally to astonish us in this altogether 
 unjust way. Is it fair on us, do you think ? " 
 
 Already, I thought, my independent resolution had effected 
 something, if only an unaccustomed equality of address from 
 her. But I said nothing. I was wary, and recognised that 
 tactics were in the air. She at least would not play to 
 sentiment, and so I was the more watchful. 
 
 " Is it true that you have already decided ? " 
 
 " I have." 
 
UNEXPECTED FUNDS 173 
 
 " Well, it must not go further without your discussing it 
 thoroughly with your uncle." As she said this she seemed to 
 recognise the futility of such an appeal to me : there was no 
 conviction in her voice, and she continued more firmly : 
 
 " I cannot understand it at all, for I was under the im- 
 pression that you were proceeding so splendidly at the office. 
 Your uncle often spoke of your good work to me. He is not, 
 as you know, the sort of man who praises his subordinates. I 
 wish he did : it would make everybody happier, and encourage 
 people. But that's his disposition, and we can't unmake 
 people. I know he appreciated your work, and it was his 
 intention that you should finally have a part in the business 
 after Henry." (Seeing I had to do half Henry's work for 
 him, and control him generally at Uncle Jacob's desire, so 
 inept was he, this did not startle me; it even let family 
 cogitations out before my eye.) " And you are not thinking 
 really of leaving ? " she continued after a pause. 
 
 What could I say ? I had nothing to say, and remained 
 firmly silent. I could see she was nettled and angered at my 
 silence, but she gave no sign of perturbation, and this the 
 more made me watchful of her. 
 
 ' You must think it over very carefully, Jacob, and do 
 nothing rashly. Did your uncle say anything to you about 
 leaving here ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That was said in anger, I am afraid. Of course he did 
 not mean it, and, for my part, I will not permit it ; so you 
 may rest assured of that." 
 
 She was, be sure, no mean tactician, but, as she spoke, 
 I scented danger, and divined her thought. 
 
 rt I would rather go, Aunt Mary," I said. 
 
 ' You mustn't take everything your uncle says in earnest." 
 
 " From myself I want to go." It was her turn for silence, 
 and her eye was coldly fixed on me. " It would leave me freer. 
 And I want to be free." 
 
 There was tense silence for a long time. Then : " You are 
 very foolish ; but you'll think better of it in a week," she 
 said, and passed quickly out of the room. 
 
 Then came Henry. 
 
 " I say, Jack," he cried out, bursting in, " this is all rot-oh ! 
 You can't mean it. What the devil made you think of it ? 
 
174 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 The pater been bullying you ? He's a fair rotter that way, 
 but it washes off, and don't hurt so much. Look here, my 
 dear chap, you just simply can't. And we were getting on so 
 chummily." 
 
 " It isn't a row at all, my dear chap. It's just a change of 
 direction. Or rather, it's an undercurrent of direction 
 coming up to the surface." This seemed to puzzle him, so 
 I added : " I wanted to be this all along." 
 
 " But literature, Jack ! That's not a paying game at all. 
 It's the very deuce of a losing game. Out of ten who take it 
 up, eight fail and come to grief. It's a fair pit from all 
 accounts.'" 
 
 " Who told you that ? " 
 
 He flushed as he said : " Everybody knows that much. 
 But you just simply can't, anyhow. And to go out and starve, 
 and take devil's fare Jack, old man, think of it ! " He was 
 genuinely affected at his picture, or the picture that had been 
 given him to present me, and we grew quite friendly. He 
 vowed that nothing would make any difference to us, and 
 that he would always help me to the end, whatever happened. 
 
 Then Frank came. He came almost before Henry had 
 gone, and, walking over to my shelf, began inspecting the 
 bindings of my books. 
 
 " Hullo ! " said he. 
 
 " Before we talk," I said, " would you mind telling me if 
 there is anybody else in the queue ? " 
 
 ' You're not in the least degree funny," he said. 
 
 " No ? " I said. "I'm sorry. I had meant to be. But 
 I hope you at least are going to be original, and not say what 
 everybody else has been saying for the past hour." 
 
 " It's no good talking to you, I can see," he said brusquely. 
 Pushing a book back into its place on the shelf, he strode out 
 of the room. 
 
 It struck me as being very odd to think of Uncle Jacob 
 running about below, procuring emissaries to launch up at me. 
 It pained me too ; for it reminded me that Frank and he 
 had become wondrous friendly of late, and that Frank was 
 becoming accustomed to do obeisance for this friendliness. 
 Moreover it angered me, and I sat down and wrote a formal 
 letter of resignation from Messrs. Mueler, Ltd. to Uncle Jacob. 
 I knew this would give him to think. 
 
UNEXPECTED FUNDS 175 
 
 Furthermore, I had another plan wherewith to astonish 
 him. Certain words spoken by Mr. Ramsay had lived in my 
 memory. My bondage in my state of dependence had hitherto 
 rendered them valueless to me, but I had thought much over 
 them, and now I had determined to work upon them. 
 
 I knew my letter would cause an early summons in the 
 morning, and when it came, my resolve was that I should 
 step out of that room of fear with a clearer understanding 
 than ever I had come out of it before. Jacob Mueler was a 
 man who could be benign enough on occasion, but for those 
 in his employ he passed between vindictiveness and lament. 
 It was the lament was reserved for me now, I knew. 
 
 " What does this mean, Jack ? There was surely no 
 necessity for this. You seem to treat me as though I were 
 nothing to you at all no more than an enemy. You have an 
 extraordinary disposition, my boy." 
 
 " I wished to make the matter formal and in order/' I 
 said. 
 
 " Formal ? " he cried out in a wail of indignant anger. 
 " Formal ? That's just like you : always wayward and 
 unnaturally -minded. You must be formal, must you ? 
 Formal, of all things ! I shall be quite glad to be rid of 
 you." 
 
 I wonder if anyone ever found himself in accord with the 
 man ! He always, on instinct, seemed to traverse his inter- 
 locutor, thinking, I suppose, in that way to nonplus an equal 
 tussle. I could have shaken him. 
 
 " Very well, sir ! " I said, irritation pressing against the 
 bars of restraint. 
 
 There was a long, tense silence. It was oppressive, almost 
 like a desert silence. He evidently seemed to think he had 
 chosen a wrong path to tread. 
 
 ' You seem to have made up your mind/' he said more 
 gently. 
 
 " I have, sir/' I said. 
 
 ' You know you are acting very foolishly ? " he asked. 
 
 " I probably am. But I want to prove that for myself." 
 
 "rThat is just your egotistical way of talking that annoys 
 ire," he flashed out on a momentary return of anger. But he 
 proceeded : " What salary are you offered in this other 
 aifair ? " 
 
176 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " I have accepted barely enough to live on. It will, I 
 know, be very difficult to manage on." 
 
 He looked amazed at this. " And yet you are talking of 
 taking it ? " he asked in wonder. " But you need not look 
 to me for support/ 1 
 
 Now was my moment ! "I don't do that/' I said firmly. 
 " I shall have to pull through, like other fellows. But there 
 was one matter I wanted to mention that I have wanted 
 to mention for some time, but have always put it off. I would 
 like, if you will allow me, to see my father's will ; I would like 
 to know exactly that is to say, how he spoke about me there. 1 ' 
 Strange, how nervous I was ! 
 
 " You wretch of a boy ! " He absolutely sprang at me 
 as he spoke. " What insinuation do you want to make 
 at me ? " 
 
 " No insinuation at all," I interposed quickly. 
 
 " Leave my room, sir ! I will not have you in it. Go out 
 of it ! No, don't speak to me ! Go out ! Go out ! " 
 
 His fury was indescribable. It followed me, as I decamped 
 up the stairs, like a wailing storm. The ignominy of having 
 him shout at me thus was so intense, that I left the build- 
 ing immediately and did not return to it that day. Nor 
 did I return to Hampstead till after dinner, when I went 
 straight to his room. It is probable that my instinct was to 
 make the broil so complete that there could be no question 
 of asking me to revoke my resolution to leave. 
 
 " I have a right to see my father's will, sir," I said. 
 
 " I forbid you to mention the subject, boy," he said. 
 
 " Then I shall turn it up at Somerset House, and seek advice. 
 I ought to know. It was my father he was." 
 
 " I refuse to be addressed in that way. Isn't it enough to 
 you that I have tended you all these years, and spent money 
 on you, and stinted nothing for you, without your coming 
 now to me with these insinuations of your brain ? " 
 
 " I am insinuating nothing, Uncle Jacob. I just ask to see 
 the will." 
 
 " Cease talking to me, and leave me alone to myself." 
 
 I tried to make myself heard as he cried at me, and th^re 
 must have been somewhat of a noise in result. But a voice 
 rang across it like a whip. 
 
 " You leave this room, Jacob, instantly/' 
 
UNEXPECTED FUNDS 177 
 
 I turned about and saw Aunt Mary standing in the open 
 door, her face rigid with anger. She quailed the two of us. 
 
 The following day I went up to Somerset House, and when 
 at last I managed to extort my information from that laby- 
 rinth, I was astonished to learn that my father had left a 
 quite decent sum of money in equal shares between Frank and 
 myself. 
 
 Fortified with this information, I awaited my next inter- 
 view with Uncle Jacob. No one spoke a word to me at 
 Hampstead, and I exchanged words with no one, so tense was 
 the atmosphere. I was not even summoned to my morning 
 interviews. So I had to wait till some of the tension was 
 released, which, inasmuch as the heat of action had passed, I 
 was not loth to do. 
 
 Nearly ten days subsequently, one evening Henry came 
 to me nervously with the information that his father wished 
 me to go to him. I went, to find the old man unwontedly 
 stiff with dignity, and Aunt Mary with him. It promised an 
 ordeal, apparently. 
 
 " You wished to see this will," he said, and handed it to 
 me. " You will see that your father's estate, when realised, 
 left rather over five hundred pounds between your brother 
 and yourself. Well, I have drawn out a few figures here, to 
 show you, at their lowest computation at their very lowest 
 what we have expended on your behalf, one way or another. 
 I have not included your salaries, of course, although they have 
 been influenced by the fact that I have always endeavoured 
 that you should have the benefit of working in a firm that I 
 myself created for other than purely commercial reasons. 
 I have only put in your cost of keep and such matters, though, 
 in the face of your recent behaviour, I could justly have 
 included those pleasures and outings to which you and Frank 
 have always come in the same way as my own children. If 
 you regard these figures you will see how the matter stands." 
 
 I took it and examined it. There were the figures, as he 
 said, placed down in debit and credit. I have the paper yet. 
 It was a curious product. The sum of it showed that I owed 
 my uncle something over one hundred and fifty pounds. 
 I scarcely knew whether to laugh or to be maddened. 
 
 " But you haven't put down the pound a week I pa) r Aunt 
 Mary," I said, half afraid to treat the thing soberly. 
 
 N 
 
178 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " And how long have you paid that ? " It was Aunt Mary 
 who asked. 
 
 " Since I was twenty-one, anyway." 
 
 " And what about the years before that ? " 
 
 Certainly she seemed to head me off either way. Then I 
 realised that this duly had been entered, and I said : 
 
 " But all that's down here." 
 
 " Do you think that that covers your keep for those years ? " 
 Her voice was cold and unperturbed. 
 
 " It was put down here with that intention/' I said. 
 
 " Well, put down your pound a week, put it down, put 
 it down ! This comes of looking after relatives' children." 
 It was Uncle Jacob who spoke now, and his crust of dignity 
 was broken by his rising temper. 
 
 " Jacob ! " Aunt Mary's cold, sharp tone stopped him 
 short. 
 
 But I was putting down the sum as I had been bidden ; 
 to my infinite joy it turned my impossible debit balance into 
 a credit balance. I remember, amid all the strain and awk- 
 wardness, what an infinite comedy it seemed to me. 
 
 " That leaves me a credit balance of forty-seven pounds 
 nine shillings and threepence," I proclaimed. 
 
 " I am very sure your dear father and mother never meant 
 that any portion of their money should be used in defiance 
 of us. That I am sure of. It would have pained and grieved 
 them." 
 
 Uncle Jacob's tone was sad and depressed as he spoke. 
 All the anger and buoyancy had gone out of it, for it was plain 
 to him that on the commitment of his own figures he had lost 
 the day. It was Aunt Mary who realised the situation. She 
 rose firmly, with a dignity that never deserted her. And her 
 voice was clear-cut in the incision of its tone as she closed the 
 business : 
 
 " You had better leave this room. That money shall be 
 paid to you on the day you leave this house." 
 
FAREWELLS 179 
 
 XVII 
 
 FAREWELLS 
 
 It was not to be expected that all these tempests had to 
 be traversed without Tim divining the state of affairs. Yet 
 he said nothing, maintaining the steady taciturnity that had 
 become habitual with him. It was partly, I think, his method 
 of keeping his castle of personality inviolate, partly his melan- 
 choly absorption in my affairs. 
 
 But one day I told him what my resolve was. 
 
 " That's no news, as I may say," he responded. " If I 
 hadn't got a job on my hands, I'd quit too." I understood 
 his job to be the care of his mother. " I'd clear out straight 
 and, snip ! I'd be a sailor. This isn't a job for a man, every- 
 one cursing at you, and you cursing at everyone, and one man 
 sweating the lot of you, and the lot of you wishing he'd slip 
 on a banana peel on the stairs. Not much ! But I've been 
 shoved in one end, and I got to go on, I may say, till the 
 damn machine coughs me out the other." 
 
 Deep, unalterable disgust was in his voice. 
 
 " Can't you look out for another job ? " I asked. " I'd 
 help you," I added, generously. 
 
 " Fat lot o' good another job'd do me ! Oh yes, I may say. 
 And the old spider down there'd help me, wouldn't he ? He'd 
 give me a reference, wouldn't he ? He's that sort, he is, 
 rather ! What he has he holds. It's easier than breaking in 
 fresh colts. Besides, who wants to whisk out of one giddy 
 machine into another giddy machine ? That's no cop no 
 good, I should say. If my dad hadn't jibbed, I'd have been 
 a sailor. Good luck to you, any old way ! " 
 
 " Of course I don't know to what I am going. But I shall 
 be right glad to be out of this place." 
 
 " What ho ! You wouldn't see me for dust the day I 
 could clear out of here, I may say ! " 
 
 When I told Mr. Tonson, he answered me with an interro- 
 gative " Oh ? " and looked suspiciously at me. I had delayed 
 telling him till the very day of my departure, and my informa- 
 tion was intended as a prelude to touching farewells, so there 
 was really no occasion for his suspicion. I had no inten- 
 tion of injuring him by evoking opinions so as to use them 
 
i8o JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 against him, or anything of the sort. But in Messrs. 
 Mueler, Ltd., everybody was in the habit of regarding every- 
 body else with suspicion, and Mr. Tonson, as one of its oldest 
 inhabitants, was one of the most deeply imbued with the 
 principle. 
 
 " In fact/' I continued, " this is to be my last day, and 
 I want to say good-bye/' 
 
 " Is that so ? " he said, more suspiciously than ever. 
 
 " Yes/' I said, " good-bye ! " And I held out my hand 
 in confirmation of my words. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; good-bye ! " he said, taking my hand in a cold, 
 feeble grasp, and letting it fall again as soon as seized, lest 
 anyone should see him engaged in this strange demonstra- 
 tiveness. He walked away at once with a non-committal 
 manner, in the way of one prepared to revoke or stand by 
 his hand-grasp according as circumstances indicated. 
 
 This discouraged me somewhat. A freak seized me, and 
 induced me to seek out Tozer, whom I rarely saw nowadays. 
 I remembered he was my first friend in the place. 
 
 " Dear, dear me ! " he exclaimed. " Not going really ? 
 Going to leave the firm ? But whatever f or ? " 
 
 His astonishment, and the attachment it betokened, were 
 astonishing. He was as mercilessly bullied as any, and 
 was paid miserably, with no possibility of a decent wage. 
 Moreover (a deeper indignity !) no one could have seen in him 
 now the free, careless aristocrat of the hills he once had been. 
 His pale face and attentive manner told their tale, and he 
 clung to his slave's livery with astonishing fidelity. 
 
 A cruel spirit tempted me to say : " Yes, Fido, I actually 
 am going to leave your master." I explained instead that 
 I was anxious for something more congenial. For I liked 
 Tozer. It was his lovable spirit had made him the more 
 docile subject. 
 
 " Really ! " he said. " But it isn't as if we were a place 
 like a stockbroker's, is it ? We are a very great deal different, 
 aren't we ? Don't you think so ? " 
 
 This amazing reply reduced me to silence. I made haste 
 to bid him farewell. 
 
 " Oh, good-bye, Mr. Elthorne ! Of course the boss is a 
 trying man, I know. He tries me, sometimes. But it's 
 splendid to be all working together for Art, isn't it ? " 
 
FAREWELLS 181 
 
 I had taken a small room north of Hampstead, to which I 
 had removed my books tenderly during the week. A carrier 
 had been instructed to call for my box during the day. So I 
 had now only to seek out Uncle Jacob, to take an orderly 
 departure. But when I sought him, I found he had gone. 
 For some curious reason it struck me as a typical act of his. 
 
 So I took my cheque and went out for the last time from 
 that office. Yet, instead of being exalted, I was extra- 
 ordinarily depressed. Quite contrary to my intentions of 
 parsimony, Rhoda and myself went to the theatre that night 
 in order to divert our thoughts from the prevailing melancholy. 
 
ACT III 
 
 A TRAGIC COMEDY 
 I 
 
 AN OCTOBER EVENING 
 
 I declare that the fifteen years of my life between twenty- 
 five and forty are of more account in the tensity and strain 
 of living, that they amount to more in the weight and value 
 of years, than all the remaining portion of my life. They 
 commonly are so in the lot of man, I am aware, but in my 
 case it was peculiarly so. And yet it is difficult to set them 
 in array. 
 
 The reason partly is that this strain consisted chiefly in 
 the total value of little things, that in after years came to seem 
 little things, but which at the moment were of terrific concern. 
 Who is it that has not read the biographies of men and been 
 exasperated by being robbed of seemingly insignificant details 
 belonging to this overweighted portion of man's life ? 
 
 For example, here was I for the first time a free man, 
 dependent on my own resources, with none to hinder me from 
 the pursuit of my ambitions, and in the way of meeting friends 
 who, judiciously used, should have been useful to that end. 
 What, then, should have occupied my mind ? A glory in my 
 freedom, anxiety for my freedom, an absorbing zest in my 
 work ? None of these things. Only a melancholy that 
 seemed almost sufficient sometimes to destroy my sanity that 
 Rhoda and myself were not for ever man and wife. 
 
 For a week prior to my leaving the house at Hampstead I 
 
AN OCTOBER EVENING 183 
 
 had been afflicted with forebodings that were not so much 
 apparent in themselves as in the positively ghastly dreams 
 that tortured my nights, and made my wakings from them a 
 heavy and tired relief. For years thereafter they continued ; 
 in fact they have never truly ceased, but I am now not so raw 
 to their torture. 
 
 Naturally my melancholy was in a way identical with these 
 forebodings that ruled my mind whenever it was not actively 
 employed with other things, but it touched the outer world 
 of circumstance at one place, and so came to live actively and 
 intensely there. I threw myself into my work with all its 
 agreeable novelty, and undoubtedly succeeded in holding the 
 waters off in this way, but they would sweep over me with a 
 wilder surge in the end as a result of their withholding. No 
 mere chronicle of the facts of my love can explain how 
 anxiously this dominant emotion of those days bent and gave 
 a direction to my whole subsequent life. 
 
 It was little likely that this subject, overwhelming, as it 
 did, the rest of my life, should escape mention in my nightly 
 meetings with Rhoda. 
 
 " It is not right/' I would cry out, " it is not right that we 
 should be separate in this way. We are one, my own darling, 
 and that fact should be celebrated in our life. It seems to me 
 terrible that you and I, one as we are, should only meet in 
 this way in my few leisure hours/' 
 
 " Never mind, dearest/' she would comfort me. " It 
 won't be long now, now that you are free, before you will be 
 earning enough for us to marry on. We must be firm and 
 patient." 
 
 " I wonder if that will ever be," I used to lament. " Oh, 
 you cannot think, dear heart, how I hate this horrible mercenary 
 business of bartering for a living. If one could only be 
 assured of something definite how much better, how much 
 harder, one could work. As it is, half my energy goes in the 
 sickliness of despair and depression." 
 
 " Never mind, dearest," she would say and smooth back 
 the hair tenderly from my forehead, f< you are bound to 
 win through. Never forget that. We shall laugh at all this 
 one day." And I, in my selfishness, never realised that she 
 felt the melancholy as acutely as I did, though she was better 
 able to hold it away by occupation with other things. 
 
184 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I shall never forget the brave comfort she was to me those 
 days. 
 
 Then the matter took a further development. As I sat in 
 my room one evening when Rhoda had to go down to her 
 employer for some special task, it flashed upon me, why could 
 I not marry her and bring her to my room, for us both to live 
 there and each proceed thence to the daily task ? I jumped 
 up and walked about the room in the sudden excitement of the 
 idea. It possessed me powerfully all the evening, and con- 
 tinued the following day, despite the gray, un-idea'd lethargy 
 of the morning. 
 
 I worked with a new inspiration till I could see her again, 
 and in the intervals of work I set out my earnings and probable 
 expenses under the new system I proposed. They, as I 
 realised, had but little reference to the probable facts of the 
 case, no more reference than such hopeful calculations and 
 apportionings usually have ; but they served their customary 
 purpose in helping me to give tangible reality to my hopes, 
 and in providing an activity for my thoughts on the subject. 
 I adopted, of course, the usual method in such calculations 
 without any respect to the fact that it would surely be dis- 
 regarded when the actual days of expenditure came. Such 
 and such were my earnings, I put it : such and such were to 
 be my expenditures, divisible in the following discreet economy. 
 In addition to my salary I used to review books now for my 
 paper, at the reduced pay of half-a-guinea for a thousand words, 
 as I was on the staff. Using this as a combined warrant of 
 ability and basis of operations I began slowly to get other work, 
 and altogether, so it figured out in my calculations, I should 
 be able to depend on not less than a hundred pounds a year, 
 with the possibility of a fair amount more. It was precarious, 
 but I said to myself that he was a strange sort of man who 
 would always be on the look out for evil chances. This I 
 said, being disposed in that direction very much myself. 
 
 It looked wonderfully simple and precise as it faced me in 
 methodical columns on a slip of white paper. The only 
 difficulty in the whole thing, conception and execution, that 
 I could imagine lay in a possible visit from Frank, who did not 
 even know that my choice in the matter of marriage had 
 already been determined. A single difficulty might easily 
 be dispensed with. 
 
AN OCTOBER EVENING 185 
 
 So I developed the matter enthusiastically to Rhoda. 
 
 " Oh, my dearest," I said to her, " it will give me a new 
 enthusiasm in my work to have you at my side. In my own 
 work and ambitions it will provide me with an inspiration ever 
 at my side, my heart's own wife ; and in my work at the paper 
 I will have the same cheer, coming from your side and return- 
 ing to you again. Incidentally, it will save time too, for I 
 will be able to work of an evening, and yet have your dear 
 company/' Feeling that this contained an element of parsi- 
 mony and calculation that was not seemly in love's own royal 
 kingdom, I skirted it quickly. " I am glad I am free, for 
 now there is no one to interfere with any of my actions/' 
 
 The world was rosy to me then, and the clouds of melan- 
 choly were swept flying away. Then, with a catch at my 
 heart, I realised suddenly that Rhoda was strangely silent. 
 
 " Why are you so quiet, dear ? " I asked. " What do you 
 think what are you thinking of ? " 
 
 I had stopped at my alarm, and she stood between me and a 
 field beyond, her fair hair, fragile face and large feathered 
 hat framed by the darkening glebe over which a heavy October 
 moisture had passed a softness and richness. There were 
 those, I thought, who would have thought her curiously 
 beautiful so, but I never thought of beauty in that way with 
 her, I knew only that she was necessary to me. Therefore, 
 I was not blind to the fact that there was a cleverness in her 
 beauty that some might have called peevish though I would 
 have fought them had they done so. 
 
 " Why don't you say something ? " I asked, alarm and 
 grievance in my tone. 
 
 " I don't know what to say/' she said, without looking up 
 at me. 
 
 Her perplexity rang sincere, and I drew the reins firmly in 
 on the bridling steeds of irritation and anger that strained to 
 fty swiftly off with my saner judgment. 
 
 " In what way, Rhoda ? " I asked. " Surely it would be a 
 happier way of life for both of us. It would be so, I know, for 
 me, and wouldn't it be so for you ? " 
 
 " I am not so sure that it would," she slowly said. 
 
 That word struck across me like the blackest treason. I 
 was simply horrified at the thing it implied : most unreasonably, 
 no doubt, but quite sincerely. I knew that I would not for a 
 
186 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 single moment have suffered myself even to think such a 
 thought. 
 
 " Rhoda ! " I cried. " Oh dear, oh dear ! That you should 
 say such a thing as that." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," she said vexedly. " I can't help it, 
 I suppose ; I only know that I think I would not be happy. 
 Why should it be such a terrible thing to say that ? Anyway, 
 there it is : I don't like the idea at all, and I don't think it 
 suits me." 
 
 " I know I haven't much to offer you." 
 
 " Oh, it isn't that at all, you know that quite well. It is 
 something quite different. I hardly know myself what it is, 
 but there's something about it I don't like." 
 
 I said nothing, for I dared not trust myself to speak. I was 
 partly afraid of her, for I realised intensely for the first time 
 that she would part from me with far less grief than the havoc 
 it would produce in me ; and my profound vexation at meet- 
 ing a rebuff on so tender a matter choked my speech and must 
 have expressed itself in my face. 
 
 " It's no use your looking so ugly about the matter, Jack," 
 she said. " You jump out with these ideas and expect me to 
 adopt them at once. It's a thing I can't do, and won't do. 
 I am not going to be bullied into these things, and I tell you 
 that flat." Then, as I stood there looking discontentedly on 
 her, she added spiritedly : " If you are going to spoil the even- 
 ing, Jack, the best thing I can do is to go back home." 
 
 " We had better keep walking," I said, seeing that people 
 were noticing our wrangle. 
 
 So we paced on in tense silence. She was the first to break 
 the silence, and she did so by declaring her intention of 
 returning. 
 
 " It's no earthly good going on like this. I would just 
 as soon be inside and comfortable as tramping on in this 
 wretched silence." 
 
 " It seems inconceivable to me," I said, " that I should come 
 to you, who profess for me a love not less than I bear you, 
 with the proposal that we should end this wretched separate 
 existence by marrying and living together, by making our 
 lives one, as in fact they were, and that you should sneer at it, 
 and say it simply doesn't suit you, in that callous, crude 
 way." 
 
AN OCTOBER EVENING 187 
 
 " I haven't sneered at it." 
 
 " It comes tantamount to that/' 
 
 " You don't see how impossible it is " 
 
 " It isn't impossible, and you know that that's no sufficient 
 excuse. It's not even a ragtag of an excuse, though you hang 
 lit out to deceive me. We could each go to our respective 
 tasks just as at present, only we should have each other for 
 comfort and cheer if that means anything to you : I'm almost 
 ashamed to confess that it still means much to me." 
 
 *' And my name, if you please have you thought of that ? " 
 
 " You could call yourself by your maiden name as you do at 
 present, though I should prefer you to take your married 
 name." 
 
 " If I did I wouldn't keep my job for a month longer : you 
 know what men are. I believe half the reason they employ 
 us girls is that it pleases their sense of sex, and there's none 
 of that satisfaction to be got out of a married woman. Oh yes, 
 my dear Jack, you may not like it, but so it is. And I must 
 keep my job, for I must live. Whereas, if I went on as Miss 
 Ermott, and it came out that I was living with you there would 
 be a frightful upset." 
 
 " You seem to have worked it out to your satisfaction that 
 it isn't workable, though how much of it is sincere I would 
 very much like to know. It's something much deeper." 
 
 " Perhaps it is," she said. 
 
 With lulls and recoveries, so the quarrel passed to and fro. 
 We had long passed the stage when either side makes any 
 attempt to win over the other, by will, by strategy or by 
 concession. We were in that inevitable, terrible state when 
 the only thing thought of, or blindly followed, was to aggravate 
 and distress the other. The deeper set the affection the 
 profounder the morbid luxury this seems to be. So we 
 plunged deeper and deeper into the morass. 
 
 Thus we reached the turning that branched away for Hamp- 
 stead. Of course I invariably saw her home, and then struck 
 across by cross roads, but now the sight of the road combined 
 with the mood I was in, and I resolved to make an exception 
 to my custom. 
 
 1 You are going on, I suppose ? " I said, coming to a halt. 
 
 ' Well yes," said she, halting too, and looking up at me in 
 surprise. 
 
188 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " This is my shortest way/' I said, and held out my 
 hand. 
 
 She took it perplexedly. I held her hand in mine no instant 
 longer than was necessary, and bidding her " Good-night ! " 
 I turned away, leaving her staring puzzledly after me. 
 
 " Oh, well ! " I heard her say in careless resignation as she 
 too turned on her way. 
 
 Though I held doggedly on my way I knew I had lost by 
 that move. She could dismiss me far more easily from her 
 mind than I could dismiss her from mine. I knew instantly 
 that this was so. And, for my part, I was that night to prove 
 the half of my intuition, for I paced to and fro, up and down 
 my room till I was well nigh in a fever, and I could scarcely 
 sleep, so was I maddened and tortured with my fury of thought. 
 
 II 
 
 A LITERARY EVENING 
 
 The following day, I remember, was a Saturday. Mr. 
 Ramsay had asked me to go over to his rooms in the early 
 evening, as he was expecting some of his friends in for a smoke 
 and talk. I had considered myself very heroic (with the out- 
 ward appearance of folly that heroism often wears) in resisting 
 the invitation, inasmuch as my Saturdays were dedicated to 
 Rhoda. 
 
 My chief did not come up on Saturdays, and I was there- 
 fore in charge in the event of anything turning up. So I sat 
 at my desk that morning, with a sense of responsibility much 
 diminished from that which had possessed me in the early days 
 of my work, and brooded fiercely on the events of the pre- 
 ceding evening. All womenkind were attainted for me in the 
 circumstance of Rhoda's faithlessness, and as I had walked 
 
A LITERARY EVENING 189 
 
 up that morning the first raw blasts of winter had swept round 
 the corner of the shops at me, with the result that I muttered 
 in a bitterness that may indeed have been exaggerated but 
 which was intensely and darkly genuine : 
 
 ' Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 As Man's ingratitude." 
 
 Slowly the resolve grew up in my mind that I should not call 
 for Rhoda that evening according to custom, but that I 
 should go instead to Sloane Square. My mind jibbed like a 
 timid mare at the resolve, but I gathered up the reins firmly 
 and held myself to it, whatever the cost. 
 
 I was the first to arrive, and Mr. Ramsay greeted me with 
 that warmth of heart that he knew so well how to blend with a 
 reserved distinction of manner. 
 
 " Excellent ! " he said, with arms extended. " I hadn't 
 expected it." 
 
 (< I found myself at the last moment able to come." 
 
 " Unexpected pleasures generally contribute in fruition 
 what they lose through lack of anticipation." 
 
 " Seen my uncle lately ? " I called back down the stairs to 
 him. 
 
 " Yesterday. But you are a forbidden topic, I may tell you. 
 He is as grumpy as five and quite extraordinarily taciturn. 
 He isn't expecting your resolve to hold and is chiefly surprised 
 at its continuing so long. It may be a satisfaction to you to 
 know that he has got your department into an incorrigible 
 tangle that it will be past the wit of any man to untie." 
 
 " How are they managing ? " 
 
 " He has taken personal direction of it together with his 
 other work with a further loss of equanimity." 
 
 " And Tim ? " 
 
 " Talks of leaving under the strain." 
 
 " Poor old Tim." 
 
 " He is coming to-night. I asked him chiefly out of a great 
 compassion, for he misses you terribly." 
 
 I gave a great shout of joy. 
 
 Soon the others began to arrive, until the sitting-room be- 
 came even difficult to see across owing to the rich clouds of 
 
igo JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 smoke given out by newly-lit pipes. Mr. Ramsay and I took it 
 in turns to go down on the errand of admission and welcome 
 and it chanced that it was he who opened the door to Tim. 
 Therefore, we could do no more than merely nod as he brought 
 a cushion over and sat on the floor by my side. Being early, I 
 was one of the half-dozen who had a seat : the rest, to their 
 better comfort, being distributed on the floor. 
 
 Helping Mr. Ramsay to distribute the wine and the whiskey, 
 I missed the opening of the conversation that was bubbling up 
 here and there, and ordering itself into a unity that should 
 embrace the company. It was for all the world like little 
 springs spurting up here and there, each to join itself to some 
 other, until finally, having at last linked up all round, they 
 resolved themselves into one bubbling well, with always the 
 tendency towards a partial disruption again. 
 
 When I was at liberty to listen I gathered that the discussion 
 had centred on certain modern writers about whom my 
 knowledge, I being chiefly bred on the great things of the past, 
 was of the slightest. But as I listened to gather up what I 
 could, the thing that puzzled me chiefly was not my lack of 
 acquaintance with the subject-matter of their discussion, as 
 my utter remoteness from what seemed to me the quaintness 
 of their attitude towards it. I, at first, felt amazingly little 
 and ignorant, not to say depressed. Then as I mastered their 
 subject-matter my confidence rose. But I remained abso- 
 lutely detached from their point of view, and so completely 
 detached, indeed, that I could not even define the distinction 
 between us. That their point of view seemed to rule among 
 them all at least, among all the active participants in the 
 conversation made the trouble all the stranger. 
 
 At last, in a lull of the conversation, when it seemed to swirl 
 upon itself awhile, preparatory for a fresh departure, I broke 
 out with : 
 
 " But does just writing, making books, literature in that 
 sense of the word, matter ? " 
 
 The conversation had paused before : it seemed to halt in 
 astonishment now. The man who was, as it were, the main 
 croupier of the conversation, laughed a short t uneasy laugh, 
 that caused me to flush red. 
 
 " Well, I don't know exactly what else does matter," he 
 said slowly, and seemed to pause as though not knowing quite 
 
A LITERARY EVENING 191 
 
 how long to let the halt hang on this intermission before sending 
 the conversation on its serious flow again. 
 
 His manner was instinctively courteous but as though 
 courteous under aggravation. A heavy, stoutish man he was, 
 with fat, clean-shaven cheeks, fair hair, a broad, commanding 
 forehead and merry eyes. His voice sometimes rang up 
 almost to a treble, and had always a pure, high quality. 
 
 If he was courteous it was more than I could say of the next 
 speaker. He was sharp-featured, with dark complexion, 
 black hair, roughly tousled with his fingers, and deep, lustrous 
 dark eyes. His clothes hung loosely upon him, and a large 
 black tie fell with wide ends over his waistcoat. He looked 
 shrewdly and keenly on me, and I am convinced that he 
 divined my point, but he turned about with a curt gesture. 
 
 ' Except Life, Jenson," he said. " But what was it you were 
 saying ? " 
 
 My flush went a deeper hue, but with anger this time not 
 less than confusion. Life there was another word that I 
 would have wished a definition of. I began to see the difference 
 beiween us a little more clearly. They were, apparently, 
 playing a little game between them, with words as counters 
 to the game, words that remained undefined, or if defined, 
 then with impure meaning and in journalistic senses. Life 
 was one such word, and Literature, as I perceived to my per- 
 plexity, seemed to be another. Apparently any automatic 
 or unworthy act of a man's day, or any clever pageful from a 
 man's pen, were demonstrable parts of one or the other. 
 
 All this was in my mind, but in a nebulous way, as the 
 interrupted conversation went forward. It was as though I 
 saw more than I could quite clearly bring to focus. And, 
 stinging under my rebuff, I turned to a man of my own age 
 sitting beside me, and said with wrathful emphasis : 
 
 " Nothing that doesn't matter, matters/' 
 
 Whereupon he suddenly sniggered, and then quickly 
 caught his snigger by the throat, remembering that I had 
 handed him some whiskey a short time before. 
 
 The others had continued their discussion, and were now 
 seeking to appraise the works of a certain writer. Being 
 unacquainted with them I could not bring an independent 
 judgment to bear upon the matter, but I was bewildered at the 
 absolute and ineradicable difference of opinion between Jenson 
 
JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and the dark-featured man, whose name, it appeared, was 
 Parkins. Jenson wished to set them on the citadel of heaven, 
 Parkins had no wish so profound as to consign them to the 
 nethermost hell. And all they had to say, however sugges- 
 tively and wittily said, were after all but clever variations of 
 these central desires. The others rallied in, some to Parkins' 
 aid, some to Jenson's, but neither chieftain nor follower 
 seemed to be able to bring any touchstone that could even so 
 much as diminish the gulf set between them. I thought, as 
 I heard them, that Jenson's method would be enough to 
 establish any insecure fame, and Parkins' method sufficient 
 to destroy belief in any beauty. 
 
 It was wonderfully clever. I have never met any man who 
 was so subtle a debater as Parkins. He skirmished and fenced 
 with an adroitness that was almost satanic ; indeed, that was 
 truly satanic in the sense that it sought only to destroy, with- 
 out any reference to a faith or conviction of its own. But 
 Jenson, in his bland, easy way, always seemed to avoid the 
 snares set for him and sail down on his adversary's flank from . 
 a fresh quarter at the precise moment that the snare should 
 have fallen due. Then the manoeuvring for position would 
 begin again Jenson, being on the defensive, not having 
 the need for the rapidity of movement his opponent required. 
 He had this disadvantage, however, as against Parkins : he 
 had convictions ; there were names in our literature that he 
 was not content to abuse if to do so should serve his turn. 
 
 I listened to it with flattering bewilderment for a time ; 
 then I began to be merely tired by it, for it all seemed to matter 
 so very little. I began in a dream to work out my own thought 
 and to see my own vision of things, and would probably 
 have soon left the company to their discussion, that meant, 
 so far as I could see, no definite general gain, when Mr. 
 Ramsay's voice breaking into the discussion struck on my 
 dreaming ear. 
 
 He was lying back on cushions beside the fire, and his eyes 
 were half closed as he peered through them on the two princi- 
 pals in the disputation. 
 
 What he had said was : " You men will go on discussing 
 this for ever, or something like it, or something leading from 
 it." What he continued to say, after a slight pause, was : 
 " Why the devil, Jenson, don't you answer a question when 
 
A LITERARY EVENING 193 
 
 it's put to you, or find out what it means, and not assume 
 immediately that it means nothing ? 
 
 " Like your damned cheek," Jenson said good-humouredly. 
 " But may I enquire, gently, what it is you refer to ? " When 
 he put those very courteous questions he seemed to chuckle 
 with satisfaction over them. 
 
 " Elthorne there asked you whether writing and making 
 books mattered, or something like it. I must admit I scarcely 
 saw his drift at first, and I'm none too sure I see it now, but 
 as you fellows try and stamp out the virtue of Gordon's work, 
 it seems to me you are trying the particular of his general." 
 
 " Scarcely that," I stammered out. " What I wanted to 
 get at is, what is it makes a man's work matter ? I want to 
 know for myself, which I suppose is a commonplace sort of 
 tiling to do. I do, nevertheless. I don't know this Gordon's 
 work, but I take it he wrote poetry, or rather, some say he 
 did, and some say emphatically he didn't. But what is 
 Poetry ? " 
 
 " The best words in the best order," someone glibly quoted. 
 
 " Oh, and Prose ? " I asked. 
 
 " Any damned words in any damned order," a long man 
 laconically observed, gazing into the fire. 
 
 When the ripple of laughter had died away, I continued, 
 with more hesitancy than before : 
 
 " What I mean to say is this : so far as I know, the main 
 difference between major and minor poets, to adopt a rough 
 distinction that is familiar and not inaccurate, is this poets 
 who have something to deliver that is more to them than life, 
 more than form, and more than skill of speech, and upon which 
 the lesser things depend, and poets who are concerned with 
 making well-wrought poems without any particular respect to 
 any particular spiritual vision that those poems have to 
 deliver." 
 
 " Bravo ! " I heard Mr. Ramsay's voice ring out. But I 
 heard it as a thing afar off, for I was engrossed by the thing I 
 wished to say. 
 
 " Take the great literature of the past, that has won through 
 the years ! I doubt if you will find any great writer whose 
 work does not pass us through an exalted spiritual discipline 
 by the particular ritual in which he has caught and kept his 
 spiritual vision." 
 
 o 
 
194 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 ." Oh, the past/' someone broke out. " Good God ! Why, 
 we have done with the past." 
 
 " Have we ! " the man sitting beside Jenson pugnaciously 
 said, with beetling brows and pursed-up lips. 
 
 " We are opening up a new order," someone else decreed. 
 
 " A statement, incidentally," Mr. Ramsay calmly observed, 
 " that I imagine every year in the world's calendar has heard 
 declared. But go on, Elthorne ! " 
 
 " I believe literature, by its tense emotions, passes us 
 through purifying fires for our greater personal life to be. 
 You see," I continued, in a glow of joy at clearing up some of 
 my own confused thought, " if this is what literature is to 
 mean, then making a book or filling a sheet with writing scarcely 
 seems to achieve it, does it ? That's what I meant." 
 
 " Every damned thing based on assumptions, my friend," 
 Jenson calmly observed. " It presupposes a deuced too much. 
 Didactic too, as such things usually are." 
 
 " What do you mean by didactic ? " I asked, puzzled. 
 
 " I'll bet he hasn't stopped to enquire," Mr. Ramsay 
 chimed in. " It's good ball to knock ninepins over with. 
 Is ' Sartor ' didactic, Jenson ? " 
 
 " Oh, ancient history, Ramsay, ancient history, old man i " 
 
 " You probably mean, not ancient enough. Very well, 
 then : is Aeschylus didactic ? " 
 
 " Most devilish ! " 
 
 " Very well, I'm content to fall in that company." 
 
 " The company's pretty good, I don't deny." 
 
 " And remember ! every time you use that careless word 
 again your pet Aeschylus falls headlong, with a good few other 
 of your loves, as I could demonstrate. Clean thinking means 
 a pure choice of words and ideas, and that's a thing, Jenson, 
 my friend, you'll never acquire so long as you argue." 
 
 While this had been going forward I had felt that both 
 Jenson and Parkins saw my drift, but that to all the others it 
 was no more than a jumble of words. I felt it, however, 
 particularly with Parkins probably because he was sitting 
 near me. He had leant back in his chair, gazing fixedly at 
 me through the curling wisps of smoke that rose from the bowl 
 of his pipe. I have since noticed it as a curious habit of his, 
 that he blew gently through his pipe, rather than drew on it, 
 when meditating a ruse in argument. And as Ramsay and 
 
A LITERARY EVENING 195 
 
 Jenson bantered one another easily, like men familiar, each 
 with the other's point of view, he said softly and gently to 
 me : 
 
 " Ah, you're an anti-realist/' 
 
 I had not at that time seen the profound difference between 
 Realism and Actualism, between the striving after Reality by 
 iinding the significance of the cruder facts of life and the mere 
 automatic reproduction of those facts, and I therefore took 
 my first false step in assenting to the definition. 
 
 " So you won't have Balzac, eh ? " 
 
 My impression of Balzac was the second-remove impression 
 of repute which a subsequent reading has not greatly altered 
 ior me, I must say. And in the terms of that impression I was 
 faced with a difficulty, for I saw the trap. I thought I had to 
 forswear either my declared principle or a writer that appealed 
 vastly to me. With more pluck than wisdom or knowledge 
 I held by what I thought to be the commitment of my principle. 
 
 I have no memory of what followed. From some experience 
 v/ith Parkins' methods I can see now what he had done. He 
 had fastened me on to an equivocation, and then haled me to 
 and fro on its separate meanings till I was dizzy and silly. I 
 only remember declaring my enmity against all sorts of things 
 that I either liked well or had not sufficiently considered ; of 
 avowing beliefs that I had put into my mouth and that I 
 \vould willingly have spat thence ; of blushing furiously and 
 stammering painfully ; of clouds of smoke that made my eyes 
 to burn, till I feared that others would think they were filled 
 \\ith tears of vexation ; of Parkins' coal-black eyes, as they 
 seemed to me, behind the smoke puffed gently from between 
 his lips ; of Jensen's gleeful chuckle in the early stages, and, 
 dimly, of his attempt to draw the battle on to himself in the 
 end ; and finally of cool night air bathing my forehead as 
 I took off my hat in Sloane Square to wipe the beads of 
 perspiration that stood on it. 
 
 " Couldn't cough it out, could ye, what's say ? " 
 
 I looked down on Tim standing beside me. I had forgotten 
 h s very existence. 
 
 " Seems I made a damned fool of myself," I said. " I 
 rr ust think it out, Tim, for I know I'm right." 
 
 " What ho 1 You were after something, I may say, and 
 they wasn't." 
 
ig6 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Brave Tim ! How his words put heart into me that night ! 
 
 " I think they call that being didactic, Tim/' 
 
 " Crikey ! " 
 
 So we strolled up the street laden with heavy mists, expect- 
 ing a rumbling bus any minute to overtake us. Then Tim 
 spoke again. 
 
 " I ought to read a bit, you know, I ought, straight. I 
 was knocked fair silly to-night, I may say. But, oh lor ! " 
 
 " Why don't you come and stay with me to-night ? Oh, 
 you can't though ; I was forgetting your mother." 
 
 " Mother's a gonner." 
 
 No tone or description can convey the sense of desolation 
 that lay in the resigned grimness with which he spoke those few 
 pert words. An aloofness of manner that I had not particu- 
 larly noticed in his previous demeanour now seemed suddenly 
 to rush in to weigh the quiet phrase with tragedy. 
 
 " I say, Tim, I didn't know, you didn't let me know. I'm 
 very sorry, old chap." 
 
 " No use worrying others, what's say ? There it just was. 
 She was a plucky one, I may say. Not much to look at, you 
 know, but but what's good grizzling ? " 
 
 The night was bitter cold ; and I now began to know it. 
 Nevertheless we sat on the top of the bus as it lurched home- 
 ward. We spake little, and the mists flew by gently, wrap- 
 ping the lamps of night till they became no more than murky 
 red halos glowing in the darkness of deserted streets and sleepy 
 houses. Faintly a few stars could be descried overhead in 
 the indefinable darkness of the heavens. It was as though 
 some eternal car rolled onwards for ever, while three huddled 
 figures sat moveless upon its benches. And street after street 
 lurched slowly by as we rumbled on through a city of sleep. 
 
A DECEMBER MORN 197 
 
 III 
 
 A DECEMBER MORN 
 
 I determined on the Sunday that I would not visit Rhoda, 
 but I knew very well it was idle coming to such resolves. 
 
 The early afternoon saw me leave Tim to his own desires 
 while I took my customary way to Kilburn. Yet it should 
 be said that, though I was drawn against my own resolves, I 
 went with not the slightest intention of capitulation. Had 
 there been any ear quick to hear words in steps, my stride, I 
 think, would have rung with warfare. 
 
 Alas, for high resolves, however! I was met by the infor- 
 mation that Miss Ermott and her friend had gone away for the 
 week-end, and would not, indeed, be back till the Tuesday. 
 Did the good landlady know where they had gone ? No, 
 she did not and she seemed somewhat surprised at her inter- 
 locutor's lack of information, so that it was difficult to pursue 
 the subject. 
 
 It was poor company Tim found me that night. What odd 
 people some of us are ! There was whiskey, there was excel- 
 lent tobacco, there was a roaring fire by the mercy of God, 
 and there was a friend who never intruded unnecessarily, who, 
 whether he spoke or was silent, acted on an instinct that, with 
 me, rarely failed, and was fullest company, yet I was the 
 miserablest man in London that evening. 
 
 I was pulled on the wires of torment all night. I knew I 
 fought at a disadvantage : if I tormented Rhoda now, I 
 tormented myself twice as acutely in the process, whereas she 
 was almost immune from the penalties she inflicted. So I 
 went homeward with Tim to satisfy my restless torments with 
 the semblance of action. 
 
 It was this made me walk all the way home from Shepherd's 
 Eush. The night was bitter and raw, but I walked so furiously 
 that I was bathed with perspiration. To find an outlet for my 
 passions, or, rather, to stifle my racing* thoughts, I addressed 
 a somewhat too deliberately winsome maiden who paused 
 hesitatingly on the crest of some area steps. Presently I 
 suggested a walk. 
 
 " Oh, I can't/' said she. " I've got to be in by ten, and 
 it's past that now, ain't it ? " 
 
198 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I produced my watch, and swore it was no more than half 
 past nine, though it was a quarter past her hour. 
 
 " Only a little way then," she agreed. 
 
 It was not long before my arm encircled her waist, my lips 
 folded over hers, and her head (prettily, if a little elaborately 
 dressed out in curls, and surmounted by a large hat with a 
 large feather) gently pressed to a resting place on my shoulder. 
 But it all rang hollow. It was like drinking wine to deaden 
 pain. And I to whom such soft charms, though crudely in- 
 carnated, were always a full music in the blood released her 
 long before I need have done had her strength of will been the 
 only opposition. 
 
 Like a wind brushing away a wisp of cloud she had gone 
 from my memory almost before a hundred yards had inter- 
 posed between us which is not the usual effect of women upon 
 me. I do not know what time I reached home. I know it was 
 in the small hours of the morning and that the grate looked 
 desolation itself with its low, flameless embers. My tormenting 
 thoughts had reduced me to such a state of nervous exhaustion 
 by that time so utterly worn out was I that I had no more 
 energy than to slip off my boots, untie my collar, and fall into 
 a heavy slumber with the blankets of my bed but half drawn 
 over me. 
 
 The following evening I endeavoured to work. Indeed, I 
 covered three pages of foolscap with some kind of automatic 
 labour that had to be kicked into the fire the following day ; 
 and if it was not worthy workmanship it was a not altogether 
 fruitless anodyne. 
 
 The next evening she herself opened the door to me, and 
 we stood facing one another in the dim illumination cast by a 
 flaring hall light. 
 
 " Well ? " I asked, with an attempt at non-committal 
 dignity. 
 
 " Well ! " she replied, with challenge in her tone. 
 
 I was, I say frankly, afraid of her. It is one of the most 
 curious things in life that women in certain characteristic 
 moods always command fear in men. I turned to pleading. 
 
 " Do you think it was altogether fair to go off like that 
 without letting me know ? " 
 
 I knew the obvious response, and tuned myself to meet 
 it. 
 
A DECEMBER MORN 199 
 
 " Well : and you didn't meet me as you arranged to just 
 out of spite, too ! " 
 
 " We can't very well talk here. Shall we go out ? " 
 
 She hesitated a moment. " It's no earthly good our going 
 out if we're going to squabble, especially as it's a frightful 
 night." 
 
 I said nothing, but stood there in silence. There are 
 certain rhythms of power that a man may wield over a woman, 
 and I had my hand on them now. It was curious the emotional 
 interplay there was between us. She was rebellious, but I 
 stood on in silence, and finally she went and put her hat and 
 coat on and came out, as I knew she would. 
 
 " I had an excuse, I think, for my not turning up 
 on Saturday, after what you had said on the previous 
 evening." 
 
 " Excuses are easy to find if anybody's looking for them. 
 Anyway, so had I." She was cold in manner, and her 
 words were delivered as though she struck at me with a 
 beak. 
 
 I decided on the swing of instinct that it was wise 
 to avoid any reference to a subject when there was a 
 patent Roland for every Oliver of mine, and to confine 
 attention on what had now become to me the main theme 
 of agony. 
 
 " Can't you see, Rhoda, what it means to me ? You know 
 very well, dear girl, that if you had come to me at any time, and 
 asked me to marry you, I would not have hesitated a single 
 instant, whatever the circumstances, but would simply and 
 naturally have done what you had a right to claim. You 
 know that this is so, don't you ? " 
 
 " I'm built on a different mould, I suppose." 
 
 " No, I don't mean that, and I don't suggest it ; I simply 
 can't understand you in this." 
 
 And so we were in it again. An introductory touch of 
 frost had come into the air, with the result that the damp 
 floating mists of the previous week, dropping moisture from 
 lank trees on to the muddy leaves beneath, had now become 
 a thick standing fog that gave a smart to the eyes and perished 
 the blood in one's veins. (The effects of that fog may to this 
 hour be descried on a copy of Balzac that I took down from my 
 shelves, and which I then bore in my hand.) Save for a bus 
 
200 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 or other vehicle, that crawled slowly along, with its conductor 
 ahead brandishing a lantern and crying aloud, we had the 
 streets to ourselves as we discussed the old subject with a 
 simple repetition of the old dialogue. Only now it was more 
 reasonable. The hour for the luxury of aggravating one 
 another, that strange and unaccountable luxury of irritation, 
 had passed. 
 
 Therefore, when I returned, though nothing had been gained 
 that could be pointed to as gain, I yet felt progress had been 
 made. Each evening that week told me the same tale. There 
 was nothing else talked of between us, save in parentheses, 
 except the one theme. At last she swept it all away and 
 would none of it. Bitterly, and truly, she said that the one 
 usurping topic was marring all things. It was cruel that I 
 should continue so, and spoil all our kisses by making them the 
 punctuations of a battle. Yes, yes, she loved me, but why could 
 we not go forward without choosing for a perpetual conversa- 
 tion the one subject of dissension ? Could she not see, I asked, 
 that it was not a lack of love that made the subject so much 
 to me and that her attitude bore that suggestion far more 
 reasonably, though I did not mean to impute it ? Oh yes, 
 she saw that, but she was made that way, she supposed. 
 Certainly she could not say other than she had, and she could 
 not tell why she thought as she did. 
 
 Two days of stiffness and awkwardness followed, and then 
 the slow joy of " making it up " was taken up with keen delight 
 by both of us. A succession of clear, sunny, frosty days 
 was partly responsible for this. The thing of contention was 
 put away. But it was there. The putting of it away only 
 enforced its existence. Either one or the other of us was 
 wondering if the other were thinking of it. It was there, 
 it had got to be decided, and so long as we continued our 
 relations to one another, which would have been impossible 
 now, unthinkable even, to sever, there could be but one 
 answer. 
 
 Therefore, it came about that one grey December afternoon 
 two rather chilled mortals might have been discovered being 
 thrown against one another by the lurchings of an omnibus 
 that made its painful way towards a western railway terminus. 
 Now and then he would turn about and steal a slow glance at 
 her stiff, awe-stricken face. And she would look back at him 
 
A DECEMBER MORN 201 
 
 and smile bravely. At one of these timid interchanges she 
 whispered. 
 
 " Are you sorry, dear ? " 
 
 " Sorry for what, dear ? " he asked. 
 
 " That you have done it ? " she responded, seeking for 
 words to express the inexpressible. 
 
 " Dearest, I'm glad, very glad," he said, assuring himself 
 with his own words, and seeking to grasp the stupendous 
 fact that this creature he could now, in no play of endearment, 
 call his wife, and all because a certain official had curtly asked 
 them some obvious questions and extracted, by promptings, 
 some obvious replies. It was all unintelligible. The very 
 necessity of these formulae had filled him with misgivings. 
 Moreover, as she sat beside him, she seemed so changed and 
 remote, even so far short of the bright requirement of the 
 colossal change. 
 
 So the bus lurched onward, and the train sped westward 
 into a pale sunset lit by a dusk saffron glow, over which, as 
 it seemed, a dim veil of crimson gauze had been drawn. As 
 this faded away a heavy mist crept over the earth with a 
 coldness that penetrated to the bone, and a light drizzle 
 spluttered on to the windows of the carriage. 
 
 So much I noticed before I saw a cluster of lights swimming 
 in the distance like fireflies on the face of the waters ; and I 
 bent to kiss Rhoda tenderly once again before we drew in to 
 the town of our choice for our brief holiday. 
 
 None knew of our marriage. We were neither of us of 
 the kind disposed to admit any to our confidence because, by 
 the cast of fortune, they chanced to be relatives. Moreover, 
 the very nature, and secret exultation of security, of it was that 
 it was to be a close affair. 
 
202 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 IV 
 
 A TURN IN AFFAIRS 
 
 The paper that had found me shelter went the way of all 
 such ventures. Within a year of its inauguration it passed 
 from a weekly to a fortnightly publication. It declared boldly, 
 even defiantly, that a fortnightly rhythm, for a journal that 
 held so high an ideal of literary production, had more of 
 nature in it than a weekly : and everybody at once recognised 
 a euphemism for financial failure. This was evident from the 
 immediate applications we received from those who had been 
 regular contributors, and who suddenly seemed pressed for 
 money. Then it passed to a monthly, and all the work was 
 written by the staff that is to say, the editor and myself. 
 And so, when it ceased publication, hardly anyone noticed 
 its demise. 
 
 I remember well the day I went out from that office for the 
 last time. A first touch of spring was in the air, and the 
 morning was bright and sunny. I had not expected the end 
 so soon, though its prospect had caused me anxiety of no 
 ordinary kind for months past. But on my arrival in the 
 morning I had been handed a cheque to the end of that week, 
 with the information that the paper would issue no more. So, 
 on a morning when the air drank like nectar to the blood, I 
 went out with bitterness and anxiety in my mind, and a packet 
 of my books and general requisites under my arm. 
 
 The first man I went in to see was Parkins, whom I had come 
 to know quite well. I admired his mental powers immensely, 
 though I knew quite well that his wonderful comprehension 
 and agility was for whatsoever use his shifting caprice might 
 decide. For it was caprice he served, not personal advantage, 
 and that was the only moral extenuation one could plead for 
 him. 
 
 He at once, in a sudden access of sympathy, commissioned 
 a number of articles for his paper from me. The value of this 
 was somewhat diminished by the fact that he never paid, all 
 the work being for the splendour and honour of being in print ; 
 but I agreed, nevertheless, and we proceeded to roam at will 
 through the whole range of English Literature. The result 
 was that I walked out in about an hour and a half like a king, 
 
A TURN IN AFFAIRS 203 
 
 the freedom of expressing myself, and being understood, in 
 all that Life and Being meant, raising me above the darts of 
 presumptuous Time. Parkins would seek to disprove, at our 
 next meeting, the very things that he now approved. But 
 what mattered that ? I walked down Fleet Street like a god. 
 
 A few spurnings at various papers, where I hoped to try 
 and amend my fortunes by commissioned work, a little rudely 
 shook my splendid exultation, and I went down to the City 
 to find Frank. 
 
 " Well, how go things with you ? " he asked, when we sat 
 together over lunch. 
 
 " Come now," I responded, with enforced gaiety, " that's 
 not so easy a question to answer. I don't know precisely 
 in what sense to take it. I am a free man, if that has anything 
 to do with it." 
 
 " You don't mean to say you have thrown up your post ? " 
 he queried in sudden alarm. 
 
 " Really I couldn't say. Thrown it up ? Maybe it has 
 thrown me up, or we may have thrown one another up. 
 The brief of it is it has ceased to be. It is not. It was and 
 is no more, It has vanished into air, into thin air, with all 
 its concomitants of sub-editorial spendour and sublunary 
 remuneration." 
 
 ' You seem to be wonderfully perky about it." 
 
 God help the man ! How little he knew of my emotions at 
 that moment. 
 
 " One may as well say the best for the approved fact, I 
 suggest." 
 
 So I spoke on to him, grimly enough could he have seen it. 
 
 " But whatever in the world will you do ? " he asked, in a 
 state of great concern. 
 
 I stared at him helplessly. Was not that very question 
 only too patent to me, without his making it the worse by 
 insistence ? Could he not have encouraged me, or helped me, 
 or sympathised with me, or at best talked of something else ? 
 A torrent of words struggled in my throat. I wished to recite 
 to him that, if Life stood for anything more than an ugly rush 
 for gain, however feebly in myself I at least wished to be true 
 to its nobler meanings. I wished to tell him that in no line 
 I lad ever written, even though it were some review of a book 
 that did not mean much to me, had I ever put a thought that I 
 
204 JACOB fiLTHORNE 
 
 would be ashamed to acknowledge at the assemblage of the 
 nations, when the last trump sounds for the reckoning of the 
 things of beauty and sincerity and the utter mockery and 
 flagellation of the things of ugliness and triviality. I wished 
 to let him know that the world to me was full of wonder and 
 beauty, that it was increasingly so each day, whereas he and 
 his kind were filling it with ugliness. I wished to pour out 
 to him the plans on plans for books that lived in my brain, 
 that I wished to create into beauty in so far as I might, with- 
 out a thought of gain, if only a fair subsistence were ensured 
 to me. I wished to tell him that only the previous morning 
 I had had a book, the result of twelve months' ungrudging 
 labour, returned to me from a distinguished firm of publishers 
 who made a great profession of ensuring the classics to the 
 nation, but who never by any chance undertook any new man's 
 work, waiting till by grave toil he had won his own position 
 to turn about and trade on his fame with their wealth with 
 the comment that they feared they could not undertake it 
 with any prospect of financial gain, an atheistical hideous- 
 ness that would have been impossible had only a fiftieth 
 portion of the men of London any conception of the sole 
 indestructibility of Beauty. 
 
 But I was seated in a City eating-house, surrounded by men 
 in ugly clothing, with ugly brains and ugly devices, doing 
 work so ugly that God will in His two hands tear it asunder, 
 and fling it back in the faces of its makers. I was seated 
 opposite a man who was my own brother, for whom, as a boy, 
 I had fought battles, who, with me, had known neglect, and 
 with whom, in those days, I had found so close an under- 
 standing that it dared express itself only in gruffness lest it 
 should tumble on a sentimentality abhorrent to the heart of a 
 boy; but who was a part of that whole ugly system. And 
 I was, perforce, silent, though the tears stood heavy in my 
 eyes. 
 
 He had begun some melancholy chant about ways and 
 means when he saw them, and he hurriedly proceeded with 
 his meal. 
 
 We said little during the rest of that meal. He began, 
 once or twice, some further investigation as to what I proposed 
 to do now that the greater bulk of my livelihood was gone ; but 
 I took no notice of him. He had no divination of moods, and 
 
" FORTUNE KNOWS WE SCORN HER" 205 
 
 therefore had not the divine gift of appropriate silence, so 
 that I was glad when we came to part. 
 
 " I am very sorry, old chap," he said, more sympathetically, 
 in parting. 
 
 " Oh, we shall pull through, I have no doubt," I responded. 
 
 Brothers ? What are brothers save the mutual notes in a 
 chord of music ? I resolved that I should never see him 
 again. 
 
 " FORTUNE KNOWS WE SCORN HER MOST WHEN MOST SHE 
 OFFERS BLOWS " 
 
 " You're early, aren't you ? " 
 
 " And so I thought I'd call for you." 
 
 We hardly thought of one another as husband and wife. 
 Neither did we think of one another as unmarried lovers. 
 There was something of both in it, and the result was a sense 
 of comradeship that was admirable. Usually I called for 
 her, or she for me, later in the evening. But on this evening 
 I had waited for her in a certain turning off Piccadilly down 
 which she always came on her way home. And we now walked 
 along it in silence. 
 
 " Anything the matter, dear ? " she asked. 
 
 She was looking up at me in close scrutiny, I knew, and I 
 dared not return her glance. So I dropped her arm out of 
 mine, and put mine within hers instead. 
 
 " Jack ! " she asked again, with a note of alarm in her 
 voice, " what's the matter, dear ? " 
 
 I bit on my lips fiercely to hold back my tears. Fortun- 
 ately the turning was unfrequented, for my attempt was a 
 poor one, and she was all solicitation. 
 
 " Oh, damn it ! " I exclaimed, brushing my tears away, 
 
206 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " why can't a man be able to stop making a fool of himself 
 like this ? " 
 
 11 What is it, dear ? " 
 
 " Only that the paper's done with oh, and I feel failure 
 in me." 
 
 " Poor old chap ! " she said, taking my hand and caressing 
 it. 
 
 We did not go homeward but turned into the Park. The 
 roar of traffic surged north and south along streets of flaming 
 orange lights and glittering white lights and burning ruddy 
 lights, lights dim and lights brilliant in avenues of noise ; 
 but the Park was dark and secret. We roved through the 
 paths in the profound silence of sympathy. In his smaller 
 moments Man uses words to thread together a sequence of 
 logic ; in his greater moments he uses them to convey the 
 sounds, the precise tones and chords, that are more full of 
 significance to his eternal soul than all the tissue of thought. 
 And so, when we spoke, we paid no heed to the words we chose, 
 but gave them the musics they required. We were never 
 so much at-one-ment as then, while we wandered beneath 
 the trees, by the side of the waters, through the intersecting 
 paths between the various bushes. 
 
