The Dream

Part II — The Loves and Death of Harry Mortimer Smith

Chapter the Fifth Fanny Discovers Herself

§ 1

“And now,” said Sarnac, “I can draw near to the essentials of life and tell you the sort of thing love was in that crowded, dingy, fear-ruled world of the London fogs and the amber London sunshine. It was a slender, wild-eyed, scared and daring emotion in a dark forest of cruelties and repressions. It soon grew old and crippled, bitter-spirited and black-hearted, but as it happened, death came early enough for me to die with a living love still in my heart....”

“To live again,” said Sunray very softly.

“And love again,” said Sarnac, patting her knee. “Let me see——....”

He took a stake that had fallen from the fire and thrust it into the bright glow at the centre and watched it burst into a sierra of flames.

“I think that the first person I was in love with was my sister Fanny. When I was a boy of eleven or twelve I was really in love with her. But somehow about that time I was also in love with an undraped plaster nymph who sat very bravely on a spouting dolphin in some public gardens near the middle of Cliffstone. She lifted her chin and smiled and waved one hand and she had the sweetest smile and the dearest little body imaginable. I loved her back particularly, and there was a point where you looked at her from behind and just caught the soft curve of her smiling cheek and her jolly little nose-tip and chin and the soft swell of her breast under her lifted arm. I would sneak round her furtively towards this particular view-point, having been too well soaked in shame about all such lovely things to look openly. But I never seemed to look my fill.

“One day as I was worshipping her in this fashion, half-turned to her and half-turned to a bed of flowers and looking at her askance, I became aware of an oldish man with a large white face, seated on a garden seat and leaning forward and regarding me with an expression of oafish cunning as if he had found me out and knew my secret. He looked like the spirit of lewdness incarnate. Suddenly panic overwhelmed me and I made off—and never went near that garden again. Angels with flaming shames prevented me. Of a terror of again meeting that horrible old man....

“Then with my coming to London Miss Beatrice Bumpus took control of my imagination and was Venus and all the goddesses, and this increased rather than diminished after she had gone away. For she went away and, I gather, married the young man I hated; she went away and gave up her work for the Vote and was no doubt welcomed back by those Warwickshire Bumpuses (who hunted) with the slaughter of a fatted fox and every sort of rejoicing. But her jolly frank and boyish face was the heroine’s in a thousand dreams. I saved her life in adventures in all parts of the world and sometimes she saved mine; we clung together over the edges of terrific precipices until I went to sleep, and when I was the conquering Muhammad after a battle, she stood out among the captive women and answered back when I said I would never love her, with two jets of cigarette smoke and the one word, ‘Liar!’

“I met no girls of my own age at all while I was errand-boy to Mr. Humberg, my evening classes and my reading kept me away from the facile encounters of the streets. Sometimes, however, when I could not fix my attention upon my books, I would slip off to Wilton Street and Victoria Street where there was a nocturnal promenade under the electric lamps. There schoolgirls and little drabs and errand-boys and soldiers prowled and accosted one another. But though I was attracted to some of the girlish figures that flitted by me I was also shy and fastidious. I was drawn by an overpowering desire for something intense and beautiful that vanished whenever I drew near to reality.”

§ 2

“Before a year was over there were several changes in the Pimlico boarding-house. The poor old Moggeridges caught influenza, a variable prevalent epidemic of the time, and succumbed to inflammation of the lungs following the fever. They died within three days of each other, and my mother and Prue were the only mourners at their dingy little funeral. Frau Buchholz fades out of my story; I do not remember clearly when she left the house nor who succeeded her. Miss Beatrice Bumpus abandoned the cause of woman’s suffrage and departed, and the second floor was taken by an extremely intermittent couple who roused my mother’s worst suspicions and led to serious differences of opinion between her and Matilda Good.

“You see these new-comers never settled in with any grave and sober luggage; they would come and stay for a day or so and then not reappear for a week or more, and they rarely arrived or departed together. This roused my mother’s moral observation, and she began hinting that perhaps they were not properly married after all. She forbade Prue ever to go to the drawing-room floor, and this precipitated a conflict with Matilda. ‘What’s this about Prue and the drawing-room?’ Matilda asked. ‘You’re putting ideas into the girl’s head.’

“‘I’m trying to keep them from ’er,’ said my mother. ‘She’s got eyes.’

“‘And fingers,’ said Matilda with dark allusiveness. ‘What’s Prue been seeing now?’

“‘Marks,’ said my mother.

“‘What marks?’ said Matilda.

“‘Marks enough,’ said my mother. ‘’Is things are marked one name and ’Er’s another, and neither of them Milton, which is the name they’ve given us. And the way that woman speaks to you, as though she felt you might notice sumpthing—friendly like and a bit afraid of you. And that ain’t all! By no means all! I’m not blind and Prue isn’t blind. There’s kissing and making love going on at all times in the day! Directly they’ve got ’ere sometimes. Hardly waiting for one to get out of the room. I’m not a perfect fool, Matilda. I been married.’

“‘What’s that got to do with us? We’re a lodging-’ouse, not a set of Nosey Parkers. If Mr. and Mrs. Milton like to have their linen marked a hundred different names, what’s that to us? Their book’s always marked paid in advance with thanks, Matilda Good, and that’s married enough for me. See? You’re an uneasy woman to have in a lodging-house, Martha, an uneasy woman. There’s no give and take about you. No save your fare. There was that trouble you made about the boy and Miss Bumpus—ridiculous it was—and now seemingly there’s going to be more trouble about Prue and Mrs. Milton—who’s a lady, mind you, say what you like, and—what’s more—a gentlewoman. I wish you’d mind your own business a bit more, Martha, and let Mr. and Mrs. Milton mind theirs. If they aren’t properly married it’s they’ve got to answer for it in the long run, not you. You’ll get even with them all right in the Last Great Day. Meanwhile do they do ’arm to anyone? A quieter couple and less trouble to look after I’ve never had in all my lodging-house days.’

“My mother made no answer.

“‘Well?’ challenged Matilda.

“‘It’s hard to be waiting on a shameless woman,’ said my mother, obstinate and white-lipped.

“‘It’s harder still to be called a shameless woman because you’ve still got your maiden name on some of your things,’ said Matilda Good. ‘Don’t talk such Rubbish, Martha.’

“‘I don’t see why ’E should ’ave a maiden name too—on ’is pyjamas,’ said my mother, rallying after a moment.

“‘You don’t know Anything, Martha,’ said Matilda, fixing her with one eye of extreme animosity and regarding the question in the abstract with the other. ‘I’ve often thought it of you and now I say it to you. You don’t know Anything. I’m going to keep Mr. and Mrs. Milton as long as I can, and if you’re too pernikkety to wait on them, there’s those who will. I won’t have my lodgers insulted. I won’t have their underclothes dragged up against them. Why! Come to think of it! Of course! He borrowed those pyjamas of ’is! Or they was given him by a gentleman friend they didn’t fit. Or he’s been left money and had to change his name sudden like. It often happens. Often. You see it in the papers. And things get mixed in the wash. Some laundries, they’re regular Exchanges. Mr. Plaice, he once had a collar with Fortescue on it. Brought it back after his summer holiday. Fortescue! There’s evidence for you. You aren’t going to bring up something against Mr. Plaice on account of that, Martha? You aren’t going to say he’s been living a double life and isn’t properly a bachelor. Do think a little clearer, Martha. And don’t think so much evil. There’s a hundred ways round before you think evil. But you like to think evil, Martha. I’ve noticed it times and oft. You fairly wallow in it. You haven’t the beginnings of a germ of Christian charity.’

“‘One can’t help seeing things,’ said my mother rather shattered.

“‘You can’t,’ said Matilda Good. ‘There’s those who can’t see an inch beyond their noses, and yet they see too much. And the more I see of you the more I’m inclined to think you’re one of that sort. Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Milton stay here—whoever else goes. Whoever else goes. That’s plain, I hope, Martha.’

“My mother was stricken speechless. She bridled and subsided and then, except for necessary and unavoidable purposes, remained hurt and silent for some days, speaking only when she was spoken to. Matilda did not seem to mind. But I noticed that when presently Matilda sent Prue upstairs with the Miltons’ tea my mother’s stiffness grew stiffer, but she made no open protest.”

§ 3

“And then suddenly Fanny reappeared in my world.

“It was a mere chance that restored Fanny to me. All our links had been severed when we removed from Cliffstone to London. My brother Ernest was her herald.

“We were at supper in the basement room and supper was usually a pleasant meal. Matilda Good would make it attractive with potatoes roasted in their jackets, or what she called a ‘frying-pan’ of potatoes and other vegetables in dripping or such-like heartening addition to cold bacon and bread and cheese and small beer. And she would read bits out of the newspaper to us and discuss them, having a really very lively intelligence, or she would draw me out to talk of the books I’d been reading. She took a great interest in murders and such-like cases, and we all became great judges of motive and evidence under her stimulation. ‘You may say it’s morbid, Martha, if you like,’ she said; ’but there never was a murder yet that wasn’t brimful of humanity. Brimful. I doubt sometimes if we know what anyone’s capable of until they’ve committed a murder or two.’

“My mother rarely failed to rise to her bait. ‘I can’t think ’ow you can say such things, Matilda,’ she would say....

“We heard the sound of a motor-car in the street above. Brother Ernest descended by the area steps and my sister Prue let him in. He appeared in his chauffeur’s uniform, cap in hand, leather jacket and gaiters.

“‘Got a night off?’ asked Matilda.

“‘Court Theatre at eleven,’ said Ernest. ‘So I thought I’d come in for a bit of a warm and a chat.’

“‘Have a snack?’ said Matilda. ‘Prue, get him a plate and a knife and fork and a glass. One glass of this beer won’t hurt your driving. Why! we haven’t seen you for ages!’

“‘Thank you, Miss Good,’ said Ernest, who was always very polite to her, ‘I will ’ave a snack. I bin’ here, there and everywhere, but it isn’t that I haven’t wanted to call on you.’

“Refreshment was administered and conversation hung fire for awhile. One or two starts were made and came to an early end. Ernest’s manner suggested preoccupation and Matilda regarded him keenly. ‘And what have you got to tell us, Ernie?’ she said suddenly.

“‘We-el,’ said Ernest, ’it’s a curious thing you should say that, Miss Good, for I ’ave got something to tell you. Something—well, I don’t know ’ow to put it—curious like.”

“Matilda refilled his glass.

“‘I seen Fanny,” said Ernest, coming to it with violent abruptness.

“‘No!’ gasped my mother, and for a moment no one else spoke.

“‘So!’ said Matilda, putting her arms on the table and billowing forward, ‘you’ve seen Fanny! Pretty little Fanny that I used to know. And where did you see her, Ernie?’

“Ernest had some difficulty in shaping out his story. ‘It was a week last Tuesday,’ he said after a pause.

“‘She wasn’t—not one of Them—about Victoria Station?’ panted my mother.

“‘Did you see her first or did she see you?’ asked Matilda.

“‘A week ago last Tuesday,’ my brother repeated.

“‘And did you speak to her?’

“‘Not at the time I didn’t. No.’

“‘Did she speak to you?’

“‘No.’

“‘Then ’ow d’you know it was our Fanny?’ asked Prue, who had been listening intently.

