Chương Chương 13 · Over two years passed, and the Schlegel household continued to lead its

. Over two years passed, and the Schlegel household continued to lead its

life of cultured but not ignoble ease, still swimming gracefully on the

grey tides of London. Concerts and plays swept past them, money had

been spent and renewed, reputations won and lost, and the city herself,

emblematic of their lives, rose and fell in a continual flux, while her

shallows washed more widely against the hills of Surrey and over the

fields of Hertfordshire. This famous building had arisen, that was

doomed. Today Whitehall had been transformed: it would be the turn of

Regent Street tomorrow. And month by month the roads smelt more

strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings

heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the

air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew: the leaves were falling

by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with an admired obscurity.

To speak against London is no longer fashionable. The Earth as an

artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future

will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town.

One can understand the reaction. Of Pan and the elemental forces, the

public has heard a little too much—they seem Victorian, while London is

Georgian—and those who care for the earth with sincerity may wait long

ere the pendulum swings back to her again. Certainly London fascinates.

One visualizes it as a tract of quivering grey, intelligent without

purpose, and excitable without love; as a spirit that has altered

before it can be chronicled; as a heart that certainly beats, but with

no pulsation of humanity. It lies beyond everything: Nature, with all

her cruelty, comes nearer to us than do these crowds of men. A friend

explains himself: the earth is explicable—from her we came, and we must

return to her. But who can explain Westminster Bridge Road or Liverpool

Street in the morning—the city inhaling—or the same thoroughfares in

the evening—the city exhaling her exhausted air? We reach in

desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the

universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human

face. London is religion’s opportunity—not the decorous religion of

theologians, but anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would

be tolerable if a man of our own sort—not anyone pompous or

tearful—were caring for us up in the sky.

The Londoner seldom understands his city until it sweeps him, too, away

from his moorings, and Margaret’s eyes were not opened until the lease

of Wickham Place expired. She had always known that it must expire, but

the knowledge only became vivid about nine months before the event.

Then the house was suddenly ringed with pathos. It had seen so much

happiness. Why had it to be swept away? In the streets of the city she

noted for the first time the architecture of hurry, and heard the

language of hurry on the mouths of its inhabitants—clipped words,

formless sentences, potted expressions of approval or disgust. Month by

month things were stepping livelier, but to what goal? The population

still rose, but what was the quality of the men born? The particular

millionaire who owned the freehold of Wickham Place, and desired to

erect Babylonian flats upon it—what right had he to stir so large a

portion of the quivering jelly? He was not a fool—she had heard him

expose Socialism—but true insight began just where his intelligence

ended, and one gathered that this was the case with most millionaires.

What right had such men—But Margaret checked herself. That way lies

madness. Thank goodness she, too, had some money, and could purchase a

new home.

Tibby, now in his second year at Oxford, was down for the Easter

vacation, and Margaret took the opportunity of having a serious talk

with him. Did he at all know where he wanted to live? Tibby didn’t know

that he did know. Did he at all know what he wanted to do? He was

equally uncertain, but when pressed remarked that he should prefer to

be quite free of any profession. Margaret was not shocked, but went on

sewing for a few minutes before she replied:

“I was thinking of Mr. Vyse. He never strikes me as particularly

happy.”

“Ye-es,” said Tibby, and then held his mouth open in a curious quiver,

as if he, too, had thoughts of Mr. Vyse, had seen round, through, over,

and beyond Mr. Vyse, had weighed Mr. Vyse, grouped him, and finally

dismissed him as having no possible bearing on the subject under

discussion. That bleat of Tibby’s infuriated Helen. But Helen was now

down in the dining-room preparing a speech about political economy. At

times her voice could be heard declaiming through the floor.

“But Mr. Vyse is rather a wretched, weedy man, don’t you think? Then

there’s Guy. That was a pitiful business. Besides”—shifting to the

general—” every one is the better for some regular work.”

Groans.

“I shall stick to it,” she continued, smiling. “I am not saying it to

educate you; it is what I really think. I believe that in the last

century men have developed the desire for work, and they must not

starve it. It’s a new desire. It goes with a great deal that’s bad, but

in itself it’s good, and I hope that for women, too, ‘not to work’ will

soon become as shocking as ‘not to be married’ was a hundred years

ago.”

“I have no experience of this profound desire to which you allude,”

enunciated Tibby.

“Then we’ll leave the subject till you do. I’m not going to rattle you

round. Take your time. Only do think over the lives of the men you like

most, and see how they’ve arranged them.”

“I like Guy and Mr. Vyse most,” said Tibby faintly, and leant so far

back in his chair that he extended in a horizontal line from knees to

throat.

“And don’t think I’m not serious because I don’t use the traditional

arguments—making money, a sphere awaiting you, and so on—all of which

are, for various reasons, cant.” She sewed on. “I’m only your sister. I

haven’t any authority over you, and I don’t want to have any. Just to

put before you what I think the truth. You see”—she shook off the

pince-nez to which she had recently taken—“in a few years we shall be

the same age practically, and I shall want you to help me. Men are so

much nicer than women.”

“Labouring under such a delusion, why do you not marry?”

“I sometimes jolly well think I would if I got the chance.”

“Has nobody arst you?”

“Only ninnies.”

“Do people ask Helen?”

“Plentifully.”

“Tell me about them.”

“No.”

“Tell me about your ninnies, then.”

“They were men who had nothing better to do,” said his sister, feeling

that she was entitled to score this point. “So take warning: you must

work, or else you must pretend to work, which is what I do. Work, work,

work if you’d save your soul and your body. It is honestly a necessity,

dear boy. Look at the Wilcoxes, look at Mr. Pembroke. With all their

defects of temper and understanding, such men give me more pleasure

than many who are better equipped and I think it is because they have

worked regularly and honestly.

