บทที่ บทที่ 26 · THE GLAMOUR FADES.

. THE GLAMOUR FADES.

After all, the rosy love-making and marrying and Epithalamy are no

more than the dawn of things, and to follow comes all the spacious

interval of white laborious light. Try as we may to stay those

delightful moments, they fade and pass remorselessly; there is no

returning, no recovering, only--for the foolish--the vilest peep-shows

and imitations in dens and darkened rooms. We go on--we grow. At least

we age. Our young couple, emerging presently from an atmosphere of

dusk and morning stars, found the sky gathering greyly overhead and

saw one another for the first time clearly in the light of every-day.

It might perhaps witness better to Lewisham's refinement if one could

tell only of a moderated and dignified cooling, of pathetic little

concealments of disappointment and a decent maintenance of the

sentimental atmosphere. And so at last daylight. But our young couple

were too crude for that. The first intimations of their lack of

identity have already been described, but it would be tedious and

pitiful to tell of all the little intensifications, shade by shade, of

the conflict of their individualities. They fell out, dear lady! they

came to conflict of words. The stress of perpetual worry was upon

them, of dwindling funds and the anxious search for work that would

not come. And on Ethel lay long, vacant, lonely hours in dull

surroundings. Differences arose from the most indifferent things; one

night Lewisham lay awake in unfathomable amazement because she had

convinced him she did not care a rap for the Welfare of Humanity, and

deemed his Socialism a fancy and an indiscretion. And one Sunday

afternoon they started for a walk under the pleasantest auspices, and

returned flushed and angry, satire and retort flying free--on the

score of the social conventions in Ethel's novelettes. For some

inexplicable reason Lewisham saw fit to hate her novelettes very

bitterly. These encounters indeed were mere skirmishes for the most

part, and the silences and embarrassments that followed ended sooner

or later in a "making up," tacit or definite, though once or twice

this making up only re-opened the healing wound. And always each

skirmish left its scar, effaced from yet another line of their lives

the lingering tints of romantic colour.

There came no work, no added income for either of them, saving two

trifles, for five long months. Once Lewisham won twelve shillings in

the prize competition of a penny weekly, and three times came

infinitesimal portions of typewriting from a poet who had apparently

seen the _Athenaeum_ advertisement. His name was Edwin Peak Baynes and

his handwriting was sprawling and unformed. He sent her several short

lyrics on scraps of paper with instructions that he desired "three

copies of each written beautifully in different styles" and "_not_

fastened with metal fasteners but with silk thread of an appropriate

colour." Both of our young people were greatly exercised by these

instructions. One fragment was called "Bird Song," one "Cloud

Shadows," and one "Eryngium," but Lewisham thought they might be

spoken of collectively as Bosh. By way of payment, this poet sent, in

contravention of the postal regulations, half a sovereign stuck into a

card, asking her to keep the balance against future occasions. In a

little while, greatly altered copies of these lyrics were returned by

the poet in person, with this enigmatical instruction written across

the cover of each: "This style I like, only if possible more so."

Lewisham was out, but Ethel opened the door, so this indorsement was

unnecessary, "He's really only a boy," said Ethel, describing the

interview to Lewisham, who was curious. They both felt that the

youthfulness of Edwin Peak Baynes detracted something from the reality

of this employment.

From his marriage until the final examination in June, Lewisham's life

had an odd amphibious quality. At home were Ethel and the perpetual

aching pursuit of employment, the pelting irritations of Madam Gadow's

persistent overcharges, and so forth, and amid such things he felt

extraordinarily grown up; but intercalated with these experiences were

those intervals at Kensington, scraps of his adolescence, as it were,

lying amidst the new matter of his manhood, intervals during which he

was simply an insubordinate and disappointing student with an

increasing disposition to gossip. At South Kensington he dwelt with

theories and ideals as a student should; at the little rooms in

Chelsea--they grew very stuffy as the summer came on, and the

accumulation of the penny novelettes Ethel favoured made a

litter--there was his particular private concrete situation, and

ideals gave place to the real.