“‘I thought she’d gone to ’er fate in some foreign country—being so near Boulogne,’ my mother said. ‘I thought them White Slave Traders ’ad the decency to carry a girl off right away from ’er ’ome.... Fanny! On the streets of London! Near ’ere. I told ’er what it would come to. Time and again I told ’er. Merry an ’onest man I said, but she was greedy and ’eadstrong.... ‘Eadstrong and vain.... She didn’t try to follow you, Ernie, to find out where we were or anything like that?’

“My brother Ernest’s face displayed his profound perplexity. ‘It wasn’t at all like that, mother,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t—that sort of thing. You see——’

“He began a struggle with the breast pocket of his very tightly fitting leather jacket and at last produced a rather soiled letter. He held it in his hand, neither attempting to read it nor offering it to us. But holding it in his hand seemed to crystallise his very rudimentary narrative powers. ‘I better tell you right from the beginning,’ he said. ‘It isn’t at all what you’d suppose. Tuesday week it was; last Tuesday week.’

“Matilda Good laid a restraining hand on my mother’s arm. ‘In the evening I suppose?’ she helped.

“‘It was a dinner and fetch,’ said my brother. ‘Of course you understand I ’adn’t set eyes on Fanny for pretty near six years. It was ’er knew me.’

“‘You had to take these people to a dinner and fetch them back again?’ said Matilda.

“‘Orders,’ said Ernest, ‘was to go to one-oh-two Brantismore Gardens Earl’s Court top flat, to pick up lady and gentleman for number to be given in Church Row Hampstead and call there ten-thirty and take home as directed. Accordingly I went to Brantismore Gardens and told the porter in the ’all—it was one of these ’ere flat places with a porter in livery—that I was there to time waiting. ’E telephoned up in the usual way. After a bit, lady and gentleman came out of the house and I went to the door of the car as I usually do and held it open. So far nothing out of the ornary. He was a gentleman in evening dress, like most gentlemen; she’d got a wrap with fur, and her hair, you know, was done up nice for an evening party with something that sparkled. Quite the lady.’

“‘And it was Fanny?’ said Prue.

“Ernest struggled mutely with his subject for some moments. ‘Not yet, like,’ he said.

“‘You mean you didn’t recognise her then?’ said Matilda.

“‘No. But she just looked up at me and seemed kind of to start and got in. I saw her sort of leaning forward and looking at me as ’E got in. Fact is, I didn’t think much of it. I should have forgotten all about it if it ’adn’t been for afterwards. But when I took them back something happened. I could see she was looking at me.... We went first to one-oh-two Brantismore Gardens again and then he got out and says to me, “Just wait a bit here,” and then he helped her out. It sort of seemed as though she was ’arf-inclined to speak to me and then she didn’t. But this time I thinks to myself: “I seen you before, somewhere, my Lady.” Oddly enough I never thought of Fanny then at all. I got as near as thinking she was a bit like ’Arry ’ere. But it never entered my ’ead it might be Fanny. Strordinary! They went up the steps to the door; one of these open entrances it is to several flats, and seemed to have a moment’s confabulation under the light, looking towards me. Then they went on up to the flat.’

“‘You didn’t know her even then?’ said Prue.

“‘’E came down the steps quarternour after perhaps, looking thoughtful. White wescoat, ’e ’ad, and coat over ’is arm. Gave me an address near Sloane Street. Got out and produced his tip, rather on the large side it was, and stood still kind of thoughtful. Seemed inclined to speak and didn’t know what to say. “I’ve an account at the garage,” ’e says, “you’ll book the car,” and then: “You’re not my usual driver,” ’e says. “What’s your name?” “Smith,” I says. “Ernest Smith?” he says. “Yes sir,” I says, and it was only as I drove off that I asked myself ’Ow the ’Ell—I reely beg your pardon, Miss Good.’

“‘Don’t mind me,’ said Matilda. ‘Go on.’

“‘Ow the Juice d’e know that my name was Ernest? I nearly ’it a taxi at the corner of Sloane Square I was so took up puzzling over it. And it was only about three o’clock in the morning, when I was lying awake still puzzling over it, that it came into my ’ead——’

“Ernest assumed the manner of a narrator who opens out his culminating surprise. ‘—that that young lady I’d been taken out that evening was——’

“He paused before his climax.

“‘Fenny,’ whispered Prue.

“‘Sister Fanny,’ said Matilda Good.

“‘Our Fanny,’ said my mother.

“‘No less a person than Fanny!’ said my brother Ernest triumphantly and looked round for the amazement proper to such a surprise.

“‘I thought it was going to be Fenny,’ said Prue.

‘Was she painted up at all?’ asked Matilda.

“‘Not nearly so much painted as most of ’em are,’ said my brother Ernest. ‘Pretty nearly everyone paints nowadays. Titled people. Bishops’ ladies. Widows. Everyone. She didn’t strike me—well, as belonging to the painted sort particularly, not in the least. Kind of fresh and a little pale—like Fanny used to be.’

“‘Was she dressed like a lady—quiet-like?’

“‘Prosperous,’ said Ernest. ‘Reely prosperous. But nothing what you might call extravagant.’

“‘And the house you took ’em to—noisy? Singing and dancing and the windows open?’

“‘It was a perfectly respectable quiet sort of ’ouse. Blinds down and no row whatever. A private ’ouse. The people who came to the door to say good night might ’ave been any gentleman and any lady. I see the butler. ’E came down to the car. ’E wasn’t ’ired for the evening. ’E was a real butler. The other guests had a private limousine with an oldish, careful sort of driver. Whadyou’d speak of as nice people.’’

“‘Hardly what you might call being on the streets of London,’ said Matilda, turning to my mother. ‘What was the gentleman like?’

“‘I don’t want to ’ear of ’im,’ said my mother.

“‘Dissipated sort of man about town—and a bit screwed?’ asked Matilda.

“‘’E was a lot soberer than most dinner fetches,’ said Ernest. ‘I see that when ’e ’andled ’is money. Lots of ’em—oh! quite ’igh-class people get—’ow shall I say it?—just a little bit funny. ‘Umerous like. Bit ’nnacurate with the door. ’E wasn’t. That’s what I can’t make out.... And then there’s this letter.’

“Then there’s this letter,’ said Matilda. ‘You better read it, Martha.’

“‘How did you get that letter?’ asked my mother, not offering to touch it. ‘You don’t mean to say she gave you a letter!’

“‘It came last Thursday. By post. It was addressed to me, Ernest Smith, Esq., at the Garage. It’s a curious letter—asking about us. I can’t make ’ead or tail of the whole business. I been thinking about it and thinking about it. Knowing ’ow set mother was about Fanny—I ’esitated.’

“His voice died away.

“‘Somebody,’ said Matilda in the pause that followed, ‘had better read that letter.’

“She looked at my mother, smiled queerly with the corners of her mouth down, and then held out her hand to Ernest.”

§ 4

“It was Matilda who read that letter; my mother’s aversion for it was all too evident. I can still remember Matilda’s large red face thrust forward over the supper things and a little on one side so as to bring the eye she was using into focus and get the best light from the feeble little gas-bracket. Beside her was Prue, with a slack curious face and a restive glance that went ever and again to my mother’s face, as a bandsman watches the conductor’s baton. My mother sat back with a defensive expression on her white face, and Ernest was posed, wide and large, in a non-committal attitude, ostentatiously unable to ‘make ’ead or tail’ of the affair.

“‘Let’s see,’ said Matilda, and took a preliminary survey of the task before her....

“‘My dear Ernie,’ she says....

“‘My dear Ernie:

“‘It was wonderful seeing you again. I could hardly believe it was you even after Mr.—Mr.—— She’s written it and thought better of it and scratched it out again, Mr. Somebody—Mr. Blank—had asked your name. I was beginning to fear I’d lost you all. Where are you living and how are you getting on? You know I went to France and Italy for a holiday—lovely, lovely places—and when I came back I slipped off at Cliffstone because I wanted to see you all again and couldn’t bear leaving you as I had done without a word.’

---

“‘She should’ve thought of that before,’ said my mother.

“‘She told me, Mrs. Bradley did, about poor father’s accident and death—the first I heard of it. I went to his grave in the cemetery and had a good cry. I couldn’t help it. Poor old Daddy! It was cruel hard luck getting killed as he did. I put a lot of flowers on his grave and arranged with Ropes the Nurseryman about having the grass cut regularly.’

---

“‘And ’im,’ said my mother, ‘lying there! ’E’d ’ve rather seen ’er lying dead at ’is feet, ’e said, than ’ave ’er the fallen woman she was. And she putting flowers over ’im. ‘Nough to make ’im turn in ’is grave.’

“‘But very likely he’s come to think differently now, Martha,’ said Matilda soothingly. ‘There’s no knowing really, Martha. Perhaps in heaven they aren’t so anxious to see people dead at their feet. Perhaps they get sort of kind up there. Let me see,—where was I? Ah?—grass cut regularly.

---

“‘Nobody knew where mother and the rest of you were. Nobody had an address. I went on to London very miserable, hating to have lost you. Mrs. Burch said that mother and Prue and Morty had gone to London to friends, but where she didn’t know. And then behold! after nearly two years, you bob up again! It’s too good to be true. Where are the others? Is Morty getting educated? Prue must be quite grown up? I would love to see them again and help them if I can. Dear Ernie, I do want you to tell mother and all of them that I am quite safe and happy. I am being helped by a friend. The one you saw. I’m not a bit fast or bad. I lead a very quiet life. I have my tiny little flat here and I read a lot and get educated. I work quite hard. I’ve passed an examination, Ernie, a university examination. I’ve learnt a lot of French and Italian and some German and about music. I’ve got a pianola and I’d love to play it to you or Morty. He was always the one for music. Often and often I think of you. Tell mother, show her this letter, and let me know soon about you all and don’t think unkind things of me. ’Member the good times we had, Ernie, when we dressed up at Christmas and father didn’t know us in the shop, and how you made me a doll’s house for my birthday. Oh! and cheese pies, Ernie! Cheese pies!’

“‘What were cheese pies?’ asked Matilda.

“‘It was a sort of silly game we had—passing people. I forget exactly. But it used to make us laugh—regular roll about we did.’

“‘Then she gets back to you, Morty,’ said Matilda,

“‘I’d love to help Morty if he still wants to be educated. I could now. I could help him a lot. I suppose he’s not a boy any longer. Perhaps he’s getting educated himself. Give him my love. Give mother my love and tell her not to think too badly of me. Fanny.’

---

“‘Fanny. Embossed address on her notepaper. That’s all.’

“Matilda dropped the letter on the table. ‘Well?’ she said in a voice that challenged my mother. ‘Seems to me that the young woman has struck one of the Right Sort—the one straight man in ten thousand... seems to have taken care of her almost more than an ordinary husband might’ve done.... What’r you going to do about it, Martha?’

“Matilda collected herself slowly from the table and leant back in her chair, regarding my mother with an expression of faintly malevolent irony.”

§ 5

“I turned from Matilda’s quizzical face to my mother’s drawn intentness.

“‘Say what you like, Matilda, that girl is living in sin.’

“‘Even that isn’t absolutely proved,’ said Matilda.

“‘Why should ’E——?’ my mother began and stopped.