“Spare me the Wilcoxes,” he moaned.

“I shall not. They are the right sort.”

“Oh, goodness me, Meg!” he protested, suddenly sitting up, alert and

angry. Tibby, for all his defects, had a genuine personality.

“Well, they’re as near the right sort as you can imagine.”

“No, no—oh, no!”

“I was thinking of the younger son, whom I once classed as a ninny, but

who came back so ill from Nigeria. He’s gone out there again, Evie

Wilcox tells me—out to his duty.”

“Duty” always elicited a groan.

“He doesn’t want the money, it is work he wants, though it is beastly

work—dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh

water and food. A nation who can produce men of that sort may well be

proud. No wonder England has become an Empire.”

“_Empire!_”

“I can’t bother over results,” said Margaret, a little sadly. “They are

too difficult for me. I can only look at the men. An Empire bores me,

so far, but I can appreciate the heroism that builds it up. London

bores me, but what thousands of splendid people are labouring to make

London—”

“What it is,” he sneered.

“What it is, worse luck. I want activity without civilization. How

paradoxical! Yet I expect that is what we shall find in heaven.”

“And I,” said Tibby, “want civilization without activity, which, I

expect, is what we shall find in the other place.”

“You needn’t go as far as the other place, Tibbi-kins, if you want

that. You can find it at Oxford.”

“Stupid—”

“If I’m stupid, get me back to the house-hunting. I’ll even live in

Oxford if you like—North Oxford. I’ll live anywhere except Bournemouth,

Torquay, and Cheltenham. Oh yes, or Ilfracombe and Swanage and

Tunbridge Wells and Surbiton and Bedford. There on no account.”

“London, then.”

“I agree, but Helen rather wants to get away from London. However,

there’s no reason we shouldn’t have a house in the country and also a

flat in town, provided we all stick together and contribute. Though of

course—Oh, how one does maunder on, and to think, to think of the

people who are really poor. How do they live? Not to move about the

world would kill me.”

As she spoke, the door was flung open, and Helen burst in in a state of

extreme excitement.

“Oh, my dears, what do you think? You’ll never guess. A woman’s been

here asking me for her husband. Her _what?_” (Helen was fond of

supplying her own surprise.) “Yes, for her husband, and it really is

so.”

“Not anything to do with Bracknell?” cried Margaret, who had lately

taken on an unemployed of that name to clean the knives and boots.

“I offered Bracknell, and he was rejected. So was Tibby. (Cheer up,

Tibby!) It’s no one we know. I said, ‘Hunt, my good woman; have a good

look round, hunt under the tables, poke up the chimney, shake out the

antimacassars. Husband? husband?’ Oh, and she so magnificently dressed

and tinkling like a chandelier.”

“Now, Helen, what did happen really?”

“What I say. I was, as it were, orating my speech. Annie opens the door

like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open.

Then we began—very civilly. ‘I want my husband, what I have reason to

believe is here.’ No—how unjust one is. She said ‘whom,’ not ‘what.’

She got it perfectly. So I said, ‘Name, please?’ and she said, ‘Lan,

Miss,’ and there we were.

“Lan?”

“Lan or Len. We were not nice about our vowels. Lanoline.”

“But what an extraordinary—”

“I said, ‘My good Mrs. Lanoline, we have some grave misunderstanding

here. Beautiful as I am, my modesty is even more remarkable than my

beauty, and never, never has Mr. Lanoline rested his eyes on mine.’”

“I hope you were pleased,” said Tibby.

“Of course,” Helen squeaked. “A perfectly delightful experience. Oh,

Mrs. Lanoline’s a dear—she asked for a husband as if he was an

umbrella. She mislaid him Saturday afternoon—and for a long time

suffered no inconvenience. But all night, and all this morning her

apprehensions grew. Breakfast didn’t seem the same—no, no more did

lunch, and so she strolled up to 2, Wickham Place as being the most

likely place for the missing article.”

“But how on earth—”

“Don’t begin how on earthing. ‘I know what I know,’ she kept repeating,

not uncivilly, but with extreme gloom. In vain I asked her what she did

know. Some knew what others knew, and others didn’t, and if they

didn’t, then others again had better be careful. Oh dear, she was

incompetent! She had a face like a silkworm, and the dining-room reeks

of orris-root. We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I

wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She

thanked me. We agreed that Mr. Lanoline’s a notty, notty man, and

hasn’t no business to go on the lardy-da. But I think she suspected me

up to the last. Bags I writing to Aunt Juley about this. Now, Meg,

remember—bags I.”

“Bag it by all means,” murmured Margaret, putting down her work. “I’m

not sure that this is so funny, Helen. It means some horrible volcano

smoking somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think so—she doesn’t really mind. The admirable creature isn’t

capable of tragedy.”

“Her husband may be, though,” said Margaret, moving to the window.

“Oh, no, not likely. No one capable of tragedy could have married Mrs.

Lanoline.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Her figure may have been good once.”

The flats, their only outlook, hung like an ornate curtain between

Margaret and the welter of London. Her thoughts turned sadly to

house-hunting. Wickham Place had been so safe. She feared,

fantastically, that her own little flock might be moving into turmoil

and squalor, into nearer contact with such episodes as these.

“Tibby and I have again been wondering where we’ll live next

September,” she said at last.

“Tibby had better first wonder what he’ll do,” retorted Helen; and that

topic was resumed, but with acrimony. Then tea came, and after tea

Helen went on preparing her speech, and Margaret prepared one, too, for

they were going out to a discussion society on the morrow. But her

thoughts were poisoned. Mrs. Lanoline had risen out of the abyss, like

a faint smell, a goblin football, telling of a life where love and

hatred had both decayed.