PART TWO

_ANDANTE CANTABILE_

_ANDANTE CANTABILE_

[ I ]

Bank pass-books and private account-books are revealing documents, strangely neglected by biographers. One of the most useful things to know about any hero is the extent of his income, whether earned or unearned, whether crescendo or diminuendo. Complicated _états d’âme_ are the luxury of leisured opulence. Those who have to earn their living must accept Appearances as Reality, and have little time for metaphysical woes and passions. I once thought of beginning this section with an accurate facsimile of George’s private account and pass books. But that would be _vérisme_. It is enough to say that his unearned income was nil, and his earned income small but crescendo. Like most people who are too high-spirited to work for stated hours at a weekly wage, he drifted into journalism, which may be briefly but accurately defined as the most degrading form of that most degrading vice, mental prostitution. Its resemblance to the less reprehensible form is striking. Only the more fashionable cocottes of the dual trade make a reasonable income. The similarity between the conditions of the two parallel prostitutions becomes still more remarkable when you reflect that on the physical side you pretend to be a milliner, or a masseuse, or a clergyman’s daughter, or a lady of quality, or even a lady journalist in need of a little aid for which you are prepared to make suitable acknowledgment; and on the mental side you pretend to be a poet, or an expert in something, or a lady of quality, or a duke. Both require suppleness in a supreme degree, and in both the fatal handicaps are honesty, modesty and independence.

All of which George discovered very rapidly; and acted accordingly. But his powers of simulation were inadequate, and consequently he failed at all times to conceal the fact that he possessed some knowledge and beliefs, and held to them. This, of course, for a long time prevented his obtaining work from any but crank periodicals, of which London before the war possessed about three, which believed in allowing contributors to say what they thought. Needless to say, they have since perished; and London journalism is now one compact sun of sweetness and light. If this, or indeed anything, much mattered, one might be tempted to deplore it.

In the course of his _naif_ peregrinations George became temporarily acquainted with numerous personages, whom he classified as morons, abject morons and queer-Dicks. The abject morons were those editors and journalists who sincerely believed in the imbecilities they perpetrated, virtuous apprentices gone to the devil, honest bootblacks out of a job. The morons were those who knew better but pretended not to, and who by long dabbling in pitch had become pitchy. The queer-Dicks were more or less honest cranks, or at least possessed so much vanity and obstinacy that they seemed honest. After a few vague and awkward struggles, George found himself limited to the queer-Dicks. Of these there were three, whom for convenience sake, I shall label Shobbe, Bobbe and Tubbe. Mr. or Herr Shobbe ran a literary review, one of those “advanced” reviews beloved by the English, which move rapidly forward with a crab-like motion. Herr Shobbe was a very great man. Comrade Bobbe ran a Socialist weekly which was subsidized by a demented eugenist and a vegetarian Theosophist. Since Marxian economics, eugenics, pure food and theosophy did not wholly fill its columns, the organ of the intellectual and wage-weary worker permitted regular comments on art and literature. And since none of the directors of the journal knew anything whatever about these subjects, they occasionally and by accident allowed them to be treated by some one with ideas and enthusiasm. Comrade Bobbe was a very great man. As for Mr. Waldo Tubbe, who hailed (why “hailed”?) from the Middle Western districts of the United States, he was an exceedingly ardent and patriotic British Tory, standing for Royalism in Art, Authority in Politics and Classicism in Religion. Unfortunately, there was no dormant peerage in the family; otherwise he would certainly have spent all his modest patrimony in endeavouring to become Lord Tubbe. Since he was an unshakable Anglo-Catholic there were no hopes of a Papal Countship; and Tory governments are proverbially shabby in their treatment of even the most distinguished among their intellectual supporters. Consequently, all Mr. Waldo Tubbe could do in that line was to hint at his aristocratic English ancestry, to use his (possibly authentic) coat-of-arms on his cutlery, stationery, toilette articles and book-plates, and know only the “best” people. How George ever got to know him is a mystery, still more how he came to write for a periodical which once advertised that its list of subscribers included four dukes, three marquesses and eleven earls. The only explanation is that Mr. Tubbe’s Americanized Toryism was a bit more lively than the native brand, or that he leaned so very far to the extreme Right that without knowing it he sometimes tumbled into the verge of the extreme Left. But, in any case, Mr. Waldo Tubbe was also a very great man.

Upon the charity of these three gentlemen our hero chiefly but not extravagantly subsisted, skating indeed upon very thin ice in his relations with them, and expending treasures of diplomacy and dissimulation which might have been employed in the service of his Country. It subsequently transpired (why “transpired”?) that his Country did not need his brains, but his blood.

* * * * *

Sunday in London. In the City, nuts, bolts, infinite curious pieces of odd metal, embedded in the black shiny roads, frozen rivers of ink, may be examined without danger. The peace of commerce which passes all desolation. Puritan fervour relapsed to negative depression. Gigantic wings of Ennui folded irresistibly over millions. Vast trails of automobiles hopelessly hooting to escape. Epic melancholy of deserted side-streets where the rhythmic beat of a horse’s hoofs is an adagio of despair. Horrors of Gunnersbury. The spleen of the railway line between Turnham Green and Hammersmith, the villainous sordidness of Raynes Park, the ennui which always vibrates with the waiting train at Gloucester Road Station, emerge triumphant when the Lord is at rest and possess the streets. The rain is one melancholy, and the sun another. The supreme insult of pealing bells morning and evening. Dearly beloved brethren, miserable sinners, stand up, stand up for Jesus. Who will deliver us, who will deliver us from the Christians? O Lord Jesus, come quickly, and get it over.

* * * * *

It was a merry Sunday evening of merry England in the month of March, 1912. After a long day of unremitting but not very remunerative toil, George had gone to call on his friend, Mr. Frank Upjohn. The word “friend” is here, as nearly always, inexact, if by friend is meant one who feels for another a disinterested affection unaccompanied by sexual desire. (Friendship accompanied by sexual desire is love, the phœnix or unicorn of passions.) In the case of George and Mr. Upjohn there was at least a truce to the instinctive hostility and grudging which human beings almost invariably feel for one another. Ties of mutual self-interest bound them. George made jokes and Mr. Upjohn laughed at them: and vice versa. Mr. Upjohn desired to make George a disciple, and George was not averse from making use of Mr. Upjohn. Mutual admiration, implied if not expressed and perhaps not wholly insincere, enabled them to form a small protective nucleus against the oceanic indifference of mankind; and thus feel superior to it. They ate together, and even lent each other small sums of money without security. The word “friend” is therefore justified _à peu près_.

Needless to say, Mr. Upjohn was a very great man. He was a Painter. Since he was destitute of any intrinsic and spontaneous originality, he strove much to be original, and invented a new school of painting every season. He first created a sensation with his daring and brilliant “Christ in a Bloomsbury Brothel,” which was denounced in no unmeasured terms by the Press, ever tender for the Purity of Public Morals and the posthumous reputation of Our Lord. “The Blessed Damozel in Hell” passed almost unnoticed, when fortunately the model most unjustly obtained an affiliation order against Mr. Upjohn, and thus drew attention to a neglected masterpiece, which was immediately bought by a man who had made a fortune in intimate rubber goods. Mr. Upjohn then became aware of the existence of modern French art. One season he painted in gorgeous Pointilliste blobs, the next in monotone Fauviste smears, then in calamitous Futuriste accidents of form and colour. At this moment he was just about to launch the Suprematist movement in painting, to which he hoped to convert George, or at any rate to get him to write an article about it. Suprematist painting, which has now unfortunately gone out of fashion, was, as its name implies, the supreme point of modern art. Mr. Upjohn produced two pictures in illustration (the word is perhaps inaccurate) of his theories. One was a beautiful scarlet whorl on a background of the purest flake white. The other at first sight appeared to be a brood of bulbous yellow chickens, with thick elongated necks, aimlessly scattered over a grey-green meadow; but on closer inspection the chickens turned out to be conventionalized phalluses. The first was called Decomposition-Cosmos, and the second Op. 49. Piano.

Mr. Upjohn turned on both electric lights in his studio for George to study these interesting productions, at which our friend gazed with a feeling of baffled perplexity and the agonized certainty that he would have to say something about them, and that what he would say would inevitably be wrong. Fortunately, Mr. Upjohn was extremely vain and highly nervous. He stood behind George, coughing and jerking himself about agitatedly:

“What I mean to say is,” he said, puncturing his discourse with coughs, “there you’ve got it.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“What I mean is, you’ve got precise expression of precise emotion.”

“Just what I was going to say.”

“You see, when you’ve got that, what I mean is, you’ve got something.”

“Why, of course!”

“You see, what I mean to say is, if you get two or three intelligent people to _see_ the thing, then you’ve got it. I mean you won’t get those damned blockheaded sons of bitches like Picasso and Augustus John to see it, I mean, it simply smashes them, you see.”

“Did you expect them to?”

“You see, what you’ve got is complete originality _and_ The Tradition. One doesn’t worry about the hacks, you see, but what I mean to say, one does _mildly_ suppose Picasso had a few gleams of intelligence, but what I mean is they won’t _take_ anything new.”

“I get the originality, of course, but I admit I don’t quite see the traditional side of the movement.”

Mr. Upjohn sighed pettishly and waved his head from side to side in commiserating contempt.

“Of course, you _wouldn’t_. What intelligence you have was ruined by your lack of education, and your native obtuseness makes you instinctively prefer the academic. I mean, can’t you SEE that the proportions of Decomposition-Cosmos are exactly those of the Canopic vase in the Filangieri-Museum at Naples?”

“How could I see that,” said George, rather annoyed, “since I’ve never been to Naples?”

“That’s what I mean to say,” exclaimed Mr. Upjohn triumphantly, “you simply have no education _what-so-ever!_”

“Well, but what about the other?” said George, desiring to be placable, “is that in the Canopic vase tradition?”

“Christ-in-petticoats, NO! I thought even you’d see _that_. What I mean is, can’t you _see_ it?”

“They might be free adaptations of Greek vase painting?” said George tentatively, hoping to soothe this excitable and irritated genius. Mr. Upjohn flung his palette knife on the floor.

“You’re _too_ stupid, George. What I mean is the proportion and placing and colour-values are exactly in the best tradition of American-Indian blankets, and what I mean is, when you’ve got that, well, I mean, you’ve got something!”

“Of course, of course, it _was_ stupid of me not to see. Forgive me, I’ve been working at hack articles all day, and my mind’s a bit muzzy.”

“I mildly supposed so!”

And Mr. Upjohn, with spasmodic movements, jerked the two easels round to the wall. There was a short pause in the conversation. Mr. Upjohn irritatedly cast himself at full length upon a sofa, and spasmodically ate candied apricots. He placed them in his mouth with his forefinger and thumb, holding his elbow at a right angle to his body, with his chin far extended; and bit them savagely in half. George watched this impressive and barbaric spectacle with the interest of one who at last discovers the meaning of the mysterious rite of Urim and Thummim. A timid effort at making conversation was repelled by Mr. Upjohn, with a gesture which George interpreted as meaning that Mr. Upjohn required complete silence to digest and sweeten with candied apricots the memory of George’s treasonable obtuseness. Suddenly George started, for Mr. Upjohn, after coughing once or twice, swung himself from his couch with incredible swiftness, hawked vigorously, flung open a window with unnecessary violence and spat voluminously into the street. He then turned and said calmly:

“You’d better come along to fat Shobbe’s.”

George, who was young enough to enjoy going to miscellaneous parties, gratefully acquiesced; and was still further gratified by being allowed to witness the strange and complex ablutions performed by Mr. Upjohn from a wash-basin startlingly concealed in a veneered mahogany tail-boy.

Mr. Upjohn was evidently a very clean man, at least in those portions of his body exposed to the public gaze. He washed and rinsed his face thoroughly, brushed his teeth until George apprehended lest the bristles be worn to the bone, gargled and spat freely. He soaped and pumiced his hands, which were large, yellow and slightly spatulate; and excavated his nails with singular industry and pertinacity. He then sat down before a folding table-mirror in three parts, which reflected both profiles as well as full-face and combed and brushed and re-brushed and re-combed his coarse hay-like hair until it crackled with induced electricity. When Mr. Upjohn judged that hygiene and beauty-culture had received their full due, he arrayed himself in a clean collar, a tie of remarkable lustre and size, and a narrow-waisted rather long coat which, taken in conjunction with the worn but elegant peg-top trousers he had on, gave him a pleasantly rake-helly and Regency look. This singular scene, which occupied the better part of an hour, was conducted by Mr. Upjohn with great gravity, varied by the emission of a singular and discordant chant or hum, and wild petulant oaths whenever any object of the toilet or of his apparel did not instantly present itself to his hand. Oddly enough, Mr. Upjohn was not a sodomist. He was a professedly ardent admirer of what our ignorant forefathers called the soft sex. Mr. Upjohn often asserted that after the immense toils of Suprematist painting nothing could rest him but the presence of several beautiful women. While gallantly and probably necessarily discreet as to his conquests, he was always prepared to talk about love, and to give subtle erotic advice, which led any man who had actually lain with a woman to suspect that Mr. Upjohn was at best a fumbler and probably still a virgin.

Mr. Upjohn then endued a very Regency thin grey overcoat, stuck a long ebony cane with no handle under his left arm-pit, tossed a soft grey hat rakishly on to his hair, and made for the door. George followed, half-impressed, half-amused by this childish swagger and self-conscious bounce.

* * * * *

In the street the Sabbath ennui of London emerged from its lair like a large dull grey octopus, and shot stealthy feelers of depression at them. Mr. Upjohn, safe as Achilles in the Stygian dip of his conceit, strode along energetically with an inward feeling that he had gone one better on James McNeill Whistler. The boredom of Mr. Upjohn came from within, not from without. He was so absorbed in Mr. Upjohn that he rarely noticed what was going on about him.

George fought at the monster and plunged desperately into talk.

“What about this coal strike? Will it ruin the country as the papers say? Isn’t it a foolish thing on both sides?”

This strike was George’s first introduction to the reality of the “social problem” and the bitter class hatred which smoulders in England and at times bursts into fierce crises of hatred, restrained only by that mingling of fear and “decency” which composes the servile character of the British working man.

“Well, what I mean to say is,” said Mr. Upjohn, who very rarely managed to say what he meant but always meant to say something original and startling, “it ain’t our affair. But what I mean is, if the miners get more money it’ll be all the better for us. They’re more likely to buy our pictures than sons of bitches like Mond and old Asquith.”

George was a bit staggered at this. In the first place, he had been looking at the problem from a national, not a personal, point of view. And, in the second place, he knew just a little about working men and their conditions. He could not see how five shillings a week more would convert the miners to collecting the Suprematist school of painting, or make them abandon their cultivated amusements of coursing, pigeon flying, gambling, wife-beating, and drinking. But Mr. Upjohn delivered his _obiter dicta_ with so much aplomb that a boy of twenty might be excused for failing to see their complete absurdity.

* * * * *

They were walking up Church Street, Kensington, that dismal communication trench which links the support line of Kensington High Street with the front line of Notting Hill Gate. How curious are cities, with their intricate trench systems and perpetual warfare, concealed but as deadly as the open warfare of armies! We live in trenches, with flat revetments of house-fronts as parapet and parados. The warfare goes on behind the house-fronts—wives with husbands, children with parents, employers with employed, tradesmen with tradesmen, banker with lawyer, and the triumphal doctor rooting out life’s casualties. Desperate warfare—for what? Money as the symbol of power; power as the symbol or affirmation of existence. Throbbing warfare of men’s cities! As fierce and implacable and concealed as the desperate warfare of plants and the hidden carnage of animals. We walk up Church Street. Up the communication trench. We cannot see “over the top,” have no vista of the immense No-Man’s Land of London’s roofs. We cannot pierce through the house-fronts. What is going on behind those dingy unpierceable house-fronts? What tortures, what contests, what incests, what cruelties, what sacrifice, what horror, what sordid emptiness? We cannot pierce through the pavement and Belgian blocks, see the subterranean veins of electric cables, the arteries of gas and water mains, the viscera of underground railways. We cannot feel the water filtering through London clay, do not perceive the relics of ruined Londons waiting for archæologists from the antipodes, do not see, far, far down, the fossillised bones of extinct animals and their coprolites. Here in Notting Hill, the sabre-toothed tiger roared and savagely devoured its victims, the huge-horned deer darted in terror; wolves howled; the brown bear preyed; overhead by day screamed eagles and by night flitted huge bats. Mysterious forest murmurs, abrupt yells and threatening growls, and the amorous hatred of female beasts, were vocal when the Channel was the Rhine’s estuary.

“Time passes,” said George. “What do we know of Time? Prehistoric beasts, like the ichthyosaurus and Queen Victoria, have laired and copulated and brought forth....”

A motor-bus roared by, like a fabulous noisy red ox with fiery eyes and a luminous interior, quenching his words.

“Eh?” said Mr. Upjohn. “*****!”

“Now, look at these simian bipeds,” George pursued, pointing to an inoffensive pair of lovers and a suspicious cop, “more foul, more deadly, more incestuously blood-lustful....”

“You see, what I mean is, nothing matters to these people but our conversation.... Now, what I mean is, you get fat Shobbe to let you write an article on me and Suprematism.”

“We should go to the Zoo more often, and watch the monkeys. The chimpanzee leaps with the dexterity of a politician. The Irish-looking ourang smokes his pipe as placidly as a Camden Town murderer. The purple-bottomed mandrils on heat will initiate you into love. And the perpetual chatter of the small monkeys—how like ourselves! What ecstatic clicking about nothing! Go to the ape, thou poet.”

Mr. Upjohn laughed abruptly and spat with a raucous cough:

“An old idea, but what’s it got to do with _le mouvement?_ Still, what I mean is, I might do something with it....”

Poor old George! He was a bloody fool. He never learned how fatally unwise it is to express any sort of an idea to a brother—still less to a sister—artist.

Mr. Upjohn discoursed on Suprematism and himself.

At Notting Hill Gate, George halted. The Sabbath ennui shot its tentacles at him, and enlaced his spirit, dragging him down into the whirlpool of wanhope. Why go on? Why affront the veiled hostility of people? Why suffer those eyes to search and those nimble unerring tongues to wound? Oh, wrap oneself in solitude, like an armoured shroud, and bend over the dead words of a dead language! A simian biped! O gods, gods! And Plato talks of Beauty.

