Part 8

This, of course, was where the Harrisons came in. I liked Harrison. If I had not liked him, I should not be making this statement, which is, I am afraid, entirely contrary to the public-school tradition. Harrison was a man of very great sincerity, no imagination and curiously cursed with nerves. It is all wrong for a man of his type to have nerves—nobody believes or understands it. In theory, he was extremely broad-minded, generous and admiringly devoted to his wife; in practice, he was narrow, jealous and nagging. To hear him speak of her, one would have thought him the ideal of chivalrous consideration; to hear him speak to her, one would have thought him a suspicious brute. Her enormous vitality, her inconsequence, her melodrama (that is the real point, I think), got on his nerves, and produced an uncontrollable reaction of irritability. He would have liked her to shine for him and for him only; yet a kind of interior shyness prompted him to repress her demonstrations and choke off her confidences. “That will do, my dear”; “Pull yourself together, my girl,” checked a caress or an enthusiasm; a grunt, a “Can’t you see I’m busy,” a “Why have you suddenly got these ideas about” music or astronomy or whatever the latest interest might be. Into the muffling of his outer manner, her radiance sank and was quenched. Yet to others he spoke with earnest pride of his wife’s brilliance and many-sided intelligence.

Harrison’s instinct was to dominate, but by nature and training he was unfitted to dominate that particular woman. It could have been done in two ways—by capturing the limelight, or by sheer physical exuberance. But neither of these things was in his power; he was inexpressive and sexually unimaginative, as so many decent men are.

He had his means of self-expression: his water-colours and his cookery. It was his misfortune that in the former he should have been weak, conventional and sentimental, and bold and free only in the latter. I believe, indeed, that all the imagination he possessed ran to the composition of sauces and flavourings. It is surely a matter for investigation whether cookery is not one of the subtlest and most severely intellectual of the arts; else, why do its more refined manifestations appeal to women hardly at all and to men only in their later and more balanced age? Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. If Harrison could have made a big public splash with anything, she could have understood that and preened herself happily as the wife of a notoriety. But she had no eyes for the half-lights.

At first it was amazing to me that Lathom showed so much patience with Harrison. Lathom is a barbarian about food and magnificently intolerant of bad painting. Twaddle about Art and Atmosphere got short shrift with him. Yet he let Harrison bore him to any extent with his prattle and his picturesque bits. Harrison did, indeed, treat him with a deference flattering in a man of his age, but under ordinary circumstances that would merely have infuriated Lathom, who, to do him justice, is no drawing-room lion. It was not that Harrison provided the response which I gave so awkwardly. In time I realised that, though I had my selfish reasons for refusing to see it. Mrs. Harrison was the radiant prism for Lathom’s brilliance, and Lathom used Harrison in that service as carelessly as in the old days he had used the prefects’ toasting-forks. He saw the tool ready to his hand and took it, without shame and without remorse.

I have put all this down, as I saw it, without consideration for the feelings of anybody. It is useless to blame people for their peculiarities of temperament. At the time I did not interfere, because, to tell the truth, I was working hard and involved in my own concerns, and did not want to be bothered with Lathom’s affairs. Besides, I rather prided myself on a cynical detachment in such matters. As it turns out, I should have done far better to preserve this cheerful selfishness throughout. That I did not was again due to sentimentality and public-school spirit, and I am heartily ashamed of it.

I suppose I must say something about Mrs. Harrison. It is difficult, because I both understood and disliked her. Just because she had no use for me, I was detached enough to see through her. I have not the superb and centralised self-confidence that could strike the colours from her prism. I come back to that image, because it expresses her with more accuracy than any description. My diffusion left her dead glass. But in Lathom’s concentration she shone. He gave her the colour and splendour her dramatic soul craved for. She saw herself robed with all the glowing radiance that dazzled her half-educated eyes in the passionate pages of Hichens and de Vere Stacpoole. I hardly think she was wicked—I do not think she had any moral standards of her own. She would adopt any attitude that was offered to her, provided it was exciting and colourful enough. I think she had enjoyed herself at her office; she had radiated there in the little warmth of popularity which always surrounds people of abundant physical and emotional vigour, but at home she had only the devotion of Miss Milsom, with her warped mind and perilous preoccupations. She visualised herself into the character of a wronged and slighted woman, because that was the easiest way to evoke clamorous response from Miss Milsom—and, of course, from Lathom when he came along.