 It was much later that she said : " Suppose, dear, that we 
 live together. Don't you think that would be better ? " 
 
 " Oh, how I wish we could ! And God bless you for that 
 word, dear ! But how can we at this of all times ? " 
 
 " Just as you wish, Jack dear. Only I am quite willing." 
 
 But the idea held me breathless. It seemed to me the very 
 manner of thing to arrest and hearten not only me, for that 
 was half the concern, but both of us, for we were bitterly 
 discouraged, though she, womanlike, lost her disappointment 
 in comforting me. It grew upon my mind with a grimness of 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " Yet, I don't know," I said presently. " It would be 
 taking up the challenge, wouldn't it ? And to take up a 
 challenge is half-way to winning a fight." 
 
 " Let us do it, Jack," she said, and I could hear a tone in 
 her voice that bade me know that she was weary of our 
 waiting. 
 
 " If only it did not mean privation for you." 
 
 " It need not, perhaps. I think I could keep on with my 
 
"FORTUNE KNOWS WE SCORN HER" 207 
 
 post, or if I didn't I could soon get another; and Mrs. 
 Thompson, I think, already half knows we are married. 1 ' 
 Mrs. Thompson was my landlady, and a kindly, if careless, 
 soul. 
 
 " We should each keep our own accounts/' 
 
 " You wouldn't be proud, Jack ? " 
 
 " I suppose one might call it pride. I mean to win my own 
 battle, anyway, Rhoda." 
 
 " Would you be proud with me, Jack ? " * 
 
 " My own dearest, I owe you now what I can never repay in 
 love. But let us have it as I say, dear. You may call it 
 pride or what you will, but if a man loses his independence he 
 loses half himself." 
 
 We let the matter rest at that, for much had to be done, 
 and the gradual pleasure of anticipation had to be enjoyed. 
 
 Then, to my complete astonishment, Frank came round to 
 see me. Under those childish punctilios that seem to sway 
 men in times of disagreement it was, I had divined, a rule laid 
 down by Jacob Mueler that I might be known and recognised, 
 but not my separate dwelling. On the two occasions when he 
 had written to me he had addressed me at the office. Frank 
 had done the same, and when we met it was usually for 
 dinner somewhere. Therefore his visit to my room wrought 
 wonderment in me. I forgot that I now had no other port of 
 call. 
 
 " I was going to write to you, but I thought I would come 
 and see you instead." 
 
 " Good ! Have some baccy ? " 
 
 ' Thanks, no ! I'll have one of my cigarettes." 
 
 There was a curious exultation and triumph about him that 
 
 puzzled me considerably. But I waited for what he had to say 
 
 rather apathetically. Numbly I wondered how very far this 
 
 j man and I had wandered apart. Even his sympathy failed 
 
 ! to reach me, for I dimly divined that he was brimming with 
 
 sympathy. 
 
 ' You know, Jack," he began, " how very sorry I am for 
 j you in this present fix of yours. I am afraid, the other day, I 
 wasn't very helpful, but my mind was so full of other things, 
 and this tiling came upon me with such a shock. I have been 
 thinking a lot about it since, and I've been having a go at 
 Uncle Jacob. Well, anyhow, to come straight to it, and not 
 
208 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 waste time beating about the bush, I have got him to agree to 
 take you back. Just a minute, before you say anything. I have 
 also got him to agree to give you a hundred and fifty a year. 
 I think he sees that you were not paid adequately before, 
 although, naturally enough, he won't admit it straight out. 
 Now I think you will admit that this is pretty fair. He only 
 stipulates that you live at Hampstead. I know you won't like 
 that. I know you don't like him, although I think you are 
 too much inclined to look on his faults and not on his virtues. 
 But it's not a very great deal, is it ? And I'm glad if I've 
 been able to be of any use." 
 
 I was genuinely moved and almost to tears by reason of 
 the helplessness of the situation. Was it never possible for 
 either of us to come near the other ? 
 
 " Do you think," I expostulated, " I would ever go into that 
 vampire's web again ? " 
 
 " I know he is a bit of a vampire, my dear chap," he replied, 
 " but you're not precisely in the position to be fastidious, are 
 
 you ? " 
 
 I stared at him amazedly. Here he was peaceably, on the 
 quiet instinct of his soul, agreeing to the application of the 
 word vampire to Jacob Mueler, and yet, if I were to draw his 
 attention to its full implication, he would have repudiated it 
 indignantly as an impossible and fantastical extravagance. 
 Moreover, what a commentary on our boasted civilisation was 
 his remark ! I was to receive pay in order to live in order that 
 my employer might derive from my vitality ! Little wonder 
 that there was some warmth in my response ! 
 
 " Good God ! I'll shoot myself firsthand, if need be, I'd 
 shoot Rhoda first." 
 
 " Rhoda ? Who's Rhoda ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, by the way, and what about my wife ? Where 
 does she come in ? " 
 
 " Your wife ? You don't mean to say " He hesitated 
 
 at this, not knowing whether to treat the matter with alarm 
 or as an infinite joke of mine. 
 
 " Don't mean to say what ? " 
 
 " She doesn't live with you here, does she ? " He was still 
 in perplexity, and was attempting to reinforce his ranks of 
 incredulity by a rapid glance around the room, and the lack 
 of any feminine influence it displayed. 
 
LITERARY MATTERS 209 
 
 " She hasn't to the moment. But she is coming to do so 
 next week." 
 
 " Oh, you're a fool/' he flamed out. " I lose all patience 
 with you." 
 
 " Look here, Frank, you are at entire liberty to think me 
 a fool. I have no doubt you are entirely right in your surmise. 
 But I'll not be addressed as you have just now addressed me 
 by any man in the world, least of all by you." 
 
 " I had better go, I think," he said, rising. 
 
 "Perhaps you had better. Don't think, however, that I 
 bear any ill-will. I don't in the least degree. In fact, I 
 am sincerely obliged to you for all you have attempted to do ; 
 very sincerely obliged to you. But don't, on the other hand, 
 think that, because it is the rule in your vile commerce for 
 one man to take advantage of another's misfortune to trespass 
 on the divine rights of his personality, you are going to be 
 permitted to take advantage of my misfortune in the same way. 
 Good-bye ! " 
 
 I could have wept with the helplessness of it. But that 
 would not have helped matters in any way. There was only 
 one thing for me to do, and I did it. I threw him out of my 
 mind. 
 
 VI 
 
 LITERARY MATTERS 
 
 Friendship, I imagine, is in its wider sense of two kinds : 
 there is the friendship of habit, and there is the friendship of 
 instinct. I had several friends (Parkins, in a way, was one) 
 who were of the first order, and with whom friendship would 
 cease when I fell out of the habit of it. Tim, and particularly 
 Mr. Ramsay, were of the latter order. And the latter in a 
 manner includes the former. I might fall out of the habit in 
 
 p 
 
210 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 their case, but the fact would remain. It is even independent 
 of the former, for I have met those with whom my soul 
 imperiously demanded friendship, that a cowardly submission 
 to convention, or an unhappy sloth of mind, has prevented 
 it. 
 
 Mr. Ramsay was away in Paris when my misfortune fell, 
 but when he returned, and I had told him of it, his response 
 was direct and instinctively accurate. He got my book 
 placed. 
 
 He sent me with a letter to a small publisher who read it, 
 and told me that it was little likely to cover the cost of 
 publication. He added, however, that he could not in con- 
 science let it pass, as it had meant something to his own soul. 
 Would I leave it with him awhile ? In the end he issued it. 
 I have always had an instinct that Mr. Ramsay supported him 
 in its loss at first, but to this hour I do not know this for 
 certain, feeling, somehow, it was not honourable to enquire. 
 Yet the irony is that I have now before me a letter from the 
 same house of publishers whose initial refusal, though expected, 
 caused me such bitterness at the time, suggesting a re-issue 
 of my early books. They are willing to trade in me now that 
 others have done the honest and honourable work. 
 
 How proud I was, and how Rhoda thrilled, when at last it 
 faced me in print. It was a wild, tumultuous thing, for 
 which I have always thereafter felt a strange distaste, despite 
 the fact that it contained in germ, of thought and artistic 
 conception, most of my work since. It was crude, of course 
 it was crude, that is the only thing that atones for it to my 
 present thought, for if a man do perfect work in his youth, 
 it can only be a little perfection, and his work will soon find 
 its period, since it will revolve on a repetition of that littleness. 
 If that strange type of being, the literary critic, had existed 
 in days gone by, would the author of " Love's Labour Lost " 
 or " Two Gentlemen of Verona " ever have been permitted 
 to thrive slowly onward to the colossal powers of his great 
 tragedies ? I rather question it. Indeed, I would attribute 
 the curious coincidence of littleness and perfection of skill 
 that betokens our latter-day work to the presence of none 
 other than that abnormal onlooker on Art. There was never 
 a type of being, by function or inclination, less disposed to the 
 godlike faculty of looking before and after. 
 
LITERARY MATTERS 211 
 
 It was confessedly ambitious. It was adventurous. I 
 entitled it " Yarborough Harland : An Artistic Study." 
 A good deal of the indecision, the halting praise, the inter- 
 mittent contempt and lofty patronage it at first evoked was 
 owing to the fact that it was neither fish nor fowl nor good red 
 herring. Harland was the eponymous hero, not for a sequence, 
 or plot, of events that befell him, but for a growth of artistic 
 opinions that he enshrined in a series of dramas that I examined 
 in detail as though they had indeed been written. One of my 
 reviewers, I remember, commented that he, at least, had never 
 heard of this Yarborough Harland, and that I consequently 
 must have greatly overrated his plays ! It is obvious that a 
 book so schemed gave me a wide opportunity of airing my own 
 opinions on literature ; and I was not altogether guiltless of 
 putting up ninepins for the particular pleasure of knocking them 
 down. For instance, I dealt somewhat fully with the theme 
 of my encounter with Parkins in Mr. Ramsay's rooms, and, 
 as I was distinctly friendly with Parkins at the time, he 
 favoured me with a very comforting eulogy of the book and 
 its opinions. 
 
 I examined, too, the progress of Harland's life, the growth 
 and development of his character, and how these found an 
 echo in his dramas, direct in effect or disguised through the 
 bend of characterisation. There were none to point out 
 that, the life and work being equally at my disposal, I could 
 clearly cause one to coalesce with the other the better for my 
 comment ; and of this I was glad, for I had been at some pains 
 to deal honestly in the matter, to follow carefully the respec- 
 tive lines of development my intuition perceived in each, and 
 so to draw the influence of cause and effect with justice and 
 judgment. . I relied in this, excusably considering my immatur- 
 ity, on the effects of action and reaction as I perceived them 
 in the works of the creative masters. 
 
 1 cannot complain of the reception of my book. It was not 
 good, but then it was not bad. It was chiefly puzzled. One 
 benefit it brought me was that I slowly, with accompanying 
 persistence on my part, was enabled to procure reviewing and 
 other journalistic work on the basis of my name having become 
 slightly known. I also, shortly thereafter, received a com- 
 mission to write a book on the novels of Disraeli. It duly 
 appeared the following year, and I found the restrictions 
 
212 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of a known author and known works were by no means a joy 
 so thrilling as the erection and creation of my own. But on 
 the night following the covenant of that commission I scarcely 
 slept for wildness of excitement. 
 
 Yet the main benefit of the book to me was its effect on 
 those two who meant most to me in life, Mr. Ramsay and 
 Rhoda. 
 
 " An excellent book, mainly an inspiring book, Jack/' 
 the former wrote to me in a letter still full of warmth to me 
 despite its many readings, " which is to me, and I imagine to 
 most, the primary virtue of a book. I have so formed the habit 
 of contemplative reading (as I think you also will) that my 
 one reading of it is equivalent to several readings, and there 
 never was a book of worth that revealed itself, gave up its 
 soul, on one scanning. Yet I shall read it again, be sure. 
 Full of faults, of course, but, in the main, right. That you 
 do not esteem life cheaply, and that you have a vision of 
 things you would happily go to the stake for, is manifest on 
 every page, in, and not only in spite of, your faults and follies ; 
 and it is a brand of greatness. I say greatness, Jack, advisedly. 
 Just praise to an earnest man never exalts, it humbles. So 
 I say greatness. Never budge from that. Never huckster it. 
 But then I do not think you will/' 
 
 And he was right. He did not exalt, he humbled me. 
 When I saw him next our interchanges were mainly in silence. 
 God bless him, he always filled me full to overflowing. 
 
 Rhoda said little. That is, to me she said little. I heard 
 once that in a company, when somebody belittled my faulty 
 book, she spoke keenly and warmly of the greatness of its 
 writer. (I put these things down simply, for they are the 
 facts of a life.) No one who ever met her thought this a mere 
 wifely judgment. She had no mere wifely loyalties. It was 
 more than that, or nothing. Our hold on one another was 
 no bond of marriage, and that was the danger of it. Perhaps 
 that was why, paradoxically enough, I had fretted for what I 
 rashly considered a marital security. 
 
 Yet it was in little things she showed her mind, little 
 things that touched me inexpressibly. She was not one to 
 show mental deference to any man or woman, though more to 
 woman than to man, but she began to concede this to me with 
 a curious delicacy. I noticed, too, that she began to brush 
 
A TURN IN AFFAIRS 213 
 
 away anything that might disturb me at my work. Such 
 attendances were little to my liking. But I could say or do 
 nothing. She was one temperamentally so little inclined to 
 services of such a nature that to have taken notice of them 
 would have been a violence given to her nature. Therefore 
 I had to endure them, being extraordinarily moved by them. 
 It was something, I felt, that boded no good, somehow. 
 
 VII 
 
 A TURN IN AFFAIRS 
 
 It was just this that, in the years that passed, provided the 
 most bewildering element in our life, and that opened the way 
 to an end that I do not profess to understand, but which 
 I must set down in all its amazing inexplicability. 
 
 Rhoda was one destined to move in her own orbit. Setting 
 aside that lower form of union, that is no union, in which one 
 side dominates, and quells the vitality of, the other (the woman 
 the man almost as often as the man the woman, I confess I 
 believe), marriage is chiefly of two kinds. There is the rare 
 kind where the man and the woman coalesce. It is rare, and 
 I do not think it often transpires, save when the man is older 
 than the woman, and a complementary relation is thus achieved. 
 There is the more familiar kind when each side can only meet 
 the other in emotional sympathy, and must be content to let 
 the. other take his and her own orbit. 
 
 Now Rhoda was not of the kind to coalesce with anyone. 
 Her mind was too brilliant, too eager, too hard (if I may say 
 so In the best sense) for that. She made the better companion, 
 indeed, because of that, for, in the very severe years that 
 fol owed, she did not cheer me by coming into my blood and 
 warming me, but by standing opposite me and calling on me. 
 
214 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 How I was to her I cannot say. I imagine mine was the other 
 method, for the glory of a woman is (as in my male way I 
 think, and endeavour justly to think) that she can be comforted 
 best when she can forget her distress in the act of comforting 
 another. Men are softer-hearted than women ; women are 
 vastly severer than men. 
 
 Therefore when Rhoda began to defer to me, and, in an 
 unwonted spirit of docility, to leave me the centre of the picture 
 without seeking the centre of another picture for herself, there 
 were moments when, released a little from the strain of 
 thinking on other things, I felt very uncomfortable. 
 
 For it meant something very great in any case, and some- 
 thing particularly acute in our case. It may be desirable or 
 not to give up the centre of a smaller picture in order to occupy 
 the lesser company of a larger and more splendid picture. 
 Men, and particularly women, are making that decision every 
 day and not, I believe, with enviable fruit accruing to their 
 decision. But to become part of the lesser company of a small, 
 neglected, and decidedly penurious, picture, is quite another 
 matter. The stoutest loyalty may not bear it. It is a matter 
 of temperament. 
 
 Our sleek magistrates on their very comfortable salaries 
 are every day deciding that it is a crime for starving men to 
 appeal to their fellow-men for assistance, or to take bread with- 
 out payment from those who have a surplusage of it just 
 as, if those same starving men decide to make a hastier end 
 of matters, they commit them to prison in order to cheer them, 
 and comfort them, and make their lives better worth living. 
 I do not know what I would have done could I not have 
 appealed to my fellow-men. Many a time, under the excuse 
 that over-eating hindered the clarity of my mind while I was at 
 work, I have gone hungry in order that there might be food 
 enough in our larder for Rhoda's subsequent meals ; and 
 many a time have I turned to Mr. Ramsay for a loan, knowing 
 I should probably never pay it back. At first I told Rhoda 
 when I did this, but she had a hot pride that was as sensitive 
 as raw flesh, and she physically quivered at the thought of 
 such an indebtedness. So I ceased it, but, in his quiet way, 
 that noble man noticed certain things in my demeanour, 
 and in our rooms too when he came, with the result that he 
 forced loans on me again. I knew it coming, I noticed his 
 
A TURN IN AFFAIRS 215 
 
 eye quietly travelling about the room one night, and when he 
 asked me to walk to the corner of the road with him, I knew 
 what was coming. But I told Rhoda nothing. She imagined 
 that certain articles I had to do to keep my name about 
 before editor's eyes, were being paid for, which were really 
 empty honours. 
 
 In the country it is possible to run credit with tradesmen ; 
 indeed, as I well know, nearly all our county families are run 
 on that system, families of wealth but of ostentatious notions 
 outrunning their wealth. In London, however, tradesmen 
 have a more fluid population to cope with. Moreover, Rhoda's 
 just pride again introduced itself, and it would have been 
 impossible for us to have subsisted thus even had it been per- 
 mitted us. I know well the customary cheap wisdom will 
 be meted out to me. But let this be taken into consideration 
 I was working twelve to fifteen hours a day strenuously : was 
 that not worth a decent livelihood ? One knows all about 
 moralities, but moralities are dismissed in an immoral state ; 
 they are an impertinence then ; and any state where a man 
 who works hard, works truly, works earnestly, to the end of 
 beauty, may starve therewithal, is a thoroughly immoral 
 state by any reckoning. Any state where men may starve 
 is not a state of society, it is a state of brigandage. There is 
 no society in it. 
 
 Anyway, so it was. Hunger, when there is food, is an insult 
 to the god in man, and Rhoda and I have had to endure that 
 insult often. Her employer began to be very restive when he 
 gathered that she was married. It doubtless slipped out in 
 the implications of her conversation, but he certainly became 
 aware of it. He was very cold and stiff with her though 
 he actually did not dismiss her. He desired to, it was 
 clear. But he undertook a lecturing tour in America, 
 and so her salary then ceased. On a similar previous 
 occasion it had been continued at half the rate until his 
 return. She then began to undertake typewriting, with a 
 small success. 
 
 So we struggled on. Rhoda was courage itself, and her 
 faith in me never wavered. Yet the fact that I had no part to 
 play meant that she had no part to play, and I winced at this, 
 because I saw that, under all her courage, she chafed at it. 
 Spiritual and physical starvation are a combination hard to 
 
216 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 resist, and I saw a state of affairs coming about that cried 
 aloud for some turn in the tide. 
 
 And it came. I remember how it came ; an innocent 
 rivulet that was to widen and roll onward unceasingly. I 
 had come home one evening after my usual tramp round the 
 weary roll of editors, from whom I might expect the journalistic 
 work that was my precarious livelihood, and had been met 
 by the usual question from Rhoda. 
 
 " Well, how did you get on to-day, dear ? " 
 
 " Not so badly. But why will men go out of the way to 
 try and get men to sell their souls ? " 
 
 " I suppose as long as they give you cash down for them it's 
 a fair offer." 
 
 " Humph." 
 
 " What was it ? " 
 
 " Oh, only Robinson. Says I'm a sheer waste. He had 
 just been reading ' Henry Hibbert ' at Jenson's invitation, and 
 says that the man who wrote that could write a devilish good 
 yarn, and why the devil doesn't he do it ? " 
 
 " Henry Hibbert : Artist " had been my third book, and 
 had aroused little enough attention. But Jenson had become 
 an admirer of it (chiefly induced, I believe, by Mr. Ramsay, 
 who was my good angel), and for Jenson to like was for 
 Jenson to proselytise. It was the supremely excellent thing 
 about him. 
 
 " I think you make a great mistake talking to men about 
 your books. They don't see what you mean ; if they do 
 they don't care a snap about it, and anyway it discourages 
 you. Why don't you go right on with it quietly ? " 
 
 " I should, I know. But Robinson's got a notion that the 
 form of the short story wants reconstruction. He's an odd 
 man, he has the wildest notions at times of artistic re-crea- 
 tion, and yet he never moves away from the crude commercial. 
 He suggests that I should write stories for his magazine now. 
 I said I could, not only because one may as well do one kind 
 of pot-boiling as another, so long as it is of a sort that does not 
 mar better work, but because I think I could get said some of 
 the things I want to, in that scope. I began to be hopeful, 
 and then, suddenly, he comes down with insistence on the 
 heavy-trowel. ' You're writing for eternity, I suppose, 
 Elthorne,' he said. ' Damn eternity. I want strong stuff 
 
A TURN IN AFFAIRS 217 
 
 for my readers. You make a great mistake thinking this 
 need not be good Art. It can be, and it must be, or I won't 
 have it. But blast your eternity/ I suggested that the 
 difference was the impermanent in artistic form, and the per- 
 manent in artistic form, thinking to outwit him. But he 
 leapt on to it, and damned the permanent roundly. So there 
 you are, just as we were before, except that the offer is still 
 open." 
 
 Then much later in the evening she said : " I say, Jack, do 
 you think I could do those stories for you ? " 
 
 " In what way, dear ? " She was an excellent and keen 
 critic of novels, and often used to do some of my reviews of 
 them for me. 
 
 " Well, write them, and, if you like them, you send them 
 in as yours. Only if you like them, that is." 
 
 " You be blowed ! If you do them, dear girl, I'll try and 
 place them for you." 
 
 " I won't do that. For one thing, it would be faithless, 
 in a kind of way to you, and to your work, for that is the real 
 work; it matters." She had my very phrase in that, and it 
 well illustrated her attitude. 
 
 " Well, I can't do your work under my name, can I ? " 
 The whole thing was scarcely serious to me as yet. I did not 
 want to say that in my, possibly fastidious, judgment, it 
 might detract from my better work if it came under my name. 
 And certainly, if the work were hers, she should have the 
 credit of it. I did not desire it ; she probably would ; and 
 in any case it would be franker. 
 
 " But I don't want to be faithless to your ideal." 
 
 " Oh, it won't be that." 
 
 " Then I haven't the knack of writing, or of devising things." 
 
 " Well, let's have an attempt together." 
 
 So that evening we spent devising situations, and con- 
 structed several. The following morning I had forgotten all 
 about it. Not so she ; for a month thereafter she, with a 
 timorousness so foreign to her nature that I clasped her to me 
 in an aching emotion, showed me three such stories : our 
 original three, worked over and reconstructed many times. 
 If I say I was moved to infinite tenderness I stand to be con- 
 victed as the egregious male ; yet so it was. Devising things 
 is a knack that may grow by custom. In those stories she 
 
2i8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 had not discovered it, but we worked at them together, with 
 the result that I sent one of them to Robinson. 
 
 He promptly accepted it. Moreover, he printed it within 
 three months, and professed himself eager to see more. It 
 appeared under the name of Ermott Jacob as suggesting our 
 alliance in its concoction. 
 
 Within the next year Robinson printed five short stories by 
 Ermott Jacob, and there were others placed elsewhere. 
 Sometimes the plot was by me, sometimes by Rhoda, but 
 always the first writing by Rhoda, whereupon we overhauled 
 it together, and she wrote it again. That was the procedure : 
 my part was the superintendence of unity, and the intro- 
 duction of a larger suggestion behind the situation, though it 
 often occurred to me that the popularity of the tales would 
 have been improved had I kept my portion of the work within 
 exacter limits. 
 
 Certainly there seemed a turn in affairs. We moved out of 
 the rooms where we had lived for eight weary, terrible, and 
 yet, in the retrospect, gloriously strenuous, years, and took 
 a small house. 
 
 VIII 
 
 ERMOTT JACOB 
 
 It was curiously characteristic of my attitude towards that 
 strange person, Ermott Jacob, that I told Mr. Ramsay nothing 
 of him, and even hid his existence from Tim and Frank, the 
 first of whom looked in regularly to have a smoke with me, 
 and the latter of whom I used to meet now and again for dinner. 
 It was right that I should, moreover, for he was only a quarter 
 my property, three-quarters at best in just due being Rhoda's 
 creation. The letters that now and then came, by way of a 
 magazine, for Ermott Jacob, were appropriated by Rhoda. 
 
ERMOTT JACOB 219 
 
 They contained thanks for benefits received by the devotees 
 of that form of fiction ; and also, by no means least, com- 
 ments on the destinies of their respective heroes, which, taken 
 'in the bulk, were an excellent guide as to the tastes of their 
 public. Strange to say, those letters were as regular and 
 persistent as they were gushing and freely-helpful : they be- 
 tokened an interest in these highly-coloured creations that 
 was as staggering to me as they were a salutary reminder 
 to Robinson on the painful matter of an increase in rate of 
 pay. In fact, they caused me to have less than ever to do 
 with Ermott Jacob; my place, as advisory counsel, being 
 slowly taken by the correspondence itself. 
 
 " I am glad to see you getting on, old chap," Frank said one 
 evening, when, having heard that we had taken a house, he 
 had come up to spy into the land. He was a highly successful 
 man now, with a flat at Hampstead, and a wife whom I had 
 seen thrice, and Rhoda once on the occasion of their marriage. 
 We moved on the two planes that are careful never to meet, 
 success and failure. 
 
 I flushed at his remark, and turned the conversation. 
 Which, when he was gone, caused Rhoda to remark : 
 
 " I don't see why you should be ashamed of Ermott Jacob, 
 Jack/' 
 
 " No, dear ? Well, I'm not, in a way. But, you see 
 well, it's a difficult thing to explain." 
 
 " I think you mean you are ashamed." 
 
 " It's not me, is it ? " 
 
 " It's me, then." 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean it in that way. I mean well, you take 
 my other work. You take this," and I laid my hands on 
 " Fairholt Evans : A Study in Mysticism and Art," my fifth 
 book that lay in proof sheets on my desk ; " it's I, because 
 it s better than I am, more than I am ; the substance of 
 waat it wishes to deliver will concern man, in my faith, through 
 all the progress of his eternal destiny. You know what I 
 think about it, Rhoda. It's breath and being. Men, even 
 wien they turn to the lower things, nevertheless are spiritually 
 polarised to these things. They can never divest themselves 
 of them. One sunset is enough to set them ringing great 
 chords in their souls, chords that give them discomfort as well 
 air joy, and which they therefore seek to stifle. Good God, 
 
220 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Rhoda, what is there of that in Ermott Jacob ? Are not 
 the two things, indeed, diametrically opposed : God and 
 Mammon ? " 
 
 " You are willing to live on Ermott Jacob's mammon, 
 anyhow, my dear." 
 
 Like a bird I was winged. I began to wish Ermott Jacob 
 had never been born. I saw Ermott Jacob as a truck with the 
 great enemy of my contention. I said no more, but left the 
 house. 
 
 It was late before I returned, and Rhoda was asleep in 
 bed. Though I enjoy a good straight conflict, I am not one 
 who loves a wrangle, it is rather my habit to withdraw myself 
 and say nothing ; consequently, the following morning, 
 feeling sore and wounded, I hardly spoke a word to her, but 
 kept closely to work. Also, an impulsion came irresponsibly 
 upon me to go to Mr. Ramsay in the evening, and as I knew 
 Rhoda would at once have guessed the purpose of my visit, 
 and resented it, I rather accentuated the coldness in order 
 that a lack of conversation should absolve me from explana- 
 tion. 
 
 Ramsay now lived in Kensington, and he greeted me with 
 his usual cordiality. But directly I came into his presence 
 I stepped into a certain knowledge, just as one may step round 
 a cliff edge and suddenly see a wide plain whose details are 
 too intricate to be grasped. I could not then have stated 
 what I knew ; but I knew it, nevertheless. It was like those 
 great intimations of divinity and beauty, those glimpses of 
 stupendous being and power, that are caught by man's intui- 
 tion, and escape on the rebound before his tardy intellect 
 can ensnare them into thoughts. 
 
 Yet, in retrospect, it may be put thus : I knew that Ramsay 
 knew who Ermott Jacob was or rather, I knew that he 
 thought Ermott Jacob was one and identical with Jacob 
 Elthorne. I knew other things too. He had lent me from 
 time to time a considerable amount of money, which, had 
 I wished to return to him, he would have refused firmly and 
 decisively, would, indeed, have taken as a breach of friend- 
 ship : but I knew now that he felt a right to its return, inas- 
 much^ I had breached the great trust of an unswerving ideal. 
 I had stepped out of the province where commerce was an 
 insolence to the baser lands where it was an expectancy. 
 
ERMOTT JACOB 221 
 
 I was not altogether comfortable, and I took an early 
 occasion to tell him that I was busy correcting the proofs of 
 " Fairholt Evans." 
 
 " It'll be the best thing I have yet done, and by a consider- 
 able deal. I am calling it a Study in Mysticism and Art, and 
 I think you will see from that that I am saying a good many 
 things that are blood and breath to me. I wish you had put 
 me on to poetry in the early days, Ramsay, for the things 
 I want ruin by mere application, and prose always applies 
 and says where poetry creates and sings. If I hadn't wished 
 to do a bit of hitting in ' Yarborough Harland ' I'd have seen 
 that. Oh yes, I have tried the odic tongue, but it's too late 
 now to capture suppleness and subtlety in it. I must stick 
 to my form, though, God knows, the thing I want to say 
 demands Being, not Becoming, poetic song, not prose state- 
 ment." 
 
 " I hadn't thought of that, Jack. You are right, though. 
 It's rather a pity." His manner was just the same, but we 
 had, nevertheless, stepped into a different air. 
 
 " I can, however, give it a certain fulness my way : I can, 
 I must, make the implications more explicit my way." 
 
 " Is Evans a failure like Harland ? " 
 
 " Yes. He must be : the development demands it ; what 
 the asses call the artistic inevitability, not knowing that 
 artistic inevitability, and moral discipline, and spiritual out- 
 come, are all different expressions of the one thing that is 
 greater than them all. Oh, it'll be fatuously reviewed, I 
 make no doubt ; the praise as little to the matter as the 
 blame." 
 
 ' Look here, Elthorne," Ramsay broke out earnestly, " you 
 are more in this than I am. Let us, in the name of the great 
 and terrible God, be frank with one another. You are seeing 
 things I am not. You are leading and helping me, and I 
 thank you for it. If I've helped you ever, you are paying 
 me now in coin nobody else could cast for me, and in eternal 
 benefit and welfare bene-fit and well-fare, my friend. So 
 now tell me, why is it that these fine men of yours must fail ? 
 Why is it failure seems so much more splendid, so much more 
 moral, so much more beautiful than success ? Why is the 
 mission of Christ transfigured by failure when it would be 
 devastated by success ? I have said to you it is so, I am 
 
222 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 unbroken in that faith ; but why, why, why ? Is it not 
 possible to devise conviction on the lines of success ? Or, 
 at least, ought not such a thing be possible ? " 
 
 There was silence between us for a moment. He had never 
 made me guide before on the spiritual heights, and I was 
 humbled and afraid. 
 
 " Well, this is how I see it (I wished to call him ' sir ') : 
 is it more blessed to give than to receive ? To give, obviously : 
 even your trading curmudgeon gives his lip-service to that. 
 Well then, this is how it seems to me : when a man closes up 
 his account on the earth, either one of two things happens ; 
 either the world is in debt to him or he is in debt to the world. 
 If he is in debt to the world, and leaves it so as he goes, leaves 
 it unabsolved well, he is a cad ; there's nothing moral about 
 him, nothing beautiful, nothing desirable ; he is, in short, a 
 cad, and there's an end on't. But if the world is in debt to 
 him, he goes out smiling, triumphant : to the degree of the 
 debt outstanding he stands above all his debtors : no man 
 can say a word against him till he has cleared up his portion 
 of the debt which he can never do. And so, in that degree, 
 he has power, beauty, moral grace. Yet what is the successful 
 man but the man who, in the very degree of his success, has 
 himself in debt to the world ? And what is the failure but 
 the man who, in the degree of his failure, has given more than 
 he has received, and who has the world in debt to him ? It's 
 God and Mammon again oh, my God ! " 
 
 Ramsay said something energetically and briskly, which I 
 did not hear, and strode about the room taking no notice of 
 my distress. He apparently addressed some further question 
 to me that I did not hear, upon which he turned about and 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " But what's the matter with you, eh ? " 
 
 I stood up slowly and faced him. There were to be no 
 unworthy secrecies in this matter. 
 
 " Well, it is this way : if a man holds fast by the highest, 
 if he do not trade with it but serve it, I say," Ramsay's 
 eyes were steady on me, for he saw what was coming " it 
 may be by some cast of Fortune's, very rare in the main, but a 
 recompense of reward will come his way even to the envy of 
 some trader. That may spoil his work, or it may not ; it 
 will certainly tempt him, but it may possibly not mar him. In 
 
ERMOTT JACOB 223 
 
 any case that does not affect the matter : it is too rare to 
 count, and the fact that he has not sold himself for gain holds 
 him clean. In fact, nothing can absolve the debt incurred 
 by the world for a thing not done for gain I tire you ? " 
 
 " No, go on ! Take your time." 
 
 " Oh, I'll get straight to it. But what would you say to a 
 man who ladled out thick sentiment for gain ; sloppy wish-wash 
 with a pseudo-artistic slime on it for hard cash ; tawdry tinsel 
 that debases the royal coinage of man's soul because he was 
 paid jolly well for it ? " 
 
 " It's done every day." 
 
 " Oh yes, but to a man who has seen a vision, and turned 
 aside from it ? " 
 
 " Much shall be forgiven to a man who has worked his day, 
 and has a slender larder, and no decencies of life, despite it." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know." 
 
 There was a considerable pause between us. 
 
 " We were talking, I take it, of Ermott Jacob," he then 
 said. 
 
 " Damn Ermott Jacob. Yes, damn Ermott Jacob. I wish 
 I could get clean again." 
 
 " You're taking it too severely, Jack. Many a fine, true- 
 hearted artist has had to do much worse, for really the stories 
 are not at all so bad. You must not be morbid upon it. I 
 admit I was disappointed when I heard of it, for I thought 
 you would turn away from the expression of your vision. 
 But what you tell me of your new book more than clears that. 
 It'll be bad for you, I suggest, if you let a morbid disgust 
 run away with you. Hack-work must be done in the present 
 state of affairs, and it may even be made a discipline. The 
 only evil is if a man forgets to distinguish what is hack- 
 labour and what is the work of his soul." 
 
 " Oh, it isn't that, Ramsay. It's the very devil more than 
 that. I believe it would mar my judgment, spoil my touch 
 [or the thing that matters; but it isn't that. Rhoda, you 
 know, has charge of Ermott Jacob." 
 
 " Ah, I wondered. I thought I caught a mind at work that 
 wasn't yours, that struck quickly and a little petulantly like 
 hers," 
 
 ''I'm not shuffling, you know. I have no wish to play 
 ancient Adam. I began Ermott Jacob, it was my work at 
 
224 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 first, and she helped me. But now she does it all, prac- 
 tically." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " Yes, my brave Rhoda, who sang me cheer, and never once 
 flinched, all these years, not only for my sake (so I hope, for 
 I am not quite so egregious a male), but for the sake of the 
 work that is so much more than either of us. She would 
 never have let me turn aside, had I wanted to. But now she 
 has taken up Ermott Jacob, and, God bless my soul, believes 
 in Ermott Jacob too. We gave up children for my work, we 
 gave up oh, comfort, and all the integument of desirable life, 
 for its fine sake, finding it worth while when it looked least 
 like it. And now, this ! " 
 
 " I'm sorry, old man. These things have a knack of spread- 
 ing." 
 
 "Surely. Ermott Jacob is more or less harmless now, 
 but ! Oh, I don't want to be disloyal to Rhoda. I never 
 have been. But I can't talk it over with her she can cut 
 like a whip, and I wanted to talk it over with someone." 
 
 IX 
 
 DOWN THE WAYS OF CHANGE 
 
 Thereafter, I noticed, Rhoda kept the affairs of Ermott 
 Jacob much to herself. If to be able to trace the lines on 
 which any event has developed is to understand the event 
 itself, I suppose I may say that I understand this event ; yet 
 to me it is now, and has ever been, amazing and inexplicable. 
 It was not as though, like Andrea del Sarto's Lucrezia, she 
 had in the past wished me to make my Art subserve profit. 
 She had not. Indeed, she had been jealous to a fault of its 
 purity and virginity. That is the amazing part of it. 
 
 Yet she had sunk her individuality, her proper personality, 
 
DOWN THE WAYS OF CHANGE 225 
 
 in the process of her jealousy, and now it was emerging, 
 occasioned by our cleavage. 
 
 Some time previously Ermott Jacob had had an offer from 
 a firm of publishers to write a novel for them. It was one of 
 those firms that are careful never to publish a book of per- 
 manent value, but, with that saving clause, catholic to a fault, 
 especially where a book mixes a delicate blend of life as-it- 
 should-be-lived, titular splendour and pornographic suggestion. 
 Terms had been offered that the letter described as generous, 
 but which were a disgrace to honesty or intelligence. So 
 Ermott Jacob had gathered some of the tales that appeared 
 under that name, and sent them elsewhere. They had not 
 Deen accepted, but another suggestion had come for the 
 writing of a novel. This we had jointly concocted, and 
 Rhoda was now at its writing. Consequently what with my 
 occupation with " Fairholt Evans " and Rhoda's labour at 
 her novel (" The Gateway " was to be its title), and each of 
 us somewhat jealous of the encroachments of the other's 
 work, we never now seemed to arrive at that identity of out- 
 ook that had made the past years to us so splendid in their 
 Bravery and cheer. 
 
 With the publication of " Fairholt Evans " I thought a 
 change would have come about, for, to my surprise, it was 
 exceedingly well received, the very height of its ambition 
 serving to win critics to its praise who, it was plain, did not 
 altogether understand it. Indeed, there is no doubt a change 
 would have come about had we not been afflicted by the 
 terrible awkwardness of one another that afflicts the intimacy 
 of marriage, that is, as it were, the outcome of that intimacy. 
 The intimacy being assumed, so many things are taken for 
 granted, which, if by some chance that intimacy be marred, 
 lemand mention for its resumption. Lovemaking in the 
 :>rave, clean sense can never be dispensed with in marriage, 
 which may seem a truism, but which, nevertheless, is more 
 [>ften than not forgotten. 
 
 Man is more frequent in such tendernesses than woman, 
 ind when a woman is constant in such overt signs of affection 
 vhat an understanding may not be reached ! 
 
 I am aware I am seeking to explain the fact between Rhoda 
 md myself ; in my general, I know, the particular peeps 
 urgently. She was thrilled by the reception of " Fairholt 
 
 9 
 
226 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Evans." The tacit admission of its value even when a lance 
 was couched at it, was my first admission to a secure rank, 
 and it was plain to see how proud she was. I noticed also 
 that for more than a week she forebore from " The Gateway." 
 We even went out to dinner together, stinting ourselves nothing 
 through a whole merry evening, to celebrate the fact. But 
 neither of us said anything to the other of the matter between 
 us : she spoke no spontaneous gladness or praise, and I asked 
 for none. It was all assumed. Consequently there was no 
 change. She went on her way and finished her novel, while I 
 proceeded with my work and dreamed plans for future books. 
 
 I do not know what reception was hoped for " The Gateway/' 
 I know very well what reception it found. I opened my 
 paper one morning, and saw a note on it that was a marvel 
 of caustic condensation. Luckily the paper was up before my 
 face, and so Rhoda could not see the sharp wince that passed 
 over it. But I suppose something in my manner told her 
 or, it may be, she had, by our continual contact of soul with 
 soul, drawn it out of me, as she was always drawing out my 
 untold thoughts and giving them back to me for she said, 
 with an obvious further question behind the question of her 
 words : 
 
 " Anything in the paper this morning ? " 
 
 " No," I said carelessly, flinging it aside. 
 
 She said no more, but later in the day I noticed her scru- 
 tinising the paper closely, and for the remainder of that day 
 she bore about a white face and silent, strained manner that 
 pained me acutely. She had evidently been struck deeply. 
 But we still said nothing. In our earlier days she had com- 
 forted me over my disappointments ; now, in our later hour of 
 accomplished intimacy, I said nothing to her in hers. 
 
 But more followed. Some were no more than curt dis- 
 missals, one or two in the more popular journals were enthusi- 
 astic over the very elements of popular appeal that no writer 
 likes to think in his work, however designedly he had placed 
 them there ; but for the most part they were caustic or brutal. 
 One was so particularly, and I noticed a tear shine on her 
 cheek after reading it. 
 
 I crossed quickly over to her, and sat on the arm of her 
 chair. " Poor old girl ! " I said. 
 
 " Oh, Jack ! " she said softly, and burst out crying. 
 
DOWN THE WAYS OF CHANGE 227 
 
 I wonder if half the reviewers realise the pain they cause. 
 If they spoke from a zeal for the high business of Art one 
 could forgive them their strictures. But not more than one 
 in ten of them has ever realised for the fractional space of a 
 moment that Art may have a high business. They speak so 
 because it is a reviewer's trade to be ill-tempered : a number 
 of them because they themselves never have had a book 
 published and cannot forgive those who have. 
 
 " My dear, what do these things matter ? " I said, taking 
 the paper from her hand, and dropping it on the floor. How 
 cheap and futile my words sounded on my lips : for I had 
 passed through the same thing and knew well that such 
 things matter considerably. How different had been her 
 brave comfort when I had undergone the same experience ! 
 But I was bound helplessly, for she had believed in my work, 
 whereas I was ashamed of Ermott Jacob. I had a right to be, 
 for I had chiefly originated that person. 
 
 She buried her face in my coat, and cried her fill. I was 
 wild with tenderness, but my tongue was strangely tied. 
 
 ' One song does not make a chorus, dear old girl," I said, 
 stroking her hair. 
 
 ' No, but it's what the whole chorus sings/' she sobbed. 
 Her completeness to the metaphor in her grief was typical 
 of her. 
 
 " Poor old ladybird ! Let's watch and see what the sales 
 have to say." 
 
 It flashed upon me I was comforting her from without, not 
 sympathising with her from within, and my faithlessness in 
 that afflicted me acutely. Yet I was involved in the censure. 
 
 She was a quivering mass of nerves by now. The previous 
 censures were having their day too. 
 
 ' The}' shall admit my work is good," she cried. " They 
 
 shall, they shall, or I'll " 
 
 But we rather expected this, dear, didn't we, when we 
 first devised Ermott Jacob ? It was only to make the money 
 to live by." 
 
 " No, it never was," she interrupted fiercely, drawing away 
 from me. " Only in some of the first stories, perhaps. * The 
 Gat eway ' was a good book. It's a book that ought to influence 
 people. And it will, it will. I have only praised the right 
 things in it; and because I have written it so as to reach a 
 
228 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 larger number of readers, and not only a stupid elect few, a 
 stuffy, priggish lot, is that any reason why it isn't just as 
 good ? " 
 
 X 
 
 AN EVENING AT MY UNCLE'S 
 
 I was soon amazed and disconcerted at receiving a letter 
 from Aunt Mary asking us up to dinner. It was blandly and 
 cordially couched, as though there never had been any 
 estrangement : in fact, it was oddly couched, as though Rhoda 
 and myself were habitual and well-beloved frequenters of the 
 household, and as though Aunt Mary were a person whose 
 only fault was a too spontaneous gush of emotion. 
 
 " There's a quaint concoction for you," I said, tossing the 
 letter over to Rhoda. 
 
 " I don't see that it interests us/' she remarked when she 
 had read it. 
 
 " I don't see that it does," I said. 
 
 Yet it did not seem to me as though the matter could be 
 quite so summarily dispelled, and, after a perplexed pause, I 
 added : 
 
 " We'll have to go, for all that, I suppose." 
 
 " Why ? " Rhoda asked, and her voice was like her question, 
 inasmuch as it cut clean across any hesitation. 
 
 " Well, because there it is, and it can't be shuffled." 
 
 " Do you want to go ? " 
 
 " I ? If the lot of them were wiped out to-morrow there 
 wouldn't be many tears I'd shed, and I shouldn't read the 
 paragraph in the paper to the end either. But they're not 
 going to be wiped out in a dispensation, and they have asked 
 us to dinner." 
 
AN EVENING AT MY UNCLE'S 229 
 
 " We have managed very well without them so far, and 
 I don't see why we should go trapsing after them now you are 
 making a name, and they come snuffing after it." 
 
 " Oh yes, I know the value of it. But the fact remains." 
 
 " I shouldn't take any notice of the letter." 
 
 " Nonsense ! I've got to. You don't seem to recognise 
 the position of affairs." 
 
 " I think you're very silly. I'm not going, anyhow." 
 
 " Look here, Rhoda, we've got to. You've got to, and 
 so have I. One generally supposes it is women who uphold 
 these puzzling obligations, but it is we soft-hearted men, 
 'pon my word. I'm dashed if I want to go. The whole 
 crowd of them bore me, and when they don't bore me they 
 anger me which is healthier but more disconcerting. For 
 all that, they can compel us, for some odd reason I don't 
 understand; and there may be some decent people there. 
 Siie speaks of some literary people, and the Jacob uncle 
 knows some brilliancy, whom he seems to dazzle. I'll give 
 him his dues, he's a bit of a genius in his way and in his 
 ways too, for he proceeds on divinations." 
 
 So it came about that we went. Neither of us wished to do 
 so. We each expected to be wearied and irritated, while 
 Rhoda, though she did not confess it in her manner, was also 
 not a little nervous. Yet there was this curious obligation, 
 that she admitted not less than I. Consequently we were 
 inclined to be short with one another as we set out. 
 
 It was all a little puzzling, for both Uncle Jacob and Aunt 
 Mary gushed over us as though we had ever been their dearest 
 fr ends. There was scarcely even the assumption of an older 
 generation in relative stratification. 
 
 " I am so glad you are able to come," said Aunt Mary in 
 queenly acceptation of Rhoda's outstretched hand, while 
 Jacob Mueler bore me off with : 
 
 " Ah, how are you, Jack ? Well, my dear fellow, I am right 
 glad to see you. Willie, this is the man. The genius of the 
 family, I tell you. Sir Statham Willie has been reading your 
 last book, Jack, my boy, and he's a great admirer of 
 yours." 
 
 A tall, bearded man rose to meet me, and I rapidly took in 
 a cultured and keen face as I stretched forth my hand in 
 recognition of the introduction. 
 
230 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Yes, I assure you, you are no stranger to me, Mr. Elthorne," 
 he said pleasantly, in a quiet, easy voice. 
 
 I was not best pleased at all this, for Jacob Mueler's manner 
 had been as full of gush as his voice had been noisy. Several 
 people looked up at me interestedly, as I could see without 
 glancing their way ; and I sat beside Sir Statham hurriedly, 
 in order to escape further attention. 
 
 While I bandied the usual ridiculous small-talk with him 
 I took note of him, and judged him to be one of those men with 
 a real, and a brave, taste for literature, but a taste founded 
 somewhat on what I may call the Medicean, or Italian Renais- 
 sance, principle. That is to say, his taste in Art was quite 
 genuine, there was really no affectation in it, yet it was 
 curiously remote. In other days he would have made an 
 excellent patron of Art ; he could have given intellectual 
 homage to the Artist, but would have required that the Artist 
 should present his works to him as from a lower social caste. 
 Similarly he would, I felt convinced, profess the warmest and 
 most enthusiastic praise for a book on fire with revolutionary 
 ardour, by a writer whose revolutionary ardour was the breath- 
 ing reality of him, and in the next breath express the utmost 
 horror of the least taint of possible revolution in a corrupt 
 society. He would recite aloud, with a just sense of decorum, 
 eloquent passages extolling the innate nobility of man, 
 and continue to treat his servants, industrial and domestic, 
 as though they were cattle. 
 
 He was, indeed, typical of the third generation of riches. 
 The first generation, the generation that achieves the riches, 
 is usually mentally brutal, and often physically brutal too ; 
 the second generation, mentally puppyish and physically 
 dandiacal ; the third generation, mentally dandiacal and 
 physically refined. Thereafter they conform to the usual 
 uninteresting type. 
 
 Yet he was, in his way, quite sincere. His love of litera- 
 ture was based on a considerable knowledge of it and an 
 independent and resolute judgment of it. He had evidently 
 read "Fairholt Evans" with some care. He spoke of it, 
 and the things it treated of, with knowledge and authority. 
 But I did not know the man, and I cannot talk of things that 
 are more to me than life with a stranger, so I created a 
 network of small-talk over it and let it pass at that. 
 
AN EVENING AT MY UNCLE'S 231 
 
 I was not sorry when a familiar voice exclaimed in surprise : 
 
 " Hullo Jack ! " 
 
 It was Frank, with round eyes of amazement, and I 
 returned his hail. 
 
 " Rhoda with you ? " 
 
 " She's somewhere about. I suppose Viola's with you ? " 
 
 He did not see the return shot and replied that she was. 
 
 " Ah, Sir S tat ham ! I am sorry. You well ? A famous 
 man, my brother, these days/' 
 
 " Indeed, and with justice, I may add." 
 
 " They keep on coming out, these books of his ! " 
 
 " We need ideals these days, and that is why " 
 
 Frank's manner was the last cry in graciousness, and I 
 escaped as I saw myself substituted for the weather. 
 
 I found out Rhoda, who was sitting alone on a sofa. " Hullo, 
 my dear," I said, " how are you getting on ? Or is it vulgar 
 to ask that here ? " 
 
 " Oh, all right ! I've just been talking to a Lady Statham 
 Willie." 
 
 "I've just been talked to by her husband." 
 
 " They seem to think a lot of your books." Rhoda was 
 flushed with pleasure. 
 
 " I don't know that I'm flattered." I was, of course. 
 
 " I think they're the reason of our being here, if you ask 
 me/' 
 
 " Oh, very likely ! Hadn't thought of that/' 
 
 " Rhoda, I want to introduce you to Mr. Jason," said Aunt 
 Mary, sailing over to us. 
 
 As I watched the two of them stepping across the room I 
 heard a voice greet me, and I turned to behold a lordly and 
 languid cousin. 
 
 " Ah, Jack," said he, and as I shook hands with him I 
 marvelled at the fluctuations of some people. The last I 
 had seen of him was when he protested his eternal assistance 
 to me in that very house, save for one or two fleeting sights 
 of him at Frank's wedding. His patronage of me now was 
 so supreme that I regarded him steadily in a wise silence. 
 ' You're a very famous chap nowadays, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Not more so than you, though," I protested. 
 
 He cogitated over this for a minute and passed it. 
 
 " I say, I've got a jolly woman to introduce to you. Will 
 
232 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 you come over ? You've got to cart her in to dinner. You're 
 a lucky man, you know/' 
 
 She was indisputably jolly. So jolly that, at dinner, as we 
 chased one mad subject after another, I did not notice that 
 I had a sister-in-law sitting on the other side. Presently I 
 became aware that she was regarding me it was the proximity 
 of a reproof of our jollity that first impinged on my conscious- 
 ness and I turned about on her. 
 
 " Oh, I am sorry," I explained. " I did not notice you so 
 near. How are you ? " I felt I ought to address her as Viola, 
 but there are certain persons whose aspects seem to rebuke 
 such familiarity. She had a queenly manner. 
 
 " You are having a very gay time, I notice/' 
 
 " Oh rather, we are, aren't we ? I really do not know 
 your name, though." 
 
 " You can call me anything you like, so long as I know what 
 to respond to. My real name is Mrs. Harrison." 
 
 " Oh yes. Mrs. Harrison my sister-in-law, Mrs. Elthorne." 
 
 After they had swung a few civil refrains across me, Viola 
 turned on me and declared : 
 
 " We are going to live at Brighton. But probably Frank 
 has told you." 
 
 " No, I knew nothing. I hope you'll like iti It'll be a pull 
 up and down for Frank, won't it ? " 
 
 " One gets so tired of London. You must come down and 
 stay with us. You shall have a special room for your writing. 
 And do bring your wife with you." 
 
 Again I had to fall back on a wise silence. I marvelled at 
 my own restraint. Rhoda, on any reckoning save that of a 
 full-dress parade, was worth fifty of her. 
 
 So the ball of conversation fell to the floor between us, 
 there being neither of us to hold it, and I turned about to 
 claim my partner again for more riotous behaviour. 
 
 After the ladies had withdrawn, in the evil manner be- 
 queathed to us from days of drunkenness, I found myself 
 once more in the clutches of Sir Statham Willie. 
 
 " You slipped away from me before, I fear," he said with 
 the easy grace he wore so well. " In case I do not have 
 another chance may I suggest that Mrs. Elthorne and your- 
 self come to tea with us, quite informally, some afternoon this 
 week ? We live in Georgian Square, number twenty-four. 
 
AN EVENING AT MY UNCLE'S 233 
 
 We should be pleased ; if I may say so without offence, we 
 should be honoured." 
 
 " It's very kind of you. We should be pleased to come." 
 
 " There are incidentally several points you mention in 
 your book that I shall look forward to discussing over with 
 you. To me that is one of the great fascinations of your 
 book : it raises so strong and insistent a host of questions that 
 lie near the centre of man's concern on earth. I am reading 
 your other books." 
 
 The insistent note of a single voice holding forth to a com- 
 pany broke through the little ring of our conversation, and 
 we looked about, to see Uncle Jacob declaring from his place 
 at the head of the table with flushed face, eager eye and hand 
 outstretched. He was criticising a recent exhibition of a new 
 school of Continental painters. What he said was sound and 
 acute ; he dealt, with equal acuteness and competency, with 
 the spirit informing the work as with the technical crafts- 
 manship that exhibited it. It was truly an excellent, search- 
 ing examination ; it was Uncle Jacob at his best, and he 
 flushed crimson with pleasure when, at his conclusion, Sir 
 Statham leaned forward and said : 
 
 " Bravo, sir ! I agree with every word you say." 
 
 " An excellent man, your uncle," he continued turning 
 to me. " In his way, a genius. I contend one of the few 
 geniuses in England. An original, searching mind. Con- 
 structive too, in its tentative, eager way." 
 
 " Of his genius there can be not one doubt, it seems to me/' 
 I agreed. 
 
 " One hears curious things about him sometimes," he 
 continued, catching the touch of reserve in my tone. 
 " Different men proceed in different ways, I know. And I 
 can understand the rapidity of your uncle's procedure leading 
 him to actions on which it would be possible to put a dubious 
 construction. Still, I will forgive a man of undoubted genius 
 many things. You and he are very great friends, are you 
 not ? " 
 
 " Hardly that," I said succinctly. Doubtless Jacob Mueler 
 in the day of my esteem honestly thought we were. 
 
 " I understood you were," he replied, quietly skirting a 
 difficult rock in the road. 
 
 Then I was rolled about the conversational rapids. First 
 
234 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Uncle Jacob joined us, and as I left the conversation to him, 
 I was caught away in turn by two men for short interchanges 
 of banality, passing so to Frank, who informed me of his 
 Brighton decision, and gave me long and elaborate details 
 of the causes that led to the decision (which I paid no heed to, 
 because I was working out the exquisite gradations with which 
 a peach passes from one cheek of carmine to another of delicate 
 green) ; and so I was eddied into the drawing-room, where I 
 sought out the vivacious Mrs. Harrison for security and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 While I was talking to her I saw Viola cross the room and sit 
 beside Rhoda with queenly majesty of grace. I knew my 
 Rhoda perfectly, and right across the room I could catch the 
 temper of what was proceeding. I could feel Rhoda with her 
 quick, direct mind ringing round Viola, who sailed on majestic- 
 ally unconscious that she was being summed up by the other 
 very much to her disadvantage. The infinite comedy of it 
 across the room fell on me in wave on wave of emotion. Both 
 were very courteous, so far as one could judge from their 
 manner : indeed, Rhoda was the more courteous of the two. 
 She, despite her sharper alertness, was the more subdued of the 
 two, Viola being clearly somewhat overbearing. I could 
 even picture myself lying on the bed that night laughing softly 
 in keen enjoyment while Rhoda disrobed and gave me her 
 opinion of her queenly and enforced relative. 
 
 " I have said that three times already, and I refuse to say 
 it any more. Now I'm going to leave you." 
 
 I turned about to arrest Mrs. Harrison's anger, and explain 
 the occasion of my rudeness. 
 
 " I'm watching those two ladies over there. Do you notice 
 anything strange about them ? I mean, do you feel the 
 comedy of their cross-purpose, or rather cross-mental-relation, 
 striking you in waves ? " 
 
 " In a way I do, now you mention it. Oh yes, I do, quite 
 distinctly ; it's a kind of comedy. One of them is your sister- 
 in-law, isn't it ? " 
 
 " And the other is my wife." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " Have you ever thought of one of those Spanish galleons 
 fighting an Elizabethan frigate ? They can never grapple 
 anywhere, can they ? And each despises the other infinitely, 
 
AN EVENING AT MY UNCLE'S 235 
 
 but with a different kind of contempt. Excuse me, but I 
 must say I think it's excessively comic." 
 
 She laughed gently and musically beside me. " Of course 
 I can't feel it like you do. I don't know your wife. But 
 doesn't she just wish the majestic one consigned to warmth ? " 
 
 tl But the Spanish galleon can't feel that. She's too high 
 above it. You see she sails on quite unperturbed. You 
 wouldn't think that a person so scorned would be so calm 
 about it." 
 
 " Yes ; and you wouldn't think a person so looked down 
 upon, and yet feeling so much keener and righter, could 
 refrain from pulling the majestic nose." 
 
 " Alertness and heaviness, eh ? " 
 
 " Speed and pomp." 
 
 " I suppose this is really very indiscreet." 
 
 " It's very delightful." 
 
 " Yes, those are frequently synonyms." 
 
 I said nothing about this to Rhoda going home that night, 
 though I heard her contempt of Viola's condescension with some 
 renewal of amusement. I mentioned only that Frank prob- 
 ably liked that kind of majesty. There was, in some way, a 
 kind of commercial value attaching to it. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " and Lady Willie is very anxious that we 
 should call on them. She wanted to call on us. But I 
 didn't give her our address. I thought that their admiration 
 of your work would probably not survive a sight of our small 
 quarters." 
 
 " And Thingummy was urging the same thing on me. It's 
 a kind of conspiracy." 
 
 " But we'll go." 
 
 " Oh rather : we'll go. We may as well see high life when 
 we can, my dear." 
 
JACOB ELTHORNE 
 XI 
 
 A PERPLEXING DISCOVERY 
 
 We allowed a decorous time to elapse before we paid the 
 promised visit to Georgian Square. I may well admit the 
 snobbery implied in the delay. I also protest a degree of 
 dignity in it. Yet these accursed social distinctions are bound 
 in with the very texture of our thought, and it is much to be 
 doubted if we will be rid of them without a momentous 
 upheaval. 
 
 May had matured her comely graces, and the hint of a 
 coming pomp was in the air. The houses of Georgian Square 
 hung closely round the trees and bushes that were for their, a 
 favoured interval of Nature, as though, in a desert city, they 
 would miss no aroma that floated upward from the hidden 
 bosom of earth. The tall trees, from the crowning elm to the 
 more pedestrian plane, as though wearied with the effort 
 to maintain the semblance of life, segregated as they were from 
 the mighty herds of their companions, wore a somewhat jaded 
 aspect. It was not obvious. Few would have noticed it. 
 The green of their leaves was yet tender, despite the coming of 
 richness upon it, and it shimmered under a softly flowing wind 
 like the rippling of a lake of waters. Yet the gaiety was not 
 absolute, it was but relative. Beneath it, to the sensitive 
 discernment, there was a sadness and heaviness entangled in 
 their souls, as of an infinite loveliness, of a life rudely detached 
 from the spacious places where the great ones of their kind 
 ran wildly and free. 
 
 The smaller bushes blossomed gaily. Smaller souls, they 
 could run in their little companies and scarcely miss the greater 
 spaces. May-trees poured their red and snowy froth on to the 
 pavements ; laburnum dripped its yellow spume from droop- 
 ing limbs ; lilac stood erect in alert spires of wonderment ; 
 a vivid carpet of variegated hyacinth and tulip spread away 
 to a central space of bright green, through strong iron rails 
 that enclosed their merriment like a forbidden place of enchant- 
 ments. But over them hung the great elms. The enclosing 
 stucco houses, like a troop of soldiers on amazingly white 
 hearthstone-stands, were an indignity to them. They could 
 do nothing, but there was a majestic protest in their poise. 
 
A PERPLEXING DISCOVERY 237 
 
 I presume I was in one of those moods of sudden sympathy 
 that come upon some men, for the sight of that Square as we 
 walked down into it silenced and awed me. It was some- 
 thing beyond all appearances, beneath all appearances. It 
 was something as terrible as the slow tears of strong, silent 
 men. It was something that appalled. 
 
 A feeling that, living in this city, I was involved in a con- 
 spiracy, despite myself, against terrible powers that waited 
 patiently to be terribly avenged, afflicted me as I followed 
 Rhoda up a wide stairway, the walls of which were hung with 
 heavy paintings, good and bad, but all celebrated in their 
 degree. It haunted me as Lady Willie came quickly across 
 the drawing-room at the call of our names at the door. 
 
 " Oh, this is nice, to see you. We began to think you were 
 never coming. I am expecting my husband in about half an 
 hour. You will stay so long, won't you ? " 
 
 There was no man in the room. There were, I noticed 
 whimsically in my half-raptness, no independent young 
 women even in the most elastic sense of youth. The 
 company was comprised of dowagers alone and dowagers 
 with attached maidens. The result was a decidedly old- 
 world appearance. 
 
 Then one of the dowagers, seeing me silent, and promptly 
 concluding that I was ill at ease, sought to cheer me with a 
 remark. 
 
 " It's nice to live in a square like this, so properly 
 tended, and see the spring coming along, isn't it, don't you 
 think ? " 
 
 I suppose I must have been looking out of the heavily cur- 
 tained windows, and that she imagined she had divined my 
 mood with rare social tact. I made no effort to disillusion 
 her. It was easier to let it slip by carelessly. 
 
 " Certainly/' I said. 
 
 " And they keep the gardens in such choice condition. I 
 have never seen such a display of flowers in a public 
 place." 
 
 Being, in its prodigal power throwing itself with abandon 
 into a richness of colour and fragrance, was a display for her. 
 Well, it indisputably was a display. 
 
 " I wonder why people who can afford it live in the heart 
 of a city when they need not," I said suddenly. 
 
238 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Oh well, one must live in town, mustn't one ? " She 
 smiled graciously on me. " You live in town, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do." 
 
 She smiled again in quiet conviction. She clearly approved 
 herself for having scored so neatly on me. It suddenly flashed 
 upon me that if she, talking so with me, could see our small 
 house and know our small income hardly earned, she would 
 not be able to associate them with me or me with them. I, 
 in that room, clearly seemed to belong to her own manner of 
 life. My circumstances, just as clearly, belonged to those of a 
 lower order an order that demanded kindness and patronage, 
 but not an order of association. The two things would have 
 been incompatible to her. Between us two there was a great 
 gulf fixed, and that gulf was her amazing ignorance. 
 
 It was impossible to resist a contempt of her, and it was 
 Lady Willie who came to the relief of our diffident silence. 
 
 " Have you read any of Mr. Elthorne's books, Mrs. Ross ? " 
 she said, sitting beside us. 
 
 " No, I am afraid I have not. You see, I am kept so occu- 
 pied with my League work." 
 
 Her manner made it perfectly clear that she neither knew 
 my name nor the fact that it had ever been imprinted on 
 the covers of a book. And it was equally obvious that she 
 had now found a perfectly satisfactory explanation of my 
 oddness. 
 
 I looked round in vain for someone with whom I could either 
 seriously discuss earnest things or heartily play through romping 
 things. Mrs. Ross would have found nothing a satisfactory 
 explanation of me if I had suddenly asked her to play a game 
 of marbles on the floor, any more than if I had been so far tactless 
 as to give her a description of how the poor live, or how the 
 poor pretend not to be poor under penalty of being poorer still. 
 The very air of stiff civility and pretence was stifling. 
 