“Come along,” shouted Mr. Upjohn, a few paces ahead, “this way. Holland Park. Old Shobbe’ll be waiting for me in that mob. What I mean is, he knows I’m the only other intelligent person in London.”

George still hesitated. He sank deeper in the maelstrom of unintelligible and causeless despair. Why go on? The adolescent love of death and suicide—corollary to youth’s vitality and vivid energy—swept over him in choking waves. To cease upon the midnight with no pain....

“I think I shan’t come,” he shouted after the retreating Mr. Upjohn.

Mr. Upjohn hurried back and seized George’s arm:

“What’s the matter with you? The best way to get an article out of Shobbe is to go and see him on his Sunday evenings. Come on. We shall be late.”

No Euripidean chorus uttered gnomic reflections on the inevitable and irresistible power of Ananke, the Destiny which is above the gods. No bright god warned him, no oracular voice spoke to him. Conflict of free-will and destiny! But is there a conflict? Whether we move or are still, whether we go to the right or the left, hesitate or rush blindly forward, the thread is inexorably spun. Ananke. Ananke.

George yielded reluctantly to the tug at his arm.

“All right, I’ll come.”

[ II ]

As they were shown into Mr. Shobbe’s large studio they encountered an indescribable babble of human voices, which gave strange point to George’s zoological remarks, since it sounded as if all the macaws at the Zoo had got into the monkey-house to argue with its inhabitants about theology. Mr. Shobbe’s studio, or “stew-joe,” as his humbler Cockney contributors called it, was already dim with cigarette smoke. The excited and elevated babble of voices was due to the fact that this was one of Mr. Shobbe’s rare caviar and champagne evenings, and not one of the ordinary beer and ham-sandwich _débâcles_. George and Mr. Upjohn were still in the doorway, hidden by the opening doors, when a couple of champagne corks popped. George noticed a look of horror and perplexity, mingled with the satisfaction always produced by the prospect of free alcohol, in Mr. Upjohn’s countenance. George wondered vaguely why, and followed the ebullient swagger of Mr. Upjohn into the large room. It was not until long afterwards that he realized the cause of this rapid and subtle flash of horror in Mr. Upjohn. The champagne and caviar evenings were reserved for the “better” contributors to, and the wealthier guarantors of, Mr. Shobbe’s periodical. Upjohn was County and Cambridge, with a small income and prospects of a large inheritance from a senile aunt—he was therefore one of the “better” contributors. George, on the other hand, was merely middle-class, talented, and penniless. Mr. Upjohn had thus committed a social error of hair-raising enormity by bringing George to the champagne reception under the false impression that it was merely a beer “do” for the common mob.

With genial bonhomie Mr. Shobbe greeted in Mr. Upjohn the potential inheritance from the senile aunt. Upon George he turned a coldly languid blue eye, and for a moment lent him a hand even limper, flabbier and clammier than usual. George noticed the difference, but ingenuously assumed that it was because he was younger than Mr. Upjohn and incapable of producing “Christ in a Bloomsbury Brothel” or the doctrines of Suprematism. But Mr. Upjohn, with more acute social ambitions, was aware of his _gaffe_. He mumbled his apology, which was almost lost in the surrounding babble:

“Brought ’m ’long discuss ’n article on Me ’n S’prematism.”

Mr. Shobbe only half-heard, and nodded vaguely. The slight awkwardness of the situation was ended by the appearance of Mrs. Shobbe, who greeted them both; and they passed into the room. George attributed the feeling of strain to his own shyness and aloofness. He was still _naif_ enough to suppose that people are welcomed for their own sake.

* * * * *

In justice to the distinguished gathering in Mr. Shobbe’s studio (two “social” journalists were present) it must be said that the babble and the excitement were not wholly due to the champagne. Pre-war London was comparatively sober. Numbers of women did not even drink at all, and cocktails and communal copulation had not then been developed to their present state of intensity. Whether the art of scandal-mongering has suffered by this new social activity is hard to say, but as ever it remains the chief diversion of the British intelligentsia. Serious conversation is, of course, impossible, on account of the paper-pirates who are always hovering about to snatch up an idea. One definite improvement is that the _bon mot_, the _recherché_ pun, the intentional witticism, are definitely discouraged. Indeed one of the brightest of the post-war reputations was created by a young man who had the self-restraint to sit through forty-five literary parties without saying a word. This frightened everybody so much that when this modern lay Trappist departed you heard on all sides: “Brilliant young man.”

“Extraordinarily clever.”

“I hear he’s writing a book on metaphysics in the Stone Age.”

“No, really?”

“They say he’s the greatest living authority on pre-Columbian literature.”

“How quite too marvellous.”

But in those distant pre-war days people strove to chatter themselves into notice through a chaos of witticisms. On this particular evening, however, witticisms were in the background, for an event had occurred to stagger this small cosmos of affectation into sincerity. With the exception of George (who was too young and unknown to matter) and a few women, almost everybody present had been connected with a publishing firm which had suddenly gone bankrupt. On Mr. Shobbe’s recommendation some of his wealthier guarantors had put money into the firm; the painters were “doing” illustrated editions or writing books on the Renaissance artists still popular in those unenlightened days; and the writers had received contracts for an almost unlimited number of works. Money had been lavishly spent and some rather amusing things had been begun. Then suddenly the publisher vanished with the lady typist-secretary and the remainder of the cash. Hence the excited babble.

George stood, a little dazed, beside a small group of youngish men and women. A dark, rather sinister-looking young man kept saying:

“Le crapule! Ah! le crapule!”

George wondered vaguely who was a crapule and why, and half-listened to the conversation.

“He was paying me three hundred a year and...”

“My last novel did so well that he gave me a five years’ contract and an advance of...”

“Yes, and I was getting twenty per cent...”

“Yes, but do let me tell you this. Shobbe says that the lawyers told him four thousand pounds of the money came from the diocesan funds of...”

“Yes, I know. Shobbe told us.”

“Le crapule!”

“What’ll the archbishop say?”

“Oh, they’ll smother that up.”

“Yes, but look here—do shut up for a minute, Bessie—what I want to know is how do we stand? What about our copyrights? Shobbe told me the legal position is...”

“Hang the legal position. What do we get out of it?”

“Crapule!”

“Nothing, probably. _You_ won’t get much anyhow. He hadn’t even published your book, and I was to get three hundred a year and...”

“It isn’t so much the money I mind as having my book off the market when it was going so well—did you see the long article on me in last week’s...”

“Crapule!”

George glanced almost affectionately at the sinister-looking young man. It struck him that the repeated “crapule” was addressed as much to his present audience as to the unknown perpetrator of these calamities. At that moment Mr. Upjohn came along, and George took him aside.

“I say, Frank, what’s all this talk about?”

“Dear Bertie has eloped with Olga and the cash.”

“Dear Bertie? Oh, you mean—. But the firm will go on, won’t it?”

“Go on the streets. You see, there isn’t a cent left. What I mean is, I shall have to find some one else to do my Suprematist book. What I mean to say is, Bertie had a glimmering of intelligence....”

“Who’s Olga?”

But at that moment a lady with two unmarried daughters and private information about the senile aunt’s fortune plunged sweetly at Mr. Upjohn.

“Oh, Mr. Upjohn, how _nice_ to see you again! How _are_ you?”

“Mildly surviving.”

“You _never_ came to my last at-home. Now, you _must_ come and have dinner next week. Sir George was _so_ much impressed last week by what you said about the new school of painting you have founded—what _is_ the name? I’m so _stupid_ about remembering names.”

Mr. Upjohn introduced them:

“Lady Carter—George Winterbourne. He’s a painter—of sorts.”

Lady Carter took in George at a glance—shabby clothes, old tie carelessly knotted, hair too long, abstracted gaze, poor, too young anyway—and was politely insolent. After a few words, she and Mr. Upjohn walked away. She pretended to be amused by Mr. Upjohn’s conversation.

* * * * *

George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of champagne. The ceaseless babble of petty talk about petty interests irritated and bored him. He felt isolated and hate-obstinate. So this was Upjohn’s “only intelligent group in London!” If this is “intelligence” then let me be a fool for God’s sake. Better the great octopus ennui outside than these jelly-fish tentacles stinging with conceit, self-interest and malice.

* * * * *

He went over to talk to Comrade-Editor Bobbe. Mr. Bobbe was a sandy-haired, narrow-chested little man with spiteful blue eyes and a malevolent class-hatred. He exercised his malevolence with comparative impunity by trading upon his working-class origin and his heart disease, of which he had been dying for twenty years. Nobody of decent breeding could hit Mr. Bobbe as he deserved, because his looks were a perpetual reminder of his disease, and his behaviour and habits gave continual evidence of his origin. He was the Thersites of the day, or rather that would have been the only excuse for him. Intellectually he was Rousseau’s sedulous and somewhat lousy ape. His conversation rasped. His vanity and class-consciousness made him yearn for affairs with upper class women, although he was obviously a homosexual type. Admirable energy, a swift and sometimes remarkable intuition into character, a good memory and excellent faculty of imitation, a sharp tongue and brutal frankness, gave him power. He was a little snipe, but a dangerous one. Although biassed and sometimes absurd, his weekly political articles were by far the best of the day. He might have been a real influence in the rapidly growing Socialist Party if he could have controlled his excessive malevolence, curbed his hankering for aristocratic alcoves, and dismissed his fatuous theories of the Unconscious, which were a singular mixture of misapprehended theosophy and ill-digested Freud. George admired his feverish energy and talents, pitied him for his ill-health and agonized sense of class inferiority, disliked his malevolence, and ignored his theories.

“What are _you_ doing here, Winterbourne? I shouldn’t have thought Shobbe would invite _you_. You haven’t any money, have you?”

“Upjohn brought me along.”

“Upjohn-and-at-’em? What’s he want of you?”

“An article on his new school of painting, I think.”

Mr. Bobbe tittered, screwing up his eyes and nose in disgust, and flapping his right hand with a gesture of take-it-away-it-stinks.

“Suprematist painting! Suprematist dung-bags! Suprematist conceit and empty-headed charlatanism. Did you see him toady to that Carter woman, _Lady_ Carter? Puh!”

There was such vindictiveness in that “puh” that George was disconcerted. True, he himself suspected Mr. Upjohn was a bit of a charlatan and knew he was odiously conceited; at the same time, there was something very kind-hearted and generous in poor Upjohn-and-at-’em, who had received that nickname for his furious onslaughts on any one who was established and successful in alleged defence of any one who was struggling and neglected. Unfortunately, these vituperative efforts of poor Mr. Upjohn did no good to his friends and served only to bring himself advertisement—the advertisement of ridiculousness. But George felt he ought to say something in defence.

“Well, of course, he’s eccentric and sometimes offensive, but he’s got a streak of curious genius and real generosity.”

Mr. Bobbe snarled rather than tittered.

“He’s an insignificant toadying little cheese-worm. That’s what he is, a toadying little _cheese-worm_. And you won’t be much better, my lad, if you let yourself drift with these people. You’ll go to pieces, you’ll just go _com-plete-ly_ to pieces. But humanity’s rotten. It’s all rotten. It stinks. It’s worm-eaten. Look at those mingy fellows prancing round those women on the tips of their toes. Cold-hearted, ****-********* mingy sneaks! Look at the women, pining for a bit o’ real warm-hearted man’s love, and what do they get? Mingy cold-hearted ********! I know ’em, I know ’em. Curse the mingy lot of ’em. But it won’t last long, it can’t. The workers won’t stand it. There’ll be a revolution and a bloody one, and soon too. Mingy sons of spats and eye-glasses!”

George was amazed and embarrassed by this outburst. He did, indeed, feel repelled by most of the gathering, particularly by persons like Mr. Robert Jeames, the Poets’ Friend, who made anthologies of all the worst authors, wore a monocle and spats, and lisped through a wet tooth. But after all Mr. Jeames was harmless and quite amiable. One might not agree with his taste; one might not feel attracted by him, or indeed by most of the people present. But there was certainly a wide difference between such a feeling and “mingy sneaks” and “cheese-worms.” Moreover, George was a little offended by Mr. Bobbe’s proletarian vocabulary, while he failed to see exactly why the sexual frigidity of a few men in dinner jackets should cause the workers to rise in bloody revolution.

“I shouldn’t think the workers care a hoot. If it’s as you say, the women are more likely to join the suffragettes.”

“Faugh!” said Mr. Bobbe, “puh! Suffragettes? Take them away. They smell. They’re unclean. They’re obscene. Women and votes! It’s the last stage of decomposition of the mingy world. When the women start to get power, it’s the end. It means the men are done for, mingy cold-hearted sneaks. Once let the women in, and nothing can save the world. Socialism, perhaps, and a genuine out-reaching of the inward unconscious Male-life to the dark Womb-life in Woman. But no, they’re not worthy of it. Let ’em go. You’ll see, my lad, you’ll see. Within five years there’ll be a...”

“Oh, Mr. Bobbe,” said Mrs. Shobbe’s voice, and a timid little greyish lady, all in grey and silver, appeared, gentle and fluttering, beside them, like a large gentle grey moth. “Oh, Mr. Bobbe, do forgive me for interrupting your _interesting_ conversation. Lady Carter is _so_ anxious to meet you and admires you so much. I’m sure you’ll like her and her two daughters—such _beautiful_ girls.”

George watched Mr. Bobbe as he bowed servilely to Lady Carter and entered into an animated conversation with that living rung in the social ladder. He watched the scene for several minutes, and was just thinking of leaving when Mr. Waldo Tubbe came near him.

“Well, Winterbourne,” he remarked in his neat, mincing English, “you appeared sunk in thought. What was the precise object of your contemplation?”

“Bobbe was inveighing against Upjohn for toadying to Lady Carter, and then as soon as Mrs. Shobbe came and asked him to be introduced, he rushed off and you can see him there sitting at Lady Carter’s feet with clasped hands.”

Mr. Tubbe looked unnecessarily grave.

“O-oh,” he said with a very genteel roll to the “o,” and an air of suggesting unutterable things. This was a very great asset to Mr. Tubbe in social intercourse. He found that an interrogative silence on his part forced other people to talk, and made them slightly ill at ease, so that they betrayed what they did not always wish to express. He would then gravely remark “Oe-oh” or “In-deed?” or “Really?” with a deportmental air which was highly impressive and somehow slightly reproving. It was reported that Mr. Tubbe spent hours practising in private the exact intonation of his “Oe-ohs,” “Reallys” and “Indeeds.” He had certainly brought them to a high pitch of gentility and suppressed significance. Mr. Tubbe drank a good deal—gin mostly—but it must be said for him that the drunker he got the more genteel and darkly significant he became.

There was a pause after Mr. Tubbe’s “Oe-oh.” His interrogative silence did its work. George plunged into talk, saying the first thing which came into his head.

“I came along with Upjohn, after seeing his new pictures.”

“In-deed?”

“He would like me to write an article on them, but it’s very difficult. Honestly, I don’t understand them and think they’re rather nonsense, don’t you?”

“Oe-oh.”

“Have you seen them?”

“Noe-o.”

Say something, blast you!

Another long pause.

“Well, my dear Winterbourne, I am very happy to have had some conversation with you. Come in and see me soon, quite soon. Will you excuse me? I must ask Lord Congreve a question. Good-bye. _Good_-bye!”

* * * * *

George observed the greeting between Mr. Waldo Tubbe and Lord Congreve.

“Hullo, Waldo!”

“My _dear_ Bernard...!”

Mr. Tubbe shook hands with an air of restrained but very considerable emotion. He treated Lord Congreve with a kind of dignified familiarity, rather like Phélypeaux playing billiards with Louis Quatorze. Mr. Shobbe, who was the third party to this interesting re-union, behaved more easily, with a _puissance-à-puissance_ geniality. George could not hear what they were saying, and did not want to. He was watching Mrs. Shobbe, who was talking gently with two younger women on a couch in one corner of the studio. Poor Mrs. Shobbe, of whom one always thought as a soft, kind, grey moth, for ever fluttering with kindly intent and for ever fluttering wrong. She had that sweet exasperating gentleness and refined incompetence which marked so many women of the wealthier class whose youth was blighted by Ruskin and Morris. Her portrait had been painted by Burne-Jones—there it was on the wall, over-sweet, over-wistful, stylized to look like one of his Arthurian damosels. And there she was, grey and moth-like, the sweetness gone insipid, the wistfulness become empty and regretful. Had she ever looked like that portrait? No one would have known it was she, unless they had been told.

Poor Mrs. Shobbe! In turns one pitied, almost loved, despised and was exasperated by her. Such crushed insipidity. And yet such a gallant effort to do “what is right.” Yet she somehow disgusted one with refinement and trying to do what is right, and made one yearn sympathetically towards a hard-swearing, hard-working, hard-drinking motor mechanic. Her life must have been very unhappy. Her well-off Victorian parents (wholesale wine trade, retired) had given her a good education of travel and accomplishments, and had systematically and gently crushed her. It was chiefly the mother, of course, that abominable mother-daughter “love” which is compact of bullying, jealousy, parasitism and baffled sexuality. With what ghastly pertinacity does a disappointed wife “take it out” on her daughter! Not consciously, of course; but the unconscious cruelty and oppression of human beings seem the most dreadful. To escape, she had married Shobbe.

Nothing can be more fatal for a girl than to marry an artist of any kind. Have affairs with them, my dears, if you like. They can teach you a great deal about life, human nature and sex, because they are directly interested in these matters, whereas other men are cluttered with prejudices, ideals and literary reminiscences. But do not marry them, unless you have a writing of divorcement in the pocket of your night-gown. If you are poor, life will be horrid even though there are no children; and if you have children, it will be hell. If you have money, you may be quite sure that it is not you but your money which has been espoused. Every poor artist and intellectual is looking for a woman to keep him. So you loot out, too. Of course, not only are there no delicious marriages, there are not even any good ones—Rochefoucauld was such an optimist. And in any case marriage is a primitive institution bound to succumb before the joint attack of contraceptives and the economic independence of women. Remember, artists are not seeking tranquillity and legitimate posterity, but experience and an income. So look out!