“‘There’s such things as feats of generosity,’ said Matilda. ‘Still——’

“‘No,’ said my mother. ‘We don’t want ’er ’elp. I’d be ashamed to take it. While she lives with that man——’

“‘Apparently she doesn’t. But go on.’

“‘Stainted money,’ said my mother. ‘It’s money she ’as from ’im. It’s the money of a Kep Woman.’

“Her anger kindled. ‘I’d sooner die than touch ’er money.’

“Her sense of the situation found form and expression. ‘She leaves ’er ’ome. She breaks ’er father’s ’eart. Kills ’im, she does. ’E was never the same man after she’d gone; never the same. She goes off to shamelessness and luxury. She makes ’er own brother drive ’er about to ’er shame.’

“‘Hardly—makes,’ protested Matilda.

“’Ow was ‘E to avoid it? And then she writes this—this letter. Impudent I call it. Impudent! Without a word of repentance—not a single word of repentance. Does she ’ave the decency to say she’s ashamed of ’erself? Not a word. Owns she’s still living with a fancy man and means to go on doing it, glories in it. And offers us ’er kind assistance—us, what she’s disgraced and shamed. Who was it that made us leave Cherry Gardens to ’ide our ’eads from our neighbours in London? ’Er! And now she’s to come ’ere in ’er moty-car and come dancing down these steps, all dressed up and painted, to say a kind word to poor mother. ‘Aven’t we suffered enough about ’er without ’er coming ’ere to show ’erself off at us? It’s topsy-turvy. Why! if she come ’ere at all, which I doubt—if she comes ’ere at all she ought to come in sackcloth and ashes and on ’er bended knees.’

“‘She won’t do that, Martha,’ said Matilda Good.

“‘Then let ’er keep away. We don’t want the disgrace of ’er. She’s chosen ’er path and let ’er abide by it. But ’ere! To come ’ere! ’Ow’r you going to explain it?’

“‘I’d explain it all right,’ said Matilda unheeded.

“’Ow am I going to explain it? And here’s Prue! Here’s this Mr. Pettigrew she’s met at the Week-day Evening Social and wants to bring to tea! ‘Ow’s she going to explain ’er fine lady sister to ’im? Kep Woman! Yes, Matilda, I say it. It’s the name for it. That’s what she is. A Kep Woman! Nice thing to tell Mr. Pettigrew. ’Ere’s my sister, the Kep Woman! ’E’d be off in a jiffy. Shocked ’e’d be out of ’is seven senses. ’Ow would Prue ever ’ave the face to go to the Week-day Evening Social again after a show-up like that? And Ernie. What’s ’E going to say about it to the other chaps at the garage when they throw it up at him that ’is sister’s a Kep Woman?’

“‘Don’t you worry about that, mother,’ said Ernest gently but firmly. ‘There’s nobody ever throws anything up against me at the garage anyhow—and there won’t be. Nohow. Not unless ’E wants to swaller ’is teeth.’

“‘Well, there’s ’Arry. ’E goes to ’is classes, and what if someone gets ’old of it there? ’Is sister, a Kep Woman. They’d ’ardly let ’im go on working after such a disgrace.’

“‘Oh I’d soon——’ I began, following in my brother’s wake. But Matilda stopped me with a gesture. Her gesture swept round and held my mother, who was indeed drawing near the end of what she had to say.

“‘I can see, Martha,’ said Matilda, ‘just ’ow you feel about Fanny. I suppose it’s all natural. Of course, this letter——’

“She picked up the letter. She pursed her great mouth and waggled her clumsy head slowly from side to side. ‘For the life of me I can’t believe the girl who wrote this is a bad-hearted girl,’ she said. ‘You’re bitter with her, Martha. You’re bitter.’

“‘After all——’ I began, but Matilda’s hand stopped me again.

“‘Bitter!’ cried my mother. ‘I know ’er. She can put on that in’cent air just as though nothing ’ad ’appened and try and make you feel in the wrong——’

“Matilda ceased to waggle and began to nod. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see. But why should Fanny take the trouble to write this letter, if she hadn’t a real sort of affection for you all? As though she need have bothered herself about the lot of you! You’re no sort of help to her. There’s kindness in this letter, Martha, and something more than kindness. Are you going to throw it back at her? Her and her offers of help? Even if she doesn’t crawl and repent as she ought to do! Won’t you even answer her letter?’

“‘I won’t be drawn into a correspondence with ’er,’ said my mother. ‘No! So long as she’s a Kep Woman, she’s no daughter of mine. I wash my ’ands of ’er. And as for ’er ’Elp! ’Elp indeed! It’s ‘Umbug! If she’d wanted ’elp us she could have married Mr. Crosby, as fair and honest a man as any woman could wish for.’

“‘So that’s that,’ said Matilda Good conclusively.

“Abruptly she swivelled her great head round to Ernest. ‘And what are you going to do, Ernie? Are you for turning down Fanny? And letting the cheese pies just drop into the mud of Oblivium, as the saying goes, and be forgotten for ever and ever and ever?’

“Ernest sat back, put his hand in his trousers pocket and remained thoughtful for some moments. ‘It’s orkward,’ he said.

“Matilda offered him no assistance.

“‘There’s my Young Lady to consider,’ said Ernest and flushed an extreme scarlet.

“My mother turned her head sharply and looked at him. Ernest with a stony expression did not look at my mother.

“‘O—oh!’ said Matilda. ‘Here’s something new. And who may your Young Lady be, Ernie?’

“‘Well, I ’adn’t proposed to discuss ’er ’ere just yet. So never mind what ’er name is. She’s got a little millinery business. I’ll say that for ’er. And a cleverer, nicer girl never lived. We met at a little dance. Nothing isn’t fixed up yet beyond a sort of engagement. There’s been presents. Given ’er a ring and so forth. But naturally I’ve never told ’er anything about Fanny. I ’aven’t discussed family affairs with ’er much, not so far. Knows we were in business of some sort and ’ad losses and father died of an accident; that’s about all. But Fanny—Fanny’s certainly going to be orkward to explain. Not that I want to be ’ard on Fanny!’

“‘I see,’ said Matilda. She glanced a mute interrogation at Prue and found her answer in Prue’s face. Then she picked up the letter again and read very distinctly: ‘One hundred and two, Brantismore Gardens, Earl’s Court.’ She read this address slowly as though she wanted to print it on her memory. ‘Top flat, you said it was, Ernie?...’

“She turned to me. ‘And what are you going to do, Harry, about all this?’

“‘I want to see Fanny for myself,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe——’

“‘’Arry,’ said my mother, ‘now—once for all—I forbid you to go near ’er. I won’t ’ave you corrupted.’

“‘Don’t forbid him, Martha,’ said Matilda. ‘It’s no use forbidding him. Because he will! Any boy with any heart and spunk in him would go and see her after that letter. One hundred and two, Brantismore Gardens, Earl’s Court,’—she was very clear with the address—’it’s not very far from here.’

“‘I forbid you to go near ’er, ‘Arry,’ my mother reiterated. And then realising too late the full importance of Fanny’s letter, she picked it up. ‘I won’t ’ave this answered. I’ll burn it as it deserves. And forget about it. Banish it from my mind. There.’

“And then my mother stood up and making a curious noise in her throat like the strangulation of a sob, she put Fanny’s letter into the fire and took the poker to thrust it into the glow and make it burn. We all stared in silence as the letter curled up and darkened, burst into a swift flame and became in an instant a writhing, agonised, crackling, black cinder. Then she sat down again, remained still for a moment, and then after a fierce struggle with her skirt-pocket dragged out a poor, old, dirty pocket-handkerchief and began to weep—at first quietly and then with a gathering passion. The rest of us sat aghast at this explosion.

“‘You mustn’t go near Fanny, ‘Arry; not if mother forbids,’ said Ernest at last, gently but firmly.

“Matilda looked at me in grim enquiry.

“‘I shall,’ I said, and was in a terror lest the unmanly tears behind my eyes should overflow.

“‘’Arry!’ cried my mother amidst her sobs. ‘You’ll break—you’ll break my heart! First Fanny! Then you.’

“‘You see!’ said Ernest.

“The storm of her weeping paused as though she waited to hear my answer. My silly little face must have been very red by this time and there was something wrong and uncontrollable about my voice, but I said what I meant to say. ‘I shall go to Fanny,’ I said, ‘and I shall just ask her straight out whether she’s leading a bad life.’

“‘And suppose she is?’ asked Matilda.

“‘I shall reason with her,’ I said. ‘I shall do all I can to save her. Yes—even if I have to find some work that will keep her.... She’s my sister....’

“I wept for a moment or so. ‘I can’t help it, mother,’ I sobbed. ‘I got to see Fanny!’

“I recovered my composure with an effort.

“‘So,’ said Matilda, regarding me, I thought, with rather more irony and rather less admiration than I deserved. Then she turned to my mother. ‘I don’t see that Harry can say fairer than that,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll have to let him see her after that. He’ll do all he can to save her, he says. Who knows? He might bring her to repentance.’

“‘More likely the other way about,’ said my mother, wiping her eyes, her brief storm of tears now over.

“‘I can’t ’elp feeling it’s a mistake,’ said Ernest, ‘for ‘Arry to go and see ’er.’

“‘Well, anyhow don’t give it up because you’ve forgotten the address, Harry,’ said Matilda, ‘or else you are done. Let it be your own free-will and not forgetfulness, if you throw her over. One hundred and two Brantismore Gardens, Earl’s Court. You’d better write it down.’

“‘One hundred and two—Brantismore Gardens.’

“I went over to my books on the corner table to do as she advised sternly and resolutely in a fair round hand on the fly-leaf of Smith’s Principia Latina.”

§ 6

“My first visit to Fanny’s flat was quite unlike any of the moving scenes I acted in my mind before-hand. I went round about half-past eight when shop was done on the evening next but one after Ernest’s revelation. The house seemed to me a very dignified one and I went up a carpeted staircase to her flat. I rang the bell and she opened the door herself.

“It was quite evident at once that the smiling young woman in the doorway had expected to see someone else instead of the gawky youth who stood before her, and that for some moments she had not the slightest idea who I was. Her expression of radiant welcome changed to a defensive coldness. ‘What do you want, please?’ she said to my silent stare.

“She had altered very much. She had grown, though now I was taller than she was, and her wavy brown hair was tied by a band of black velvet with a brooch on one side of it, adorned with clear-cut stones of some sort that shone and twinkled. Her face and lips had a warmer colour than I remembered. And she was wearing a light soft greenish-blue robe with loose sleeves; it gave glimpses of her pretty neck and throat and revealed her white arms. She seemed a magically delightful being, soft and luminous and sweet-scented and altogether wonderful to a young barbarian out of the London streets. Her delicacy overawed me. I cleared my throat. ‘Fanny!’ I said hoarsely, ‘don’t you know me?’

“She knitted her pretty brows and then came her old delightful smile. ‘Why! It’s Harry!’ she cried and drew me into the little hall and hugged and kissed me. ‘My little brother Harry, grown as big as I am! How wonderful!’

“Then she went by me and shut the door and looked at me doubtfully. ‘But why didn’t you write to me first to say you were coming? Here am I dying for a talk with you and here’s a visitor who’s coming to see me. May come in at any moment. Now what am I to do? Let me see!’