 I looked across at Rhoda, and saw her with a curiously 
 flushed expression, half-perplexity, half-pleasure, held in 
 conversation by a vivacious dowager and her attached maiden. 
 She held a book in her hand which they were evidently dis- 
 cussing. It was plastered with a library label, but it looked 
 wonderfully like " The Gateway." 
 
 Lady Statham Willie had vastly more depth than Mrs. 
 Ross, and she enlivened the conversation till her husband 
 
A PERPLEXING DISCOVERY 239 
 
 returned. She was a marked contrast to her husband. Some- 
 what under middle height, she had a stout, or rather wide, 
 figure, with a broad, pleasant face. A kindly grace of humour 
 dashed her manner and mental outlook, just enough, and 
 refined just enough, not to make her socially indecorous. 
 Hers was a direct and practical mind. It did not take much 
 perception to see that she was the organiser of the household, 
 husband included. His was the figure-head, and she 
 arranged and managed things for him, devising it so that her 
 support always placed him in advantageous lights. But it 
 was she who handled the reins. She handled them capably. 
 For twenty minutes she brought Mrs. Ross and myself to a 
 common unity of interest in suggestions for the prevention of 
 cruelty to animals. 
 
 Sir Statham on his entry bore me triumphantly off to his 
 library. All my books (even the Disraeli volume, which was 
 out of print) faced me on one of the shelves, and in the cry 
 that my soul set up I forbore being regaled on superb editions 
 that evidently only subserved a delicate pleasure. These 
 books meant no burning fire of inspiration to the man. They 
 did not bring the god in him to sing out in a mighty paean of 
 triumph. They did not make him a king. They found him a 
 baronet, and they left him a baronet : a baronet who had had, 
 if rumour spoke truly, to pay rather more than the market 
 price of that honour into his party's funds inasmuch as he 
 would not undertake political service even to presiding at 
 public meetings. They did not knock his head against the 
 stars, nor did they set the stars like clusters in his soul. 
 Therefore we really had no community of emotion in them, 
 however much it might appear to be so, or however much we 
 might simulate it. Yet his pleasure in them was quite unsullied. 
 He had never dared the heights and so he never risked the 
 depths. He remained only superbly secure on the sunlit 
 slopes. 
 
 So when Lady Willie came to inform " these bookmen that 
 such a thing as Time was passing, and that Mrs. Elthorne 
 was waiting for her husband/' his manner towards me made it 
 evident that I was fast in his affection. 
 
 Outside, it seemed to me, Rhoda had a manner of suppressed 
 excitement I could not understand ; and she was unforgiveably 
 inattentive as I declared my anger that the splendid passions 
 
240 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of an artist should be made to subserve an appetite that 
 toyed with them for idle pleasure. Then she cut me short 
 with : 
 
 " Jack, is there time for us to get to " and she 
 
 mentioned the firm of publishers responsible for " The 
 Gateway/ 1 
 
 " Oh, was that ' The Gateway ' I saw you talking about ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, but can we manage it ? " 
 
 " Barely. We might though. But why this haste ? 
 How odd to have found it there ! " 
 
 " It was marked ' fourth edition/ Oh, Jack, let us try ! " 
 She could scarcely contain her excitement. 
 
 " Hullo ! We might venture a cab on that/' 
 
 " Oh, do let us ! " 
 
 The way of a book is a strange thing. Time was when the 
 reviews on it were a just symptom of its sales an augury of 
 them. Now it is no longer so. A new, hidden rule is in 
 operation, that none may discover. After the bitter attacks 
 on the book neither of us had paid much heed to it. I had 
 almost said we had not given much thought to it, but the 
 quivering excitement beside me in the cab made it patent that 
 this was not so at least in her case. As the negotiations had 
 been made through me she could not have made any enquiries 
 save through me, and how she must have fretted at my 
 indifference ! I put my arm about her in tacit apology of 
 my unknown cruelty. 
 
 " Oh, Jack, if it is so ! " 
 
 " It must be so if it's marked so, though we don't know 
 what they mean by editions/' 
 
 " Don't you think this cab's going slowly ? Couldn't we 
 take another ? " 
 
 " Better sit tight, old dear. We shall manage it." 
 
 Half an hour later we were walking through a crowded 
 street, and we might have been its only pedestrians for all 
 we knew to the contrary. " The Gateway " was in its sixth 
 edition, the previous five having meant a total of nine thousand 
 copies sold in England. Moreover it seemed as though, for 
 some indiscoverable cause, a run had been started, for each 
 week, it appeared, saw an increasing bulk of orders. The 
 publishers had scarcely advertised it, but now they were 
 about to inaugurate an extensive and elaborate campaign. 
 
A NEW SYSTEM 241 
 
 To our way of thinking we were rich. We were rich as we 
 had never thought to have been. We were dazed with our 
 richness. But we were not so dazed as to lose sight of the 
 fact that the occasion demanded a regal and a costly 
 dinner. 
 
 XII 
 
 A NEW SYSTEM 
 
 I have said that, beyond our dreams of possibility, we were 
 rich, yet in that very form of statement it becomes apparent 
 that it was not I who was rich, but Rhoda. The fact that, in 
 the natural outcome of events, those riches were likely to be 
 considerably increased, only made the thing more apparent. 
 
 I would have put it away on a shelf of my thought, but for 
 one aspect of it that was not to be burked. It was due to me 
 to put it away so. If marriage be a partnership of equals 
 (and it is a serfdom jjjp) then the man is as entitled to the 
 good fortune of his wife as she, in the more habitual course, 
 is to his. She may claim it, so should he. It is part of the 
 joint contract. Nor, truly, did it avail for me to say that her 
 manner of work was part of the indignity of life that it was 
 part of my manner of work to combat. That might seem the 
 essence of honour to me, but, from the point of view of our 
 marriage, it might also be regarded as a personal fastidiousness. 
 But there was an aspect of it that became imperative. 
 
 As desired, the agreement for " The Gateway " stood in 
 my name. It had no right so to stand. Had I succeeded 
 she would have leceived the proceeds at my hands. Seeing 
 it was she who had succeeded I ought to receive the proceeds 
 at her hands. That was but simple rectitude. 
 
 It came up urgently, moreover. The book had originally 
 been offered to several houses in America, and as none of 
 them had taken it up, and as none seemed likely to take it 
 
 R 
 
242 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 up, I had refused to let any clause for American rights stand 
 in the agreement. But now it was proposed to issue an Ameri- 
 can edition, and the terms on which it was proposed to do so, 
 considering the lapse of copyright, were exceedingly generous 
 to us. There was the question of other books to follow from 
 a successful author. 
 
 It was my moment. When the agreement arrived, standing 
 in my name, I took it to Rhoda. 
 
 " Here's that agreement, dear. Don't you think it ought 
 to stand in your name ? " 
 
 " Is it necessary ? " she asked, as though she were fearful 
 of the suggestion. 
 
 " Well, nothing's necessary. But it would be franker, 
 wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " It's not just that I should pillage your labours." 
 
 " Dear, you're not doing that. But if you think it would be 
 better " 
 
 " And at the same time it would be better to make over the 
 original agreement to you. It ought never to have stood in 
 my name." 
 
 She held herself arrested looking at me. She seemed as 
 though she were afraid of herself. Then suddenly she came 
 to my side. 
 
 " Jack, let them stand as they are, this one and the other. 
 Don't argue, don't argue ; I want it like that. I would much 
 rather, really. You do it all." 
 
 I wondered afterwards at her pleading manner. It seemed 
 to me that she must already have given the matter some 
 thought. But, constrained by her, I continued and concluded 
 the arrangements myself. 
 
 Yet I was not satisfied. The whole thing pleased me ill : 
 partly, no doubt, because my name stood to a kind of com- 
 promise very undesirable to me, but also because it was 
 frankly unfair and inequitable. So we drew out a new scheme 
 of life, whereby she took her own cheque-book and drew on 
 the funds that were hers directly for herself. We kept a 
 common account, yet I was careful to note what was mine 
 and what was hers, and never to go beyond my own earnings 
 for my own needs. Even so I was irked, though I attempted 
 resolutely to hold it under. 
 
A NEW SYSTEM 243 
 
 Nor, indeed, was Rhoda satisfied, so far as I could judge. 
 The money was hers, and she used it freely. To me, bound 
 as I was in the memory of days when hunger was known, 
 when I was almost nurtured to the expectation of misfortune, 
 so much so that each knock of the postman caused my heart 
 to beat wildly, it seemed that she was impermissibly extrava- 
 gant. But I could say nothing, and we grew accustomed, 
 each of us, to living a life of separate thoughts, pleasures, 
 and even ambitions. 
 
 We gave up our small house, and took a flat in Kensington, 
 not very far from Ramsay. It was, Rhoda said, socially 
 permissible to live in confined quarters in Kensington when it 
 was invidious to have greater arm-play and purer air in the 
 remoter suburbs. She took a housekeeper to herself, so as 
 to leave herself free for her work. She began, not only to 
 pay calls, but to expect calls, and to devise entertainments. 
 
 In all this I was a silent and reluctant liner at the rear of an 
 energetic tug. I have not the reputation of lacking energy, 
 but a great lethargy had come over me. I could not work, 
 I could not dream my dreams. I could not force a direction for 
 my life, though the manner of that direction was as clear to 
 me as of old. I could have wept, many times, in the melan- 
 choly that came upon me. I became cynical in my attitude 
 to things, for which Ramsay took me roundly to task. I 
 had longed once to be able to read certain books that my 
 unremitting labour forbade to me. Now I could not find the 
 energy to do so. Life was like a twisted knot in my hand that 
 I had lost the will to untie. 
 
 When, in the autumn, the proposal came for Ermott Jacob's 
 new book, I passed the letter over to Rhoda, and suggested 
 that it would be well if a literary agent were appointed to 
 devise the details. I suggested one, whom she went to see. 
 I heard no more of it, but I knew that an agreement had 
 been signed by Rhoda in her own name. 
 
244 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 XIII 
 
 TIM MAKES A REVELATION 
 
 No doubt I would have justified myself in the end ade- 
 quately. In fact, I must have done so, for no one can deny 
 the original impulsion of his life. Yet it has ever been a 
 curious gratification to me to think that it was Tim who came 
 to my rescue. 
 
 I still continued my usual work, such as reviewing and 
 essays : inasmuch as I used no other money than my own 
 earnings for my own personal expenditure it was necessary 
 for me to do so. I actually improved my position in this 
 regard, for we entertained men of influence at the select 
 dinners Rhoda slowly began to organise, and this reacted with 
 considerable benefit on my cash receipts. But the personal 
 cry had gone out of my work, as I had always sought to make 
 it permeate all my work. None noticed it, but I did, and 
 it depressed me acutely. When Rhoda declared, as she never 
 tired of declaring, that it was mere pigheadedness in me to 
 continue such humdrum labour, I said nothing ; I made no 
 reference to the new note of demand which accompanied her 
 complaints, but I clung to my routine work despite my 
 listlessness. I clung to it though I grew yet more listless, 
 for by the end of that year Rhoda had made the better part 
 of four thousand pounds from " The Gateway " in England, 
 and America was now beginning a tale of success. Success 
 makes success : everybody will read a book that everybody 
 else declares a success, so long as the sentiment please : but it 
 merely made my petty journalism to seem a farcical business. 
 And to this Tim came with his healing. 
 
 A wave of grey had passed over the flaming red of his close- 
 cropped head : prematurely, I imagine, though I never knew 
 his age. He was now assistant-manager at Messrs. Mueler, 
 Ltd., and took the major part of the work from Mr. Tonson. 
 The jackdaw permitted this the more easily since he was 
 by this time bullied out of all power to retaliate on his inferiors. 
 I had influenced Frank to get him this rise, seeing that Frank 
 was an eminently successful man, and therefore, according 
 to commercial standards, a man whose wishes were to be 
 studied. Tim knew this, but he was a man, and therefore 
 
TIM MAKES A REVELATION 245 
 
 did not throw the loose ends of his gratitude about the 
 place. 
 
 Now that we were very successful, and lived in a choice 
 Kensington flat, Tim was not so welcome a guest as hereto- 
 fore. Rhoda was not very proud of this fact, but it remained. 
 We had at least one flaming quarrel about it, but since Rhoda 
 declared that Tim might live on the premises for all she cared, 
 I could say nothing. That splendid offer took the sting from 
 my angry protest. But Tim felt the atmosphere, and he 
 stayed away. So I went out after him, and we used occa- 
 sionally to dine in Soho, or meet at odd times at Ramsay's 
 flat. 
 
 I had noticed a slow and unaccountable change coming 
 over him for some time, that partly associated itself, I saw, 
 with his visits to Ramsay's flat, but which was yet something 
 further. I did not much trouble to discover, for I cared 
 for him so greatly on the human side that I had not discussed 
 intellectual matters with him. Some might have conceived 
 this as intellectual loftiness, but Tim and I knew one another 
 better than that. Yet our conversations were more permeated 
 with intellectual concerns than had ever been possible formerly. 
 He had read my books, and he had continued with a good deal 
 of other reading, in which I had helped him as best I could. 
 But there was an element in it I had known nothing of, and 
 which sprang fiercely and surprisingly out upon me in what 
 is to me a memorable conversation. 
 
 We were sitting at dinner in Soho, or, more accurately, we 
 were sitting after dinner smoking quietly together. Suddenly 
 he said : 
 
 " Given up writing on ' The Weekly/ s'pose, now ? " 
 
 " No. Why do you think that ? " 
 
 " Hadn't been able to fix you." 
 
 It was some time before the force of this came upon me. 
 My work there was never signed. None of my weekly work 
 anywhere was signed, save by a rare chance. 
 
 " So you manage to spot them then ? " I said. 
 
 " Oh, ay, I may say. Like your books, you know. Make 
 you feel you've God's promise, one may say : ' Thoughts that 
 wander through eternity,' sort of." He was very abashed 
 about this quotation. ' You know, swell you up in a proper 
 kind of way. Make you think, and hold your head up too." 
 
246 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I have sometimes desired to think that a man is his own 
 dependency in the world, and may dispense with friends. It 
 is such remarks prove the contrary. The blood began to 
 flow again in me. My soul awoke from its lethargy. 
 
 " Those you can drop on, you mean," I said with an effort 
 at disparagement. 
 
 " That's why I can drop on 'em," he replied. 
 
 He was carefully, somewhat nervously, ramming his pipe 
 with the stump of a lead-pencil as he spoke, and I began to 
 realise that he was throwing out a line to my aid. I think 
 there were tears in my eyes as I looked at him. I know that 
 my spirit was awaking to splendour and a knowledge of power 
 within me, rising up with its wisdom from eternity. 
 
 " I didn't know, old chap, you followed my doings 
 so." 
 
 " Never been to my room, I may say. Have ye ? " 
 
 " No, that's true." I spoke slowly, for it seemed to me 
 very strange that this should be so. 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 I thought upon it steadily. Then I rose up, and called for 
 the account. 
 
 " Hullo ! Going ? Where going ? " 
 
 " To your room." 
 
 " No, look here, I may say. Well, I'm not going." 
 
 " Nobody asked you to." 
 
 " The Brownie won't let you in." 
 
 " Won't she ? Not if I make up my mind ? " 
 
 " You won't find the Brownie tidy to shift. You'd rather 
 push about lead slag, I may say." 
 
 " That's a good thing to know beforehand, anyhow. I'm 
 a bit stiff in the joints for dodging on stairs, though ! Tim ! " 
 
 " Hullo ! " 
 
 " Get up ! " 
 
 Our conversation on the way to Shepherd's Bush was a 
 suspended animation. We talked, intermittently, on cursory 
 topics : it was as though it were understood that the more 
 considerable matter was to be resumed, where it was suspended, 
 when we won to our goal. This was over the surface of things : 
 beneath the surface, independent of the cursory words we 
 spoke, and yet oddly linked with them, a rich spiritual inter- 
 change was passing, as a result of which my soul was thriving, 
 
TIM MAKES A REVELATION 247 
 
 and I was winning my way back to those feelings of power that 
 give a man his quality in the world. 
 
 When we entered his room there was immediate silence 
 between us, for I saw at once what he meant. There was a 
 curious disorder about his room. A large, leather-covered easy- 
 chair was drawn before a gas-stove, and there was an indes- 
 cribable appearance about it that gave me at once to know that 
 it had passed from his father to his mother, and from his 
 mother to himself, being to him, therefore, beyond all price 
 and reckoning, valuable. But it was to a bookcase in a corner 
 that I at once went. 
 
 There is a knowledge beyond all phrasing and conveyance 
 of words, instant and intuitive, and as I looked on that book- 
 case I saw something that touched me profoundly, yet 
 distressed, and even pained, me. My own collection of books 
 was as representative and varied as could well be in its com- 
 pass ; yet though a man may make all things subserve his 
 Art there are things that are himself as other things are not, 
 and as I looked on those books I saw the perfect reflex of my 
 mind. I could even vaguely imagine possible conversations 
 with him, or with Mr. Ramsay in his presence, in the juxta- 
 positions of certain books with certain other books, conver- 
 sations that I had no memory of, but which seemed all too 
 clearly indicated. 
 
 ' I say, Tim," I called to him. 
 
 ' What's say ? " 
 
 ' Do you mind my saying straight out ? " 
 
 ' You can fire on, I may say/' 
 
 1 Don't you think you should have struck out and found 
 your own imprint ? A man's only a help to another while 
 he finds himself, not a model oh, good God, not a 
 model ! " 
 
 " Piff ! " 
 
 " Nor is he. My thing, I know, is right, absolutely and 
 magnificently right, or I wouldn't be after it. I'd die for it 
 with a shout, if need were. But not its imprint on me. It 
 imprints differently on different stuffs." 
 
 " Oh rather, so I should say. What am I but what you've 
 made me, you and your friend Ramsay ? Wouldn't I be 
 grubbing all day, and loafing when I wasn't grubbing, and 
 sleeping when I wasn't grubbing or loafing, if you hadn't 
 
248 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 come flaming about me, making me mad with you, I 
 was so sick with myself. Oh yes ! Oh I may say ! 
 Different stuffs, old Jack ! I know someone who hadn't 
 got a bit of stuff at all. And that wasn't you, I needn't 
 be saying." 
 
 " Nonsense, of course you had ; more so, believe me, than 
 many I know. And, in any case, to put it frankly, it looks 
 too much like modelling on me, and I don't like to think 
 that." 
 
 "Piff!" 
 
 " Believe me, I don't. I don't think I have ever felt so 
 uncomfortable in my life. Each man must find himself, and 
 I can only help." 
 
 There was a long spell of silence between us. I stood and 
 surveyed his bookshelf, humbled and dismayed, while he lit 
 his stove, then filled and lit his pipe. It was not until the 
 opening heavy clouds of smoke had paled away, and he drew 
 steadily and more comfortably, that he spoke again. Then he 
 spoke slowly and with laboured earnestness. 
 
 " You won't shake me, I may say. Oh no ! I don't 
 know much about these things : not like you do." He paid 
 no heed to the deprecating hand that I, in every earnestness, 
 threw out, but continued as deliberately : " But I know this, 
 it's no copy, as I should know, but another kind of finding. 
 You go straight on, I don't ; I go round and round. What's 
 say then ? I've got to go round and round you while you 
 keep going straight on. See ? You've made a big difference 
 to me. I've told no one, but you have. You've made a man 
 of me. I think, feel, be. Oh, I am, that's it. And you've 
 got to go on and help me out, man." 
 
 I think we probably should have prayed together then. 
 Possibly we did, for there was a long silence between us. 
 
 There was no moment in which there was not a spiritual 
 interchange between us. There was no moment in which 
 there was not an entirely manly interchange between us. 
 When I left there was only a firm, steady handshake. 
 
 I walked the better part of the way home, for I was alone 
 with thoughts that were indescribable. I longed for great 
 hills, and the quiet, undulating rhythms of earth throbbing 
 softly about me in the darkness, while I walked with my 
 thoughts. But the clash and clangour of intermittent traffic 
 
"THE CRUCIFIX" 0249 
 
 broke harshly on my ear, and marred the sanctity. Yet 
 I had a vision of things, while the houses doffed their lights 
 slowly one by one, and relapsed into darkness, that were 
 very wonderful and very humbling. 
 
 XIV 
 
 " THE CRUCIFIX " 
 
 For some time prior to our sudden fortune, and our elevation 
 to the ways of minor society obligations, I had been making 
 notes for another study, yet more ambitious (for a man must 
 go onward) to follow " Fairholt Evans/' I had determined 
 to entitle it " The Robes of Wisdom/' It had been my wish 
 to hold myself freer of my created character, and to break 
 away into a rhapsodical eloquence that should overcome the 
 limitations that logical phrases have for the conveyance of the 
 things prior and subsequent to the somewhat pert, however 
 wonderful, device of words. Yet to do this would need very 
 careful and orderly arrangement. For example, I did not 
 know whether to put the eloquence into the lips of my creation, 
 or boldly to take it up myself. I had worked hard in my 
 thought at it, till the compromise our success meant, with 
 its attendant departure into an artificial way of living, made 
 the whole scheme fall ineffectually from my hands. 
 
 The morning following my conversation with Tim I found 
 out my notes and lived the day with them. I lived the week 
 with them. Rhoda, I noticed dimly, devised things so that I 
 should not be interrupted, and that nothing should jar upon me. 
 In the dear way she could so well pursue, she showed in a 
 hundred little ways her joy that I had resumed what was life 
 to me. I remembered she had been vaguely distressed at 
 my lassitude for some time, and had endeavoured to surround 
 
250 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 me with more luxuries for my better peace, whereas it was 
 the Y er Y presence of the luxuries, seeing whence and by 
 what compromise they came, that had chiefly induced the 
 lassitude. 
 
 So we grew again to a kindlier understanding so far as the 
 eternal presence of a housekeeper and two servants would 
 allow. Inasmuch as she gave up demurring at my absolute 
 refusal to use her moneys for my private expenditure, very 
 little actual difference of opinion came up in our speech 
 together. I know my inconsistence, I do not seek to disguise 
 it. I was living on her moneys, and so there would have been 
 no difference in the acceptation of a further obligation. But 
 a man's wayward and illogical actions are not all the folly 
 they seem. Such actions usually have a symbolic value to 
 him, the destruction of which symbol is the destruction of all 
 that it means to him, good or bad. 
 
 Yet there was another barrier between us, though this 
 had gone ; one that never broke into our speech ; and whose 
 guarded absence from our speech was the sign of its existence. 
 She never referred to my work, she never asked to see it, 
 even as I was never suffered to, nor indeed desired to, know 
 how she progressed with hers. Nay, I knew she would 
 probably now not read my book when it came out. I may 
 have been altogether wrong in my thought, but I had it 
 powerfully. If she read it she would do so cased about with a 
 spirit of guardedness, lest it broke in upon, and marred, the 
 thing she herself wished to do. 
 
 I am aware that this, put down crudely so, cannot but make 
 me appear very undesirably an egotist, nor will it condone that 
 imputation to say that I was willing to suffer for the ideals 
 I held. Yet it is only fair to say that these were indeed ideals 
 for which I stood ideals that the conscience of men attest 
 even against their own doings. Rhoda's very fear was not so 
 much a fear of something without her, as of its appeal to 
 something within her. The thing that stood between us was 
 something as proper to her as to myself, only she was faith- 
 less to it. 
 
 Yet though we did not remove it from betwixt us, we drew 
 to each other very wondrously over it. Timidly, tentatively, 
 we put our hands to touch one another over it. We were very 
 shy of one another, and the intercepting obstruction made us 
 
"THE CRUCIFIX" 251 
 
 yet more shy. We began to see more of one another. We 
 took our courses less in independence of one another than had 
 been the case for over a year. I was much engrossed in my 
 new book ; 1 had begun to write it now, and I lived with it 
 always ; there was no moment of my day or night when I 
 might not be said to have been at work on it. If I was not 
 writing it I was reading for it, and when I was not writing or 
 reading I was thinking upon it. My very dressing and 
 undressing began to be even more than usually intermittent 
 and absent-minded proceedings. Consequently we had not 
 much time together. Yet when we had we went out together. 
 We soon resumed our old habit, relinquished this many a 
 year, of walking the streets together, my arm in hers or hers in 
 mine, quietly watching the ways and faces of people and 
 noticing the well-nigh intolerable drabness, and sameness, 
 and dully automatic repetition, of their conversation. I 
 wonder that did not have its effect upon her. It is the Ermott 
 Jacobs on the one hand, and the hideous, insulting slavery 
 imposed by Industrialism and Commerce on the other, that 
 have produced monstrous cities full of men and women more 
 like the dull, uncontemplative cattle than their own godlike 
 prototypes. Their work is not work but degrading labour ; 
 their recreation is not re-creation but sentimental or vicious 
 excitement. 
 
 Yet we went about so, and the fact that the obstruction 
 between us caused us never to lose our shyness, made our 
 interchanges exquisitely tender. To this hour there is an 
 incommensurable fragrance about those walks of ours. 
 
 Then, suddenly, the ruin came to it all. The obstruction 
 between us was thrown up mountain-high, and the fact that 
 Tim's words had stung me into zest again made its presence 
 the more fiercely intolerable. 
 
 I had ceased work late one afternoon, and, as Rhoda was out 
 paying some or other call, I had gone for an hour's walk at top 
 speed. It was only so I could escape the revolutions of my 
 thought, and I always adopted it when I wished to approach 
 what I had to do from a newer point of view. 
 
 When I returned I found a parcel had arrived for Rhoda. As 
 it bore the name of her publisher I guessed its contents. I 
 did not know the book was to be published so soon. It was 
 a sign of how little either of us knew of the other's dearest 
 
252 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 tillage. With a presentiment of evil I cut the parcel open and 
 bore off a copy to my study. 
 
 I read quickly and cursorily, with a sickening heart. And 
 when Rhoda opened the door and entered I had well-nigh 
 finished it. I could see instantly in her face that she had come 
 to verify what the opened parcel suggested. Her eyes had 
 gone instantly to the book in my hand. Her voice was 
 nervous and agitated, a little defiant, too, when she spoke. 
 
 " I'm late," she said. 
 
 I said nothing, but drew into myself. Her sudden 
 appearance made my whole soul shrink away. 
 
 She drew off her gloves with quick, nervous actions. Her 
 manner was intensely business-like and unsympathetic. 
 
 " We shall have to hurry," she said. 
 
 " Hurry ? " 
 
 " Yes, there are those people coming to dinner." 
 
 " Oh, confound ! I was looking forward to a good evening's 
 work." 
 
 " There'll not be much time for you to dress, Mrs. Elthorne : 
 you've not forgotten the dinner," said a level voice at the door. 
 It was the housekeeper. 
 
 " No, I'm coming now. Half an hour, Jack." 
 
 The better part of that half an hour was spent by me 
 standing in the middle of that room gazing at a book lying 
 on my chair bound in mauve and with the figured gilt in- 
 scription, " The Crucifix." The dinner, I divined, was to 
 celebrate its advent. Many thoughts fought in me, but 
 distaste at the coming dinner predominated. Then I 
 suddenly remembered that Ramsay had been one of the 
 guests. That seemed particularly ironical, but it eased me 
 somewhat. 
 
THE DINNER 253 
 
 XV 
 
 THE DINNER 
 
 By a careful secretion of superfluous furniture it had been 
 made possible to seat ten at dinner with not too much dis- 
 comfort. The Statham Willies, Miss Fortescue, an indefatigable 
 writer of romances, a sleek parson and his wife, by name 
 Sowerby-Smythe, Gregory Duncan, an under-secretarial 
 person and hanger-on of Cabinets, and his wife, and Ramsay, 
 comprised our guests. If Sir Statham Willie be called a 
 reader of my books and so a very good friend of mine, then he 
 and Ramsay constituted my share of guests at the solemn 
 board. The rest belonged to Rhoda. I had pressed feebly 
 for the inclusion of Mrs. Harrison, the gay widow, but 
 I had been told that she would indisputably upset the 
 equilibrium of graceful conversation. Strangely enough, 
 that had been the very reason why I had wished her 
 included. 
 
 Miss Fortescue and Rhoda had become considerable friends 
 by reason of the former's pronounced admiration of " The 
 Gateway." The response naturally was that Rhoda should 
 become an admirer of certain very popular romances that had 
 been well infused in a decoction of religious sentimentalism. 
 Rhoda's response, I knew, was less unreserved than Miss 
 Fortescue was led to believe, yet what one may call the 
 Fortescue trail had very obviously run over " The Crucifix/' 
 for all that Rhoda w r as a daintier, less adjectival and emphatic, 
 writer. Rhoda flitted from twig to twig in gentler, more 
 aerial fashion, like a wren ; Miss Fortescue went shrieking 
 through the brushwood like a startled blackbird. The sleek 
 Sowerby-Smythe, with a voice as though he were perpetually 
 seeking to disguise the fact that he had his mouth full, had 
 once preached a sermon on a novel of Miss Fortescue's dealing 
 \vith the sanctity of something or other. How he ever 
 managed to get through a sermon without someone throwing a 
 hymn-book at him through sheer exasperation at the mono- 
 tony of his voice, I do not know ; but the fact remains on 
 record. Those that go to churches in fine raiment must be 
 schooled to a wondrous patience. At any rate, here was 
 the cause of Sowerby-Smythe's inclusion, and also of 
 
254 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Rhoda's recent, though intermittent, visits northward to his 
 church. 
 
 Gregory Duncan was a wit suppressed by a memory of 
 official pretension. To see, and speak with, his wife was to 
 revere and esteem her. If a tragedy be the baffling of worth 
 by the imposition of a worthless convention, then both she 
 and he were tragedies. 
 
 I insisted, contrary to all plans, on bearing Mrs. Duncan in 
 to dinner, and I had the great joy of seeing Ramsay delivered 
 over to Miss Fortescue. I rallied him on the fact that Ken- 
 sington did not agree with him, and as only Rhoda and he 
 saw my drift, it afforded me infinite satisfaction to see the 
 topic of Kensington salubrity float about the table as the 
 opener of amenities. 
 
 Sir Statham, even, sang it to Rhoda, who listened and was 
 courteous as only a woman can be, caught in social meshes. 
 Only I left it alone. 
 
 " What shall we talk about ? " I said to Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 " Anything you wish/' she replied, looking up simply and 
 engagingly at me. Evidently she was prime for no conver- 
 sational flights. 
 
 ' It's you must decree/' 
 
 ' My husband has been reading your book." 
 
 ' Ah ! You haven't ! " 
 
 ' No, I'm ashamed to confess/' 
 
 ' Why not be proud to confess ? " 
 
 ' I'm afraid that's very like mock modesty." 
 
 ' It's part of the convention." 
 
 ' Are you very conventional, then ? " 
 
 ' I pledged allegiance to your lead." 
 
 ' Was I conventional ? " 
 
 ' You started to talk about my book." 
 A period seemed to sound at that, and she gave it its full 
 value before continuing. 
 
 " Are you interested in the Infirmity Bill ? " 
 
 " Politics are another convention, I suggest." 
 
 " Oh no, no ! They are the working out of ideals." There 
 was manifest sincerity in the challenging ring of her voice. 
 Faces of spiritual fragrance, such as hers, always betoken 
 sincerity and purity, though often joined with a pathetic 
 simplicity. 
 
THE DINNER 255 
 
 r ' You infer my book is not ? " 
 
 " No, of course not ! I was foolish to say that." She 
 seemed pained at the suggestion. 
 
 " Indeed, I knew it. I only jested. What ideals do you 
 think politics are concerned with ? " 
 
 " I meant, our side/' 
 
 " I meant, either side." 
 
 " Well, Christian civilisation, and its working out in 
 practice/' 
 
 " Ah ! I fear if Christ endured modern civilisation, and 
 its cynic conspirators, the politicians, chiefly, there would be 
 some more business done with a whip of cords." 
 
 " Do you think so ? Oh dear ! " 
 
 " Don't you ? Compare Him, and the life He led, the 
 way He thought, with this putrescent thing we call civilisa- 
 tion! Isn't the contrast its own revelation? " 
 
 " Do you read Meredith ? " 
 
 " Dear Meredith ! He was a man. You mean, I suppose, 
 the first condition of sanity to believe that our civilisation is 
 founded on common sense ? " 
 
 ' Yes, but I couldn't have remembered it, you know." 
 
 " But remember what Meredith reflected. Nineteenth- 
 century negation. Pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy : and 
 consequently an abject acceptance of things as they are just 
 because they are a bit further forward in time than things of 
 the past. Conceive the intellectual cowardice of it though, 
 heaven knows, Meredith was no coward, rather the reverse. 
 No, no ; I believe in diviner origins and destinies. I believe 
 that 
 
 ' Our towns are copied fragments from our breast ; 
 And all man's Babylons strive but to impart 
 The grandeur of his Babylonian heart.' 
 
 And when we copy wrong, through commercial avarice or 
 official cowardice, there remains only to smash it all up and 
 begin again, for the bad can only get worse on the law of its 
 own being." 
 
 " Mr. Elthorne ! But who's to do the smashing ? " 
 " It's certain those who have the spoils from the wrong copy 
 won't." 
 
 " It's simply terrible." 
 
256 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Fire is always terrible, but it purifies." 
 
 Sitting beside me I could see her three-quarter face as she 
 looked across the table with wide, wondering eyes fixed on 
 space. I was afraid of the look in them. There is something 
 that can be terrible about the Fra-Angelico saint once the fire 
 lights in the soul. I bent the conversation back again. 
 
 " We must, you see, stick to the conventional/' I said. 
 
 " Oh ! Why ? " 
 
 " Otherwise we find ourselves in middle ocean, with a 
 storm brewing over our heads ! And it is, by common con- 
 sent, boorish and unrefined to be earnest at meals. I beg, 
 most devoutly, your pardon/' 
 
 " Are you talking politics ? " Mrs. Sowerby-Smythe inter- 
 posed from the right, with that added graciousness in her smile 
 that parsons' wives are expected to show officials and their 
 wives. 
 
 All the evening, both when the ladies had withdrawn, and 
 when we were in the drawing-room, I endeavoured to get hold 
 of Ramsay, but I was unable to do so. I would have taken 
 him off to my study could I have done so, and risked the im- 
 plied social neglect. But Sir S tat ham baulked me first, and 
 then Duncan laid hold on me for a talk on some recent 
 poems. I could only manage to whisper to him to be in no 
 haste to go when the guests began to show their curiously 
 unanimous desire to depart. 
 
 Presently all were gone save Miss Fortescue. Then I 
 took occasion to say : 
 
 " Til stroll along with you if you're going, Ramsay." 
 
 I felt, suddenly and irresistibly, a flame of opposition from 
 Rhoda break round me as I stood up to put my suggestion 
 into effect. I was even daunted by it, afraid by reason of it. 
 Yet I held to my resolve. 
 
 It was a cold evening in late spring, the earthy smell of 
 which was in the air even among the houses as we went. 
 The stars shone in between scurrying clouds driven by a wind 
 from the east. The pavements were still damp with the 
 shower that had emptied and thinned their fleeting wisps. 
 
 " What do you think of the Fortescue ? " I asked. 
 
 " She's an awkward woman to have on your own side. One 
 would infinitely rather have her for foe. She's the sort that 
 does the most damage to the side she's on." 
 
THE DINNER 257 
 
 We walked on in silence, breathing the freshened air with 
 wide nostrils. How the hills must have been on such a night ! 
 I was thirsty for them. 
 
 " We were celebrating something to-night, weren't we ? " 
 he asked in his quiet, level tone. " Mrs. Elthorne's birthday, 
 or your wedding-day ? " 
 
 " No, ' The Crucifix/ ' 
 
 He drew his brow down in thought. Then his face lightened 
 with recollection. " Oh ; is it good ? " 
 
 " My friend, we know one another too well to skate civilly 
 on thin ice/' 
 
 " I'm sorry/' he said. 
 
 We walked on again in silence. 
 
 " Namby-pamby, slippy-sloppy, erotico- religious sentimen- 
 talism. Oh, Ramsay, I can't tell you how this has hit me. 
 All we artists have our petty jealousies, I suppose, but heaven 
 is my witness, I am clean in this. If Rhoda would only do the 
 clean, upright, spiritually athletic thing, oh, I'd give anything 
 for it, I would indeed. But this is the kind of wish-wash that 
 your peevish dowagers dote on, and silly adolescent girls, 
 thwarted of the outcome of their sex, gaping on some curate's 
 eyes. The kind of stuff that Sowerby-Smythe will yawp his 
 melancholy syllables over on a Sunday morning, and then 
 be drawn in a sumptuous car by languid women to a decorous 
 lunch, while men are starving, and women too, on every 
 hand, and having the god in them whipped out by squalor 
 and ignominy. And she's better than that, my Rhoda is, 
 Ramsay, old man. Oh, such mountains higher ! Only, the 
 shriek of popularity's in her ear ; absolutely, absolutely ; it's 
 too deep-grained now to erase. ' The Crucifix ' is enough to 
 prove that, especially if it sells. Old man, I never wish to 
 spend another two hours such as I had this afternoon reading 
 it. And from so clean, and so brave, a spirit so plucky and 
 unflinching a fighter ! " 
 
 " Maybe not absolutely, though ! " 
 
 " Who knows ? But nothing spoils like success, especially 
 if it be the success of a wrong thing." 
 
 " I'm afraid that's true enough." 
 
 " Well, I must go. She's waiting now to talk to me about 
 it." 
 
 Not till I had spoken the words did I realise the knowledge 
 
258 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 that had so unostentatiously fallen on me. As I stood with 
 hand outstretched, under the stars that shone palely behind 
 a hurrying gauze of cloud, in a night of dark and silent houses, 
 I could see Rhoda sitting before the fire, gazing on it, waiting 
 for me. I knew her thought, I realised her wish. Like 
 a tumult of darkly hurrying figures across an obscure 
 landscape a surge of thoughts, of images rather, had 
 fled across my mind, leaving this one picture surely on 
 my brain. It had fled after me, and had found, and 
 caught, me. 
 
 " You won't forget/' said Ramsay, as his hand came into 
 mine, " more things are lost by a failure in kindness than the 
 world dreams of, as a poet did not say/' 
 
 " Yes, I see that/' 
 
 " Good ! " 
 
 A great depression of spirits was on me as I walked back 
 through the night. And yet, curiously mixed with it, there 
 was an exaltation of spirit. It was as though that portion 
 of me that strode steadily beneath the black houses outlined 
 against the indigo sky, back to the interview with Rhoda 
 as though that were depressed, while somewhere else a portion 
 of my being trod on rolling hills, sentient and vast beneath 
 a solemn night, snuffing the rich, sweet smell of my mother 
 Earth, beaten upon by the winds that curled over her, bathing 
 in the undulating waves of the actual rhythms of Being that 
 were abroad in power. 
 
 Suddenly I became aware of someone running after me with 
 a long, easy movement. I turned about, and presently saw 
 that it was Ramsay returning. 
 
 " Forgotten anything ? " I asked. 
 
 " No. Only I want you to know of my faith in you and 
 your work, of my admiration for it. It struck me you needed 
 that. The best of us slip without a song of cheer by our side. 
 You have done splendidly so far ; don't slip now. That is 
 the obverse to what I said about kindness. They are both, 
 oh, so necessary/' 
 
 " God help me, but you're a good friend, Ramsay." 
 
 " Well, good-night again ! " 
 
 " I say ! " 
 
 He turned expectantly. 
 
 " You run well/' 
 
AFTER THE DINNER 259 
 
 " It's easier that way, and splendid exercise. You should 
 run home." 
 
 " Not in streets, old man. Over swelling hills oh ! " 
 
 XVI 
 
 AFTER THE DINNER 
 
 When I entered the drawing-room Rhoda was sitting much 
 as I had imagined her, but she was reading. A rapid glance 
 showed me that she was reading " The Crucifix/' turning 
 over the leaves and reading here and there in that first handle 
 of a new book that is one of the joys of an author's life. I 
 divined quickly that the book she held was the very copy I 
 had borne away to my study, and that she had taken it thence. 
 Her first words proved me right. 
 
 " I wish, Jack/' she said, " you would not open my parcels/' 
 
 Her voice was modulated to a smooth asperity that told 
 me her sentence had been carefully weighed. 
 
 At first I took no notice of her words. 
 
 r ' You open my letters, anyhow, when you feel so disposed/' 
 I then said. 
 
 " Well, then, I'll never do so again," she said, closing the 
 book, and throwing it beside her on the couch. 
 
 I lit a cigarette. Pipes, these days, had been ruled out of 
 order in the drawing-room, as unbecoming. A stinging phrase 
 had been on my iips, for her action had been petulance itself. 
 But I changed my mind. 
 
 " I don't see that it's necessary to take it that way. We 
 have never yet stood on ceremony with each other; why 
 should we now ? " 
 
 She was silent for some time at this. She was evidently 
 
260 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 thinking fiercely, and I so well caught the development of 
 her thought that her next words hit me shrewdly. 
 
 " What was it you wanted to talk to Ramsay about ? " 
 
 " I did not go to talk with him. I wished to be with 
 him." 
 
 " That seems rather an easy way of evading my question/' 
 
 Her words, and the asperity with which they were delivered, 
 nettled me considerably, and I had again to curb the irritable 
 fiends that began to run on my blood. The distinction I had 
 made was a real one, as well she knew, despite the fact that it 
 offered her a manifest opportunity to display an effective 
 wit. 
 
 " I can only repeat what I said, Rhoda. It very accurately 
 defined my feelings. Besides/' I threw out after a while, 
 not desiring to be pushed to a continual defence, " you had 
 the great Fortescue with you/' 
 
 She flushed quickly as she replied in anger : " You always 
 jeer at her/' 
 
 " Excuse me," I broke in, " I never jeer at her. I hate her 
 work, and I also happen to dislike her person. But you like 
 her, and I'm not grumbling. I went out with my friend, while 
 you remained with yours, whom I dislike. It seems to me 
 perfectly simple/' 
 
 What cowards we are ! It was quite clear in my mind 
 that the issue between us (though I scarcely knew what that 
 issue was) would have to be fought, yet here I was seeking 
 to ride it off and render it impossible. I began, indeed, to 
 imagine that I had done so with fair success, but I did not 
 allow for the fact that women are not harassed by the cowardice 
 that afflicts men. Rhoda swept all impediments aside and 
 flew straight for her mark. 
 
 " You know very well you went to talk with Ramsay because 
 you had been reading my book." She had risen as she spoke, 
 and stood facing me as I lounged against the mantelpiece. 
 The firelight on her face made her seem thinner, I thought, an 
 appearance that was emphasised by the richly brocaded and 
 exceedingly expensive gown she wore. Yet in many ways she 
 seemed even younger than on that first day of our meeting, 
 when I had watched her furtively in Giorgio's restaurant, 
 while she pretended she was not aware of it. In fact, she was 
 younger. Each sex keeps the other young. 
 
AFTER THE DINNER 261 
 
 Intent on her person as she stood before me, I had not paid 
 close heed to what she had been saying. I pulled on my 
 attention and heard her again. 
 
 ' You may even not have mentioned it." 
 ' Mentioned what ? " I asked. 
 ' My book. What else am I talking about ? " 
 ' Well, go on ! " 
 
 ' But it was there all the time. You are never openly 
 disloyal that I will admit but in fact you are, and it comes 
 to the same thing. And what does it amount to ? A petty, 
 stupid jealousy because I have written a successful book and 
 you have not. That's all/' 
 
 I knew she did not think her words true, her very tone of 
 excess implied so much, but I was so fiercely cut by them that 
 my whole mind towered up in anger of resentment. 
 
 " If you ever spoke a deliberate falsehood in your life you 
 spoke one then. At the best it's a falsehood, and at the worst 
 it's a much shorter, directer, and less pleasant word, for if I 
 have a jealousy (as heaven knows I may have) it's a jealousy 
 for my art, which I consider a kind of priestly thing in the 
 highest sense, and not truly for myself, who am the agent for 
 it. You know that, and you shared in my feelings once. And 
 now you fling this jibe at me ! I have no words to say how 
 utterly you are false to the best in us both." 
 
 She seemed shamed by my outbreak, but women, even 
 less than men, do not easily relinquish an assumed position. 
 
 " My dear boy, you write for a mutual back-scratching 
 society," she said. 
 
 It was a petty stab at the best, I know : it showed her, 
 moreover, in her recently acquired social facilities. Yet by 
 that very fact it wounded me most, for it most decisively 
 emphasised our remoteness from one another. I turned away 
 from her, for I was acutely distressed. 
 
 " What an epilogue to our fight together ! You jibe at my 
 comparative failure ! or deeper failure, for that matter, for I 
 don't doubt that the back-scratching, as you elegantly put it, 
 such as it is, will in due course fall out of favour." 
 
 " Why do you scoff at popularity ? " 
 
 " I don't scoff at popularity. I want it. How I want it ! 
 I want ' joy in widest commonalty spread,' in that fine phrase 
 of Wordsworth's. But I do not want sloppy religiosity lapped 
 
262 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 up by the herd, depraving them so that they cannot know, and 
 do not want, the deeper, more wholesome, thing." 
 
 I halted, for Rhoda had winced. I shrank from wounding 
 her, for, heaven knows, to see her suffer, even at some slight 
 practical joke of mine, filled me with tenderness. So I endeav- 
 oured to turn the immediate application away. 
 
 " Take the Fortescue's last book ! I can't believe you like 
 it." 
 
 " It stands for the things you say you stand for," she said. 
 
 " Yes, but how differently. Or put me out of it ! Take it 
 in some other field. Because Beethoven is filled as full as 
 could be with tunefulness and mightiest harmony, would you 
 therefore say that the latest sentimental serenade for the sub- 
 urban elect stands with him against the hosts of arbitrary 
 intellectual symbolism and cacophony ? Or because the 
 very latest melodrama works on the emotions even as ' King 
 Lear ' does, that therefore they stand together against actualism 
 and intellectualism ? Oh, my Lord, what a philosophy ! " 
 
 " I don't think you are at all fair." 
 
 " Why," I turned on her, " the minds of men being for ever 
 slothful and that's the stupendous factor always neglected 
 in idealistic calculations the cheap must frustrate the great 
 from its kingdom, far more than the adversary may." 
 
 While I had been speaking she had been walking up and down 
 the room with an easy panther-like movement that had dimly 
 surprised me, for her usual gait was eager and alert. It was 
 the effect of queenly gowns, I suppose. It at any rate made 
 our conflict less of a bicker than it otherwise might have been ; 
 it was driven beneath a more decorous appearance. She 
 spoke to the same note. 
 
 " Would you say my book was the same as Ella's ? No 
 difference between them ? " 
 
 " In style all the difference on the earth. If you will allow 
 me to say so, there are pages in this book where the delicacy 
 of your style makes one blind almost to the sentimental medium 
 in which it works." She halted and flushed with pleasure 
 as I spoke. " But it will sell worse in consequence. But 
 the medium, the material, Rhoda ! I don't wish to pain 
 you, but I am bound to say it will rot the fibres of great 
 spiritual being at the core. It will not ennoble ; it will 
 deprave in the worst sense/' 
 
AFTER THE DINNER 263 
 
 " Writing for a purpose isn't Art/' 
 
 " Nonsense ! All great artists work for a purpose ; they 
 are all, in the highest sense, teachers ; it is only the idlers who 
 annul the high purpose. Besides," I added, " you are now 
 contradicting yourself of five minutes ago/' 
 
 She was faced by her contradiction and had no exit. As 
 the moments passed and she had no reply I could see she 
 was determining to cut her way through the mesh. She 
 did so. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said impatiently, throwing off the gauze tissue 
 she had draped about her shoulders, " all this place is built 
 on it, and you are very well content to live in it." 
 
 It was a blow deadly in its accuracy. Moreover, this was 
 the second occasion of the selfsame stroke. As I stood there 
 everything seemed to take new values before my eyes. She 
 had seated herself on the sofa again and was once more finger- 
 ing the book. Her attitude conveyed to me a sense of apology 
 due to me for her stroke, but she was infinitely too proud to 
 bend to it, while I would not anticipate it. We must have 
 remained so, in strained silence, for the better portion of an 
 hour, for the clock struck half-past one before she spoke 
 again. 
 
 " Are you coming to bed ? " she said then, and there seemed, 
 to my ear, something in her voice bidding me take her words 
 as a proffered overture. 
 
 But I said nothing. To be frank I dared not trust my tongue 
 to speech. 
 
 " Well, you need not take it too seriously," she said 
 again. 
 
 StiJl I said nothing. My nails, behind my back, were dug 
 into my palms in the effort to restrain a very sailing tempest 
 of tears. My emotions were strained past bearing. 
 
 " Oh, well," she said, and trod out, with her head high, 
 and her mood unrepentant. 
 
 I seemed to be numbed. Presently I went over to the 
 window, and, drawing aside the curtain, looked out on to the 
 night. The gauzy clouds and stars were still as though dark 
 beings in the spaces of the heavens were catching bright jewels 
 in pale phosphorescent nets, flinging them away and catching 
 them again. The winds were still singing in the tops of the 
 trees as they bent them suddenly over in fierce gusts. Over 
 
264 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 across the road a street lamp was reflected in the wet cape of 
 a constable asleep against a post. 
 
 In the room itself I noticed the fire low in the grate, and 
 1 heard the slow creak of its outer embers. I noticed the chairs, 
 too, arranged comically in couples round the room, as though 
 invisible spirits sat and held colloquies in them. I noticed 
 everything acutely, even the curiously just assortment of 
 colours in the flowers that decked the room, betraying Rhoda's 
 sense of combination and balance. But I did not reflect : the 
 busy fret-workings of thought were dead in me. I was so 
 numbed disastrously, unaccountably numbed that I seemed 
 only to live in my perceptions, which were abnormally acute. 
 They were even highly metaphorical and pictorial : fantastical 
 even, for as I turned to the room again from my sight into the 
 street the trees were swaying to and fro in my mind like many- 
 fingered witches bending in strange incantations. 
 
 Then, as I slowly rose out of my trance, as a great bird might 
 slowly rise from the waters of an enchanted lake, I realised 
 that the hour was well after three. So I took a couple of 
 great-coats into my study, locked the door, and slept 
 heavily in my chair, without a thought or dream till late the 
 next day. 
 
 XVII 
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 
 
 Marital troubles do not often greatly divert the habitual 
 domestic economy. One meets at meals, if not otherwise ; 
 the customary amenities of conversation are exchanged, if 
 not spontaneously, at least before onlookers ; and so, generally, 
 with no manifest overture or admission of apology due from 
 either side, the stream of a warmer feeling begins to trickle 
 through and to swell apace, till it would seem as though all 
 
I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 265 
 
 memory, instinctive or reflective, had passed to a sometime 
 beating of the drum. 
 
 Tragedies, however, are things of the spirit, not of the habit 
 of life. After a few days (chiefly induced by the continual 
 presence of our housekeeper) scarcely anyone would have 
 surmised that there was anything amiss between Rhoda and 
 myself ; nevertheless the fact remained that my whole life 
 was at a standstill. I had, with some strange forebodings, 
 taken up my work again, but it had fallen uselessly from my 
 hands. Not lightly turned aside from a task I set myself, I 
 had persisted with its execution, but with disastrous results. 
 I turn down " The Robes of Wisdom " now, and I can dis- 
 cover at once certain passages in it, too firmly embedded in 
 its execution to be altered or excised, that display quite 
 clearly the stubborn prosecution of what I wished to do rather 
 than the full-hearted expression of my vision, such as it may 
 be. For it was as though a spirit flowed into my study, as I 
 sat at work, and firmly took my pen out of my hand. An 
 atmosphere possessed the place that was hostile to my vision, 
 to which my vision in turn was hostile. The fact that I was 
 convicted in my own mind of being insincere and a fraud, 
 was weighty enough, but this atmosphere seemed a 
 deeper, altogether more penetrating, thing. It was a thing 
 I could not gainsay and be the man I was, or wished 
 to be. 
 
 Moreover, as I sat at my desk then, the recognition of other 
 things came on me. With my page of MS. before me, and the 
 pen lying idly beside it, my mind became preoccupied with 
 strange images that floated before it. For some days I was 
 too preoccupied with them definitely to take knowledge of 
 them. It was as though I lived with them in some other world 
 than this, knowing them too intimately to be doubtful of them, 
 but without bringing them clearly before the recognition of 
 the Self that had its major residence in this world of sense and 
 sight. Then I awoke out of my lethargy, and the images 
 took more or less definite proportions. Hills, I saw, and 
 great mountains, either clear-shining beneath a radiant moon, 
 or bathed in mists that floated over them like a congregation 
 of spirits. I cannot define my visions ; there are those, no 
 doubt, who will understand them : but it seemed as though 
 I were both watching these things from above (flowing 
 
266 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 beneath me like great brown and blue waves that surged 
 toward a predestined shore), and footing on them in a strange 
 exultation and joy. 
 
 No doubt a part of me had been loosed, and was inhabiting 
 such scenes as its proper place. But I seemed to know as 
 clearly as could be that (apart altogether from the hostile 
 spirit of Rhoda invading my room or possibly induced by it) 
 " The Robes of Wisdom " could not be written until I had 
 explored in physical presence such places as in spirit I beheld. 
 There was a proper part of vision I wanted, and it flouted me 
 among the abodes of men. 
 
 So I strode the streets discontentedly, or tried to read stub- 
 born books that only annoyed me. Rhoda, I felt, watched me 
 curiously. At first she seemed as though she held out a hand 
 over the gulf that had yawned between us. But I was driven 
 by a destiny and could heed nothing. Then she turned about 
 and went her own way again. 
 
 I avoided everybody, even Ramsay and Tim, who had 
 nowadays sealed a great friendship. Everything distasted 
 on my tongue. And the case was not improved when one 
 day along Chancery Lane I suddenly saw a face that brought 
 memory crying up within me. It was a broad, clean-shaven, 
 sunburnt face, with a slight fringe of very fair hair along the 
 cheek-bones, with two blue eyes that could have shone, had 
 once shone, with merriment, but were now dull and dis- 
 contented. The figure was of a tall, broadly-built man, in 
 a daring suit of clothes, and a bowler hat set rakishly on his 
 forehead. 
 
 I followed the man up Chancery Lane into Holborn, and 
 had no difficulty in keeping him in sight among the throng of 
 people. He was a prominent figure, and there was some- 
 thing of satiety and scorn as he walked among the smaller 
 men than he. I had no wish to speak with him, but only 
 followed him whimsically. I felt like a looker-on at the pageant 
 of life as I followed him, and had no wish to break this effect 
 by speaking with him. 
 
 Then he turned away to the right up towards a quiet square 
 surrounded by what looked like lawyers' offices. Automatic- 
 ally I followed him. It seemed very odd to me that I should 
 be able to follow him so, like a wraith of the past. I must 
 
I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 267 
 
 even, I suppose, have imagined myself as invisible, for when 
 he looked round once or twice I paid no heed. 
 
 At last he faced about with an insolent and challenging 
 expression. Possibly he would have said something but 
 that I held steadily forward towards him. I was still half 
 fancying myself as a looker-on from an invisible post of 
 vantage, when I heard my voice saying : 
 
 " Isn't your name Cartwright ? " I had spoken as though 
 it had been an inexpressibly humorous thing that the fact 
 should be so. 
 
 " It is/' said he, his challenge changing to expectancy. 
 
 " That's an odd thing," I said. 
 
 He drew himself up again. 
 
 " My name's Elthorne." 
 
 " Elthorne ! " 
 
 " Jacob Elthorne." 
 
 " Hell ! " he burst out, after a moment of preparatory 
 astonishment. " Jack Elthorne ! Oh, my God ! Let's go 
 and have a drink ! " 
 
 I knew well his type. He had become one of those English- 
 men whose conception of manliness was of the beefy, beery 
 and expletive order : that being the main average of their 
 lives, with golf, boxing and bawdy tales for decoration. 
 
 As we drank each other's healths in honour of our merry 
 meeting, he asked : 
 
 " And what the devil are you doing ? " 
 
 " Oh, writing ! " I was still inexpressibly amused at the 
 encounter. 
 
 " Writing ! What the hell kind of writing ? Not 
 books ! " 
 
 " That's it : books. And in papers, you know." 
 
 " Oh, my God ! But you always were an odd devil." 
 
 "Was I*? " 
 
 " Oh yes, you were. You were a bossy kind of a chap, with 
 all kinds of fantastic notions. You used to damned well own 
 that top room in your infernal way. I never could stand 
 writing myself, you know. Nor reading, neither. Unless it's 
 
 a book by now and again." He mentioned a racy writer 
 
 vvhose name lined the street-posters. " The Buff-fellow's 
 more in my line." 
 
 " And what have you been doing ? " 
 
268 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Hell only knows. Every damned mothers-son of a job. 
 And messed everything up." 
 
 " But you are surely doing something now. 11 I surveyed 
 his well-conditioned figure. At school he had been great of 
 bone and well-proportioned, I remembered, but this now had 
 run to heaviness, the heaviness of a decaying athleticism. 
 
 " God, yes/' he said carelessly, even shiftily. "I'm sur- 
 veying this damned England ; building, you know, and that 
 kind of thing ; getting fool-builders to build and fool-buyers 
 to buy. A man must live somehow, damn it all. I don't 
 know what the devil some of us would do if there weren't 
 fools about. Have another drink ? " 
 
 " It should be my shout this time." 
 
 " Very well. I'll repeat." 
 
 He did repeat, and he repeated a good many times before 
 we finally parted. I will say for him that the day was hot 
 enough. But his manner was that of one to whom his whiskey 
 was a habit much the same as blowing his nose might be. 
 
 " Are you married ? " I asked. I still felt my whimsical 
 oddity, and asked the question purely out of mischief. 
 
 " Damn my aunt, that's good : when I can get the same 
 pleasures without any of the bother ! Not much ! You 
 aren't ? " 
 
 " Oh yes." 
 
 " Sorry I spoke then. Each to his own kind of pleasure, I 
 suppose." 
 
 My dream-world (if so it may be called) passed away at this, 
 and I saw him in the full light of day with something of 
 revulsion, and a profounder feeling of tragedy, for I had often 
 thought of my old chum Cartwright. I changed the subject. 
 
 " Have you ever seen anything of Ransome ? " I asked, 
 thinking of the other member of the trio of chums that had 
 once existed, with myself as the connecting link. 
 
 " Good God, yes ! We spent one or two of our holidays 
 together. But he was a squeamish sort of devil, and couldn't 
 get on with a man like me, I suppose. He is the manager 
 of some engineering works in Kent, and is doing damned well, 
 I believe. He got married too." 
 
 " And old Warner ? " 
 
 " Oh, he's some damned dean, or canon, or something of 
 that kind in the goody-goody line. He always was a par- 
 
I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 269 
 
 sonical kind of devil. He wrote to me a lot once, hoping to 
 convert me, I suppose/' And as he snorted in contempt I 
 could not help recalling that he had once been Warner's great 
 favourite at school. 
 
 My mood of whimsey had now effectually passed ; I could 
 no more regard him as from another world ; and so I found it 
 hard to continue speaking with him. I declared my inten- 
 tion of proceeding on my way; whereupon he declared his 
 intention of coming along with me. 
 
 We did not stir reminiscences again. We held firmly to the 
 ordinary topical course of conversation. We threaded our 
 way through the network of streets in the direction of Charing 
 Cross, where he at last complained of the heat of the day and 
 suggested another drink. I professed haste, and as we parted 
 he turned in to satisfy his thirst. 
 
 I said nothing to Rhoda of our meeting. It was typical 
 of my mood at that time that I had begun a strangely isolated 
 life within my mind, where the very isolation was the chief 
 source of pleasure. I sat that evening smoking in my study, 
 passing in review my schooldays. Frank, Cartwright and 
 Ransome were the chief figures in the procession. One I had 
 never seen since his impulsive farewell of me, nor did I wish 
 to see him, for my inconceivable distance from the other two 
 afflicted me ; Cartwright was as far removed as a man could 
 be ; and my own brother, in his splendid house at Brighton, 
 and his distant patronage of the things I cared for, was in no 
 better case. 
 
 Later on, Ramsay came in for a smoke, and from him I 
 learnt that Rhoda had gone out. But I said nothing to him. 
 I felt as though I could let no skiffs from the mainland push 
 off for the island in which I passed my mental life. 
 
270 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 XVIII 
 
 I AWAKE 
 
 This state of affairs could not long continue. It continues, 
 to be sure, in an amazing mass of the married lives of England : 
 the husband going his one way, and the wife her other, neither 
 of their orbits touching the other save at the solemn ritual 
 of meals. But it could not continue. Each of us had our 
 ideals that it affronted. 
 
 I am not going to follow out the perplexed mental laby- 
 rinth by which we arrived at the solution of our tragic-comedy. 
 Outside my own introspective curiosity it can have little 
 interest. My island-life continued without intermission for 
 some months ; indeed, it has, since that time, become more or 
 less a fixed constitution of my mind. But I began to be afraid 
 of it in time, because I saw the effect it was having on 
 Rhoda. 
 
 It is impossible in life to serve only one loyalty. Whether 
 I would or not my major loyalty had to be my Art, for it was 
 to me not an execution only, but an explanation of the whole 
 purpose of life, mine and others, in its implicit philosophy. 
 Disloyalty to it would have made me no more than a foam of 
 the wave flung up on the sand. But part of that inspiration 
 (to put it at its humblest) was founded in love and the disci- 
 pline of strife, in both of which Rhoda and I had been married. 
 I considered, once or twice, the idea of parting from her, of 
 going my own way and relinquishing her to hers, but it was, 
 even in my thought, like the pain of tearing limb from limb. 
 It was not to be endured even in the fancy. 
 
 These were, in the old figure, the horns of my dilemma. In 
 philosophical phrase, the antinomy was constitutional. Any 
 resolution, to me then, seemed annihilation. 
 
 I began to evade the real weight of the issue by pretending 
 to myself that my indifference was only sulkiness, and by 
 forcing myself to seek Rhoda out and live my life with her. 
 During the late summer of that year, and all the succeeding 
 winter, we lived a social life together, and even renewed much 
 of our affectionate interchange. But it was an empty show, 
 for " The Robes of Wisdom " continued untouched, and that 
 fact lay like lead on my spirit. She knew it as well as I. 
 
I AWAKE 271 
 
 I had so far lost touch with her that I found it hard to follow 
 the developing attitude of her mind, save at moments when 
 the warmth either of affection or opposition brought our 
 spirits together, and so I could not say how she thought about 
 our new, and unsatisfactory, union of life. But it was plain 
 to me that she as much as I had her island-life, at least so 
 tar as I was concerned. And I was full of fears because of 
 that. 
 
 It was a figure of our life now that when, in the spring, her 
 next novel was published, neither of us made any allusion to 
 the fact. We skirted it decorously. There was no dinner in 
 celebration, nor did I see a copy of the book, save in book- 
 sellers' windows. We neither of us went into the other's 
 study. And that was the symbol of the hidden warfare. 
 
 It flamed out at the least provocation, and was as dis- 
 creetly covered again. For example, we had once been out to 
 a private show at some Picture Exhibition, and as it was late 
 were standing at the corner of Piccadilly deciding where we 
 should dine. It was too late to go home, and as we were not 
 (in society's slang) dressed, our choice was restricted. I 
 declared for one of the places I was in the habit of frequenting, 
 she for a select place that I feared. I, for myself, could not 
 afford the object of her choice, and so our contention really 
 became a symbol again, as most of our contentions were in 
 the habit of becoming. 
 
 Then I saw a familiar figure crossing the road from New 
 Coventry Street. " Here's Tim," I cried, " he shall join 
 us." 
 
 It was one of the most uncomfortable meals I have ever 
 known. Rhoda said nothing to Tim the whole meal through, 
 save in one or two frigid replies to enquiries of his. Conse- 
 quently the conversation between Tim and myself was 
 almost as awkward. And it was the same on our way 
 home. 
 
 Small blame to him, nothing could induce Tim to enter the 
 Louse. He was virtually a stranger to our flat, and so, 
 having seen Rhoda in, I went along with him for awhile. 
 
 Tim was the last person on the earth to display resent- 
 ment, but there was keen resentment in his voice as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " I'm sorry Mrs. Elthorne doesn't like me, let me say, Jack. 
 
272 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 But she needn't wave it out like a flag, I may add. Not a 
 bit of it." 
 