Poor Mrs. Shobbe did not look out, she had never been allowed to do anything so unmaidenly. She became the means whereby Mr. Shobbe avoided the dismal but common fate of working for a living. He snubbed her, he patronized her, he neglected her, he was unfaithful to her, but hung on to her like a sloth to a tree-branch—she had three thousand a year, most of which he spent. As for Shobbe he was a plump and talented snob of German origin. His aquiline nose was the one piece of evidence, apart from his bad manners, which supported his claim to aristocratic birth. Before the Great War he was always talking about his year’s service in an aristocratic German regiment, or beginning a sentence “When I was last with the Kaiser,” or talking voluble German whenever there was an audience, or saying “of course, you English...” After the war he discovered that he was and always had been a patriotic English gentleman. Be it said to his credit, he “rolled up” himself and did not only “give” a few cousins. But then, there was Mrs. Shobbe to get away from on a legitimate excuse—how many patriotic English gentlemen in the war armies were rather avoiding their wives than seeking their country’s enemies? Shobbe was an excellent example of the artist’s amazing selfishness and vanity. After the comfort of his own person he really cared for nothing but his prose style and literary reputation. He was also an amazing and very amusing liar—a sort of literary Falstaff. As for his affairs with women—my God! Yet, after all, were they really so lurid? Probably they were grossly exaggerated because Shobbe had talent, and everybody was jealous of it....

* * * * *

George suddenly became aware that Mrs. Shobbe was beckoning to him from the couch. Some of the noisier guests had departed—probably to drink more freely—and a wide-opened window had carried away much of the tobacco smoke. George emerged from his reverie and went quickly over to her.

“You know Mrs. Lamberton, don’t you, Mr. Winterbourne? And this is Miss Paston, Elizabeth Paston.”

How-do-you-dos.

“And oh, Mr. Winterbourne, will you get us some iced lemonade, please? We’re all dying of thirst in this smoky room.”

George brought the drinks, and sat down in a chair facing the women. They chatted aimlessly. Soon Mrs. Shobbe went away. She saw a lonely old maid in the opposite corner of the room, and felt it “right” to talk to her. Mrs. Lamberton sighed.

“Why does one come to these intellectual agapes? An expense of spirit in a waste of time.”

“Now, Frances!” said Elizabeth, with her hard nervous little laugh, “you know you’d hate it if you weren’t asked.”

“Besides, it’s one place where you’re sure not to meet your husband,” said George.

“Oh, but then I _never_ see him. Only last week I had to ask the servants if Mr. Lamberton were still alive or only pre-occupied with a new conquest.”

“And was he?”

“What?”

“Alive.”

“I didn’t know he ever had been.”

They laughed, though the paltry jest was near the truth.

“And yet,” George pursued, with the ruthless clumsiness of youth, “you must have liked him once. Why? Why do women like men? And on what singular principle do they choose their husbands? Instinct? Self-interest?”

Neither answered. Women do not like these questions, especially from young men whose duty it is to be dazzled by charms they cannot analyze. Of course, the questions were impertinent; but if a young man is not impertinent, what on earth is the use of him?

The women lit cigarettes. George looked at Elizabeth Paston. A slender figure in red silk; black glossy hair drawn back from a high intellectual forehead; large, very intelligent dark eyes; a rather pale, rather Egyptian-looking face with prominent cheek bones, slightly sunken cheeks and full red lips; a nervous manner. She was one of those “near” virgins so common in the countries of sexual prohibition. Her hands were slender, the line from her ear to her chin exquisitely beautiful, her breasts too flat. She smoked cigarettes too rapidly, and had a way of sitting with a look of abstraction in a pose which showed off the lovely line of her throat and jaw. Her teeth were a little irregular. The delicate ear was like a frail pink shell under the dark sea-fronds of her hair. Her calves and ankles, such important indications of female character and temperament, were hidden under the long skirts of those days; but the bared arms and wrists were slender and a little sensual as they lay along her clothed thighs. George was greatly attracted. Apparently she also liked him, and Mrs. Lamberton noticed it with that swift rather devilish intuition of women. She rose to leave.

“Oh, Frances, don’t go yet!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “I only came to see you, and you were so surrounded by men I have scarcely seen you.”

“Yes, don’t go.”

“I must. You don’t know the duties awaiting a careful wife and good mother.”

She slipped away, leaving them alone.

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Elizabeth.

“Something very lovely and precious. Even when she talks nonsense in that slightly affected way she seems to be saying something valuable.”

“Do you think she is beautiful?”

“Beautiful? Yes, in a way, but she isn’t one of those horrid regular beauties. You notice her at once in a room, but you’d never see her on the walls of the Academy. It isn’t her beauty so much as her personality, and that you feel more by intuition than by observation. And yet the effect is beauty.”

“Are you very much in love with her?”

“Why, aren’t you? Isn’t every one?”

“In love with her?”

George was silent. He was not sure whether the question was _naif_ or very much the reverse. Elizabeth changed the conversation.

“What do you ‘do’?”

“Oh, I’m a painter, and I write hack articles for Shobbe and such people to earn a living.”

“But don’t you sell your pictures?”

“I try to, but you see people in England aren’t much interested in modern art, not as they are on the Continent or even in America. They want the same old thing done over again and done with more sugar. One thing about the British bourgeois—he doesn’t know anything about pictures but very stoutly stands for what he likes, and what he likes is anything except art. The newest historians say that the Anglo-Saxons come from the same race as the Vandals, and I can well believe it.”

“Surely there are some up-to-date collectors in England.”

“Why, yes, of course, probably as many as anywhere else, but too many of them collect pictures as an investment and so only take what the dealers advise them to buy; others are afraid to touch English art, which has gone soggy with pre-Raphaelitism and touched imbecility with the anecdotal picture. There are people with taste and enthusiasms, but they’re nearly all poor. It’s much the same in Paris. The new painters there are having a terrific struggle, but they’ll win. The young are with them. And then in Paris it’s rather chic to know the latest movements and to defend the rebel artists against the ordinary mass ignorance and hostility. Here they’re still terrified by the fate of Oscar, and it’s chic to be a sporting imbecile. The English think it’s virile to have no sensibilities.”

“Are you English or American?”

“English, of course. Should I care about them if I were not? In a way, of course, it doesn’t really matter. The nationalist epoch of painting is over—it’s now an international language centred in Paris and understood from Petersburg to New York. What the English think doesn’t matter.”

George was excited and talking volubly. Elizabeth encouraged him. Females know instinctively or by bitter experience that males like to tell them things. It is so very curious that we talk of vanity as if it were almost exclusively feminine, whereas both sexes are equally vain. Perhaps males are vainer. Women are sometimes plainly revolted by really inane compliments, while there is no flattery too gross for a male. There simply isn’t. And not one of us is free from it. However much you may be on your guard, however much you may think you dislike it, you will find yourself instinctively angling for female flattery—and getting it. Oh, yes, you’ll get it, just as long as that subtle female instinct warns them there is potency in your loins....

“Mother of the race of Æneas, voluptuous delight of gods and men, sacred Aphrodite”—how does it go? But the poet is right. She, the sacred one, the imperious reproductive instinct, with all Her wiles and charms, is indeed the ruler over all living things, in the waters, in the air, on land. Over us her sway is complete, for it is not seasonal but permanent. (Who was the lady who said that if the animals don’t make love all the time the reason is that they are _bêtes?_) Priests, with all weapons from circumcision to prudery, have warred with Her; legislators have laid down rules for Her; well-meaning persons have tried to domesticate Her. Useless! “At thy coming, goddess,” the celibate hides his shaved crown and sneaks to a brothel, the clerk in holy orders enters into holy matrimony, the lawyer visits the little shop-girl he “helps,” domestic peace is shaken alive with adulteries. For man is an ambulatory digestive tube which wants to keep alive, and Death waits for him. Descartes was a fool in these matters, like so many philosophers. “I think, therefore I am.” Idiot! I am because others loved; I love that others may be. Hunger and Death are the realities, and between those great chasms flits a little Life. The enemy of Death is not Thought, not Apollo with gold shafts of light, useless against the Foe of gods and men, as you see him in the prologue to “Alkestis.” It is She, the Cyprian, who triumphs, woman-like with her wiles. Generations She yields Him, the Devourer, as His prey, and unwearyingly raises up new races of men and women. It is She who swells the loins of men with an intolerable burden of seed; She who makes ready the thirsty womb; She who creates implacable desire and infinite yearning and compels the life-giving act; *** *** ****** *** **** ***** ********* **** *** **** **** ********* ******; She who plumps the flat white belly and then, treacherous and cruel to Her instrument once Her purpose is achieved, with intolerable anguish tears forth from shaking mother-flesh the feeble fruit of Man. All the thoughts and emotions and desires of adult men and women circle about Her, and Her enemies are but Death’s friends. You may elude Her with asceticism, you may thwart Her purpose (who shall write a new myth of the rubber-tree, Death’s subtle gift?), but if you love Life you must love Her, and if you puritanically say She is not, you are both a fool and Death’s servant. If you hate Life, if you think the suffering outweighs the pleasure, if you think it the supreme crime to transmit life, then you must indeed dread Her as the author of the supreme evil—Life.

Elizabeth and George talked and found each other delightful. They thought it was their interest in art and ideas. Delightful error! All the arts of mankind are the Cyprian’s hand-maids, and even the chaster and tweeded spectre Sport has unwittingly been made Her pander—for with no grudging hand does the Goddess scatter Her gifts, smiling upon the amorous play of children and not disdaining even those who desire their own sex. She is beneficent and knows there are only too many ready to propagate and is not anxious to create too many victims for Hunger, and therefore patronizes even the heretics of Sparta and Lesbos....

* * * * *

We should turn churches into temples to Venus, and set up a statue to Havelock Ellis, the moral Hercules who has partially succeeded in cleansing the Augean stable of the white man’s mind....

* * * * *

Under the benign influence of the Cyprian they talked, they went on talking. They had drifted on to the topics of Christ and Christianity, that interminable _pons asinorum_ of youthful discussions.

“But I think Christ is wonderful,” Elizabeth was saying with an air of having discovered something, “because he completely ignored social values and considered people only for what they really were in themselves. It is so strange to think of his being made the pretext for the world’s most elaborate system of priest-craft when the whole of his life and teaching are a protest against it.”

“The bohemian Christ? But have you noticed what a Proteus he is? Everybody interprets the historical Jesus to please himself. He is a whole mythology in himself. If you really try to discover the historical Jesus, you find you keep stripping away veil after veil, and then just as you think you are coming to the real figure, you find there’s nothing there. But, I grant you, Christ is a very sympathetic figure. What I cannot endure is Christianity and the harm it has done Europe. I detest its system of values, its persecution, its hatred of life (it worships a tortured and expiring god), its cult of self-sacrifice and sexual aberrations, like sadism, masochism and chastity....”

Elizabeth laughed, a little shocked.

“Oh, oh! Now you are exaggerating!”

“Not at all. I think I could prove what I say, at the expense of some time and boring you. Consider the lives of Saints like Catherine of Siena, Sebastian and all the infinite martyrs, look at their representation in art; and then ask yourself what instincts are really satisfied by the cult of these personalities and images.”

“That sounds like good Protestant prejudice.”

“There are lots of things I detest in Protestantism—its smugness and aridity for instance—but I like its honesty. And we owe it a great deal. It was because of the political inconveniences resulting from a multitude of sects, that Holland and England reintroduced religious tolerance, which had disappeared with the triumph of the Christians. Of course, the tolerance is not complete, because the Christians are still persecutors at heart and have a thousand ways of vexing and maligning those who disagree with them or are merely indifferent. Hence the extraordinary defensive puritanism of many English rationalists. But something has been achieved. After all, during many centuries I should have been arrested, tortured and probably murdered for what I have just said to you, and you would have thought me a carbonized monster. Now any alleged truth or moral proposition or belief which has to be enforced by torture or defended by sophistry stands self-condemned.”

Was ever woman in this manner wooed? But George had mounted one of his hobby-horses and was careering away through a dust of words. Elizabeth, with practical instinct, stopped him.

“Where do you live?”

“In Greek Street. I’ve got a large room there, big enough to paint in. Where do you live?”

“In Hampstead. It’s rather horrid and the place is full of old maids. But anything is better than being at home. I don’t mind my father, but my mother makes me so nervous when I’m at home that I feel I shall just die if I have to be any longer with her.”

“I’m so glad you hate your parents, at least one of them. It’s so important to recognize these antipathies, which are after all perfectly natural. Most animals hate their mature young. I remember I used to watch the young robins exterminating their fathers and think how right it was. But it ought to be the mothers. Men somehow leave each other alone.”

“Oh, it’s partly due to the awful domestic-den family life. They can’t really help it, poor dears. The den was forced on them, and they had to live in it.”

“Not really. They must have wanted it. It’s all part of people’s amazing cowardice, their panic terror of life. It’s a device of governments, an official cheat.” George was off again. “All states are founded on the obligation of a man to provide for the child he begets and the woman who produces it. The State wants children, wants more and more ‘citizens’ for various reasons. The State exploits the love of a man for a woman and his tenderness towards her children—even she may not know whether they’re his or not. And so she’s taught to say: ‘Be careful, step warily, don’t offend any one, remember your first duty is to provide for me and the children, you mustn’t let us starve, oh, do be careful,’ with the result that the poor man very soon becomes a member of the infinite army of respectable commuters....”

“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth laughed again, “why are you so full of moral indignation?”

“I’m not. Most of my brilliant acquaintances, like Upjohn, have so much to say about themselves that I never seem to get a chance of discussing anything else. And my non-brilliant acquaintances are simply shocked and reproving. They think I’m utterly damned because I read Baudelaire, for instance. Have you noticed the British middle-class superstition that anything they can label ‘Gallic’ must necessarily be libidinous and depraved? I get tired of telling them that the beauty of Baudelaire’s verse is infinitely more spiritual and ‘uplifting’—to use their damned cant—than all the confounded nonconformist-baptist-cum-Salvation Army....”

But the end of George’s denunciation was never uttered, for at that moment they were interrupted by the gentle Mrs. Shobbe.

“Excuse me for interrupting you, Mr. Winterbourne. Elizabeth dear, do you know how late it is? I’m afraid you’ll miss the last bus, and you know I promised your dear mother I would look after you....”

Both George and Elizabeth saw with surprise and some embarrassment that the studio was nearly empty. Almost every one else had gone and they hadn’t noticed it, absorbed in their delightful exploration of each other. Of course, in these cases it isn’t what is said that matters, but all that remains unsaid. The talk is mere “parade,” a rustling out of the peacock’s tail, a kind of antennæ delicately fumbling. Lovers are like mirrors—each gazes rapturously at himself reflected in the other. How delicious the first flashes of recognition!

Elizabeth jumped nervously to her feet, almost upsetting a small table.

“Oh, my! I’d no idea it was so late. I must go. Good-bye, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Winterbourne,” said George. “But if you’re going to Hampstead, let me take you back as far as Tottenham Court Road and put you on the Hampstead bus. It’s not out of my way at all.”

“Yes, do, Elizabeth. I feel so nervous at your being alone in London at night like this. Whatever should we do if anything happened to you?”

“Why, what’s likely to happen?” said George contemptuously, ever ready to defend the cause of female emancipation, “she’s got sense enough not to let herself be run over, and if any one tries to rape her she can yell for a policeman.”

* * * * *

“Such a violent and rude young man,” Mrs. Shobbe lamented as they went for Elizabeth’s things. “But they’re all like that now. They seem to have _no_ respect for _anything_, not even the purity of womanhood. I don’t know if I ought to let him take you home, Elizabeth.”

“Oh, that’s all right; besides, I rather like him. He’s quite amusing. I shall ask him to come and have tea with me at my studio.”

“_Elizabeth!_”

But Elizabeth was already at the door where George was waiting. All the guests had departed, except Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Waldo Tubbe. A last whiff of their conversation reached George’s ears:

“You see, what I mean is, you take Suprematism, what I mean is, you see, there you’ve got something....”

And like the toll of Big Ben over the sleeping city came Mr. Tubbe’s last, deep-breathed, significant, deportmental:

“Oe-oh.”

[ III ]

This banal party and banal conversation with Elizabeth were of capital importance in George’s life. The party, with its revelations of character and general tedium, confirmed George in his growing dislike for the intellectual banditti. Self-interest, though universal, is less tolerable in those who are supposed to be above it—there is, of course, no reason why a good artist should not be successful, but when one considers the intrigues now necessary for success there is a natural prejudice in favour of those who do not elbow in the throng. Vanity is none the less odious even when there is some reason for it, though why any one should feel vain of publishing books and exhibiting pictures is a mystery, when you reflect that two thousand novels a year are published in England alone and that tens of thousands of canvases are showed annually in Paris. Gossip and scandal are none the less scandal and gossip even when witty and the victims are more or less conspicuous in the small world which receives, or haughtily disdains to receive, press-cuttings. George felt it rather unimportant to know which talented lady was “with” which famous gentleman. His interest was comparatively so languid that he forgot most of the scandal he was told ten minutes after he heard it, and rarely bothered to repeat what little he remembered. Somehow people are frightfully offended if you say, “Does it matter?” when they tell you with sparkling eyes that somebody you know has run away with the mistress of Snooks, the painter, or that Pocock, the eminent impresario, has just celebrated the birth of his twenty-fifth illegitimate child. Does it matter, indeed! Why this fascinated delight in the private lives of the great? They’re just as sordid as everybody else’s.

The artist, anyway, is not nearly so important as he thinks himself. It’s all poppycock and swagger for Baudelaire to say that a man can live three days without food but not a day without poetry. It may have been true of Baudelaire; it certainly isn’t true of the world in general. In any nation only a comparatively small minority are interested in the arts, and most of those merely want to be amused. If all the artists and writers of a nation were suddenly obliterated by some plague of Egypt, some legitimately vengeful angel, most people would be totally unaware that they had suffered any loss, unless the newspapers made a fuss about it. But let the journeymen bakers go on strike for a fortnight.... If I were a millionaire it would amuse me to go about giving high-minded artists five hundred pounds a year to shut up. The suggestion is not copyright.

Our young friend was, of course, filled with numerous high-falutin’ delusions about the supreme importance of art and the dazzling supremacy of artists over the rest of mankind. But he had two fairly sound ideas. One was that the artist should do his job, like any one else, as well as he could, without making too much fuss about it; the other was that knowledge of the arts and practice of any art are chiefly important for sharpening the intelligence and perceptions, extending one’s experience and intensifying life. These objects are not furthered by scandal, preposterous vanity and arrivism. He was therefore perfectly right in feeling a certain amount of contempt for Mr. Shobbe’s guests. The life of Rousseau the Douanier is infinitely more respectable than that of a fashionable portrait-painter, touting socially for orders.