“The little hall in which we stood was bright with white paint and pretty Japanese pictures. It had cupboards to hide away coats and hats and an old oak chest. Several doors opened into it and two were ajar. Through one I had a glimpse of a sofa and things set out for coffee, and through the other I saw a long mirror and a chintz-covered armchair. She seemed to hesitate between these two rooms and then pushed me into the former one and shut the door behind us.

“‘You should have written to tell me you were coming,’ she said. ‘I’m dying to talk to you and here’s someone coming who’s dying to talk to me. But never mind! let’s talk all we can. How are you? Well—I can see that. But are you getting educated? And mother, how’s mother? What’s happened to Prue? And is Ernest as hot-tempered as ever?’

“I attempted to tell her. I tried to give her an impression of Matilda Good and to hint not too harshly at my mother’s white implacability. I began to tell her of my chemist’s shop and how much Latin and Chemistry I knew, and in the midst of it she darted away from me and stood listening.

“It was the sound of a latch-key at the door.

“‘My other visitor,’ she said, hesitated a moment and was out of the room, leaving me to study her furniture and the coffee machine that bubbled on the table. She had left the door a little ajar and I heard all too plainly the sound of a kiss and then a man’s voice. I thought it was rather a jolly voice.

‘I’m tired, little Fanny; oh! I’m tired to death. This new paper is the devil. We’ve started all wrong. But I shall pull it off. Gods! if I hadn’t this sweet pool of rest to plunge into, I’d go off my head! I’d have nothing left to me but headlines. Take my coat; there’s a dear. I smell coffee.’

“I heard a movement as though Fanny had checked her visitor almost at the door of the room I was in. I heard her say something very quickly about a brother.

“‘Oh, Damn!’ said the man very heartily. ‘Not another of ’em! How many brothers have you got, Fanny? Send him away. I’ve only got an hour altogether, my dear——’

“Then the door closed sharply—Fanny must have discovered it was ajar—and the rest of the talk was inaudible.

“Fanny reappeared, a little flushed and bright-eyed and withal demure. She had evidently been kissed again.

“‘Harry,’ she said, ‘I hate to ask you to go and come again, but that other visitor—I’d promised him first. Do you mind, Harry? I’m longing for a good time with you, a good long talk. You get your Sundays, Harry? Well, why not come here at three on Sunday when I’ll be quite alone and we’ll have a regular good old tea? Do you mind, Harry?’

“I said I didn’t. In that flat ethical values seemed quite different to what they were outside.

“‘After all, you did ought to have written first,’ said Fanny, ‘instead of just jumping out on me out of the dark.’

“There was no one in the hall when she showed me out and not even a hat or coat visible. ‘Give me a kiss, Harry,’ she said and I kissed her very readily. ‘Quite sure you don’t mind?’ she said at her door.

“‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘I ought to have written.’

“‘Sunday at three,’ she said, as I went down the carpeted staircase.

“‘Sunday at three,’ I replied at the bend of the stairs.

“Downstairs there was a sort of entrance hall to all the flats with a fire burning in a fire-place and a man ready to call a cab or taxi for anyone who wanted one. The prosperity and comfort of it all impressed me greatly, and I was quite proud to be walking out of such a fine place. It was only when I had gone some way along the street that I began to realise how widely my plans for the evening had miscarried.

“I had not asked her whether she was living a bad life or not and I had reasoned with her not at all. The scenes I had rehearsed in my mind beforehand, of a strong and simple and resolute younger brother saving his frail but lovable sister from terrible degradations, had indeed vanished altogether from my mind when her door had opened and she had appeared. And here I was with the evening all before me and nothing to report to my family but the profound difference that lies between romance and reality. I decided not to report to my family at all yet, but to go for a very long walk and think this Fanny business over thoroughly, returning home when it would be too late for my mother to cross-examine me and ’draw me out’ at any length.

“I made for the Thames Embankment, for that afforded uncrowded pavements and the solemnity and incidental beauty appropriate to a meditative promenade.

“It is curious to recall now the phases of my mind that night. At first the bright realities I came from dominated me: Fanny pretty and prosperous, kindly and self-assured, in her well-lit, well-furnished flat, and the friendly and confident voice I had heard speaking in the hall, asserted themselves as facts to be accepted and respected. It was delightful after more than two years of ugly imaginations to have the glimpse of my dear sister again so undefeated and loved and cared for and to look forward to a long time with her on Sunday and a long confabulation upon all I had done in the meantime and all I meant to do. Very probably these two people were married after all, but unable for some obscure reason to reveal the fact to the world. Perhaps Fanny would tell me as much in the strictest confidence on Sunday and I could go home and astonish and quell my mother with the whispered secret. And even as I developed and cuddled this idea it grew clear and cold and important in my mind that they were not married at all, and the shades of a long-accumulated disapproval dimmed that first bright impression of Fanny’s little nest. I felt a growing dissatisfaction with the part I had played in our encounter. I had let myself be handled and thrust out as though I had been a mere boy instead of a brother full of help and moral superiority. Surely I ought to have said something, however brief, to indicate our relative moral positions! I ought to have faced that man too, the Bad Man, lurking no doubt in the room with the mirror and the chintz-covered chair. He had avoided seeing me—because he could not face me! And from these new aspects of the case I began to develop a whole new dream of reproach and rescue. What should I have said to the Bad Man? ‘And so, Sir, at last we meet——’

“Something like that.

“My imagination began to leap and bound and soar with me. I pictured the Bad Man, dressed in that ‘immaculate evening dress’ which my novels told me marked the deeper and colder depths of male depravity, cowering under my stream of simple eloquence. ‘You took her,’ I would say, ‘from our homely but pure and simple home. You broke her father’s heart’—yes, I imagined myself saying that!—’And what have you made of her?’ I asked. ‘Your doll, your plaything! to be pampered while the whim lasts and then to be cast aside!’ Or—’tossed aside’?

“I decided ‘tossed aside’ was better.

“I found myself walking along the Embankment, gesticulating and uttering such things as that.”

“But you knew better?” said Firefly. “Even then.”

“I knew better. But that was the way our minds worked in the ancient days.”

§ 7

“But,” said Sarnac, “my second visit to Fanny, like my first, was full of unexpected experiences and unrehearsed effects. The carpet on the pleasant staircase seemed to deaden down my moral tramplings, and when the door opened and I saw my dear Fanny again, friendly and glad, I forgot altogether the stern interrogations with which that second interview was to have opened. She pulled my hair and kissed me, took my hat and coat, said I had grown tremendously and measured herself against me, pushed me into her bright little sitting-room, where she had prepared such a tea as I had never seen before, little ham sandwiches, sandwiches of a delightful stuff called Gentleman’s Relish, strawberry jam, two sorts of cake, and little biscuits to fill in any odd corners. ‘You are a dear to come and see me, Harry. But I had a sort of feeling that whatever happened you would come along.’

“‘We two always sort of hung together,’ I said.

“‘Always,’ she agreed. ‘I think mother and Ernie might have written me a line. Perhaps they will later. Ever seen an electric kettle, Harry? This is one. And you put that plug in there.’

“‘I know,’ I said, and did as I was told. ‘There’s resistances embedded in the coating. I’ve been doing some electricity and chemistry. Council classes. Six’r seven subjects altogether. And there’s a shop-window in Tothill Street full of such things.’

“‘I expect you know all about them,’ she said. ‘I expect you’ve learnt all sorts of sciences,’ and so we came to the great topic of what I was learning and what I was going to do.

“It was delightful to talk to someone who really understood the thirst for knowledge that possessed me. I talked of myself and my dreams and ambitions, and meanwhile, being a growing youth, my arm swept like a swarm of locusts over Fanny’s wonderful tea. Fanny watched me with a smile on her face and steered me with questions towards the things she most wanted to know. And when we had talked enough for a time she showed me how to play her pianola and I got a roll of Schumann that Mr. Plaice had long ago made familiar to me and had the exquisite delight of playing it over for myself. These pianolas were quite easy things to manage, I found; in a little while I was already playing with conscious expression.

“Fanny praised me for my quickness, cleared her tea-things away while I played, and then came and sat beside me and listened and talked and we found we had learnt quite a lot about music since our parting. We both thought great things of Bach,—whom I found I was calling quite incorrectly Batch—and Mozart, who also had to be pronounced a little differently. And then Fanny began to question me about the work I wanted to do in the world. ‘You mustn’t stay with that old chemist much longer,’ she declared. How would I like to do some sort of work that had to do with books, bookselling or helping in a library or printing and publishing books and magazines? ‘You’ve never thought of writing things?’ asked Fanny. ‘People do.’

“‘I made some verses once or twice,’ I confessed, ‘and wrote a letter to the Daily News about temperance. But they didn’t put it in.’

“‘Have you ever wanted to write?’

“‘What, books? Like Arnold Bennett? Rather!’

“‘But you didn’t quite know how to set about it.’

“‘It’s difficult to begin,’ I said, as though that was the only barrier.

“‘You ought to leave that old chemist’s shop,’ she repeated. ‘If I were to ask people I know and found out some better sort of job for you, Harry, would you take it?’

“‘Rather!’ said I.”

“Why not altogether?” interrupted Firefly.

“Oh! we used to say Rather,” said Sarnac. “It was artistic understatement. But you realise how dreadfully I lapsed from all my preconceived notions about Fanny and myself. We talked the whole evening away. We had a delightful cold picnic supper in a pretty little dining-room with a dresser, and Fanny showed me how to make a wonderful salad with onions very finely chopped and white wine and sugar in the dressing. And afterwards came some more of that marvel, the pianola, and then very reluctantly I took my leave. And when I found myself in the streets again I had once more my former sense of having dropped abruptly from one world into another, colder, bleaker, harder, and with entirely different moral values. Again I felt the same reluctance to go straight home and have my evening dimmed and destroyed by a score of pitiless questions. And when at last I did go home I told a lie. ‘Fanny’s got a pretty place and she’s as happy as can be,’ I said. ‘I’m not quite sure, but from what she said, I believe that man’s going to marry her before very long.’

“My cheeks and ears grew hot under my mother’s hostile stare.

“‘Did she tell you that?’

“‘Practically,’ I lied. ‘I kind of got it out of her.’

“‘But ’e’s married already!’ said my mother.

“‘I believe there is something,’ I said.

“‘Something!’ said my mother scornfully. ‘She’s stolen another woman’s man. ’E belongs to ’er—for ever. No matter what there is against ’er. “Whomsoever God Hath Joined, Let No Man Put Asunder!”—that’s what I was taught and what I believe. ’E may be older; ’e may have led her astray, but while she and ’e harbour together the sin is ’ers smutch as ’is. Did you see ’im?’

“‘He wasn’t there.’

“‘’Adn’t the face. That’s so much to their credit. And are you going there again?’

“‘I’ve kind of promised——’

“‘It’s against my wishes, ‘Arry. Every time you go near Fanny, ‘Arry, you disobey me. Mark that. Let’s be plain about that, once and for all.’

“I felt mulish. ‘She’s my sister,’ I said.