 " I am sorry, Tim/' I said, taking his arm. It would have 
 been stupid to have disguised the fact. Besides, what right 
 had Rhoda to treat my friends so ? I was commonly civil 
 with her Fortescue person. Tim, in our new way of life, was 
 presumably a " vulgar person." 
 
 " You aren't publishing any more books, let me say, old 
 man," Tim added, and the point of the remark was so obvious 
 that I flushed. It was a strange thing to find Tim coming out 
 in attack. Like most peaceable persons he was uncommonly 
 direct in attack. 
 
 " My next book needs a lot of thinking over," I said, and 
 it was true for, though I could not write at it, my thought had 
 struck on some new developments in it. 
 
 " Not writing," he continued incisively. 
 
 " There isn't much need for it in the present state of 
 affairs." 
 
 " You are drifting, old Jack, I may say. Old Ramsay and 
 I were talking about it the other day. The hit has gone out of 
 
 you. Oh yes ! You don't stir things up now and " 
 
 He halted, for my distress must have been obvious. 
 
 " Oh, Tim," I said out, " what in the name of heaven am I 
 to do ? This life is killing me. It's a contradiction of all 
 that I stand for. My life's based on it ; in fact, it is partly 
 based on two things that drift naturally apart, and how on 
 earth can I resolve it ? " 
 
 " You can write, what's say ? If I could write how I 
 would live then, and not bother about the outside. You can 
 do that, eh what ? what's say ? " 
 
 He was eager to help me, feverishly eager, but he could not 
 understand my difficulty. How could he, when it was an 
 enigma to myself ? And when we parted he was, dear old 
 fellow, nearly in tears at my distress, and as much puzzled at 
 the cause of it. His handshake was a thing to remember. 
 
 I determined to attack Rhoda fiercely about her attitude to 
 Tim ; and doubtless she had come to the same resolve about 
 my insistence on Tim's companionship ; for between the two 
 resolves, while each waited for the other, it fell to the ground 
 between us, and was not mentioned. 
 
 But I was resolved to wake from my lethargy, to continue 
 
THE BLOW FALLS 273 
 
 my book, and, if need be, to assail the enemy first by a 
 powerful attack so as to justify my position and hold it firm 
 before the enemy. Tim had said I no longer stirred things 
 up. It was a penetrating remark. I resolved to stir things 
 up. 
 
 XIX 
 
 THE BLOW FALLS 
 
 I did so. More than a little feverishly I went round the 
 following day in the attempt to procure reviewing ; to procure 
 books of such a kind as would enable me to strike my sword 
 In the proper place. It is not my conception of reviewing, but 
 such was my mood. It was rather a foolish, even a petulant, 
 mood, yet there it was. And what should destiny put into 
 my hands but Ella Fortescue's latest sentimental romance ! 
 
 I am not going to put the weight of it on the shoulders of 
 destiny. It was I who accepted the book whoever and 
 whatever it was that placed it there. And I accepted three 
 copies of the book, for three separate reviews. Two of them, 
 t should be said to my credit, I returned, for I have always 
 attempted to hold myself free from the churlish, and often 
 far from disinterested, practice of writing four or five anony- 
 mous attacks on the one book, such as some men habitually do. 
 The third I kept was for a journal that signed its reviews ; 
 and succinctly and gleefully, over my proper signature, I 
 attempted to show that the tendency of this manner of thing 
 could only be, in the highest sense, irreligious, immoral, and 
 decadent, since such things were the natural outcome of 
 sentimentality, a corruptive lack of forceful spirituality, 
 snobbery and effete religiosity. 
 
 I enjoyed that article as I had enjoyed few things for the 
 
 T 
 
274 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 better part of two years. But before I despatched it I felt 
 in honour bound to show it to Rhoda. 
 
 " I thought you had better see this before I sent it, Rhoda/ 1 
 I said, handing it to her one morning after breakfast. 
 
 I scanned the daily paper while she read it. How often 
 she did so I do not know, for it was long ere she spoke. 
 
 " Do you find it necessary to send this, Jack ? " at length 
 she said. 
 
 I looked up, but said nothing. She held my paper in her 
 hand, and, as she looked on it, her forehead was puckered in 
 a curious perplexity, that seemed uncertain of the form into 
 which it should resolve itself. 
 
 " I don't see/' she explained, " that you need go out of 
 your way to attack Ella's book/' 
 
 " It's not an unfair review/' I said. 
 
 " I suppose it's not," she admitted slowly. 
 
 " I refrain from any hint of personality, I give instances 
 for every fault I charge indeed, she would admit my instances, 
 and probably call them social virtues ; and it is plain that I 
 am concerned for something far more important than the 
 mere business of book-making. It is signed, you see, and 
 therefore honourable." 
 
 " It wouldn't so much matter if it were not signed," she said. 
 I looked at her in surprise. Was she merely jealous of her 
 friend, or was this my old Rhoda seeing the thing, for a 
 moment, from the old point of view that was as much hers as 
 mine at one time ? But she was inscrutable. 
 
 " You mean that I must cease attacking certain kinds of hum- 
 bug when I see them, at one sudden moment, because at that 
 one moment you have taken to yourself a friend who is one 
 of the foremost examples of them I should say, teachers 
 of them. I must sheath my sword, I must fold my banner, 
 and spend my days in sleep, because my wife has gone over 
 to one of the opposing camps. You must come and spill the 
 cup of what I, in my strange way, consider my destiny, into 
 the sand and claim that right because I love you." 
 
 She looked steadily at me as I spoke. Suddenly, to both 
 of us, our cleavage seemed a sharp and distinct thing. The 
 recognition of it entered into our speech. 
 
 " And you claim, I suppose, that your work fulfils the great 
 claims you make here ? " 
 
THE BLOW FALLS 275 
 
 " I would rather claim nothing now I am not working/' 
 
 " You do so claim/' 
 
 " Very well, I do. So did you : once." 
 
 " Do you consider the humiliation this would put on 
 me ? " 
 
 " It pains me to consider it/' 
 
 " I thought you didn't believe in reviews of attack/' 
 
 " Not unsigned. But this has become a kind of symbol in 
 my spiritual freedom. It will not diminish her popularity, 
 I may say. Her sales will still continue to be the envy of us 
 all." 
 
 " You do well to speak of envy." 
 
 " If you think that, you are right to say it." 
 
 After a lengthy silence she rose up, and presently returned 
 to the room ready for the weather. 
 
 " You are going out ? " I said. 
 
 " I am going to Ella," she replied. 
 
 Holding my review in my hand I turned her remark over in 
 my mind while she fastened her gloves. In the drawn battle 
 she went over to the adversary, so it seemed. It was a 
 curious fulfilment of my earlier remark. The whole thing 
 was very complicated too. 
 
 " What to do ? " I asked. 
 
 " To tell her of your attack." 
 
 I rose up and faced her. 
 
 " Rhoda," I said, " if I went out and was unfaithful with 
 my body to you, you would consider yourself justly affronted. 
 If the mind is greater than the body, isn't a mental unfaithful- 
 ness a greater matter than a bodily ?' " 
 
 " The thing isn't comparable at all." 
 
 " No, it isn't, it's identical." 
 
 ' That's a verbal quip." 
 
 " It isn't, really : but still ! I say you are being mentally 
 unfaithful in allying yourself with my mental foe." 
 
 " I'm afraid," she said with fine scorn, " you are rather 
 old-fashioned. You want me to be your mental chattel." 
 
 " I despise mental chattels, and I could never despise you. 
 ] may remind you, too, that there are many would consider 
 you old-fashioned in objecting to bodily unfaithfulness." 
 
 " We can't stand for ever haggling like this. I am going 
 out to call on Ella/' 
 
276 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 All the bitterness of years frothed up into my brain at this, 
 and her clean, decisive way of saying it. 
 
 " And you are right to go/' I said. " You are not being 
 unfaithful at all. You are declaring your mental identity 
 with the object of my attack, my honest and necessary attack. 
 You were unfaithful years ago, and it is to Ella Fortescue 
 you owe the major fidelity now. You are not being unfaithful 
 now, you are being faithful ; that is how it is. That is the 
 shattering irony of it, for our marriage is nothing but a 
 mockery in the sight of -high intention, clean strife and pure 
 Beauty. With every vital force of my being I call the curses 
 of the Centre of the Universe on the day when I invented 
 Ermott Jacob, and on all the works of Ermott Jacob/' 
 
 Striding past her where she stood I went into my room for 
 my boots. I had to go out into the open air, for I could not 
 contain myself in closed quarters. I felt as though I were 
 being stifled. 
 
 When I passed out again Rhoda was sitting before the fire, 
 looking at the flames leaping yellowy and sickly over the coals 
 in the cold autumn sunlight. I paid no heed to her, but 
 went violently out. 
 
 How I spent that day I do not remember. My mind was 
 too agitated to hold consecutive images. I have a distinct 
 memory that evening of sitting in an alcove off the lounge of 
 one of the music-halls, drinking liqueurs and holding a vigorous 
 discussion with two daughters of joy who were endeavouring 
 to convert me to an epicurean philosophy to their inter- 
 pretation of it, anyway. Only as one of them, a woman with 
 a magnificent presence, was sardonic and bitter, they did 
 not commend their inducement. It was early in the evening, 
 and when they saw I was not to be overborne, they did not 
 bother me, and were very comradely. The magnificent one had 
 had a tragic history, for she was too contemptuous of life to 
 have lied. It was fairly late when I returned, and I went 
 straight to my own room. 
 
 As Rhoda was often in the habit of having her breakfast 
 in bed it was not strange for me to have breakfast alone ; 
 but when, as I sat reading the paper afterwards, the house- 
 keeper came to ask me if I should be in or out that day, some- 
 thing odd in her manner at once caught my attention. She 
 was always a pursed-up sort of woman; but this seemed 
 
THE BLOW FALLS 277 
 
 suddenly to have become a very radiation of sniffing 
 antagonism. 
 
 " What about Mrs. Elthorne ? " I asked. 
 
 " Mrs. Elthorne ? " She seemed surprised. 
 
 " Yes/' I said militantly, " what about her ? What are 
 our arrangements for to-day ? " 
 
 At my attack she became more subdued, but it seemed to 
 take the form of cold raillery, if one may imagine raillery in 
 old parchment. 
 
 " She wasn't here last night. She left a letter for you, 
 she told me to say, in your study." 
 
 A sudden coldness seemed to seize at my very heart. I 
 could scarcely breathe for oppression, and I had the utmost 
 difficulty in sitting perfectly still, and not humbling myself 
 before this odious woman's implied raillery. Apprehension 
 laid hold of me like a fever. But I succeeded, I believe, in 
 revealing nothing, in holding myself still, and in saying as 
 though with natural impatience : 
 
 t( Very well. I'll speak to you later." 
 
 As soon as she had gone I went at once to my study, and on 
 my desk, surely enough, there was the letter from Rhoda. 
 It read simply thus : 
 
 " DEAR JACK, 
 
 " / have been thinking a lot over what you said, and I 
 have decided to leave you. Many times I have thought of 
 it, for everything has gone wrong with us the two years or 
 so now closing. But as I made up my mind that if ever I left 
 you it would be finally, never to return, I had no wish to come 
 to a sudden decision. Now I am going. It will be useless to 
 try to write to me, for I shall leave no address. You will not 
 be able to find me, and I shall not return. Our ways had 
 much better be apart. That is decided. 
 
 " Don't forget you are due to go to the Statham Willies for 
 ihe week-end. I have written to say that I can't come, and 
 ihat you will come alone. I shall write next week explaining 
 why, but you had better keep up the farce of my being ill, 
 as I said. 
 
 " The keys are with Miss Kerr. She will look after you well. 
 Of course you have your cheque-book ; and you must use it. 
 You may not like Ermott Jacob, but you have a kind of right 
 
278 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 in that property. You invented the name, and yon invented 
 the style. I would not have thought of it myself. 
 " I hope you will be well and comfortable. 
 
 " RHODA." 
 
 The letter had evidently been dashed off in haste. I read 
 it again, not now perturbedly, but bitterly, and in a vain 
 attempt to penetrate to the mind of the writer. Did she 
 really think, knowing me, that I should continue to draw 
 Ermott Jacob's money ? Either she had become more 
 remote from me than even I had thought, or she wished to 
 snatch a virtue easily. I decided on the former as preferable. 
 Then about the Statham Willies it was ridiculous. I sat 
 down forthwith, and wrote saying that unfortunately I could 
 not come, briefly saying why. 
 
 Curiously my grief seemed to have become cold and dead in 
 me. I lit my pipe, and sat before my fire, proposing to think 
 things out. But I fear my ruminations became a bitter 
 setting-forth of my wrongs to the undeliberating coals. For 
 the first time in my life I took knowledge of my age. Once 
 a paroxysm of torment would have seized on me, but now, to 
 the maturer settlement my mind had achieved, a grimness, a 
 caustic bitterness, had seized on me. The shock, I vaguely 
 realised, was more acute, it was more terrible, but it had 
 driven me in on myself, whereas once it would have driven me 
 out in abandon. The make-up of my mind had, I suppose, 
 become inverted. 
 
 Again before my eyes there came the vision of flowing hills 
 misty beneath an attentive moon, and again it seemed to me 
 I was walking on them in deep and mystical communion with 
 a Presence with Whom communion meant unutterable peace. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon ere I went out. I walked up to 
 the West, and walked about the West, slowly and quietly, 
 thinking of nothing, but living acutely in my perceptions. 
 The curious contrast of the silver-blue arc-lights with the 
 richer, tawny-golden arc-lights, defying each other, and 
 throwing a strangely-mingled union of their colours up against 
 the black sky ; the way in which the evening damp caused a 
 new faint light to be reflected from pavement and street ; 
 the challenging reds and greens of the repeating advertisements 
 that seemed somehow not to mingle with the general com- 
 
THE BLOW FALLS 279 
 
 plexion of light, but to break into a crude flower of words, and 
 be shut away into darkness, as though they had nothing to do 
 with the luminous haze that shone elsewhere ; the peculiarly 
 penetrating quality of the lights thrown from jewellers' 
 windows and sweet-stuff windows : all were attentively 
 noted by me, and adjusted into their respective balances. 
 
 The people, too, my eye observed carefully, if automatically, 
 and I dimly realised that some of those I observed seemed to 
 resent it, while others flashed a bright and hopeful exchange. 
 But as neither could have reached my mind till long after the 
 event, they only formed part of a confused retrospect. It 
 was so I became distantly aware of a battered bowler hat, a 
 bearded, pinched, dirty face and a disastrous pair of boots 
 standing in a gutter, with a trunk to the curious person of a 
 concert advertisement ! 
 
 It seemed so quaint as it reverberated on my memory that 
 I smiled grimly to myself (for I was in little mood for smiling) 
 as I turned towards the place the advertisement had indicated. 
 It was late, but that mattered little. I stood on the floor 
 of the house, packed among a closely massed host of listeners, 
 from whose lips many wisps of blue smoke were curling to the 
 dome above, like a fragrant incense of thanksgiving. I did 
 not know what it was that was being played as I entered, but 
 the clang and joyous excitement of Bach was unmistakable. 
 What a sunlit mind was his ! Then Brahms' Second Concerto 
 came, and the majesty of the Allegro, coming upon Bach's 
 resonancy, followed by the haunting melancholy of the Andante, 
 so perfectly coloured by the violoncello, swept me from dream 
 to dream, from the dull pain of bitterness to a kingship that 
 stood up on the heights and knew itself divine. The prolix 
 and facile Mozart intervened for a spell with some song an 
 intruder in that company surely ! and then Beethoven's 
 Seventh Symphony cried its musical adventure through my 
 brain. It is impossible for pen to describe my mood as I stood 
 and heard. I had not heard it for some three years, and now 
 it swept over me with a significance altogether new. The 
 wonderful second movement so far fitted in with my earlier 
 mood as to uproot all my being, and leave no part of me that 
 did not shiver with ecstasy. When the third movement 
 concluded, I vaguely feared an anti-climax in the Allegro. 
 But I was either very happily attuned, or the conducting was 
 
28o JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 singularly swayed by the rhythm of the whole, for its true 
 value was caught ; with wings that seemed to beat swiftly 
 in a thinning air it swept through its course, and left the 
 earthly ecstasy in the heavenly places. 
 
 As I walked all the way home I scarcely knew if I did or 
 indeed did not tread on the clouds. But one thing I knew of 
 a surety. I knew that I was nearer than I ever yet had been 
 to walking on the mountains that were so continually haunting 
 my vision. 
 
 XX 
 
 SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 The sun streamed across my room. It was one of those rich 
 autumn mornings when the air flows like wine not the young 
 and sparkling vintage of the spring, but quiet, tawny and 
 mature. In the gardens of some square that could be seen 
 from my bedroom window, a young thrush could be heard 
 practising his newly discovered power of song. As I heard 
 him I could imagine him. I could see his throat swell with 
 some unsuspected phrase, and then I could see him suddenly 
 stop, with a poise of head that said clearly : " Did I do that ? 
 Did that come from me ? That was an astonishing good 
 thing to have done ; let me try it again." I chuckled to myself 
 as I sprang out of bed and tried to find him. But he defied 
 my search. 
 
 It was not until I was nearly dressed that I suddenly realised 
 that I was now alone in the world. I stopped, facing the 
 situation. It seemed inconceivable ; and a cry of " Rhoda, 
 my wife, you cannot surely mean this/' broke from my lips. 
 I tried to imagine what she was doing, where she was, 
 what her purposes were : and then my mind, in the natural 
 reflex of maturity guarding against the pangs of youth, 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 281 
 
 sharpened quickly to a cynic bitterness, that was, in its 
 degree, invaluable. Yet the strangeness of cynicism, to me, 
 was its own pain. 
 
 Nevertheless I put my hand into my pocket for Rhoda's 
 letter. I drew out, instead, my own letter to Lady Statham 
 Willie. I had not sent it and she would be expecting me 
 after all. I thought at once of sending a telegram, and then 
 my mood began to play with the idea of going down there after 
 all. 
 
 The result was that I was soon speeding through sun- 
 washed landscapes to Hampshire, where the Statham Willies 
 had their country house. 
 
 Lady Willie received me with her usual effusiveness for it 
 is past the bounds of possibility, surely, that anyone should 
 feel such a strain of warmheartedness towards all her guests. 
 vShe lamented with me about Rhoda's illness (upon which I 
 said nothing), informed me that I was just in time for lunch, 
 and assumed I w r ould go out with the guns afterwards. Did 
 I not shoot ? Never mind, said she, there would be other 
 men following also. 
 
 I would have avoided the ordinary rout at another time, but 
 I now began to cling to society, for my morning alone had 
 been searched and scorched with pain. I so shrank from a 
 renewal of that blind and fruitless appeal of my emotions that 
 the company of a stolid, unimaginative baronet was preferable. 
 He was one of those men who are usually praised as being 
 cypically English. It may or may not be a just eulogy. I 
 should have called him stupid and dull-minded, neither 
 interesting in his strong untutoredness nor exciting in his 
 clear refinement a cipher only, calling for cancellation as 
 promptly as decency would allow. He was a sort of moneyed 
 edition of what Cartwright had become, with a kind of energy 
 that he wasted in sport, but which might have been profitably 
 employed in sawing wood or drawing lumber. I suppose, 
 iiowever, he was typical enough. 
 
 Our few miles to the covers would have been an interesting 
 study in psychology, except that studies in self-satisfied 
 stupidity are profitless enough. God did not make man 
 stupid and self-contented, he became that through his own 
 sloth of mind : and artists, in the degree of their artistry, are 
 interested in creative powers, not in producing blocks of inertia. 
 
282 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 The glorious autumn afternoon, flooding hill and dale rich 
 with colours, seemed to mean nothing to my companion. It 
 indicated to him the prospect of a good shoot, merely. I 
 pointed out to him the glory of the sunlight as it streamed into 
 a beech wood hanging along the brow of a hill, making its 
 copper carpet to glow like liquid metal. It was a wonderful 
 sight and so filled my mind with excitement that my very 
 blood ran more swiftly in my veins. Surely there are few 
 moments more wonderful in the life of man on earth than when 
 such a sight strikes across the mind with its incommunicable 
 ecstasy. But my companion looked shortly in the direction I 
 indicated, said, " Rather jolly, isn't it ? " and strode briefly on. 
 I remembered that at lunch he had exclaimed scornfully against 
 uneducated workmen and labourers having political power. 
 I thought him rather an excellent person to talk, he with all 
 his advantages, and this stupendous result ! 
 
 Presently I heard a flutter ahead, and saw a most glorious 
 sight. A beautiful cock-pheasant, in his wonderful suit of 
 colour, flew up into the golden sunlight and headed straight 
 for us. It was a thing to feast one's eyes upon. He seemed 
 like a beautiful jewel, gifted with the miracle of life, sailing 
 through a heaven of gold and blue, when suddenly a noise 
 jarred on the silence, and I saw him stagger and fall. Bravely 
 he arrested his fall, however, and flew upwards again, with 
 obvious effort, when the noise jarred again, and I saw him 
 fall like a bolt to the earth. 
 
 I was staggered and mystified. The whole thing seemed 
 horrible and inconceivable to me. Then I saw my companion 
 standing beside me, with a gun that smoked at both its 
 barrels. I felt the horror of the thing drive all the blood from 
 my face, and my hands grew clammy and cold. Without a 
 thought of what I did, and without an instant's hesitation I 
 struck him with all my force under his ear. He staggered 
 backwards, dazed (for I was not light of blow), and the gun 
 fell from his hands. 
 
 " You monstrous coward," I cried at him. " You damnable 
 traitor." 
 
 " What the devil do you mean ? " he said, putting his hand 
 to the place where my blow began to shine out in a red 
 patch. 
 
 " You are a damned coward, sir. You choose to mutilate 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 283 
 
 a thing of beauty, and choose it because it can't retaliate 
 on you/' Other and cruder objurgations followed this, I 
 fear. 
 
 " You're a damned sentimentalist," he said. " Get out ! " 
 
 His stolid contempt (contempt from that unrefined bull !) 
 made my bubbling pot to boil finally over. I have a dim 
 memory of someone seizing hold of me, whom I threw 
 impatiently off. 
 
 " You'll defend yourself in this case, anyway," I cried, 
 " and prove if you be coward or no." 
 
 I remember he seemed rather contemptuous in his defence 
 at first, as I sprang at him. He had a sudden surprise, I 
 imagine, for I was not quite unacquainted with his national 
 defence, and I made some pretty work on his face before he 
 quite realised the state of affairs. Again someone laid hold 
 of me. I suppose it was a compliment to me that it was not 
 he whom they handled. A perfect fury had seized hold of 
 me, and it is possible that the pain and restraint of the past 
 twenty-four hours added irritability to my anger. I know I 
 flung them off, whoever they were that had seized me, and 
 1 know that my stolid baronet presented an uncomely spectacle 
 before we were finally parted. 
 
 I remember seeing Sir Statham Willie standing before me 
 with a pale face and horrified manner. 
 
 " Mr. Elthorne," he said, " I am very much surprised." 
 
 " I expect Sir Hugh Ackworth is a great deal more surprised," 
 I said jocosely, and strode away from the company. 
 
 I was glad and gay as I strode over the fields. A grand 
 exultation filled me, and I longed for nothing so much as to 
 take each of that shooting party in turn, with or without 
 weapons that is, if they were so anxious for sport as they 
 professed to be. But I doubt that their conception of sport 
 \Vcis not the shedding of blood where their foe was too frail to 
 retaliate. Come to that, sport is only justly so called at equal 
 odds, and by that standard there is but little sport in the 
 world. Even tiger-shooters slink up on to elephants. And 
 assuredly, the picture of a solemn row of men, standing eagerly, 
 each with a fire-arm in his hand, because of a rush of pheasants, 
 should be the mock of supernal beings ! No, I was not 
 ashamed. I was glad and very gay. 
 
 But then a great sadness came over me. I strolled into an 
 
284 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 adjacent copse, wishing to sit down and think things out. 
 As I strode through the brushwood I disturbed some pheasants, 
 that flew wildly away from me. But the rustling continued, 
 and, pulling aside the bracken, I saw a pool and trail of blood. 
 Following it out I came upon a young hen-pheasant cruelly 
 wounded. It shrank fearfully away from me. I had to put 
 it to death, because one of its legs and half its wing were 
 nearly shot away ; but as I did so that fresh English grass 
 was wet with bitter tears, and they were not only of grief. 
 Hopeless, impotent rage shook me. Rage at the irreligious, 
 nay sacrilegious, land where such things were habitual 
 amusement, filled me. No wonder the making of beauty 
 was neglected in it ! 
 
 Dusk was already heavy over the countryside before I 
 returned. In my room my clothes were laid carefully out on 
 my bed for dinner, but I seized hold of them and roughly 
 bundled them back into my bag. In the hall I could hear 
 men's voices from the billiard-room. Doubtless they were 
 discussing my breach of what they called their etiquette. 
 Well, they could continue to discuss, for all I cared ! As I 
 threw on my overcoat Lady Statham Willie came into the 
 hall. 
 
 " I am going, Lady Statham/' I said. " I cannot stay here 
 longer/' 
 
 " I am sorry/' she said, for the first time with a restraint in 
 her smile. " Of course I have every sympathy with your 
 protest a man of your sensibilities." 
 
 " Excuse me, Lady Statham, that cannot be. I noticed 
 the wing of a beautiful bird in your hat to-day." 
 
 " You will excuse me," she said proudly, " but do you not 
 rather forget the address of a gentleman to a lady ? " 
 
 " My dear madam," I replied, " I think it is time we refused 
 the title of gentleman or gentlewoman either to those who 
 butcher, trade in butchery, or accept its results." And I 
 fled down the steps with my bag into the dark. 
 
 I had to wait long on that exposed countryside platform 
 for a train, and when I reached London it was exceedingly 
 late. I could not very well return home. It would hardly 
 have been fair, for I had said I would be away for the week- 
 end, and probably my pursed-up bit of parchment was 
 entertaining friends at my expense. No, I would not bend 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 285 
 
 to what would look like a trick ; besides, I yearned for 
 company. 
 
 Therefore, I did the one thing I could do : I went round 
 to see Ramsay. His man told me Tim was there also, and 
 I was doubly glad. 
 
 My attire, and the bag I bore, were the first things that 
 attracted attention, and I was at once challenged for an 
 explanation. I gave it. I walked up and down that room, 
 pouring out the hideous tale in all its hideousness, and it 
 was long before the rushing anger of my words abated. 
 
 " And so you came away ? " Tim then said. 
 
 " And wouldn't you have done so ? " I asked. 
 
 " Wouldn't have been there, first place, let me say/' he 
 declared. <( But," he added after a while, " what about 
 Mrs. E. ? Leave her in it ? " 
 
 Then for the first time for many hours I remembered 
 Rhoda's flight. I had not even given it a thought when I 
 had decided to come round to Ramsay's flat. 
 
 " Oh," I said awkwardly, " I had forgotten that. She has 
 left me," I said. " She left me yesterday. I am alone now." 
 
ACT IV 
 
 IRELAND 
 I 
 
 BY WAY OF RETROSPECT 
 
 We all of us, as we look back over our days, must needs be 
 impressed with coincidences and correspondences in them 
 that lead us inevitably to the conception of a governing 
 destiny. Some like to scoff at it as a pathetic fallacy of the 
 highest degree, but there are none immune from it ; and, 
 for myself, I have never been of the school that thinks a 
 desire is to be trusted inversely in the degree of its prevalence. 
 To such a school the fact that all men, and all races of men, 
 desire a certain thing most ardently (immortality, for example) 
 is a convincing proof that that thing is a superstition, and 
 consequently to be distrusted. Presumably, to it, if one man 
 only desired a thing, and only came to desire it because of a 
 long isolation from his fellows, whatever it was he desired 
 (personal extinction, possibly) would be considered as a highly 
 reasonable thing. However, that kind of squint misanthropy 
 has never won my love. I have a strong conviction that a 
 destiny ruled my days, and I am never more sure of it than 
 when I contemplate this precise juncture in my life. Many 
 lines converge at this point, but from the outlook of my work, 
 from that, in other words, which has been to me the cause 
 of my being, the confluence is seen most markedly. 
 
 It is one of the penalties of an autobiography of this kind 
 that it should pre-suppose what does not appear. I have 
 
BY WAY OF RETROSPECT 287 
 
 sought to minimise this as much as possible by dealing briefly 
 with the outlines of each of my more characteristic books as 
 it appeared : for my wish has been to make this book complete 
 in itself. In pursuance of this desire let me therefore, quite 
 succinctly, survey my mental progress to the moment, thus 
 to show how strangely things have fitted in, and how clearly 
 my next step seemed marked out for me. 
 
 My earliest vague desires for oratory or rather, not so 
 much desire for oratory, as daydreams wherein I already was 
 the orator replete with mastery that were crushed in school- 
 days, and brushed aside in the stress of self-styled business, 
 were shown to have been a definite reaching forward of my 
 spirit directly Ramsay came into my life. It was possibly 
 part of the same chance or destiny that directs our lives that 
 he should have put into my hands, of all conceivable books, 
 " Sartor Resartus." On that basis my dreams began at once 
 rapidly to crystallise into their ordained shapes. Voice spake 
 to voice there, and the whole force of my nature rushed into 
 a channel where its pace and continuance were decreed by its 
 own momentum. 
 
 " Sartor Resartus " is, I suppose, a kind of oratory : not 
 the framed oratory of the logician, but the impulsive oratory 
 of the poet. At any rate I began to dream books that were 
 clearly derived from that book. My sketches and essays 
 were only disciplinary exercises towards these books that were 
 framing themselves in my mind. None of them were ever 
 written. For the crystallisation went on, and, in the days and 
 hours that succeeded, other books began to be framed where 
 I held myself free of the closer derivation, where I, indeed, 
 attacked some of the fundamental principles of that book. 
 I conceived men who were heroes in the sense that they had 
 seen some vision of the earth, some synthesis of man's life and 
 aspirations, some conception of Beauty, which they steadfastly 
 sought to interpret to men in the terms of some Art ; pigment, 
 stone or words. To me the Artist has always seemed the 
 Supreme Teacher, not in the little pedagogic sense, not in 
 the loud-voiced, brass-tone way of those who declare the 
 complete will of God to elect audiences, but in the calm fact 
 of his vision of what was beautiful, and his creation of a 
 form that should give it a partial expression. It is idle to 
 say (it is only the idlers who do say) that to make a thing of 
 
288 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 beauty is not to teach. Of course it is to teach ; it teaches in 
 the supremest of possible ways. Let me here quote some 
 words from " Henry Hibbert," words that I put into the 
 chapter on " His Notebook." 
 
 " What then is this Venus of Milo ? What may we mean 
 ' by saying it is beautiful ? This, and surely this only, that, 
 ' apart from the most natural outworkings and differences of 
 ' personality, woman should be, nay in fact is, thus. Very 
 ' well then, what follows ? Must we halt here and idle, and 
 ' let our rich minds fall into surfeit with contemplation ? Is 
 ' it not too terribly clear that if woman, not only should be, 
 ' but is, thus, that every one who employs a woman under con- 
 ' ditions that forbid, or hinder, her from attaining that beauty 
 ' is uttering a blasphemy that will recoil on his soul in the Being 
 1 to come with a terrible vengeance, with a fire that cannot be 
 ' quenched because he, and he alone, has kindled it ? It is not 
 ' only a physical beauty, a rich contour and grace, let it be 
 1 marked. It might have that and yet fail. But note that 
 ' poise of head, that intellectual dignity, that wise brow and 
 1 eye ! There is beauty indeed. They who sin against it (in 
 ' the name of Commerce, Industry, what you will) are sinning 
 ' the one unforgiveable sin as surely as he who thrusts a stone 
 ' down a mountain side cannot recall it, or stay the avalanche 
 ' it may cause. I tremble as I stand outside factory-gates and 
 ' see emerge in a stream these defaced, despoiled, butchered 
 ' Venuses of Milo. Defaced by whom ? Despoiled for what ? 
 ' Butchered in what cause ? By money-mongers and for 
 ' money-mongering always. In some moods I could shout 
 ' with savage joy to think of the terrible vengeance where the 
 ' worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched that they 
 ' themselves have made for themselves. In some moods I 
 1 could well believe that I will laugh with the same savage 
 ' joy, with the same mocking exultation, when these same 
 ' blasphemers against beauty will have pressed into the depth 
 ' of their souls, will they nill they, the earnings of their lives. 
 ' And yet I know it will be a terrible thing to see. And what 
 ' of the maker of this Venus of Milo in that day ? What of 
 ' Agesandros, the son of Menides of Antioch ? I tell you, he 
 ' will be one of the chief witnesses. Why ? Because he has 
 ' been that all the centuries, as every artist in his manner and 
 ' degree cannot but be. No wonder some industrialists wish 
 
BY WAY OF RETROSPECT 289 
 
 ' to destroy, or frustrate, things of beauty in the name of 
 ' utility. No wonder they seek to patronise the artist, to 
 ' vitiate him, to diminish the vigour of his Art. It is the 
 ' instinct of self -protection, it is the arm thrown out to fend 
 ' the blow. But it is unavailing : ' As a man soweth so shall 
 ' he reap/ See what a wonderful thing is this Venus of 
 ' Milo by this Agesandros : Agesandros the artist, Agesandros 
 ' the witness, Agesandros the judge, but Agesandros also the 
 ' teacher, the incomparable guide to the better way ! " 
 
 Here, in the finding of this one quotation, I have spent 
 the whole morning reading through " Henry Hibbert," and 
 it rings as wondrously as ever it did. I have severe question- 
 ings over my books sometimes, especially the earlier books, 
 but a reading such as this morning's fills me with vigour. 
 Yet here is the point I have indicated, stated unequivocally. 
 Yet in my early work (in the phrase of Henry Hibbert) I 
 had been less content to be a witness and more anxious to 
 force the application ; I had wished to be more eloquent 
 in declamation than in wisdom. 
 
 It was so for a particular reason. The life I was compelled 
 to lead for a livelihood must be remembered. What chance 
 had I of cultivating meditation and vision, working, as I had 
 to, twelve to fifteen hours a day ? And without the deep 
 cultivation of one's vision one cannot rely fully on creation, 
 for how can one create a form for which one has not yet 
 seen the thing awaiting the form ? There are only two things 
 to be done. One is, to forego the vision altogether and write 
 journalism, The other is, to cling to such of the vision as is 
 clear, and fill up what is lacking (through fault of opportunity 
 or capacity) by declamation. 
 
 Yet there is a compensation. The continual act of creation 
 is itself a cultivation of vision, and, with its cultivation thus, 
 the vision must needs increase. And so, as my work went on 
 in :he course of its discipline it had become less and less 
 hortatory and more and more creative, until, in " The Robes 
 of Wisdom," the whole process faced me, demanding elements 
 in me I could not give. 
 
 In " Harland," and " Hibbert," and " Evans," I had set 
 out to depict characters, to criticise and analyse their work, 
 who lived chiefly, I can more plainly see now, as men in 
 jud ; piient on the world. Their work was partly a criticism 
 
 U 
 
290 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of life, but deliberately so rather than implicitly so. Now, 
 however, I had to come to a piece of work where I wished to 
 create a character who should be positive and constructive. 
 I had conceived the thought of a man who took his own body, 
 emotions, desires, impulses, as the basis of his Art, and who so 
 moulded and influenced himself that he laid hold on certain 
 springs of power and bent the whole society in which he lived 
 to a beautiful conception. Not that he set out so to bend it, 
 but rather that he simply influenced it by being himself. 
 To apply the terms of one Art to another he perfected the 
 technique of his spirit so that he, all unconsciously, radiated 
 power, even to the extent of subduing the so-called laws of 
 matter to his will. For his will had become the chief law, 
 being pure and altruistic. 
 
 It was, I see now (though none of my critics have thought 
 long enough on the book to hint it) , a conception fundament- 
 ally opposed to the doctrines of Nietzsche. He had opposed 
 his man of power, his Uebermensch, to the altruistic man. As 
 I worked it out, the altruistic man the true egoist, I may say, 
 not the mawkish sentimentalist was the only man who could 
 lay hold of power. He, as it were, got inside the laws of the 
 universe so that all things worked for him, whereas the 
 Uebermensch merely stored up a vengeance of spiritual law 
 against himself. The hero of " The Robes of Wisdom/' 
 despite all the faults of my workmanship, stood up strong, 
 laughed aloud, was free of his company, was healthy in the 
 spontaneity of his desires, yet was authoritative for the 
 truest of causes, inasmuch as he spoke from the centre of 
 wisdom, not fearful of the earth but gladly accepting it, and 
 yet not cringing avidly for it. He was loved widely, except 
 by the crooked of mind. These hated him, with good cause, 
 for he whipped them with his tongue, and went several 
 times to prison for assault when he flogged them with a 
 horsewhip. He was an artist, but his Art was himself, and 
 the conditions of his Art were the secret and mystical laws of 
 the universe. 
 
 It is clear that such a book demanded above all else close 
 meditation and psychic experiment. And these are not things 
 easily procured in great cities. Indeed, the surrounding 
 psychic atmosphere of rush and irritation is itself sufficient 
 to disrupt the necessary mood, the calm in which the mind 
 
BY WAY OF RETROSPECT 291 
 
 spins swiftly on itself. Night, when the world unfurls itself 
 in power and Being is unhampered, was needed, and there 
 is no Night in great cities. Night, there, is a kind of horrific 
 Day. Hills, too, were needed, for they are the centres of 
 psychic power, they are the nerve-ganglia of the earth. 
 One wanted to be able to get away from men, and sit quietly 
 until the body and spirit became part of the earth, and power 
 throbbed through one without the inhibition of a restless 
 will. One needed so to get within the spin of life that it would 
 be possible to see its little rhythms, its minuter whorls, as 
 patiently and surely as the larger rhythms, and even the 
 gigantic whorls. In such a mood it should be possible posi- 
 tively to behold life, and to wrest its secrets, to get behind 
 flowers, birds and trees, and discover what they mask, what 
 they reflect, and thus to know what they are. 
 
 Great cities obviously frustrate this. But there was another 
 frustration that I must set down fearlessly. I could never 
 vvdn such knowledge while living with Rhoda. I cannot be 
 disloyal to my steadfast companion of the early, bitter years, 
 whose courage was so wonderful, so clear-shining ; but the 
 truth must be said, brutal though I must appear to say it, 
 that I had outgrown her. That tragedy happens more often 
 in married life than some conceive, and it had come to me. 
 Had I continued to live with her, I might have been folded 
 up and put on the shelf for all the use I would have been in the 
 spiritual business of the universe. I doubt if she could ever 
 have kept pace with me in the way I had to go ; but when she 
 became enthralled with " Ermott Jacob " she not only stood 
 still, she went another way. And surely, if this life have 
 any spiritual significance, it cannot be demanded of any one 
 that he or she frustrate, or forego, that significance because 
 of a diverse mate ! 
 
 However that be, it was curious how my mind, robbed of 
 the world it asked, began to create it for itself. It shrank 
 away from Rhoda sensitively, even against my will, and it 
 began to create great hilly landscapes for its contemplation. 
 1 would sometimes (particularly while attempting to work 
 at " The Robes of Wisdom ") surprise myself living delightedly 
 in such landscapes, and walking delightedly on such hills; 
 and the thought of Rhoda, if it recurred at such moments, 
 would hurt like the cut of a whip. 
 
292 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I was ripe for a change, and it was at that precise moment 
 that the change came, along a wholly different line of approach 
 that had carefully been prepared for years. 
 
 II 
 
 MY DREAM-MOOD BEGINS TO CRYSTALLISE 
 
 It may be decided that, at a certain moment in a man's 
 physical state, an operation may be necessary before health 
 may succeed. But that does not make the operation the less 
 painful. I can quite clearly see that Rhoda and I had to part 
 before I could again take up the use of my life, but at the 
 moment my wild cry was only to get her back. 
 
 I paced to and fro about my rooms crying on her name. I 
 walked the streets fiercely, in the hope of stilling my pain, 
 or even of seeing her face, though I had a sure instinct that 
 she had gone abroad. But nothing gave me ease. To escape 
 from myself I asked Tim to come up and stay with me. This 
 he did, and I cannot tell how I would look forward to his 
 return of an evening. We would sit of an evening smoking, 
 or I would work, at odd journalistic tasks, feverishly, while 
 he would read or, as I think, watch me closely. We had 
 travelled far from the days when he sat opposite me in Thames 
 Street, and gauged my moods with that quiet instinct of his ; 
 but the change was only one of deeper stillness, for the under- 
 standing was the same. 
 
 I had not thought to let Frank know that Rhoda had left 
 me. It was, of course, negligent of me, seeing there was 
 little hope of her return ; but we moved in different worlds, 
 and I had not even thought of him. So I was surprised one 
 morning to get a letter of commiseration from him, followed 
 
MY DREAM-MOOD BEGINS TO CRYSTALLISE 293 
 
 soon after by a telephone message asking me to dine with 
 him that night, " as he was staying in ' Town.' ' 
 
 By the same post I got a letter from Statham Willie, and I 
 assumed, therefore, that Rhoda's letters were arriving. It 
 was a kindly letter, saying he had every sympathy with the 
 " protest of an artistic nature " (why will stupid people 
 condone matters that offend them on the conception of artistic 
 irresponsibility? or are they more adroit than stupid?) 
 especially as I had doubtless been in a state of distress and 
 pain. He added that he hoped our friendship would not be 
 greatly impaired. I should have replied to him. I had no 
 intention of resuming the friendship he spoke of, for I knew it 
 only existed on the basis of his being a patron of Art what- 
 ever that should be instead of both of us being servants of 
 Beauty. But I was strained, and fretted, and took no notice 
 of his letter. 
 
 I was in the same state of tension with Frank that night. 
 He was very kind and sympathetic, and as we sat at dinner 
 we must have made a strong contrast. My very deep blue 
 eyes, dark hair and beard against his brown eyes, broad, fair 
 face, clean-shaven, and brown, curly hair, would not, I think, 
 have led any one to imagine we were brothers. Moreover, he 
 was very patient with my churlishness. 
 
 " But don't you know where she is ? " he asked me for the 
 fourth or fifth time. 
 
 " Oh, my good God, Frank," I broke out, " haven't I told 
 3 r ou I don't ? Why do you keep asking me the same question ? 
 Do you think I would be here if I did ? " 
 
 " I am sorry," he murmured, and busied himself with his 
 soup. 
 
 " How is business ? " I asked apologetically. 
 
 " Oh, very trying and anxious," he said. 
 
 " I like your conception of trying and anxious," I said, 
 surveying his portly, well-conditioned figure and air of 
 success. 
 
 " Oh, I know you think I have a very easy time of it," he 
 said, " but it's not quite so simple as you think. Still, 
 about Rhoda what do you propose to do ? " 
 
 An irascible reply was on my lips to this utterly futile 
 question, but I checked it, and said instead : " What would 
 you propose ? " 
 
294 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " It's not so easy, you know/' said he, and 1 declare I 
 believe the man did not see how he had exposed the futility 
 of his own question. But he liked worrying at these things, 
 and I had known what I was being asked to that morning, 
 so I could not very well complain. 
 
 " She's not going to return, you think ? " he asked. 
 
 ' You have her letter," I said. 
 
 " Yes, it's very trying. It's difficult to know what to 
 suggest. You know how sorry I am for you." 
 
 " Viola fit ? " I asked after a pause. 
 
 " Yes, thanks." 
 
 " And the kiddies ? " 
 
 " Oh yes." 
 
 " Give them my love," I said. 
 
 " I will, I will," he said with great heartiness. " But now 
 about your affairs : I am glad to see Rhoda says she admits 
 your right to share in her books." 
 
 " Did she say that ? " I asked, and wondered how little 
 some men thought of the proper pride of their fellows. 
 
 " Yes, in her letter," he said, looking quickly at me. I 
 suppose something in my voice caught his attention. 
 
 " Very kind of her, I am sure especially seeing it's the 
 cause of our separation ! " 
 
 " You writers are odd people," he said in the way of con- 
 cession. " But you are not going to do anything foolish ? " 
 he added with a touch of anxiety. 
 
 " I certainly am not, if to touch her money be a foolish 
 thing." 
 
 " You know very well I meant just the reverse," he said, 
 with a flush coming over his face, and a quick shadow of 
 annoyance. 
 
 " Oh ! " said I. 
 
 Our conversations were ever the same, they never led to 
 anything. We see-sawed, and pulled traversely, and in the 
 end resumed our first positions, but at the cost of much 
 irritation and anger. 
 
 Yet something emerged ever from the futilities of that 
 conversation. For when the fruit was removed, he gave me a 
 superb cigar, ordered another bottle of an excellent champagne 
 he had discovered, and sat back in his chair with every inten- 
 tion of resigning himself to the heavy luxury of post-prandial 
 
MY DREAM-MOOD BEGINS TO CRYSTALLISE 295 
 
 contentment. His eyes became dreamy, his cheeks grew like 
 a well-ripened peach, and his voice sank into a modulated, 
 not too hasty, tone. At such times, as I knew, he would grow 
 wonderfully sentimental in what one may call the fatal- 
 regret manner of sentiment. I smoked my cigar, and began 
 to watch for the signs. I wondered whether the topic would 
 be the poor or the architectural dilapidations of London. To 
 my surprise it was neither. 
 
 " You know, Jack/' he said, watching the wisp of smoke 
 float away from his cigar, just where the ash joined the brown 
 leaf, " it's very strange to think of the way we have come. 
 Do you ever think of the pater ? " 
 
 " I can't say I do." 
 
 " Or the mater ? " 
 
 " Not so often as I should, I'm afraid." Dear old mater ! 
 How odd to think of her watching us then, great, strong, grown 
 men, both of us older than she when she died. 
 
 " Do you remember Saggart ? " he continued. 
 
 " I do," said I ; dazedly, maybe, for a blow seemed to 
 strike across my eyes as he spoke. I saw the hills of my 
 dream-state, suddenly. I saw the hills around Dublin, and 
 behind them, hills on hills, and stretches of bogland. As 
 from a distance I heard his voice continue : 
 
 " I often think of those days, you know. Here we are, 
 continually getting older. Life passes us, and what does it 
 all amount to ? It's all very strange." 
 
 A silence elapsed, as I pulled myself out of my dreams to 
 say : " And do you remember the hiding I gave you for calling 
 me Jacob ? " 
 
 He flushed with annoyance and looked round at me. " I'm 
 not so sure that it was you who won," he said. 
 
 " I haven't the least doubt," I said. 
 
 " You wouldn't have," said he, grumbling, and yet turning 
 the edge with humour. He was loth to lose the sense of 
 luxury, in a bicker as to ancient rights. 
 
 And so we played the ancient game of memory-hunting 
 over those excellent cigars and the old port which followed the 
 champagne. Frank was a man who knew how to attend to 
 !iis wines, and he played the accompanying sentimental luxury 
 to the full. 
 
 It might almost be said that I walked home on the hills of 
 
396 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Dublin, so completely had I been transported to them. My 
 nostalgia of the past months had suddenly become a loud 
 cry through my whole being. It was as though, from the 
 heights where I seemed to stand, I could see the whole of 
 Ireland stretched beneath me, and its magnet-power drew 
 me so that it was even a pain to me to continue in that half- 
 trance. 
 
 Coward that I was, I believed I feared the inevitable con- 
 clusion, for it meant the dragging up of many rusted anchors. 
 But in the depths of me I seemed to know that the conclusion 
 was indeed inevitable, 
 
 III 
 
 I TAKE MY DECISION 
 
 I said not a word to anyone, but let the matter turn over in 
 my soul, until the cry was so plangent, the nostalgia was so 
 acute a pain, that I could no longer delay action. Yet action 
 meant a very great deal to me. It not only meant cutting 
 myself away from my friends and from the haunts where I 
 was known. This may not have meant so much. Parkins, 
 Jenson, Wolton of the Morning News, and those other odds 
 and ends of my acquaintance, whom I met every fortnight 
 at the Highway Tavern for dinner and talk, had no real part 
 in my life. I went seldom, these days, to the Highway, because 
 of that, and because the endless discussion of the same 
 things became very like the affected pose of young office-boys 
 with pens behind their ears, " talking shop/' One could tell 
 to a nicety what each man was going to say, and in what 
 words he would say it. There was none of the unexpectedness 
 of life in it. There was none of the strewing of good gold 
 
I TAKE MY DECISION 297 
 
 and common brass which makes life so infinitely interesting 
 a thing. The dross, in the talk of those men, had been all 
 carefully refined away, and the result was very tiring in its 
 sameness. " The highest is never attained save at the risk 
 of the abysmal/' someone had said. Certainly those men 
 never took the risk : they would, almost to a man, have lifted 
 their eyebrows at, and turned cold stares on, so lackadaisical 
 an attempt. Theirs was a true literary circle, and there was 
 none of the glorious adventure of life in it adventure in 
 the teeth of hazard and spiritual danger. As a change I 
 liked their company well, but most surely it would be no 
 hardship to forego that company because of the resolve I 
 had to make. 
 
 With Ramsay and Tim it was different. They were my 
 only intimate friends, and it would be a wrench to leave 
 them. It sounds unnecessary to put it so acutely : it will be 
 asked could I not easily return now and again ? True, I 
 could, but a wrench is a wrench nevertheless. Moreover I 
 knew further what it meant. My books meant no livelihood 
 to me : their monetary return was but thirty or forty pounds 
 a year. I was dependent upon journalism, and I knew only 
 too well that " out of sight " was " out of mind " in that 
 profession. 
 
 When I mentioned the subject to Ramsay and Tim in my 
 study one evening, I was, I confess, stricken at Tim's speech- 
 less consternation. Ramsay, in his quiet way, advanced all 
 the difficulties I would have to face, dwelling chiefly on the 
 matter of my livelihood. But I had thought of that. I 
 looked round the room I sat in, and said : 
 
 " These should keep me for the first year or so, and by 
 that time I shall see my way a little more clearly." 
 
 " Your books ! " cried Ramsay, genuinely alarmed. 
 
 I could not help smiling at his shock, who was usually so 
 firm and calm. It marked the fact that a cleavage, of a sort, 
 had come between even this old friend and myself. I wanted 
 a knowledge that was not to be found in books though, 
 surely, there were certain men, mainly poets, whom I would 
 need with me whereas he had long since become wedded to 
 the idea of books. I winced a little, therefore, at his exclama- 
 tion, as he sat suddenly up in his chair. Tim, I think, sym- 
 pathised more fully , but I felt his pain of spirit striking on me 
 
298 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 as I sat beside him. It cried out for sympathy, so silent was 
 it. I have seldom felt so moved in my life. 
 
 " I cannot take them with me, anyhow/' I said. 
 
 " But my dear Jack/' he protested, feebly endeavouring to 
 grasp the enormity of the thing. 
 
 " They ought to fetch three or four years' careful keep if 
 I live very simply, even on a forced sale." 
 
 " Never ! " said Ramsay, rising strenuously, as his wont was, 
 from his astonishment. " Name your price, and I'll hold 
 them for you." 
 
 " I'd sell the copyright of my books, past and present, to 
 any man who would give me sufficient to live on in peace for 
 the rest of my days. The State ought to do that." 
 
 " And therefore the State won't. It will sooner spend 
 millions, not to say priceless blood, over rich men's trading 
 rights. And nor will I, for I'll store your books for you." 
 
 " I'm earning a bit now/' said Tim's choked voice beside 
 me. ' You've a right to that, may say." 
 
 " Old Tim," I said, and laid my hand on his knee. We were 
 all suddenly silent with emotion. A calm too full for words 
 had settled on the three of us. 
 
 " Nearly three hundred, it is, let me say," he continued 
 bravely, and his eyes were not dry. " Wouldn't be half 
 that, wasn't it for you : not it. You've a call to it, old 
 Jack." 
 
 " And I earn eight to nine hundred a year," spoke Ramsay's 
 deeper voice from the other end of the room, " and again 
 owing to you. Tim's right, Jack, you've a right to let us 
 keep you." 
 
 " Go to hell, the both of you ! " I said. 
 
 So we sat and smoked away the silence so pregnant with 
 emotion till Ramsay's voice was again heard. 
 
 " Two hundred from the two of us we could arrange the 
 details between us, Tim," he said, speaking his aside hastily 
 to Tim. " That should help to support." 
 
 " That should keep a damned nabob," I said, " but I'm 
 not going to take it, all the same." 
 
 " Jack," began Tim. 
 
 " Yes, you are," said Ramsay. " Tell me this : if you 
 offered it to me, the case being reversed, and I refused, what 
 would you think of me ? Then imagine our feelings." 
 
I TAKE MY DECISION 299 
 
 He was right. In the name of our friendship I had no right 
 to refuse, however I might, and did in obstinacy, continue 
 to frustrate the idea. In the end, however, I consented to 
 take a pound a week from each of them, they to hold my books 
 till such time as I might want them. The sale of the furniture 
 of the flat would, I reckoned, provide me with funds sufficient 
 for a modest balance. The better part of it was such as Rhoda 
 would need when she resumed her social life, and this I had 
 stored in her name. The rest was sold on my account, and 
 I wrote her a letter, addressed to her publishers, telling her 
 what I had done. 
 
 Till the very day of my leaving England I did not hear from 
 her. I knew this restraint cost her something, and I mar- 
 velled at it. It convinced me that, either the thought of me 
 was dead in her, which I could scarcely credit, or that she had 
 herself very well in hand. And in either case to seek a recon- 
 ciliation was to cry for the moon, with one of Rhoda's keen cast 
 of mind. 
 
 Thus, one early spring night, as the Irish mail train drew 
 slowly out of Euston station, I leaned out of one of the windows 
 watching Ramsay and Tim as they stood bareheaded on the 
 platform. Ramsay was calm and smiling, but Tim was white 
 and strained, his rat-like brown eyes looking hungrily up the 
 platform, and his pink skin very pale and drawn under his 
 red hair freely sprinkled with white. As for myself, I did 
 not think so modest a removal could have affected me as it 
 did. Possibly it was owing to the fact that I was turning to 
 a new way of life. 
 
300 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 IV 
 
 IRELAND 
 
 It was thirty years since I had been in Ireland, yet, as the 
 boat drew in at Kingstown Pier, and the rich speech of the 
 porters came across to me, I thrilled and quivered like a tuned 
 string to its note. No friendship or loyalty seemed com- 
 parable to this beloved land, and England, land and people, 
 seemed as foreign as the remoter Caucasian steppes. That 
 strange, wild spirit that sweeps the land, austere and intangible 
 (diversely known as Crania ni Mhaille, Caitilin ni h-Ulaichan, 
 and by a score of secret names) seemed at once to know me 
 and touch me till I thrilled. Yet I was half ashamed to meet 
 her. I felt like some wanderer in cities returning to his 
 mother Earth : who steals timidly forth to her bosom, as 
 though trusting that she will not notice the town-stains on 
 him, however much he himself may be aware of them, hoping 
 that he may at once be caught to her bosom. So it was I 
 felt, at once humble and glad. 
 
 I do not explain these things. I set them down. I have 
 been a man who has rather kept to himself than sought com- 
 pany not in misanthropy, but in a sensitiveness that no 
 one understood save Tim but that morning, in a joyousness 
 that some will deem pathetic and some will look at with 
 superior eyes, every man was welcome to me. I walked the 
 streets of Dublin in the spring sunshine like a warfarer come 
 home, rather surprised that the rest of my fellows should walk 
 the streets and seem so little to realise the wonder of their 
 presence in this beautiful place. I insisted on two jarvies 
 that day drinking with me, and in each case called for 
 whiskey on behalf of all those present, and had the blessing 
 of God called many times on me. 
 
 In that most English of Irish cities I was in an air as different 
 from that of England as ever I might be in Bruges itself, where 
 I had fled sometimes under pressure of work to conclude. By 
 that strangest of national indications, atmosphere, I had 
 come into a different nation. At first I was overwhelmed into 
 a sentiment that trembled on weakness, but at all times I 
 breathed freely, and felt as though I were at home ; with this 
 difference, that I had all the marks of the stranger, the foreigner 
 
IRELAND 301 
 
 on me. In my heart I might feel, even overwhelmingly, at 
 home, but my outer way of life decreed me an outlander. 
 My speech was different, even the clothing of my thought was 
 different, and I never really got near to the heart of a man 
 there. But I wished to do so, and I had not felt the inclina- 
 tion to do so before. I even wished to do so quite promis- 
 cuously, which was a thing much unlike me in the past. I did 
 not wish to be a spectator, I wished to be a participator, 
 and the glow of warmth this introduced into me is quite 
 indescribable. I almost desired every man to stand towards 
 me as Ramsay and Tim had come to stand in the past, and I 
 was startled at the wildness, and even pitiful wildness, with 
 which I endeavoured to achieve this. I bent the whole powers 
 of my mimetic ability in order to approximate myself to the 
 people, in my strife towards this end. There was, to be true, 
 the cry of my spirit claiming an affinity, that urged me to 
 this. And there was also the oddness of suddenly finding a 
 home on earth where I was largely a stranger. 
 
 Like one returning to health, who does not too quickly take 
 strong food, but dilutes it according to his need, I remained 
 in Dublin a week or so. I knew some men there, whom I had 
 met in London, whose work I admired, and these, towards 
 the, end of my stay, I sought out. I did not do so at the 
 beginning, however, as I had no desire to lay shackles on my 
 liberty. To have sought out acquaintances would, to my 
 mood then, have been to belong to a portion of the city ; but 
 to remain at large, and unhindered, was to belong to the whole 
 city. 
 
 I went down to Saggart, too, after a while, though I had 
 shrunk from that at first. I scarcely knew my way about in 
 parts of it, so greatly had it changed. But I found out our 
 cottage. To my grown figure, and new adjustment of sizes, 
 it seemed inconceivably small. It had been split into two 
 cottages, with sundry alterations and enlargements to that 
 end, and the tennis-lawn of many encounters was now a 
 thickly-strewn potato-patch. The trees had been cleared 
 away to the right, and it now no longer was nested in seclusion. 
 
 " It's a good day/' said the owner of one of the cottages, 
 passing into his place as I stood there in the evening light. 
 
 'It is indeed/' said I. " May I ask how long these two 
 places have been like this ? " 
 
302 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " It should be twenty years, and that's the living truth," 
 said he, " though I can't recall it myself." 
 
 " It used to be all one once." 
 
 " And that's true for you. So it used." 
 
 " I remember it so." 
 
 " Do you now ? Well maybe you'll step in for a sup of 
 milk, or maybe something stronger." 
 
 We sat in a room that looked out on to this potato-patch. 
 It was the half of the room that had once served as our 
 dining-room, and by looking through the door in the wains- 
 coting division, that now swung ajar, and by shifting my 
 vision through the years, I could see my father standing by the 
 handsome fireplace there, and glowering over the top of his 
 daily paper at the solitary letter that lay beside my mother's 
 plate. 
 
 Ordinarily I would have found a keen and whimsical delight 
 in playing the unseen looker-on through my seen person. I 
 would have questioned the man till he would have wondered 
 whither my questions led, and how I came to possess such 
 uncanny knowledge of the house in which he lived. But now 
 I only wished confidence, and the human interchange. 
 
 " I used to live in this house at one time." 
 
 " Did you now ? Wouldn't that be a strange long time 
 ago ? " 
 
 " All the time I was a lad, or most of the time, anyhow." 
 
 " Was it born in it you were ? " 
 
 " I was not." 
 
 " That should be a strange thing, coming into your own 
 house after all this stretch of years. It was all one at that 
 time, so it was. Seumas Power has the other half. We both 
 came together to this place looking for work, we did. He and 
 I came together, walking on the roads, the time the tinworks 
 was disused." 
 
 " Did you come far ? " 
 
 " Oh, we did." 
 
 " How far was it? " 
 
 " It was a long way, and we came walking on the roads." 
 
 " From the west ? " 
 
 " It was." 
 
 " I was thinking of walking across to the west in a day or 
 so." 
 
IRELAND 303 
 
 " Is that so ? " 
 
 " And I was wondering what would be the best road to 
 take/' 
 
 " There's many good roads, there is, and many of them is as 
 good as others might be." 
 
 " I thought of going straight across by Mullingar and 
 Athlone to Tuam, or perhaps Roscommon." 
 
 " Tuam, is it ? " 
 
 " Yes, Tuam. I suppose that's as quick as any, quicker 
 than most." 
 
 " It's a very good road, it is." 
 
 " That wasn't the road by which you came, I suppose." 
 
 " It was." 
 
 I suppose my inquisitiveness had made him wary of me, for 
 we might have continued like this for ever. So I rose and 
 asked him if it would inconvenience him at all if I had an 
 opportunit}' of looking over the house. 
 
 " Inconvenience, is it ? It would not, then. Sure, you're 
 welcome, sir, and who would have the better right than the 
 man who was bred in it, and whose father had it ? I'll just 
 speak now to Nancy Power, or maybe Sally will, and you shall 
 see both of them." 
 
 It was Seumas Power who had the bathroom where Frank 
 and I were ranged beneath father's eye each morning, brandish- 
 ing dumb-bells with our puny, white arms in the patient hope 
 of accumulating prodigious muscles. The tub remained in the 
 same (with rusted iron where white paint used to be) but the 
 rest of the room was twisted out of recognition. The bedroom 
 we had slept in was in my host's portion, whose name I 
 omitted to extort. 
 
 Then I walked away in the dusk that had fallen on the earth 
 and resolved that I should no longer delay in setting out 
 westward. 
 
304 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 V 
 
 I BEGIN MY WANDERINGS 
 
 And so, on a fresh spring morning a few days after, I slung 
 a small satchel over my shoulder, and might have been seen 
 swinging across Phoenix Park. There was the restraining 
 touch of natural habit to my new venture, for I had always 
 taken some long walk alone in the spring, and I felt now as 
 though this were but such another holiday. 
 
 I knew better than to hurry matters in the early stages, 
 and so took the way easily. Yet I had reason for haste. For, 
 while my moneys were sufficient for my slight wants when I 
 had settled what I should do, there was (at least until I became 
 more accustomed to the nearer range of capital) a strain on 
 their sufficiency while I was undecided. It was too cold, 
 for one not inured to various weathers, to sleep out ; and I 
 had even to train myself out of those fastidious ways that are 
 a necessity in cities. For dirt is only dirt in cities : there it 
 is an improper degradation, whereas under the untarnished 
 sky it is but the stain of mother Earth. Yet it is not easy, 
 any more than it is desirable, to change one's values 
 hastily. 
 
 But these things soon adjust themselves. Man, as someone 
 surely must have said, soon drops out of fastidious ways 
 without woman at his side to remind him of them, and by 
 the time I reached Athlone the poverty of my satchel's con- 
 tents had ceased to inconvenience me. I had come, as I had 
 intended to come, through Mullingar and the rich land of 
 Meath, taking a quick and close reckoning of my journey by 
 the change in the face of the earth as I went by. The mere 
 picturesqueness of the scenery as I began soon changed into 
 rolling pasturelands, and these, in their turn, grew darker 
 and sterner, until they became mixed with bogland. Yet, 
 even as the pastureland had changed, so the boglands changed 
 too in their turn. They grew wilder, browner, sterner, it 
 may be, but chiefly they grew more significant. 
 
 As I took my way through Galway, I was all the time 
 haunted, as though there was some presence continually by 
 me, that I knew intimately well, though I could by no means 
 tell how this was. At first it made me uneasy. Indeed, I 
 
I BEGIN MY WANDERINGS 305 
 
 must confess to a renewal of my childhood's fears of darkness. 
 It was but natural that I should avoid walking at night, 
 seeing the road was unknown to me, and lay poised, as it 
 almost seemed, over treacherous bogs, that flowed up towards 
 it like a heavy sea, indenting its edge ; but I began to detect 
 myself putting this forward as the prime reason when my deeper 
 motives were much less satisfactory. I laughed at myself 
 at falling again into fearful childhood, as painting the figures 
 of my own imagination on this pall of darkness. But I soon 
 reflected that this is truly only a trick of the mind to defeat 
 legitimate enquiry. And I began to examine the position 
 carefully. 
 