* * * * *

Elizabeth and George continued their conversation on the bus from Holland Park to Tottenham Court Road. Like most bright young things they abounded in their own sense. As George said, it was perfectly obvious that they were an immense improvement on their predecessors, that they knew exactly how to avoid the lamentable errors and absurdities of former generations, and that they were going to have most interesting and delightful lives. Anybody who has not felt these pleasing delusions at the age of twenty must, I fear, be ranged in George’s category of abject morons. Youth is so much more valuable than experience; it is also far more intelligent. Few things are more astounding and touching than the kindly tolerance of the young for their imbecile elders. For, have no doubts about it, even the greatest minds degenerate annually, and the finest moral character is repulsive at forty. Think of the fire and flash and inspiring genius of young General Bonaparte and the stupid degeneracy of the Emperor who had to retreat ignominiously from Moscow. A nation which relies on the alleged wisdom of sexagenarians is irrevocably degenerate. Attila was only thirty when he sacked sexagenarian Rome—at least, he ought to have been.

Elizabeth and George were very young and hence, on _a priori_ grounds, extremely intelligent. Probably the highest intensity of life ever reached by man or woman is in the early stages of their first real love affair, particularly if it is not thwarted by insane social and religious prejudices inherited from the timid and envious aged, and not contaminated by marriage.

They emerged from the stuffy smoke-heavy room into the broad avenue, and walked towards Notting Hill tube station. A warm southwesterly wind was blowing, moisture-laden, the kindly courier of Spring. Gone was the raw acrid damp of Winter, and they imagined they could taste in the air the faint salt flavour of southern seas and the earthy English acres.

“We shall have rain to-morrow,” said George, instinctively looking up at the cloudy sky invisible beyond the glare of street lamps. “It is Spring at last. The crocuses will be nearly over. I must go and look at the flowers at Hampton Court. Will you come?”

“I’d love to, but isn’t Hampton Court full of trippers?”

“Not if you go at the right time. I have walked there in the early morning as solitary as ever King Charles when the Privy Garden was really private. I should rather like to Jive in King William’s summer-house.”

“I like wilder and more primitive country, the Downs and those great round empty Exmoor hills. And I like the clear rough waves dashing against the rocks in Cornwall.”

“I don’t know Cornwall, but I love the Downs above Storrington and I’ve walked over Exmoor twice. But now I’m rather in revolt against mere country—‘Nature,’ as they used to call it. Nature-worship is a sort of Narcissus-worship, holding up Nature’s mirror to ourselves. And how abominably selfish these Nature-worshippers are I Why! they want a whole landscape to themselves and they complain bitterly when farm-labourers want modern grocery stores and W. C.’s. Whole communities apparently are to live in static ignorance and picturesque decay in order to gratify their false ideas of what is beautiful.”

“Of course, I hate the Simple-Lifers too. There was a set of them near the place in the seaside where we went for the holidays as children....”

“Oh! Have you got brothers and sisters?”

“A sister and two brothers. Why, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I believe so, but I never think about it. Relatives are awful—they contribute absolutely nothing to your interest in life, and think that gives them a perpetual right to interfere in your affairs. And they have the monstrous impudence to pretend that you ought to love them. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ they say sententiously. So it may be, but I don’t want to dabble in thick blood. I hate proverbs, don’t you? I’ve always noticed that anything absurd or tyrannical or fatuous can always be supported by a proverb—the collective stupidity of the ages. But, I say, I’m so sorry I interrupted you. I go on talking and talking, and don’t give you a chance to say a word.”

“Oh, I like it. I think your ideas are amusing.”

“Not amusing, merely common-sense. But you mustn’t let me talk all the time. You see, I find most people rather oppress my spirits, and keep me from saying what I really think. So as a rule I’m silent, but when I find a sympathetic victim, well, you’ve already had a bitter experience of how I chatter nineteen to the dozen. There, I’m off again! Now tell me what you were going to say about the Simple-Lifers.”

“The Simple-Lifers? Oh, yes, I remember. Well, there was a set of people down there who had fled from the horrors of the mechanical age—you know, the usual art-y sort, Ruskin-cum-William Morris....”

“Hand-looms, vegetable diet, long embroidered frocks and home-spun tweed trousers from the Hebrides? I know them. ‘News from Nowhere’ people. What a gospel to lead nowhither!”

“Yes. Well, they were to lead the simple life, work with their hands part of the time, and do arts and crafts and write the rest of the time. They were also to show the world an example of perfect community life. They used to make the farm girls dance round a Maypole—the boys wouldn’t come, they stood in the lane and jeered.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, those who hadn’t private incomes got very hard up, and were always borrowing money off the two or three members who had money. The arts and crafts didn’t sell, and the toiling on the land had very meagre results. Then they got themselves somehow into two or three cliques, always running down the people in the other cliques, talking scandal about them, and saying they were ruining everything by their selfish behaviour. Then the wife of one of the rich members ran away with one of the men, and the other rich members were so scandalized that they went away too, and the whole community broke up. The village was very glad when they went. The farmers and gentry were furious because they talked Socialism and the ideal state to the labourers. And all the labourers’ wives were furious because the Simple-Life women tried to brighten up their lives and make them furnish their cottages ‘artistically....’”

They had missed two buses outside the tube station in their excited chatter. A third came along. George grabbed Elizabeth’s arm:

“Come on, here’s our bus. Let’s go on top.”

The bus-top was empty except for a couple spooning on a back-seat. George and Elizabeth a little haughtily went to the very front.

“Other peoples’ love-affairs are very tedious,” said George sententiously.

“Oh, very.”

“Rather primitive and humiliating.”

“Why humiliating?”

“Oh, because...”

“Fares, please!”

The conductor lurched skilfully against the front of the bus as it made a cow-like leap forward. George raked in his pocket for the pennies.

“Let me pay my share.”

Elizabeth produced a sixpence.

“Oh, no, please. Look, let me take you back to Hampstead, and you can pay from Tottenham Court Road.”

“All right.”

The conductor and the fare-paying had interrupted the rhythm of their communication. They were silent. The bus ran noisily along the wave-furrowed shiny tarred street, with the dark mystery of Kensington Gardens to the right and the equally mysterious boarding-houses of Bayswater to the left. Near the street-lamps the grass behind the railing was a vivid artificial green, as if some one had splashed down a bucket-ful of bright paint. Like savages in some primitive dance, the ancient trees swayed slowly, irregularly and mysteriously in the strong wind. A red apocalyptic glow from the lights of Oxford Street stained luridly and uneasily the low rolling clouds before them. The grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London had vanished. George took his hat off and let the wind rumple his hair. Their young cheeks were fresh with driving moist wind.

“Don’t you really like the Pre-Raphaelites?” asked Elizabeth, as the bus slowed down near Lancaster Gate.

“I used to. About three years ago I was quite cracked about Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Morris. Now I simply hate them. I can still read Browning and Swinburne—Browning for his sense of life, Swinburne for his intoxicating rhetoric. But after spending three months in Paris I got frightfully excited about modern painting. Do you know Apollinaire?”

“No, who’s he?”

“Oh, he’s a Polish Jew who has written some quite good poems and does amusing word-pictures he calls Calligrammes. He lives by writing and editing obscene books, and he’s the great defender of the new painters like Picasso and Braque and Léger and Picabia.”

“The Cubists?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve only heard of them. I never saw any of their work. I thought they were just ‘wild men’ and _fumistes?_”

“You wait ten years, and see then if you dare to say that Picasso is a _fumiste!_ But haven’t you been to Paris?”

“Yes, I was there last year, in September.”

“We must have been there together. How curious, I wish I’d seen you.”

“Oh, it was very dull. I was with father and mother, and everybody we met kept talking about the coming war with Germany. A friend of father’s in the Admiralty told him in confidence that it was absolutely certain to happen.”

“What nonsense!” said George explosively, “what absolute nonsense! Haven’t you read Norman Angell’s ‘Great Illusion’? He shows quite conclusively that war does nearly as much damage to the victor as the conquered. And he also says that the structure of modern international commerce and finance is so delicate and widespread that a war couldn’t possibly last more than a few weeks without coming to an end automatically, because all the nations would be ruined. I’ll lend you the book if you like.”

“I don’t know anything about such things, but father’s friend said the Government was very worried about the position.”

“I can’t believe it. What! A war between European nations in the twentieth century? It’s quite unthinkable. We’re far too civilized. It’s over forty years since the Franco-Prussian War....”

“But there’s been a Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan Wars....”

“Well, yes, but they’re different. I can’t believe any of the big European nations would start a war with another. Of course, there are Chauvins and Junkers and Jingoes, but who cares a hang about them? The people don’t want war.”

“Of course, I don’t know, but I heard Admiral Partington telling father that the navy is bigger, newer and more efficient than it’s ever been. And he said the German army is huge and most efficient, and the French are so frightened they’ve made the period of conscription three years. And he said, look out when the Kiel canal is opened.”

“Good Lord, you surely don’t believe what stodgy old Admirals say, do you? It’s their job to frighten people with war scares so that they can go on getting money out of the country and building their ridiculous Dreadnoughts. I met a coast-guard officer last summer, who got drunk and said he’d sealed orders as to what to do in case of war. I told him I thought that seal would not be broken until the angels in the Apocalypse arrived.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He just shook his head, and ordered another whiskey.”

“Well, it doesn’t concern us. It’s not our business.”

“No, thank God, it doesn’t and can’t concern us.”

* * * * *

They were in Oxford Street, rolling past the shuttered shop-fronts. A good many people were on the pavements, but the street was comparatively empty of vehicles, empty and sonorous. As they ran down past Selfridge’s, the curved line of lights in the centre of the street looked like an uncoiled necklace of luminous, glittering beads. At Oxford Circus they gazed down old Regent Street with its long lines of _café-au-lait_ Regency houses, broken only at the Quadrant by the new Piccadilly Hotel.

“Isn’t that like us?” said George. “We have an attempt at town-planning, and dull as Nash is, at any rate his design is simple and dignified, and then we go and ruin the Quadrant with a horrid would-be-modern hotel.”

“But I thought you believed in modernity in art.”

“So I do, but I don’t believe in mucking up the art of the past if it can be avoided. Besides, I don’t call these pastiches of Renaissance palaces modern architecture. The only people who have got a live modern architecture are the Americans, and they don’t know it.”

“Those awful sky-scrapers!”

“They’re awful in one way, but they’re original. I saw some photographs of New York from the harbour recently, and I thought it the most beautiful city in the world, a sort of gigantic and stupendous Venice. I’d like to go there, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I’d like to go to Paris and live in the real student’s quarter, and to Italy and Spain.”

* * * * *

The bus stopped at the end of Tottenham Court Road. They got down, and crossed the street to wait for the Hampstead bus.

“Look here,” said Elizabeth, “why do you bother to come all the way out to Hampstead? I’m perfectly used to going about alone. I shall be all right.”

“Of course, you would be. But I’d like to come most awfully. I hope I shall see a good deal of you, and we haven’t arranged where and when to meet again.”

“But there won’t be a bus back.”

“Oh, I shall walk. I like walking. And it’ll be an antidote to the fug and idiotic talk at Shobbe’s. Here’s the bus. Come on.”

They clambered on to the top of the bus, and again got the front seat. Elizabeth took off her right-hand glove to pay the fare, and after the conductor had gone George gently and rather timidly put his hand on hers. She did not withdraw it. Having established this delicious and dangerous contact, they sat silent for a while. The firm cool male hand gently espoused her slim glove-warmed fingers. In them both was the exaltation of the Cyprian, potential desire recognized only as a heightening of vitality. The first step along the primrose path—how delightful! But whither does it lead? To what everlasting bonfires of servitude or ashy wastes of indifference? Neither of them thought of the future. Why should they? The young at least have the sense to live only in the present moment.

Preceded by the silver dove-drawn chariot of the Paphian, the heavy bus lumbered northward. Sweet is the smile of Cypris, but ironic and a little terrifying, enigmatic as the fixed smile of the Veian Apollo.

Like all imaginative and sensitive men George was not what is called an enterprising lover. He had too much male modesty, the inherent _pudor_ which is so much stronger and more genuine than the induced modesty of women, that coquettish flight of the nymph who casts a rosy apple at her pursuer to encourage him to continue. Odd, but perhaps in the nature of things, that those men who have most contempt for women are generally most successful with them. There must be a vast amount of latent masochism in women, ranging from the primitive delight in being knocked down to the subtle enjoyment of complex jealousies. How ghastly—if you think about it—their passion for soldiers! To breed babes by him who has slain men—puh! there’s too much spilt blood in the world, one sickens at it. Give me some civet....

Once more they fell into talk, eager, excited, more intimate talk. They were calling each other “George” and “Elizabeth” before they reached the stately homes of Camden Town. By the time they passed Mornington Crescent they had admitted that they liked each other “frightfully” and would see a good deal of each other. In their excitement they talked rather incoherently, jumping from one topic to another in their eagerness to say something of all that seemed to clamour for expression, recklessly wasting their emotional energy. Their laughter had the ring of pure happiness. George slipped his arm through Elizabeth’s and held her fingers more amorously. Their natures expanded in a sudden delicious efflorescence; great coloured plumes of flowers seemed to sway and nod above their heads. They were enclosed in a nimbler air, the clear oxygen of desire, so light, so compact, so resistant to the grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London.

“Isn’t it strange!” George exclaimed, with that fatuity peculiar to lovers, “I only met you this evening and yet I feel as if I had known you all my life!”

“So do I!”

He gratefully squeezed her fingers in silence, caught in a sudden panic of bashfulness, unable to pursue further.

“Do let’s meet often. We can go to the galleries and Queen’s Hall and Hampton and Oxshott. I can get you tickets for the new picture shows. Do you know the Allied Artists?”

“Yes, I belong.”

“Do you? Why ever didn’t you tell me you are a painter, too?”

“Oh, I’m such a bad painter, besides you didn’t ask me.”

“Touché! How self-absorbed one is. I apologize.”

“You must come and have tea at my studio and look at my—what I call my pictures. But you mustn’t be too critical. When can you come?”

“Any time. To-morrow if you like.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“Oh! Oh! You are impatient. Can you come on Friday?”

“So long? It seems ages away!”

“Well, Thursday then.”

“All right, what time?”

“About four.”

Elizabeth was probably not acquainted with Stendhal’s ingenious theory of crystallization, but she acted instinctively in accordance with it. Three days and four nights made exactly the right period. To-morrow was too soon, the crystals would be in process of formation. A week would be rather too long, they would be tending to disintegrate.... Infinite subtlety of females! One must admit they need it.

* * * * *

George accompanied Elizabeth to the boarding-house where she lived and took the address of her studio. She held out her hand, after putting the latch-key in the yale lock.

“Till Thursday then, good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He held her hand a moment, and then awkwardly and timidly kissed it. In her turn she felt a sudden panic, opened the door swiftly, and disappeared inside, with a last hasty: “Good-night, good-night!”

George stood for several moments irresolutely on the step. He was desolated, thinking he had offended her.

Inside Elizabeth was murmuring silently to herself: “He kissed my hand, he kissed my hand! I’ve a lover, a lover.”

The sudden panic and flight were a masterpiece of erotic strategy—they left that feeling of uncertainty, of mingled hope and fear, so valuable to the production of a powerful crystallization.

* * * * *

George walked back to Greek Street, enclosing in himself a small chaos of emotions and thoughts. He went by way of Fitzjohn’s Avenue and St. John’s Wood. The infinite debate in a lover’s mind—did she or didn’t she, would she or wouldn’t she?—moved in those curious arabesques where a mind continually wanders away from a main stem of thought, and perpetually comes back to it. Upjohn’s ridiculous conceit, Shobbe’s party, never go to that sort of thing again, Bobbe’s acrid offensiveness, how delicate that line from her ear to her throat, I should like to paint her, now, in that article to-morrow I must try to show clearly and definitely what the new painters are attempting, I wonder if she was really offended when I kissed her hand, but I must think about that article, let me see, begin with an explanation of non-representational, yes, that’s it, I must get a new tie for Thursday, this one’s worn out.... And thus, with merciless iteration.

* * * * *

Under a gas-lamp near Marlborough Road Station he stopped and tried to write his first poem, and was surprised to find how difficult it was and what nonsense he wrote. A policeman came out of a side-street, and looked a little suspiciously at him. George moved on. A little later he began to sing “Bid me to live,” interrupted himself halfway through to make a note for a study in analysis of form. He walked rapidly and absorbedly, unconscious of his physical fatigue. Just before he crossed Oxford Street, he stopped and clapped his hands together. My God, I was a fool to kiss her hand the first time I met her, she’ll think I do that to every girl and won’t want to speak to me again. Oh, well, it’s done. I wish I could kiss her mouth. I must remember to tell her on Thursday about that show at the Leicester Gallery....

He lay awake long that night, unable to sleep for very love of living. So much to see, so much to experience, so much to achieve, so much to be and do! How wonderful to do things with Elizabeth! It would be fun to go to New York, of course, but perhaps one ought to see the old world first? She said something about Paris and Spain. We might go together. Cursed money difficulty. Never mind, if one wants to do a thing hard enough, one always manages to do it. I suppose I’m in love with her? It would be divine to kiss her and touch her breasts and... Of course, one mustn’t have a baby, that would be too ghastly. I must find out. I wish we could go to Paris, the trees will be leafing in the Luxembourg....

* * * * *

In the night-silence water dripped with insistent melody in some hidden tank. From outside came the shrill distant notes of train whistles, rather silvery and exquisite, bringing the yearning for travel, “the horns of elf-land faintly blowing.” Where had he read that? Oh, of course, Stevenson. Funny how the Coningtons thought Stevenson a good author....

“Good-night, Elizabeth, good-night, sweet, sweet Elizabeth, good-night, good-night.”

[ IV ]

Before our eyes we have the regrettable examples of George Augustus and Isabel, Ma and Pa Tartly, dear Mamma and dear Papa—eponyms of sexual infelicity.

Are we more intelligent than our ancestors? What a question for the British Press or for those three musketeers of publicity cheap and silly, of tattered debates on torn topics—Shaw, Chesterton and Belloc. Shaw, yes, the puritan Beaumarchais—_un coup de chapeau_—but the others! To the goddess Ennui sung by Pope, the groans of the Britons. Who will deliver us from the R. C. bores?

* * * * *

The problem may be stated thus:

Let X equal the _ménage_ of dear Mamma-dear Papa, or a typical couple of the seventies and eighties;

And let Y equal the _ménage_ George Augustus and Isabel, or a typical couple of the nineties and noughts;

And further, let Z equal Elizabeth and George, or a typical bright young pair of the Georgian or European War epoch;

Then, it remains to be proved whether Z is equal to, or greater than or less than X and / or Y.