It was a strangely narrow world, he perceived dimly, in which his

manhood opened. The only visitors were the Chafferys. Chaffery would

come to share their supper, and won upon Lewisham in spite of his

roguery by his incessantly entertaining monologue and by his expressed

respect for and envy of Lewisham's scientific attainments. Moreover,

as time went on Lewisham found himself more and more in sympathy with

Chaffery's bitterness against those who order the world. It was good

to hear him on bishops and that sort of people. He said what Lewisham

wanted to say beautifully. Mrs. Chaffery was perpetually

flitting--out of the house as Lewisham came home, a dim, black,

nervous, untidy little figure. She came because Ethel, in spite of her

expressed belief that love was "all in all," found married life a

little dull and lonely while Lewisham was away. And she went hastily

when he came, because of a certain irritability that the struggle

against the world was developing. He told no one at Kensington about

his marriage, at first because it was such a delicious secret, and

then for quite other reasons. So there was no overlapping. The two

worlds began and ended sharply at the wrought-iron gates. But the day

came when Lewisham passed those gates for the last time and his

adolescence ended altogether.

In the final examination of the biological course, the examination

that signalised the end of his income of a weekly guinea, he knew well

enough that he had done badly. The evening of the last day's practical

work found him belated, hot-headed, beaten, with ruffled hair and red

ears. He sat to the last moment doggedly struggling to keep cool and

to mount the ciliated funnel of an earthworm's nephridium. But

ciliated funnels come not to those who have shirked the laboratory

practice. He rose, surrendered his paper to the morose elderly young

assistant demonstrator who had welcomed him so flatteringly eight

months before, and walked down the laboratory to the door where the

rest of his fellow-students clustered.

Smithers was talking loudly about the "twistiness" of the

identification, and the youngster with the big ears was listening

attentively.

"Here's Lewisham! How did _you_ get on, Lewisham?" asked Smithers,

not concealing his assurance.

"Horribly," said Lewisham shortly, and pushed past.

"Did you spot D?" clamoured Smithers.

Lewisham pretended not to hear.

Miss Heydinger stood with her hat in her hand and looked at Lewisham's

hot eyes. He was for walking past her, but something in her face

penetrated even his disturbance. He stopped.

"Did you get out the nephridium?" he said as graciously as he could.

She shook her head. "Are you going downstairs?" she asked.

"Rather," said Lewisham, with a vague intimation in his manner of the

offence Smithers gave him.

He opened the glass door from the passage to the staircase. They went

down one tier of that square spiral in silence.

"Are you coming up again next year?" asked Miss Heydinger.

"No," said Lewisham. "No, I shall not come here again. Ever."

Pause. "What will you do?" she asked.

"I don't know. I have to get a living somehow. It's been bothering me

all the session."

"I thought--" She stopped. "Will you go down to your uncle's again?"

she said.

"No. I shall stop in London. It's no good going out of things into the

country. And besides--I've quarrelled rather with my uncle."

"What do you think of doing?--teaching?"

"I suppose it will be teaching, I'm not sure. Anything that turns up."

"I see," she said.

They went on down in silence for a time.

"I suppose you will come up again?" he asked.

"I may try the botanical again--if they can find room. And, I was

thinking--sometimes one hears of things. What is your address? So that

if I heard of anything."

Lewisham stopped on the staircase and thought. "Of course," he

said. He made no effort to give her the address, and she demanded it

again at the foot of the stairs.

"That confounded nephridium--!" he said. "It has put everything out of

my head."

They exchanged addresses on leaflets torn from Miss Heydinger's little

note-book.

She waited at the Book in the hall while he signed his name. At the

iron gates of the Schools she said: "I am going through Kensington

Gardens."

He was now feeling irritated about the addresses, and he would not see

the implicit invitation. "I am going towards Chelsea."

She hesitated a moment, looking at him--puzzled. "Good-bye, then,"

she said.

"Good-bye," he answered, lifting his hat.

He crossed the Exhibition Road slowly with his packed glazed bag, now

seamed with cracks, in his hand. He went thoughtfully down to the

corner of the Cromwell Road and turned along that to the right so that

he could see the red pile of the Science Schools rising fair, and

tall across the gardens of the Natural History Museum. He looked back

towards it regretfully.

He was quite sure that he had failed in this last examination. He

knew that any career as a scientific man was now closed to him for

ever. And he remembered now how he had come along this very road to

that great building for the first time in his life, and all the hopes

and resolves that had swelled within him as he had drawn near. That

dream of incessant unswerving work! Where might he have reached if

only he had had singleness of purpose to realise that purpose?...

And in these gardens it was that he and Smithers and Parkson had sat

on a seat hard by the fossil tree, and discoursed of Socialism

together before the great paper was read....

"Yes," he said, speaking aloud to himself; "yes--_that's_

all over too. Everything's over."

Presently the corner of the Natural History Museum came between him

and his receding Alma Mater. He sighed and turned his face towards the

stuffy little rooms at Chelsea, and the still unconquered world.