 Man, I said to myself, is not afraid of nothing, and it is 
 irrational and merely stupid to say that he is. When he is 
 alone, be he grown man or child, he may be irked by a lack 
 of society, but in the constitution of that restlessness there 
 is no stray wisp of anything that may justly be called fear, 
 Fear is only introduced into the situation by the presence of 
 something. We are all, I reflected, in the habit of masking 
 realities by the use of words that have no meaning in them, 
 and, in the multitude of such words, one of them is supersti- 
 tion. It is at least significant that the same fears and beliefs 
 that are found in primitive man, and which are called super- 
 stitions in them, should also be present in the mind of children, 
 who are, obviously, either at an age before formulated supersti- 
 tions may reach them, or conceived by their parents at an 
 age when the presence of such superstitions should not be 
 in the constitution of the orgasm. That is to say, by either 
 reckoning, there cannot be such a thing as superstition in a 
 child. When he is visited by fear, therefore, and no visible 
 cause can be traced for it, it is at least fair to assume that this 
 is due to an acute perception of intangible presences that 
 belongs to the primitive constitution of man, and that has 
 been crushed out of grown man by his many sophistications. 
 And that this is not only a fair assumption, but an inevitable 
 conclusion, is seen by the presence of such identical percep- 
 tions among all primitive men as the argument infers and the 
 fact confirms. 
 
 Fear, therefore, is a perception, at one time a perception 
 and a reaction. When man is afraid, he is not afraid of 
 nothing, as it would be irrational to conceive, but of something, 
 
 x 
 
306 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and his fear is an indication of that something, that is of such a 
 nature as to escape the observation of his five senses. But 
 fear may afflict him in broadest daylight, when it is called 
 panic, or it may, as it more usually does, afflict him in dark- 
 ness. To put it from the other side, those presences may come 
 about him in open day, though, for some indiscoverable cause, 
 it is their more usual custom to take their liberty in darkness. 
 The cause is indiscoverable, though it is not beyond a sagacious 
 conjecture. Clearly, if men are in fear of those presences, 
 men are a hindrance, in some way, to their free operation, 
 and it would be more desirable to hold their road through the 
 universe, when the floating islands of personality are no longer 
 awake to throw off their craven rays of fear, but are securely 
 tucked away in sleep. For fear, in a free universe, is an insult, 
 even as freedom is a spiritual heritage. 
 
 So I worked the matter out as I walked the Galway roads. 
 And one evening I found the answer that led me out of the 
 forks of the intellectual dilemma into which my thinking had 
 brought me. I had resolved to make Tuam my first stop, but, 
 having come into Galway, I had not hastened, turning about 
 the byways further south. This day, however, I had resolved 
 to get into Tuam by night, and as evening fell it became 
 apparent to me that I had missed my road. It was dark, 
 and the same uncanny fear had beset me, being by no means 
 lessened in my uncertainty about the road I trod. I held 
 steadily on in the glimmer of starlight, in the vain hope that, 
 inasmuch as a road indicates a town or village somewhere upon 
 it, I should soon strike some place that might serve as destina- 
 tion. The bog stretched on every hand, and there was only 
 a pale and shadowy indication of the road beneath my feet. 
 Judging from what I had seen in the mist of the twilight, there 
 were no hills anywhere, no trees, no cottages, only perpetual 
 bog a desolate landscape, but curiously haunting, and even, 
 in its way, beautiful. Now it was all black and sombre, 
 rolling away till it met the terrific bend of the heavens gleaming 
 with the myriad jewels of its stars, an unrelieved darkness 
 against a darkness hung with gems. And every now and 
 then as I strode along, in the intervals of my perplexity, 
 through the still air something like a breath of wind would 
 seem to come, and a quiver passed through me that, now, was 
 not altogether fear. 
 
I BEGIN MY WANDERINGS 307 
 
 Then I heard the sound of voices beside the road. There 
 was no light to be seen from where I stood, but as I stepped 
 cautiously in that direction, set back from the road a little 
 I could see a chink of light near the earth. To my knock a 
 voice bade me enter, and I pushed open the door and 
 entered. 
 
 It was a roadside shebeen, very poorly lit by a dirty lamp, 
 and the smell of stale porter and the smoke of twist tobacco 
 accosted me as I bent my head to pass through the 
 door. 
 
 " A tinker is it ? "he asked who was evidently the owner of 
 the place, leaning across the counter to the left, and peering 
 through the smoky gloom at me. 
 
 " It is not/' I said. 
 
 " Well, whoever it is you are, you're welcome heartily," he 
 said. 
 
 " Oh ! you're welcome, you're welcome," a chorus of voices 
 declared, and looking quickly about, I saw a row of men sitting 
 on benches round the house, with their backs to the wall, each 
 with a large glass of porter in his hand. They nearly all had 
 that strong, darkly-proud, taciturn face that I had seen so 
 much of lately. It indicates an aristocracy that would have 
 no cause to be abashed in the highest presence, and had a 
 strange, spiritual affinity with this landscape of desolate 
 bog. 
 
 " I was on the road to Tuam, but God knows where I am on 
 the road to now," I said. 
 
 " Oh ! come in, sir, come in," said the owner of the place. 
 " It should be a dark night to be taking the road." 
 
 " You're a damned way from the road to Tuam, now," said 
 o le unemotional voice to the left of me. The speaker had 
 a black soft hat that sat low on his brow, shading his eyes, but 
 his equally black hair ran down in whiskers on the side of his 
 face. They ended on a level with the line of his mouth, which 
 seemed, perhaps partly because of that, uncannily straight and 
 firm, almost to cruelty. His manner was like a challenge to 
 me, and yet it was too remote, even too contemptuous, for 
 that. 
 
 I had met many such men during the past days, and so took 
 turn in his own mood, speaking as though to myself for him to 
 hoar, rather than directly to him. 
 
308 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " That's my conviction, too/' I said. " What I'm wonder- 
 ing now is whether I could make Tuam to-night. " 
 
 " Oh ! you could," said he. 
 
 " He could not/' said the owner of the place. Then to the 
 others he added, as they ventured one opinion or the other : 
 " And he not knowing the road at all. This is a poor country 
 on a dark night, mister/' he said to me. 
 
 I rather admired the skill with which he swept us all in his 
 attention. 
 
 " Tuam should be five miles from this living place, and it's 
 a good road to be walking with the night so young." 
 
 " Ah ! what's the good of your talking ? " replied the man 
 at the counter, vigorously wiping a glass for me. " And how 
 should he know which should be the turnings, and he a stranger 
 to this place, as anyone could see with a shift of the one 
 eye." 
 
 The other merely spat on the floor, and took a drink of his 
 porter, while a more eager voice affirmed : 
 
 " That's a true thing." 
 
 I sat among them drinking my whiskey as they discussed 
 the matter. The influence of the night outside drifted in upon 
 me where I sat in that lonely shebeen to which the men had 
 gathered from I knew not what places. It drifted in upon 
 me and drew me to it wondrously. The men were so much a 
 part of the spirit of the landscape that, though they were dis- 
 cussing the problem of my getting to Tuam that night, I 
 scarcely seemed absent from its influence. The spirit not 
 only lapped about the walls of the house, but seemed actually 
 to have encroached beyond them, to have dismissed them, 
 and to be ruling uninterruptedly throughout the space they 
 confined as though they were not present. The immediate 
 scene seemed quaintly to mar the spirit of the night as little 
 as might the unmusical, and yet not discordant, voice of a 
 corncrake. 
 
 Yet that little mattered. It was not quite the same thing. 
 Though the night was not kept without, the influence of its 
 presence within the place was to draw me out. I felt it drag 
 on my spirit, and resolved to continue my journey. 
 
 " Isn't that the very thing I'm after saying myself ? If 
 there was a decent bit of a moon to be showing the road, 
 you might follow its drifting as easy as eat spuds. But it's 
 
I BEGIN MY WANDERINGS 309 
 
 a dark night, a heavy kind of a night, and the man's a stranger 
 at all. Will you have some more porter, Meehawl ? " 
 
 " I will not," said the taciturn man opposite me. " There 
 are three turns in it, two turns that go to the right, and one 
 turn would go to the left, with the lights of Tuam showing 
 itself before you could twist your hands at that time." 
 
 " Sure, he has got to go on," said another voice emphatic- 
 ally. " Where the devil would he stretch himself if he didn't?" 
 
 " Couldn't he stretch himself in this place ? " said another. 
 
 " This would be a poor place to stretch in, mister," said its 
 owner to me, apologetically. 
 
 " Wouldn't the hotel at Tuam be closed up ? " 
 
 " And to-morrow fair-day ? " Meehawl asked shortly. 
 
 " I must go on anyway," I said. " I ought to be in Tuam 
 to-night, many thanks to you." 
 
 As I left the half-gloom of that place, where the men had 
 been talking in tones that seemed low and modulated without 
 any effort on their part to alter their ordinary manner of 
 conversation, and stepped into the night, followed by the 
 blessings of the Almighty God, I seemed to be moving from 
 one kind of calm to another. It was some little time before 
 I grew accustomed to the heavy darkness, and when I did 
 so, and could see the faint glimmer of the road before me, my 
 thoughts reverted to the cogitation of the midday. 
 
 Then suddenly I felt, rather than thought, the solution to 
 my difficulty. Fear, of course, was a perception, but it was 
 chiefly a reaction. And since fear was an insult and an impedi- 
 ment in the universe, fear was a wrong kind of reaction. 
 
 Surely that was so. To fear is to hand to the object of our 
 fear a power over us, a power which it otherwise would lack, 
 [ndeed, fear is itself a provocation. A man clothed in absolute 
 fearlessness not defiance, for that is a kind of fear, but an 
 entire absence of fear, a simple, unquestioning freedom from 
 fear in all its forms should be invulnerable. He could com- 
 mand the wildest of beasts, who are only driven to the frenzy 
 that preludes attack by the waves of fear falling on them. 
 Comradeship and simple faith should be the keys to universal 
 safety ; they should annul the difference between right and 
 wrong, with all the categories consequent on them, in a 
 universal at-one-ment. 
 
 Fear, therefore, may only be considered as a perception 
 
3io JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 because it is almost the inevitable reaction from it in man's 
 present state of unfaith. In a state of faith the reaction 
 would be delight, a humbling and ecstatic delight. 
 
 I stood still, as I saw this, and gazed upon the earth swathed 
 in the darkness of night. How sublime it was, how pure, 
 how holy ! I stood erect, and stretched out my arms accept- 
 ing the spirit that was abroad in gladness and joy ; it may be 
 said, in a spirit of worship ; and, as I did so, every nerve in me 
 thrilled and quivered with delight. There was fear in me too 
 (for our words are ineffectual and clumsy labels), but it was 
 not the fear that degraded oneself and the universe. Rather 
 it was the fear that exalted and purified all things. I lost 
 touch with my querulous personality, and rose into a person- 
 ality that was a noble and magnificent thing. I became a part 
 of the overflowing joy that is at the secret of wonder, being 
 none the less myself because of that, but more truly and 
 divinely myself. 
 
 The spirit that was abroad flowed through me in wave on 
 wave, subjecting me entirely to itself, until at first I almost 
 whinnied with speechless delight, and finally grew calm and 
 subdued in a joy that was like a broad lake hushed in motion- 
 less reverie. The thrill of ecstasy that at first impelled me 
 to leap and sing aloud, to dance, and chant the music of the 
 dance, flowed into stiller waters that seemed to be the very 
 essence of all song, of all music, even as harmony is the unheard 
 inspirer of all harmonies. 
 
 The secret of all things seemed to be, not revealed to me, 
 but mine, where I stood at the pivot on which they whirled. 
 It was a moment such as does not often come to man, but, 
 when it comes, makes him thereafter always a different man, 
 a man with a secret sign upon his brow. 
 
I CONTINUE MY WANDERINGS 311 
 
 VI 
 
 I CONTINUE MY WANDERINGS 
 
 It was excellent luck that took me to Tuam just at that 
 moment. Though I arrived late that night too late to seek 
 humbler quarters the hotel in the central square was open 
 and busily employed. Indeed it was with the utmost diffi- 
 culty that I could persuade them to take me, and finally a 
 sofa was put up into a small, bare room. There was already 
 an occupant for this room, I was told, confined though it was, 
 and it was much later before he came in to claim his bed. I 
 was aroused out of sleep by being somewhat hilariously, but 
 not discourteously, hailed, and I turned over to see a man 
 sitting on the bed in his shirt, holding a candle-stick in his 
 hand, that swayed uneasily and dripped tallow on to the bare 
 boards. 
 
 I was asked if I would care to have a whiskey. I declined 
 the invitation. I was then asked what it was I would care 
 to have. I suggested that there would be no one to serve 
 us, seeing it was about half-past one in the morning. This 
 struck him as an original idea, and he proceeded to undress. 
 Then, as I dozed off to sleep again, I was asked if I dealt in 
 bullocks. I repudiated the suggestion, and said I was an 
 ordinary traveller. I had some difficulty in explaining the 
 full significance of this, whereupon I was asked what the hell 
 I was doing in Tuam then. 
 
 It was a little trying, particularly as I had to settle myself 
 to listen, full of sleep though I was, to a rather confused 
 dissertation on the points of promise in heifers. But I bore 
 with it equably, for my mind was too full of peace to be easily 
 disturbed. 
 
 The following morning I was again aroused in the same 
 manner. My companion sat on his bed quaintly swathed in 
 bi.ankets, with so puzzled and depressed an expression at my 
 renewed refusal of a whiskey, with so pathetic a melancholy 
 indeed, that I had no choice in the matter. It would have 
 been ridiculous to spoil his day simply because I would not 
 permit him to offer me a glass of whiskey. He grew wonder- 
 fully friendly, however, when I finally agreed, and we each 
 sat in bed and toasted the other. 
 
312 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I was not long after him, however, and was much puzzled 
 at seeing the streets deserted. No fair could I find wherever 
 I sought, and at last returned to the hotel. There I was 
 informed that the fair was held in a field some distance out- 
 side the city. This touched some slumbering memory in 
 me, and as I walked out I remembered having once been 
 told of this field, where fairs have been held without inter- 
 mission since the days of the early Irish civilisation. 
 
 It moved me strangely. It took me back before the days 
 when fairs were part of a monstrous commercialism. As I 
 mixed among the eager bargainers it haunted me, and it 
 haunted me all the following days as I walked my way north- 
 ward. The blight that had taken England into its maw, 
 the desolation of desolation that had written the number of 
 its days over that land, had not fixed its peculiar power here. 
 There was, be sure, poverty everywhere, acute poverty, and 
 a ruin that had put its brand upon the landscape. Everywhere 
 could be read the signs of a debauched repression, past and 
 present, exercised on a fair nationality by an overlordism 
 secure in its self will and vindictiveness. That was sure 
 enough, and it was deadly enough. But it was deadly to 
 the body of life, not to the spirit of life. 
 
 For example, the thing that now impressed me most was 
 the poverty. In England I had never seen poverty but what 
 it had implied degradation. Over this countryside poverty 
 was universal, and such poverty as it would be hard to match, 
 but degradation was so rare as to be negligible. That strange 
 abhorrence of the presence of the poor in the vast slum areas 
 of England an abhorrence that prevailed with me despite 
 my worthiest and noblest promptings to the contrary did 
 not prevail here. The sordid monotony of joyless labour; 
 the degradation of work that was not work, that produced 
 nothing, nothing but ugliness, and the opportunity of ostenta- 
 tion for the masters' womenkind ; the disgusting fleshly 
 passion that this broke into as a natural relief, and the drab- 
 ness and horrible monotony of marriage when this passion 
 has worn off, both posturing under the name of love ; the 
 stupid sentimentalities, demanding titillating books, the smug 
 religiosities demanding a self-congratulatory ecclesiastical 
 system, both of them revolts from monotony that ask their 
 natural panders, and receive them, and so perpetuate them- 
 
I CONTINUE MY WANDERINGS 313 
 
 selves : all this, and the rest of the hideous system that boasts 
 the name of civilisation with nothing whatsoever of civility 
 about it, had at least not invaded my own people to whom I 
 had returned. There was more aristocracy in many of these 
 so-called peasants, in their mien, features, deliberate grace 
 and balance of speech, in their reserve and half-contemptuous 
 self-reliance, even in their occasionally brutal strength of will, 
 than I had ever seen before. It was an aristocracy of instinct, 
 not of a cult and that is the only aristocracy. 
 
 There was not only the aristocracy of manners, there was 
 also the aristocracy of letters. I first stumbled on this inad- 
 vertently. I had appealed for shelter one frosty night at a 
 solitary cottage. It had been my intention to sleep out, but 
 it had turned so cold that I found out the nearest cottage, 
 at once to be offered the children's loft, above the cow-pen 
 in the one living-room. As I warmed myself before the fire, 
 I noticed the man of the house take up a book he had laid 
 down at my entrance. When I drew him into conversation, 
 I learnt that this was a collection of poems in the Irish. 
 He recited me several, and recited them with a manifest 
 joy in the value of sounds. Then he went on to recite me local 
 variants of the same songs, and concluded by declaiming 
 some of his own composition. I had not the Irish, and 
 therefore I asked him if he would translate some of them for 
 me. 
 
 " I haven't the ability to that/' said he then, withdrawing 
 again. 
 
 " It would be a good thing," I said. " Sure I might help 
 you with the English." 
 
 It was long before he consented. At first our progress was 
 slow, but this was chiefly a lack of confidence in himself, for 
 he inevitably, though with grave courtesy, put aside the words 
 I suggested to him, though he accepted their metrical order. 
 
 This aroused my curiosity, and often in the days that 
 followed I discovered such men. Whereas, though the 
 learning may not have been present, there was, nearly inevit- 
 ably, a culture of idea and a quick eagerness to discuss con- 
 ceptions worthy a man's thought. Yet it was not this so much 
 as the upright assumption of intellectual rank that impressed 
 me. 
 
 I could not help thinking of the England where to suggest 
 
314 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 culture of thought was to be dubbed a bore, or to be tolerated 
 with amusement as an artistic temperament. Once the train 
 of thought had been suggested I found my mind continually 
 running to comparisons. When, for instance, I noticed the 
 sensitiveness of these people, the quickness with which they 
 withdrew themselves into an invulnerable reserve at the least 
 hint of an implied social inequality, their swift, and silent, if 
 dangerous, anger at a breath of ridicule, I could not help thinking 
 at once of the fatuous English complacency that is the laugh- 
 ing-stock of nations. 
 
 Often in London I had discussed (with Ramsay alone, and 
 in his rooms with the usual company that assembled there 
 fortnightly), the whole relation of modern civilisation to those 
 nobler conceptions of Life that alone can save men from 
 brutality and cynicism. And we had always come face to face 
 with a certain inevitable twist back of the subject on itself. 
 In all ranges of society it was the same. There was nowhere 
 the remotest conception of Beauty, or if there was such a 
 conception, it was soon smothered up by scorn, patronage, 
 or amusement. The makers of " the greatest Empire the 
 world has ever seen " have been men of commerce, men of 
 hard gain, with the result that the whole edifice has been 
 raised on a foundation of slums and practical serfdom, with 
 an ostentatious flash of gold to its pinnacle. The middle 
 classes, however, had neither the slums (though they had, 
 and enjoyed, much of the serfdom), nor the flash of gold. 
 They had neither the pinch of want nor the chance of adven- 
 ture, and so they hired sentimentalists to write for them, 
 and preachers to comfort them ; they paid them, and paid 
 them well, to give them the illusion of the golden glitter above 
 their reach. With Want and the Desire for Ostentation, on 
 the one hand and the other, the position seemed impregnable 
 because it could so easily spring back to its earlier position. 
 That was the hopelessness of it. Commerce had imposed its 
 debased coinage everywhere. If the poor revolted, they 
 revolted for tangible gains, not because their state was dis- 
 honour to the highest. That was called, always in the phrases 
 of commerce, being practical. Yet wherein was it practical ? 
 Had they revolted for ideals, the ideals would always have 
 remained, and they could have solidified the advantages 
 they might have gained in the light of them. Their gaze being 
 
I CONTINUE MY WANDERINGS 315 
 
 forward they could have stood securely in the present. As 
 it was, they were, commercially speaking, practical, and what 
 was the result ?.. Their leaders paid small heed to culture ; 
 they were remote from all the created Beauty of the world ; 
 consequently, as they were, by the fact of leadership, raised 
 above their fellows, they became middle-class, with the 
 middle-class sordid conception of getting-on. So other leaders 
 had to be found, the work had once again to be renewed, and 
 the Jack of a conception of Beauty became the highest impractic- 
 ability. Men ceased to be artists, and they became brute 
 beasts or sordid machines. There was no conception of Beauty 
 anywhere, and therefore there was nothing one could begin 
 on. For the essence of utility is its final uselessness, and 
 opportunism continues to be opportunism without proceeding 
 to any good end. 
 
 And so, imperceptibly, against my stoutest wishes, I had, 
 in common with many others, drifted into a cynical revolt 
 against my fellows. But health began to flow into my veins 
 as I walked these places where the blight of commerce, of 
 gain for gain's sake, had scarcely entered ; where, certainly, 
 its accumulated cjiricism had found no lodgment. I loved 
 my fellows again. I rejoiced in their impracticability (to 
 employ the cant term) because it meant something, and I 
 gloried in their intractability because it was their way of 
 showing that it meant something. 
 
 I loved my fellows. It was not till long after that I saw 
 the significance of the change that had, healthily, quietly, 
 come upon me. And it was this that caused me to receive 
 into my soul the mystical companionship of hills and dreaming 
 fields. 
 
 It was a holy pilgrimage to me, that walk up through Galway 
 and Mayo. It was nothing effervescent. It was a deep, quiet, 
 almost taciturn, joy. The hills and clouds, the strange bogs and 
 standing lakes, bathed my soul ; and there was nothing about 
 men to put me out of tune with the great Being. One or 
 two towns, to be sure, there were, in the north of Galway, that 
 jangled the music again. Ordinarily I would have chosen to 
 stay some time in such places, braving them, but now I admit 
 I fled from them. I stayed long enough to strike upon the 
 elen tental in the people there as elsewhere. There was external 
 squalor, but it had not meant spiritual degradation. Yet I 
 
316 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 fled, nevertheless. For I did not want Problems, I wanted 
 
 Joy. 
 
 I found it. The summer was well spent before I came upon 
 a valley among the hills of Mayo, where a dishevelled, single- 
 room cottage on a hillside served my turn. A new roof, 
 repaired walls, a thick coating of tar on the inside, and a 
 whitewash without, rendered it habitable, and did not unduly 
 strain my purse. 
 
 VII 
 
 GLEANN-NA-SIOTHCHANA 
 
 I did not for some time realise the change that had been 
 wrought in me by those days. When I had been settled in 
 my cottage some time, Ramsay sent me a large parcel of 
 letters that had accumulated. I dreaded opening them, 
 and let them lie by for some weeks. At last I opened the 
 parcel : but when I came to read through the letters they all 
 seemed ridiculously remote and inconsequential. 
 
 Indeed, I had to stop, the task seemed so idle. But there 
 were two from Rhoda, and these I read as from across a 
 tremendous distance. I could not have believed that they 
 would have touched me so little. It was like prying into the 
 correspondence of some other man. 
 
 The contents of them made this seem the stranger. The first 
 in order of date preceded the other by nearly two months. It 
 spoke of the receipt of my letters, declared her sorrow at the 
 evident pain they expressed, and said that this had more than 
 anything influenced her in withholding herself, as it would be 
 much better that we both should be calm when next we met. 
 I tried to recall the pain I had expressed, but it was like 
 going into another lifetime, and hurt so acutely that I sur- 
 rendered the attempt and resumed my quiet of mind. 
 
GLEANN-NA-SIOTHCHANA 317 
 
 The second letter was more urgent. She asked for news of 
 me. She said : 
 
 " I hope you have got my first letter. I sent it to Mar shams " 
 (my publishers) " to forward to you in case you had left the 
 flat. But I have not had a reply. Perhaps I did not give an 
 address did I ? 
 
 " / should be pleased to hear from you. I notice you have 
 paid in a cheque to me, but haven't drawn out anything. I 
 can't understand this. Will you let me know ? You know 
 / fed this money is both of ours. Whatever money you made 
 was both of ours, and the other must be so too in common fairness. 
 I don't think this is just a duty. It is the proper way of things. 
 You remember you yourself used to say so ; so draw for whatever 
 you need, to oblige me/' 
 
 She concluded with these words : 
 
 " We messed things in the past, and it has been a lesson 
 to us. We are always one in God's sight, I know and I am 
 beginning to be glad to know / miss you sometimes a good 
 deal. Do you, I wonder, sometimes think of me ? Perhaps 
 this separation will teach us both forbearance, and it may be 
 desirable to resume our life again in the light of the lessons 
 we have learned. What do you think ? I have been reading 
 your letters again, and I ought to say I am sorry indeed for 
 the, pain I seem to have caused you. 
 
 " Believe me to be, 
 
 " Your loving wife, 
 
 " RHODA." 
 
 I supposed she had caused me pain, but all this seemed 
 like a rumour from a different continent. The letter slipped 
 from my hand on to my table, and I discovered myself 
 presently watching a bare-legged woman come down the hill 
 across the valley. It was impossible to say who it was, but 
 the pink of her face and legs were caught by the evening sun, 
 and her puce-coloured petticoat moved dully against the 
 heather. To the right I could see the sun shining upon 
 the heather on the crest of Neifin in the distance. It was all 
 wonderful, it trembled with Life and Power; and as I 
 
3i8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 turned to the letter on the table before me, it seemed threaten- 
 ing and strange by contrast. 
 
 The butcher came in, as I sat so, with my meat. 
 
 " It's late the way I am/' he said, " and I've had a big 
 travel to go." 
 
 " There's the hell of a lot of letters for you, Paddy," I said, 
 kicking my leg towards them. 
 
 " Are them all letters ? " he said, staring at them. 
 
 " They are so," I said. 
 
 " Then may the Lord God save me, but they're a rare lot. 
 And you do be reading them all ? " 
 
 ".Till I got tired, and then I gave it up. Letters, Paddy, 
 are the damnablest invention that the great wit of man struck 
 on. Will you have some baccy ? " 
 
 " Begging your pardon, I'll have some of my own. Your 
 sort does burn the tongue." 
 
 So we sat and smoked, till he rose to go. 
 
 " Well, it's a nice place you've made yourself here, be sure 
 indeed it is ! A grand and decent place the way old Farrell 
 wouldn't know the look of it. It should be a lonely place for 
 a bachelor man, and if any time you'd come down to herself, 
 it's no splendour of a cottage we have, but you'll be welcome, 
 sir, very heartily welcome." 
 
 " I know that, Paddy. God bless you ! " 
 
 " And may He bless you heartily, sir." 
 
 That evening I attempted to answer Rhoda, but the letter 
 refused to be written. I sat for a long time facing it, but the 
 blank sheet defied me in its shining whiteness. It was not 
 that my being was numb : in fact, it had never been so alert 
 and alive. But it was alive in another direction. I felt a 
 duty called me, I knew that common humanity, not to say a 
 more intimate relation, summoned me, but the function of 
 my mind in that direction seemed to have gone. 
 
 Nor was I troubled. I w r as, in truth, quite peaceful. And 
 when I rose, my task not yet begun, reached down my hat 
 and swung down the valley, it seemed only as it should be. 
 
 I sought out an old man in the village with whom I had 
 struck up a great friendship. It was a joy to hear him speak, 
 even on the most commonplace topic. He was an artist in 
 words. He created the most beautiful cadences, knowing 
 them to be beautiful, and intending them to be beautiful. He 
 
GLEANN-NA-SIOTHCHANA 319 
 
 would revise his sentences as he spoke, going over them again 
 with a more emphatic choice of words, and a deliberate excision 
 of unessentials. This was so in what some might have deemed 
 ordinary verbosity, and I used to watch him at work as he 
 spoke, sometimes wholly losing the matter of his deliverance 
 in the artistry that worked through the manner of his delivery. 
 He was a widower and very infirm, so that he lived continually 
 in an uncared-for, if not a positively wretched, state. I had 
 given him a part of the turf I had had gathered for myself, 
 so that he usually had a good fire. That was his only comfort 
 in the world. Heaven knows how, and when, he got his meals. 
 Yet when, as often he did, he came up to my cottage for a 
 talk, it was with the utmost difficulty that I could persuade 
 him to eat anything. He was as proud as a man could be, 
 and of a delicacy that the wretchedest boor could not have 
 trampled upon. 
 
 At first he had wished to speak on current politics, but he 
 had treated them with so simple a faith in human goodness 
 that the very conversation was painful. The slightest 
 knowledge of the facts of the matter, the human elements 
 swaying them, would have dispelled in a moment the premises 
 of his discussion ; and yet it would have been cruel to make 
 him realise that men in power were not so disinterested as he 
 himself was and wished others to be. So I had bent our 
 conversations in other directions, and, to my inconceivable 
 joy, I found him to be rich in knowledge of the poems and 
 legends of the neighbourhood. 
 
 Thus we sat, that evening, and talked till near midnight. 
 Two young men of the village were there as I entered, and to 
 them, with that grave courtesy that always characterised 
 him, he was discoursing of the glorious future that awaited 
 Ireland in the good providence of God. I had never uttered 
 a thought of my attitude to politics to him, save in a warm 
 concurrence with his hopes for the land, but at my entrance 
 he said at once, quietly and gravely : 
 
 " It should be a blessed thing to educate the mind of the 
 young in the dispensations of God for this land that was once 
 so ^reat and good." 
 
 11 We might draw them on us in that way," I suggested. 
 
 11 We might so/' he said. " The blessings of God are surely 
 to b e deserved by us, to the great admiration of the world, for 
 
320 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 it would be a poor thing, and a discreditable thing, for them 
 to pass away, and we unworthy of them." 
 
 I noticed his quiet answer to predestination as the con- 
 versation turned into other channels. He had been dis- 
 coursing before, but now, after an intermittent conversation 
 between us, he became a reciter, with certain interruptions 
 by myself. As I walked slowly back up the road, through the 
 heavy darkness of the night, I reflected that he was what would 
 have been called an unpractical man, a talker, a dreamer. 
 Some terms become laughable when seen in perspective. 
 Walking up that mountain side in the heavy, starless, moonless 
 night, with the last lights of the village disappearing in the 
 darkness below me, one felt that there was a peace and power 
 to be gained that the practical men are the first to miss. 
 Martin O'Hara, however, had not missed them. He took 
 them to slumber with him, and he brought them from slumber 
 to the quiet business of his day. His mind was like an un- 
 ruffled lake that reflects the clearness of the sky ; and all the 
 world's activity could not have put it in possession of that 
 richness beyond price and purchase. 
 
 VIII 
 
 FRIENDS 
 
 The valley had been wisely named. Peace flowed through 
 it like an unhasting river. And there was a feeling of such 
 power everywhere, that I, who in cities had grown out of 
 childhood into maturity, began to feel like a child again. My 
 ignorance of all that mattered, my folly, oppressed me so 
 that I began to feel like a child might when the company of 
 its elders looks upon it, with the addition of a more acute self- 
 consciousness. I was awkward, and yet it was without 
 
FRIENDS 321 
 
 discomfort. If I felt like an infant in a strange company, I 
 knew that the company was purifying and enriching. One 
 needed to be disciplined and tutored to be fit for that place, 
 but the place extended its welcome. 
 
 My cottage lay up on the hillside beyond the limit of the 
 road. A mountain rose behind me, and another before me, 
 while through the valley, like a fluttering pale ribbon, the 
 road wound its way between them. The curve of the road, 
 and the further curve of a rough path to my house, hid the 
 village from my sight behind the curving mountain side. 
 Thus there were usually none to observe me as I used to steal 
 timidly out sometimes of a morning to the Earth whose mother- 
 hood I was learning so late in the day. There was a quiet 
 dell in the hill behind me, in a place of long, rough heather, 
 where there was no pasturage, and consequently where the 
 foot of men never trod ; and there I would take all my clothes 
 from off me, and in my nakedness run and leap upon her 
 bosom. A wildness, a maddening ecstasy would seize me at 
 such times, till I would throw myself on the heather, and, 
 rolling in it, laugh and sing aloud in glee, the winds sweeping 
 my voice off my lips into a silence that came back like a clear 
 answer. After such occasions, when I returned to the cottage, 
 everything seemed more significant to me. I would stand at 
 my window looking at the mountain opposite for hours at a 
 time, as though it were more than mountain, as though the 
 purple and rust of the heather, the dark-green patches of 
 grass, the dull masses of rock, the silver stream that some- 
 times gleamed down a fissure in its side, were all infused with 
 some inner glow that transmuted them and hypnotised me. 
 There was a new lyric in the song of birds, there was a new 
 voice in the wind. There seemed to be a pale aura, sometimes 
 of violet, sometimes of a strange colour like golden-green, 
 rising from the earth and clothing it gently over. The strange- 
 ne ss of this would pass with time, but the permanent posses- 
 sion it left me with could not pass. 
 
 Sometimes, as though a voice bade me, I would steal out 
 of a night and climb to the summit of the mountain, and sit 
 there till the early dawn crept into the upper air. I began 
 after some time to be quite adept in making my way over the 
 bcggy rough ground that at first tripped me, as though I had 
 developed a new instinct. What passed at such times I 
 
 y 
 
322 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 cannot clearly tell. It is not only that such things defy words, 
 but that the great influences of the universe are known in 
 their effect, not in themselves. The effect on me was full of 
 wonder. I felt my being grow and expand, like a flower 
 unfolding. I felt quite certain of some things that had long 
 puzzled me. I no longer wondered about the higher Pres- 
 ences that flood through the universe ; I knew them, I had 
 come into touch with them, and they with me. 
 
 Moreover, I knew another thing, a thing that I was richly 
 glad to know, that I was, beyond all expression, thrilled to 
 know. Growth is not altogether an unconscious thing. Some- 
 times it may watch itself, or rather, realise itself in a tingling 
 consciousness of coming power and benignity. So I needed 
 none to tell me that the very fashion of my face was altering ; 
 that my glance was changing from one kind of self-assurance 
 to another ; that my mouth, cheeks and forehead were not 
 so much changing their contour as throwing off a different 
 expression that seemed to suggest another contour. Some 
 would have said that I had changed, but it was not my body 
 that had changed as yet. When they said in the village 
 that I was looking better presently, or that I had surely a 
 great contentment, God bless me, or that I was altering to the 
 very image of the great poets and prophets of the times gone 
 by, I knew ; I knew what they meant. And I would go up 
 on the mountain in meekness and gladness, and give thanks. 
 
 It was only Martin that divined what had happened. Or 
 possibly it was only Martin who gave me any hint that he had 
 divined. I had seen him look quickly at me once or twice, and 
 I had guessed that that look meant recognition. I felt in his 
 manner that he knew, though he said nothing. It was almost 
 as if we saluted one another in a new world, where speech 
 was not necessary. But one day when I had come down from 
 the hills, and brought him the loan of a book I had promised, 
 in the midst of his rather absent-minded conversation he 
 quietly said : 
 
 " Did you go on Guala to-day ? " 
 
 " I did, Martin," I said. 
 
 " There are some things that may be known on Guala more 
 than maybe found in the wisdom of the world's great writings. 1 ' 
 
 " Yes, Martin, that is so." 
 
 " So there are. And a man may show on his face more 
 
FRIENDS 323 
 
 things than may be put into big books, if he comes into a 
 quiet glen like this to find what may be found, so he may/' 
 
 That was all. We began then to speak of other things 
 of the book I had brought him, and such subjects as that 
 suggested but there was new kindness in his attitude to- 
 ward me that made me feel like a lad again : he from his 
 seventy years to my forty odd. 
 
 So time flowed by. Mists began to creep lightly over the 
 rusty heather. And then the great South- West awoke, and 
 roared through the valley. The same bend of the hill that 
 hid me from the village, protected me from the full blast of 
 its power, yet my cottage was the object of at least two cross- 
 currents that swept round to search it out. When I stood 
 upon Guala and opened my arms to the flying revelry of its 
 power, a new secret exultation came into my life. If it came 
 laden with long whips of rain that stung as they lashed the 
 face, I put on the barest clothes, and laughed in the face of 
 that tumult of waters. Times there were, however, as the 
 year grew forward, when I was not admitted to the revelry. 
 My strength was not sufficient to sustain it. Even could I 
 have stood on the hill, and not have been swept away, I could 
 not have breathed, and my cheek would have been laid open 
 by the hail and rain that tore the air. I had endeavoured it, 
 but soon had had man's limitations demonstrated to me. 
 
 Then one morning as I awoke, I had the first drowsiness 
 cleaned wondrously out of my mind by the sudden sight of 
 the hills standing up in the whiteness of the night's snow. It 
 transfigured me. I believe I cried suddenly out in an ecstasy 
 that was almost a pain. It was not long before I was out on 
 Guala. No expression of language could tell my mood then. 
 I worshipped Beauty v/ith an unutterable longing to know 
 more truly what it was, and my worship was scarcely toler- 
 able, a nostalgia that made my body sick with the efforts my 
 soul made to escape from it. The east wind was scarcely 
 perceptible as it struck me keenly. 
 
 Then spring came on, not in any pomp or wonder, for there 
 were no trees or shrubs in Gleann-na-Siothchana to display 
 its qualities of wonder, but in a soft graciousness. The gaunt 
 valley seemed gently to thrill and softly to change as spring 
 took its road coming from the south. That was all. And 
 simmer flowed up as inauspiciously. 
 
324 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Seeing that I would not be withdrawn from the valley by 
 any seduction, both Tim and Ramsay came to see me in the 
 summer. I also asked Frank if he would come, and he 
 answered saying he would be very glad to do so. I shuddered 
 to think what we should do with one another during the week 
 of his proposed stay. He would, of course, think that I had 
 taken a final leave of my wits, and I would be irritated beyond 
 endurance. But I had come to think more kindly of men, 
 and I did not wish my own brother to be estranged from me ; 
 or rather, I did not wish to be estranged from him, for he 
 was willing to be on hearty terms with anyone who conceded 
 him the reverence he wanted. And he really was a dear fellow. 
 He wrote to me with astonishing regularity, and continually 
 sent me cheques. When at first I did not cash them, he wrote 
 me a letter of such pained expostulation that I could not 
 but do as he wished. It shocked him considerably, I could see, 
 that a brother of his should be living on two pounds a week, 
 although I had all that I wanted. So I laid it all by in case 
 of need, for I had resolved not to take moneys from Tim or 
 Ramsay beyond the eight hundred or a thousand pounds that 
 I estimated to be the value of my books. Moreover, I wanted 
 to talk with him, although it was inevitable we should disagree. 
 But in the end he wrote saying he could not possibly manage 
 to get away, that all he would be able to manage was a long 
 arranged fishing engagement in the Highlands of Scotland. 
 This fishing was evidently a new notion of his : I had not 
 heard of it before. 
 
 So my only visitors were Tim and Ramsay. Tim was the 
 first to come, and the morning sun of a June day shone on 
 the copper and grey of his head as he leaned out of the carriage 
 to catch a first sight of me. It was good to see him again, 
 and it was more than good to be lifted up by his warm love 
 and enthusiasm, things that were given a distinctive quality 
 by his quaintness. I had driven a car the twenty miles to 
 Castlebar station to meet him, and as we drove back it was 
 plain to me that his estimation of Ireland was very much set 
 back by what he saw. 
 
 He had only a fortnight's respite from his desk, and during 
 that time we went for many long walks over the hills. I 
 introduced him to my friends in the village. At first they were 
 all very dignified with him, from Paddy Egan, the butcher, 
 
FRIENDS 325 
 
 to Martin O'Hara. They did not understand his eagerness, 
 his friendliness, and they either withdrew into dignity, or 
 met him with a responding friendliness and cordial agreement 
 that I knew was only another method of withdrawal. Tim 
 did not notice it, but I did, and before a week was out I had 
 managed inauspiciously to guide him into their acceptance. 
 Then his irresponsibly affectionate soul, free from any kind 
 of pretension, began to work its own influence with them. I 
 could scarcely realise that he was now about fifty. I think 
 he would have had as much difficulty as myself in realising 
 so strange a fact. The grey did somewhat mingle with his 
 younger red, and wrinkles had slowly begun to come round 
 his eyes in a tougher and harder skin. He had also grown 
 quieter, gentler, more timid, but in essentials he had not 
 changed much. He never reminded me of the passing of 
 time, but rather of its perpetuity ; and as we walked over the 
 hills sat outside my cottage in the warmth of the sun, or joined 
 in the passing household tasks, in an affection that nothing 
 could have jarred, he always brought an atmosphere of con- 
 tinuance into our relation, as though there could be no term 
 set to it in its constant pivoting upon itself. He might 
 acquire an amazing inward knowledge of my books, and become 
 a vociferous reader, but he did not grow thereby, he only 
 deepened. Similarly he did not seem to bring any new element 
 into my life. That, in my one room cottage, would have been 
 quickly noticed. The day after he came it was almost as 
 though he had always been there. I went out as before ; and 
 if not so often alone, his company did not seem much of an 
 intrusion. He was quiet and shy with Guala, but the hill 
 did not reject him. So that when he had to go, it was a wrench 
 that hurt both of us badly. On the platform he clung to my 
 hand long, his eyes brimming with tears, and I was not much 
 better. 
 
 That his visit had meant much to him I learnt when Ramsay 
 came early in August. There was no leaning out of the train 
 for Ramsay. Indeed, I almost thought he had decided to 
 scay in Dublin for the later train, when he emerged deliber- 
 ately, very grey, very shrewd and very cool. 
 
 " I thought maybe you wouldn't come by this train," I said 
 as we shook hands. " The train hadn't stopped before Tim 
 was out on the platform/' 
 
326 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " Tim's a foolish and wire-strung boy, Jack," said Ramsay, 
 " just as he was an old man when we first knew him. He 
 ought to grow a beard, as we have done : that would steady 
 him when he looked in the glass. Only he'd have to keep it 
 trimmed/' 
 
 " It is untrimmed a bit," I said, stroking mine. 
 
 Ramsay tuned me, as he had ever done. He was always 
 like a plunge into a cold stream, and he became more so. 
 
 " Tim reports great things," he said when we sat in the 
 car. 
 
 " Does he ? " I asked, watching the mare's alert ears as 
 we made our way out of the unaccustomed town. 
 
 " Indeed, yes. He says you are finding out what you have 
 written about." 
 
 " Does he ? " I exclaimed, turning on him, and almost 
 putting the mare across the road. " I didn't think he had 
 noticed that." 
 
 " Oh ! Tim has got a wonderful faculty of observation 
 under his power of assimilation. I only discovered it by 
 accident. And I like your accent." 
 
 " You're fifteen per cent, greyer than you used to be. A 
 year must make a lot of difference at your time of life." 
 
 " You'll need an older hand with that mare in a moment, 
 my lad." 
 
 " Tut ! Forty-two's the prime of life." 
 
 " For retiring from life." 
 
 " For retiring to life. You wait till you've seen." 
 
 Ramsay won his way with the people more quickly than 
 Tim had done. His firm, erect dignity, his quiet assurance, 
 his dignified and well-shaped figure, all helped to that end. 
 But he was not so well received by Guala and his brother hills. 
 It was not that they rejected him. That would have been 
 unthinkable. But they were stiff and reserved, and it 
 seemed to me that they were a little jealous, as they had not 
 been of Tim. I could perceive the justice of it. Tim, by 
 reason of his own unchangeableness, was simpler and purer 
 of soul. Ramsay, despite his penetration of intellect, his 
 quiet observation, his acute wisdom, was not so pure, and had 
 wandered further from the primitive Powers from whom we 
 have come, and to whom we must return. And Guala rang 
 the coins on his counter with an unfailing ear for their tone. 
 
FRIENDS 327 
 
 At least, so I explained it to myself. For, though Ramsay 
 himself was surely quite unaware of it, there was contention 
 between him and the hills. When we sped over them in our 
 long walks, it was the walk that caught Ramsay's mind, not 
 the close, loving earth-intimacy. It was our talk, not the 
 caress, so gently given, of the earth-presence, like a benedic- 
 tion on the soul. His mind seemed to me to shoot forward to 
 head off my access to that unuttered communion, and often 
 he was successful. I was unable, somehow, to get out alone ; 
 and sometimes I only succeeded in doing so by pretending I 
 had to purchase something in the village, and by hurrying 
 over and round on to Guala by the other side. At such times 
 my approach was half apologetic. 
 
 This, I thought, was the counterpart in fact and reality of 
 the conflict between what is called superstition and what is 
 called reason. It was not an imaginary conflict, it was a 
 close, tense issue between actual powers. It was the power 
 of man's cold calculation, or heated and desperate reason, 
 seeking to keep at bay the enormous powers (the powers, indeed, 
 of his origin and destiny) that sought to overwhelm him and 
 join him with them in their great purposes to cause him a 
 tense strain of spiritual living, in fact. Possibly this was one 
 of the reasons why men herded in great cities, the better to 
 wage the conflict and to escape its urgency. 
 
 I think sometimes it was this that caused Shakespeare's 
 hand to grow slack. It was strange that his plays should 
 begin to grow untidy, and then to fail in frequency, just when 
 flowers and fields and the open heaven invaded them. Per- 
 haps he found the answer to the questions he asked, each 
 tragedy being a huge interrogation mark. Perhaps he saw 
 the reverse of the coin : or was it the obverse ? But some 
 men grow so alert, so agile, that they cannot clearly see the 
 answer before them to the questions they even then are asking. 
 Quest becomes a habit that must continue for its own sake, 
 although its object, or a clue to it, be actually found. 
 
 Perhaps it was so with Ramsay. Certainly I have found it 
 difficult to understand him otherwise. We had both striven 
 in the same direction (I, indeed, aided vastly by himself), 
 and so it would seem that he would welcome my answer I 
 had found. And I believe he would have in a book. But in 
 the presence of Being, of Beauty, of Power, his intellect 
 
328 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 started working, and the answer that comes in vision was 
 at once dispelled. The intellect is an instrument of analysis, 
 and he was using it to its proper end. And so Reality was 
 destroyed. Could he have had the presentation of that 
 Reality in a book, his intellect would have had play, and 
 he would have hailed it gladly. It was a strange thing to 
 realise, but it convinced me the more that I was right where 
 I was. 
 
 Having seen so much, I was on guard against him and it 
 seemed to me that Guala was at once more at ease. And I 
 was enabled to give myself up to the enjoyment of his com- 
 pany the more freely : my citadel being well guarded. During 
 the sultry evenings we smoked and talked on the hillside till 
 the glow had gone from the western sky, and the butt-end of a 
 declining moon was high above our heads. We took long 
 walks despite the heat, and laughed along the roads. One 
 day we walked to Loch Cam, and we swam there, and then 
 ran upon the grass till we dried, while I told him that I had 
 never seen so athletic a specimen of an old man in my life, 
 and he told me not to be a cheeky youngster. He told me 
 literary news, and I told him they did not interest me in the 
 least degree, and told him village news instead. He told me 
 I ought to be ashamed of myself as a literary man, and I told 
 him that I was not a literary man, and had no wish to be. He 
 replied that I must be, since a well-known critic had lately 
 expressed the conviction that my " claims to be considered a 
 man of letters were indisputable " ; and we laughed loud 
 and long. 
 
 We had our graver moments, and our cantankerous moments, 
 but the month of his stay was a feast of gladness. It was 
 strange that the thing between us should have raised its head 
 on the last evening of his stay. We were sitting smoking on 
 the hillside, and it seemed to me that Guala heard him atten- 
 tively as he spoke. 
 
 " And when do you propose returning to civilisation ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Civilisation ! " 
 
 " It's an odd name for it certainly. Culture, Jack ? " 
 
 " My dear man ! Can you name the match of Martin in 
 literary London ? " 
 
 " Do you really propose to remain steadfast here ? " 
 
ETHNA CAHILL 329 
 
 " My dear, dear Ramsay, your brain is ossifying. That's 
 the worst of old age. Why ever not ? " 
 
 " You mustn't evade the conflict, young Jackie." 
 
 " I thought I was taking it up here as never before." And 
 I told him what I took the conflict to mean, in the arena of 
 the soul. 
 
 " That's for yourself. And what about the claims of 
 others ? " 
 
 " And must each man forsake the way of wisdom, having 
 found it, because some of his fellows, in the coarseness and 
 rapacity of their minds, have subjugated and made miserable 
 others of his fellows ? May that not be turning aside ? " 
 
 " Dear chap, care for others is a part of Beauty." 
 
 " Dear old man, you are always right even when you are 
 only partly right. But I can't move from here till I see my 
 next step clear, not even for a week." 
 
 IX 
 
 ETHNA CAHILL 
 
 Indeed, there seemed a general conspiracy about that time 
 to withdraw me from Gleann-na-Siothchana. Frank wrote 
 wondering when I intended resuming my " ordinary life." 
 When I replied saying that I had resumed it he seemed off ended 
 for some reason, and wrote saying that I knew very well what 
 he meant. Dear old Ramsay began sending me new books 
 o: authors whom I knew, which I put down to his stalwart 
 k ; ndness at first, soon, however, to perceive the quiet subtlety 
 or it. Tim's laments over our separation also pulled in the 
 ScMne direction. 
 
 Moreover, Rhoda's continual letters troubled me. I had, 
 
330 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the previous year, at last written to her, briefly and courte- 
 ously, chiefly in elucidation of the details of the disposal of her 
 furniture. A desultory correspondence had ensued. She 
 wished to know where I was, but beyond telling her that I 
 had a cottage in Ireland I said no more, for I feared lest she 
 should have come upon me. Only Frank, Ramsay and Tim 
 knew. Ramsay and Tim she never approached, and Frank's 
 mind guarded its secrets out of inveterate habit. Then she 
 began to speak of the resumption of our marital life. She 
 spoke of it as a religious duty that imposed a certain obligation 
 upon her. That was scarcely encouraging for a beginning, 
 and I could easily have defended my reluctance to meet the 
 question on that ground. But that would have been scarcely 
 frank, for, in the first place, it was only a method whereby 
 she maintained her proper pride, and, in the second place, it 
 was chiefly an accidental outgrowth from her new sentimental, 
 falsely-religious creed. The objection was not in her, but in 
 me. She had, by her own choice, left me, and rendered my 
 access to her impossible. It was true I had suffered, and 
 acutely, but since then I had travelled on a road that I must 
 go back upon if I were to resume a life with Rhoda. And to 
 go back so was simply unthinkable. It was strictly impossible. 
 
 There was the other side of the case ; for our companion- 
 ship and unity in the past was a live thing. It not only had 
 been, but it was, a live thing. It was just as impossible to 
 revoke it as it was impossible to build a bridge over the chasm 
 back to it. That was the shattering antinomy. There was 
 no just resolution to it. Consequently her spasmodic letters 
 as they spoke more and more openly of our " religious duty," 
 troubled me. I feared for their arrival. They often lay 
 about my room for a week before they were opened, and some 
 of them no doubt got lost. 
 
 It might have been cruel, save that the inequality in our 
 conditions adjusted that difference from a worldly point of 
 view. Her letters came from excellent addresses in London, 
 and from parts of Europe that I had once hungered to reach. 
 With my new sensibilities I found it necessary often to lay 
 them out on the heather to air, they were so heavy with 
 perfume. 
 
 Yet it was impossible, and it became more so, for now I had 
 taken up " The Robes of Wisdom " and was working at it. 
 
ETHNA CAHILL 331 
 
 I had had to cut away portions of it. It had been schemed 
 to consist of four books, and I had progressed some way with 
 the third, dealing with the mystical realisation of the Being 
 beyond the limit of Man's body. This third book I had begun 
 again. For that matter I was not best pleased with the earlier 
 portions ; but I never have been pleased with work done, and 
 I have equally never been able to go over old ground. So I 
 took it up where to do so was imperative, and I was working 
 slowly, yet severely, at it, deepening my experience, as I 
 wrote, with the artistic expression of it. 
 
 I could give a care to it that was not possible with my work 
 before. The passage of the days did not mean a continually 
 feverish rush. The wheels of life did not spin without gripping 
 the metals, and I was able to stay at rest if I could not move 
 forward : I could, in short, live, and not merely continue the 
 automatic habit of existence. The pageant of the months, 
 therefore, became a wonderful thing as it flowed past me. It 
 was not a plumed and bannered pageant, such as forests and 
 flowing valleys may show. It was imperceptible and delicate, 
 subtle like the breath of gorse on the wind. The changes had 
 come, and one was in full enjoyment of them before one knew 
 they were coming. The cry of a plover, for instance, one 
 morning as I awoke, brought over my mind the slow, amused 
 knowledge that the autumn was indeed upon us ; and in a 
 sudden shift of the wind to the east, the morning's mantle of 
 snow seemed a thing of wonder. 
 
 There was nothing that could weary my continued delight, 
 for it was the delight of thriving. Ramsay's parcels of books 
 ceased to be dangerous when I perceived their intention. 
 They became a habit to him, and a pleasure to me. " The 
 Robes of Wisdom " called up the whole energy of my mind, 
 and by sedulously not looking backward, its very perplexities 
 became an engagement and not a disappointment. Martin 
 O' Eiara helped me with it, unconsciously, for when I talked 
 with him on some of the matters that were engaging my mind, 
 I found that, though he had not thought them out, he had much 
 of the experience. His words were seldom adequate symbols 
 to his experience in their merely intellectual quality, but 
 they had a richly significant emotional value that continually 
 meant more to me. 
 
 So three years passed by. I had, contrary to my usual 
 
332 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 practice, kept my book by me for some time, but I had now 
 decided to have it published. The publisher of my earlier 
 books had amalgamated with another firm, and when I wrote 
 to the new firm on the subject, they replied saying that my 
 books had not appeared to be paying propositions, to which 
 had to be added the fact that the name of Jacob Elthorne as 
 an author was mostly forgotten, but would I send them the 
 manuscript ? Their statements were indisputable, and I 
 did not reply to them. I determined to take my book up 
 with me to a Dublin house. 
 
 It was strange to leave Gleann-an-Siothchana for even a 
 short time, and it was strange to feel the wash of humanity 
 round me again walking up O'Connell Street and Grafton 
 Street. The publisher I had called to see, I had learnt, was 
 away for that day, and in the very strangeness of feeling this 
 tide flow round about me, I had walked up through to St. 
 Stephen's Green, dragging my bag with me. Then I took the 
 tram to the house of the excellent matron who had housed me 
 when last I had been in Dublin. 
 
 I had determined to stay a day or so in order to see several 
 of those whose acquaintance I had made during my earlier 
 stay, and with whom I had corresponded while at Gleann-an- 
 Siothchana ; but my quiet delight was not a thing to be rudely 
 marred, and during the whole of that first day I made no effort 
 to speak to anyone, taking my quiet joy to its full. 
 
 In the evening I sat in a restaurant in the same spirit of 
 quiet joy, watching the people. Singly not one of them had 
 the distinction, either in pure, rough strength or in spirituality, 
 of those that I knew under the brow of Guala, but in the mass 
 they were interesting in a wholly new way. They were not 
 so much separate beings as separate expressions of a Being 
 greater than them all, that larger Being being the city of 
 Dublin, part compounded of human elements, part of houses 
 and part of atmosphere. 
 
 The room was a large one, and to the left of me in a recess 
 sat a cluster of girls fingering string instruments and chatting 
 together. Presently one of them who seemed the youngest 
 of them all, and who had been sitting apart looking vacantly 
 across the room over the heads of the people arose, and at 
 that signal all of them took their places and dog-eared their 
 music. I do not know what it was they played, but I do 
 
ETHNA CAHILL 333 
 
 very vividly recall the figure of that girl as they played it. 
 Her chin had seemed like a delicate angle blunted and turned 
 over, before ; but now, pressed down upon the violin, as it 
 was, the lines of her jaw seemed the very essence of deter- 
 mined pugnacity. Her hair, swinging about in loose wisps, 
 seemed like a flaming red that had not quite resolved to be 
 free of the gentler yellow. Her blue eyes, though deep of 
 colour, seemed hard as her gaze was fixed intently on her 
 music. I had scarcely noticed her before, but she seemed 
 transformed now as she attacked the piece she played ; she 
 stood markedly out. So far as I recollect, the piece was not 
 a difficult one. At least, I know well it would not have been 
 made difficult in any other such place. But she attacked it 
 with all the fire of her being, seeming to make it resound with 
 the energy she upcalled. I very well remember how the 
 'cellist and second violinist, seated each side of her as she 
 stood, glanced up at her now and then, quickly, and with 
 pained protest. 
 
 While they had played or rather, while she had played, 
 and her companions had lagged reluctantly in her rear the 
 room had continued to ring with laughter and its customary 
 chatter, and when they ceased, the chatter sped on negli- 
 gently. It was added to, from the alcove where they sat, by 
 the musicians themselves, save that astonishing girl, who 
 sat staring with puckered brows at the music she had just 
 played. 
 
 I stepped over to her and asked her to play something or 
 other Schubert's Ave Maria I think it was. She looked 
 quickly at me, but made no reply. She said something to the 
 'cellist beside her, who presently searched through a pile of 
 music. Curiously enough I do not remember the playing of 
 it, maybe because of the strange thing that happened after- 
 wards, maybe because it made me drunk with itself. But 
 very soon she was playing again, not the whole company of 
 them on this occasion, but just herself with an accompani- 
 ment. It was Gounod's rendering of the same hymn she 
 played, but so curiously did she play it that it sounded strange 
 and unfamiliar. Her touch was so delicate, her tone so 
 breathless, that the melody seemed to fall back again into the 
 Preludium from which Gounod had so rudely and unfairly 
 extracted it. It was not a melody so much as an aroma round 
 
334 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the cadences of the Preludium as it surged gently to and fro 
 over the keys. When she sat down I felt her looking at me, 
 but I was in the knot of some dream, and did not pay any heed 
 to her. 
 
 Presently I went over to her again. :< Thank you," I said. 
 " It was kind of you. But I should like to speak to you. 
 When do you leave here ? " 
 
 She looked up at me in surprise, and her lips pressed together 
 pugnaciously. 
 
 " I can't meet you," she said, almost fiercely. Then she 
 seemed to relent a little. " Can't you say it now ? " 
 
 " Not very easily. It is about your music." I stood calmly 
 looking at her, like one that was content to wait for what he 
 wished. 
 
 She looked hard at me, and then her sight went over me. 
 I suppose the very pronounced absence of the dandiacal 
 about my appearance reassured her. 
 
 " It's leave I will in half an hour," she said briefly, and 
 turned aside to ask for some music. 
 
 To clinch it at that I- went straight out. I had acted on a 
 curious impulse, and the impulse held as I took a turn around 
 the streets to fill up the half-hour of waiting. Her combative 
 figure, with chin fixed hard on her fiddle, making simple 
 things difficult so as to search them throughout, was in my 
 mind as I walked. I was almost as much amused as I was 
 puzzled. And when I saw her come out of that restaurant, 
 simply, even a little dully, dressed, her way of walking sug- 
 gested the same combative spirit. She came straight up to 
 me and said : 
 
 " Did you want to say anything ? " 
 
 " We'll go to some restaurant first, " I said, turning about 
 and leaving her to follow at my side. It was strange the way 
 her manner influenced me to its counterpart. 
 
 " You like music ? " I said, when I had found such a place. 
 
 " I do not like it," she said. " I hate it." 
 
 " That's because you can't master it. If you could, you 
 wouldn't be interested any more in it." 
 
 " I don't know anything about that," she said. 
 
 " Did you ever go to hear any of the big music at the con- 
 certs ? " I asked. 
 
 Her big blue eyes as they fixed on me were eloquent . 
 
ETHNA CAHILL 335 
 
 " Yes," I said, " that's the devil. We none of us can do the 
 things we want to : or rather, that we ought to have God's 
 right to. I can't complain much now, I'm sure, but when I 
 was younger, when it mattered, I could not then. It's not the 
 not having the money ; it's not being free where the soul's 
 concerned." 
 
 " You're a very queer man," she said to me as the result of 
 her deliberations. 
 
 I laughed at her, but checked my laughter when I saw her 
 flush at it. 
 
 " You know of course that Gounod had only picked one of 
 the strands out of Bach's Preludium, and called it his own 
 tune ? " 
 
 Her mystified look told me she did not. 
 
 ' ' That accompaniment, you knew it was Bach's Preludium P " 
 
 " No, I did not." She seemed a little pitiful in her ignor- 
 ance. It was as though she stretched out a hand, in a little 
 of defiance, in more of perplexity, but altogether in a request 
 to me not to assume too much. And yet all the time she was 
 like one hungry for food. 
 
 I drew a paper out of my pocket and consulted it. 
 
 " There's a concert to-morrow," I said. " They are doing 
 Beethoven's D major Concerto. We'll go to it." 
 
 Her lips pressed firmly together, as though to deny the 
 almost painful hope that had come into her eyes. 
 
 " I can't go with you," she said, as if the idea were pre- 
 posterous. 
 
 " Why can't you go with me ? " 
 
 " I don't know you at all, and we never met till to-day." 
 
 " I know two, or at most three, people in the city of Dublin. 
 If I don't chance to w r ant to talk to them, I am going to have a 
 lively time presently according to your code of right and fit 
 in the matter, aren't I ? " 
 
 " That is so, and I wouldn't be unsociable," she said, 
 thinking it out, 
 
 ' You gave me a pleasure to-day, and I want to return it 
 to-morrow," I said. " That is all." 
 
 She lived in one of the turnings off Dorset Street, and as 
 we went that way we discussed the matter. But it was not 
 until I had taunted her with taking me to be a play-boy that 
 she finally, and a little fiercely, resolved to come with me. 
 
336 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Her name was Ethna Cahill. Her parents had died some 
 time ago, I gathered, in the County Cavan, and she had been 
 given shelter by her aunt, who had married an Englishman, 
 Hugh Walpole by name, a man over-disposed to his national 
 beer. Bit by bit, and casually, I extracted this much from 
 her. " Aunty Walpole " gave a steadiness to her income 
 by taking in lodgers, and what with this, and " Hughie 
 Walpole's " soaking and surliness, things were not very bright 
 in the way of domestic life, it appeared. 
 
 " I can't even practice/' she said, " and the lodgers not 
 complain of it." Then she checked herself quickly. " But 
 what am I telling you all this for ? You've been searching 
 me ! " 
 
 " You're telling me," I said, " because it's good to tell one 
 another things. Besides, I'm not a bit of a boy, my dear girl. 
 I'm very sorry for you." I put my hand on her shoulder as 
 I spoke. She quivered a little, then suddenly shook it off. 
 
 X 
 
 STILL ETHNA CAHILL 
 
 I knew she would be thrilled by the Concerto, and I was 
 intensely anxious to see how she would show it. But I was 
 surprised at the result. At the muted chords opening the 
 Lar ghetto she quivered like an aspen. My arm touched hers 
 as we sat, and I felt each chord tremble through her. The 
 colour came into and fled from her face with the movements 
 of the music, making it like a sunlit glade, with clouds passing 
 in the sky between it and the sun. Her eyes were fixed on the 
 bow of the solo- violinist as it moved up and down. 
 
 " Did you like it ? " I asked, when we were outside. 
 
STILL ETHNA CAHILL 337 
 
 She said nothing for a while, then : " If I could play like 
 that ! " she wailed. " But then I can't," she added fiercely, 
 " and I never will be able to, and I hate it, hate it." 
 
 (t You want to play with the very best ? " 
 
 " It isn't only to play. It's to know what it means. There 
 shouldn't be much difference playing in a shop or a hall like 
 that if one only knew. But I don't know, Mr. Elthorne, and 
 that's what makes me cry about it." 
 
 " I told you, Miss Cahill, that I was in the west of Ireland 
 in a wee cottage by myself ? That's why I went there, to 
 know. Only in a different way and not so much a different 
 way either, maybe." 
 
 " Yes," she weighed it reflectively, " that might do it 
 perhaps, all alone with a fiddle. But then you couldn't go 
 to things the like of this." 
 
 " That is the drawback. You can't dismiss the accumu- 
 lated wisdom of the world, and I must take you to more such 
 concerts." 
 
 " Oh no ! " she cried out in sudden alarm. " And I didn't 
 mean to be asking, I didn't." 
 
 " Do you mind, Miss Cahill, if I point out faults ? " 
 
 " No," she said wonderingly. 
 
 " Then I'm going to say you ought to be franker. Oh ! 
 I know my countrywomen, and how proud-strong you are. 
 But if I'm frank with you, and you are frank with me, there's 
 no question of asking or of favours. If you'll permit me to 
 do so, we shall go to more concerts like this some time, and 
 I'll send you some books. You ought to find yourself, anyhow. 
 Bless us, there aren't many who bother about that, and those 
 who do, ought to be helped, for it's the most exhausting kind 
 of bother." 
 