It is rather surprising, I feel, that Harrison was never jealous of Lathom, as he was of every other man, including myself. I fancy it was because he looked on Lathom as his own friend, primarily. Now I come to think of it, it was of his wife’s personal life that he was jealous—her office, her interests, the friends she had made for herself—everything that had not come to her through him. My position was different. He distrusted me because of my work and opinions. I had written an unpleasant book and I had no definite moral judgments. From such a man, nothing but impropriety could be expected. He was wary and uneasy in my presence. He could talk food with me, and did, but only, I think, in despair for want of other appreciation. He was fearfully lonely, poor soul, and I failed him miserably. And he was jockeyed by me into letting his wife’s picture be shown at the Academy—but only because he thought I was belittling his wife’s character. His change of mind was a chivalrous rush to her defence. I was pleased with myself at the time, I remember; I suppose my light-hearted diplomacy was about as disastrous as diplomacy usually is. What devilish things we do when we try to be clever. After all, Harrison probably understood his wife only too well, but he could not bear that anyone should suspect the clay of his idol. He destroyed himself rather than let her down. I rather think that Harrison had something heroic behind his primness and his gold spectacles.

There was one thing which I ought most certainly to have left severely alone, and that was the final disaster, in which Miss Milsom was concerned. For once I was seized with the idiotic whim to play the martyr and the noble-spirited friend. At the very moment when my reasonable and deliberate policy of detachment should have come to my aid, I must choose to take the centre of the stage and indulge in high-mindedness.

Lathom woke me up. He came and sat on my bed, and I noticed with irritation that he had been borrowing my dressing-gown again. He always took things.

“I’m in a mess,” he said.

“Oh?” said I.

He told me what had happened. I have seen Miss Milsom’s account. It is accurate in all points but one. Far from repulsing Lathom, she had encouraged him. He had broken from her at the foot of the staircase with considerable difficulty. He was filled with a righteous disgust, which struck me as funny under the circumstances.

“Disgusting old woman,” said he.

“True,” said I. “None should have passions but the young and the beautiful. What are you going to do? Serve with Leah seven years in the hope of getting Rachel in the end?”

“Don’t be filthy,” said he. “There will be a row about this, I’m afraid.”

“Very likely,” said I. “But that is your affair.”

“Not altogether,” said Lathom. “You see, she thinks it was you.”

“Me?” I was considerably taken aback.

“Yes. You see, I had your dressing-gown——”

“So I observe.”

“She recognised the feel—the quilting, you know—damn it all, she rubbed her ugly face in it——”

“Really,” I said, “the kittenish old creature.”

All the same, I was not pleased. Gestures which delight in the right person are so indecent when performed by the wrong. In fact, it is only when we contemplate the loves of unpleasant people that we see the indecency of passion. It is disgusting to think of the amorous transports of, let us say, Mr. Pecksniff. Grotesque characters only exist for us from the waist upwards.

“I suppose,” I went on, “it didn’t occur to you to mention that you were not me?”

“I didn’t say anything. I got away. I didn’t want to make a noise. In fact . . .”

In fact, he had made use of me cheerfully enough, and was now wondering whether I should put up with it.

“Look here,” I said, “what do you intend to do? If you want to carry on an intrigue with Mrs. Harrison, I tell you, frankly, I’m going to get out and leave you to it. It bores me and I don’t care about these alarms and excursions. Anyhow, why don’t you leave the woman alone? You’re doing her no good.”

Then he exploded and started to tramp about. She was the greatest miracle God had ever made. They were meant for one another. They had got into each other’s blood and all the rest of it. That, of course. Equally, of course, if Harrison had been a decent sort of man he would have sacrificed his own feelings. (As if Lathom had ever thought of sacrificing anything.) But Harrison was a brute, who did not appreciate the wonderful woman who had been entrusted to him. Lathom could suffer himself, but he could not bear to see her suffer. It was all so damned unjust. The man was not fit to live. He deserved to be murdered for his rotten paintings, let alone for his cruelty to his wife. And to think that his revolting hands should have the right . . .

And so on.

It is so very odd that in moments of excitement we should all talk like characters in a penny novelette. However long one lives, I suppose it always strikes one with the same shock of surprise.

“That’ll do,” I said at last. “We can take that as read. If Mrs. Harrison feels as you do about it——”

He interrupted me to assure me at unnecessary length that she did.

“Very well,” I said, “why not do the decent and sensible thing and take her away? You won’t find this kind of backstairs intrigue permanently inspiring, you know. Besides, it seems to be the kind of thing you do very badly.”