A pretty theorem, not to be solved mathematically—too many unknown quantities involved.

I am naturally prejudiced in favour of Z, because I belong to their generation, but what do _les jeunes_, the sole competent authority, think? For, after all,—let us be perfectly frank—dear Papa expired peacefully in his bed; George Augustus was unhappily but accidentally slain in the performance of his religious duties; whereas George, if you accept my interpretation of the facts, virtually committed suicide at the age of twenty-six.

But then dear Papa and George Augustus did not have to fight the European War....

The problem, you see, is almost insoluble, no doubt because it is wrongly stated. Let us examine it in different terms.

* * * * *

Without going back to Horace’s egg, may we not assume that he and she have lived well who have lived with felicity?

This not only involves the problem of the _summum bonum_ or sovereign good, so much debated by the ancient philosophers, but the awful difficulty of knowing who is to decide whether another person has lived with felicity. Is there such a thing as a happy life? And, if there is would it be the most desirable life? Would you like to be Claudian’s old man of Verona? Or Mr. John D. Rockefeller? Or Mr. Michael Arlan? Or any other type of unabridged felicity?

There are, of course, lots of things and people who will eagerly or dogmatically tell you exactly what you have to do to be happy. There is, for instance, the collective wisdom of the ages, as embodied in our religions, philosophies, laws, and social customs. What a mess! What a junk-shop of dusty relics! And in any case, “the collective wisdom of the ages” is merely one of the innumerable devices of government by which the Anglo-Saxon peoples are humbugged into thinking themselves free, enlightened and happy.

* * * * *

But let us abandon these abstruse and arid speculations.... The point is, did George and Elizabeth (consider them for the moment, please, rather as types than individuals) come better prepared to the erotic life than their predecessors, were they more intelligent about it, did they make a bigger mess of things? Does the free play of the passions and intelligence make for more erotic happiness than the taboo system? Liberty versus Restraint. Wise Promiscuity versus Monogamy. (This is becoming a Norman Haire tract.)

Here, of course, I shall come into collision (if this has not happened long ago) with the virtuous British journalist. This gentleman will inform us that there are far too many books about the erotic life, that to dwell upon sex is morbid and disgusting, that monogamous marriage as established by religion and law must remain sacred, et cetera, et cetera, and that it provides a perfect solution, et cetera, et cetera. Moreover, in the few cases where it goes wrong, the situation must be met by frequent applications of cold water to the genitals, by propelling balls of different sizes in different manners with various instruments in mimic combat, by slaying small animals and birds, by playing bridge for modest sums, avoiding French wines and dancing, scattering saltpetre on one’s bread and butter, regularly attending church, and subscribing to the virtuous organ of the virtuous journalist....

To which may be said; for example,

That without sexual intercourse, frequent and pleasant, adult life is maimed and tedious;

That social hypocrisy prescribes that we shall avoid open discussion and practice of the sexual life, and that we all (virtuous journalists included) think a great deal about it;

That the sporting-ascetic practices recommended are only effective in those predisposed to abnormal frigidity, and

That they, taken in conjunction with the segregation of the sexes, economic difficulties and insane prejudices, form one of the chief predisposing causes of the pictures of Dorian Grey and wells of loneliness which cause the virtuous journalist so much horror and indignation.

We therefore unanimously dismiss the virtuous British journalist with a firm but vigorous kick in the seat of his intelligence, and return to our speculations.

* * * * *

Mother of the race of Æneas, voluptuous delight of gods and men, sacred Aphrodite, who from the recesses of thy divine abode lookest in pity upon the sorrowing generations of men and women, and sheddest upon us rose-petals of subtle and recurrent pleasure and the delicious gift of Sleep, do Thou, Goddess, be ever with us, and neglect not the felicity of Thy worshippers. Do Thou, alone beautiful, daughter of the Gods, drench us with loveliness.

* * * * *

From which to the lives of Pa and Ma Hartley _et al._, is indeed a staggeringly long step....

* * * * *

I hold a brief for the war generation. J’aurais pu mourir; rien ne m’eût été plus facile. J’ai encore à écrire ce que nous avons fait.... (Bonaparte à Fontainebleau—admirez l’érudition de l’auteur.)

* * * * *

Yet why should we mourn, O Zeus, and why should we laugh? Why weep, why mock? What is a generation of men that we should mourn for it? As leaves, as leaves, says the poet, spring, burgeon and fall the generations of Man—No! but as rats in the rolling ship of the Earth as she plunges through the roar of the stars to the inevitable doom. And like rats we pullulate, and like rats we scramble for greasy prey, and like rats we fight and murder our kin.... And—O gigantic mirth!—the voice of the Thomiste is heard!

* * * * *

Peace be to you, O lovers, peace unto Juliet’s grave!

* * * * *

At the time of which I am writing—the three or four years preceding 1914—young men and women were just as much interested in sexual matters as they are now, or were at any other time. They were in revolt against the family or domestic den ethic, that “ordained for the procreation of children” attitude whereby the State turns its adult members into a true proletariat, mere producers of _proles_. And they were almost as much in revolt against Tennysonian and Pre-Raphaelite “idealism,” which made love a sort of hand-holding in the Hesperides. But, let it be remembered, Freudianism (as distinct from Freud, that great man whom every one talks about and nobody reads) had scarcely begun to penetrate. All things were not interpreted in terms of sexual symbolism; and if one had the misfortune to slip on a banana peel in the street, he was not immediately told that this implied repressed desire to undergo the initiatory mutilating rite of the Mohammedans. They thought they were rediscovering the importance of the physical in love; they hoped they were not neglecting the essential tenderness, and the mythopœic faculty of lovers which is the source of much beauty.

* * * * *

Late in April, George and Elizabeth went to Hampton Court. They met at Waterloo about nine, went by train to Teddington, and walked through Bushey Park. Each had brought a frugal lunch, half because of poverty, half from some Pythagorean delusion about austerity in diet.

They walked on the grass through the long elm naves.

“How blue the sky is,” said Elizabeth, throwing back her head, and breathing the soft air.

“Yes, and look how the elms make long Gothic arches!”

“Yes, and do look at the young leaves, so shrill, so virginal a green.”

“Yes, and yet you can still see the beautiful tree skeleton—youth and age.”

“Yes, and the chestnut blossom will be out soon.”

“Yes, and the young grass is— Oh Elizabeth, look, look! The deer! There’s two young ones.”

“Where? Where are they? I can’t see them. I _want_ to see them!”

“There they are! Look, look, running across to the right.”

“Oh, yes! How funny the little ones are I But how graceful. How old are they?”

“Only a few days I should think. Why are they so beautiful and young babies so hideous?”

“I don’t know. They’re always supposed to look like their fathers, aren’t they?”

“Touché—but I should think that would make the mothers hate them, and they love the little beasts.”

“Not always. A friend of mine had a baby last year, and she didn’t want it when it was coming, but kept thinking she would love it when it came. And when she saw it, she simply loathed it, and they had to take it away. But she _made_ herself look after it. She says it’s ruined her life and she doesn’t find it a bit interesting, but now she’s fond of it and couldn’t bear it to die.”

“Perhaps she didn’t love her husband.”

“Oh, yes, she does. She simply dotes on him.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t his child.”

“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth slightly shocked. “It _was_ his child. But one reason why she didn’t like it was because it separated them.”

“How long had they been married when the child was born?”

“Oh, I don’t know—less than a year.”

“Idiotic,” said George, banging the end of his walking stick on the ground, “Ab-so-lute-ly idiotic! Why the devil did they go and have a child bang off like that? Of course, she’s unhappy and they’re ‘separated.’ Serves ’em right.”

“But could they help it? I mean—well, you know—it just happens, doesn’t it?”

“Good Lord, Elizabeth, what a prehistoric notion! Of course it doesn’t ‘just happen.’ There are several ways...”

“It seems a bit revolting?”

“Not a bit! You may feel so because you’ve had mushy ideas about maidenly modesty and such twaddle instilled into you. That’s all part of the taboo. Now I think the really civilized thing is _not_ to let such things happen to us like animals, but to control them. It’s all most frightfully important, perhaps the most important problem for our generation to solve.”

“But you surely don’t think everybody should give up having children?”

“Why, of course not! I do say so sometimes when I feel discouraged and disgusted with the poor scarecrows of humanity we are now. Fewer and better babies. Isn’t it insane that we exercise over animals the control they haven’t got themselves, and yet resolutely refuse even to discuss it about human beings? How can you have a fine race if you breed insensately like white mice?”

“Well, but, George dear, you can’t interfere with other peoples’ lives like that!”

“I didn’t say one should. But I believe that if people have the necessary knowledge and we get rid of the taboo they will for their own sakes come to breed more eugenically. Of course, it’s an intimate and private matter—no need for Sir Thomas Moore’s insane regulations and naked exhibitions before modest matrons and discreet old gentlemen. It’s not for the old to interfere with the lusts of youth! Damn the old. But here’s another point. Like most intelligent women and a few men you’re indignant at the way women have been treated in the past and at the wicked mediæval laws of this country. You want women to be free to live more interesting lives. So do I. Any man who isn’t an abject moron would rather see women becoming more intelligent and magnanimous instead of having them kept ignorant and timid and repressed and meekly acquiescent, and therefore sly and catty and wanting to get their own back. But you won’t achieve that with Suffrage. Of course, let women have votes if they want them. But who the devil wants a vote? I’d gladly give you mine if I had one. But the point is this—when women, all women, know how to control their bodies, they’ll have an enormous power. They’ll be able to choose when and how they’ll have a child and what man they want as its father. Overpopulation causes wars as much as commercial greed and diplomatic deceit and imbecile patriotism. Talk about the miners’ strike! What I want to see is a universal strike of women. They could bring all the governments of the world to their knees in a year. Like the Lysistrata, you know, but not a failure this time.”

“Oh, George, you are amusing with your fancies I You make me laugh!”

“Laugh away! But I’m serious. Of course, it isn’t possible to have such a concerted action all over the world. For one thing it wouldn’t be politic to announce it, because the unscrupulous governments will always go to any extent of force and fraud to sustain their infamous régimes....”

* * * * *

They had crossed the road outside Bushey Park and entered the palace gates. Between the wall which backs the Long Border, the Tudor side of the palace and another long high wall, is the Wilderness, or old English garden, composed on the grandiose scale advocated by Bacon. It is both a garden and a “wilderness,” in the sense that it is planted with innumerable bulbs (which are thinned and removed from time to time), but otherwise allowed to run wild. George and Elizabeth stopped with that sudden ecstasy of delight felt by the sensitive young—a few of them—at the sight of loveliness. Great secular trees, better protected than those in the outer Park, held up vast fans of glittering green and gold foliage which trembled in the light wind and formed moving patterns on the tender blue sky. The lilacs had just unfolded their pale hearts showing the slim stalk of closed buds which would break open later in a foam of white and blue blossoms. Underfoot was the stouter green of wild plants, spread out like an evening sky of verdure for the thick clustered constellations of flowers. There shone the soft slim yellow trumpet of the wild daffodil; the daffodil which has a pointed ruff of white petals to display its gold head; and the more opulent double daffodil which, compared with the other two, is like an ostentatious merchant between Florizel and Perdita. There were the many-headed jonquils, creamy and thick-scented; the starry narcissus, so alert on its long slender stiff stem, so sharp-eyed, so unlike a languid youth gazing into a pool; the hyacinth-blue frail squilla almost lost in the lush herbs; and the hyacinth, blue and white and red, with its firm thick-set stem and innumerable bells curling back their open points. Among them stood tulips—the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large parti-coloured gold and red, noble and sombre like the royal banner of Spain.

English spring flowers! What an answer to our ridiculous “cosmic woe,” how salutary, what a soft reproach to bitterness and avarice and despair, what balm to hurt minds! The lovely bulb-flowers, loveliest of the year, so unpretentious, so cordial, so unconscious, so free from the striving after originality of the gardener’s tamed pets! The spring flowers of the English woods, so surprising under those bleak skies, and the flowers the English love so much and tend so skilfully in the cleanly wantonness of their gardens, as surprisingly beautiful as the poets of that bleak race! When the inevitable “fuit Ilium” resounds mournfully over London among the appalling crash of huge bombs and the foul reek of deadly gases while the planes roar overhead, will the conqueror think regretfully and tenderly of the flowers and the poets...?

* * * * *

When George, on one of our walks, told me the gist of this conversation with Elizabeth, I was at once more amused and more interested than I allowed him to see. There are certain aspects of peoples’ bodies, certain things they say and do, which not only determine one’s attitude towards them but seem to explain them. And more, in some cases they seem to reveal an epoch. Every one has experience of attraction or repulsion caused by another’s body. For instance, there was once a poet, whose work I admired; but the first time I met him he tried to hold a girl’s hand. I didn’t mind _that_, au contraire. What I minded was the awful spectacle of his large ugly raw-red hand, with knotty fingers and gnawed mourning nails, trying to enclose the washed and chubby hand of my little friend.... I could never read his poems again without thinking of that Mr. Hyde-like hand, the Barrymore film hand of Mr. Hyde....

Now I had a reason for dwelling at some length on these preliminary conversations of George and Elizabeth with George much in the foreground. They seem to explain a great deal, at least to me. They reveal him and at the same time “throw more light” (as the learned say) on the state of mind of a generation of young men who mostly perished in their twenties. As a rule, George was very silent. Like most people who think at all he had very little of the small change of conversation and disliked aimless babbling. But when he was with somebody he liked, he talked. My God, how much he talked! He was passionately interested in ideas, passionately interested in his own reactions to the appearances of things, comparatively little interested in the lives of other people except in a general and abstract way. He noticed in a flash the girl at a party who looked like a Botticelli (people still admired Botticelli in those days and girls lived up to it) but he would never see, for example, the look on the face of the rather plain woman whom one guessed to be in love with the handsome host uxoriously devoted to his new wife. Consequently his talk was all ideas and impressions. He had an almost indecent love of ideas. If you threw George a new idea he caught it with a skilled and grateful snap, like a seal at the Zoo catching a fish jerked at it by the keeper.

Of course, it is very natural that young men and women should be interested in ideas, which are new to them though probably stale enough to those a bit older. But the young War Generation seem to me to have been abnormally swayed by ideas of grandiose “Social reform.” England swarmed with Social Reformers. I don’t pretend to know why. Perhaps it was due to the political idealism of Ruskin and Morris, aided by the infinitely more sensible work of the Fabians. Everybody was the architect of a New Jerusalem, and a rummy assortment of plans they provided. This passion has now reached the disinterested and noble-minded trade unionist and to some extent even the agricultural labourer. Consequently, you may now hear, at Hyde Park Corner or in pubs or third-class carriages, beautifully garbled versions of the highbrow talk of about twenty years ago. You thus have the encouraging and delightful spectacle of a proletariat eagerly expecting a millennium, impossible at any time, but particularly impossible after a catastrophe which has plunged the intellectuals into Spenglerian pessimism and hurled the weaker or more cynical into the ironic bosom of Mother Church....

George was pretty much affected by this social reform bunk. He was always looking at things from “the point of view of the Country” and far more frequently from “the point of view of humanity.” This may have been a result of his Public School, kicked-backside-of-the-Empire training. I know he resisted it with commendable contempt and fury, but where so much pitch was flying about he could scarcely avoid some of it. Perhaps the young are always like that, although one does not seem to notice it. As I pointed out to George years afterwards, he was quite right to discuss the matter frankly and openly with Elizabeth before they proceeded further, but all this bunk about eugenics and women’s rights and preventing wars by birth control would have discouraged any girl who had not fully made up her mind already that she wanted him. It was appallingly bad strategy as seduction—though, _en passant_ let it be noted that “seduction” is one of those primitive notions which could only inhabit the degenerate minds of lawyers and social uplifters, since in nine cases out of ten the “seducer,” if any, is the woman. I thought that George ought to have imparted a little elementary information, and have pointed out that in the present state of human affairs it is not quite right for people to have a child without being legally married because it’s so hard on the child, although in some cases it should be done deliberately as a protest against a foolish prejudice. He ought then to have explained how it may spoil a sexual relationship to have a child too soon and unthinkingly. And he should then have demonstrated by example and precept that love is an art, and a very difficult art, and one most dismally and disastrously neglected especially by “well-bred” Englishmen. It sounds incredible but it is true that there are thousands of such men, perfectly decent, humane persons, who despise a woman if they think or know that she experiences any sexual pleasure. And then they wonder vaguely why women are shrewish and discontented....

All this will sound very elementary to some people and very reprehensible to others. I am simply trying to explain these people. Of course, there is always the superior person who veils puritanism by saying: “I’m so bored with all this talk about sex. Why can’t people go to bed with the person they want to, and stop talking about it?” Well, why shouldn’t we talk about what interests us, and what, after all, is extremely important to adult life and happiness? Maybe we can learn something from the adulteries of others. It seems to me that the error of the Elizabeth and George generation was that they were far too absolute, too general, too dogmatic in their “ideas” about sex. They _would_ let the Social Reform bunk distort their view. They had seen in their own homes the dreadful unhappiness and suffering caused by Victorian, and indeed Edwardian, ignorance and domestic dennery and swarming infants, and they reacted violently against it. So far, good. But they failed to see that in the way they went about it, they were merely setting up another tyranny—the tyranny of free love. Why shouldn’t people be monogamous if they want to be? Maybe it suits them. Don’t be dragooned into it, of course, but don’t be frightened out of it if you’re made that way. There are certain elementary precepts which always hold good—for instance, Balzac’s “Never begin marriage with a rape”—but this is a wholly personal and very complex and delicate relation which people must work out for themselves. All one asks is that they shall not be interfered with by law and busybodies. It is an interesting comment on the sadism latent in communities that the cruelty and misery of the Victorian home are legally protected and held up as shining examples of behaviour, whereas any attempt to make people a little more natural and happy and tolerant is supposed to be wicked. How men destroy their own happiness! How they hate happiness and pleasure! Think of the insane delusion of female chastity which holds that any woman who has “had” more than one man is “impure,” whereas in fact many women soon come to dislike profoundly their first lover, and most are only really happy and satisfied with a fourth or sixth or tenth.

Alas! “with human nature what it is,” the love-lives of most people will always alternate between brief periods of happiness and long periods of suffering. The “sexual problem” will only be solved with the millennium which produces a perfect humanity. Until then we can only look on and sigh at the ruined lives; and reflect that men and women might be to each other the great consolation, while in fact they do little but torment each other....