 " There aren't many who think like that. But you're a 
 queer man altogether." 
 
 Her pugnacious aloofness that meant a disprizal of the 
 things most valuable to her began to reassert itself, and I 
 found it impossible to make any headway with her. It was 
 thus she protected herself against her impotence ; and to me 
 it was infinitely pathetic. Pride was its efficient cause, but 
 protection was the end it served. In a while she said : 
 
 " When are you going to see Aunty Walpole ? " 
 
 She had told me she had informed her aunt where she was 
 
338 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 going that evening, and how it had come about. If I 
 wished to assist her, as one passer may assist another, I 
 would have to see an aunt in whom her interest was of the 
 smallest, in a house that was continually irksome to her, and 
 probably meet the Hughie Walpole whom she loathed. It 
 was certainly queer, but, in her, delightful by reason of its 
 proud straightforwardness. I told her that I would call the 
 following evening. I did, in fact, suggest the morning, but 
 that being delicately burked, I gathered that her aunt was 
 scarcely arrayed for the world's eye at that time of day. 
 
 When I did call the following evening she herself had not 
 come in. I was sorry. I wished it had been later as a 
 concession to her pride. Her aunt, however, was a quiet and 
 dignified woman, of the decayed pretty type, and she was 
 quite competent to steer the boat aright through the intro- 
 ductory rapids. Walpole was also in. He was a man who 
 might once have been genial and hearty, but the finer edges 
 had been rubbed off those qualities until they had lost their 
 distinctive shape. The most marked distinction I could 
 note between them was that she spoke of her niece as Ethna, 
 with a full appreciation of the music of the word, while he 
 called her Eth, with the shortest possible quantity to the 
 vowel. That her manner demanded respect, while his asked 
 slighting, was possibly only an outer demonstration of that 
 inner difference. 
 
 When Ethna Cahill came in, Hughie Walpole went out, to 
 the relief of everybody, except his wife, who followed his 
 retreating form with an apprehensive eye. 
 
 " Do you know/' she said immediately, as she entered, 
 " I've been thinking about you ? You had to walk home last 
 night. Wasn't it selfish of me not to think of that ? But 
 then I wanted you so much to help me." 
 
 " It was a good walk. The moon was out, and the houses 
 looked like a deserted city, especially round by the canal. 
 There was no hurry for me to be stirring this morning." 
 
 At that reassurance she stared at me, and I thought she 
 was about to continue her self-condemnation. I was mis- 
 taken ; the matter was already remote in her mind, and she 
 straightway launched on an enquiry that clearly showed how 
 earnestly her thoughts had been ploughing to and fro across 
 the themes of the previous evening's concert. 
 
STILL ETHNA CAHILL 339 
 
 I stayed in Dublin a fortnight longer than I had originally 
 intended, and saw Ethna Cahill most days. I had music- 
 books sent her, and went through several of them with her. 
 It was fascinating beyond conception of words to see her 
 young, strong nature so sensitive, so brusque, so impulsive 
 to strike at a thing it saw, and so mortified when its stroke 
 missed the aim finding itself. It did not learn (I doubt if 
 the human mind does truly ever learn), it discovered itself ; 
 and it was a wild and enthralling study to watch that self- 
 discovery. It is so always, but with her it was particularly 
 so, if only because her fierce yet delicate strength needed such 
 careful handling, since it could so easily turn and wound itself. 
 
 It meant that I raided my small capital, but that was part 
 of the splendid adventure. Nothing else seemed worth while 
 beside the joint effort we two made that she should burst 
 through to the fields where her being might play in power. 
 In helping her I helped myself. All those wonderful months 
 beneath the discipline of Guala seemed to take new point and 
 moment as they were bent to human service. The deep and 
 quiet delight that had reigned there seemed to become active 
 in this new human sphere. 
 
 When I returned to Gleann-na-Siothchana, it is true I felt 
 a certain restraint, a discomfort even. The presence of Ethna 
 Cahill seemed to follow me, drawing me back. Her struggling, 
 perplexed soul appealed to me with infinite pathos, and 
 dislodged the fulness of peace a change that Guala was quick 
 to detect. And yet I am persuaded that it was not the selfish 
 antinomy that provides the external perplexity of living, that 
 haunted me now ; not so much that, as the contest between 
 the purer power of Guala and the impure, conglomerate power 
 of Dublin making my soul its battlefield, the majesty of purity 
 against the uncouth majesty of Citydom. 
 
 Moreover, there was a letter from Rhoda awaiting me, as I 
 remember, that I pushed away unopened for later attention. 
 
340 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 XI 
 
 A DISCOVERY 
 
 In a month or so my book appeared, and after another 
 month the reviews came along. I might have expected the 
 result, but I was bitterly disappointed notwithstanding. 
 During the time of my withdrawal, apparently, the reviewers 
 who had grown up with me, and whose cavalier indifference 
 to their own generation I had won round to a kind of bene- 
 ficent toleration by the mere fact of producing books, had 
 passed on from the work of reviewing, and a new generation, 
 who also regarded reviewing as a temporary and inevitable 
 task, had taken its place. This generation did not know my 
 earlier books. How should it ? And even if it did, it did 
 not know the spiritual development implied in them. Con- 
 sequently " The Robes of Wisdom " produced a sharp and 
 sudden cleavage. On the one hand I was dismissed shortly 
 as either, at best, a harmless mystagogue, or, at worst, a 
 driveller, but, in either case, as a man who could not think 
 (whatever might have been the quaint thing they meant by 
 that), and who therefore strung words together, eloquent or 
 ineloquent, that meant no more than the satisfaction of my 
 itch for authorship. On the other hand, in the rarer in- 
 stances, I fell among coterie-mongers. These saw in the book 
 what I am very sure never had been considered by me. They 
 put upon me thoughts that produced the most absolute despair 
 in me, and they praised me for them. " Interesting 
 speculations," " daring personifications/' were some of their 
 epithets, whose only merit was that they lacked the insolent 
 sting of those employed by the former group. But nowhere, 
 not in the insolence nor in the coterie-mongering, not in the 
 curt dismissals nor in the misconceiving praise, did anyone 
 seem to discriminate that, rightly or wrongly, with all the 
 earnestness of my being I had tried to make a contribution 
 towards the settlement of the huge problem of living. Some 
 critics even blamed the book as being " remote from Life " ; 
 by which, I take it, they meant remote from slums and 
 debauchery and brutality, that being their notable conception 
 of Life, spelled in capitals. 
 
 Life is not merely living ; Life is right living, in the mind 
 and the body. Ugliness is not Life ; it is Death. 
 
A DISCOVERY 341 
 
 Ramsay wrote to me that I must not be depressed by 
 criticism, since criticism had never yet been right, not in a 
 single instance, in its judgment of contemporaries. Which 
 is of course true : history attests it. But to one who feels 
 he has something to say of moment to his fellows, that is an 
 inadequate consolation. My very effort only to say that 
 which I felt to be of moment made my bitterness the acuter. 
 The life of men in great cities impinged on me in my solitude 
 by its very refusal of me. I fell into a dejection that lasted 
 long, and for which there seemed no mitigation. 
 
 The chief thing that roused me was Ethna CahiU's letters. 
 I had sent her a copy of the book, and she had not answered 
 by thanks, praise or censure. In her fierce, direct way, she 
 enquired. I could imagine her perplexed reading of the 
 book, for her letters were disjointed and, it would have 
 seemed to one who had not met her, petulant. It was as 
 though she felt there was something there she wished to 
 possess, and she wished to tear its secret out. The very 
 labour of reading it seemed too long : to have to peruse it 
 twice, and yet again to scrutinise it, apparently seemed to her 
 an indignity. She seemed angry with me, and yet determined 
 to make use of me as by divine right. It was magnificent of 
 her, and I determined to stint no labour, to consider nothing 
 a cost, if I could in any way assist her. 
 
 It was thus I came to Dublin again. I had noticed in the 
 papers that a certain opera company was to visit the city, 
 and I wrote at once booking seats for both of us, writing also 
 to her telling her what I had done. 
 
 Her reply was to make a stiff protest against the reception 
 of favours, whereupon I wrote to her again saying that the 
 tickets had been booked, and that I would expect her company. 
 But, crossing my letter, the following morning there came 
 another from her, in which she seemed completely to have 
 forgotten her earlier letter. She accepted the fact simply 
 and straightforwardly, and wrote asking me what books she 
 might profitably get from the library so as to prepare her 
 mind. She had travelled far in the twenty-four hours. It 
 was her trick of personality, this speedy travel over the tracts 
 of her mind. She had not yet commanded the whole of 
 her various being to a unity, and so had to abide in different 
 parts of it at different moments. 
 
342 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I must at that time have been very blind. When I arrived 
 at Broadstone, I at once took my bag to Rathmines, and went 
 round to the restaurant at which she played, taking the same 
 seat I had sat in when first I had heard her play. She was 
 playing as I did so, but when she saw me her cheeks flushed 
 red, she swayed as she stood, and for something like four or 
 five bars her bow lay listlessly on the strings while she stood 
 with eyes fast closed. The second violinist looked up in 
 alarm, but she shook herself roughly like a terrier coming out 
 of water, and took her company of players through the 
 remainder of that piece at a pace that taxed them as much as 
 it puzzled them. Yet I saw nothing in it beyond her natural 
 bewilderment at finding one whom she least expected to see. 
 I felt tender over her as though I had played an unfair practical 
 joke upon her. 
 
 I was waiting outside when she came up to me. She gripped 
 my arm tensely as she spoke. 
 
 " I did not know you had come to Dublin again," she 
 said. 
 
 " I ought to have told you. I'm afraid I played a bad 
 joke on you. I'm very sorry, my dear girl." 
 
 She opened her eyes wide and looked at rrie. Then she 
 removed her hand and shook herself again. 
 
 " When was it you came up ? " 
 
 II This very afternoon. Ill come round to pay my respects 
 to your aunt, if I may." 
 
 " Surely I " she said. " There'll be supper there too. 
 Unless " and she broke away again " you've got anything 
 else to do." 
 
 " I shall certainly have supper there, if your aunt will put 
 up with me," I said, brushing past her prideful defiance. " I 
 have a lot I want to talk to you about too." 
 
 With a simple directness and forceful admiration that was 
 quite remarkable, she produced before me, when we had passed 
 through the introductions with her aunt, very nearly the whole 
 list of my books. 
 
 " But my dear girl," I protested, " I would have given them 
 to you gladly if I had thought you wanted them." 
 
 " Wanted them ! And what way would I always bother 
 you when I know right well I can afford them just as well as 
 you can ? " 
 
A DISCOVERY 343 
 
 " You mustn't go making a Protestant of her, Mr. Elthorne," 
 said her aunt, less in humour than in earnest. 
 
 "No," said Ethna Cahill, suddenly checked. " He won't 
 do that. But I must know. And it's awfully good to take 
 all this bother over me. I know well it is, although I may 
 sometimes seem queer to you. But you won't mind that, 
 will you ? " To my amazement her eyes were full of tears 
 as she spoke, and she seemed wonderfully appealing and 
 humble. 
 
 I felt a furious desire to take her half-outstretched hand and 
 stroke it, she seemed suddenly so frail a frame to contain her 
 energetic spirit. Instead of which I quietly brushed aside 
 her appeal. 
 
 " My dear girl, you mustn't talk like that to me. How 
 haven't you your right to make what use you will of me ? 
 What other use are any of us in this world than to help one 
 another forward in the things that really matter ? assuming 
 there is a mutual interest in those things. But now I want 
 to know how you are going to manage about the time for the 
 opera." 
 
 " Oh ! I'm arranging that/' she said, briskly and firmly 
 once more. " I saw the directors, and told them it was for 
 the sake of my music, and they're letting me go half an hour 
 early all next week." 
 
 " But do directors of that kind care a bit for your music, 
 beyond waltz-music while their scones are being eaten ? " 
 
 " I don't know," she said, " but they did for me." And I 
 could suddenly see her energetic demand, so full of importance, 
 of those peaceable business men, and their puzzled comments 
 on her afterwards, when they had granted her request scarcely 
 knowing what they did. 
 
 For her twenty-five years she was the completest child I 
 have ever met, Or rather, since we speak of children idly, 
 not knowing what we mean by the term, she was the most 
 original soul I have ever met. She was not ignorant of the 
 cmder facts of life, I was surprised to find. There had been 
 tramplers in the house of her sex, I learnt later, who had been 
 sent swiftly to the rightabout with a complete knowledge of 
 their intentions. Her aunt's lodging-house had revealed some 
 of the seamier aspects of living to her, which she had looked 
 on with unflinching and knowledgeable eyes. But her 
 
344 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 courage had not been daunted, and that is to say her quick 
 impulse and her frank wonder had remained unsoiled. In a 
 sense she was younger than her years in the sense that she 
 had not become spuriously old, but like all those people 
 whom one considers younger than their years, she was also 
 much older than them. She commanded her seniors with no 
 other expectation than obedience, and usually she met 
 obedience, though she also met, and never noticed, surly 
 interrogation. 
 
 All the following week her delight in the opera was almost 
 pathetic to watch. It would have been pathetic had it not 
 been so absorbing. What might pedantically be called the 
 philosophical conceptions behind the music, won her immediate 
 attention, and the music itself became a kind of approach, 
 complete or incomplete, towards them. We learnt together 
 richly. We went twice to see Tristan and Isolde, for she 
 had been puzzled and depressed after the first time. Then 
 during the performance of the first act, on our second visit, 
 she whispered to me : 
 
 " But this isn't love." 
 
 " Ah ! " I exclaimed. " Why isn't it ? " 
 
 " Love fills the mind with blood," she said, and trembled 
 as she spoke, " but all the blood has been burnt out of this. 
 Love's just as terrible, but it's a different kind of terribleness. 
 This is too dry scorching, that's the word it's unhealthy. 
 But you know : what is it ? " 
 
 " Listen : where's the burden of the music carried ? " 
 
 She listened. " On the 'cellos," she said. 
 
 " Now," I said, and took her hand, " listen to the register, 
 and see if you notice anything." 
 
 " It isn't really 'cello register at all," she said slowly, " it's 
 too high." 
 
 A number of voices bade our silence at this, and despite 
 her impatience, I would not continue till the end of the act, 
 when I said : 
 
 " That was Wagner's musical expression of the fact that the 
 fire had burnt all the sap out of the emotion. It's dry, hard, 
 in a sense arid." 
 
 " It isn't love," she declared emphatically. " Love burns 
 too, it burns up, but it fills up. This doesn't fill up at all, 
 do you know ? It empties. They are just cinders now/' 
 
A DISCOVERY 345 
 
 She sat facing me with her large deep-blue eyes flashing keenly, 
 and a flush lighting along the pellucidness of her complexion. 
 Her red hair was roughened where she had laid hold of it during 
 the continuance of the music. I thought as I looked on her 
 what a terrible and wonderful being this would be if she loved. 
 It would, I divined, be no dry fire, but rather a mighty torrent. 
 Again I had a sudden conception of her body's frailty under 
 the possible stress exerted upon her spirit. I put my hand 
 half protectingly on her arm, and she shook it roughly off 
 and took up her programme. 
 
 Still I did not see the drift of things. She, I am sure, did 
 not, for her nature went forward directly and instinctively, 
 far ahead of her realisation of herself, if indeed her realisation 
 of herself ever caught up with the urgent and trustful drive of 
 her being. 
 
 It was not until the actual hour of my departure that v the 
 consciousness of things swept like a flame round us both. The 
 glory of those evenings had passed, and lived in our memories 
 now like aromas housed in a careful shrine. We were, each 
 of us, both elated and melancholy. Through fitful sunshine 
 the driving rain sailed across the open mouth of Broadstone 
 station as we stood on the platform beside the waiting train. 
 There were few travellers, and the porters had most of them 
 escaped outside, so that the appearance of outward things 
 was scarcely exhilarating. And we were depressed at the 
 thought of parting, though a strange exultation burned through 
 it all. 
 
 Then, as a shout came for all to take their places, I took 
 her hand to say good-bye. 
 
 " I may any time come up suddenly/' I added. " I feel the 
 possibility in my blood/' 
 
 I looked in her eyes as I spoke ; they were fixed, large and 
 earnest, upon me. Then I raised her hand and gently touched 
 it with my lips. As I lifted my head, I saw her face again, 
 burning and eager. She was trembling from head to foot. 
 Before I could know well what had happened, she had flung 
 her arms about my neck, my arms were about her, and our 
 lips had met in an exultant, triumphing kiss. 
 
 I came to myself to realise that the train had begun to move 
 cut of the station. Calling her name, I leapt into it hastily, 
 and not till I was within did I realise that there was no 
 
346 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 need for me to return by it. But it was too late to recall my 
 decision, and as the train toiled away, I saw Ethna standing 
 erect and motionless on the platform, burning, as it were, in a 
 dream of glory. 
 
 For the first hour or so I had no thoughts but for that 
 consummating picture. It absorbed me, thrilled me ; it 
 sent chords of wonderful music through my soul. Then other 
 thoughts came on, and I was caught in difficulties. Presently 
 one cruel and devastating thought flashed through me. Did 
 Ethna know I was married ? Had I ever told her ? For the 
 soul of me I could not say. We had spoken of most things, 
 it seemed, near to us both, and I was amazed to think how 
 intimately we had indeed spoken together ; but I had not 
 been in the habit of thinking of my legal bond, and it was quite 
 likely I had not spoken of it. The torture of that was inex- 
 pressible, and I amazed the one other occupant of my 
 carriage by leaping up with a loud cry of pain. 
 
 So my thoughts turned to Rhoda, and she suddenly came 
 and stood between us. Not by the legal bond she held. Not 
 by anything so merely categorical. But by a real and indis- 
 putable claim. For I saw her then as I had not seen her, or 
 had occasion to think of her, since the days immediately 
 prior to her leaving me, with all the mental conflict that they 
 meant. I saw her as the one who had stood faithfully and 
 loyally by me in my poverty and bitterest struggles. She 
 held me by that ; and how that journey ended I do not know. 
 
ACT V 
 
 AN EXPOSITION OF TRAGEDY 
 I 
 
 THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT RESOLUTION 
 
 The whole of my past rolled to my feet, and I stood on the 
 crown of its accomplishments and failures to face the future. 
 It was impossible to net it all in, and to take an action that 
 would remain the completely right thing to do. There would 
 always be some outstanding consideration to abrogate the rest. 
 I neglect categorical considerations. That I was legally 
 bound to Rhoda would matter greatly to Ethna, who was a 
 Catholic ; but to me it was a difficulty not past solution. But 
 I was married, in the more truly sacramental sense of marriage, 
 both to Ethna and to Rhoda ; to Rhoda in the sacrament, the 
 holy-sealing, of suffering, courage and loyalty, and to Ethna 
 in the sacrament of a coeval love such as I had dreamed of 
 but had never known, mutually fulfilling. And though they 
 did not, to me then, really compare, though the disparity was 
 wide, yet their counter claims remained. To which was added 
 a whole host of other harassing perplexities. 
 
 Happily, for right or for wrong, some temporary fury of 
 blood gives a lead to circumstances, or, in certain passes 
 of life, a fastidiousness of brain might have us weighing 
 abstractions uselessly for ever. It is action that gives the 
 cue to action. When I got out of the train at Castlebar 
 station my mind was challenging and defiant. I stood opposite 
 Rhoda and defied her claims, though I did not dispute them. 
 
348 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 So I went straightway to the post-office and sent a letter-card 
 to Ethna. I have it here amongst other precious relics : 
 
 " My darling, do not forget, whatever else may happen, 
 I am yours absolutely. The kiss on your lips this morning 
 was the crown of my life. I am yours to bid go or bid stay. 
 I am yours, my little one, to dispense. To bring a glance 
 of pleasure to your face would recompense any consideration ; 
 it tears me, tears me, to think I may ever pain you. And 
 there is such a joy in service that I could never have believed 
 till now. Your face and figure are before me now like a dream 
 to follow. God bless you, God bless you, and God bless you." 
 
 That was my challenge flung down. That was the first thing 
 I saw had to be done, and though I saw no more to be 
 done, I did that one thing and left the rest to evolve itself. 
 
 It did so rapidly, for the following night I wrote at length 
 to Rhoda telling her the brief of the circumstances, and ask- 
 ing her to complete her action by divorcing me. Divining 
 that she would not agree to outwit the law, I told her that, 
 on hearing from her, I would provide her with the circum- 
 stances on which she could base her charge of unfaithfulness. 
 It was humiliating that one should be compelled to subter- 
 fuge in a matter that was clean and honourable from start 
 to finish, but that was the compulsion laid upon one by a 
 State finical in this regard, though quite sufficiently lax in 
 the ordering of public morality. 
 
 Having carefully written the letter, I posted it in the 
 village for the morrow's mail. There was nothing more 
 possible to be done till I had a reply to it, so I went up and 
 lay on Guala to learn patience. 
 
 It was a warm night in late summer, and there was a 
 breathless hush on the earth. The silence that filled the 
 valley, and flowed up over me, was something quite tangible 
 as it was wondrously impressive. The glow that still flowed 
 up from the west dimmed the lustre of the stars, quenching 
 their restless activity, and so motion seemed banished with 
 sound. Nothing could have been imagined more calculated to 
 calm the spirit. And yet, beneath all the calm, there was the 
 throb of a mighty being, like the muffled pulse of an engine 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT RESOLUTION 349 
 
 whose power lay sleeping now. Indeed, the very silence, the 
 very calm, seemed created by that slumbering sense of power. 
 It was not the absence of something, but the presence of 
 something, quelling all things to a whisper of delight. 
 
 I was glad above all things that this presence could so 
 unmistakably make itself known to me. It was what I 
 wanted to approve the love I knew. I felt as if, were Ethna 
 at my side, on Guala's great back, the sense of solitude would 
 in no way be marred, that the presence would not eject her 
 from itself, but would interpenetrate her as it did all else. I 
 felt as though to think of her was not a detraction of the 
 present moment, but that each, in the restful act of contem- 
 plation, became part of the other. She would have lain, as 
 I did, full on her back, thrilled, as I was, and lost to all sense 
 of time and place and the accidents of circumstance. I could 
 have held her hand, and we could have gone, like children, 
 naked into the presence of the Great Being. 
 
 It was strange how my very trouble helped this. Guala 
 could conceivably have been jealous of a detracting influence, 
 but that the sense of my trouble drew out a self-forgetting 
 beneficence. I lay there richly blessed, while the hours of 
 Time ran obliviously by outside that shrine of timeless power 
 asleep or awake I know not, nor did it very much matter 
 in the body or out of it till the dawn flushed through the 
 heavens and young-eyed day stood on the waking earth, 
 glittering in his crystals of dew, and radiant in his shining 
 garment of light. 
 
 Not till the sun had dipped over its zenith was I free to 
 rise and go slowly back to my cottage. As I went back I was 
 thrilled with joy and full of peace. I had, it seemed, been so 
 thrilled as against a struggle. All that week a hush remained, 
 within and without. I had resolved not to write to Ethna 
 until I heard from Rhoda, but I was alarmed at having no 
 letter from her. I was alarmed because I knew so precisely 
 wnat it meant. Her whole being was flowing out in a joy 
 that was her perfect contentment and self-effacement. I 
 could even see the radiant light of her face as she went about 
 her work. A flame had burned up in her, and though it 
 burned steadily and contentedly, it did so only because it had 
 consumed the whole of her. I was astonished to think how 
 well I knew her. Letters were an irrelevance to that mood of 
 
350 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 hers. What could letters to and fro avail with that kiss on her 
 lips as fresh as though it had just been pressed ! I trembled 
 for awe, trembled like a reed, when I thought of the pure fire 
 of that nature to whom I had brought I knew not what. 
 
 I trembled the more when I received Rhoda's reply. It 
 was five years since I had seen her, and I had no clear picture 
 in my mind of what she might have grown ; but I received a 
 distinct picture from that letter. Had she claimed the 
 memory of the past, the pledge of our once loyal union and all 
 that that had meant, I would have been silenced. But she 
 did not. She claimed the fact of our marriage, she referred 
 to that as though thereby I or she (it was not clear which) was 
 to be tethered to the other, hindering and frustrating the 
 other, through the countless ages of eternity whatever we 
 would ; she spoke of the " sacred words breathed over us 
 both/' though she did not make it clear whether the sacred- 
 ness lay with the unknown man who invented them or the 
 matter-of-fact officer who compelled us to say them after him. 
 It occurred to me at once as an argument to take up with her 
 that we had only been mated in a registry office, which would, 
 I imagined, undermine her attitude ; but it was monstrous that 
 I should be compelled to juggle with such irrelevancies. There 
 was only one sacrament, and that I admitted ; and that she 
 did not claim indeed, our whole attitude, the very fact of 
 our separation, was an abrogation of it. That it did not 
 wholly abrogate, I knew in my blood, but that it seemed to 
 have been abrogated for her, I saw from her letter. 
 
 It needed all my strength to read that letter, for it sent a 
 fever into my bones. It put a barrier effectually across my 
 path. That her emotions had been touched, I saw ; and the 
 part of the letter where that peeped through moved me 
 considerably. Had the whole letter been thus, or had she 
 appealed on the basis of it, I must needs have been exceedingly 
 tender in my attitude. Love is always a thing for very tender 
 handling. But she professed horror oh, how can I write of 
 it ? How can I treat of one who spoke of a thing that 
 seemingly did not exist ? who spoke of that seeming non- 
 existent thing as though its denial was a kind of horrific 
 sacrilege ? Horror, because I loved Ethna ? The free winds 
 that blew among the heather laughed at the notion as a 
 monstrosity. If ever there were love that was pure, free of 
 
THE INTRODUCTORY ISSUE 351 
 
 the flesh (if need were : though the flesh is no thing to fear) 
 and untainted, then my love for Ethna was such a thing. 
 While hers for me went without saying. One had only to 
 know her to judge of that. 
 
 It was a wild, wild night I spent with that letter, striding 
 the hills, and lamenting in my cottage. The following day 
 brought little remission ; but it brought me this knowledge, 
 that I would have to see Ethna forthwith, and, however much 
 I feared it, to see Rhoda also. 
 
 II 
 
 THE INTRODUCTORY ISSUE 
 
 There was one thing I had not taken into my calculations. 
 I realised it as I sat in a corner of that restaurant and heard 
 Ethna, across the bustle and clatter of plates, abandon herself 
 to her violin. She was playing the Preislied. I was reminded 
 of an evening only a fortnight before when we had heard it 
 together, and discussed its formless irresponsibility. This she 
 was now interpreting so quaintly that the air, if air it may be 
 called, seemed to float about the room in bondage to no 
 instrumentation or technique. It became thus, in a manner, 
 deeply expressive of herself ; but as I heard it I realised that, 
 like a number of lovely, untamed souls in our country, she 
 owed fealty to a bondage that was not expressive of her, but 
 held her nevertheless. 
 
 When she saw me standing outside she came up to me 
 happily, even as though she had been expecting me, and 
 slipped her arm within my own, stepping gladly up the street. 
 
 " Do you know I was wondering when I should see you ? " 
 she said. 
 
352 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I looked down at her face that was lifted up towards me and 
 shone radiantly in the heavy dusk. How pure she was ! 
 Love had taken her impetuous, perplexed being and burned the 
 whole of it to a crystal clearness. I was greatly afraid for her, 
 and turned away the thought that the coming ordeal was 
 necessary to exalt her possibly, inasmuch as it savoured of 
 hateful unkindness to her and complacency towards myself. 
 
 " Dear little woman, how I have lived in the perfection of 
 that sudden kiss ! " 
 
 We had not renewed it. It seemed almost like making 
 sacramental things a common usage. But our eyes held each 
 other. We caressed in our glances, or our souls did, and we 
 thrilled richly in the joy of it. 
 
 " Let us go somewhere by ourselves and talk, Ethna," I 
 said. 
 
 " Jack ! " It was her first speaking of my name, and she 
 said it softly, as an assent. 
 
 It had been my intention to ask her if she had said anything 
 to her aunt, but as I had looked in her eyes I had known 
 that question unnecessary. I could almost have heard her 
 softly derisive " Aunty Walpole ? " No, it was plain she 
 had not wished to mar her joy by uncovering the secrecy, and 
 as we went in to a hotel off Dame Street I knew that our 
 tribulation was to be in a universe we owned for ourselves. 
 
 I felt as raw and nervous as any lad at the prospect of 
 breaking my news to this dear girl, and shattering the clear 
 wonder of her joy. She noticed it. Indeed, it was her 
 smiling glances of question at me that brought me to the 
 threshold of my statement. 
 
 " Dear/' said I, putting my hand over hers on the table, 
 " I told you most things about myself, I believe : I hardly 
 know what I did tell you, and what I did not : but did I, 
 among other things, ever tell you that I have been married ? " 
 
 " You did not/' she said slowly. It was plain that the 
 brightness of her joy had been dimmed, but it was equally 
 plain that she had not come to the notion of my wife being 
 then alive. 
 
 " I never thought of myself in that relation/' I said, 
 breaking the fact to her gently. " I gave you all my glance 
 took in, but it never took that fact in its widest sweep, for she 
 left me years ago and I have grown another man since. I was 
 
THE INTRODUCTORY ISSUE 353 
 
 ripe for the change then, and it has developed busily in the 
 five years since, so that I have had no cause in my developing 
 nature to entertain the other relation. Otherwise you would 
 have heard of it with all the rest of my proper concerns that 
 came naturally out before you. And then, to me at least, 
 the knowledge of our love swept so suddenly out of the sky 
 upon us. It was not until I got away that the other thing 
 suddenly came before me. I have not slept for nights. I 
 have been so much to blame/' 
 
 With words I sought to muffle the blow for us both. I 
 sought to deaden it, but it had fallen notwithstanding. 
 Ethna's face had grown white and haggard, and her eyes 
 staring beyond me across the room were old with pain. The 
 happy joy had been stricken away, and the tense agony in that 
 face as I looked at it nearly made me cry aloud and to tell her 
 it was all a ghastly joke, that I was not, nor ever had been, 
 married. The waiter came and placed something before us, 
 but I pushed it away and told him in the name of God not to 
 interfere with us. 
 
 Time flowed by, and there was still no change or move in 
 her. It was intolerable, to look on that white, staring face, to 
 see that anguish of soul as its fair and beautiful citadel 
 crumbled slowly before it, and to know that it was my hand 
 had struck the blow. 
 
 Anything was better than that mute, suffering glance, and 
 I spoke to her. " You would be just to be angry with me, my 
 dearest/' I said, " but don't continue in silence so. It is too 
 terrible/' 
 
 She turned her eyes on me, and for a moment it seemed as 
 though she meant to be angry. Her being seemed to draw up 
 to strike and adjust her wrong strike me, strike anything ; 
 and had it brought her relief I would have endured her stroke 
 gladly. But her glance changed, as it caught mine, to one 
 that cried numbly. 
 
 ' Oh, Jack, and I had been so so happy ! " 
 
 " Ethna ! " 
 
 " Mine I thought you were mine. In our own world I 
 had lived all this time." 
 
 " And I am yours, Ethna." 
 
 ' But you are married ! " She spoke half wonderingly. 
 
 " So the law says. But I am not owned except by 
 
 AA 
 
354 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 you. It is a complication of affairs, not of facts, this of 
 ours." 
 
 She revived a little at this, but then she turned away 
 again with a piteous gesture. 
 
 " I can't cheat myself ; I can't cheat myself," she cried, 
 then wildly struck the blow she had inclined to at first. " Oh, 
 how I hate things ! First my music, and then this ! Why 
 can't I own anything ? Why can't I give up anything ? Oh, 
 Jack ! " And she reached up her hand and fiercely took mine 
 that I had outstretched across the table to her aid. The way 
 she spoke my name made me know that she had breathed it 
 often in the kingdom she had made for our possession. 
 
 I summoned my years to me for the will to guide us out 
 of these poignant waters. She was bleeding opposite me, in 
 an exquisite pain of spirit, and I could not suffer my self- 
 blame to withhold my hand from the energy requisite for some 
 measure of her relief. Else where was the virtue in my riper 
 years ? So I drew myself together. 
 
 " Ethna dear, does that kiss of ours remain, or does it not 
 remain ? Tell me that." 
 
 She looked suddenly round on me, and I held her eyes with 
 mine. As I spoke on, the colour slowly crept back into her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " It was a pledge, and it still is ; and surely that's a great 
 deal more than a formal bond lodged in a dusty archive." 
 Even as I spoke Rhoda seemed to stand with another bond 
 before me. But I put it aside. First things first, I said ; 
 Rhoda herself had cancelled that bond ; and I continued 
 earnestly : " What you are suffering now in your degree, I 
 have suffered in my degree all this past week. We cannot 
 either of us take the other's pain, or we would gladly, wouldn't 
 we ? But in the end of it all I see this clearly, that we have 
 our love still as truly as ever we had, with the other's comfort 
 added to it. I cannot believe in the purposelessness of things. 
 If we lift our heads bravely in this we shall find its meaning. 
 But in the meantime we each of us always have the other. I 
 know that that's easier to hold by in fuller years, but, my 
 Ethna, it is true. To-morrow I go to England, to-morrow 
 morning by the mail, to see this lady who claims this bond so 
 as to arrange its dissolution. I can't believe she will want the 
 continuance of a mere paper-state " 
 
THE INTRODUCTORY ISSUE 355 
 
 " Divorce ! " 
 
 " Yes, dear, divorce." The thing I had seen afar struck 
 us suddenly. 
 
 " But they won't let me marry a divorced man," she 
 declared fiercely, almost contemptuously, with pride in every 
 nerve of her ; then suddenly she dissolved to a wild humility. 
 " Oh, Jack, dear, I didn't mean that ; I didn't mean that 
 surely. I would, oh I would, have you anyway. You can't 
 think how I have lived all the very whole of my life this 
 week gone. I'm not all that hard Aunty Walpole is. But 
 there'd surely be a great trouble ; and divorce is a terrible 
 thing." 
 
 " I know well what you meant, little woman," I said. 
 " You may just let your soul's word freely out. I shall under- 
 stand ; I know you, Ethna, and the rest is simple. Divorce 
 frightens you, I know, that's because you've been trained to 
 it ; but what if divorce exists already in the soul ? What 
 then, my dear, of our one sealing kiss ? Is the flesh more than 
 the soul ? " She was silent. Her whole body seemed to 
 yearn eagerly towards me, and her face to reach forward to 
 mine infinitely, though she moved not. " Let me tell you the 
 story," I said, " and you shall judge how real that divorce is." 
 
 Simply I told her the story : quietly, and with a music of 
 words so chosen that they should soothe her spirit quivering 
 still. It would have been wanton brutality to have spoken 
 to her of the early intimacies of my life with Rhoda, though 
 they had a memory of loyalty that was not dead. I told that 
 Rhoda had earnestly co-operated in certain ideals of life that 
 to me were the whole meaning of life, which ideals she had 
 abused, scoffing at me for holding them. From this I dated 
 what I had to say. I said clearly that I did not blame Rhoda ; 
 that that would have been an impertinence, seeing she was 
 one and I another soul ; but that a divorce had ensued, a 
 wrenching apart that had meant considerable pain to me, and 
 doubtless therefore to her, and that, in the result, we now, in 
 the deepest sense, had nothing to do with each other, had no 
 traffic because we had no common medium of traffic. In 
 short, that we were in fact divorced, and that any attempt 
 to resume a mutual life under the circumstances would be an 
 indecency, a prostitution. I was about to point out that 
 there was only one possible claim she could have on me, 
 
356 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 maintenance because of wasted years, and in that she had the 
 advantage of me, when Ethna broke in : 
 
 " But weren't you wanting to know, like you've been 
 helping me to get at things ? How could you go apart ? " 
 
 " She found success/' I said. 
 
 Silence fell on us at this. Her trouble seemed held in 
 suspense by an exquisite shyness that was more eloquent to 
 me than the speaking of many words. Presently her eyes 
 sought mine. 
 
 " I know that, Ethna/' I said, " I have no doubt of that. 
 Your art is an art to you, as mine is to me, and we can each 
 help deepen the other. My dearest ! " 
 
 Then her brow puckered, and she hung between perplexity 
 and the shyness that was so novel in her. 
 
 " But would they ? " she asked. 
 
 " My dear little love," I reassured her, " our union is a 
 higher thing than needs the judgment of men's hands." 
 
 We had eaten nothing, but I paid our account to a sym- 
 pathetic and understanding waiter. He and we, I dimly 
 realised, were the only people in the room. 
 
 Outside, in the dark of her own street, Ethna suddenly 
 took an alarm. 
 
 " Oh, what," she cried, " if she won't let you free ? " Her 
 lips were pursed and the poise of her body challenging, as 
 when she played her violin. Then terror struck her : her face 
 became pale and haggard, and she clung to me wildly, trem- 
 bling violently. 
 
 " We mustn't think of that," I declared. " We absolutely 
 must not. It's impossible. I should go mad if I thought of 
 that. Ethna, it shall be, I say it, and we shall go to Gleann- 
 na-Siothchana." 
 
MY QUEST IN LONDON BEGINS 357 
 
 III 
 
 MY QUEST IN LONDON BEGINS 
 
 Not only Ramsay, but Tim himself, awaited me at his flat. 
 
 " I wasn't going to let the return of the recluse to the world 
 pass by unnoticed," Ramsay declared. " I passed the tele- 
 gram on. Half literary London will be here in a short time for 
 your delectation/' 
 
 " Since when have you taken to explicit humour, old Ram- 
 say ? " I asked. 
 
 " Someone must keep the balance level," he said in a tone 
 whereby I knew at once that his quiet observation had already 
 divined that something was amiss. 
 
 " I prefer our Ireland to this man's London," I said to Tim, 
 who had heartily thrust me into a chair and lit his usually 
 monstrous pipe. 
 
 " We Scottishmen do rather own it, I admit," said Ramsay, 
 holding his match till it burnt his fingers for the greater 
 deliberation of his remark. Then after the initial silence had 
 passed off, and our pipes began to take their journeymen way, 
 he added quietly : " Well, what is it ? " 
 
 I told them in as few words as might be. I was in London 
 for action, and it was not my intention to talk upon it by the 
 way even to my dearest of friends. There was a long silence 
 after I had spoken. Ramsay's face betrayed no hint of what 
 he thought ; Tim's was keen with pain as he stared ahead of 
 him. Then Ramsay spoke. 
 
 " I don't approve of it," he said firmly. 
 
 " New presbyter is old priest writ large," I quoted to him. 
 " I go to see Ermott Jacob to-morrow morning." 
 
 They both breathed sharply at my mention of that name. 
 It pained me keenly to hurt my old friends with any appear- 
 ance of harshness, although I knew that my morrow's inter- 
 view, to have any satisfactory result, could only take one 
 course. I was resolved to win, and I was faced by Rhoda's 
 first refusal, her falling back on cant phrases. 
 
 " My friend, my dear and only friends outside my glen, 
 don't think oddly of me. I can only fall back on the schoolboy 
 phrase, and say, ' You don't know her or you'd know what I 
 mean.' But you do know me, and I ask you to believe and 
 
358 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 trust me." Half an bout before this I would not bave believed 
 I could have been pushed, with scarce a word spoken, to a 
 defence. But those who have lived through an experience 
 can never communicate that fact to others, and I had oppo- 
 site me dear friends of mine who had not yet adjusted their 
 mental outlook to this new conception of me. 
 
 I felt it about me as I set out the following morning to find 
 out Rhoda ; but I had had a letter from Ethna, and that was 
 working actively in my mind. It was my first letter from her, 
 and that fact was eloquent. While she could dwell in her 
 mind's possession of me, letters had been unnecessary, but 
 now that that was assailed she cried wildly and fiercely for 
 the assurance her eager soul demanded. Her various being 
 had been suddenly knit to a unity by the kiss uprushing from 
 both our needs ; but my news had disintegrated it again to 
 its old contentious discussion. And she wailed for peace, 
 for power upon herself. I would get daily letters, I knew, but 
 this first of them made me strong, if desperate, for my inter- 
 view. 
 
 Rhoda had a flat now near Sloane Square. The drawing- 
 room into which I was shown by her maid was a resplendent 
 affair. When she herself entered she came forward tentatively, 
 interrogatively ; it was plain that she had not recognised 
 me. I realised that I must have changed somewhat during 
 these five years, but she, though she was thinner and, as it 
 were, more convinced of manner, had remained the same. 
 Was I unemotional that the sight of her should stir me so 
 little ? Or was it that I had, in the quietude of Gleann-na- 
 Siothchana, grown incredibly remote from her ? Or was it 
 that my last experience of her in this elegance was of one who 
 went her way paying small heed to me, and whose presence 
 I had come scarcely to notice in those rare hours when we met ? 
 I did not know ; I could not tell ; I only know these quick 
 speculations ran through me as she scanned me, rather than 
 any glow of emotion. 
 
 Then : " Jack ! " she exclaimed : and added, a little ner- 
 vously, " I didn't recognise you at first. But I hadn't 
 expected to see you, you see. I'm very glad you have come." 
 
 "I've changed much more than merely in physical appear- 
 ance," I said awkwardly. 
 
 " Won't you sit down ? " she said, her nervousness mixing 
 
MY QUEST IN LONDON BEGINS 359 
 
 with the manner of the accomplished hostess. I could not 
 help but admire the ease with which one thing flowed over and 
 dominated the other in an easy grace of manner. I admired 
 it as one might admire a grace that one scarcely has wished to 
 covet. 
 
 We sat, and an awkward silence might have fallen on us 
 but for her. 
 
 " Have you been in London long ? " she asked. 
 
 " I only arrived last night." 
 
 " I am glad you came to see me so soon." 
 
 It was simply and genuinely spoken. There was the out- 
 reaching of a hand of tenderness in it that did not fail to dis- 
 cover me. I felt brutal indeed in refusing to accept it, but 
 what would have been the use in proceeding thus ? 
 
 " I came specially to see you," I said, " on the subject of 
 my last letter to you." 
 
 " Oh," she said, stiff and alert. " I thought I wrote to you 
 in answer. You got my letter ? " 
 
 " Which meant an intolerable and impossible state of affairs 
 you to live your separate life, and I mine ; we never to 
 meet, but to pay a mock pledge to a paper bond that has 
 ceased to mean anything. Surely you can see that that is an 
 indecent contrivance ! " 
 
 " I am willing that we should renew our married life." 
 Her words were spoken coldly ; but that, no doubt, was to 
 cover the extreme awkwardness of her position. 
 
 "Do I understand you rightly ? You know that my 
 affection is given elsewhere excuse me, but I was not to 
 blame for the state of affairs that created that possibility ! 
 and yet you desire the renewal of You make me wonder 
 where that pride is that once was so active in you. I spoke 
 of a separate bondage being indecent : surely Can't I appeal 
 to you on nobler grounds ? " 
 
 " It isn't a question of pride. It's a question of duty." 
 
 It was hard not to be impatient at this, but the point had 
 to be met since it was plainly her citadel. 
 
 " Our duty lay in the past. We failed then : I, or you, or 
 both of us, failed there, and the thing has gone away into the 
 shades. What do you mean by duty ? Would you play up 
 to this duty ? Look at me now, and conceive me in this 
 elegant drawing-room full of your elegant friends ! Does 
 
360 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 that prospect please you ? That kind of thing always irked 
 me, as you know : I scorn it unutterably now. Who am I 
 to scorn ? you may ask. I admit the justice of that plea, 
 but it only argues the futility of what you call this duty. 
 Would you forswear all this for the duty of which you speak ? " 
 
 " I would try it if you wished/' she said. 
 
 " I hope you won't be offended if I suggest that you only 
 put that up to outflank my case. Yet even if you did so, 
 you would be bored to tears in a month, seeing the will has 
 not proceeded from any real change of desire in you. Come 
 and see my one-room cottage, and judge for yourself how widely 
 we are separated ! But the immediate matter is this, that I, 
 who have lived my separate life for five years since long 
 before then, truly have come upon one now whom I love, and 
 who loves me ; that is to say, one who fills up my life, as you 
 do not wish to, and long ago elected not to. Therefore " 
 
 " I suppose you consider that that's all a woman's for, to 
 fill up a man's life, as you put it," her voice rang out. " It 
 makes one tired, continually hearing that kind of thing." 
 
 " Attribute it to my male fatuity, if you will. It is truly 
 only a subjective way of stating a double position, for I fill 
 up her life too. That, I can firmly state, is the thing that 
 most weighs with me. Both sides are necessary to what we 
 can call love, and both sides are amply completed in this 
 present instance as neither is between yourself and myself. 
 You, with perfect justice, and even possibly with commendable 
 taste, have no desire to fill up my life. I would sooner be 
 laid on a dustheap than drift in this stream." I indicated 
 the elegant room we sat within. " In short, I am divorced 
 here, and lately have been married elsewhere. It is your duty 
 to let that patent fact be registered in the noble archives of 
 the State. I do not ask it for my sake, for it matters little 
 to me what kind of registration the State elects to make of me. 
 I ask it for the sake of this lady to whom it is a matter of 
 concern." 
 
 " Have you been unfaithful to me ? " she quickly asked. 
 
 " Yes," I lied. Whether she had in her mind my possible re- 
 lations with Ethna, or the Divine-Law comedy, I do not know ; 
 but the thing had to be said at some time, as part of the idiot- 
 game the law would compel us to play, and I might just as 
 well begin it forthwith. As part of that comedy it lost its 
 
MY QUEST IN LONDON BEGINS 361 
 
 character of a lie, and became a tragic game of Aunt Sally. 
 I thought of adding that she first had been unfaithful, but I 
 had said my say to that end, and would add no more. 
 
 She sat flushed and silent for a time ; then her mind veered 
 about on a different vane, and she flashed out upon me : 
 
 " I'm surprised at you, Jack. A man of your ideals too ! 
 I have always held in my mind that whatever else might 
 happen you would be faithful to me. Where's the nobility 
 in writing books that your life gives a lie too ? " 
 
 " It is you who must take the responsibility of that/' I 
 broke in. 
 
 "II" She rose before me as she spoke. 
 
 " Yes/' I said, and rose too, " by selfishly enforcing a 
 bond that has lost all validity " 
 
 " I shall never consent ! " 
 
 " selfishly, and, I believe, vindictively, although you were 
 the first to turn your back on all that it should have meant." 
 
 Few things are accomplished in such ignoble anger as we 
 then broke to, and bitter words were spoken that were the less 
 edifying seeing this was our first meeting for five years. We 
 were both shamefast at the end, each feeling injured with the 
 other for the unworthy display. As I looked on her, she 
 seemed then, in the white morning light, to look strangely 
 thin and grey. 
 
 " Nothing can be done by this," I said, after we had fallen 
 to a pained silence. " I ask you again, I implore you if you 
 will, to liberate me, as you alone can cancel this meaningless 
 thing that fetters my proper freedom " 
 
 " I will never, never do it," she said, still angrily. Her pose 
 suggested unflinching defiance. In that room it carried off its 
 incomparable dignity, though it would have looked histrionic 
 on hills. 
 
362 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 IV 
 
 SHOWING HOW FRANK GAVE HIS ASSISTANCE 
 
 A pale, watery sun shed a meretricious beauty over the faint 
 mists of Sloane Square as I stood there with the tragic years 
 loaded upon me. I could not, I dared not, write to Ethna 
 that I had failed. I drew her letter out of my pocket, and read 
 it again. Each line in it was a cry, not an ordinary plaintive 
 cry, but a thing that had tempests in it, almost fearful like 
 the coming of a storm. They rang as though she had hold of 
 life, our life, and impossible powers were tearing it from her 
 hands. It was wild ; it was dumb too ; like a pain that passed 
 beyond words. It is likely I cried aloud in my pain, as though 
 Guala were by to help me. Then I thought for the first time 
 of Frank, and I strode across to the station. 
 
 A pale youth, in a high white collar and silk tie, looking 
 superciliously over me informed me that Mr. Elthorne was in 
 and asked if I had an appointment with him. But I had seen 
 Frank Elthorne's name on a doorway behind the youth's 
 back, and stepping through the barrier I pushed him uncere- 
 moniously aside and strode across. 
 
 " Who the devil " said Frank starting out of his chair 
 
 on seeing a stranger come in. Someone was with him, stand- 
 ing beside his desk, some head of department, presumably. 
 
 " You may go, sir/' I said to him, and as he turned amusedly 
 away, I turned to Frank : " I'm in trouble, Frank, and I 
 think you can be of assistance to me." 
 
 " The backwoodsman ! " he exclaimed. " But steady : 
 you don't own the place. Well, how are you ? " 
 
 He hung in balance between an assertion of dignity and a 
 desire to be cordial. It was good to see him again. We were 
 widely enough apart in all conscience, but it was right good 
 to see Frank again. He was very stout and sleek and prosper- 
 ous-looking. His clean-shaven cheek was full of good living 
 without being unhealthily so, and gave an excellent top 
 finish to his generally well-groomed appearance. He was very 
 pleased with himself about something. 
 
 "I'm well. I could run you a mile anyway." 
 
 He could not refrain from criticism. " Don't you think 
 you might have touched yourself up a bit for the City, even 
 
HOW FRANK GAVE HIS ASSISTANCE 363 
 
 though we do worship the devil here ? What, eh ? But never 
 mind, I'm glad to see you. How are you ? Oh yes, what's 
 the trouble ? " He positively brimmed with good humour. 
 
 " I want you to see Rhoda for me." He suddenly looked 
 interested, but I held relentlessly on to dissipate his picture, 
 although I again felt this awkwardness in speaking of Rhoda. 
 " I have been to see her this morning, and she refuses abso- 
 lutely to take steps to release me, although I have explained 
 to her that we have no hold each on the other. I want now to 
 marry." 
 
 " Marry, my dear man ? You marry ? But I beg pardon, 
 go on ; who is it ? " 
 
 " A violinist in a Dublin tea-shop." 
 
 " I say, Jack ! " He looked doubtfully at me. " Oh," he 
 laughed, " I suppose this is your sense of humour." 
 
 " Frank," I said, "it's more earnest a thing than you can 
 conceive, or I can trust myself to explain. Will you just do 
 as I ask you ? Go up, and see what you can do to get Rhoda 
 to act reasonably? Her attitude is pure jealousy, I believe. 
 She doesn't explain, she is all apostrophes and stubbornness. 
 We had shameless word-throwing this morning." 
 
 " I don't wonder she refuses," he said pensively. " She 
 has just written a book on the sanctity of marriage. Sort of 
 book you ought to write," he said, looking up at me, " it 
 would bring you in pots of money. It did her a lot of good ; 
 her sales were sagging horribly, I believe. Very good book, 
 rnind you ! But, you know, I don't think I could do much good. 
 I don't see much of her, you see. Still, if you think it would 
 cio any good, I'll do what I can. It sounds an odd kind of 
 business." He looked doubtfully at me again. " How old 
 is she ? " 
 
 I caught the incongruous thought in his mind, and refused 
 to parley with it on that basis. " I take it you couldn't go 
 this afternoon ? " I asked. 
 
 " I don't think it would be wise if there was a scene this 
 morning." 
 
 " No ; that's just. I must be calm. I feel nervous like a 
 3'oungster over again. You see, I'm now thinking of Ethna ; 
 she didn't know I was married till after we found ourselves in 
 love with each other. And this present state will be cutting 
 her to pieces, she is so acutely strung. She's a Catholic too." 
 
364 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " A Catholic, Jack ! Isn't it an odd thing for an Elthorne 
 to marry a Catholic ? Still, there you are, it's your business. 
 I'm sorry ; I don't want to interfere. I'll go and see Rhoda 
 to-morrow afternoon." He made a note of the fact. " Can 
 we dine somewhere to-night ? " He consulted his notebook 
 again. " But I can't, I'm sorry ; Vi's got a dinner on of 
 sorts." He threw a side-glance at my tweed suit. 
 
 " I have an appointment to-night," I said, which was not 
 true, though I could easily make it so. 
 
 " Right ! " said he. " What do you say to lunch ? " He 
 was still suspicious of my tweed suit and tweed hat, but he 
 braced himself together for a brotherly heroism. " You've 
 heard of Uncle Jacob ? " 
 
 " Not a word ! 
 
 " Poor old chap, he had a stroke last week. It's his 
 second, and he's very bad. Shouldn't be surprised if he 
 doesn't pull through. Been a very successful man, old 
 uncle, you know. Funny kind of mind, and very close." 
 
 " I wouldn't be surprised if he had fifty strokes one on top 
 of another. It's all the pent-up energy he has vampired from 
 others working out in him, and his old tissues can't stand it. 
 That kind of man always works out in strokes in the end. 
 You cast your mind over the men you know and see if it isn't 
 so. It's a kind of readjustment of things, only it's in- 
 adequate, and it doesn't reimburse the creatures who have 
 been vampired. Men like that ought to be thrashed once a 
 week to retard their fiendish domination. No, his ailments 
 don't move me to the least spark of sympathy." 
 
 It was strange how I looked for company in this great city. 
 Could I have had Guala to turn to, I would have had abundant 
 company. There would have been no corner needing to be 
 filled. But here I was restless. Nothing satisfied. It was 
 like drinking a salt liquor. After leaving Frank, I went to 
 see some of the editors, and others, whom I had known, most 
 of whom had passed on to other things, but some of whom 
 were glad to see me. I could not complain that few wished 
 to see me, for I cannot truly say I wished to see them, but 
 the restlessness had to be satisfied. I also wrote to Ethna 
 more cheerily than the event justified, for I feared greatly 
 for her. I also sent her some books. 
 
 Tim came over again that night, and we three sat and 
 
HOW FRANK GAVE HIS ASSISTANCE 365 
 
 talked till late. Now that we were away from the actual 
 presence of Earth I found Ramsay eager and avid to hear my 
 speculations upon her real being. Her lively demonstrations 
 of her knowledge and overwhelming colossal sympathy 
 reached him, if only in my conversations. He was a book- 
 man. But with Tim I had an odd sense that he was always 
 before me in the field, though he had never canvassed these 
 conceptions. And then I found myself wondering if he were 
 not really an earth-presence, or, as one may say, an earth- 
 realisation, strangely gone astray. 
 
 I was to dine with Frank at his club the following night to 
 hear the result of his interview, and the day drew out heavily 
 enough. It was not till our dinner was well forward that I 
 asked him how he had fared. 
 
 " She's a very awkward person to discuss with," he said ; 
 and I could see he had begun to sympathise with me in 
 desiring a severance of the bond that held me to her, though 
 for reasons remote enough from mine. " You can't make any 
 headway with her. She keeps on talking about her duty. 
 My dear man, she positively wants you to go back to her. I 
 suppose we never want a thing till we are beginning to lose it." 
 
 " She spoke about her duty, with me." 
 
 " Of course it's her book she's running her head against. 
 You writers are a curious lot of people. It's her book, you 
 see. She has committed herself, I suppose. Always avoid 
 commitments, I say. Though why, because she has written 
 something in a book, she should want to push herself into your 
 pocket, I can't for the life of me see." 
 
 " Perhaps she wants to push me in her pocket," I said 
 bitterly. 
 
 " Ha, ha ; that's good. Well, I'm glad you can see the 
 humorous side of it. I told her that, mind you ; I told her 
 that we had read her book, Vi and myself, and liked it 
 immensely (always stroke people down first : what, eh ?), 
 but that she shouldn't let her right and proper pride in a book 
 make her inflict a very grave injustice on eh this lady 
 iriend of yours." 
 
 " Miss Cahill." 
 
 " Miss Cahill, is her name ? Old Irish name that is ; I 
 like it, Jack. But there, with all due respect to Rhoda, 
 women are unreasonable kind of people to talk to. Vi's just 
 
366 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 the same in her kind of way. She wouldn't hear, last night, 
 of the idea of you marrying a waitress in a tea-shop just as 
 if a thing of that kind really matters in the end. But to 
 return to the question : I reminded her that she was originally 
 responsible for the state of affairs, and that it was due to her 
 to do something. And what do you think she said ? " 
 
 " I haven't the dimmest notion." Dark, heavy clouds were 
 about me as I heard his speech from afar. 
 
 " She said she would go back to you. You see, that's the 
 difficulty of talking to women ; they always swing back to a 
 thing one has left a long time before." He looked balefully 
 across the heavy room. " You may talk as much as you like 
 about women's rights and women's economic freedom, and all 
 that kind of thing however, that's got nothing to do with it. 
 At any rate, I pointed out to her that that's to say, I asked 
 her what she would do if you well, you know, dispensed 
 with a marriage formula. You could do that in the West of 
 Ireland : there'd be no chattering females there, would there ?" 
 (I heard him in patience. Life was at low ebb in me, and his 
 desire to help me was very genuine.) " And she spoke of 
 living in sin. Which is carrying a good thing a bit too far, it 
 strikes me. I could scarcely say that to her, but I was care- 
 ful to show her, you may be sure, that it would be she who 
 would be responsible for such a result supposing you did 
 such a thing. Of course, I only used it as an argument." 
 
 " You need not think I pay any exaggerated deference to 
 the legal system of forcibly pairing eternal couples. To me, 
 a life with Ethna is beyond human interference. But she 
 has grown accustomed to looking at things a certain way. 
 It is right in her, and, anyway, it is her. I would as soon think 
 of striking a babe with my blackthorn as injuring her slowly- 
 thriving but quite wonderful mind. Though to me these 
 legal permissions and intermissions are a monstrous impertin- 
 ence." 
 
 " Oh, I don't agree with you there. You fly off to the other 
 extreme. In substance there may be something in what you 
 say. I'm not a narrow-minded man, mark you ; and if you 
 sometimes think I am, you make a very great mistake. But 
 there's no sense in going to such lengths." 
 
 " Is it hopeless then ? " He, somehow, seemed to make the 
 blackness of the prospect a still more unendurable thing. 
 
THE RESULT OF MY MISSION 367 
 
 " I don't know. I had to use a little craft/' And he 
 chuckled softly to himself. " I finished up pleasantly and 
 amicably. And then I told her that Professor Archibald was 
 coming for the week-end could she come and meet him ? 
 He wasn't, but I wired to him. I shall have another go at 
 her then. One can fight better in one's own house/' 
 
 THE RESULT OF MY MISSION 
 
 We decided that my presence during the week-end, on its 
 own merits, would be inadvisable, inasmuch as, in the event 
 of failure or partial success, there would still remain the chance 
 of a subsequent interview by myself. Besides which, under 
 the circumstances, it was impossible for my legal wife and 
 myself to be in one house together with strangers there also. 
 And behind all such arguments there was the tacit fact that 
 Viola, in her great and resplendent way, had always been 
 sheathed in an impervious dislike of myself. It had always 
 been so, though no one spoke of it, and everyone would have 
 been horrified at the breath of such a notion especially 
 Viola. So I had to remain steadfast in such patience as I 
 could muster. 
 
 Even in these few days the issue had begun to tear my 
 nerves, and, judging from my own state, I could only imagine 
 what the suspense was meaning to Ethna. Her letters, that 
 came daily, and sometimes twice daily, harried me the more. 
 Not a word did she write in them of any doubt or pain, but 
 the very avoidance spoke its own message. And, coming 
 from her, to whom love could be so self-complete a thing, her 
 declarations of her utter willingness to be sacrificed to it told 
 
368 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 me of the dear strong soul in Dublin that was slowly bleeding. 
 I knew her ; I marvelled sometimes to think how well I knew 
 her ; therefore her letters were to me the barings of her soul, 
 and I shrank in pain at those revelations. Sometimes I felt 
 as though I could have risen to any crime if it was truly to aid 
 her I thought wildly of certain things ; but the thought of 
 Guala, and the great baring of God I had known in that 
 presence, came to me, and slowly calmed me as with a strong 
 rhythm. 
 
 It was a sultry calm. It soothed the spirit, but the result 
 of its solace became such on the striving and thwarted desire 
 that it deadened me, it sank me in a complete, seemingly 
 irretrievable, dejection, even as a glorious summer's noon may 
 strip the intellect of all activity with this difference, that 
 there were tragic tears in my gloom. Complete night seemed 
 to have enveloped me, and out of the darkness there came the 
 voice of one wailing. 
 
 Ramsay noticed it, and he rallied me sharply on the fact. 
 It was, I remember, on the Sunday night. Tim had been 
 with us all the day. One or two had come in during the even- 
 ing whom I had not seen for the whole time of my life in 
 Ireland : such men as Parkins (more cynical than ever), 
 Jenson (blander and stouter) and one or two others. But 
 my thoughts had been with Frank's interview with Rhoda, 
 and the conversation had flowed on past me. It was now near 
 midnight, and everybody had gone. We had been sitting 
 alone, quietly smoking, for some time when he spoke. 
 
 " I can't understand you/' he said, and his quiet words 
 left his lips almost as inauspiciously as his tobacco smoke, 
 and as gently ; " here you have been living for five years in 
 the centre of power, and your state now is as nerve-strung as 
 any boy's. As I don't know Miss Cahill I can't say anything 
 about her, though your faith in her is abundantly sufficient 
 for any who know you. But you now raise that question by 
 your present mood." 
 
 " I don't understand myself, Ramsay ; but I should have 
 thought that the emotional situation might have suggested 
 itself to you. And to find that is as far as intelligence can go. 
 Intelligence doesn't often get so far." 
 
 "I'm trying to find the relation between the past five years 
 and what you call the emotional situation." 
 
THE RESULT OF MY MISSION 369 
 
 " Your wit might have saved you the search. You are 
 looking for plums in April. Don't think I have lost faith 
 because my soul is torn and rent : I have not lost faith, but 
 my soul is torn none the less. You are knocking at doors 
 that cannot be opened. These things, like all great things, 
 are paradoxes, and escape the brain. I believe with all my 
 heart that in five years I shall see the appropriateness of this 
 moment, but with all my heart if I could forego it I would. 
 You don't understand it ? Nor do I ; but I know it is so." 
 
 " That's not my point. I can't see how the life of power 
 impinges, if I may use the word, on this moment." 
 
 " Because you are annoyed that life refuses to be put into 
 an intellectual term ; and you start by being impatient with 
 things that mar your preconceived synthesis. Your mind 
 goes in the vicious circle of books and that is one of the 
 literary circles, if I may put it that way." 
 
 Ramsay smiled in his chair like one who would say, " Come, 
 that is distinctly healthier," and I was glad he should be pleased 
 at the little sally, for I did not wish to struggle against unfaith 
 in the inner places as well as in the outer. Tim himself, I had 
 felt, had been puzzled with me all day. 
 
 " Look, Ramsay," I went on, " there have always been the 
 links between the periods of my life ; but who saw them at 
 the time ? Who saw the connection between ' Sartor Resartus' 
 and the pimply idiot in a tall white collar and careful gloves, 
 or between that odd enough conjunction and a realisation of 
 myself and a literary career ? Least of all you, who came as 
 the angel of light, with a divine and blessed sense of things 
 that has made you the biggest single moulding influence in 
 my life. Who saw the connection between my meeting a 
 typist in Giorgio's restaurant, and all the unrest and longing 
 for certitude in a terrestrial career that brought to me, with the 
 laboured reading before it and the striving expression after 
 it ? No one, no one to this moment save myself alone, and 
 hast of all Rhoda. Who saw the connection between a certain 
 development in all my writing and my subsequent life in 
 Ireland that appeared when Rhoda left me, and I was left 
 numbed with pain ? No one, yet so it was. Or to revert : 
 who saw the connection between my ordinary boyhood and all 
 that has happened since ? (For all boyhoods are ordinary, 
 as we know, Ramsay, despite the fanciful foolery of biographers. 
 