“I wish to God,” replied Lathom, “that I could take her away. Heaven and earth, man, do you think I wouldn’t do it like a shot if I had half a chance? But she won’t hear of it. She’s got some poisonous idea about not making a scandal. It’s this damned awful suburban respectability that’s crushing the beautiful life out of her. When you see what she was meant to be—free and splendid and ready to proclaim her splendid passion to the world—and then see what this foul blighter has made of her——”

“Well, there you are,” said I. “That’s the raw, red life of the suburbs, as per specification. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Look here, Lathom, buzz off and let me get to sleep, there’s a good chap. You can blow your feelings off in the morning.”

“Oh, all right.” He got up from the bed and hesitated at the door. “I only thought I’d warn you,” he added, a little awkwardly, “in case the old woman says anything to you.”

“Dashed good of you,” I said dryly. “What am I to do? Make love to the confidante while you make love to the mistress, and go stark mad in white linen?”

“Oh, you needn’t bother to do that,” said he. “I should just treat the whole thing as a joke. Or, if she makes a fuss, apologise and say you were a bit screwed. I’ll back you up.”

I was so infuriated with him for shoving the responsibility on to me in this light-hearted way that I told him to clear out, which he did.

As a matter of fact, I rather under-estimated the seriousness of the thing. I mean, I did not realise the lengths to which Miss Milsom’s resentment might go. I determined merely to avoid the woman in future, and, in fact, treat the whole episode as if it hadn’t occurred. I thought Lathom had received a salutary shock and useful lesson on the difficulties attending suburban love-affairs, and that he might bethink himself and stop the whole thing before it had gone too far. A good thing, too. I was clearing out and getting married at Easter, and there, so far as I was concerned, was an end of it. Lathom could fish it out for himself after that. My book had made a sudden success, and I was feeling rather cock-a-hoop with myself.

Consequently, I was quite unprepared for the arrival of Harrison with his accusation. He was dead-white with fury and intensely quiet. He did not offer me a single opening by scattering his usual fiery particles of rage. He put the accusation before me. Such and such things had been stated—what had I to reply? I tried to dismiss the thing with airy persiflage. He was not abashed by my assumption of ridicule. He simply asked whether I denied being on the landing at that time, and, if not, what I was doing there. When I refused to answer so absurd an accusation, he told me, without further argument, to leave the house. His wife must not be subjected to any kind of disagreeable contact. The mere fact that I could take such an attitude to the matter (and, indeed, my attitude had nothing dignified about it) showed that I was an entirely unsuitable person to come into any sort of contact with Mrs. Harrison. He was there to protect her from persons of my sort. Would I go quietly or wait to be removed by force?

The deceived husband is usually considered to be a ridiculous figure, but Harrison was not ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder whether he was deceived. I thought at the time that he was, but perhaps the light of faith in his eyes was really the torch of martyrdom. It is fine to die for a faith, but perhaps it is still finer to die for a thing you do not believe in. I do not know. He baffled me. If the garrison was disarmed and beaten behind that impenetrable façade, I was never to know it. Nobody would ever know it.

It is ironical that Lathom, coming to Suburbia to find raw, red life, should have failed to recognise it when he saw it. It was there, all right, in this dry little man, with no imagination beyond beef-steak and mushrooms, but it did not wear bright colours, and Lathom liked colours. The thing was farcical. And I believe I was the most farcical fool in the whole outfit. Even then, the mocking censor which views one’s personality from the outside sat sniggering in a corner of my brain. Here was I, a successful novelist, presented with this monstrous situation—one which was quite in my own line of work, too—and I hadn’t even had the wits to see it coming. The thing was a gift.

I could see myself tackling it, too, in quite the right modern, cynical way. No nonsense. No foolish shibboleths about honour and self-sacrifice. A lucid exposure of the situation—an epigram or so—a confrontation of Harrison (as representing the old morality) with the unsentimental frankness of the new.

And the damnable thing was that I didn’t do it. When it came to saying, “My good man, you are mistaken. My friend Lathom is the man you ought to be after. He and your wife are carrying on a love-affair, for which you are largely to blame, if, indeed, any blame attaches to these unsophisticated manifestations of natural selection”—when it came to the point, I didn’t say it. Looking at Harrison, I couldn’t say it. I behaved like a perfect little gentleman, and said nothing whatever.

After that, I can only suppose that I became quite intoxicated by this new and heroic view of myself. I went straight off to Lathom and told him about it. I oozed priggishness. I said:

“I have stood by you. I have kept silence. I have agreed to leave the house at once. But I will only do it if you will promise me to chuck the whole business—clear out at the same time that I do. Leave these people alone. You have no right to ruin the life of this decent man and his wife, who were getting along quite well in their way till you came along.”