* * * * *

I do not pity Elizabeth and George. They were very happy that day—and on other days—and to be quite happy even for one day is sufficient sanction for the misfortune of existence.

They went from the Wilderness into the large garden and walked slowly beside the Long Border where the gardeners were busily potting out spring flowers. The crocuses were almost over, and the large motor lawn-mower was smoothly humming over the delicate green turf of the great lawns. They looked at the trimmed yews and wondered if they had been planted by Cardinal Wolsey. They criticized, somewhat adversely, the lead statue of the three Graces and, walking under the trees by the canals, noticed the cold green lily-leaves just beginning to unfold under water. They stood at the end of the Long Border and for a long time in silence watched the swirl and eddy of the Thames, the house-boats being freshly painted for the season, the exquisite swaying fronds of the young willows. In the Privy Garden, on the raised walk and under the lime-tree avenue where the great clumps of crocuses lay sprawled and dying and overgrown at the foot of each tree, they talked of King Charles, and fought over the age-old contest of King and Parliament. Elizabeth was romantically for the handsome melancholy King; George Whiggish and all for political freedom, though gravely disapproving of Puritan vandalism. They went through the Fountain Court and the beautiful Tudor Courts, and walked along the river, and sat under a tree to eat their lunch. They talked and argued and laughed and made plans and reformed the world and felt important (God knows why!) and held hands and kissed when they thought no one was looking.... And yes, they were very happy.

* * * * *

Dear Lovers! If it were not for you, how dreary the world would be! Never shall a pair of you pass me without a kindly discreet glance and a murmured wish, “Be happy.” How my heart warmed to an old French poet as we walked slowly on the Boulevard, and the lovers in the soft evening air passed us by, hand so close in hand, bodies so amorously near, eyes so sparkling and alive. Now and then, in the intoxicating air of the spring and the tolerant kindliness of the Parisians, a pair would feel so exuberant and so enthusiastic and so moved with each other’s perfections, that they would have to stop and exchange a long kiss, perfunctorily hidden by a quite inadequate tree-trunk. Nobody interrupted them, nobody scowled, no policeman arrested them for indecency. And the old poet paused, and laid his hand on my arm, and said: “Mon ami, I grow old! I am nearly sixty. And sometimes as I pass along these streets and see these warm young people I find myself thinking: ‘How impudique! Why is this permitted? Why do they intrude their passions on me?’ And then I remember that I too was young, and I too passed eagerly and happily with one or other of my young mistresses whom I thought so beautiful, each of whom I loved with so immortal a love! And I look at the lovers passing and I say to myself: ‘Allez-y, mes enfants, allez-y, soyez heureux!’”

Dear Lovers! Let us never forget that you are the sweetness of the bitter world.

* * * * *

And Elizabeth and George lingered through the sunny hours; and before the afternoon became too chill—for April is cold in England—they went back slowly through the long glades of the Park, they too hand in hand like the lovers on the Boulevard, they too with bodies amorously near, they too with eyes sparkling and alive, they too pausing to join their lips when the loveliness of life and the ecstasy of loving drew them together in a kiss.

They were so happy they did not know they were tired.

[ V ]

It is fascinating to observe how people organize and disorganize their lives, fascinating to see how an impulse of vitality sends them off on a certain line, how they wobble, err, suffer, recover themselves. What is the most banal street, the most tedious place you know? Think how fascinating if only you knew the real lives of those tedious people!

There are two centres or poles of activity in every adult life—the economic and the sexual. Hunger and Death, the enemies. Your whole adult life depends on how you deal with the two primitive foes, Hunger and Death. Never mind how much the conditions of collective human life seem to have altered them, they are there; you can never really get away from Hunger and Death, from the need to eat and the will to live again.

Thus, two problems are created—the economic and the sexual. There is no cut-and-dried solution of either. Existence is tolerable—I will not say “happy,” though I believe in happiness—to the extent that as an individual you are successful in solving these two problems. Certain traditional solutions are presented to us all in youth, and the swiftness with which we see their foolishness is an almost unerring test of intelligence. When we have seen through them, a new and delicate problem presents itself—we have to create our own happiness underneath or in despite of the Laws (or rules for collective life) and at the same time preserve intact the sense of Justice, or that which is due to each.

The primitive, the proletarian, the common man and woman solution is merely one of _quantity_. Get all the grub and copulation you want and more than you want and ipso facto you will be happy. Put money in thy purse. Excellent Iago, what a fool you are! Noble Caliban, what a silly beast! Savages, the heroes of Homer and working men gorge on the flesh of beeves. To sack a town and rape all the women was the sexual ideal of centuries of civilized savages. To do the same thing with money sneakingly, instead of with the sword openly, is the actual ideal of Dr. Frank Crane’s world-famous business men. The judgment of the wiser world is upon them all. Let them join the megatherium and the wild ass.

Then you have the Rudyard Kipling or British Public School solution. Not so far removed from the other as you might think, for it is a harnessing of the same primitive instincts to the service of a group—the nation—instead of to the service of the individual. Whatever is done for the Empire is right. Not Truth and Justice, but British Truth and British Justice. Odious profanation! You are the servant of the Empire, never mind whether you are rich or poor, do what the Empire tells you, and so long as the Empire is rich and powerful you ought to be happy. Woman? A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair. Get rid of the sexual problem by teaching men to despise women, either by open scorn or by putting them on the pedestal of chastity. Of course, they’re valuable as possessions. Oh, quite! There can be no world peace because the man who has the most money gets the best woman, as the German Kaiser said at the gathering of the nations. As if the nations were a set of Kiplingesque characters bidding against each other for an expensive tart! How despicable, how odious!

No, each of us has to work out the problems for himself and, I repeat, on the correct solution of both depends happiness in life. I do not pretend to be able to teach what is your solution. I think I know what is mine; but that is not necessarily yours. But I am quite sure that the quantitative and the British Public School solutions are wrong....

The struggle with Hunger, or the economic problem, leads to situations of astonishing “human interest,” as Balzac recognized. But we are not much concerned with it here. It was highly important in the case of Isabel; very little in the case of Elizabeth and George. They were content with very little, which they obtained quite easily—Elizabeth from her parents, George by various odd jobs which occupied only a comparatively small part of his time. Each wanted to avoid the slavery of working eight hours a day at a stated wage, for some one else, though both were willing to work sixteen hours a day on their own, at what they wanted to do. Neither had the slightest ambition to dominate others through wealth. Of course, you may say they solved the economic problem by dodging it. However, as far as they are concerned as individuals, that _was_ a solution.

But this “dodging solution” (if you like to call it such) involved the sexual problem, too. It was quite obvious that George was incapable of supporting a woman and children on his perfunctorily performed jobs, while his painting was rather a liability than an asset. On the other hand, it was equally obvious that Elizabeth was not rich enough to afford the luxury of an artist husband and a family. It therefore followed that they could not afford children, and since they didn’t want them, this was a misfortune they contemplated with calm. But, since they didn’t want children, it followed that there was no need to get married. Why get married, except for the sake of the unfortunate little bastard?

All of which they talked out very fully before they ever lay together. You may say, of course, that this is very wicked and “unnatural,” that if every one acted in this way the human race would soon come to a full stop. I shall not make the obvious retort of “a good job too,” but merely say that I observe no danger of under-population in Europe. Since the population of England is about three times the amount which the land of England can feed, I am inclined to think that George and Elizabeth should be regarded as a national hero and heroine in this respect....

If you are as quick-witted as you ought to be you will already have noticed one big difference between the George-Elizabeth _ménage_ (I don’t mean the legal irregularity, which is of no importance) and the _ménages_ of George Augustus-Isabel, Dear Mamma-Dear Papa, Ma-and-Pa Hartly. “They talked it out very fully before they ever lay together.” You get the point? They used their intelligence, they actually used their intelligence _before_ embarking on a joint sexual experience. That’s the great break in the generations. Trying to use some intelligence in life, instead of blindly following instincts and the collective imbecility of the ages as embodied in social and legal codes. Isabel “married for money” and got what she deserved, viz., bankruptcy. But she had been obliquely taught that it was a girl’s duty to use men’s sexual passions as a means of acquiring property. Whoring within the law. The Trade Union of married women. George Augustus was greatly attracted by Isabel and wanted to lie with her. Why not? My God, why not? But he had never thought about the problems. He didn’t want children; Isabel didn’t want children. Not really. But they had been taught that if a man and woman wanted to lie together it was horribly wicked to do so unless they were “married.” The parson, the public ceremonies and the signatures made “sacred” what was otherwise inexpressibly wrong and sinful. But in the code on which George Augustus and Isabel were reared “marriage” meant “a dear little baby” nine months after the wedding bells. All right for those who go into it with open eyes. Perfect. Charming. I’ll be godfather every ten months. J’adore les enfants. But all wrong, all so rottenly wrong, if you go into it like a couple of ninnies, mess up your sexual life, disappoint the man, disgust the woman, and produce an infant you can’t look after properly....

Which is precisely what George Augustus and Isabel did, and what their parents did before them....

Now the marriage of Molière’s time was jolly sensible so far as it went. You, Eraste, love Lisette? Good. You, Lisette, love Eraste? Admirable. You wish to crown your flame? Most natural and delightful. But you know that means infants? Perfect. How much money have you got, Eraste? Nothing? Ah!... But your father approves? Will give ten thousand crowns if Lisette’s father will give another five thousand? Delicious. _Quite_ a different situation. Your father approves, Lisette? Yes? Quick, a notary. Bless you, my children.

That was blunt, bluff common-sense. I’m sorry for Lisette, but not for Lisette’s children.

The only trouble was that Lisette and Eraste were not very happy sexually—hence the _amants_ of Lisette and the _amies_ of Eraste. So you dropped into promiscuity, and Eraste didn’t know if Lisette’s later brats were his; and Lisette didn’t know how many dear little bastards Eraste was scattering about the world. All of which made for nastiness, cantankerousness and hypocrisy.

The simple process of dissociating sex life from the philoprogenitive instinct was performed by the War Generation—at least on the grand scale, for isolated practitioners had long existed. The march of Science (how delightful clichés are!) had brought certain engines within the reach of all; and sensible people profited by them. The old alternative of burning or marrying disappeared. And the following, far better proposition arose. It was perfectly possible for man or woman to live a satisfactory sex life without having children. Hence, by the scientific process of trial and error, it became possible for each to seek the really satisfactory lover; while those who were philoprogenitively inclined might marry (en attendant mieux) for the sake of the children. Thus there was a return to the wise promiscuity of the Ancients (if the Ancients ever did anything so sensible, which I greatly doubt) which was a great advance on humbug, domestic tyranny, furtive promiscuity and whoring. One definite result, which we see to-day, is an undeniable decline in the number of whores—the first time this has occurred since the Edict of Milan.

Unfortunately the pre-war “engines” were rather crude and not wholly reliable....

George and Elizabeth, then, were either extremely sensible or disgustingly immoral—I don’t mind what your judgment is, I am recording facts. I don’t, however, attempt to disguise my own prejudice, which is that intelligence makes for a far better life than “Luv” and “God,” those euphuisms for stupidity and ignorance. In a manner of speaking they were pioneers. At any rate, they thought they were, which is all that matters here. They really thought they had worked out a more sensible, more intelligent, more humane relationship between the sexes. But there were certain rather important little snags they overlooked. Like most bright young things, they were very cock-sure of themselves, a good bit too cock-sure. And then, while one doesn’t at all deny that they were pretty bright, and on the right track, their knowledge was unhappily theoretical, chiefly derived from George’s reading and meditations. It’s a confoundedly dangerous thing for two virgins to take on the job of initiating each other into a complicated art they only know theoretically. Dangerous, in that high hopes may be dashed, rather lovely emotions sadly frustrated and a beautiful relationship spoiled. There are dangers in meeting the undeniably right person too soon in life. Two handsome young married people, obviously deeply in love—what a charming spectacle, how delightful.... Wait! You wait! Not very long either....

* * * * *

You haven’t forgotten Fanny and the young man from Cambridge....

* * * * *

Well, Elizabeth and George worked out their scheme, and for a considerable time it all worked admirably. But for the war and the upset of every one’s mind and life and character, it might have weathered the small storms of Fanny and the young man—and perhaps other Fannies and other young men—and still have gone on working. Elizabeth abandoned her Hampstead boarding house, and found a large room, which did as a studio, in Bloomsbury. She wrote her parents in Manchester that she did this for the sake of economy and to be nearer her “work”—whatever that might mean. The economy consisted in the fact that when she spent the night with George at his “studio” she was obviously not wearing out her own bed clothes. Elizabeth’s mother paid her a surprise visit. Most luckily George had gone away for the week-end, and Elizabeth was “discovered” calmly painting by herself. She behaved with the admirable dissimulation which comes so naturally to women, swiftly whipped away one or two objects (such as a tobacco pipe and pouch, the _Psychology of Sex_, inscribed “To darling Elizabeth from George”) which might have betrayed a certain intimacy with a male, and sent George a long warning telegram. Mrs. Paston stayed three days. Of course, she suspected “something.” Elizabeth looked about ten times prettier, was much more smartly dressed, talked differently, used all sorts of new phrases, and was obviously very happy, so happy that even three days of her mother failed to depress her completely. Elizabeth treated her char-lady with reasonable humanity, so when Mrs. Paston severely cross-examined her in secret about Elizabeth, the char-lady just went beautifully stupid and stood by Elizabeth nobly. “Oh, no, Ma’am, I never seen nothin’ wrong.” “Oh, yes, Ma’am, Miss Elizabeth’s such a nice young lady.” “I’m only here of mornings, Ma’am.” So Mrs. Paston, baffled but somewhat suspicious—what right had Elizabeth to look so well and happy and pretty away from her dear parents?—had to return home and present a blank report.

So that alarm died down.

* * * * *

Elizabeth became inordinately proud of being no longer a virgin. You might have thought she was the only devirginated young woman in London. But, like King Midas, she burned to share her secret, to make somebody else envious. So one week when George had run over to Paris about some pictures, she invited Fanny to tea, and after a tremendous amount of preparation, confessed the lovely secret. Partly to Elizabeth’s disappointment and partly to her relief, Fanny took the news as something very ordinary.

“I’m really surprised you waited so long, my dear.”

“But you’re nearly as old as I am!”

“Oh, but, darling, didn’t you _know?_ I’ve had two or three affairs. Only I didn’t say anything to _you_. I thought you’d be shocked.”

“Shocked?” Elizabeth laughed scornfully, though she _was_ a bit surprised. “Why on earth should _I_ be shocked? _I_ think people should be free to have all the love affairs they want.”

“Do tell me who he is!”

Elizabeth blushed slightly and hesitated.

“No, I won’t tell you now, but you’ll meet him soon.”

“But, Elizabeth, I hope you’re careful? You won’t go and have a baby?”

Elizabeth laughed scornfully again.

“Have a baby? Of course not! Why ever do you think I’m so silly? George and I talked it—”

“Oh! His name’s ‘George’ is it?”

“Yes. Did I let that out? Yes, George Winterbourne. Well, we talked it all out, and we’ve got a perfectly good arrangement. George says we’re too young to have children, so why get married; and anyway we’re too poor. If we want children later on, we can always _get_ married. I said I wouldn’t tie myself down with _any_ man—I don’t want anybody else’s name. I told George that if I wanted other lovers I should have them, and if he wanted any one else he was to have her. But, of course, when there’s a relationship as firmly established as ours, one doesn’t _want_ any one else.”

Fanny smiled.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact, Elizabeth had not said anything of the sort, when George drew up his Triumphal Scheme of the Perfect Sex Relationship. She had been rather timid and uncertain at first. But George’s discourses and the books on physiology and psychology and sex which he made her read and her own exultation at being no longer a virgin had sent her spinning in the other direction. She had, in a few months, far outdistanced George in “freedom.” Her argument was rational and quite defensible; indeed it was a corollary to George’s own views, though he hadn’t seen it. Because you were very fond of one person, she argued, that was no reason why you shouldn’t be attracted by others. Monogamy was established to tyrannize women and to make sure offspring were legitimate and to provide for them and the mother. But where women are free and there is no offspring, what on earth is the good of an artificial and forced fidelity? Directly one has to _promise_ fidelity, directly an effort of will is made to “remain faithful,” a false position is set up. The effort of keeping such a promise is the surest assurance that it will be broken sooner or later. On the other hand, while you are in love with some one, well, you’re in love, and you either don’t want any one else, or if you do, you’re probably only too happy to get back speedily to the person you do really care for.

There was logic and a good deal of sense in this, George had to admit. But he also had to admit to himself that he didn’t altogether like the idea of Elizabeth “going with” somebody else. Nor, for that matter, would Elizabeth have liked George “going with” another girl. But she deceived herself unknowingly. At that time she was very much under the influence of a Swedish book she had read, a book devoted to the Future of the Race. This was the work of an earnest-minded virgin of fifty who laid it down as an indisputable axiom that there must be complete frankness between the sexes. “The old notion of sexual fidelity must go,” declared this enthusiastic writer, “and only from the golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom can rise the glorious new race et cetera, et cetera.” Elizabeth didn’t know the authoress was an old maid, and she was annoyed with George for making fun of the “golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom.”

“But, Elizabeth,” George had said, when she propounded this argument, “of course, I believe that people should be free, and it’s disgusting for them to stay together when they don’t any longer love each other. But suppose I happened to want some one else, just a sort of whim, and went on loving you, wouldn’t it be better if I said nothing about it? And the same with you?”

“And tell each other lies? Why, George, you yourself have said time and again that there can be no genuine relationship which involves deceit. The very essence and beauty and joy of our relation depend upon its being honest and frank and accepting facts.”

“Why, yes, but...”

“Look at the lives of our parents, look at all the sneaking adulteries going on at this very moment in every suburb of London. Don’t you see, why, you _must_ see, that what’s wrong about adultery is not the sexual part of it at all, but the plotting and sneaking and dissimulation and lies and pretence....”

“That’s true,” said George slowly and reflectively, “that’s true. But—suppose I told you that when I was last in Paris I spent the nights with Georgina Harris?”

“Did you?”

“No, of course not. But, you see...”

“What would it have mattered if you had? My Swedish woman you make fun of is very sound about that. She says that two people should spend a few days or more away from each other every few weeks, and that it may be a very good thing for them to have other sexual experience. It prevents any feeling of sameness and satiety, and often brings two people together more closely than ever, if only they’re frank about it.”