“’And I’m your mother. Though nowadays mothers are no more than dirt under their children’s feet. Marry ’er indeed! Why should ’e? Likely. ’E’ll marry the next one. Come, Prue, take that bit of coal off the fire and we’ll go up to bed.”

§ 8

“And now,” said Sarnac, “I must tell you of the queer business organisation of Thunderstone House and the great firm of Crane & Newberry, for whom, at Fanny’s instance, I abandoned Mr. Humberg and his gold-labelled bottles of nothingness. Crane & Newberry were publishers of newspapers, magazines and books, and Thunderstone House was a sort of fountain of printed paper, spouting an unending wash of reading matter into the lives of the English people.

“I am talking of the world two thousand years ago,” said Sarnac. “No doubt you have all been good children and have read your histories duly, but at this distance in time things appear very much foreshortened, and changes that occupied lifetimes and went on amidst dense clouds of doubt, misunderstanding and opposition seem to be the easiest and most natural of transitions. We were all taught that the scientific method came into human affairs first of all in the world of material things, and later on in the matters of psychology and human relationship, so that the large-scale handling of steel, and railways, automobiles, telegraphs, flying machines and all the broad material foundations of the new age were in existence two or three generations before social, political and educational ideas and methods were modified in correspondence with the new necessities these things had created. There was a great unanticipated increase in the trade and population of the world and much confusion and conflict, violent social stresses and revolutions and great wars, before even the need of a scientific adjustment of human relationships was recognised. It is easy enough to learn of such things in general terms but hard to explain just what these processes of blind readjustment meant in anxiety, suffering and distress to the countless millions who found themselves born into the swirl of this phase of change. As I look back to that time in which I lived my other life I am reminded of a crowd of people in one of my old Pimlico fogs. No one had any vision of things as a whole; everybody was feeling his way slowly and clumsily from one just perceptible thing to another. And nearly everybody was uneasy and disposed to be angry.

“It is clear beyond question to us now, that the days of illiterate drudges were already past in the distant nineteenth century, for power-machinery had superseded them. The new world, so much more complicated and dangerous, so much richer and ampler, was a world insisting upon an educated population, educated intellectually and morally. But in those days these things were not at all clear, and it was grudgingly and insufficiently that access to knowledge and enlightenment was given by the learned and prosperous classes to the rapidly accumulating masses of the population. They insisted that it should be done by special channels and in a new and different class of school. I have told you of what passed for my education, reading and writing, rudimentary computations, ‘jogfry’ and so forth. That sort of process, truncated by employment at thirteen or fourteen, when curiosity and interest were just beginning to awaken, was as far as education had gone for the bulk of the common men and women in the opening years of the twentieth century. It had produced a vast multitude of people, just able to read, credulous and uncritical and pitifully curious to learn about life and things, pitifully wanting to see and know. As a whole the community did nothing to satisfy the vague aspirations of those half-awakened swarms; it was left to ‘private enterprise’ to find what profits it could in their dim desires. A number of great publishing businesses arose to trade upon the new reading public that this ‘elementary’ education, as we called it, had accumulated.

“In all ages people have wanted stories about life. The young have always wanted to be told about the stage on which they are beginning to play their parts, to be shown the chances and possibilities of existence, vividly and dramatically, so that they may imagine and anticipate their own reactions. And even those who are no longer youthful have always been eager to supplement their experiences and widen their judgment by tales and histories and discussions. There has been literature since there has been writing, since indeed there was enough language for story-telling and reciting. And always literature has told people what their minds were prepared to receive, searching for what it should tell rather in the mind and expectation of the hearer or reader—who was the person who paid—than in the unendowed wildernesses of reality. So that the greater part of the literature of every age has been a vulgar and ephemeral thing interesting only to the historian and psychologist of later times because of the light it threw upon the desires and imaginative limitations of its generation. But the popular literature of the age in which Harry Mortimer Smith was living was more abundant, more cynically insincere, lazy, cheap and empty than anything that the world had ever seen before.

“You would accuse me of burlesque if I were to tell you the stories of the various people who built up immense fortunes by catering for the vague needs of the new reading crowds that filled the hypertrophied cities of the Atlantic world. There was a certain Newnes of whom legend related that one day after reading aloud some item of interest to his family he remarked, ‘I call that a regular tit-bit.’ From that feat of nomenclature he went on to the idea of a weekly periodical full of scraps of interest, cuttings from books and newspapers and the like. A hungry multitude, eager and curious, was ready to feed greedily on such hors d’oeuvre. So Tit-Bits came into existence, whittled from a thousand sources by an industrious and not too expensive staff, and Newnes became a man of wealth and a baronet. His first experiment upon the new public encouraged him to make a number of others. He gave it a monthly magazine full of short stories drawn from foreign sources. At first its success was uncertain, and then a certain Dr. Conan Doyle rose to fame in it and carried it to success with stories about crime and the detection of crime. Every intelligent person in those days, everyone indeed intelligent or not, was curious about the murders and such-like crimes which still abounded. Indeed, there could have been no more fascinating and desirable subject for us; properly treated such cases illuminated the problems of law, training and control in our social welter as nothing else could have done. The poorest people bought at least a weekly paper in order to quicken their wits over murder mysteries and divorces, driven by an almost instinctive need to probe motives and judge restraints. But Conan Doyle’s stories had little of psychology in them; he tangled a skein of clues in order to disentangle it again, and his readers forgot the interest of the problem in the interest of the puzzle.

“Hard upon the heels of Newnes came a host of other competitors, among others a certain Arthur Pearson and a group of brothers Harmsworth who rose to great power and wealth from the beginning of a small weekly paper called Answers, inspired originally by the notion that people liked to read other people’s letters. You will find in the histories how two of these Harmsworths, men of great thrust and energy, became Lords of England and prominent figures in politics, but I have to tell of them now simply to tell you of the multitude of papers and magazines they created to win the errand-boy’s guffaw, the heart of the factory girl, the respect of the aristocracy and the confidence of the nouveau riche. It was a roaring factory of hasty printing. Our own firm at Thunderstone House was of an older standing than these Newnes, Pearson, Harmsworth concerns. As early as the eighteenth century the hunger for knowledge had been apparent, and a certain footman turned publisher, named Dodsley, had produced a book of wisdom called the Young Man’s Companion. Our founder, Crane, had done the same sort of thing in Early Victorian times. He had won his way to considerable success with a Home Teacher in monthly parts and with Crane’s Circle of the Sciences and a weekly magazine and so forth. His chief rivals had been two firms called Cassell’s and Routledge’s, and for years, though he worked upon a smaller capital, he kept well abreast of them. For a time the onrush of the newer popular publishers had thrust Crane and his contemporaries into the background and then, reconstructed and reinvigorated by a certain Sir Peter Newberry, the old business had won its way back to prosperity, publishing a shoal of novelette magazines and cheap domestic newspapers for women, young girls and children, reviving the Home Teacher on modern lines with a memory training system and a Guide to Success by Sir Peter Newberry thrown in, and even launching out into scientific handbooks of a not too onerous sort.

“It is difficult for you to realise,” said Sarnac, “what a frightful lot of printed stuff there was in that old world. It was choked with printed rubbish just as it was choked with human rubbish and a rubbish of furniture and clothing and every sort of rubbish; there was too much of the inferior grades of everything. And good things incredibly rare! You cannot imagine how delightful it is for me to sit here again, naked and simple, talking plainly and nakedly in a clear and beautiful room. The sense of escape, of being cleansed of unnecessary adhesions of any sort, is exquisite. We read a book now and then and talk and make love naturally and honestly and do our work and thought and research with well-aired, well-fed brains, and we live with all our senses and abilities taking a firm and easy grip upon life. But stress was in the air of the twentieth century. Those who had enough courage fought hard for knowledge and existence, and to them we sold our not very lucid or helpful Home Teacher and our entirely base Guide to Success; but great multitudes relaxed their hold upon life in a way that is known now only to our morbid psychologists. They averted their attention from reality and gave themselves up to reverie. They went about the world distraught in a day-dream, a day-dream that they were not really themselves, but beings far nobler and more romantic, or that presently things would change about them into a dramatic scene centring about themselves. These novelette magazines and popular novels that supplied the chief part of the income of Crane & Newberry, were really helps to reverie—mental drugs. Sunray, have you ever read any twentieth-century novelettes?”

“One or two,” said Sunray. “It’s as you say. I suppose I have a dozen or so. Some day you shall see my little collection.”

“Very likely ours—half of them,—Crane & Newberry’s I mean. It will be amusing to see them again. The great bulk of this reverie material was written for Crane & Newberry by girls and women and by a type of slack imaginative men. These ‘authors,’ as we called them, lived scattered about London or in houses on the country-side, and they sent their writings by post to Thunderstone House, where we edited them in various ways and put the stuff into our magazines and books. Thunderstone House was a great rambling warren of a place opening out of Tottenham Court Road, with a yard into which huge lorries brought rolls of paper and from which vans departed with our finished products. It was all a-quiver with the roar and thudding of the printing machinery. I remember very vividly to this day how I went there first, down a narrow roadway out of the main thoroughfare, past a dingy public-house and the stage door of a theatre.”

“What were you going to do—pack up books? Or run errands?” asked Radiant.

“I was to do what I could. Very soon I was on the general editorial staff.”

“Editing popular knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“But why did they want an illiterate youngster like yourself at Thunderstone House?” asked Radiant. “I can understand that this work of instructing and answering the first crude questions of the new reading classes was necessarily a wholesale improvised affair, but surely there were enough learned men at the ancient universities to do all the editing and instructing that was needed!”

Sarnac shook his head. “The amazing thing is that there weren’t,” he said. “They produced men enough of a sort but they weren’t the right sort.”

His auditors looked puzzled.

“The rank-and-file of the men they sent out labelled M.A. and so forth from Oxford and Cambridge were exactly like those gilt-lettered jars in Mr. Humberg’s shop, that had nothing in them but stale water. The pseudo-educated man of the older order couldn’t teach, couldn’t write, couldn’t explain. He was pompous and patronising and prosy; timid and indistinct in statement, with no sense of the common need or the common quality. The promoted office-boy, these new magazine and newspaper people discovered, was brighter and better at the job, comparatively modest and industrious, eager to know things and impart things. The editors of our periodicals, the managers of our part publications and so forth were nearly all of the office-boy class, hardly any of them, in the academic sense, educated. But many of them had a sort of educational enthusiasm and all of them a boldness that the men of the old learning lacked....”

Sarnac reflected. “In Britain at the time I am speaking about—and in America also—there were practically two educational worlds and two traditions of intellectual culture side by side. There was all this vast fermenting hullabaloo of the new publishing, the new press, the cinema theatres and so forth, a crude mental uproar arising out of the new elementary schools of the nineteenth century, and there was the old aristocratic education of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which had picked up its tradition from the Augustan age of Rome. They didn’t mix. On the one hand were these office-boy fellows with the intellectual courage and vigour—oh! of Aristotle and Plato, whatever the quality of their intellectual equipment might be; on the other the academic man, affectedly Grecian, like the bought and sold learned man of the days of Roman slavery. He had the gentility of the household slave; he had the same abject respect for patron, prince and patrician; he had the same meticulous care in minor matters, and the same fear of uncharted reality. He criticised like a slave, sneering and hinting, he quarrelled like a slave, despised all he dared despise with the eagerness of a slave. He was incapable of serving the multitude. The new reading-crowd, the working masses, the ‘democracy’ as we used to call it, had to get its knowledge and its wisdom without him.

