CHAPTER X

A HERO-WORSHIPPER AGAIN GLIMPSES HIS HERO, AFTER MANY YEARS

To look up Trist was, I knew, both necessary and desirable, and yet I dreaded it too. Not quite as I had dreaded the visit to Esher, but as a duty to be put off. Why? For we had been great friends; more, he had been my exemplar, my model. His year or two of seniority, his _flair_ for civilisation, as I might call it, had set him in the position of mentor. I had been rather at his feet than by his side. That was thirty and more years ago; and now, ... do you understand?

In the days when Trist and I shared rooms, I was in the City and he sub-edited an evening paper. He was fresh from Oxford, wealthy, contemptuous, and gay; he took his duties very lightly, but was an admirable man for the post, and did much to establish the paper's reputation on the humorous side.

Although I could not afford it, I went to the same tailor and hosier; I smoked the same brand, which was then a simple thing to do, for it was before the second discovery of tobacco, so to speak, when there were few mixtures, and no "Pioneers of the Smoking World," and it was possible to walk twenty yards along a street and not pass three tobacconists. I am not naturally a hero-worshipper, but Trist found me at an impressionable age and he filled an empty space. I had better have been in love, no doubt, but that was not my way.

Soon after I had left England he threw up journalism, travelled, then did some political private-secretarial work and so forth, and as relation after relation died and left him money he gradually became a connoisseur of life and nothing else, and settled down in Gray's Inn, permanently, with his floating population of fifty pairs of perfect trousers, a profile glass, and an invaluable man.

In Buenos Ayres I had written to Trist now and then, and he to me: enough to inform each other that the end was not yet, but little more.

I continued to put off the call as long as I could. There is something very perilous in the resumption of intercourse after many years, especially when the man you are going to see was once your hero. Heroes do not wear well, and it is a question whether they are less heroic to their valets who see them continually or to old admirers who have acquired thirty years of experience since they saw them last. I was going, I felt, to see Trist with very clear eyes, and I did not want to. I am absurdly fond of the past.

Few friendships, I suppose, wear honestly through a long life. The friends do not progress equally; one matures quickly, the other slowly. One becomes pious, the other impious. They marry (this is the commonest interruption of all) antipathetic wives. It is all as it should be if they were really friends once, for friends, in fact, belong to periods rather than to all time, although sentiment would have it otherwise. One is always changing a little, although of radical change there is almost none, and new friends are found in tune with each stage. I could admit no longer any need for Trist, and yet all the same I longed to see him and dreaded it too.

There was another obstacle in the way. We were both bachelors. In every man, I take it, even the most married, there sleeps a bachelor; but a bachelor through and through as I have been, and as Trist is, is a less negotiable quantity. No one probably has more affectionate impulses than I,--a warmer wish to help and comfort,--and yet I am always conscious of a slight barrier between me and those I would befriend and assist, a barrier which probably would not be there had I married. Marriage, there is no doubt, is a solvent; and the curious thing is that the married reveal their state: marconigrams pass.

Bachelors have many advantages, but they are all minor. Perhaps the greatest advantage they enjoy is that of still being able to follow an impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them all the pleasure that it would give many a man who has tasted restriction. Feeding on impulses can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll.

As it happened, fate took the matter out of my hands, for I walked bang into Trist one afternoon under my own roof--that is to say, in Bemerton's shop. He was engaged in the characteristic occupation of making some one do something for him, and in this case he was dealing with such ordinarily unpromising material as Miss Ruth Wagstaff. He seemed so genuinely glad to see me again that I felt ashamed of having so long deferred my visit; and I promised to dine with him that very evening.

I found Trist in very comfortable, almost luxurious, rooms, at the top of a seventeenth-century house in Gray's Inn, overlooking a beautiful grave square on one side and a beautiful grave lawn on the other. Not quite the true Oxford cloister, but very near it; and with busy London within a stone's-throw. His only companion is his man, Jack Rogers, once a sailor in the King's Navy, but now through the loss of an eye enjoying a pension on land, although only twenty-nine years of age, and acting as valet, cook, and parlour-maid to my old friend. Why a navy which owes most of its prestige to the activities of a man who lacked not only one eye but also one arm should be in such a hurry to get rid of Jack I cannot understand; for he sees far more with his widowed orb than the ordinary observer does with two, and is quite the most capable all-round hand I have yet met.

That Trist should live in Gray's Inn, off Holborn, of all streets, and that his man should not have been for some years with the Duke of B---- and the Earl of A----, are the surprising things; but then Trist makes a point of never belonging wholly to any type. His aim is always to be original somewhere, although never original enough to be conspicuous.

Another of his foibles is to be thought worldly to a point of cynicism; but he is of course far too English to be a genuine success, although he may deceive the poor observer. Every man has some ideal, and Trist has been true to his ever since I have known him. I should describe his ideal, which he acquired as quite a youth, as a blend of Lytton's Zanoni and Meredith's Adrian Harley, the wise youth. (For one has to get one's durable exemplars from books; in real life one finds them out.) Underneath, however, he has a sympathetic kindliness which has prompted him to many actions wholly out of keeping with his cool exterior.

He does nothing: he is a true dilettante; but though he does nothing he knows all. He studies the papers, collects gossip, sees the new plays, reads the new books, attends sales at Christie's and Sotheby's. Half-past seven finds him in evening dress as naturally as it finds a baby in bed. He is never in a hurry, and never late. His cigarette case is always full.