I grew solemn and portentous about it. I enlarged on Harrison’s sufferings. I painted a vivid picture of the miseries the woman must needs undergo in the course of a secret love-affair. I called it vulgar. I called it wicked and selfish. I used expressions which I thought had perished from the vocabulary since the ’eighties. And I ended by saying:

“If you do not promise me to do the decent thing, you cannot expect me to stand by you.” Which was mere blackmail.

There must be more of the old inhibitions alive in even the most modern of us than one would readily credit. Lathom was actually abashed by my eloquence. He protested at first; then he grew sulky; finally, he was touched.

“You’re quite right, old man,” he said, “damn it. I’ve been behaving like a cad. I couldn’t make her happy. I ought to go away. I will go away. You’ve been damned decent to me.” He wrung my hand. I clapped him sentimentally on the shoulder. We wallowed in our own high-mindedness. It must have been a touching sight.

The first disagreeable consequence of this foolish interference with the course of events arrived in the shape of a letter from my fiancée. Miss Milsom had felt it her duty to send one of those warnings. I dashed up to Scotland to put matters right. The greatest compliment I can pay to the open mind and generous common sense of Elizabeth is to say plainly that I had no difficulty about doing this. But I was reminded with a slight shock that Victorian quixotry has a way of landing one in complications. However, no harm appeared to be done, and later on I received a letter from Lathom, dated from Paris, in which he informed me that he was playing the game (the words were proof in themselves of the condition to which I must have reduced him), and that, after a highly emotional scene, Mrs. Harrison and he had agreed to part.

* * * * *

I got married soon after that, and forgot all about Lathom and the Harrisons—the more so as Elizabeth did not encourage me to dwell on the subject. A natural jealousy, I thought, particularly as she had not seemed altogether impressed by my quixotic gesture. But women are unconquerable realists, and nowadays they are not taught to flatter male delusions as they once were. It is uncomfortable to think that perhaps our repressed Victorian ancestresses were as clear-sighted as their franker granddaughters. If so, how they must have laughed, as they made their meek responses. In this century we do know, more or less, what they are thinking, and meet them on equal terms—at least, I hope we do.

I was reminded of Lathom by receiving my ticket for the Private View at the Academy on May 3rd. We had had our honeymoon, and were ready to return to our place in the world. Almost the first thing I saw, as we surged through the crowd, was the painted face of Mrs. Harrison, blazing out from a wall full of civic worthiness and fagged society beauties, with the loud insistence of a begonia in a bed of cherry-pie. There was a little knot of people in front of it, and I recognised Marlowe, the man who paints those knotty nudes, and created a sensation two years ago with “The Wrestlers.” He was enjoying his usual pastime of being rude to Garvice, the portrait-painter. His voice bellowed out over the din, and his black cloak flapped gustily from a flung-out arm. “Of course you don’t like it,” he boomed lustily, “it kills everything in the place dead. That’s none of your damned art—that’s painting—a _painting_, I tell you.” Several pained people, who had been discussing values in low tones, shrank at the unseemly noise, and dodged waveringly from the sweep of his hairy fist. “None of you poor pimples,” went on Marlowe, threateningly “can _see_ colour—or thickness—you’re only fit to colour Christmas cards at twopence a hundred. There isn’t a painter in the whole beastly boarding-house crowd of you except this chap.” I will do Marlowe the justice to say that, except where nudes are concerned, he is singularly generous to the younger men. He glowered round through his bush of beard and spectacles, and caught sight of me. “Hullo, Munting!” he bawled. “Come here. Somebody said you knew this fellow Lathom. Who is he? Why haven’t you brought him round to see me?”

I explained that I had only just returned from my honeymoon, and introduced Marlowe to my wife. Marlowe roared approval in his characteristic way, and added:

“Come along on Friday—same old crowd, you know, and bring this man Lathom. I want to know him. He can _paint_.”

He spun round to face the picture again, and the crowd retired precipitately to avoid him.

“Well,” said a man’s voice, almost in my ear, “and how do you think it looks, now it’s hung?”

I spun round and saw Lathom, and with him, before I could adopt any suitable attitude to the situation, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, flung up from the waves of sightseers like the ball from a Rugby scrum.

Retreat was hopeless, because Marlowe now had me tightly by the shoulder, while with his other hand he sketched large, thumby gestures towards the portrait to indicate the modelling and brushwork.

“Hullo, Munting!” said Lathom.

“Hullo, Lathom!” I said, and added nervously, “Hullo-ullo-ullo!” like something by P. G. Wodehouse.

“Good God!” exploded Marlowe, “is this the man? The man and the model, by all that’s lucky,” he bellowed on, without waiting for my embarrassed answer. “I’m Marlowe; and I say you’ve done a good piece of work.”