“Crane, our founder, had had in his day some inkling of the educational function such businesses as his were bound to serve in the world, but Sir Peter Newberry had been a hard tradesman, intent only on recovering the prosperity that the newer popular publishers had filched away from our firm. He was a hard-driving man; he drove hard, he paid in niggardly fashion and he succeeded. He had been dead now for some years and the chief shareholder and director of the firm was his son Richard. He was nicknamed the Sun; I think because someone had quoted Shakespeare about the winter of our discontent being made summer by this Sun of York. He was by contrast a very genial and warming person. He was acutely alive to the moral responsibility that lay behind the practical irresponsibility of a popular publisher. If anything, he drove harder than his father, but he paid generously; he tried to keep a little ahead of the new public instead of a little behind; the times moved in his favour and he succeeded even more than his father had done. I had been employed by Crane & Newberry for many weeks before I saw him, but in the first office I entered in Thunderstone House I saw the evidences of his personality in certain notices upon the wall. They were printed in clear black letters on cards and hung up. It was his device for giving the house a tone of its own.

“I remember ‘We lead; the others imitate,’ and ‘If you are in any doubt about its being too good put it in.’ A third was: ‘If a man doesn’t know what you know that’s no reason for writing as if he was an all-round fool. Rest assured there is something he knows better than you do.’”

§ 9

“It took me some time to get from the yard of Thunderstone House to the office in which these inscriptions were displayed. Fanny had told me to ask for Mr. Cheeseman, and when I had discovered and entered the doorway up a flight of steps, which had at first been masked by two large vans, I made this demand of an extremely small young lady enclosed in a kind of glass cage. She had a round face and a bright red button of a nose. She was engaged, I realised slowly, in removing a foreign stamp from a fragment of envelope by licking the back of the paper. She did not desist from this occupation but mutely asked my business with her eyes.

“‘Oran-amoiment?’ she asked, still licking.

“‘Pardon?’

“‘Oran-amoiment?’

“‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t get it quite.’

“‘Mus’ be deaf,’ she said, putting down the stamp and taking a sufficient breath for slow loud speech. ‘’Ave you gottonappointment?’

“‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Yes. I was told to come here to-day and see Mr. Cheeseman between ten and twelve.’

She resumed her struggle with the stamp for a time. ‘S’pose you don’t c’lect stamps?’ she asked. ‘’Sintresting ‘obby. Mr. Cheeseman’s written a little ‘andbook about it. Looking for a job, I suppose? May ’ave to wait a bit. Will you fill up that bit of paper there? Formality we ’ave to insist on. Pencil....’

“The paper demanded my name and my business and I wrote that the latter was ‘literary employment.’

“‘Lordy,’ said the young lady when she read it. ‘I thought you was in for the ware’ouse. I say, Florence,’ she said to another considerably larger girl who had appeared on the staircase, ‘look at ’im. ’E’s after litry emplyment.’

“‘Cheek!’ said the second young lady after one glance at me, and sat down inside the glass box with a piece of chewing gum and a novelette just published by the firm. The young lady with the button nose resumed her stamp damping. They kept me ten minutes before the smaller one remarked: ’Spose I better take this up to Mr. Cheeseman, Flo,’ and departed with my form.

“She returned after five minutes or so. ‘Mr. Cheeseman says ’E can see you now for one minute,’ she said, and led the way up a staircase and along a passage that looked with glass windows into a printer’s shop and down a staircase and along a dark passage to a small apartment with an office table, one or two chairs, and bookshelves covered with paper-covered publications. Out of this opened another room, and the door was open. ‘You better sit down here,’ said the young lady with the button nose.

“‘That Smith?’ asked a voice. ‘Come right in.’

“I went in, and the young lady with the button nose vanished from my world.

“I discovered a gentleman sunken deeply in an arm-chair before a writing-table, and lost in contemplation of a row of vivid drawings which were standing up on a shelf against the wall of the room. He had an intensely earnest, frowning, red face, a large broad mouth intensely compressed, and stiff black hair that stood out from his head in many directions. His head was slightly on one side and he was chewing the end of a lead-pencil. ‘Don’t see it,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t see it.’ I stood awaiting his attention. ‘Smith,’ he murmured, still not looking at me, ‘Harry Mortimer Smith. Smith, were you by any chance educated at a Board School?’

“‘Yessir,’ I said.

“‘I hear you have literary tastes.’

“‘Yessir.’

“‘Then come here and stand by me and look at these damned pictures there. Did you ever see such stuff?’

“I stood by his side but remained judiciously silent. The drawings I now perceived were designs for a magazine cover. Upon all of them appeared the words ‘The New World’ in very conspicuous lettering. One design was all flying machines and steamships and automobiles; two others insisted upon a flying machine; one showed a kneeling loin-clothed man saluting the rising sun—which however rose behind him. Another showed a planet earth half illuminated, and another was simply a workman going to his work in the dawn.

“‘Smith,’ said Mr. Cheeseman, ‘it’s you’ve got to buy this magazine, not me. Which of these covers do you prefer? It’s your decision. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.’

“‘Meaning me, Sir?’ I said brightly.

“His bristle eyebrows displayed a momentary surprise. ‘I suppose we’re all fitted with the same tags nowadays,’ he remarked. ‘Which do you find most attractive?’

“‘Those aeroplane things, Sir, seem to me to be shoving it a bit too hard,’ I said.

“‘H’m,’ said Mr. Cheeseman. ‘That’s what the Sun says. You wouldn’t buy on that?’

“‘I don’t think so, Sir. It’s been done too much.’

“‘How about that globe?’

“‘Too like an Atlas, Sir.’

“‘Aren’t geography and travel interesting?’

“‘They are, Sir, but somehow they aren’t attractive.’

“‘Interesting but not attractive. H’m. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.... So it’s going to be that labour chap there in the dawn. You’d buy that, eh?’

“‘Is this going to be a magazine about inventions and discoveries and progress, Sir?’

“‘Exactly.’

“‘Well, the Dawn’s good, Sir, but I don’t think that sort of Labour Day Cartoon man is going to be very attractive. Looks rheumatic and heavy, Sir. Why not cut him out and keep the dawn?’

“‘Bit too like a slice of ham, Smith—thin pink streaks.’

“I was struck by an idea. ‘Suppose, Sir, you kept that dawn scene and made it a bit earlier in the year. Buds on the trees, Sir. And perhaps snowy mountains, rather cold and far off. And then you put a hand right across it—just a big hand—pointing, Sir.’

“‘Pointing up?’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

“‘No, Sir, pointing forward and just a little up. It would sort of make one curious.’

“‘It would. A woman’s hand.’

“‘Just a hand I think, Sir.’

“‘You’d buy that?’

“‘I’d jump at it, Sir, if I had the money.’

“Mr. Cheeseman reflected for some moments, chewing his pencil serenely. Then he spat out small bits of pencil over his desk and spoke. ‘What you say, Smith, is exactly what I’ve been thinking. Exactly. It’s very curious.’ He pressed a bell-push on his desk and a messenger girl appeared. ‘Ask Mr. Prelude to come here.... So you think you’d like to come into Thunderstone House, Smith. I’m told you know a little about science already. Learn more. Our public’s moving up to science. I’ve got some books over there I want you to read and pick out anything you find interesting.’

“‘You’ll be able to find me a job, Sir?’ I said.

“‘I’ve got to find you a job all right. Orders is orders. You’ll be able to sit in that room there....’

“We were interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Prelude. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a melancholy expression.

“‘Mr. Prelude,’ said Mr. Cheeseman, waving his arm at the cover sketches, ‘this stuff won’t do. It’s—it’s too banal. We want something fresher, something with a touch of imagination. What I want to see on the cover is—well, say a dawn—a very calm and simple scene, mostly colour, mountain range far away just flushed with sunrise, valley blue and still, high streamer clouds touched with pink. See? Trees perhaps in the foreground—just budding—spring motif and morning motif. See? All a little faint and backgroundy. Then a big hand and wrist across the page pointing at something, something high and far away. See?’

“He surveyed Mr. Prelude with the glow of creative enthusiasm on his face. Mr. Prelude looked disapproval. ‘The Sun will like that,’ he said.

“‘It’s the goods,’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

“‘Why not those flying machines?’

“‘Why not midges?’ asked Mr. Cheeseman.

“Mr. Prelude shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve got no use for a magazine on progress without a flying machine or a Zeppelin,’ he said. ‘Still—it’s your affair.’

“Mr. Cheeseman looked a little dashed by his colleague’s doubt, but he held to his idea. ‘We’ll get a sketch made,’ he said. ‘How about Wilkinson?’

“They discussed some unknown Wilkinson as a possible cover designer. Then Mr. Cheeseman turned to me. ‘By the by, here’s a youngster we’ve got to make use of, Prelude. We don’t know what he can do, but he seems intelligent. I thought we’d use him to sift some of those scientific books. What he likes, they’ll like. I can’t read that stuff. I’m too busy.’

“Mr. Prelude surveyed me. ‘You never know what you can do till you try,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything of science?’

“‘Not very much,’ I said. ‘But I’ve done some physiography and chemistry and a little geology. And read a lot.’

“‘You don’t want to know very much,’ said Mr. Prelude. ‘You’re better without it here. Makes you High-Brow. High-Brow goes to tens of thousands, but Crane & Newberry go to hundreds of thousands. Not that our brows aren’t rising some in this establishment. Educational and improving, we’re going to be. So far as is consistent with our profits. See that notice,—We lead? All the same, Cheeseman,’ said Mr. Prelude, ‘the thing that has sold, the thing that sells and the thing that’s going to sell, is the magazine with a pretty girl on the cover—and the less costume the better. Consistent with decency. Now here—what’s your name?’

“‘Smith, Sir.’

“‘Smith. And here’s all these covers on the book-stall. And then I produce this. Which does he buy?’

“This was the cover of the summer number of Newberry’s Story Magazine, on which two young ladies in skin-tight bathing dresses disported themselves on a sandy beach.

“‘Smith goes for this,’ said Mr. Prelude triumphantly.

“I shook my head.

“‘You mean to say that isn’t attractive?’ said Mr. Cheeseman, turning in his chair and pointing with his well-chewed pencil.

“I reflected.

“‘There’s never anything about them inside,’ I said.

“‘Got you there, Prelude!’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

“‘Not a bit. He bought six or seven before he found that out. And most of ’em forgot about it when they read inside.’”

§ 10

“I found my introduction to Thunderstone House far less terrifying than I had anticipated. It was gratifying to have come so near to what Mr. Cheeseman had thought about the magazine cover, and there were presently other very reassuring coincidences of the same sort. I was immediately interested in the editorial and publishing work that was going on about me, and my mind took one of those forward strides that are characteristic of adolescence. I was still a boy when I left Mr. Humberg; I had not been with Crane & Newberry six weeks before I perceived that I was a capable and responsible young man. I began to form opinions rapidly, to write with confidence; even my handwriting suddenly grew up from a careless or over-careful boyish scrawl to a consistent and characteristic script. I began to think about the clothes I was wearing and of the impression I made upon other people.