Trist's second ambition (the first being never to be unprepared) is to own the best Old Crome. His life may be said almost to have been dedicated to Old Crome. He has three on his walls, and he wants others, but they must be better than the three; which to my eye are perfect. Two are views of Household Heath, which stood for the promised land to this painter, and the other is a cottage and a tree and a peasant woman. They are the only pictures in the room. In the dining-room one painter again is represented, and one only, the rare and marvellous Bonington, who perished in his pride, but not before he had revolutionised French landscape painting,--all water-colours. Trist spends hours every week in curiosity shops, and in the summer, when he is driven from London by sheer lack of activity there, he makes his holiday in Norfolk, partly sailing on the Broads and partly bicycling among the farmhouses, into which with masterly address he finds his way and scans the walls for the Master's glow. His manners are charming, and he rarely meets with a rebuff. Down to the present time, however, he tells me, one Crome and one only has he found that he covets--and that he cannot get. The owner, a strong wealthy farmer of as much independence and will-power as Trist himself, would as soon sell his daughter.

Nothing else moves Trist to feeling. Old Crome and Bonington can light his eye, but for the rest his attitude through life is one of cool, amused detachment and perfect self-possession. I have from time to time set down his _obiter dicta_ on the management of one's affairs in a very civilised progress through this vale of tears; but as I can remember only those that he has dropped in my hearing, the record necessarily is deprived of thousands that may be better,--as indeed I suppose Boswell's also is. (A new collection of Johnson's good things uttered when Boswell was absent would stand almost first among the books we desire. I mentioned this to Mr. Bemerton one day, for we often talk of the impossible books we should like to have. "Yes," he said, "and what a good subject for the forger." He is, by the way, greatly interested in literary forgeries, and keeps a number of them together on a shelf, and is one of the few people who have read _Vortigern_.)

Here, then, are certain of the aphorisms with which Trist would, in his Chesterfieldian manner, instruct his son, if he had anything so ridiculous. All begin with the same words--concerning which I might perhaps say that by "life" Trist does not mean what a poet means, or a saint, or a schoolboy, or a motorist, or even what I mean by it. Trist means by "life" a protected ease. I have jotted them down from time to time as I remembered them--my first thought being mischievously to convict him of inconsistency. I see now, however, that one definite idea connects all.

"The art of life," says Trist, "is the pigeon-holing of women." True enough of Englishmen, at any rate, who want women only when they want them (and then they must behave); but no Frenchman would say it.

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to say the same things to everybody. To differentiate one's treatment of people may be interesting, but it leads to complications."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to assume that no one else has any feelings."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is the use and not abuse of alcohol. A wise _apéritif_ can make a bad dinner almost good, and a bad partner almost negligible."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to be so well known at a good restaurant that you can pay by cheque."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to make your tailor come to you."

"The art of life," says Trist, who hates gossip, "is never to see two unrelated people together; but if you must,--and it can't be helped very easily,--never to mention it again. Three-quarters of the ills of life proceed from the report that So-and-so has been seen with So-and-so. There is too much talk. A wise autocrat would cut out the tongue of every baby. A silent society would probably be a happy one; because it would be largely without scandal." That seemed to me, I said, too drastic, and I recommended instead the example (from my Chinese book) of Hsin Shao, of the second and third century A.D., "who is now chiefly remembered in connection with his practice of devoting the first day of every month to criticism of his neighbours and their conduct."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is never to be out of small change."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to keep down acquaintances. One's friends one can manage, but one's acquaintances can be the devil."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to show your hand. There is no diplomacy like candour. You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to live near a post office, but never to go there one's self."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is never to think you know what other people are feeling about you. You are sure to be wrong."

"The art of life," says Trist, "is to be thought odd. Everything will then be permitted to you. The best way to be thought odd is to return a cheque now and then on a conscientious scruple. There is no such investment."

Trist also has a very interesting and ingenious theory that goes more deeply into the management of life. "I do not believe," he once said to me, "in carving out our own destiny, but I believe that the unexpected happens so often, and the expected so seldom, that one might by steadily anticipating ills avoid calamity."

Trist, however, is not really as monstrous as these maxims would make him out to be. For the full play of his personality he must undoubtedly be calm and prosperous and spoiled; but once he is in that state of bliss he can be extraordinarily kind. One would not see him carrying a poor woman's bundle, or putting himself out over a street casualty; but he has befriended several young artists and musicians, and he lends money capriciously to needy persons at the very moment when money means most to them. He likes to play Fate.

I came away from his rooms that first evening a little saddened. I could not help contrasting the past, when he was so necessary to me, with the present, when we each made the other constrained, and had grown so naturally into the power of doing without each other that the early conditions could never be restored.

But since then I have fallen into the old Trist habit again, and now I like to be with him almost as much as ever, although I am no longer plastic as I was. I like his fastidiousness, and it amuses me (and perhaps does me good) to watch the skill with which he looks ahead by instinct to ensure his comfort.

We are to go down to Miss Gold's to tea one afternoon next week. Trist, it seems, has a taxi-cab driver in his pocket, and he will convey us there. "I telephone him when I want him," said Trist; "it is far better than being bothered with a car of one's own."

Of course.