“I wonder,” said George, “I wonder. Is there any one you’re interested in, Elizabeth?”

“Of course not. You’re really rather unintelligent about this, George. You know perfectly well I love you and shall never love any one else so much. But there mustn’t be any lying and dissimulation, and no artificial fidelity. If you want to go off for a night or a week-end or a week with some charming girl or woman, you must go. And if I want to do the same with a man, I must. Don’t you see that by thwarting a mere _béguin_ you may turn it into something more serious, whereas by enjoying it you get rid of it? Probably, as my Swedish woman says, one is so much disappointed that a single night is more than enough, and one returns to one’s love eagerly, cured of wandering fancies for the next six months.”

“Yes, I daresay there’s something in that. It seems sound. And yet if the original relationship is so secure and if the other affair is so slight and unimportant and merely physical, it seems unnecessary to hurt one’s love by speaking about it. I don’t tell you every day what I had for lunch. Besides, even if one spends only one night with another person that implies at least a one night’s preference which might hurt.”

“Which might hurt!” Elizabeth mocked. “George, you’re being positively old-fashioned. Why, when you go to Paris, isn’t that a preference? And when I go to Fanny’s cottage in the country for a week-end, isn’t that a preference? How do you know we’re not Sapphic friends?”

“I’m jolly sure you’re not! You’re neither of you in the least bit Lesbian types. Besides, you’d have told me.”

“You see! You know quite well I’d have told you.”

“Yes, but going to Paris or the country for a few days isn’t the same sort of ‘preference.’”

The argument tailed off in a futile attempt to define “preference.” Ultimately Elizabeth carried her point. It was definitely established that “nothing could break” a relationship such as theirs; but that “love itself must have rest” and therefore there was wisdom in occasional short separations; that so far from breaking up such a relationship occasional “slight affairs” elsewhere would only strengthen and stimulate it. George allowed himself to be convinced. The snag here lay in the fact that he had definitely sensed the possible danger of arousing jealousy, whereas Elizabeth, confident in herself and the theories of her Swedish old maid, scorned the idea that so base a passion could even enter _their_ relation.

* * * * *

About two months after this George and Elizabeth were cheerfully dining in a small Soho restaurant when Fanny came in with a young man, the “young man from Cambridge,” Reggie Burnside.

“Oh, look!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “there’s Fanny and a friend with her. Fanny! Fanny!” signalling across the room. Fanny came across.

“This is George Winterbourne. You’ve often heard of Fanny, George. I say, Fanny, do come and have dinner with us.”

“Yes, do.”

“But I’ve got Reggie Burnside with me.”

“Well, bring him along too.”

The young man was introduced, and they sat down at the table. In most respects Fanny was curiously different from Elizabeth; each was not so much the antithesis as the complement to the other. Fanny was just a little taller than Elizabeth (George disliked short women), and where Elizabeth was dark and Egyptian-looking and pale, Fanny was golden and English (not chocolate-box English) and most delicate white and red. She was a bit like Priscilla, George thought, but with the soft gold of Priscilla made hard and glittering like an exquisite metallic flower. There was something both gem-like and flower-like in Fanny. Perhaps that was due to her eyes. With other women you are conscious almost immediately of all sorts of beauties and defects, but with Fanny you were instantaneously absorbed by the eyes. When you thought about her afterwards, you just saw a mental image of those extraordinary blue eyes, disassociated from the rest of her, like an Edgar Poe vision. But unlike so many vivid blue eyes, they were gem-like rather than flower-like; they were not soft nor stupid nor sentimental nor languid, but clear, alert and rather hard. You may see exactly their shade of colour in the deeper parts of Lake Garda on a sunny day. Yet the quality was not aqueous, but vitreous. Venetian glass, perhaps? No, that is too opaque. It is very hard to say what was the quality which made them so remarkable. Men looked at them once and fell helplessly in love, one might say almost noisily in love—Fanny didn’t mind, it was obviously her _métier_ to have men fall in love with her. Perhaps Fanny’s eyes were simply made a symbol in the imagination of that mysterious sexual attraction which radiated from her, or perhaps they conformed to some unwritten but instinctively recognized canon of the perfect eye, the Platonic “idea” of eyes....

With Elizabeth you saw not the eyes alone, but the whole head. You would have liked to keep Fanny’s eyes, magnificently set in gold, in an open jewel-casket, to look at when you doubted whether any beauty remained in the dull world. But with Elizabeth you wanted the whole head, it was so much like one of those small stone heads of Egyptian princesses in the Louvre. So very Egyptian. The full delicately-moulded lips, the high cheek-bones, the slightly oblique eye-sockets, the magnificent line from ear to chin, the upward sweep of the wide brow, the straight black hair. Oddly enough, on analysis Elizabeth’s eyes proved to be quite as beautiful as Fanny’s, but somehow less ostentatiously lovely. They were deeper and softer, and which is rare in dark eyes, intelligent. Fanny’s blue eyes were intelligent enough, but they hadn’t quite the subtle depths of Elizabeth’s, they hadn’t the same reserve.

Elizabeth lived very much in and on herself; Fanny was a whole-hearted extravert. Where Elizabeth hesitated, mused, suffered, Fanny acted, came a cropper, picked herself up gaily and started off again with just the same zest for experience. She was more smartly dressed than Elizabeth. Of course, Elizabeth was always quite charming and attractive, but you guessed that she had other things to think about beside clothes. Fanny loved clothes, and with no more money than Elizabeth, contrived to look stunningly fashionable where Elizabeth merely looked O. K. Oddly enough, Fanny was not devoured by the Scylla of clothes, the monster of millinery which is never satiate with its female victims. Her energy saved her from that. She and Elizabeth were both restlessly energetic, but whereas Elizabeth’s energy went into dreaming and arguing and trying to paint, Fanny’s went into all sorts of activities with all sorts of persons. She did not “do” anything, having sense enough to see that in most young women, “art” is merely a kind of safety-valve for sex. Fanny, I’m glad to say, did not need a safety-valve for her sex; the steam-pressure was kept regulated and the engine worked perfectly, thank you very much. She was emotionally and mentally far less complicated than Elizabeth, less profound; therefore to her the new sexual régime, where perfect freedom has happily taken the place of service, presented fewer possible snags. I’ve said, of course, that Fanny sometimes came a cropper; she did, but she hadn’t Elizabeth’s capacity for suffering, Elizabeth’s desolate despair when her silk purse turned out to be a sow’s ear—which every one else had known long before.

Perhaps the remarkable quality of Elizabeth’s mind and character is best shown by the fact that she never said or implied anything mean or nasty about Fanny’s clothes....

* * * * *

Reggie Burnside was a rich young man engaged in some mysterious “research work” at Cambridge, something connected with the structure of the atom, and highly impressive because the nature of his work could only be explained in elaborate mathematical symbols. He wore spectacles, talked in a high intellectual voice with the peculiar intonation and blurred syllables favoured by some members of that great centre of learning, and appeared exceedingly weary. Even Fanny’s impetuous dash never galvanized him into a spontaneous action or a natural remark. He also was extremely modern, and was devoted to Fanny. He was always at hand when nothing better presented itself—the permanent second string to the fiddle, or, as Fanny put it, one of her _fautes_, adding sotto-voce, my _faute-de-mieux_.

The talk at first was the usual high-brow chatter of the period—Flecker and Brooke and Mr. Russell, referred to as “Bertie” in a casual way by Fanny and Reggie, to the mystification of George. This is one of the charming traits of the English intelligentsia. Every one they don’t know is an outsider, and they love to keep the outsider outside by a gently condescending patronage. A most effective method is to talk nonchalantly about well-known people by their Christian names:

“Have you read Johnny’s last book?”

“No-oh. Not yet. The last one was a dreadful bore. Is this any better?”

“No-oh, I don’t think so. Tommy dislikes it profoundly. Says it reminds him of sports on the village green.”

“How a-_mus_ing!”

“Oh, Tommy can be quite a-_mus_ing at times. I was with him and Bernard the other day, and Bernard said...”

And if the outsider is silly enough to bite, and to say timidly or bluntly: “Who’s Johnny?” the answer comes swift and sweet:

“O-oh! Don’t you _know_...!”

And then the dazzled outsider is condescendingly informed who “Johnny” is, and especially if a mere American or Continental, is crushed to learn that “Johnny” is Johnny Walker or some other enormously brilliant light in the firmament of British culture....

* * * * *

George got sick of hearing about “Bertie” without being told who the devil Bertie was, and began to talk about Ezra Pound, Jules Romains and Modigliani. But he soon learned by sweet implication that such people might be all very well in their way, but after all, well, you know what I mean, Cambridge _is_ Cambridge.... So George shut up, and said nothing. Then Reggie began to talk to Elizabeth about Alpine climbing, the sport of Dons—and a very appropriate one too, if you think about it. And Fanny talked to George.

Now Fanny was quite a subtile little beast of the field, and saw that George was a bit sulky, and guessed why. Vapourish airs were indifferent to her. She had been brought up among such people, and unconsciously adopted their tone when speaking to them. But when she was among other sorts of people she just as unconsciously dropped the vapourish airs, and let her natural self respond to theirs. She had a foot, one might almost say a leg, in several social worlds; and got on perfectly well in any of them. There was a sort of physical indifference in Fanny which at first sight looked like mere hardness, and wasn’t. In fact, she wasn’t nearly as hard as Elizabeth, who could be quite Stonehenge-y at times. And then suddenly crumble. But Fanny’s physical indifference carried her through a lot; one felt that her morning bath had something Lethean about it, and washed away the memory of last night’s lover along with his touch.

So Fanny began to talk to George quite naturally and gaily. He was suspicious, and gave her three verbal bangs in quick succession. She took them with unflinching good humour, and went on talking and trying to find out what he was interested in. George pretty soon melted to her gaiety—or perhaps it was the gem-like eyes. He looked at them, and wondered what it felt like to possess natural organs which were such superb _objets d’art_. They must, he reflected, cause her a good deal of annoyance. Every man who met her would feel called upon to inform her that she had wonderful eyes, as if he had made an astounding discovery, hitherto unrevealed by any one. George decided that it would be well _not_ to comment upon Fanny’s eyes at a first meeting.

Reggie had failed to interest Elizabeth in Alpine climbing, and switched off on to “a_mus_ing” anecdotes, which were more successful. Under the mild influence of a little wine and a sympathetic listener Reggie shed some of his worst mannerisms, and became almost human. He liked Elizabeth. She might not be wholly “a_mus_ing” but she was “re_fresh_ing.” (She was a good listener.) And when the talk once again became general, George began to think that Reggie was not such a bad fellow after all; there was a sort of “niceness” about him, the genuine English pride and good nature under a screen of affectation.

They sat over coffee and cigarettes until the fidgeting of the waiter and “Madame’s” little games with the electric switches warned them that their money and absence would now be more welcome than their company. It was well after ten—too late for the cinema. They walked down Shaftesbury Avenue, George with Reggie, and Elizabeth with Fanny.

“I like your George,” said Fanny.

“Do you? I’m so glad.”

“He’s a bit _farouche_, but I like the way he enthuses about what interests him. It’s not put on.”

“I think Reggie’s rather nice.”

“Oh! Reggie....” and Fanny waved her hand with a little shrug.

“But he _is_ nice, Fanny. You know you like him.”

“Yes, he’s all right. I’m not wild about him. You can have him, if you want.”

“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth laughed, “wait till I ask you!”

* * * * *

They separated at Piccadilly Circus. Fanny and Reggie went off somewhere in a taxi. Coming down Shaftesbury Avenue, George had noticed that it was a clear night with a full moon, and insisted on going to the Embankment to see the moonlight on the Thames. They turned into the Haymarket.

“What do you think of Fanny?” asked Elizabeth.

“I think she has most marvelous eyes.”

“Yes, that’s what every one says.”

“I was trying to be original! But she’s a nice girl, too. At first, when she and Burnside began talking, I thought she was hopelessly infected by his sort of affectation.”

“Why! Don’t you like him? I thought he was charming.”

“Charming? I shouldn’t say that. I think he’s not a bad sort of fellow really, but you know how exasperating I find the Cambridge bleat. Ah’d much raver lis’n to a muckin’ Cawkn’y, swop me bob, I would.”

“But you know he’s a very important young scientist, and supposed to be doing marvelous research work.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. Fanny couldn’t tell me. She said you had to be a specialist yourself to understand what he’s doing.”

“Well, I must say I’m a bit suspicious of these mysterious ‘specialists,’ who can’t even tell you plainly what they’re doing. I think Boileau’s right—what’s accurately conceived can be clearly expressed. When Science begins to talk the language of mystic Theology and superstition, I begin to suspect it vehemently. Besides, only the feeble sections of any aristocracy take on vapourish airs and affected ways of talk. Well-bred people haven’t any affectations. And men with really fine minds haven’t any intellectual vanity.”

“Oh, but Reggie isn’t vain. He didn’t even mention his work to me. And he told such a_mus_ing stories.”

“That’s just another form of insolence—they assume you’re too ignorant and stupid to understand their great and important labours, so they never condescend even to mention them, but tell ‘a_mus_ing stories,’ as I see you’ve already learned to call Common-Room gossip.”

Elizabeth was silent, ominously silent. She was more used to the Cambridge manner than George was, and thought he fussed too much about it. Besides, she had been really attracted by Reggie. She thought George was making a jealous scene. There she did him a wrong; it never occurred to George that Elizabeth might fall in love with Reggie. (Oddly enough, it never _does_ occur to a husband or a lover _in esse_ to suspect his probable coadjutor—until it is too late. He suspects plenty of wrong people, but rarely the right one. The Cyprian undoubtedly has artful ways.) As a matter of fact, George had not the slightest feeling of jealousy. He was merely saying what he felt, as he would have done about any other chance acquaintance. He respected Elizabeth’s silence. It was one of their numerous pacts—to respect each other’s silence. So they walked mutely down Whitehall, while George thought vaguely about Fanny and his next day’s work and cocked his head up to try to see the moon and watched the occasional busses bounding along like rapid barges in the empty light-filled river of Belgian blocks; and Elizabeth brooded over the supposed revelation of a hitherto unsuspected tendency to silly jealousy in George. But just as they approached the Abbey, George slipped his arm through hers so naturally, affectionately and unsuspiciously that Elizabeth’s ill-humour vanished, and in two minutes they were chattering as volubly as ever.

They walked along the Embankment from Westminster Bridge towards the City. A serene sky hung over London, transposed to an astonishing blue by the complementary yellow of the brilliant street lights. A few trams and taxis were still moving on the Embankment, but after the ceaseless roar of day traffic, the air seemed almost silent. At times, they could hear the lap and gurgle of the swift river water, as the strong flood tide ran inland, bearing a faint flavour of salt. The river was beautifully silver in the soft steady moonlight which wavered into multitudes of ripples as soon as it touched the broken surface of the Thames. Blocks of moored barges stood black and immovable in the silver flood. The Southern bank was dark, low and motionless, except for the luminous announcements of the blessings of Lipton’s Tea and the Daily Mail. The Scotchman in coloured moving lights pledged the bonny highlands in countless sparkling glasses of electric whiskey. Hungerford Railway Bridge seemed filled with the red eyes of immense dragons, whose vast bulk lay coiled somewhere invisibly on either bank. Occasionally a red eye would wink green, and presently a brightly-lit train would crawl cautiously and heavily over the vibrating bridge. The lighted windows of the Cecil and the Savoy aroused no envy in them. Nor did they pine to inspect the records of a great people lying behind the darkened and silent façade of Somerset House.

Opposite the quiet Temple Garden they paused by the parapet and looked up and down that magnificent sweep of river, with its amazing mixture of dignified beauty and almost incredible sordidness. They stood for some time, talking in quiet tones, comparing the Thames with the Seine, and wondering what dream-like city would have arisen by those noble curves if London had been inhabited by a race of artists. Elizabeth wanted to set Florence or Oxford on either side of the Thames between Westminster and St. Paul’s. George agreed that that would be lovely, but thought the buildings would be dwarfed by the width of the river, the long bridges and the length of façade. And they finally agreed that with all its sordidness and hugger-mugger and strange contrast of palaces abutting on slums, the Embankment had a beauty of its own which they would not exchange even for the dream-city of a race of artists.

Midnight boomed with majestic, policeman-like slowness from Big Ben; and as the last deep vibrations faded from the air, the great city seemed to be gliding into sleep and silence. They lingered a little longer, and then turned to go.

Then, for the first time they noticed what they knew would be there but had forgotten in their absorbed delight in the silvery water and moon-washed outlines of the city—that on every bench sat crouched or huddled one or more miserable ragged human beings. In front of them ran the mystically lovely river; behind them the dark masses of the Temple rose solidly and sternly defensive of Law and Order behind the spear-front of its tall sharp-pointed iron fence. And there they crouched and huddled in rags and hunger and misery, free-born members of the greatest Empire the earth has yet seen, citizens of Her who so proudly claimed to be the wealthiest of cities, the exchange and mart of the whole world.

George gave what change he had in his pockets to a noseless syphilitic hag, and Elizabeth emptied her purse into the hand of a shivering child which had to be awakened to receive the gift, and cowered as if it thought it was going to be struck.

Ignoring the hag’s hoarse: “Thank yer kindly, Sir, Gord bless yer, Lidy,” they fled clutching each other’s hands. They did not speak until they said good-night outside Elizabeth’s door.

[ VI ]

During 1913 life ran on very pleasantly and happily for George and Elizabeth. As in the cases of the fortunate nations without a history, there appears to be very little to record about this year. I make no doubt that it was the happiest in George’s life. He was, as they say, “getting on,” and had less need to worry about money. In the spring they went to Dorsetshire and stayed at an Inn. Elizabeth did a certain amount of painting, but apart from a few sketches George did not attempt landscape—especially the picturesque landscape; he wanted his painting to be urban, contemporary and hard. They walked a good deal over Worbarrow Down and the rather desolate heath land round about. On more than one occasion they traversed the very same piece of land where George was afterwards in camp with me, a coincidence which seemed to make a great impression upon him. Certain aspects of a familiar landscape always call up the same train of thought: and as people are never weary of telling us what particularly strikes them, so George rarely failed to convey this piece of stale news to me as we walked out of camp by what had once been the rough cart-track he and Elizabeth had followed in less desolate days. He seemed to think it remarkable that he should be so miserable in exactly the same place where he had once been so happy. As I pointed out, that showed great ignorance of the ironic temper of the gods, who are very fond of such genial contrasts. They delight to lay a corpse in a marriage bed, and to strike down a great nation in the fullest flush of its pride and power. One might think that happiness was “hubris,” the excess which calls down the vengeance of Fate.