“In quite a little time I was writing short contributions to some of our minor weeklies and monthlies and suggesting articles and ‘features’ as we called them to Mr. Cheeseman. The eighteen shillings a week at which I started went up in a series of jerks to three pounds, which was quite a big salary in those days for a youngster not yet eighteen. Fanny took the keenest interest in my work and displayed an extraordinary understanding of its conditions. She seemed to know all about Mr. Cheeseman and Mr. Prelude and the rest of my colleagues directly I mentioned them.

“One day I was working in the room next to Mr. Cheeseman’s with another youngster called Wilkins at a rather odd little job. One of the authors our firm employed had written a long story for the Story Reader’s Paradise, and it had been set up by the printers and passed for press before it was discovered that in a careless moment she had given her chief villain the name of a very prominent lawyer who unhappily also had a country house in a village almost identical in name with the corresponding village in the story. The prominent lawyer might see fit to consider this use of his name as libellous and make trouble for us. So Wilkins and I were going through two sets of proofs, one to check the other, and we were changing the name of the prominent lawyer to an entirely different one whenever it occurred. To brighten the task we had made a game of it. Each one raced down his galley proof and called the name of ‘Reginald Flake’ whenever he found it and scored a point for every name he called first. I was some points up when I heard a voice in the passage that seemed oddly familiar to me. ‘They’re all spread out on my desk, sir, if you like to come into my room,’ I heard Mr. Cheeseman say.

“‘Fay-nits,’ said Wilkins. ‘It’s the Sun.’

“I turned round as the door opened and saw Mr. Cheeseman holding the door open for a good-looking youngish man, with rather handsome regular features and a sort of bang of brown hair over his forehead. He wore a pair of very round large spectacles with glasses tinted a faint yellow colour. He met my eyes and an expression of partial recognition came into his and faded again. Either he recognised me or he recognised a resemblance in me. He followed Mr. Cheeseman across the room. Then he turned sharply.

“‘Of course,’ he said smiling and returning a step or two towards me. ‘You must be young Smith. How are you getting on here?’

“‘I’m working for Mr. Cheeseman mostly,’ I said standing up.

“He turned to Mr. Cheeseman.

“‘Very satisfactory, sir. Quick, interested; he’ll do well here.’

“‘I’m glad to hear it—very glad. Everyone has a chance here and there’s no favours. No favours. The best man does the job. Glad to see you among the directors whenever you care to come up to us, Smith.’

“‘I’ll do my best, Sir.’

“He hesitated, smiled again in a very friendly way and went into Mr. Cheeseman’s room....

“‘Where are we?’ I said. ‘Middle of galley 32? Score, 22-29.’

“‘How d’you know ’im?’ asked Wilkins in a fierce undertone.

“‘I don’t know him,’ I said, suddenly hot and flushed. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

“‘Well, he knew you.’

“‘He’s heard about me.’

“‘Who from?’

“‘How the deuce should I know?’ I asked with needless heat.

“‘Oh!’ said Wilkins and reflected. ‘But——’

“He glanced at my troubled face and said no more.

“But at the game of ‘Reginald Flake’ he overhauled me and beat me at the end of the book, 67-42.”

§ 11

“I concealed altogether from my mother the share that Fanny had had in getting me my new job and all the opportunities it carried with it in Thunderstone House, and so it was possible for her to find some pride and satisfaction in my increasing prosperity. I was presently able to double and then still further to increase my contribution to the household expenses, and I exchanged my attic, which was handed over to Prue for her very own, for the room which had once sheltered the old Moggeridges. It was rearranged as a bed-sitting room for me, and soon I had first one and then several shelves full of books and a writing-desk of my own.

“And also I concealed from my mother, for there was no use in distressing her, the frequency of my visits to Fanny. We began to make little excursions together, for Fanny, I discovered, was often very lonely. Newberry was a very busy man, and often he could not come near her for ten days or a fortnight, and although she had some women friends, and classes and lectures, there were gaps often of several days when she would have had no one to speak to but the servant who came in daily to her, if it had not been for me. But all this companioning of Fanny I tried to hide from my mother, though now and then her suspicions stabbed my falsehoods. Ernie and Prue, however, were able to follow the calls of love unhampered by the family shame, and presently they were both engaged and his young lady and her young man were brought to a Sunday tea-party in the drawing-room—through the kind permission of Mr. and Mrs. Milton who were, as usual, ‘away.’ Ernie’s Young Lady—I’ve completely forgotten her name—proved to be a well-dressed, self-possessed young woman with a vast knowledge of people in what we used to call ‘society’; she talked freely and fashionably, taking the larger share of the conversation, of Ascot and Monte Carlo and the Court. Prue’s Mr. Pettigrew was of a more serious quality, and of the things he said I remember now only that he expressed a firm conviction that Messages from the Dead were Bound to Come in a few years’ time. He was a chiropodist and very well thought of in chiropodological circles.”

“Stop!” cried Radiant. “What is this? You are talking nonsense, Sarnac. What is chiropodological—hand—foot—scientific?”

“I thought you’d ask me that,” said Sarnac, smiling. “Chiropody was—corn-cutting.”

“Corn-cutting—harvesting,” said Starlight. “But where do the hands and feet come in? There were machines then, were there not?”

“No, this was a different sort of corn. Mr. Humberg’s shop was full of corn-salves and corn-cures. Corns were painful and tiresome callosities produced on people’s feet by the pressure of ill-fitting boots. We don’t know of such things nowadays, but they darkened scores of lives in Pimlico.”

“But why did they wear ill-fitting boots?” demanded Radiant. “Oh!—never mind. Never mind. I know. A mad world which made boots at hazard without looking at the feet that had to wear them! And wore boots that hurt it when no sane people would dream of wearing boots! Go on with your story.”

“Let me see,” said Sarnac. “I was talking of a tea-party, a family tea-party in the drawing-room—in which we talked of everything in the world but my sister Fanny. And quite a little while after that tea-party my mother fell ill and died.

“It was a swift and sudden illness. She caught a cold and would not go to bed. When she did go to bed, she got up after one day of it, because she couldn’t bear to think of all that Prue might be doing or not doing in the house-work downstairs. And her cold turned to pneumonia, the same sort of inflammation that had carried off the Moggeridges, and she died in three days.

“Now when the fever came upon her she changed suddenly from something white and hard and unapproachable to something flushed and pitiful. Her face grew smaller and younger looking, her eyes bright, and something came into them that reminded me of Fanny when Fanny was distressed. And all my habit of sullen resistance to my mother melted when I saw her struggling for breath on her tumbled pillow and realised that she might be near the end of all her hates and drudgeries. Matilda Good became again the old friend who had known her since she was a young woman, and they called each other ’Tilda’ and ‘Marty’ instead of Matilda and Martha. Matilda for all her varicose veins was up and down stairs fifty times a day; and there was much sending out for expensive things, the more expensive the better, that Matilda thought my mother might ‘fancy.’ They stood appealingly untouched upon the table by her bedside. Once or twice towards the end my mother asked for me, and when I came in the evening and bent over her she whispered hoarsely, ‘’Arry boy—promise me!... Promise me!...’

“I sat down and took the hand she held out to me, and so holding to me, she dozed.

“What she wanted me to promise she never said; and whether it was some last vow she wanted to extract from me that would separate me from Fanny for ever, or whether her thoughts about Fanny had changed under the shadow of death and she had some new message for her, I cannot imagine to this day. Perhaps she herself did not know what I had to promise; a dying desire for predominance moved her. Will stirred in her and faded again to nothing. ‘Promise me!’ Fanny she never mentioned by name and we did not dare to bring my sister in to her. Ernest came and kissed her and knelt down by the bedside and suddenly, dreadfully wept aloud like the child he was and set us all weeping; he was her firstborn and her dearest, he had known her before her final embitterment, he had always been a dutiful son to her.

“Presently she was lying there very straight and still, as hushed and still as my father’s shop on Sundays, and the traffics and struggles and angers of life had done with her for ever. Her face was now neither young nor old, a marble face of peace. All her peevish resentment was smoothed and wiped away. It had never occurred to me before that she had or had not good looks, but now I saw that Fanny’s fine regularity of feature came from her. She was like Fanny, like an immobile, unhumorous Fanny.

“I stood beside her still body oppressed by a grief too wide and deep for tears, an immense grief that was not so much for her as for all that distress of life she had embodied. For now I saw that there was not and there never had been anything hateful in her; I saw for the first time the devotion of her, the misguided passion for right, the mute, blundering, tormented and tormenting love in her heart. Even her love of Fanny was a love capsized and inverted; her fallen daughter had been to her a detested changeling for the pretty clever little girl who was to have been a paragon of feminine virtue. Except for Ernest how bitterly and repeatedly had we children offended her rigid and implacable standards, Fanny and I openly and rebelliously and Prue by discovery! For Prue—I will not tell you the details of Matilda’s exposure—pilfered.

“Long before we children began to thwart my mother there must have been a still more monstrous disappointment for her. What sort of dreams of manly piety and decorum had she wrapped about my poor, maundering, ramshackle, loose-limbed father when he and she walked out together in their Sunday clothes, making the best and more than the best of themselves? He must have been a tall, good-looking, young man then, and reassuringly apt with pious reflections. What shocks had he, gross, clumsy, wayward, ignorant and incompetent as the dear man was, inflicted upon her set and limited expectations?

“And then think of my Uncle John Julip again, that wonderful and adored elder brother with the manners of a sporting baronet, who had slowly shrivelled down to the figure of a drunken thief! Everything had shrivelled for her,—poor soul! In our streets in those old days men were permitted to sell brightly coloured distended bladders to children, the most apt instruments for acute disappointment you can imagine; and the life God had given my mother was very like one of these bladders. It had burst and shrivelled down to a limp and empty residue that nothing could ever restore. She had faced her declining days, prematurely wrinkled, weary, laborious and unloved except by one dutiful son....

“Yes, the thought of Ernest was a consolation to me. Surely his loyalty had meant happiness for her.”

Sarnac paused. “I find it impossible,” he said, “to disentangle my thoughts as I stood by my mother’s death-bed from a thousand things that have come to me since about her. I have had to tell of her as an antagonist, as a hard, uncharitable soul. That was her rôle in my story. But she was indeed just the creature and victim of that disordered age which had turned her natural tenacity to a blind intolerance and wasted her moral passion upon ugly and barren ends. If Fanny and Ernest and I had shown any stoutness against the disadvantages of our start in life, if we had won for ourselves any knowledge or respect, we inherited that much steadfastness from her; such honesty as we had was hers. If her moral harshness had overshadowed and embittered our adolescence, her passionate mothering had sheltered our childhood. Our father would have loved us, wondered at us and left us about. But early in her life, that fear, that terror-stricken hatred of sex that overshadowed the Christian centuries, that frantic resort to the suppressions, subjugations and disciplines of a stereotyped marriage in its harshest form, a marriage as easy to step into and as hard to leave as a steel trap with its teeth hidden by the most elaborate secrecies and misrepresentations, had set its pitiless grip upon my mother’s imagination and blackened all the happier impulses in life for her. She was ready, if necessary, to pass all her children through the fires of that Moloch, if by so doing their souls might be saved. She did it the more bitterly because she was doing it against the deeper undeveloped things in her own nature.