 B3 
 
370 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Or better still, all boyhoods are extraordinary, only the better 
 part of men lose the wonder of its possibility, falling away from, 
 as it were, instead of developing, its startling spontaneity.) 
 The only thing my boyhood left with me was a colossal 
 ignorance, and therefore a cleanness to new receptions ; and 
 an extraordinary sense of homelessness that has haunted me 
 all my days. Saving that, I see no connection, but no doubt 
 it exists. And you ask now, what is the connection between 
 my five years of power, of joy, of peace, of self-realisation, 
 and this Darkness of Night, this utter bewilderment in utter 
 love, that has caught me ? Frank to-day has spoken to Rhoda ; 
 and though I hope and hope against all hope, I have no 
 expectation of success. The future is terrible to see, in that 
 case, for, Ethna being who and where she is, I cannot ask 
 her to outrage herself as she would deem what she would call 
 an unsanctified union, unsanctified, that is to say, by inter- 
 fering clerics. For myself, I might withdraw to Gleann-na- 
 Siothchana, and embrace the necessary discipline. But 
 what of her ? You don't know her, Ramsay. She strives, 
 she reaches forward, she wishes to embrace more than is 
 possible for her. Therefore she is continually thwarted and 
 spiritually exasperated. For one week she had the rest, 
 the fulness, of realisation, of possession. Broken away from 
 it now, her striving to possess again what she once possessed 
 (and what will be for ever impossible to possess) will kill her, 
 as I truly believe, she is so exquisitely constructed. This is 
 my Darkness of Night ; and the connection between what may 
 happen in it (what is happening, if you will) and the five years 
 under Guala, it is impossible to know. It looks like a cynical 
 smashing of it all, like a brutal burst of laughter in the face 
 of it, cancelling everything like an inverted comedy. And yet 
 I believe, were you to bring me a simple solution to it all, a 
 kind of a god-in-the-machine solution, I would refuse it, and 
 abide what may be. I mean I have faith in some kind of 
 connection to be achieved : but oh, the pain of it, Ramsay, the 
 inconceivable pain of sitting here like this, and that girl in 
 Dublin bleeding, slowly bleeding. It drains the strength out 
 of me and makes me like a helpless child. It isn't life any more 
 than the other ( I hope it won't prove to be life any less than 
 the other) ; but it's less endurable. However, no doubt we shall 
 pull through : smiling perhaps/' 
 
THE RESULT OF MY MISSION 371 
 
 The following morning I received a letter from Frank 
 bursting with radiancy. " She returns to-morrow after 
 lunch/' he wrote, "go up and see her, and I think you'll 
 find things all right. I brought her round to a reasonable 
 state of mind. If you strike the iron when I left it hot, I 
 think you'll find things will come round quite to your liking. 
 Good luck to you." 
 
 I found it difficult to adjust myself to this. It puzzled me 
 rather than relieved. I tried to imagine Frank and Rhoda 
 discussing the matter, and Rhoda foregoing her inaccessible 
 stubbornness at his desire ; but my mind refused it. Yet 
 here it was clearly enough as I read it again. Frank was a man 
 of business, and therefore presumably no fool (though that did 
 not necessarily follow) ; and his words were explicit enough. 
 It only remained to me to do as he suggested. I resolved to 
 see her when there was least chance of anyone being with 
 her. 
 
 She received me apologetically, a little diffidently. " I 
 don't want even to seem discourteous," she said, " to you of 
 all people, Jack. But you have come a bit late, haven't you ? 
 I have some people coming to dinner, and I was just going to 
 dress." 
 
 " I won't keep you a few minutes," I said. " Frank told 
 me you were going to stay with Viola for the week-end, and 
 
 I suggested he should speak to you " It was not easy to 
 
 come to the point. 
 
 ' Yes ? " she said interrogatively, and a little watchfully. 
 
 " I have a note from him saying that you have agreed in 
 short, that you have agreed to institute proceedings against 
 me." 
 
 " Frank said that ? " 
 
 " I have his letter." 
 
 " Frank's a fool." 
 
 ' You'll pardon me, but don't you rather speed ahead of my 
 intelligence ? " 
 
 " My dear Jack, you know Frank. He talks and talks, and 
 continues talking, until you say ' Yes ' to him out of very 
 boredom. He hypnotises you, until you do anything to escape 
 him. He assumes that he has a fatherly right to dictate 
 your course of action to you it's perfectly impossible to 
 deny him, and the only thing to do is to agree to everything, 
 
372 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and to fail to put anything into effect. He'll put it down to 
 the vagaries of your sex, of course, and talk loudly about its 
 unfitness for affairs. But what does it matter what a man like 
 that says ? He doesn't think. He's just a bundle of pre- 
 judices, and it's a foregone conclusion what he'll say in any 
 event. I was a fool to go down there. Vi's just a feminine 
 and, I may say, a stupider edition of Frank with the large 
 airs she gives herself. They both bore me, but I suppose 
 my will was enfeebled by him. And I'm sorry if my dejected 
 air of compliance with his torrent of words made you think 
 
 " It didn't really," I said coldly, for life was dulled within 
 me. " I found it difficult to conceive of one so coolly brilliant 
 as yourself stooping to the humanity of a kind action." 
 
 That stayed her. It discomposed her too, and a faint 
 flush came creeping into her cheek. 
 
 " That's unlike you, Jack," she said. " You used not to 
 be unkind." She quivered a little, to my surprise. 
 
 " Unkindness is an opportune subject between us two, I 
 suggest," I said. 
 
 " Is it ? " 
 
 " Do I really understand that you will not help me to make 
 the divorce that exists between us a legal affair ? " I pleaded 
 with her. 
 
 " I have said so, Jack. But I deny " 
 
 " You have written a book on the subject," I suggested, 
 breaking in on her. 
 
 That revived her again. " Oh, Frank discoursed on that 
 theme in his blind, unintelligent way. I think you have the 
 wit to see that my book sprang from the same sincere convic- 
 tion as my present attitude that so offends you." 
 
 " Oh, all of us are sincere in our convictions. It only depends 
 how we came to acquire those sincere convictions." 
 
 " I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow you." 
 
 " In a word, that your sincere convictions are a matter of 
 sales," she flushed suddenly " just as Parkins, who I 
 learn attacked my book anonymously in three different papers, 
 sincerely thought it bad because he sincerely did not wish it 
 to prosper. We are all sincere enough, but we may not all 
 be admirable." 
 
 " You are a very arrogant man, Jack." 
 
 " And you," I said, " are a vindictively- willed woman. 
 
THE RESULT OF MY MISSION 373 
 
 Excuse my bluntness, but these may happen to be the last 
 words we will exchange together, and I wish to make one 
 thing clear. I came to you apologetically, with a very great 
 tenderness in my thought for you. I wished to spare you pain, 
 but I wished also to do what seemed my immediately right 
 thing to do. In my mind the memory of our life together, and 
 especially of the way you stood bravely and unflinchingly 
 by me in our poverty and need, was very warm, even to throw- 
 ing the shadow of a doubt over this new relation that has come 
 into my life. That tenderness of thought you have turned to 
 something very like bitterness and hatred. All those warm 
 memories you have cancelled, and made them to be objects 
 of physical and spiritual revulsion I cannot consider the 
 thought of them. You have made me look back over the 
 whole of our relations together through the gateway of this 
 moment and the sight is not pleasant. You may have 
 ruined my life ; I don't know, I scarcely care. You may 
 have ruined a life a great deal more to me than mine is. These 
 things will probably concern you little, they may only give 
 you a text for more sentimental rubbish about the holiness of 
 forms where no mind is. But it may or may not affect you 
 closer to know that you have ruined your life in my memory. 
 You have stripped that house bare anyway/' 
 
 The chill night air struck about me as I walked quickly out. 
 I walked fiercely till midnight, in a confusion of tears and help- 
 less distress. A fever was in my brain, and nothing I could 
 do seemed to give it ease. It was like a torment boiling within, 
 demanding the quick motion of my limbs, and being the more 
 agitated by that. It worked on, till it worked itself numb. 
 That was not till after midnight. I was then, I remembered 
 later, out near Acton, and I crept into some hotel for the 
 night, for I was unutterably weary. 
 
 It was not till long after that a vague memory came to me 
 of seeing Rhoda sink with white face and short, gasping breath 
 among the cushions on her sofa. Her gaze seemed then to 
 be fixed at a very great distance. I do not know if the memory 
 were accurate, or a heavier relation of what occurred. 
 
374 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 VI 
 
 IN ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN 
 
 Apprehensively I sat in the train that plunged through 
 darkness, bearing me back towards Ethna. Frank, his hearty 
 energy expended, had relapsed into the automatic round of 
 his money-making ; and I had only seen him on the morning 
 after my interview for a short time, while he descanted on the 
 extraordinary nature of women (he regarded women object- 
 ively, as belonging to as different a world as the beasts). 
 But Ramsay and Tim had come to see me at Euston station, 
 and it had been touchingly plain to me that they had been 
 concerned for me, that they were half-afraid to let me away 
 from their sight. There had not been much said, but the 
 atmosphere was there. In fact, I had not been disposed to 
 exchange many words with anyone, and I was glad beyond 
 measure, as I looked out on the darkness that flew past the 
 window, that the train was an empty one and that I had the 
 carriage to myself. It seemed to give me the space I needed, 
 and I was even glad at leaving my two friends, for the same 
 reason. It was this, in fact, I think they most feared, and 
 the mood that wrought it in me. 
 
 To say that I was dulled would be to say truly, and yet it 
 would not be all of truth. In a sense I was also very sharply 
 alert and alive. It would have taken very little to have made 
 me flame up in a torment of joy or of grief. It was as though I 
 sat in the midst of a terrible and unrelievable darkness while the 
 outer edges of my being, the limits of my ultra-physical self, 
 were being played upon by an eternity of intense and beautiful 
 light, and that either realm might suddenly encroach on the 
 other. I could see none other than the darkness, but I was 
 aware of the light ; and it was as though I trembled, in my 
 numbed state, in those strange thrills that came from afar. 
 Similarly a man might obtrude an arm into dazzling sunlight 
 from a cold and clammy cell, and tremble in a joy that accentu- 
 ated his despair. 
 
 I was strangely aware also of Ethna. I had written to her 
 asking her to meet me on the morrow, but as I sat in that 
 train I seemed to reach out and come into touch with her. 
 Somewhere she and I had merged. Her rich and completing 
 
IN ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN 375 
 
 sex seemed to flow about me with an appeal that intoxicated 
 me while it remained a purging influence. I ached, sometimes 
 with a pang scarcely to be borne, to press my lips upon hers 
 and to have in my nostrils the scent of her hair. It was the 
 first time her sex had appealed to me in that alive way, and 
 it aroused me to a piercing tenderness over her image as I 
 conjured it before me. It made my despair seem the more 
 hopeless ; and as I sat thus, beneath my seeming deadness, 
 in some secret quarter of my being, there was a strange riot 
 of emotions, of black despair, of bitter cynicism against the 
 artificial ordering of things that both Ethna and Rhoda, in 
 their differing ways, obeyed, of thwarted and imperative 
 hunger, of dizzy desires, of strange thrills of unutterable joy 
 that timidly pulsed across the tormented field. 
 
 The following morning, as I sat in a restaurant opposite 
 St. Stephen's Green over a completed breakfast, I saw Ethna 
 push through the door and come eagerly stepping towards me ; 
 and the desire in each of us made the joy of that sight 
 beautiful for that moment. 
 
 " Come," I said softly to her, " let us go into St. Stephen's 
 Green. The fresh air better suits than this." 
 
 And indeed the air that early October morning was like 
 wine. The inexpressible scent of it was like a wonderful 
 aroma, and stirred a great longing in me for my glen. There 
 was no one in the Green, where the air hung poised delicately 
 like a balloon. The ducks, adorned with the memory of many 
 distant lakes, were the only life visible, as they busied them- 
 selves breaking their fast. Very soon, I thought, the plover 
 would be on Guala, and the wail of curlew and the calling of 
 the wild geese would come down on the wind and float round 
 about the village. 
 
 " On such a morning as this," I said to her, scarcely thinking 
 what it was I said, " what a happiness it would be for the two 
 of us to come out of my cabin and make over the wonderful 
 hills ! " 
 
 For answer she drew my arm fiercely closer to her, and I 
 felt her tremble through her whole body. I bent and drew 
 her to me in a kiss. Her manner was the fearful expression 
 of her question, and I feared to give her its reply. 
 
 " She won't release me, my dear, she won't release me/' I 
 said at length. 
 
376 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Her sudden limpness beside me let me know how much she 
 had feared this blow. 
 
 " Why ? " she asked feebly, when the shock had passed 
 away ; and again I perceived in her flaccid manner how much 
 the fires had burned in her, wasting her. 
 
 I had to tread the centre of the furnace, and it was of no 
 avail to try and avoid that midmost heat. If I took it now 
 I obviated it for a later time, and possibly wrought a better 
 conclusion. So I set myself to saying the one true thing that 
 would most make her to realise precisely what our love meant. 
 
 " She says our marriage bond is a duty she intends to main- 
 tain/' It had not been easy to say, and the way Ethna 
 looked suddenly up at me with wide, fearful eyes when she 
 realised the full import of the words, made me curse myself 
 for having said them. Her arm fell out of mine as though it 
 no longer had a right to be there, and she shrank almost as 
 though she feared me. Yet, having started in that way, I 
 had to continue it. "I saw her twice, and it was clear to me 
 that she means to keep up that attitude. My brother saw her 
 twice : first she told him what she told me, and the second 
 time she just got rid of him. Yesterday morning my friend 
 Ramsay saw her, and she refused absolutely to discuss the 
 question with anyone but myself. Then when he asked her 
 if it would be any good if I saw her again, she said she had 
 been foolish in leaving me, and that if he would use his influence 
 towards a reconciliation she would be glad. That showed 
 very clearly how stupid it would be for me to go again. I 
 thought once but never mind about that ! It would be 
 almost sacrilegious to us here, dear, if I put exactions upon her 
 that I knew she could not observe and that would be of no 
 avail to me if she did observe. It would be merely insulting 
 to everybody, and I doubt if it would make her realise the 
 futility of things." I had gone on talking partly to stupefy 
 myself, but I could not bear her continued and numb silence. 
 " Oh, Ethna, Ethna, say something for the dear God's sake/' 
 I cried out. " You have suffered : how you have suffered ! 
 I can see it written all over you." 
 
 " And you have suffered too/ 'she said quickly, looking round 
 on me with wide, reproachful eyes and taking my hand in hers. 
 " We have both suffered." She seemed already years older. 
 A new and wonderful gravity was shining in her. " And I 
 
IN ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN 377 
 
 have been thinking too much of myself," she added. But the 
 pain that stirred in her was no longer to be resisted. " Oh, 
 Jack ! " she wailed, holding my coat and burying her head on 
 her hands. 
 
 I was too near her own mood to be of any assistance to her. 
 But then she sprang up again in a rebellion that flushed through 
 her. 
 
 " But what right has she got to talk like that ? " she cried. Her 
 lips were pressed angrily together, and her eyes flashed indigna- 
 tion at me as though it were me she attacked. " She didn't 
 want to keep you, and she lost you, and what right has she 
 got to talk like that ? It's just because she knows there is 
 somebody else, that's all it is. She doesn't really want you 
 now, she knows very well she doesn't, or she wouldn't talk 
 of duty ; and I need you. I oh, you show me things ; it's 
 black without you, it has been black all these days." 
 
 " Come and sit down, dear," I said, " you're shaking." 
 I thought indeed she would fall, and I drew her to a seat. 
 
 " Don't you think she might in the end ? " she asked. 
 
 " I wish I could think so. But no one can be more stub- 
 born than she. That has been her chief characteristic." 
 
 She turned to me with a question on her lips. I guessed 
 it though she did not speak it. Her attitude of utter misery 
 made me sure that I had guessed aright, and I led towards its 
 subject along a different way. 
 
 " Ethna, dear girl, I have brought much unhappiness to you, 
 1 fear. I am so sorry. Had I only thought of this in the 
 beginning " 
 
 But she checked me quickly, wildly. " Don't, don't, 
 don't ! If you only knew, you would never say that. Don't 
 say it ! Think of me now and before I met you ! Isn't there 
 a difference in it ? Ah, but I know where I am now, though 
 I cry about the other things ; and I just got up and went to 
 bed and quarrelled with people in between, then." She smiled 
 through tears at me. " Oh, Jack, don't say that ! I really 
 don't mean to be like this, oh, I don't, for I do love you, I 
 do absolutely ; and I wouldn't go outside that for anything 
 now, not for anything. I oughtn't to be distressed like this, 
 surely, but if you only knew how much I wanted you ! " 
 
 " Dear little woman, and there is no thought in my mind but 
 to bring you blessing indeed, that's my chief concern just 
 
378 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 now, and brings me the most pain. In my cabin you would 
 fill the glen with a music it never knew before. But you do 
 see, dear, don't you, that in the very sacredest of possible 
 plights we are pledged together ? that her helping to cancel 
 the other bond is only a matter of a convenience or incon- 
 venience ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, it must be so/' said she, as though any other 
 thought were inconceivable. 
 
 Then I put the question to her she had wished to put to me : 
 " What are we to do now, then ? " I asked. 
 
 She stared ahead of her, rapt in thought ; and as I looked on 
 the clear colour of her cheek so close to me it paled slowly, and 
 her face became set and drawn. A matter that to me was 
 simple enough was a tragic problem to her, and I wished, as 
 far as in me lay, not to coerce her to a decision by any claim of 
 mine, believing it would come of itself, and more happily, 
 in her own free choice. Her hand sought for mine and gripped 
 it fiercely. 
 
 " What do you think ? " she asked. She did not turn my 
 way, and her voice was low, almost, indeed, a whisper. 
 
 " To me," I said, " there is no question. Nothing can make 
 our union holier than it is. The fact that someone will or 
 will not take steps to have a bond set aside that has already 
 lost all its meaning, and the fact that someone else can or 
 cannot therefore be persuaded to grant a dispensation to con- 
 cede a thing that already exists, and is so blessed in its exist- 
 ence, seems to me to be all a bundle of impertinences. Do all 
 those things make our love lose its beauty to you ? Tell me 
 that, Ethna ! " 
 
 " No ! " She straightened up, and the word exploded from 
 her lips with a defined challenge to the world. 
 
 " And that is the answer to everything, dear. Never let 
 anyone persuade you that a thing that is pure and beautiful 
 is a thing that can possibly be otherwise than absolutely the 
 very thing to be done. Nothing that's ugly is right, 
 and nothing that's truly beautiful is wrong. Those are the 
 only rights and wrongs in the world, and whoever says other- 
 wise has some self-interest to serve." She was already 
 happier in the streaming autumn sunshine that gave depth 
 and added warmth to her heavy hair, and a simpler translu- 
 cency to her cheek where it fell upon it. The light was warmer 
 
IN ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN 379 
 
 too as slowly she stripped away piece after piece of the outworn 
 raiment others had put upon her. "It is you who must 
 decide, dear/' I went on, " for it is with you there is any 
 question. But if you say to me that you wish to come to 
 Gleann-na-Siothchana with me, you will be my wife in the 
 richest meaning of that word that so many have abused and 
 made rather stuffy and common. We will each help the other, 
 we will each stand opposite the other, free of the other and yet 
 pledged to the other, dependent and yet independent, two and 
 yet one, free and yet servants. If we spoil the thing the fault 
 will be at no other doors than our own ; but I don't think we 
 will ; and in my case that is part of the splendid adventure of 
 it. My decision needed no taking, and I am ready and waiting. 
 It is you who must decide now, my Ethna." 
 
 In the exceeding simplicity of the thing to me I lost sight 
 of what it meant to her. It meant, for her, exchanging firm 
 ground, or what at any rate seemed firm ground, for the air. 
 Her conviction in the general Tightness of her matured principles 
 was not shaken. She was, in truth, seeking to make out a 
 particular case where those principles did not apply. She had 
 to tread those principles under foot to come to me, while yet 
 believing in them : with the continual thought that she 
 trampled them under foot in mere selfish t inordinate pleasure 
 a thing against the grain of her nature. Her distress was ap- 
 parent, and I yearned infinitely over her as she raised possible 
 difficulties. 
 
 " But Father Magennis would let the priest down there 
 know, and we would find it impossible/' 
 
 I had not thought of that. This close network of a system 
 baffled the whole issue. " But does Father Magennis know 
 where I live ? " I asked in alarm. 
 
 " He would find out from Aunty Walpole." 
 " But does she know ? Did you tell her ? " 
 " I don't think so, but she may have seen my letters." 
 She had, with bent brows, been throwing up questions 
 perplexedly as she sought her way through her difficulty, but 
 c 5 whole new difficulty arose before me as I heard her. I saw 
 the whole of this social, or religio-social, system I wished to 
 neglect, standing up to defy us. It suddenly became like a 
 network that had us in its meshes. For the people in the 
 village, good simple friends of mine though they were, would 
 
380 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 ostracise us, were they informed by Father Hefferan that we 
 were, in the cant phrase, " living in sin/' Father Hefferan 
 himself would be changed good soul though he were, and 
 as removed from the mere clerical system as any man could 
 be ; and Michael O'Hara, who gave his lip-service to the 
 system though his heart were elsewhere, would find himself 
 slowly alienated, even against his best will. The very nobility 
 of the people would take strength against us, for they were 
 pure, and they would be informed that the thing we were going 
 to do was impure. It was monstrous enough, yet so it was, 
 and attested the atrophy of healthful judgment mere codes 
 and precepts of conduct always work in the end, however 
 healthful the people in whom they work. 
 
 As Ethna was working her way to clearness she had unknow- 
 ingly transplanted the alarm to my own mind. I scarcely 
 knew how to deal with it, but the music of a slow chime coming 
 through the sunlit air cut across our speech with its silver 
 note. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, starting up, " there's twelve o'clock, and 
 I ought to be beginning my first piece now." 
 
 " Once late won't make so great a difference, you silly little 
 woman." 
 
 " But I'm never late," she declared, and I well believed 
 her. 
 
 Her only thought now was to speed back to her task, but 
 my thought was busy on the difficulty she had raised in me. 
 
 " Do you think if I saw Father Magennis it would help 
 matters ? " I asked as we hurried along crowded Graf ton 
 Street. 
 
 " It might," she said, taking hold of my hand, though I 
 doubt if her thoughts were with my question. 
 
 " I'll go and see him straightway," I said. " What is his 
 address ? " 
 
 She told me ; and when I left her I went forthwith to seek 
 him out, thinking to untie this immediate knot in the system. 
 
FATHER MAGENNIS 381 
 
 VII 
 
 FATHER MAGENNIS 
 
 I admit, frankly, I did not know what I did. I had never 
 yet come into contact with the whole wide, complicated 
 system into which I now so blunderingly put my foot. That 
 must be my excuse. It is ever the wise way, in opposing a 
 system, to stand outside it, fare well fare ill. I was troubled 
 and anxious lest Ethna, in taking the step I felt she would, 
 would find a ring of steel about her ; I was also, I suppose, 
 quickly prone to such anxiety, being nerve-racked after these 
 days of strife and pain and despair ; and it seemed to me that 
 I would be able to enlist Father Magennis, if not fully in our 
 cause, at least to a desire not to create misery by meddling 
 in our deep concerns. I, knowing our cause so pure, thought 
 to appeal to the man in him, and silence him by a frank con- 
 fidence. I was judging by what I had found of Father Heffe- 
 ran, whose kindly disposition and shrewd charity had the 
 same effect in him as breadth of mind might have in another. 
 
 His appearance certainly encouraged that thought. He was 
 an elderly man with grey hair that nearly faded into snow, 
 and his face, with long upper lip and upturned nose, had a 
 grave humour attached to it, while his high, trim forehead 
 and high cheekbones made it instinct with quiet dignity and 
 intense spiritual rigidity. One side of his room was filled 
 with books, which, before he had entered, I had naturally 
 scrutinised. They were all Catholic devotional books. In 
 my judgment devotional books of every kind should be 
 expressly forbidden, inasmuch as they always beget a false 
 fervour, a fervour not born of spiritual experience, but 
 burned up in an intellectual outhouse of the being, and 
 transported thence into the soul by a kind of sleight, giving the 
 sum total of things an erroneous quality. They nearly 
 always damage the health of the spiritual estate. They 
 engender a detachment from real experience that cannot but 
 work a kind of spiritual viciousness, and may even, in the end. 
 corrupt the moral fibres while begetting a high moral pride, 
 I feared those books, but when the man entered, and spoke 
 to me in his quiet caressing voice and assured manner, he 
 invited confidence. 
 
382 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 " I don't know if I caught your name rightly/' he said in 
 a broad Dublin accent. " My good housekeeper is a bit 
 deaf." 
 
 " Jacob Elthorne," I informed him, wondering whether to 
 land bravely into the subject of my visit, or lead gently 
 to it. 
 
 " Ah yes ! And you wished to see me ? " 
 
 " I certainly came with that end in view." 
 
 He looked up at me, and smiled in a gentle, caressing way. 
 " That was a stupid question," he said. His manner was one 
 of professional attention. 
 
 I began to feel that I had better invent some chance 
 subject, and leave him, for I was vaguely uncomfortable. 
 But that seemed a foolish thing to do. I had come with 
 an intention, and I was not going to let an indefmed 
 fearfulness throw me away from it. So I proceeded, and 
 proceeded directly. 
 
 ' You know Miss Ethna Cahill ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," he said, " the niece of my very dear parishioner 
 Mrs. Walpole." 
 
 " We had wished to marry," I began, when he interposed 
 quickly and quietly : 
 
 " You are a Catholic then ? " 
 
 " I am not," I said, " though, equally well, I would 
 scarcely call myself a Protestant." 
 
 " I see, an Agnostic ? " 
 
 " Nor that. I like to think myself a Christian in an unob- 
 trusive way, and I hold myself detached from each of the 
 exclusively organised systems of Christianity." 
 
 " But you must be one or the other," he insisted firmly. 
 The world to him was a place of organised combative com- 
 munities, as it is to most ; but he was not puzzled by a denial 
 of them, he quietly ruled it out. 
 
 " Excuse me, but I don't protest against you, any more 
 than I protest against them, or than I protest against anyone 
 who seeks to make what is firstly and lastly an enriching 
 and completing experience into a system. However, that 
 is not what I came to speak to you about. I have been 
 married " 
 
 " That," said he with finality, and as though relieved to 
 get such assistance from me, "makes it altogether impossible." 
 
FATHER MAGENNIS 383 
 
 " But my dear sir " I began again. 
 
 " You came to me for my advice, and I can't tell you more 
 than is surely so." 
 
 " I suppose/' I said, " that if I were not divorced in such 
 a possible and extreme case, put it for the sake of argument 
 well, what would you consider of a union hypothetically 
 under those conditions ? I am interested in your views, I may 
 say/' 
 
 " It would not be a union. It would be carnal sin/' 
 
 " Could you pray for such a union ? " 
 
 " I should seek to reclaim my child. I should do all things 
 to save her soul, and protect her. Nothing could be too 
 much." He still spoke quietly, but with a flush in his pale 
 cheek. 
 
 " And render her more miserable thereby ? " 
 
 " To create that misery in her life would be the first step in 
 reclamation. To be happy in evil-doing is to be beyond 
 assistance." 
 
 There was a mastery in his way of speaking, born of relegated 
 authority, and betraying an inaccessibility of mind. There 
 was also an invincible energy in his quiet manner. It was 
 clearly useless to continue, and I determined to say no more. 
 But as I went my ways I was dogged by the sense that I had 
 made a great mistake in coming to see him. 
 
384 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE STORM BREAKS ABOUT ETHNA 
 
 I had once known Rhoda in a way that dispensed with 
 speech. Her spirit seemed to set up rhythms that my spirit 
 caught and interpreted into meanings. Or rather, it would 
 possibly be truer to say that our spirits interpenetrated 
 beyond the limitations of our bodies, and communed with each 
 other. That, in fact, had been our marriage. When that 
 ceased we passed out of a state of marriage. And now the 
 same thing began to reproduce itself, in a far more marvellous 
 way, between Ethna and myself. As I sat in a corner of that 
 restaurant that evening, unobserved by her, in every phrase of 
 every piece she played, however jaunty and slight it may have 
 been, a note sang out that told me her deepest being was in a 
 state of upheaval. The morning's news, apparently, had 
 begun to work in her probably as she had, consciously or 
 subconsciously, brooded upon it and there seemed faintly 
 to be a wail of terrible agony as she surveyed a world where 
 the brightest dawn came shining perplexedly over a scene of 
 the most hopeless disrepair and tumult. It sent an agony 
 into me as I heard it : if it was I who brought the dawn, it 
 was I who caused the disrepair, and, in that secret world, I 
 cried aloud blindly in the wish that I had not come into her 
 life to cause her such pain. 
 
 Therefore I said nothing to her that evening on the matter. 
 I even made no reference to my visit to Father Magennis. It 
 was as if she secretly put a hand out to me, pleading with me 
 to permit things to resolve a little before we spoke again on 
 the immediate matter before us both. I had intended to go 
 with her to her aunt's, so as to adjust the civilities there. But 
 she wished quiet and ease, she wished to look upon the dawn 
 uninterrupted by a sight of the tumult of earth on which it 
 shone ; and so we took the tram out to Clontarf and walked 
 baok, saying little, but richly enjoying each other. It was 
 quiet and inauspicious enough, but it made her tremble as a 
 battery, so charged was she with the fulfilment of herself. 
 For myself, the quiet passion of that evening, half-sad, half 
 a riot of satisfaction, remains one of the most treasured 
 memories of my days. It is not one of the occasions of which 
 
THE STORM BREAKS ABOUT ETHNA 385 
 
 one can say much. There is too much to say. The misty 
 night, with an early touch of frost in the air, folded us about 
 with its silent and, as it were, intelligent caress, while a faint 
 golden halo shone above Dublin in the near distance. And 
 we went forward silently, feeling an impending tragedy, but 
 drawn the nearer because of that. It was a sacramental 
 night. When I left her at the gate of the boarding-house, she 
 clung to me in a helplessness that, in one so fiercely proud, so 
 imperious and independent, was very pitiful. The memory 
 of that wild embrace tore my mind as I went my way alone. 
 All that night I dreamed restlessly of calamities. 
 
 Yet when early the next morning I received a telegram from 
 Ethna asking me to meet her, my uneasiness flamed up in 
 wild alarm like dry tinder touched by a spark. Without 
 waiting for a meal I fled down to St. Stephen's Green, where 
 she had given her appointment, and although it was nearly 
 three-quarters of an hour earlier than the time she had appointed 
 she was there waiting for me. Whatever my alarm before, it 
 was nothing to that which shook me when I saw her tear- 
 stained face, lifeless hair, and eyes that told their tale of a 
 brain hardly held in leash behind them. 
 
 " Ethna, Ethna, whatever can be the matter ? " I cried. 
 
 " Oh, Jack/' she said, clinging to my arm, " I haven't 
 slept all this weary night, they have been at me so." 
 
 " But you surely haven't told them yet ! " 
 
 " Father Magennis and all." 
 
 Like a blow in the midst of my brain the sense of my error 
 struck me. I had not conceived that a confidence given from 
 a man to a man could be used so foully. 
 
 " But " I began to protest. I was dazed, however, and 
 
 could but grapple hopelessly with this new situation. 
 
 " They were all waiting for me last night, and I didn't 
 know what it was they were saying at all, when they were all 
 talking at me, and calling the curse of God on me. Jack, it 
 isn't a wicked thing I've done, is it ? How can it be a wicked 
 thing, and I in the joy of my life, and everything becoming so 
 plain to me that was dark at one time ? How can I be 
 wicked ? I amn't wicked. I can't be wicked when I'm 
 wanting to be better, when I'm wanting to see better and do 
 so much better, than ever I've wanted before. That isn't to 
 be wicked, is it, Jack ? And Father Magennis called the curse 
 
 cc 
 
386 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 of God on me if ever I might see you again. And they were 
 talking at me all the night till the dawn of this day, both 
 of them, and Father Magennis too. The curse of God it was 
 he called on me, the curse of God it was if I should go to 
 you. Oh, Jack ! " She shuddered at that very thought. 
 
 " Look, Ethna," I spoke even roughly to her " there's 
 no man can call the curse of God on you, whatever the kind 
 of dress he wear, or the kind of name he likes to call himself ; 
 and he's a blasphemer who should be whipped who says that 
 thing. Father Magennis is no more than a liar and a bully, 
 and he's a damnable usurper too. I'll whip the skin off him, 
 bullying you ! " 
 
 She heard me vaguely, as from a distance. Her distressed 
 eyes seemed to be gazing on some horror. 
 
 " And Father attached such terrible names to me I'm 
 surely not deserving them, do you know ! " 
 
 Her voice wailed low, as in a moan of distress. It 
 was terrible to me to see her beaten so low, to see 
 her whipped so thoroughly who was so fiercely pugnacious 
 and proud. I wondered how I might arouse her numbed 
 spirit. 
 
 " I suppose that the cur had hard names for me too," I 
 said with bitterness. 
 
 She sprang to that as at a spur. 
 
 " Didn't he ! But not twice, oh, not twice, my dear one. 
 The like of that man, who can't help me better at all, putting 
 hard names on you ! I told him I looked up to him because 
 he was a priest, but I looked up to you because you helped 
 me, because you were yourself, that all the frocks on him 
 wouldn't cover over that difference. I was just mad to hear 
 him, and told him things made him wonder at me. I think 
 he was afraid oh, but he put the curse of God on me, dear, 
 he did that ! " 
 
 " Ethna, you must hear me ! He can't do it. There's 
 no man can do it. It's a good thing, my dear, that God 
 doesn't bind himself by every system-monger, drunk with his 
 catchwords, that rises up to curse and to bless." 
 
 " Oh, but I told him he had no right to be saying that, no 
 right at all. But he said whosoever he bound on earth should 
 be bound in hell." 
 
 " Where did he get hold of that yarn ? " 
 
THE STORM BREAKS ABOUT ETHNA 387 
 
 " Jesus Christ said it." She seemed surprised at my 
 contempt. 
 
 'The Christ never said anything of the sort,and it's positively 
 indecent for anyone to try and bluff you so wickedly. Christ 
 never spoke of hell, He spoke of ' the heavens ' ; and what 
 the loosing and binding there is we scarcely know, and surely 
 never will know in that way of talk, or by that kind of man, for 
 all his bluff and question-begging. Ethna, let me beg of you, 
 in the name of the dignity and divinity of manhood and woman- 
 hood, don't commit your free judgment, your upright, healthful 
 choice, into the keeping of anyone, whatever kind of clothes 
 they wear. You know what we are going to do is free and 
 worthy. You know that, so do I : I think, dear, I may say 
 we wouldn't do it if it weren't so. We, in our free and pure 
 judgment, elect to do this : Ethna, Ethna, my dear, what 
 can the word of a mere outsider do to make it otherwise ? It's 
 so preposterous. Think, dear, can a clean thing be made 
 unclean at the dictate of a man who smothers his mind with 
 unhealthy foetid books ? " 
 
 " Oh, I do think. I keep saying that to myself just as 
 you have put it but then the thought comes to me that he 
 is a priest after all." 
 
 " Oh, we are all priests if we aim highly and keep clean." 
 " Jack, you're so splendid saying things like that. And I 
 do believe it oh, I do, I do. But there's a difference too." 
 " Dear girl, what difference ? " 
 " I don't know. It comes out in my mind." 
 Suddenly, without an instant's warning, she broke down in 
 tears, in a torrent of nerve-strung sobs that shattered her 
 frame. I drew her to a shrub-enclosed seat away from the 
 eye of curious passers-by, and sought to comfort her. But 
 there was no comfort. The strain of suspense upon her 
 striving spirit to which Life had been brought with promise 
 of fulfilment, and cruelly snatched away her harassed mind 
 with a problem before it beyond its growth to unriddle, and 
 this last devastating storm that had ruthlessly swept upon a 
 place the least of all prepared to receive it all joined in 
 rocking her being to its very foundations. The extremity to 
 which her sobs reduced her seemed at times almost to prevent 
 her recovery. She even terrified me. I held on to my mind 
 with all my strength lest I should become as wild and 
 
3*8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 unrestrainable as she, for that would have been beyond the 
 limits of her endurance. 
 
 " If I went away for a time, would that help matters ? " I 
 said to her, scarce knowing what it was I said. 
 
 It made her worse, for it gave poignancy to the breakdown 
 of her endurance. 
 
 " You mustn't, you mustn't," she said, gripping hold of 
 my arm in wild terror. " What should I do without you ? 
 Promise me you won't. But you can't, you couldn't do it. 
 If I ruin myself, I must have you, for I'm needing you ; 
 my darling, I'm crying for you ; with all my body and all my 
 soul and all my spirit I'm crying for you ; it would be all 
 dark without you ; I should go mad without you ; I couldn't 
 bear it. Jack, you won't go away ? " 
 
 " No, dear, I won't, I promise you. I'll do whatever you 
 wish of me, for I'm yours to serve in the highest and best 
 way." 
 
 I folded her about and calmed her, while she clung nervously 
 and fearfully to me. It was a delicate structure, this, that had 
 been caught at the meeting-place of strong contentions, a 
 delicate spirit most delicately houselled. She was not yet 
 in possession of her various self ; she had not yet brought 
 herself to a well-knit unity, acting under the response of strong 
 centres ; and her mind fled through the differing regions of her 
 soul not knowing where it should rest, racking and destroying 
 the brain and the body it used. They were not competent to 
 bear the powers that came into them, and had I not folded 
 her with my arms and spoken gently and caressingly to her I 
 hardly know what she would have done. 
 
 Presently she became calmer, growing almost heavy and 
 inert as she did so. The strife in her had left her 
 weakened and flaccid. Then she gathered herself together 
 to leave. 
 
 " Where are you going, dear ? You can't go to work 
 to-day." I asked of her. 
 
 " I must go home and sleep." She took my hand in hers 
 and kissed it. 
 
 Then a tremor leapt in her eyes. I leant forward and put 
 an unspoken question to her. 
 
 " They are all at home, I suppose," she answered. " I 
 left them there. I ran away from them." 
 
I STEP INTO THE STORM MYSELF 389 
 
 " I shall come with you," I resolved. 
 " Oh no," she cried. 
 
 " Yes, I will, and speak to them myself. I'll not have 
 them bullying you like this." 
 
 IX 
 
 I STEP INTO THE STORM MYSELF 
 
 For the only time I lamented Dublin's noble fidelity to her 
 jaunting car. Ethna's mind and body had been beaten into 
 a state of utter fatigue, and she sighed every now and again, 
 a long, quivering sigh, as a child might in memory of a past 
 sorrow, but with a note that seemed to hint depths latent in it 
 that were ready to break forth again and work renewed havoc 
 in her. She rested against me almost as if the touch of my 
 person were a surrounding comfort. It made me loom up as 
 her protector. And that was the touching part of it, for 
 she hacj always resented me in that capacity, seeming to 
 regard angrily anyone who stood between her and her proper 
 battles. 
 
 Mrs. Walpole's reception of Ethna was as of one greatly 
 aggrieved, but with me that woman with such possibilities 
 of kindness was like a bitter frost. She drew Ethna in, and 
 then stood out in a way that plainly defied me to enter. The 
 situation was a difficult one. Not to have entered, with 
 Ethna inside expecting me to follow, was impossible ; and 
 yet to raise a protest, with the prospect of a clamour to follow, 
 was equally impossible, since it would have raised further 
 distress in Ethna's mind. I made as though to enter, but 
 her position defied me, while her manner made it clear that her 
 position was no accidental one. 
 
3QO JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 I spoke to her quietly and gently : " Please don't let us have 
 any scene here, Mrs. Walpole. Ethna's in a very distressed 
 state, and it would only make her bad again. She is expecting 
 me to follow her/' 
 
 Mrs. Walpole said nothing, but stood there mutely challeng- 
 ing me. One could not but respect her, she was so very 
 intense and dignified. 
 
 Happily the situation was not pushed to unpleasantness. 
 I saw a hand appear on her arm from the darkness of the hall 
 beyond, and draw her aside. It was Father Magennis. He 
 whispered some words to her, and gravely invited me to enter. 
 It was as though he summoned some naughty child to his 
 presence, but it would have been idle to have taken offence 
 at a question of manner. 
 
 Walpole himself was there. That seemed to argue the 
 extreme seriousness of the question, except that I do not 
 suppose he very much resented an excuse not to go to 
 work. He sat easily in a corner of the dim and dowdy 
 room, with a pretence of considerable injury on his pasty 
 face. 
 
 " Ethna," I said to her, " you go upstairs to your room 
 and lie down and rest. It would perhaps be just as well if 
 you weren't here, and you ought to rest a bit." 
 
 A moment's flash of her pugnacious self swept over her, 
 but I caught her glance with my own and held it 
 firmly. 
 
 " Little woman, to please me," I added softly to 
 her. 
 
 " It would be just as well, Ethna," said Father Magennis 
 with a touch of authority. " I want to speak with Mr. 
 Elthorne." 
 
 Quickly she turned about on him, and her manner spoke 
 clear hostility. But she turned to me again, and I took her 
 arm and led her gently out. 
 
 The incident made the opposing camps clearly defined, and 
 fully charged, when I re-entered the room. Mrs. Walpole 
 stood by Father Magennis white and angry, Father Magennis 
 sat at the table obviously piqued at finding a higher authority 
 than his with one of his parishioners, and Walpole leaned 
 forward in his chair like one who would have blustered but 
 for the fear of his being put in his place by Father Magennis. 
 
I STEP INTO THE STORM MYSELF 391 
 
 All their eyes were on me as I came forward and stood at the 
 table opposite them. 
 
 For a moment or so the silence was tense. But I came with 
 a kiss freshly put upon my lips by Ethna, and that made me 
 keen for the issue. 
 
 " Excuse me, Father Magennis," I said, " may I ask you 
 what you would call marriage ? " 
 
 " That alone which is solemnised by the Church," he said 
 promptly, and as though glad that I so introduced the 
 subject. 
 
 It was the reply I had led for, but his choice of words made 
 me turn aside from the course I had proposed myself. 
 
 " Precisely : solemnised, and, for those who form part of 
 ecclesiastical systems, preferably so solemnised ; but not made. 
 You cannot make marriage, and whatever you cannot make 
 may be made independently of you. It is idle, it is, believe 
 me, sir, even insolent of you, to refuse to recognise what has 
 been made independently of you when you admit you cannot 
 make it yourself. It is about the one arrogance that is 
 unpardonable. Yes " 
 
 " You run ahead too fast, Mr. Elthorne. I have not said 
 our holy Church cannot make marriages. Nor do I admit 
 it either, Mr. Elthorne/' 
 
 ' You used the word solemnised, not made, you remember." 
 
 " If you are anxious upon a verbal " 
 
 " Not at all. I take your instinctive choice of words 
 because it expressed a just instinct in you." 
 
 " I don't follow you at all. But I deny the idea you 
 are trying to attach to me. I have nothing to do with 
 it." 
 
 " You may deny, sir, till the split of judgment, but it doesn't 
 alter the fact. If you married, or put through all your sacred 
 forms of marriage, a woman to a sexless person with a male 
 resemblance, would that abide ? Or if you married two who 
 refused to ratify your solemnity of form, would that 
 abide ? " 
 
 " These things are not marriage." His pale face had 
 become flushed as he leaned forward to confute me. 
 
 " Precisely, that's what I am saying. And all your forms 
 and solemnities can't make them so. That's to say, marriage 
 is a thing independent of you. Your task, sir, is to solemnise 
 
392 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 it if the parties in whom the spiritual fact had occurred think 
 that it needs other than its own solemnity. It is an impertinence 
 for you to do otherwise, and I say it is an impertinence for 
 you to try and come between Ethna and myself who have 
 that bond, even as it was a merciless brutality in you to bully 
 her the whole of this past night/' 
 
 He sat there, drumming on the table with his fingers, 
 flushed and annoyed, perturbed even, that I had forced the 
 pace, and so rushed him into a corner, discomforting him in 
 the presence of these his parishioners. That he was so 
 discomforted was apparent from the way he half turned his 
 head right and left in their direction without actually looking 
 at them. His fixed, austere countenance seemed even for a 
 moment to be intensely malevolent. I began to be wary for an 
 explosion that would serve, by its onset, to drive me forcibly 
 from my ground. It came, although in its deliberate dignity 
 it did not wear the appearance of an explosion. 
 
 " It is by such casuistry of the devil you have corrupted our 
 child " his gesture included the Walpoles in his reference, 
 and so rallied them to him. " We shall resist it by our 
 stubborn faith, and we shall save Ethna from you. By what 
 right do you come stealing faith and innocence in this way ? 
 You shall not steal more." 
 
 I was about to thrust him out of this rhetorical evasion of 
 the point at issue when Mrs. Walpole put me at a disadvantage 
 by breaking in shrilly : 
 
 " And I never thought, all the time you were coming here 
 with your soft ways and kindness, it was deceiving me you 
 were all the time. And I helping you, unknowingly, by telling 
 Ethna it was the kind man you were, with all your tickets 
 for the concerts, and books for her, and all the rest of it ! I 
 didn't trust the nasty thoughts, Father, that sometimes came 
 to me when I saw Ethna reading books she was better without, 
 and all the time they were warnings to me all the time they 
 were." 
 
 " Mrs. Walpole, excuse me, I owe it to you to say that I had 
 no thought at that time that a great love was coming to me 
 and Ethna. Directly I did know, and at the very moment I 
 could get the ground clear before me, I was going to tell you. 
 You should have known to-day, except that Father Magennis 
 broke my confidence to him. I am very sorry to cause you 
 
I STEP INTO THE STORM MYSELF 393 
 
 any pain, and I know Ethna is, but this thing went ahead 
 of you because it first went ahead of us/' 
 
 " That is enough/' said Father Magennis with an intolerable 
 assumption of authority, rising as he spoke. " It is surely 
 enough that you should deceive everybody without adding to 
 it by words. Ethna will not dare to defy the Church she was 
 bred in, the God she has always worshipped so devoutly ; and 
 we will support her faith in resisting you. That is what I 
 wanted to tell you." He held bravely on despite all my 
 efforts to break in, for I saw he was about to fall back 
 on the vantage grounds of authority. " That is all. I 
 think I may say you had better withdraw ; we would wish 
 it." He half -turned to Walpole for confirmation of his 
 edict. 
 
 " Yes, yes, Father, whatever you say," eagerly said that 
 worthy, rousing himself thus far. And Mrs. Walpole moved 
 round the table towards the door. 
 
 It was an awkward moment, but I had been struggling 
 for speech during the whole time that Father Magennis, 
 arrayed in his full and iciest dignity, had been declaring the 
 law to me ; and I now burst in emphatically. 
 
 " I refuse to leave this house, or to leave this room, until I 
 have seen Ethna." 
 
 " We shall call a constable," Father Magennis said in angry 
 discomfiture. 
 
 " In that you shall please yourself ; I very much regret 
 any unpleasantness, but you must see I have a right to see 
 Ethna." It was plain to me what their intentions were with 
 regard to her. 
 
 I do not like to think upon the tumult that succeeded at 
 this. All Mrs. Walpole's instincts as an outraged hostess, her 
 probable memories as a landlady, with other inducements 
 besides, rose to aid her tongue in anathemas on me. It would 
 have been like any street broil (it was quite sufficiently 
 degrading) save for a curious moral capture of the situation 
 chat helped her natural sense of dignity. It was probably 
 Walpole's spluttered defiance of me that gave the grossness 
 to the scene. Father Magennis himself took no part in the 
 scene, but then neither did he attempt to allay Mrs. Walpole's 
 anger. He stood by coldly and statuesquely. 
 
 I tried to calm this sudden storm that so curiously made 
 
394 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 me shamefast, but Mrs. Walpole merely held the door open, 
 and bade me go. That of course I could not do. I could not 
 proceed with half a dozen words of speech, and I certainly 
 could not go, while my continued presence only made 
 her shrill anger (with Walpole for growling chorus) the 
 worse. 
 
 Then swiftly a strained calm fell on the scene, for Ethna 
 herself had come running in among us. She made a splendid, 
 a tragic, figure, and I think we were all awed by her. As she 
 looked from one to the other, she swayed as she stood, and it 
 was plain to see that she was wrought beyond her strength, 
 but none of us thought to go near her. Mrs. Walpole was even 
 afraid of her (Walpole had retreated to his corner), but no 
 one spoke a word. Poor Ethna struggled to speak, but words 
 refused to come to her moving lips. 
 
 " My dear child, you see all the evil your errors have 
 brought upon us/' It was Father Magennis who spoke as 
 he came towards her, in his hateful instinct to seize the 
 advantage of a situation. 
 
 Ethna put her hands tremblingly to her face, and burst into 
 a torrent of tears. 
 
 I tried to calm her idly enough, for this was a matter of 
 nervous ruin more than of a definable grief. I could have 
 cursed the whole of them, but that would have been to make 
 her worse. 
 
 " She shall leave with me now," I said. 
 
 " That would be impossibly wrong and cruel of you/' 
 Father Magennis said. 
 
 " What do you mean, wrong and cruel ? " 
 
 " Cruel, because you cannot take her away from her 
 guardians, and she in the state she is ; wrong, because she is 
 in no state to take her own decision/' 
 
 " Oh, leave it, leave it ! " Ethna burst out. " Jack, my 
 darling, come again to-morrow, and then I'll be ready. But 
 I must sleep, oh, I must sleep. I can't stand this, I can't, 
 I can't." 
 
 " What she says is very wise ; indeed, it is the only possible 
 thing to do," Father Magennis said with a readiness that I 
 could scarcely understand, distracted as I was by Ethna's 
 collapse. And, in fact, it seemed so to me also. 
 
 " How do I know you will let me in to-morrow ? " 
 
ETHNA MAKES HER DECISION 395 
 
 " I pledge it." 
 
 " In faith and honour ? " I had no trust in the man. 
 
 " Surely : in faith and in honour/' 
 
 So I gently disengaged Ethna's quivering embrace, kissed 
 her on her brow, and resigned her to Mrs. Walpole to lead 
 upstairs. I went away full of distractions and foreboding. 
 But what else was there for me to do ? 
 
 X 
 
 ETHNA MAKES HER DECISION 
 
 " I ought to say immediately that Miss Cahill has decided, 
 has, in fact, promised me, not to see you, nor hear from you, 
 for a full year from now." So Father Magennis addressed me, 
 a little hurriedly and precipitatedly, in that same dining-room 
 the following morning. Mrs. Walpole had stiffly shown me 
 in but had failed to follow me, and I hardly had seen Ethna 
 standing beyond the gloom on the light of the window, and 
 Father Magennis standing at the table in between, when this 
 sentence greeted me. 
 
 I scarcely realised it. It stupefied me momentarily, 
 and checked me. I saw Ethna turn quickly towards 
 Father Magennis ; but it seemed some minutes before she 
 spoke. 
 
 " It oughtn't to be put like that. It's not you who 
 ought to have said it at all, and it's not right to put 
 it that way. You promised you would not be here when 
 I saw Jack." 
 
 " I know, my child " 
 
 " Will you not go ? " she cried, raising her hands with that 
 same trembling slowness to her face. " I can't stand it, 
 
396 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Father. You are cruel to me. I'll go out with him this 
 minute, and let you do what you like to Aunty Walpole and 
 all of them, if you can't keep your word to me." 
 
 He said no more, but there was a long patient malice in 
 his glance at me as he went. 
 
 " Ethna, what does this mean ? " I asked her. 
 
 " Ah, you mustn't be angry with me," she wailed. " You 
 don't know what hardness they've given me." 
 
 " No, dear, I won't be hard. I'm sorry. But it's very 
 bewildering. It's staggering. ' ' 
 
 " But I shan't fail," she said, so bravely, standing erect 
 before me with head high, and in a voice that would have 
 been cheerful but for its obvious strain and the tremble in it. 
 " I'll be ready in a year. Perhaps it's better like that. Do 
 
 you know, I think it will show " She hesitated a moment, 
 
 trying to hold herself bravely. I should have left her to 
 herself, but I saw tears in her eyes, that she sought to stem 
 back, and I took her hand to caress and comfort her. Im- 
 mediately the whole of the tempest she had sought to hold 
 back, exploded. The heat of it scorched her very tears, 
 for she shook as in an ague, seeming more as though she had a 
 seizure than as though she were in violent grief. I laid her 
 on the worn old sofa, for I had no one to turn to for assistance. 
 Yet she became calm again as suddenly as the storm had 
 swept upon her. 
 
 I feared greatly for her violent alternations ; her brain 
 seemed the momentary expression of the revolving areas of 
 her soul, and her frame was being worn by the fierce and 
 differing strains. 
 
 " Ethna, my dearest, it shall be as you wish. Nothing 
 can change me, and I have the faith in you I have 
 in myself. But what is gained by wasting a year in this 
 way ? Won't it only mean all the struggle over again 
 then ? " 
 
 " It's to save them, that's all it is. She gets some of 
 her people from him, and he says he'll interdict her because it's 
 her training led me into sin. That's what he says, anyway. 
 What can he do ? I should let him try, I shouldn't flinch 
 because he talked in threats, for he couldn't keep the 
 sacraments from her. But she's a poor thing, and she's 
 afraid. Anyway, it's a hard struggle for her." 
 
ETHNA MAKES HER DECISION 397 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " Oh, and he promised he wouldn't if I didn't see you, or 
 write to you and do anything, for a year, whatever I might do 
 at that time. So I promised." 
 
 There surely never were words spoken with such utter 
 dejection. She had grown quite listless and dulled. 
 
 " They will only try to put you more severely under their 
 order of things, so as to drive us apart, you know ! " 
 
 " I suppose so. He promised he wouldn't/' 
 
 " Are you still thinking of his word to you ? Apart from 
 them, what, dear, would be your own resolve ? I want to 
 have something to go away upon." 
 
 " It's a dreadful thing to have the curse of God put upon 
 you," she said in the same dulled way. 
 
 In a sudden twitch of irritation (for I was very deeply 
 distressed) I thought of challenging her love for me. But that 
 would have been to act like an unlearned youth, for one 
 heart does not love another less because it loves a sense of 
 duty more. So I checked myself in silence, and bowed my 
 head. 
 
 " Not that he can really/' she continued. " God can't 
 bring life to me, and then suddenly damn it like that. How 
 can He ? And He can't use a cruel, soft cat of a man like 
 Father is turning out to be, to curse me who do mean to 
 glorify Him. Oh, Jack, you've been lovely to me, and I do 
 thank God for having found you for all this bother of things. 
 Oh, I do, I do. You've made a woman of me that was only 
 angry and silly before ; and I will be worthy of you all this 
 year, I will ; and I will come to you at the end, I promise. 
 Oh, I wish it were here now. You don't know what it means 
 to me. It's like just going to walk down a long, dark gulley 
 with no light at all in it. But I shall come out of it again. 
 You'll help me, won't you, dear ? " 
 
 " My dearest, as you wish and as you will." 
 
 We spoke many soft and sacred things together, while I 
 sought to keep away any recurrence of violence in her. And 
 when I went away, after her clinging, agonised, pure pain of 
 spirit, it all seemed strangely unreal and like a dream. It 
 was like the numbness succeeding to a caning at school. 
 The memory of our talk, as I went up the street, appeared 
 even stupidly tame, and insufficient. It seemed more 
 
398 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 like an anticlimax than a real occurrence, except for a 
 far-away sound of weeping in it, of weeping never to be 
 quenched. 
 
 XI 
 
 EVERYTHING FAILS ME 
 
 The plover and curlew were crying above the hills when 1 
 returned to my cottage ; the voice of the wild geese was soon 
 heard, like a breathless moan in the air above, as they passed 
 to their roosting quarters in the wild dark splendour of the 
 autumn dusk ; and all the mountains were trembling in that 
 new tenderness of power that comes upon them with the 
 return of their birds. I felt it all, but as in some remote 
 suburb of my being. Life and Being were around me in 
 power. I felt it all, it could not be denied, but it seemed to 
 affect me little, and brought me no comfort. 
 
 In the morning the wild geese woke me as they passed 
 overhead (they always flew lower in the dusk of dawn), and 
 I was instantly awake. Habit reasserted itself. But, once 
 awake, knowledge came, and I lay there in dejection, thinking 
 out my tortured dreams of the night. I did not rise. What 
 object was there in rising ? It only meant passing through a 
 day that mattered little one way or another in the sum of 
 things. And when later I went forth and trod upon Guala, 
 I felt that my return was known, but it did not wake me to 
 delight. I was grateful, of course, dumbly grateful for this 
 high company where my presence was not unwelcome, but it 
 was not able to pierce the dejection that encased as a harness 
 of steel. 
 
 In the war of self I tried to arouse myself, but nowhere 
 
EVERYTHING FAILS ME 399 
 
 could I find an instrument with which to do so. What 
 friends had I ? Ramsay and Tim were both alienated from 
 me by this new turn in my affairs that they had not been able 
 to conceive. Frank : what was he ? A kind of man who 
 burrowed in the indecencies of commerce, who emerged to 
 the light of day to blink half-recognisingly at me, run round 
 energetically in futile circles, and plunge again into his 
 burrowing. Rhoda was dead to me : dead even to anger and 
 resentment. Who else was there ? Ethna ? would she be 
 able to endure continued oppression for a whole year at her 
 changeful time of years ? I very much doubted it. And what 
 else had I ? Coming here I had cut myself away from other 
 people certainly with small loss to myself judging by the 
 defection of these others who had been so much more to me. 
 I turned down the books I had written, and laughed at them. 
 They might be good or bad, but who read them ? Sweat 
 of my soul they certainly were, but who could have answered 
 me how many I had written, and which they were, and what 
 in the name of conscience they meant ? I was only one of 
 the thousands of others who piled up writings to feed their own 
 self-conceit, who received no payment for them, but to whom 
 the name in print on the back side of a book was all in all, let 
 the print be in Syriac if it would. 
 
 What other book could I write if I were put to it ? None, 
 as I well knew : my brain was dead to ideas. And that was 
 the plain, short judgment on the rest of the matter. I had 
 only gone on writing so long as I had ideas, so long as I 
 could beat up subject-matter. It certainly had the merit of 
 being honourable, but in what other way did it differ from 
 Frank's manner of living ? 
 
 I had played a game with Life, and I had lost lost so 
 heavily that nothing more remained to play with. There was 
 no one to blame but myself. It was I who married Rhoda, 
 it was I who parted from her on a subject that, as I looked at 
 my books, seemed as extravagant as stupid. She too pub- 
 lished books, and they sold that was one thing she could 
 say. It was even I who originated Ermott Jacob. I had 
 made all the whips that came in turn across my shoulders. It 
 was I who held aloof from the many, thinking that precious 
 friends were better than a multitude. It was I who elected 
 to come out into this wonderful Temple of the Highest, 
 
400 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 where I now wandered, empty and disconsolate. I had not 
 had a hand dealt me, I had been given a whole pack, had 
 chosen my own hand, and had lost on every card I had 
 played. 
 
 Ethna I could scarce bear to think of. If I blamed myself 
 anywhere I blamed myself there. I cursed myself for my folly. 
 What was the point in living a strenuous, battling, dogged 
 and disappointed life till forty if one could not by that time 
 acquire sufficient common sense to see that that kind of 
 dalliance (helping her, I had called it in my fatuity) would end 
 in just such complications as had chanced ? What had I, 
 whom the State had bound for life, to do walking abroad, 
 pretending I was out of serfdom, and getting dear souls into 
 misery who had till then known such distance from misery as 
 the earth may give ? 
 
 It was only when I thought of her that my bitterness rose 
 out of its dull lethargy, but it rose into a torment that was 
 almost past endurance. Either I would think of Father 
 Magennis harrying her in his merciless, crafty way : when I 
 would rise up with a sharp cry as though a weapon had been 
 thrust into me. Or I would think of her longing for me till 
 her hunger wore away her physical endurance : when the pity 
 and answering hunger would make the great spaces of the hills 
 too small for my complaint. Or I would think of her being 
 crushed by the opposition, or outgrowing the memory as 
 weeks went by, or shrinking from the ordeal when the 
 customary routine of life began to subdue her to its habit : 
 when the blackest despair took me, though I ever justified 
 her, seeing that I had come to look upon myself with dis- 
 illusioned eyes. 
 
 So the weeks went by, and my cottage saw much bitter, 
 listless brooding. Reading itself defied me. Rhoda had, the 
 previous Christmas, sent me a wonderfully bound copy of 
 Marcus Aurelius ; and, as I cut the flyleaf out in the determina- 
 tion to give the book to Martin O'Hara, I looked within it. 
 But this sleek, rich emperor, looking out upon the world with 
 his sleek, rich eyes, and calling his outlook stoical, exasperated 
 me. Men in his position do not find wisdom, they get others 
 to help them make a counterfeit of it, and they never learn 
 that it is a counterfeit, for there are none to tell them the truth. 
 Men only read these Meditations because their writer was an 
 
EVERYTHING FAILS ME 401 
 
 emperor, and because it is as rare to find an exalted person 
 thinking as it is to find him blacking his own boots : not 
 because of any proved wisdom in them. The need for quota- 
 tions in calendars (never at any risk to be put into practice, 
 they have not that sting or urgency) keeps them alive. I 
 did not give the book to Martin. I flung it away in the heather. 
 
 I turned to Shelley. Beautiful Shelley ! He did not exas- 
 perate, but he failed to comfort ; he created a pain that was 
 too near tears, and I put him away tenderly. Keats I did 
 not try, he was not central enough. But Carlyle helped me. 
 His great humanity, and bewildering vision, came very near 
 me, yet it was a moment's quickness of the blood, for soon 
 even the wonderful pageant of his French Revolution became 
 like a troop of soldiers passing in music and with banners 
 through the muddied dullness of a remembered dream. I 
 did not go further than Carlyle. Father Hefferan lent me 
 Newman, but I carefully returned it in a fortnight without 
 reading it. Newman is a spiritual aesthete, and as unhealthy, 
 and as affected, as the average aesthete. Kingsley was a 
 grocer beside him, but Kingsley was human. 
 
 Father Hefferan's visits were a puzzling matter. His round, 
 weather-beaten moon of a face, with light-blue eyes that 
 laughed and twinkled in the expanse of redness, seemed the 
 last remove from intrigue, yet his visits could not but remind 
 me of Father Magennis, lean and disciplinary in his stuffy 
 room in Dublin. Father Hefferan, though his zeal was 
 matchless, never discussed his creed with me. He avoided 
 it, rather. And so his new attention made me wonder. 
 
 For in rny listless dejection I had cut myself away from 
 everybody. A wall seemed to have arisen between myself and 
 the people of the village. Whether it was my fancy or not, 
 I cannot say, but it certainly seemed to me that their very 
 salutations in the street, on the rare occasions when I met any 
 of them, were cold and forbidding, with the result that I 
 avoided them, even as I have no doubt they avoided me. 
 
 Martin O'Hara himself I had not seen since my return, 
 and so I was the more surprised when one evening he came in 
 to see me. 
 
 ' It's a wild night/' I said. 
 
 ' A wilder I haven't seen, though the years are white on 
 me." 
 
 DD 
 
402 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 He was the only man in the place who really enjoyed my 
 tobacco, and we smoked in silence for a long while. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you," he said at last, " of the man who 
 got lost once on the big hills behind this place ? " 
 
 " You never did." 
 
 " A good man, he was, and never a man to flinch at the 
 troubles of things. But his wife died a grand, good woman 
 she was too : she died in the pains of giving birth, and the 
 doctor never came though he was called many times, and the 
 woman of the place was visiting her friends in Kerry. And so 
 she died, and he went wandering the big hills in the pity of 
 it. He was a decent, God-fearing man, but he was ' away ' 
 for a long time. It was plain to see he was ' away/ the way 
 he'd look at you, and he walking through the village itself. 
 The people turned against him, for he brought a curse on the 
 place." 
 
 I began to see the drift of his words, and wished to ask him 
 more precisely upon them. But I knew well that would 
 greatly offend his delicacy, without succeeding in my intention. 
 
 So I lifted the question into the general : " How should a 
 man's private troubles have anything to do with the 
 people ? " I asked. 
 
 But Martin was not to be drawn from his particular instance : 
 " He was a decent man," said he, " but the good people 
 ravaged him, coming upon him in his great sorrow. So he 
 was ' away/ and when he turned his feet against his friends 
 they put a great anger on him. He set out to go to the United 
 States of America, but he was drowned on the way." 
 
THE KNOCK UPON THE WINDOW 403 
 XII 
 
 THE KNOCK UPON THE WINDOW 
 
 Though I tried hard to wring something more definite from 
 him I failed utterly. I only succeeded in getting fuller details 
 of the tragedy that evidently had occurred. With an aloof 
 dignity that nothing could break, Martin baffled all my 
 attempts with simple adroitness, and when at last he went, 
 he left with me a delicate sense of what he had come to 
 deliver. 
 
 The result was that the following day I took out my ruck- 
 sack, passed over Guala away from the village, struck down 
 southward, and then turned about towards Blacksod Bay. 
 The gale was abating, and torn fragments of cloud were being 
 blown along the hilltops beneath a clear sky, as I lifted up my 
 head and took the wind upon my face. None knew of my 
 departure. I went silently and without advice. 
 