“Such things, more dimly appreciated perhaps, passed through the mind of Harry Mortimer Smith, my former self, as he stood beside his dead mother. He was torn—I was torn—by a sense of irrational separation and by the haunting persuasion of lost opportunities. There were things I felt that I might have said, propitious moments I might have seized to make things better between us. I had differed from her so harshly; I might have been so much kinder to her and still have held my way. She lay there a feeble, little, old woman, thin, worn and prematurely aged. How often had I struck at her with all my rebel strength, blind to the fact that I could wound her as only a child can wound the mother who bore it. She had been darkened and I also had been darkened, and now—now it was all too late. The door had closed between us. And was closed for ever. For ever....”

§ 12

“The year and a half that intervened between my mother’s death and the beginning of the First World War—the War that came before the Poison Gas War and the Great Desolation—were years of rapid growth for me, mental and physical alike. I remained with Matilda Good because I had come to love that clumsy, wise, friendly creature almost as if she was my second mother, but now I was prosperous enough to occupy the whole of the second floor and to have a sitting-room separate from my bedroom. I still came down to the underground breakfast-room for breakfast or supper or high tea because I liked talking with Matilda. Prue had married Mr. Pettigrew by that time, and in her stead two grey and sedulous women came in—they were sisters, one a spinster and the other the wife of a broken-down prize-fighter—to do the drudgeries Prue and my mother had done.

“My chief companion in those days was my sister Fanny. Our childhood’s alliance was renewed and strengthened. We had a need for each other; we were able to help each other as no one else could help us. I found out very soon that Fanny’s life was divided into two very unequal parts; that she had hours and sometimes days of excitement and happiness with Newberry, who loved her greatly and gave her all the time he could steal away for her and introduced her to such friends as he could trust to respect her and keep their secret, and also she had long stretches of uneventful solitude in which she was terribly left to herself. My sister Fanny was plucky and loyal and devoted, but before we two got together again I think she found those grey intervals of suspended animation dreary and dangerous and sometimes almost intolerable. Often she had nothing to live for at all, nothing bright and vital, but the almost daily note, a hasty word or so he scribbled to her. And the better he was, the worse it was for her. The fact that he was pleasant and delightful and deeply in love with her, the very brightness of being with him, made those great intervals seem darker and duller.”

“Hadn’t she work?” asked Sunray.

“And fellow workers, and other women?” asked Firefly.

“Not in her position. Not as an unmarried woman—of lowly origins—with a lover.”

“But there were others in the same position? Surely there were many!”

“A scattered class, a class made to be ashamed of itself. Newberry and Fanny were lovers, such lovers as we are to-day; they got through with it and at last, I believe, they married according to the custom of the time. But they were the exceptional ones, they knew what they wanted and had stout hearts. Most of these irregular unions succumbed to the boredom in between and to the temptations of separation. Forgetfulness and jealousy played havoc with these insecure couples. The girls in their phases of loneliness picked up with other men and the first lover suspected their infidelities and strayed away. I have a lot to tell you yet about jealousy in the old world; it was not regarded as an ugly thing but as a rather high-spirited thing. People let it go and were proud of it. And the majority of these irregular unions were not even love unions in the first place, they were vice unions, dishonest on either side. Drugs and drink crept very easily into lives divided between over-excitement and tedium and darkened by a general disapproval. The defiant pose was the easiest pose. The unmarried lover was made a social outcast and driven towards other sorts of social outcasts, more evil and unhappy.... You see perhaps now why my sister Fanny was rather alone and aloof, for all that she belonged to a numerous class.

“I suppose,” said Sarnac, “that the object of that rigid legal marriage of the old world was to keep lovers together. In countless cases it kept the wrong people together and lovers apart. But then you must remember that in those days children were supposed to be providential accidents; they were indeed accidents of cohabitation and that altered all the conditions of the question. There were no proper schools for children, no sort of refuge if the parents parted and tore the home asunder. We are so secure; it is hard to imagine now the chancy insecurity of the ancient days. It is hard to imagine the dangers that hung about an unprotected child. In our world nowadays we all seem to get paired; sooner or later each finds a mate and marriage is a natural and necessary relationship instead of a compulsory device. All the priests of all the religions that have ever been in the world could not bind me to Sunray more firmly than I am bound to-day. Does one get a book and an altar to marry the axe to its handle?...

“None of which does in the least degree affect the fact that my sister Fanny suffered dreadfully from loneliness before she rediscovered me.

“She was full of curiosities and enterprise, and she took possession of my leisure to explore all sorts of shows and resorts in and about old London, museums, picture-galleries, parks, gardens and heaths, that I should otherwise never have visited. Indeed she might not have visited them either if I had not been available as her escort, because in that world of crazy suppressions, most of these places were haunted by furtive love-hunters and feeble-minded folk who might have been irritating and tiresome to a solitary girl so pretty as Fanny. They would have followed her about and accosted her when they got her alone, and thrust their disagreeable cravings between her and the beauty and sunshine.

“But together we went gaily to all sorts of interesting things. This old London I am describing to you had a large share of parks and gardens; there was a pleasing quaintness about all of them and much unpremeditated loveliness. There was a certain Richmond Park, to which we often resorted, with many fine old trees and grassy spaces and wildernesses of bracken, that got very yellow and gay in autumn, and a quantity of deer. You might have been transported from this age to Richmond Park two thousand years ago, and still fancied yourself in the northland parks of to-day. The great trees, like nearly all trees in those days, were, it is true, infested with fungus and partly decayed, but Fanny and I never noticed that. They seemed great healthy trees to us. And there was a view from a hill-crest of the winding Thames, a very delightful view. And then there were the oddest old gardens and flower spaces at Kew. I remember a quite good rock-garden and glass-houses of flowers; the brightest flowers the old world imagined possible. And there were paths through a jungle of rhododendra, primitive small rhododendra, but bright coloured and a great delight to Fanny and me. There was a place where we had tea at little tables in the open air. In that frowsty old germ-saturated world with its dread of draughts and colds and coughs it gave one a bright sense of adventure to eat food in the open air.

“We went to museums and picture-galleries and talked about what the pictures meant and we talked of a thousand things together. There comes back to me one conversation we had at a place called Hampton Court, a queer, old, red-brick palace with a great grape-vine under glass and an ancient garden beside the Thames. There were flower-beds full of half-wild herbaceous flowers, and we walked beside them under trees until we came to a low wall that looked upon the river, and we sat down on a seat and there, after a silence, suddenly Fanny, like one who has been pent up beyond endurance, began talking of love.

“She began by asking questions about the girls I had met and the girls at Thunderstone House. I described one or two of them to her. My chief friend among them was Milly Kimpton from the counting-house; we had got to the pitch of taking teas together and such-like friendly acts. ‘That’s not love,’ said Fanny the wise, ’lending each other books. You don’t begin to know what love is yet, Harry.

“‘But you will, Harry—you will.

“‘Don’t you be too late about it, Harry. There’s nothing in life like loving someone, Harry. People don’t talk to you about it and lots of people don’t know what they are missing. It’s all the difference between being nothing or something. It’s all the difference between being dead or alive. When you are really loving someone you’re all right and nothing can harm you. And when you aren’t, nothing is right, everything is wrong. But love is a queer thing, Harry, and about as dreadful as it is dear. It gets wrong. Sometimes it all goes wrong and it’s awful; it slips from you somehow; it goes and you’re left mean and little—ever so mean!—and you can’t get back and it seems you hardly want to get back. You’re dead and you’re damned and done for, and then again it all comes back again like the sunrise—like being born afresh.’

“And then with a desperate shamelessness she began to talk of Newberry and how much she loved him. She told little irrelevant things about his ‘ways.’ ‘He comes to me whenever he can,’ she said, and repeated this presently. ‘He’s all my life,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what he is to me....’

“Then her constant dread of a separation crept up to the surface of her thoughts.

“‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it will always go on like this.... I don’t care if it does, I don’t care if I never marry him. I wouldn’t care—not if at last I’m thrown aside. I’d go through it all again and count myself lucky even if I knew for certain I was to be dropped and cast aside.’

“Queer Fanny! Her face was flushed and her eyes shining with tears. I asked myself what had been happening.

“‘He’ll never throw me aside, Harry. He’ll never throw me aside. He can’t. He can’t. He’s half as old again as I am and yet he comes to me in his trouble. Once—— Once he cried to me. Men, all of you, are so strong and yet so helpless....

“‘You’ve got to have a woman to come to....

“‘Just a little while ago—— Well—— He was ill. He was very ill. He has pain in his eyes and sometimes he’s afraid about them. This time, suddenly, he had frightful pains. And he thought he couldn’t see. He came straight to me, Harry. He called a cab and came to me, and he came feeling his way upstairs to me and fumbling at the door; and I nursed him in my darkened room until the pain had gone. He didn’t go home, Harry, where there were servants and nurses to be got and attendants and everything; he came to me. It was me he came to. Me! He’s my man. He knows I’d give my life for him. I would, Harry. I’d cut my body to pieces bit by bit, if it would make him happy.

“‘It wasn’t so much the pain he had, Harry, as the fear. He’s not the one to mind a bit of pain or be afraid of many things. But he was afraid and scared. He’d never been afraid before, but he was afraid of going blind—he was too afraid to go to the specialist. It was like a little child, Harry, and him so big and strong—afraid of the dark. He thought they’d get hold of him so that perhaps he’d not be able to come to me. He thought he wouldn’t be able to see his beloved magazines and papers any more. And the pain just turned the screw on him. He clung to me.

“‘It was me made him go. I took him there. He wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been for me. He’d have just let things drift on and not a soul in the world, for all his money and power, to mother him. And then he might really have gone blind if it hadn’t been taken in time. I pretended to be his secretary and I took him and waited in the waiting-room for him. I dreaded they’d hurt him. I was listening for something to happen all the time. I had to look at their old Graphics as if I didn’t care a rap what they were doing to him. And then he came out smiling with a green shade on and I had to stand up stiff and cool and wait to hear what he had to say. I was scared by that shade, Harry. Scared! I held my breath. I thought it had come. “It isn’t so bad as we fancied, Miss Smith,” he says—offhand like. “You kept the taxi? You’ll have to take my arm I’m afraid.” “Certainly sir,” I said, mimpsy-like. I was careful to be kind of awkward taking his arm. There were people there in the waiting-room and you never know. Acted respectful. Me!—that has had him in my arms a thousand times.

“‘But when we were in the taxi and safe he pushed up the shade and took me into his arms and he hugged me and he cried—he cried wet tears. And held me. Because he’d got me still and his sight still and the work he loves to do. Things would have to be done to his eyes but he’d keep his sight—and he has. There’s been no trouble now. Not for months.’

“She sat looking away from me over the shining river.

“‘How could he ever leave me?’ she said. ‘After a time like that?’

“Stoutly she spoke, but even to my youthful eyes she seemed little and lonely, sitting there on the old red wall.

“I thought of the busy bustling man with the big tortoise-shell glasses away from her, and of one or two things I had heard whispered about him. It seemed to me then that no men were good enough for the women in the world.

“‘When he’s tired or in trouble,’ said Fanny, sure and still, ‘he’ll always come back to me.’”