 I realised with difficulty that my dejection had weakened 
 me physically. After I had gone a few miles I discovered that 
 I could continue walking only with the greatest difficulty. 
 It puzzled me at first, since I do not usually tire with 
 walking. But I forced myself to continue, and found that 
 the monotony of tramping attuned me better than anything 
 else could. 
 
 It was within a few days of Christmas, and before I had gone 
 a week on my way the weather turned very black. Moreover, 
 the habit of walking had begun to master my mind, and subdue 
 it, so that in the end I became a kind of walking automaton : 
 thinking nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing but only 
 walking, for ever walking. 
 
 Christmas passed almost without my knowledge. In the 
 wliite, moonlight one evening the sight of candles winking in 
 every window made me aware that I was nearing the threshold 
 of the day. I was royally entertained that night, and when 
 I went off the following morning, with hearty greetings in my 
 ear, no charge would be taken from me for my night's keep. 
 A mile along the road the memory had passed from me, 
 and I had grown into the steady comfort of walking 
 on vard. 
 
 Then when, as I came towards Achill, the country grew gaunt 
 
404 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 and severe, Owen Dubh standing before me in its strange 
 austerity, my mood became uplifted, and a change came over 
 me. The country became like a renunciation that had opened 
 a whole world of wonder. There were none of the civil parts 
 of a picture, there was no invitation or calm in the land- 
 scape : it was challenging, arrestive, defiant even, saturated 
 in a dim, mystical light. It was, I felt at once, full of mighty 
 presences. To those who knew them not they meant nothing 
 either way. To those who did, they were a challenge, pos- 
 sibly a great danger. That challenge was bracing, and as 
 I went forward into it I was exalted. 
 
 It was so I went past Mallaranney, down to Carraun, 
 crossed by curragh one sunlit frosty morning into Achill, 
 and went round by way of the coast, over the hills or by the 
 road, to Dooega, and so on to Keel. So I went on westward, 
 standing on those great cliffs while the illimitable waters of 
 the ocean were leaping in the cold sunlight beneath me. I 
 returned by Dugort, which was an incursion of mere civilisa- 
 tion, and which I soon left. Then the weather turned wild, 
 the long streamers of rain driving over the low bogs above 
 Bonnacurry as, to a calmer tune of my brain, I turned back 
 towards my glen. 
 
 Strangely a new mood had taken possession of me, and it 
 was one of expectancy. There was no excitement in it ; it 
 was like waiting for something inevitable, that I knew was 
 inevitable, though I knew not what it was. It was as if some 
 part of me had taken possession of the future, and could not 
 send back to my brain more than a sense of what it knew. 
 It was, I know, something extraordinarily exalted, and the 
 sharp response of the people to me on my return made me 
 realise that it was something wholesome, and maybe even 
 dignified. 
 
 In half a dream I passed the weeks waiting. It was a 
 queer and whimsical mood, part melancholy and part a tender 
 looking into the darkness to see what should emerge. I have 
 no difficulty in transporting myself into any part of my life, 
 but those three or four weeks baffle me. It must have been a 
 kind of somnambulism, and it seems it must have been gracious, 
 for several have spoken to me of my very great tenderness with 
 them during this time. But I have the vaguest memory of 
 myself, probably because of the sharpness of what ensued. 
 
THE KNOCK UPON THE WINDOW 405 
 
 One evening I sat so, contemplatively before a fire well 
 banked with turf. For it was a terrible night. It had been 
 furious and wild for nearly a week, sleet and rain driving down 
 upon a north-easterly wind. All the mountains were capped 
 with snow, but in the valleys the sleet was soft as it was 
 driven before the hurricane of wind. I could hear nothing but 
 the shriek of the wind against the cottage and the hiss and 
 sting of the sleet against the window. It was such a wind as 
 I had never known, save when it came from the south-west, 
 and it was bleak as though it were full of knives. Now and 
 then I could hear the wail of the heather outside, or the cry 
 of a bird that had been swept from cover, but these were in 
 lulls, for the wind made the cottage the special point of its 
 onset, shrieking and crying around it. My cottage was the 
 only obstruction on the mountain side, and when earlier I 
 had tried to venture out I had found it almost impossible to 
 stand. 
 
 And as I sat, quietly smoking, in the attentiveness of waking 
 dream that had lately marked me, presently I heard a knock 
 upon the window. I turned round wonderingly, when it was 
 repeated, and my name was called in a voice that made my 
 heart to beat heavily. In wild concern I flung wide the door 
 and saw, in the light streaming from the window, a form huddled 
 before it. 
 
 " Ethna, Ethna ! " I cried. " Whatever are you doing 
 here ? " 
 
 " Oh, Jack," she said, feebly enough, " I thought I would 
 never find you." 
 
 " My darling ! but what made you come, and how did you 
 come ? " 
 
 " I got lost so many times. I nearly went to sleep in the 
 heather." 
 
 It was pitiful beyond all words : she clung to me so pathetic- 
 ally, she was so frail and thin. And she stood already in a 
 pool of water, so wet was she. 
 
 I poured her out a glass of hot brandy, and drew her to the 
 fire. It was pitiable to see the way she shuddered in its 
 heat. 
 
 " Have you no clothes ? " I asked her. 
 
 " I have nothing. Oh, Jack, I came straight to you." 
 
 Like a starveling coming to shelter she lifted her lips to 
 
406 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 mine. We had not kissed yet. And when we kissed she broke 
 down into sobs, into a torrent of weeping, so unendurable 
 seemed that moment. I was distracted with pain. Physi- 
 cally and mentally she seemed at the very end of her 
 resources. 
 
 I drew out my night suit before the fire, and a large towel, 
 and I made her dry herself and get into my bed, while I 
 turned away. Presently she called me, and I went to 
 her. 
 
 " My dearest," I said, " it's very dear to think of you 
 coming to me like this; but how, why, what made you 
 come ? " 
 
 " I couldn't stand it, I couldn't. I was crying for you all 
 the time, my heart was, and they've been so terrible to me 
 since Christmas, troubling me all the time. I couldn't bear 
 it, with that aching in me all the time, and their troubling me. 
 So I walked out this morning, do you know, while they were 
 talking to me, and went straight to the station." 
 ' That man-devil Magennis, I suppose ! " 
 
 " He has been so cruel to me, Jack. Hadn't I pain enough 
 without his troublesome words ? And the days were so dark 
 and wild, and so cold in my room, where I was, to get away 
 from them. And I was so crying and aching lor you. Oh, 
 I was so glad to think I was going to look on you. But then 
 I thought I wouldn't after all, the wind beat against me 
 so." 
 
 A terrible thought struck me : " Ethna my dear you 
 didn't walk from Castlebar ! " 
 
 " I took a car a little bit of the way. But I haven't any 
 money, coming out the way I did." 
 
 " My poor little woman ! I could have paid this 
 end ! " 
 
 " I didn't think of that. I was only thinking of getting 
 to see you, and to be with you. And, Jack, the wind beat so, 
 I thought I would never be able to come. It beat me back ; 
 it kept beating me back ; and I got so tired. It blew me back ; 
 and I kept sitting down till I thought I would have to give it 
 up." 
 
 " My dearest, my dearest." 
 
 " Then when I got to the village they told me I had still 
 to go on. I cried then, Jack ; and a man wanted to bring me 
 
THE KNOCK UPON THE WINDOW 407 
 
 up. But I wouldn't let him. Then I lost my way up in the 
 heather ; and I didn't know what to do, till I saw the light 
 in the valley. I went back to the village then ; and I was 
 crying because it was all a spent journey. Somebody put 
 me right again ; but I got lost again in the heather. You see, 
 the wind blew me all out of the way, and the heather caught me, 
 and tripped me ; and my skirt was wet ; and I was so hopeless. 
 I think I went to sleep then, in the heather : I only wanted 
 everything to be forgotten, for it seemed I was never to see 
 you, and that was so terrible. But I forced myself to go on. 
 I crawled down low, so as to get out of the wind. And I came 
 on the path again, that way ; and I came along the path for 
 a long, long time, when I saw the window and I knew it 
 must be you. I knew it had to be you, for I couldn't go any 
 more at all Oh, Jack, I am glad to see you." 
 
 I bowed my head upon the bed : it was awful to think of 
 her, so frail and thin, battling her way through that terrible 
 journey of storm to come to me. 
 
 " Poor old Jack/' I heard her voice. " I am sorry if I've 
 troubled you. But I wanted to tell you ; I kept saying to 
 myself all the way that I should tell you, so that you could see 
 how much I wanted you." 
 
 " Dear, I never doubted that." 
 
 " The way I sent you away from me ! It was that troubled 
 me all times. But it was Father Magennis's doing ; I was so 
 worried and vexed." 
 
 " Ethna, you mustn't talk like that. Whatever you did I 
 never doubted you." 
 
 " Do you really mean that ? " 
 
 " Dear, dear girl ! You needn't have reproached yourself. 
 If I had only thought you had " 
 
 ''' You're very kind to me, Jack ; and you do comfort me 
 so." 
 
 " Dearest ! and if you had got lost, and gone astray upon 
 the bogs." 
 
 " It was light that part of the journey." 
 
 " My darling, my darling ! " 
 
 She was so thin, so fragile, so tired, lying there in my bed, 
 it was pitiful to look upon her. By this time I had some 
 broth ready for her, which she only ate at my desire, for she 
 was tired and foredone beyond hunger. I had put brandy 
 
4 o8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 in her tea, and presently her eyes grew heavy, and, even as I 
 watched her, she sank into a heavy sleep. 
 
 So I gently stacked up a large fire, and, turning the light 
 out, slept in my chair. But I had difficulty in disengaging 
 her hand, which was closed in a fierce grip upon my own. 
 
 XIII 
 
 THE STRUGGLE AT THE THRESHOLD 
 
 The storm raged furiously all the following day, and the 
 cottage shook in the anger of the wind. Ethna had been 
 awake before me, and I had drawn myself out of my long 
 chair to see her looking on me in the white dawn. There was 
 an inexpressible yearning in her eyes. 
 
 " My dearest/' I said, going to her, " how do you feel this 
 morning ? " 
 
 She said nothing, but her eyes searched my face. It was 
 terrible for me to see how thin and haggard she was, and there 
 was a flush on each cheek that I little liked. But such things 
 were only noticed incidentally, for, like a river running calmly 
 in the quivering fulness of its joy, we were rejoicing each of us 
 in the actual presence of the other. I laid her dear hair back 
 upon the pillow, and she caressed me, with an intimate gentle- 
 ness such as no other joy on earth can rival. 
 
 Yet she was ill, and sorely ill. Her temperature was high, 
 and there were signs of pulmonary congestion. I did not know 
 what to do, for I could not very well leave her. But I had 
 a curious knowledge of how to treat straightforward illness, 
 and had been of some slight service in the village in helping 
 those that fell ill. So I tended her. 
 
THE STRUGGLE AT THE THRESHOLD 409 
 
 Later in the day William Barrett came up to see me. " A 
 lady was seeking the way to find you in the storm yesterday," 
 he said. " I directed her surely, but she wouldn't let me help 
 her the way up the hill.'* 
 
 " Yes/' I said, hiding my diffidence. " She is within now. 
 She had a bad journey in the storm. She is ill now, I am sorry 
 to say/' This was the difficulty I had not yet taken into my 
 immediate reckoning. Ordinarily I would have left the glen 
 promptly, but Ethna's illness and high fever prohibited 
 that. 
 
 " Faith, I'm sorry to hear that/' said he. " But you're 
 the right man to help her in any illness, God bless you. You'll 
 do her a power more good than any doctor." 
 
 " I'm afraid it'll be a matter for the doctor, for all that, 
 William." For, indeed, Ethna was very restless, and her 
 lungs were evidently giving her increasing trouble. 
 
 " If you'd let me go bring the doctor, Mr. Elthorne, I 
 should be proud. As always I should serve your happiness." 
 There was a curious timidity in his attitude that puzzled me. 
 
 " It would be very good of you, William." 
 
 " Not at all, sir. There would be many glad to do it for 
 you. And there would be many to wish you a great prosperity 
 in the future of time, and to bid your lady heartily welcome." 
 
 I puzzled for a long time over his words before it began to 
 dawn upon my mind what he meant. 
 
 " Dearest/' I said to Ethna, " I believe the people here 
 think you are my wife come to me in the end of all as indeed 
 you are, God knows." 
 
 She put out her hand to take mine and caress it, while 
 she smiled happily at me. It was the sudden springing up of 
 deep contentment through her feverish restlessness, for she 
 was getting worse, and the shrieking wind and rain made sleep 
 impossible for her in that state. 
 
 Late in the afternoon Barrett drove the doctor over from 
 Castlebar in his car. He declared the obvious, that Ethna 
 was at the beginnings of pneumonia, and that the symptoms 
 seemed to indicate a difficult time. Physically she was very 
 weak, mentally she had been distraught, and nervously spent, 
 with the result that the long strain and exposure coming upon 
 all this had played havoc with her. 
 
 So she lay, and for weeks it seemed as though I had only 
 
410 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 gained her to lose her. Night and day I tended her, dis- 
 traught to think she might slip away thus, and miss the dear 
 happiness she had struggled so painfully to reach. Night and 
 day it seemed that nothing could save that struggling, hard- 
 breathing form from releasing its anguished spirit. It was 
 only my voice that held her, that calmed her. I would speak 
 her name gently by her bedside for hours at a time, and she 
 would turn to me, smiling, and take my hand in hers. Or I 
 would read her poetry, which, in her state, she might not 
 understand, but the cadence of which, in my voice, arrested 
 her and calmed her. The deep, deep peace of such hours was 
 more curative than any physician's craft could be. 
 
 They were long, anxious weeks. I was often saturated with 
 a sleep I could not suffer myself, and she, for days together, 
 would keep a close struggle for breath. But there was some- 
 thing in them that made them eloquent with a joy beyond the 
 expression of language. The very touch of our hands together 
 was a communion fuller of meaning than words, or even music, 
 could have uttered. It was the blessedness of fulfilment, 
 flowing from the bosom of God. 
 
 April had come bleakly into the valley before she had even 
 begun to be convalescent. A few scattered warm days in 
 that month mended her greatly, but it was already obvious 
 that she would never be the same again, that she would never 
 be sound of lung. The glory of the summer helped her. 
 Indeed, had it not been for that wonderful summer, another 
 tale would have been told. It helped her to pull back to 
 health again, however insecure that health might be, and it 
 gave us each a new measure of life. 
 
THE HOUSE OF FULFILMENT 411 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE HOUSE OF FULFILMENT 
 
 The wonder of the years that followed is incommunicable. 
 They were the very beauty of fulfilment. In all the changes 
 that had come upon Ethna during the time I had known her, 
 none were so beautiful as that which now transformed her. 
 Her frailty of health was not sufficient to contain the eager 
 strength that till then had marked her spirit, the impatient 
 directness that had characterised her, and, as though temper- 
 ing itself to these new conditions, it turned itself to a beautiful 
 and almost ethereal delicacy, that arrayed her like a light 
 falling on her from a world beyond view. Our love grew up 
 between us like a wonderful inheritance of peaceful ecstasy. 
 Its fragrance floated about us like an infinite memory, that 
 was also an infinite achievement. The past and the future 
 were absolved in it. 
 
 There was scarcely a consecutive five minutes of the day or 
 night in which we were not in each other's company. We 
 each turned expectantly to the other, as a flower turns expect- 
 antly to the sun to fulfil its life. Each, in the beautiful 
 accuracy of the old phrase, was the light of the other's eye. 
 The touch of hand in hand, as we walked the hills, set music 
 ringing in the world of spirit that made speech superfluous. 
 The wild light of first love paled by contrast, and where the 
 one tends to fret itself into satiety, the other was proud and 
 patient and contented. 
 
 Sometimes I would sit and watch her as she moved about 
 the cottage at work. She might turn about in a smile of 
 response, but more usually she would move in the happy 
 consciousness of the glance, delighting in it, bathing in 
 it, as in a beam of warm light that fell upon her. And that 
 became the symbol of our interchange. There was no strain- 
 ing, no exertion, in it ; it was a simple flowing forth. It was 
 spontaneous and ecstatic ; it enveloped us as a flame of per- 
 fume, merging us in it, and dissolving us in a calm that was 
 i he crown on the brow of wildness. There were moments 
 when I felt a thankfulness for this great joy that was humble 
 and glad ; but, so true was its fulfilment, my more usual mood 
 was one of high acceptation of a divine order of things. 
 
412 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 Ethna was simple and fragrant in her joy. There could be 
 nothing so gratifying in its effect on me, as her expanding 
 delight in my mere presence ; but in her it was something as 
 lovely as a flower. It was reflected in her music. I had pro- 
 vided her with a violin ; and her playing of the simplest 
 tunes transmuted them with the radiance of her own joy. 
 Her ill-health, her weakness, her increasing frailty, that broke 
 out continually in her and kept her to her bed, seemed wholly 
 unable even to indent the edge of that perfect round of 
 joy. 
 
 That our love must have been something exceedingly 
 beautiful was obvious from the way in which the people of 
 the village would look out for us, and call the " blessings of the 
 good God on the two of you, for surely you do be throwing a 
 wonderful sunlight about you as you come and go/' They 
 loved Ethna, and she loved helping them and nursing them 
 and mixing her irradiant life of joy with their sterner, more 
 stoic way. She brought her lyric to the narrative, till the 
 whole became one flowering song. 
 
 It was this, possibly, that saved us from one peril. Soon 
 after Ethna's convalescence Father Hefferan came up to see 
 me. He enquired after her, wished her good health, and very 
 soon gave me to know that he knew of our relationship. I 
 had expected him long before, and had come to the conclusion 
 that the long arm was not to reach us. The delay puzzled 
 me, but there was no purpose in seeking to frustrate the issue. 
 So I took him out upon the hills, and in the evening of the day 
 told him the whole of my story. 
 
 " Faith, I'm sorry indeed for you/' he said then, " but will 
 you tell me, Mr. Elthorne, what I can do under the circum- 
 stances, as a priest of the Catholic Church, other than to warn 
 my flock against you ? I needn't tell you what a grief it 
 would be to me, for I know you to be a good man, and I have 
 a powerful respect for you. But there you are, don't you 
 see ! " 
 
 " And may I ask you, Father Hefferan, what right or voca- 
 tion have you to call down judgment, that might very easily 
 wound considerably, without any knowledge of the case ? " 
 
 " I know the facts of the case." 
 
 " Facts ? What facts ? What are the facts ? " 
 
 " Surely, haven't you yeself just told me ? " His round, 
 
THE HOUSE OF FULFILMENT 413 
 
 weather-beaten face seemed to grow yet rounder in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " Words you put on a bit of paper, or hear in your listening 
 ear, aren't facts, Father. They are only memories of facts. 
 Facts are the things that are exhaled in daily life, they are 
 the fragrances, the results, of spiritual permutations, of deeds. 
 You know nothing of the facts of our case till you have watched 
 our lives, and their results on the lives of those we meet. 
 If you took my advice you would watch, you would observe 
 thinkingly, and not take a hasty decision that will be weighed 
 by a higher authority than ecclesiastical opinions/' 
 
 I refused to say more to him, but left him with that. The 
 subject was never referred to again between us. I do not 
 know what action he took, or how he avoided action. I can 
 only guess by an incident that occurred many months later. 
 He used often to come up to see us, though generally of an 
 evening. I noticed that he chose the darker hours to come 
 up the hill, and I felt tacitly that he did not wish a return 
 visit. Once, however, I suggested such a visit. His reply 
 was significant. He smiled mischievously, reservedly, and 
 said : " That should surely be a difficult thing for me to ask 
 you to do, seeing that I have no knowledge but that you left 
 this valley, which would have been a most natural thing for 
 you to do in your circumstances." 
 
 So we were left undisturbed, and a renewed intimacy with 
 the people of the valley was the result. It was an intimacy 
 where Ethna led me into a whole new world of experience. 
 I cannot say exactly where, or how. I had always lived in 
 fraternity with the people, and had always tried to render 
 them what service I could. She seemed only to continue this. 
 But she widened and deepened the groove till it opened into 
 a new world. Humanity became a unity then. Services be- 
 came no mere things done for others ; they turned, in the com- 
 pletest sense, into things done unto oneself. One enriched 
 one's own blood with them. They sent a new light into the 
 eye, a new colour into the cheek. It was a kind of completion 
 of oneself : as it were an intense and vital personality being 
 caught up into a terrific impersonality, where every act was 
 a pure ecstasy. 
 
 The mighty beings of the hills, and the great, throbbing 
 rhythms, coming up from the heart of the dear mother, Earth, 
 
414 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 had abstracted me in the past, had seemed a separate exercise 
 of Knowledge ; but Ethna now spun the more various thread- 
 work of humanity through this texture, making the whole a 
 splendid brocade of Life. It seems a sufficiently obvious 
 thing to do. Yet, though I had forgotten more of huma.nity 
 than she had ever learnt, she gave this simple and obvious 
 thing a vivid new significance. She did it by the native 
 instinct of her soul. It had been for all time true to her, 
 and was above what Time could teach, though Time might 
 easily have marred or ruined it. 
 
 And this simple Tightness of hers made her at once at 
 home when I took her up among the hills. Sometimes as we 
 sat on Guala she would suddenly, impulsively, lay her cheek 
 affectionately against the mountain side ; and then as sud- 
 denly sit upright again, with a curious look of awe upon her 
 face, as though she had been surprised into something like 
 indignity in the presence of majesty. Always, as we went so, 
 she was impulsive and cognisant, never irked by long con- 
 tinued silences, finding them full of speech rather, and the 
 completest companionship. I was necessary to her at such 
 times, but I was not all ; and she soon became necessary to 
 me, for she brought a new revelation into the communion, 
 gave it a new fragrance and receptive music. That was one 
 of the strangest of things, for she thereby became indispens- 
 able to me, and to say that is to say that our union, whatever 
 might chance, was irrefragable. And yet it was not merely 
 assonance that was won. It was curious to see how differ- 
 ently this inner world of reality struck along the lines of her 
 receptivity. It is in spiritual things as it is in material. No 
 two eyes see the same blade of grass ; its shape, its colour, 
 its significance, are determined by the personality, and none 
 may know what it is in itself. It is in the minds of men that 
 knowledge exists ; and therefore there are as many material 
 worlds as there are minds of men. So in the inner world of 
 reality. Guala was a different thing to Ethna from what it 
 had ever been to me. The majestic powers and presences of 
 earth were less august to her, more delicate. Whatever 
 they were in themselves it is impossible to tell (just as it is 
 impossible to tell the hue or fragrance of any rose) ; and it is 
 the less easy to tell since they lay so much beyond the scope 
 of the reasoning and thinking mind ; but, as they lived their 
 
THE HOUSE OF FULFILMENT 415 
 
 high ways, the intuitive intelligence had knowledge of them, 
 and, as we recreated them under the conditions of our tempera- 
 ments, a vivid communion was the result. But the thing so 
 perplexing to say was just this : that we lent each other our 
 differing knowledge (though no word was spoken), and a new, 
 unified knowledge grew up, greater than that either of us 
 could have perceived. And the new dazzling wonder was 
 this : that these powers and presences themselves began to 
 fa 11 away. We began, by right of access somehow mysteriously 
 achieved on our behalf, to approach nearer the Central Magni- 
 ficence, Him Whom we call God, than they ever could. They 
 were ranged about the Central Magnificence, full of majesty, 
 of terror, and of loveliness, with set places continually : we, 
 though curiously less than they, were yet curiously more, 
 and could go on within circle after circle in the whiter and 
 whiter light. 
 
 It was this last new experience that began to absorb our 
 spiritual travail. It is a difficult thing to speak of, for the 
 consciousness of it made us feel that Life was to be renewed 
 upon some higher plane for its more adequate continuance. 
 It was not something independent of this world of appearances. 
 The world of appearances was merged in it, was part of it. 
 Just as a square, being of two dimensions, is one of the sides 
 of a cube, which is of three, and at one time masks it and 
 reveals it, so this three-dimensional world of appearances was 
 one of the aspects of the other world beyond, masking it and 
 revealing. At times one could catch it, as it were, at an angle, 
 and then the side that had slightly turned away seemed like 
 a monstrous illusion. 
 
 Usually this was a pure realisation, with nothing definite 
 to account for the working of the imaginative Knowledge. 
 Indeed, it would scarcely be intelligible that the world of 
 appearance would itself demonstrate its insufficiency to mask 
 the bigger thing of which it was an aspect. Yet once or twice 
 it 'did so, and the veil itself displayed its rents in itself. 
 
 Once Ethna and myself were sitting on Guala idly watching 
 a couple of men loading a cart with turf. One man was 
 throwing the turf, in blocks of four, to the other, who caught 
 them from him, turned, threw his burden along the cart, and 
 then turned about to receive the next flight. As we sat we 
 could see down the whole length of the cart. We saw the first 
 
416 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 man throw the sods of turf, and the second man receive them. 
 We saw the second man turn about and throw the turf into 
 the cart, where it fell and distributed itself soundlessly, as 
 in a picture-show. Then we saw him turn about, and, when 
 the next lot was well in the air, we heard the first lot fall and 
 bounce along the wooden floor of the cart. This went on 
 continuously, and presently the extraordinary feeling grew 
 on me that I was looking at some part of the show of things 
 where the machinery did not quite fit, and where, through the 
 chink between, I could see the world beyond, dark, with 
 rolling waves of light. Everything suddenly became bewilder- 
 ingly unsubstantial. The turf fell soundlessly along the cart ; 
 a sound of turf rumbling upon a wooden floor came a long 
 time later, without any assignable cause ; and between the 
 two the reeling imagination fell. The solid-seeming earth 
 became a whirling congregation of discharging forces ; the 
 form of everything faded away, like a diminishing cloud ; and 
 swift radiations from spiritual intelligences catapulted through 
 space in their stead. Force, that is the basis of matter, became 
 the natural emanations, the thoughts, very possibly, of majestic 
 Beings, who dwelt in a wide illimitable space where omni- 
 presence was almost a reality. These emanations, in some 
 outer court, took visible shape : here they were power and 
 joy. With one such Being, forceful and exquisitely delicate, 
 I seemed, in a curiously helpful interchange, to be changing 
 and ever changing, the fact of that change whirling me nearer 
 the white fire of an incommunicable loveliness, the Unborn 
 and Eternal Beauty Himself. 
 
 A trance, a dreaming whimsey, some will call it ; others, 
 a veritable experience outside the conditions of Time. I know 
 that I found myself looking in Ethna's white, strained face, 
 in her trance-wide, vacant eyes, with my hand in hers. The 
 cart and turf-gatherers were gone. We two went down the 
 hill. We did not speak of it. Speech is for terrestrial con- 
 ditions, and we used it for terrestrial things. All beyond that 
 was knowledge, and did not need words. Communion does 
 not need communication. 
 
 Moments such as these were not infrequent between us. 
 They reconciled me to her increasing fragility. Indeed, some- 
 times they made it seem inevitable. For she never truly 
 recovered from her illness. The heat of that first summer, 
 
THE HOUSE OF FULFILMENT 417 
 
 there is no doubt, saved her, but when the winter came again 
 I nursed her feveredly, fearing lest she should not survive 
 it. She would not hear of moving away, though, ever against 
 my purest instincts, I urged her that we should do so. Frank, 
 very royally, wrote offering, indeed urging, a winter in Italy, 
 but she would not be moved. She declared she belonged to 
 Gleann-na-Siothchana, and I knew she was right. 
 
 Yet it was not easy to see her holding life more and more 
 loosely. In moments of great spiritual expression I did not 
 heed it, for I knew that nothing could quench our communion, 
 and that nothing could mar our mutual aid eternally given. 
 But in hours of depression the sight of her increasing physical 
 delicacy pierced me through and through. She knew it, 
 she knew it as soon as I experienced it, and it was dear 
 beyond all thought to see the way in which she set out to 
 soothe me, and to cheat me away from the thought. 
 
 She was wide-eyed, and I was wide-eyed. We were 
 walking to an assured end, and there was no disguising the 
 fact that it was a near end. It made us very anxious to wring 
 the utmost out of the hours that passed, and yet with one such 
 as she, with her boundless spontaneity, it was impossible 
 to make this a deliberate attempt. So a tender joy was 
 constantly enkindled between us by an effort that never rose 
 into the world of consciousness, and the river of our life ran 
 deeply forward, in full ease. 
 
 To my great joy the second winter did not affect her as much 
 as I had feared it would. But the summer that followed was 
 bleak and wet, and, guard her as I would, she was continu- 
 ously feverish. It was not easy to know her body's illness, 
 for her gaiety rose unconquerably through it. Our very joy 
 in each other seemed selfishly to blot out knowledge of things 
 contrary to it. Yet I watched carefully, never ceasing my 
 guard of her. It was so all through the winter that followed, 
 and I thought I had defended her well, and seen it safely away, 
 when its sudden return for a wild and tempestuous fortnight 
 in April laid her low. And when she had been in bed a week, 
 despite the fair words of the doctor, we knew what none could 
 tell us. We looked in each other's eyes : and we knew. It 
 was there, set and inevitable, between us, and the gravity of a 
 great sorrow came over us. 
 
 " Dear Jack/' she said, " I am content. I never thought 
 
 EE 
 
4i8 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 there could have been three years like these. How you have 
 lifted me up ! To think of the angry, hopeless thing I was ! " 
 
 " Dear Ethna ! The Presence knows it was you who lifted 
 me up. I believe I was a misanthrope/ 1 
 
 " Thank you, dear Jack, for all this happiness. Oh, how 
 I thank you ! " 
 
 " Don't, Ethna ! don't ! " 
 
 " It is a Presence, Jack." 
 
 " He is present now, and I dare not begrudge you. But 
 how I would if I dared ! " 
 
 " I shall always be with you, you know, always, Jack ; 
 you know that ; it must be so now, you see." 
 
 " I know, I know. But just the touch of your hand, the 
 smile of your eyes, the sun on your hair ! My dear, my dear ! " 
 
 In those days she went quietly away. She should have 
 been unconscious, her fever was so high. But her eye was 
 on mine, her hand was in mine, and we knew each other well. 
 
 XV 
 
 THE WAY ONWARD 
 
 She was buried on the hillside at the back of the cottage ; 
 and the heather was carefully laid back over the place even as 
 it had been before. It says much for the love she had won 
 that none regarded it as at all amiss that she should not be 
 buried in consecrated ground. I had wished to avoid a cere- 
 mony ; but it became inevitable. It is not things done over 
 the dead clay, but things enacted in the live spirit, that matter ; 
 but Father Hefferan came up to see me, and it was evident 
 that he expected some such suggestion. It was, indeed, noble 
 
THE WAY ONWARD 419 
 
 of him, for it meant very much to him under the circum- 
 stances. And the offer was freely given, without apology or 
 cavil. 
 
 So a special version of the service was read over the coffin 
 after mass on the Sunday morning ; and when the turf was 
 laid back over the place, I stayed on the hillside, while the 
 people streamed back towards the village, the women keening 
 as they went. At my wish none had come up to " wake " 
 her. I had " wajsed " her alone. And now, when all remains 
 were put out of sight, I walked the hillside in an utter loneliness. 
 
 I knew her company with me ; but it seemed so very insuf- 
 ficient. I made a gesture as though to take her hand, as I 
 used to when she walked beside me, and it stamped the futility 
 of consolation. The voice was silent, the eyes no longer leapt 
 to mine, that trembling body, so precious to embrace, meant 
 nothing now ; and it was not easy to conceive the higher 
 companionship. 
 
 It was not wise to hasten that conception. If it were right 
 it would come. Meanwhile sorrow must have its day ; and 
 it coarsens and brutalises a man to refuse its hour, Its 
 poignancy is its own purgation ; and better disciplines than 
 the rough hand that would check it or the cynic thought that 
 fears a healthy emotion. 
 
 Yet there was one manifest fault I had to avoid ; and I 
 soon discovered it. I began to treasure relics ; and when 
 one opens the door to sentimentality, emotion soon flies. 
 So I put them all away. I wished to find communion with the 
 unfleshed Ethna wherever she had her larger life, but I did 
 not want to conjure up a shadow from my own sorrowing and 
 mistake the one for the other. It is the old distinction, in 
 fact, between the fancy and the imagination. The imagination 
 discovers absolute Beauty; the fancy constructs a playful 
 prettiness. The imagination finds ; the fancy pretends. The 
 one finds the eternal truth, the other makes the eternal 
 falsehood. If I gave my fancy play, it would, out of my sorrow, 
 construct a sentimental shade, and with it for ever bar my 
 access to her who lately lived with me in Time. So I put 
 away all relics ; I burned every memento, till there was 
 nothing left of her for me to depend upon ; I spent my time 
 much upon the hills, thinking of her, not as my companion 
 who had been, but as my companion who was. And, in the 
 
420 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 wise way she had taught me, I gave myself freely to the people, 
 worked with them on the land, and took from them in fair 
 recompense what I wanted of its produce for my needs. 
 
 So I came to a vision of things that filled me with wonder. 
 And my days and progress passed unchallenged, until the 
 incident that started me writing these pages. 
 
 It was nearly two years after Ethna's passage, and a shrewd 
 April day, when as I came down from the hills in the early 
 afternoon I was surprised to see a strange car before my 
 cottage. Both James Ramsay and Tim Larkin had been with 
 me the previous year, and were to be with me later in this, 
 so I knew it could not be either of them. I thought of Frank, 
 and hastened on. When I entered my cottage, to my consider- 
 able perturbation I saw Rhoda sitting there. 
 
 " You are surprised to see me ? " she said. She seemed 
 younger than when I had last seen her, and the slight bronze 
 on her cheek told me she had not known a winter in these 
 islands. 
 
 " I certainly hadn't expected you/ 1 I said. Her presence 
 here disturbed me. 
 
 " I came about half an hour ago. I didn't know, Jack, it 
 was in a bare, rough cottage like this that you lived." 
 
 " I beg of you not to comment on me and my affairs. I am 
 very well content." 
 
 " But I must. It distresses me. You don't mean to say 
 you've lived here all the time." 
 
 " All the time." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " Please ! " I protested ; and then, as I felt that something 
 more definite needed to be said, I added : " We were very 
 happy here." 
 
 She winced a little, and turned away. ' You are very 
 obstinate," she said. 
 
 I did not know in what connection this was meant ; more- 
 over, I felt exceedingly awkward ; and so I made no effort 
 to break a silence that grew painful. 
 
 " I didn't come out of mere curiosity," she said with a sharp 
 touch of indignation. 
 
 " I never suggested that you had. But why did you come ?" 
 
 " Do you forget, Jack, that you are my husband ? " 
 
 I looked at her wide-eyed in astonishment. Her words 
 
THE WAY ONWARD 421 
 
 utterly bewildered me. I failed at first completely to take 
 their meaning, they seemed spoken from so different a clime. 
 It was not for a long time that I realised she was alluding to a 
 legal bond that, seemingly, still existed between us. 
 
 " Are you that is to say, are you speaking legally ? " 
 
 " I don't think you are right in making a joke of it." 
 
 " Oh, believe me, nothing is further from my thought. 
 But you are speaking of a thing well, a long time ago I 
 believe I said something about its irrelevance. It is more so 
 now/' 
 
 " It isn't for me. It exists for me." 
 
 " Without any desire to be merely unkind, may I remind 
 you that you said you felt it was your duty " 
 
 " Don't, Jack ! That was a stupid thing I said, and I am 
 very sorry for it. I really meant to avoid saying how much 
 more it meant to me. It was priggishly said, but it really 
 only meant the covering of awkwardness. I am awkward 
 now." 
 
 " So am I. You should not have come." 
 
 " I had to. I heard through Mr. Ramsay that she had died. 
 That was a year ago. I thought I would let another year go 
 by, and then come to see you and try if our unhappy differ- 
 ence could not be settled, and our life taken up again. I 
 would be willing to do without a social life. It is not so 
 satisfactory as one thinks." 
 
 I felt infinitely sorry for her, for she was deeply moved and 
 profoundly in earnest. But what could I do ? She was asking 
 for a thing that could not be given, and she was not at all aware 
 how wide and unbridgable a space had stretched between us. 
 
 ' You should not have come. You should not have come," 
 I said. ' You don't realise the position of affairs what 
 eternities have rolled on. When I came to you some years 
 ago, and asked you to liberate me, if you had freely thrown 
 open the door, you would have put me in a most difficult posi- 
 tion. I loved her with all my heart, but there were some 
 parts in me all the time secretly testifying to links between us, 
 between you and me. They were in submission at the time, 
 but I cannot say what they would have done if you had appealed 
 to them and offered at the same time to cut all statutory 
 shackles. I have often thought of that since. From one 
 point of view, it was my danger. But you did not take that 
 
422 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 course. You held me by my bonds, you made your appeal 
 to the State, to something that was not between us ; and you 
 clean cut the links remaining between us. Months of bitter- 
 ness followed that made the thought of you painful to me. 
 Then she came ; asking nothing, and bringing nothing, yet 
 receiving and bringing untellable riches. Our life was a 
 perfect marriage. I thank God humbly that there never was 
 so much as a difference or shadow between us, though we 
 lived in the confined elbow-space of this one room day and night 
 for many weeks continuously of wild weather that she dared 
 not encounter. That absolved everything else. And it was 
 you who decreed that order of things." 
 
 There was a long, painful silence between before she 
 spoke. 
 
 " But she is dead/' she then said gently. 
 
 " No, no, no ! " I cried. 
 
 She looked at me surprisedly. I got up and went out of 
 the cottage. 
 
 " Will you come out here ? " I said. She came. " What 
 do you see there ? " I asked her. 
 
 ' The hillside ? " 
 
 " If I suggested to you that it was no mere tangible matter, 
 but a splendid Being, what would you say ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " If I told you it was but the materialising of the thought- 
 power of a god, whose appearance it was, what would you 
 say ? " 
 
 " It's a strange, imaginative idea, Jack." 
 
 " If I told you that man's imagination was an authentic 
 sense giving him a dimly shaped knowledge of the world of 
 which all this show, these hills, this valley, these fair plains 
 and distances, was but a shadowy facet, which was above it, 
 and through it, and round it, in which our spirits may have play 
 even while we take a temporary nucleus in a body and a brain, 
 where Time is absolved and Space itself is scarcely more than 
 a trick, where separate beauties merge into an exquisite 
 essence, where music is a continual bubbling from unseen depths, 
 where spiritual movement is power making intellectual and 
 physical movement an almost inconceivable lethargy, where 
 Being may have an abundant urgency, and where it is even 
 possible from this partial appearance to transmit one's 
 
THE WAY ONWARD 423 
 
 energies in an ecstasy of delight, in a splendour of eternal 
 achievement : what then ? You would think me mad ? " 
 " I think these are dangerous things to play with/' 
 " Well, on that hillside somewhere, she is buried. I don't 
 know where now. I don't care : the heather is over it, and 
 the earth will soon be one with it. But in the real and verit- 
 able world, that is so much inside this world that it can see 
 its very electrons as stars, that is so much outside it that it 
 can see the whole of it as a speck of dust, she has her splendid 
 existence, and there I am slowly learning to have my exist- 
 ence too, under the knowledge, the eye, if I may say so, of the 
 Uncreated Beauty Himself, whom we would serve, for with- 
 out Him we could not be. I may have its fashion wrong, 
 but it is something in that semblance. The Earth-presences 
 are there ; the Earth herself is there ; and she and I are there. 
 They, I think, are, in some degree, static ; we all are progres- 
 sive and urgent. Forgive me, I weary you." 
 
 " No, you don't. But why do you tell me all this ? " 
 I did not wish to hurt her. I looked at her, and asked her : 
 " What was it you came here to ask me to do ? " 
 We looked at one another, with a resolving issue between 
 us. 
 
 " I am sorry," I said, " but you see what things have rolled 
 between us. We must each go on ; we cannot go back." 
 " But what if all this is merely imagination ? " 
 " Nothing can be merely imagination. I know. And I 
 know the more clearly because she is there to help me. In fact, 
 that is the present case. That is why the very bond to which 
 you have referred makes the distance between us the more 
 impassable." 
 
 In the silver light of a cloudy afternoon, before my cottage 
 on the hillside, we stood so before each other. The silence 
 between us no longer seemed one of covert antagonism. A 
 gentler influence seemed to smooth that away, and I felt 
 glad she had come. 
 
 Presently with a dignified delicacy she put out her hand. 
 " Good-bye then," she said. 
 " Let me make you a cup of tea before you go." 
 " It would be better not. Good-bye ! " 
 " Good-bye ! " 
 I watched the car down the road. When it disappeared 
 
424 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 behind the hummock below I waited till it reappeared the 
 other side of the village. She waved to me there, and I waved 
 back. But I stood watching it as it wound down the road, 
 until it disappeared, a mere speck, round the bend of the 
 valley. Then I turned into my cottage, and a great sweet- 
 ness of thought filled my mind. I was glad she had come. 
 It seemed to set things straight. And there was a new note 
 in the music sweeping over the hill. 
 
 That July, Tim Larkin and James Ramsay came together 
 to stay with me. They stayed nearly a month. The weather 
 was good, and we slept out beneath the stars. They often 
 went out together, leaving me alone choosing to do so with 
 a quick refinement of sympathy that told me at once how far 
 we all had progressed. And, indeed, their visits left me inex- 
 pressibly enriched, ours had been so true and full a companion- 
 ship. 
 
 Often these days I had been haunted by just that curious 
 sense of richness, that fulness of things, that ripeness of Time, 
 that has left me wondering what was to follow. I have lived 
 a full life, with much of diversity in it, and much of adversity 
 too ; much of strangeness and seeming unexpectedness ; much 
 of struggle, of thwarting and misconception ; with much also 
 of joy, and a great harvest of fulfilment. I commend it all ; 
 and find it all good. Even my stupidities, egotisms and gross- 
 nesses, have been turned to good. Life has been good. I 
 would not have had it otherwise. 
 
 Yet that is too retrospective. The best is always forward, 
 not backward ; and one must continue to live, earnestly, 
 and with all one's heart. There is a great richness ahead ; 
 and I shall set out to explore it and possess it and pass it into 
 currency. 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 425 
 XVI 
 
 AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 
 
 Elthorne's charge to me, when handing me the manuscript 
 of this book, was to revise it, delete where necessary, and 
 generally so to adjust it that it would more readily assume 
 the shape he feared it lacked. His words to me during the 
 last days, when his telegram had summoned me to him, 
 were : " There are moments when I doubt the least atom of 
 its value ; there are moments when it fascinates my reflection ; 
 and in neither mood can I get a discovery of its proportions. 
 In the first flush of recalling the past I let myself loose in 
 reminiscence ; and I have since wondered what link there is 
 between much of what I have said of those early days and 
 what was to follow thereafter ; but when I tried to cut it 
 down, or prune it even, the whole of the future seemed rooted 
 there, which would be maimed and left without implication 
 by such excision. If this sequence, this growth, is patent or 
 not, I can't say. My eyes have grown tired with looking at 
 the thing. As grand old Carlyle said, you know : ' A man 
 must have done with a thing ! ' God help it ! you take it, and 
 do what you think. I'm pushing off my skiff now, and I'm 
 wondering if it will concern me much where I go. Perhaps it 
 will concern me infinitely : so take care ! " 
 
 It is easy for a man to give such a charge to his fellow. It 
 is another thing for his fellow to complete it. Larkin and 
 I have come to the decision to let the book be published 
 as it came into our hands. Whoever might have altered it, 
 we could not have done so, for we loved the man, and treasure 
 every memory of him. He was staunch and faithful to a fault. 
 Even as he clave without flinching to what he justly held to 
 be his purpose in life, so he held firmly to his friends. If an 
 outsider may make the comment, one of the main causes why 
 his disagreement with Mrs. Elthorne at once became so acute 
 was because of the breach of loyalty that it meant. It was so 
 in the higher sense, for, as he was in the habit of saying : " I 
 don't always admit the brotherhood of Man : I admit the 
 brotherhood of all those who serve Beauty : that is the only 
 brotherhood ; there are no other bonds ; against all others 
 we wage an implacable warfare, a sword in one hand and a 
 
426 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 banner in the other/' That was his supreme loyalty, and I 
 have never known him fail from it. But in the lower loyalty, 
 the loyalty to friends, he never flinched, and, whatever tem- 
 porary disagreement might have been afoot, he never failed to 
 respond when his friends turned to him. He was our leader, 
 our leader among equals ; but he was our friend who rejoiced 
 to have the command of friendship put upon him. I have 
 heard him called a churl, because, presumably, he held no 
 truck with those who turned aside from purposeful living ; but 
 no churl ever responded to the appeals of humanity as he did. 
 It was scarcely even the response of volition : especially 
 latterly it became the response of a reflex. Similarly I have 
 heard him called a pedant. That used most to puzzle Larkin 
 and myself. For his humanity was as laughterful as it was 
 purposeful. 
 
 This brings me to the most curious defect I discover in this 
 book. When Elthorne bent his mind to a thing he became 
 tense, even titanic, and he took on him a gusto that turned 
 his labour into a kind of great play ; but the nature of the 
 play itself was rather too strenuous in an effete day for others 
 to notice the joy in it. It seemed dark, deep-grained, knotted ; 
 in its different way like the laughter of drums in his favourite 
 Ninth Symphony. That was the aspect it wore in his work, 
 often enough in himself ; and I think it a great pity that, 
 in this book, one would scarcely ever divine the man who, in 
 his deepest despair, would set out with as many pranks, and as 
 ridiculous and as childlike, as an effervescent schoolboy let 
 loose on a half-term holiday. They were of a nature that 
 would not bear relation, they depended so on the seeming 
 shallow gaiety of the moment. With Larkin and myself 
 he was often like a boy trying to make his stiff-legged 
 elders run, and his stiff-legged elders were only too self- 
 conscious while he seemed to glory in the disapprobation he 
 attracted. 
 
 It was so in the early days of struggle in London, when he 
 flung away trouble like a cloak, and compelled us to run 
 races up the road, with some far pedestrian as a winning-post, 
 who was much puzzled at the excitement he seemed to create 
 and cry a halt to. It was so on the hills of Mayo, where, 
 however, the races he ran and the great echoing laughter 
 seemed to spring from a far more significant spontaneity. I 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 427 
 
 can see the origin of this in the slight account he gives in these 
 pages of his father. Indeed, it is clear to me that he derived 
 much from his father, in temperament and likeness ; though 
 such derivations very truly are an impertinent ingenuity as 
 a rule. 
 
 Save for some hints, this side of him does not appear in the 
 book, and both Larkin and myself noticed the defect at once. 
 The curious thing is that its idiom is a perfect imprint of his 
 personality notwithstanding that deficiency. His sensitive- 
 ness (that early brought him much misunderstanding), his 
 intensity and consequent scorn of indirect methods (that to 
 the end created for him an atmosphere of active dislike), his 
 energy and pace of life and thought (that puzzled people and 
 so caused them to distrust him) all these things are here. 
 One curious trait I noticed about him was the way in which he 
 lived in and for his great moments. There are players in 
 sports, I notice, who need a great occasion to call out their 
 powers. It was so with Elthorne in his life. In reviewing, 
 if he thought a book a little book he would praise it or 
 blame it indifferently. I could not understand the seem- 
 ing vagary of some of his opinions until I taxed him with 
 it. " One might just as well speak kindly/' he answered ; 
 " who'll hear of it in a year's time ? It doesn't matter." In 
 the same way I could not get him interested in writers who did 
 not intend ambitiously. He would read for a space, then 
 his attention would wander, and he would turn to some work 
 of his own or go out. But if the work intended greatly (as 
 he would say), if there was matter in it of moment to his 
 " soulthrift," his eye would kindle, and he would be content 
 to overlook faults innumerable in its technique. It was he 
 who overcame my dislike for Blake. " Read him, man," he 
 said ; " read him : he matters : nearly everything that's 
 going to matter in future days lies implicit in Blake." I lent 
 him the Essai sur les donnees immediate* de la conscience. 
 M Blake," he cried ; " Blake. You'll find all this there." And 
 for some days hereafter he carried about with him an old 
 valuable copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This is 
 now in my possession. So I remember in his early days (after 
 a conversation that is recorded in these pages a great deal 
 more to his disfavour than happened in the event, such was 
 his habit of magnifying the gaucheries his sensitiveness 
 
428 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 invented) seeing him steadfastly go through the Comedie 
 Humainc volume by volume in an English translation. 
 
 His criticism of me was that I was more interested in the 
 text of books than in the things whereof they treated. My 
 criticism of him was that he lost sight of the value of the little 
 perfections in a disproportionate lust for the inspirations 
 from which great impulsions come. " Rectangular per- 
 fections ! " he would cry. " We want curves, man ; we want 
 curves, and chance them making an ellipsis rather than a 
 circle/' It was one of the most pregnant of his many sayings. 
 It bears much thinking upon. He himself illustrated it fully, 
 for he was an ellipsis, in his way of thinking, in his strenuous 
 living, even in the faulty grammar or daring construction of 
 his sentences. But he was an ellipsis that grew to be more of 
 a circle for every month he lived, in all he wrought and did ; 
 and that, as we would both have agreed, is the best justifica- 
 tion of a man's life. 
 
 Even as this happened his impatience grew less and his 
 scorn diminished. When I showed him a letter in which he 
 wrote of the " pigmy critics and pigmy pavement-shufflers 
 who make up the reading public," he laughed and said : " It's 
 true enough, old Ramsay ; but what an unnecessary thing 
 to have said ! " However, he was never really intolerant. It 
 was never just a whimsey idea of his that personalities develop 
 at tangents. He was forceful ; but he rejoiced in forcefulness 
 opposing him. And one of the things that puzzled him 
 most was when people carried violent disagreements into 
 personal relations. I knew him well, but this trait in him 
 always puzzled me. He would call a man a liar and a rogue 
 in some specific disagreement, and then, when the specific 
 cause of disagreement was put by, expect to walk down the 
 road with him in completest friendliness. " Why ever not ? " 
 he said once to a man, in utter astonishment at finding un- 
 friendliness. " I say you're an idiot, and I think you are ; 
 but we can't all be wise, so why not let's have a drink ? " 
 This bewildering forthrightness of his continued to bewilder 
 us all to the very last. 
 
 One thing he never lost, and that was a long memory. A 
 dropped friendship, for instance, was never taken up again. 
 Some called this a shortness of memory, when it was the very 
 reverse. The old intimacy was never really forgotten, it 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 429 
 
 seemed queerly to live on in the man, and anything else than 
 it was intolerable. And in his closing years another instance 
 of this arose. He had sent his first book to a leading house of 
 publishers, who had, in their usual way, rejected it. Towards 
 the end this same house wrote to him suggesting a collected 
 edition. Both Larkin and myself were in Mayo when this 
 letter arrived, and we advised him strongly to accept it. " It's 
 just a piratical suggestion when others have done all the work 
 and taken all the risk. The old boys there would be surprised 
 that I think them libertines ; but that's what they are, and 
 every bit as lax in decency and morality. No, I'll not reply 
 to them at all." The offer was an excellent one, and we urged 
 him to close with it, but he just laughed at us in some such 
 words as these. 
 
 Yet I know the idea had touched him nearly, and Larkin 
 and myself succeeded in getting a similar proposal (in worse 
 terms) put up by another, newer publisher. This he closed 
 with, and, as I conjecture, spent the time between the writing 
 of this book and his death in preparing the edition. The 
 first three volumes were to be published together, but he was 
 destined not to see them. They were due for October, he died 
 in September. From wherever he viewed the scene he must 
 have had a detached pleasure in what followed. The coinci- 
 dence of his death and the publication of the edition made 
 him the twelvemonths' vogue he suddenly became. The very 
 critics who decried him when he was alive made money out 
 of magazine articles on him when he was dead. Larkin said 
 lie could imagine him standing watching the spectacle with the 
 scornful light in his eyes and the characteristic flicker and 
 movement of his lips when cynically amused, and saying : 
 " It's not me they're concerned with at all, do you know, but 
 only the fine articles I've given them the chance of writing. 
 They'll blow me up now, and let me go flat after, equally 
 unconcernedly. And, mind you, if the State had helped 
 me before, it could have taken all the profit of this now." 
 
 It was in the middle of that September that I received a 
 telegram from him bidding me go to him at once. The tele- 
 gram also said that he had wired to Larkin. I knew by that 
 that something was amiss, and went forthwith down to the 
 city to see Larkin. It was not easy for him to get away, and 
 we decided that I should go alone, and let him know later what 
 
430 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 to do. When I arrived in Mayo it was to find Elthorne very 
 ill indeed. 
 
 " It's the finish, old Ramsay," he said to me. 
 
 " Nonsense," I told him, for indeed, though he looked ill, 
 one did not associate death with that tenacious personality. 
 " You must not talk like that, Jack." 
 
 " I know what you mean," he said, " but this is not 
 relinquishing, this is knowledge. I have the knowledge in 
 me : Guala intimates it, Ethna intimates it : I know it like I 
 can guess your thoughts now, as cattle can snuff a storm. And 
 I am very well content." 
 
 I had never gone altogether with him in his retirement (as 
 he disliked my calling it), and I failed altogether to keep pace 
 with him where he went treading among the mysteries. I 
 knew he must be right : anything that could so beautify his 
 character, his carriage, his thoughts, his very facial expression, 
 must be true or else there is no truth. His phrase was : 
 " Beauty is a state, Truth is a deed, and Truth is Beauty 
 coming into action " : with which I concur, and by which I 
 was compelled to believe him even when I least could see 
 clearly what he meant. And now, as he spoke, there was 
 something in his voice that drove protest and complaint out of 
 me, and made the duty before us like the setting of a house in 
 order. As I looked on him I smiled, for there came to me the 
 understanding of an old phrase : "He speaks as a man having 
 authority, and not as a scribe." 
 
 When I went down into the village to wire to Larkin and to 
 Mr. Frank Elthorne I learnt, what I could not discover from 
 him, how he had fallen ill. It was very good to a friend's 
 heart to hear the way the people spoke of dear old Elthorne. 
 
 " He's a grand man, surely," I was told ; " and it'll be a 
 bad day for this place if anything happened to him, so it will. 
 You see, sir, this is the way it was. The rough weather 
 came on the top of us before we knew how we were in it at all. 
 Well, sir, God help us, we're a simple people anyhow, and 
 we were destroyed, thinking our bit of corn would be ruined 
 on us altogether lying in the fields the way it was. Patch 
 Gallaghar, and he having the biggest bit of land in this valley, 
 called a meitheal ; but what was the use of that when we were 
 all troubled with our own stuff ? Well, sir, that was the time 
 Mr. Elthorne came to our help. He put us all together in our 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 431 
 
 companies ; and we began to work together in our companies, 
 working along where the corn was most easily to be got. 
 Then we went over the whole place with Father Hefferan 
 and took an account of the corn every man had to be gathered 
 each man's in its proper proportion. He did that, sir ; he 
 was a fair man, Mr. Elthorne was, a wonderful fair man, and 
 there isn't a man who could gainsay that. That was the way 
 it was, sir we worked from the dawn of day to the down of 
 day, and the first man to come out was Mr. Elthorne and the 
 jast man to go in was Mr. Elthorne. Always smiling he was, 
 though it was clear as the sun do rise he was terribly tired. 
 And he had good reason to be, 111 say that, sir. He worked 
 quicker than any of us, he did so, for that was the way he made 
 us work quicker. Wet through he was, all times, eating no 
 more than the potatoes that came to us. And he wouldn't 
 be put from it, though Father Hefferan tried well enough like 
 the good man he is. No, he wouldn't be put from it. He 
 thought Fll speak Mr. Elthorne fair, sir : what way wouldn't 
 I, and he the noble man he was ? That's true, he was a noble 
 man. But he was an obstinate man, a very obstinate sort of 
 a man, and he would believe that what any other man in the 
 world could do, himself could do. We're a simple people, 
 sir, we're always in the clothes that do be wet, and a plate of 
 spuds and a dish of tea, or a bit of whiskey itself some odd time, 
 from the morning rise till the sun does fall, is our custom. 
 Mr. Elthorne wasn't nurtured that way at all ; but he was 
 working for us, and it's not for me to say a thing against him. 
 So we went on working till the corn was that sodden it wasn't 
 worth the lifting. We left it then. All that day, and the 
 day before it, Mr. Elthorne had been like a horse you wouldn't 
 whip for shame ; but he wouldn't stop then. He brought us 
 all to Father Hefferan, and there he was, giving every man a 
 piece of paper he signed with his own hand for the corn he'd 
 a right to have, and he'd have fallen like any tree you would 
 cut if Father hadn't caught him. That was a week ago this 
 very day, sir. There isn't a house in this village that doesn't 
 ewe its weight of gold to Mr. Elthorne. He's a grand man ; 
 and I was telling Father, he's a holy man too. And that's the 
 truth/' 
 
 " He would believe that what any other man in the world 
 could do, himself could do." Michael Barrett struck his finger 
 
432 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 on a characteristic obstinacy of Elthorne's there. And the result 
 was that he could breathe only with the utmost difficulty, with 
 a frame so sorely reduced in vitality as to be incompetent of 
 re-asserting its strength. But his mind was clear ; and though 
 he could speak but little, we had some slight and fragmentary 
 conversations that helped me to a better understanding of his 
 attitude than I had ever found before. 
 
 I had been reading the closing pages of this book of his, and 
 had been wonderfully illumined while yet bewildered and 
 baffled by them. I asked him what they meant. 
 
 " Do you mean that visible things are only symbols ? " 
 
 " What is a symbol ? " he asked ; and then after a while said 
 slowly : " Let's drop words we don't quite understand. I 
 mean a partial appearance of a thing that is much more at 
 the same time : the fourth dimension appearing to the third 
 dimension necessarily in terms of the third just as the third 
 would to the second. You work it out in models." 
 
 " Do you mean to claim absolute truth for your vision ? " 
 
 " Silly old Ramsay ! Why do you think I write books ? 
 For a joke ? None of your pranks." 
 
 " Not just as you see it, though, surely ! " 
 
 " You're in dotage, old white-beard ! I don't claim the 
 north side as the only true Westminster Abbey because you 
 prefer the south side. But it's Westminster Abbey all the 
 time." 
 
 " Do I bother you ? " 
 
 " Heaps ! But I can bear it ! " 
 
 " What I mean is, your words seem queerly precise and yet 
 queerly vague. I know all about vision being vision, but 
 couldn't you give more clues ? " 
 
 " Impossible. Two men draw the old Abley, north and 
 south. They draw on paper in second dimension conse- 
 quently. They trick up conventions of perspective, and so on, 
 to suggest third, but 'tis really only second. So they differ 
 about the same thing. They can only be imperfect, partial, 
 suggestive. I use words invention of the third dimension. 
 I can only be imperfect, partial, suggestive. But the thing's 
 there all the time to be experienced. Poetry's soaked with 
 the experience. So is religion at its best when it's true, 
 I should say. That's why sounds and colours mean more than 
 words. Every chord suggests chords up and down the scale 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 433 
 
 that don't come to our ears, but which we know all about all 
 the same. Suggestion is significance/' 
 
 Another time he said to me very earnestly, without my having 
 put any question at all to him : " Ramsay, dear man, there's 
 nothing inanimate anywhere. Old Earth's a big, beautiful 
 being who knows all about each of us. The clay of her, the 
 rocks of her, are her energies passing before our sight. You 
 see them in seeming-solid on the floor. You see them liker 
 their bright vivid selves in the radiations that strike against a 
 plate of sulphide of zinc you know what I mean. It's all 
 real, or it's all unreal, however you like to look at it ; but it's 
 never inanimate. I tell you, there's nothing inanimate. 
 The things that seem inanimate here are the faulty reports of 
 our senses of tremendous powers and presences in the Beyond 
 that's about us as any physicist will show you in two 
 minutes in his laboratory. Everything is a demonstration 
 of life, sentience and knowledge, such as we can scarcely 
 apprehend. We know that when we see at the angles of 
 vision, or, best of all, in the tremendous communion of Love. 
 Love commands all knowledge : Love is knowledge. Love 
 helps one to the Uncreated Beauty Himself. Christ's love 
 did that, do you know. And just as our dear old Earth's 
 energies show themselves in crystals, and flowers, and songs 
 of birds, so the energy of Love shows itself in beautiful expres- 
 sions of face, beautiful gestures, beautiful songs, beauty every- 
 where. That's why we love Beauty, because Love is the energis- 
 ing of Beauty. Ramsay, old man, how we waste our days ! 
 I'd like to live again, in some ways ; but we must go onward 
 and it's grand to go onward." 
 
 On the Friday Larkin arrived, with Frank Elthorne : 
 indeed it was, I learnt, chiefly owing to Frank Elt home's 
 influence with his cousin that Larkin was able to get away. 
 Our friend by then was in a bad way, breathing with difficulty 
 and very weak. He never lost humour, however, and greeted 
 his brother and Larkin happily. 
 
 " Good old Tim," he said, putting out his hand to them. 
 " Hullo, Frank ! There's all about you in a book over there. 
 You're not quite so bad as that. But you're an animal, 
 though. Feeds well, don't he, Ramsay ? " 
 
 Poor Frank Elthorne ! He was the most deeply distressed 
 of us all. I have not often seen a man so grieved. Except 
 
 FF 
 
434 JACOB ELTHORNE 
 
 for his distress, that evening would have been almost a happy 
 reunion. It was our last, for the following afternoon Elthorne 
 became delirious. That made his brother's distress so terrible 
 that our concern once or twice was with him. Then he sat 
 for hours moodily watching his brother ; and " Poor old Jack ! 
 Poor dear Jack ! Can't anything be done ? " he would say, 
 and wildly walk about the end of the cottage. Perhaps this 
 was partly owing to what seemed to him the strangeness of 
 Elthorne's words. To me, knowing the attitude of his spirit, 
 they were significant and interesting, and too far beyond the 
 bounds of common meanings to be reproduced. Larkin 
 interested me most. He seemed almost transformed. He 
 stood nearly the whole of that Sunday at the foot of the bed, 
 watching Elthorne with bright, widely-opened eyes and a soft 
 smile that gave his face the strange light as of a flower. The 
 people of Mayo doubtless would have called him " away " ; 
 but that there was another Larkin who knew what was 
 happening than the customary Larkin of the city of London 
 was only too clear. He was transfigured and illumined. 
 
 On the Monday afternoon Elthorne became so weak that 
 all motion failed him, and the cottage was wrapt in a great 
 hush. The doctor was there the whole time ; but the first 
 we knew of his death was that Larkin suddenly relaxed his 
 attitude, breathed heavily, and straightway walked out of 
 the cottage. It was startling. It was just as if he had gone 
 out to follow his friend. I knew forthwith what it meant, and 
 turned at once to the doctor, who confirmed my thought. 
 Then I was alarmed by hearing a very distressing abandon- 
 ment of tears from Frank Elthorne, whom I had forgotten 
 where he sat in his corner. 
 
 The dusk was creeping through the valley, when I heard the 
 voices of women keening as they came up the hill. They had 
 somehow learnt the news : probably from Larkin. Soon they 
 came up about the cottage, and into the cottage, keening 
 wildly, and with a poignancy of sorrow that needed no simula- 
 tion. It was a strange, wild scene. All the village must have 
 been there, keening passionately in the low dusk that was 
 setting on the hills. 
 
 There was a similar scene when, a few days later, we buried 
 him beside the mate of his last years. Martin O'Hara found 
 the place at once, and without hesitation, though it had resumed 
 
AFTERWORD BY JAMES RAMSAY 435 
 
 its oneness with the hillside. Frank Elthorne was almost 
 terrified by the figures that knelt and, with richly coloured 
 shawls over their heads, keened on and on in their abandon- 
 ment of sorrow. As we returned down the hill he said to me : 
 " I never understood him, Ramsay ; and I must say I don't 
 think he ever really understood me. But I loved him, God 
 knows ; and I am sure he loved me very much. I wish we 
 could live our lives again. He was a very great man, my 
 brother was." 
 
 The following day we returned to England. As the train 
 toiled slowly onward, and we sat in silence, I caught Larkin's 
 glance, and said to him, as he smiled across at me : 
 
 " You know one of the last things he said to me before you 
 came ? ' But we must go onward you know, it's grand to 
 go onward/ " 
 
 " Just like him, I may say," said Larkin. 
 
 THE END 
 
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