They returned to London for a few weeks, and then went to Paris, Elizabeth adored Paris, and wanted to live there permanently; but George was against it. He had got some bug about the best art being “autochthonous,” and declared that an artist ought to live in his own country. But the real reason was that Parisian life seemed so pleasant and the town so full of artists more gifted and more advanced than himself that he found it almost impossible to work there. It was easier to feel important in the comparative desert of London. So they returned to London, and in the autumn George had his first “show,” which was not altogether such a failure as he had expected.

When autumn turned to winter, and the yellow leaves of the plane trees drifted down into heaps in the London squares lying miserably sodden under the rain—the everlasting London drizzle—Elizabeth got very restless. She wanted to get away, anywhere under blue skies and sun. Her throat and lungs were rather sensitive, and when the weather turned foggy, she nearly choked in the heavy soot-laden stifling air. They talked about going to Italy or Spain, but George knew only too well that he could not afford it. He might indeed get assurances from various impresarios he frequented that “work could go on as usual,” but he knew only too well that a month’s absence would mean a decline and that after three months he would be practically forgotten and dropped. It’s a dangerous thing to have a national reputation for honesty—people get to trading upon it and seem to think it absolves them from individual obligations. So George, after forming various vague plans for a delightful winter in Sicily or the island of Majorca, had to admit to Elizabeth that he simply dared not go. He begged her to go alone, or to find some friend to go with her. But Elizabeth flatly refused to go without him. So they stayed in London, and worked and coughed together. Perhaps it might have been better to take the risk, for as things turned out George never saw either Spain or Italy, which he had wanted to see so much.

Fanny came to London for a week in November, before going South for the winter, and they saw her nearly every day. Fanny and George were by this time on a footing of pretty friendly familiarity. That is to say, they always kissed each other on meeting and parting—after Fanny had kissed Elizabeth—and held hands in taxis whether Elizabeth was there or not. Elizabeth didn’t object at all. Not only because of her theory of freedom. She was at that time rather deeply involved in some theory of “erogenous zones” in women, and men’s reaction to them. And she had got it firmly into her mind that Fanny was “sexually antipathetic” to George, because he had one day innocently and casually remarked that he thought Fanny rather flat-chested. Elizabeth leaped on this—it confirmed her theory so nicely. George had known Fanny for over a year and “nothing had happened” between them, and therefore it was plain that Fanny’s “erogenous zones” awoke no response in him.

“Most peculiar,” said Elizabeth, when she discussed the matter with a demure-looking but mighty ironical Fanny, “_I_ should have thought you’d be the very type of woman to attract him. But he only talks about your ‘marvellous eyes,’ and they aren’t erogenous zones at all. That means he only likes you as a human being....”

So Elizabeth took no notice when Fanny kissed George; or when she said: “George darling, do go and get some cigarettes for me,” and George departed with alacrity; or when George called Fanny “My love” or “Fanny darling.” People throw these endearments about so liberally nowadays, how on earth is one to know? And, in fact, all this went on for a long time, and nothing did “happen.” George was quite devoted to Elizabeth, and then they were away when Fanny was in London, and Fanny was away when they were in London. Both George and Fanny begged Elizabeth to “go South” with Fanny, but Elizabeth wouldn’t. She was very loyal, and wouldn’t take a holiday George couldn’t share. But by this time Fanny had become fond of George, very fond indeed. She was weary of Reggie, who was sometimes so absorbed in atoms that he neglected his functions as Fanny’s _faute-de-mieux_. She thought it might be an excellent plan if she and Elizabeth swopped riders, so to speak. Not that she wanted to “take George away” from his mistress. Oh! Not at all. Fanny didn’t want him as a _permanence_—Elizabeth was welcome to that. But she felt he might do excellently as a locum tenens, while Elizabeth was widening her experience with Reggie. So there was an unusual warmth in her farewell kiss to George, who had gone down to see her off at Victoria, and a lingeringly soft pressure of her hand, and a particularly inviting look in her beautiful eyes.

“Good-bye, darling!” and she leaned from the window and to his surprise kissed him again on the lips, “of course, I’ll write—often. And mind you write to me. I shall be back in March at latest.”

Fanny did write—occasionally to Elizabeth, once or twice to them both, frequently to George. Her letters to George were much longer and more amusing than the others. George showed some of them to Elizabeth and forgot to show others. He replied punctually and affectionately.

Just before Christmas, Reggie Burnside passed through London on his way to Mürren. He dropped into Elizabeth’s studio for tea, and finding her alone asked her to marry him, in a casual offhand way, rather as he might have suggested their going to Rumpelmeyer’s instead of having tea in the studio. Elizabeth was surprised, flattered and fluttered. They had quite a long discussion. Elizabeth was amazed that Reggie should want to marry, and above all to marry her. If she hadn’t been so flattered, she would have been offended at any one’s thinking she would do such a thing. She had almost the “thank-you-I’m-not-that-sort-of-girl” sniffiness about it.

“Is this a new brand of joke, Reggie?”

“Good God, no! I’m perfectly serious.”

“But why in heaven’s name do you want to _marry?_”

“It’s more convenient, you know, addressing letters and meeting people and all that.”

“But why want to marry _me?_”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

Elizabeth pondered a little over this.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I don’t believe I’m in love with you. I’m sure I’m not. I like you most awfully, but I’m not in love with you, I’m in love with George.”

“Oh, George!” Reggie waved a contemptuous hand. “What’s the good of your wasting your time with a man like that, Elizabeth? He won’t do anything. He doesn’t know anybody worth mentioning, except ourselves, and nobody at Cambridge thinks anything of his painting.”

Elizabeth was on the defensive immediately.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Reggie! George is a dear, and I won’t have you say things like that about him. And as if anybody cares a hang what mouldy young Cambridge thinks about a painter!”

Reggie changed his tack.

“All right, if you don’t want to marry me, don’t. But, look here. You oughtn’t to spend the winter in London with that cough and your chest. I’ll give up Mürren if you’ll come for a month with me to some small place on the Riviera. We can easily find a place where there aren’t any English.”

This was a far more gratifying and dangerous proposal to Elizabeth than matrimony. She was heartily sick of London fog and cold and drizzle and mire and soot and messy open fires which fill the room with dust but don’t warm it. More than once she had regretted not having gone away with Fanny. Moreover, a “month’s affair” with Reggie would perfectly well fit into the arrangement with George, whereas they hadn’t thought of and hadn’t discussed the possibility of either marrying some one else. Elizabeth hesitated, but she had a feeling that it would be rather mean to leave George suddenly alone in London and go off on her own with Reggie, if only for a month. She certainly was extraordinarily fond of George.

“No, Reggie, I can’t come this time. Go to Mürren, and when you come back, perhaps... well, we’ll see.”

Elizabeth made toast and tea, and they sat on a large low divan in front of the fire. The dingy light soon faded from the soiled London sky, but they sat on in the firelight, holding hands.

She let Reggie kiss her as much as he wanted, but for the time being resisted any further encroachments.

* * * * *

Elizabeth’s resistance, at that precise moment, to the advances of Mr. Reginald Burnside, seems to me a striking example of George’s infelicity. I mean that I see a direct link between it and the sudden inexplicable standing up of a man in khaki, before a murderous machine gun fire, not long after dawn, on the morning of the 4th of November, 1918.... Not that I wish melodramatically “to set the brand of Cain” upon Elizabeth or upon Fanny or upon both jointly. Far from it. _They_ didn’t make the war. _They_ didn’t give George the jumps. And after all there is a doubt, almost a mystery involved in George’s death. Did he really commit suicide? I don’t know. I’ve only got circumstantial evidence and my own hunch about it, a sort of intuition, a something haunting in my memory of the man, an Orestes-like feeling of some inexpiated guilt. Who is to say whether a man can really commit suicide on a battlefield? Desperate recklessness and looking for trouble may be the very means of his escaping the death which finds the prudent coward crouching in a shell-hole. And suppose he did deliberately get himself killed, ought we, ought I, to attach any blame to Elizabeth and Fanny? I don’t think so. There were plenty of other things to disgust him with life. And even supposing that he realized the war was ending, realized that in his state of mind he simply could not face the problem of his relation with those two women, still I think them utterly blameless. The mess was as much his fault as theirs. It was really quite an easy mess to clear up. What made it impossible was George’s shattered nerves, and for that they were not to blame. Oh, not in the least. Perhaps I’m as much to blame as anybody. I ought to have done something to get George sent out of the line. I think I might have gone to the Brigadier and have told him in private what I knew about George’s state of mind—or perhaps to his Colonel. But I didn’t go. At that time I was not persona grata with those in authority, for I happened to sympathize then with the young Russian Revolution, and had foolishly argued hotly about it. So perhaps my effort would have been wasted. And anyhow it was a very difficult and ticklish thing to do, and I was tired, very tired....

At any rate, just about a fortnight after Reggie went to Mürren, the abominable winter climate of London gave Elizabeth some sort of a chill inside and upset her interior economy. Within four or five days she became quite demented. She insisted that she was with child, and insisted that the only solution was for George to marry her—at once. Perhaps the afternoon with Reggie had somehow inserted the idea of marriage into her “subconscious.” At all events, her extraordinary energy was suddenly concentrated upon attaining a state which she had hitherto utterly scorned. It was a silly thing to do, but one really cannot blame her. Men are oddly callous about these mysterious female maladies and demoniacal possessions. They get peevish and pathetic enough if something goes wrong with their own livers, but they are strangely unsympathetic about the profounder derangements of their yoke-fellows in iniquity. Perhaps they might feel a little more humane if they too had a sort of twenty-eight day clock inside them, always a nuisance, often liable to go wrong and set up irregular blood-pressure and an intolerable poisoning of the brain. George ought to have hiked her off to a gynecologist at once. Instead of which, he behaved as stupidly as any George Augustus would have done under the circumstances. He did nothing but gasp and stare at Elizabeth’s whirling tantrums, and worry, and offer exasperating comfort, and propose remedies and measures which, as Elizabeth told him, with a stamp of her foot, were impossible, impossible, _impossible_. Of course, by the Triumphal Scheme for the Perfect Sex Relation, it was duly enacted that under such circumstances there was nothing to do but marry the girl. But elementary prudence would suggest that it might be sensible to make certain the circumstances _had_ arisen, a precaution which they entirely overlooked in the mental disarray caused by Elizabeth’s regrettable dementia.

The change wrought in Elizabeth’s outlook in a few days was amazing. If she hadn’t felt so tragically about it, she would have been ludicrous in her mental manœuvres. The whole Triumphal Scheme was scrapped almost instantaneously, and by a rapid and masterly series of evolutions her whole army of arguments was withdrawn from the outpost line of Complete Sexual Freedom, and fell back upon the Hindenburg line of Safety First, Female Honour, and Legal Marriage. It was, of course, ridiculous for them to marry at all, either of them. They weren’t the marrying sort. They were adventurers in life, not good citizens. Neither of them was the kind of person who exults in life insurance and buying a house on the hire-purchase system and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoon and taking the “kiddies” (odious word) to the seaside. Neither of them looked forward to the “Old Age Will Come” summit of felicity, with an elderly and imbecilly contented-looking George sitting beside a placid and motherly white-haired Elizabeth in the garden of a dear little home, contemplating together with smug beatitude the document from the insurance company guaranteeing a safe ten pounds a week for the remainder of their joint lives. I am glad to say that George and Elizabeth would have shuddered at any such prospect. But Elizabeth insisted upon marriage, and married they duly were, despite the feeble protests of Elizabeth’s family and the masterly denunciations of Isabel, already recorded.

In all outward respects the legal marriage made no difference whatever to their lives and relationships. Elizabeth retained her studio, and George his. They met no more frequently and on exactly the same terms of affectionate sensuality into which their first exultant passion had long ago evolved. One of the terms of the Triumphal Scheme emphatically laid down the axiom that it was most undesirable and dangerous for two lovers to inhabit the same flat or small house. If they were rich enough to live in separate wings of a large house, all well and good; but if not, then they should live no nearer than neighbouring streets. The essence of freedom is the disposal of one’s own time in one’s own way, and how can two people do that if they are living on top of each other? Moreover, a daily absence of several hours is quite indispensable to the avoidance of the domestic den atmosphere. It is far better for two lovers to be happy together for three or four hours a day than to be indifferent or miserable for twenty-four. The joint marriage-bed, Elizabeth used to state impressively, is destructive of all self-respect and sexual charm, and blunts the finer edges of sensibility....

Soon after the legal formalities were irrevocably accomplished and Elizabeth’s social anxieties somewhat calmed, it occurred to her that she ought to consult a doctor, in order to learn how to behave during these months of “expecting,” as the modest working-class matron calls it. So she got the address of a “modern” physician, who was supposed to have all the latest and most enlightened methods of dealing with pregnancy and its distresses. To Elizabeth’s amazement she found she was not pregnant at all! With the not unnatural suspicion that most doctors are more or less charlatans imposing on the ignorance of the public, she refused to believe him until he told her flatly that in her present condition she might wait till doomsday for the appearance of an infant, but that if she neglected her present slight disorder it might become dangerous and permanent. She then condescended to accept his diagnosis and advice. George had accompanied her, and was in the specialist’s waiting room. A serious, concentrated, rather pi-jaw Elizabeth had left him to enter the consulting room, and George fidgeted over the imbecilities of “Punch,” wondering how on earth they would deal with the problem of an infant and feeling that he would probably have to take a job and “settle down” into the horrible morass of domestic life. To his amazement, as the consulting-room door opened, he heard Elizabeth laugh with her old merry gaiety which was so attractive, and caught the words:

“Well, if it’s twins, Doctor, you shall be godfather.”

To which the Doctor replied with a laugh George thought rather ribald and heartless under the circumstances. Elizabeth rushed into the room, exclaiming:

“It’s all right, darling, a false alarm. I’m no more pregnant than you are.”

George, who was wool-gathering, might have remained indefinitely perplexed, if the doctor had not taken him aside and told him briefly the situation, adding that for a little time it would be well if Elizabeth refrained from sexual relations.

“How long do you advise?” asked George.

“Oh, let her follow the treatment prescribed for about a month, and then let me examine her again. I’ve no doubt whatever that she’ll be perfectly all right again. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t have a child without a slight operation. Only, in the future, she must avoid chills. She ought not to spend the winter in England.”

George wrote out a cheque for three guineas (which Elizabeth insisted on repaying afterwards), and they celebrated the event with a dinner.

“Let us drink,” said George, “to this happy occasion when we have NOT committed the unforgivable sin of thrusting an unwanted existence upon one more unfortunate human being.”

But perhaps the most amazing circumstance in this peculiar episode was the speed with which Elizabeth once more evacuated the old familiar Hindenburg Line, and reoccupied the most advanced positions of Sexual Freedom. But, of course, she did so with a difference. Though she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, and though George tried not to see it, in her case the Triumphal Scheme had broken down badly under its first stern test. Directly that test had come, she had fallen back in panic on the old cut-and-dried solution; she hadn’t had the courage to go through with it. In a way one could excuse her by saying that the interior trouble had temporarily deranged her brain, that she wasn’t really responsible for her actions. But that’s only a quibble—the fact remains that she did fly in a panic to social safety and the registrar. And then the legal tie introduced a subtle difference in their relation. You may say, of course, that it needn’t, that since they continued to live in exactly the same way and to profess exactly the same attitude towards each other and “freedom,” it made no difference whether they were legally married or not. But it did. And it does. You can see that perfectly well if you watch people. Somehow the mere fact of marriage introduces the sense of possession, and hence jealousy. Lovers, of course, may be and frequently are just as possessive and quite as jealous. But there is a difference. As a rule lovers are not first occupants, so to speak; and they are generally willing to grant each other more liberty and to “forgive.” But you will see married people who have become totally indifferent to each other, rise in a fury of possessiveness and jealousy when they happen to find out that the wife or husband, as the case may be, is in love with some one else. This, indeed may be only another aspect of that peculiar vindictiveness bred by marriage. And another curious modification of their relationship arose. When Elizabeth reoccupied the Sexual Freedom line, without knowing it she did so for herself alone, and not for George. If George liked to accept the subsequent Elizabeth-Reggie affair, in accordance with the provisions of the Triumphal Scheme, all well and good; that was his lookout. But when it came to Elizabeth’s accepting the Fanny-George affair in the same spirit, that was a very different matter. Elizabeth now felt somehow responsible for George, and feeling responsible translated itself into keeping possession of....

However, three months after the false alarm, Elizabeth seemed more “advanced” and full of “freedom” than ever. Her position as a married woman enabled her to talk with greater liberty on all sorts of topics which are now discussed in every nursery, but at that time were considered highly improper and not to be named before Citizens of the Empire. She got hold of a book on the woes of the Uranians, and was deeply affected by it. She wanted to start a crusade on their behalf, and was greatly disappointed by the coolness with which George met her enthusiasm.

“It is ridiculous,” said Elizabeth, “that these unfortunate people should be persecuted by obsolete laws derived from the prejudices of the Jewish prophets and mediæval ignorance.”

“Of course it is, but what can one do about it? Persecution-mania has always existed. It’s a very curious coincidence that the vulgar English word for one sort of intermediate sexual type originally meant a heretic. But there’s nothing to be done.”

“I think something ought to be done.”

“Well, I think it’s too soon to do anything. You’ve got to allow time for knowledge to percolate into rock-like heads, and for ignorance and superstitions to be dispelled. Let’s get the ordinary relations of men and women on to a decent basis first, and then it’ll be time to think about the heretics in love.”

“But, George darling, these people are hunted and exiled and despised for something which is not their ‘fault’ at all, some difference in their physiological or psychological structure. There probably isn’t any such thing as a perfectly ‘normal’ sexual type. Simply because we’re ‘normal’ why should we hate and despise these people?”

“I know, I know. Theoretically, I agree with you absolutely. But it’s no good my mind trying to defend what my instincts and feelings reject. Frankly, I don’t like homosexuals. I respect their freedom, of course, but I don’t like them. As a matter of fact, I don’t know any, at least so far as I am aware. No doubt some of our friends are homosexual, but as I’m not personally interested in it, I never notice it.”

“Yes, but because you don’t notice it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Don’t be narrow-minded, George. There are probably tens of thousands of people living miserable lives....”

“Oh, I know all about that! But you can’t break down the inherited prejudices of ages in five minutes. I personally don’t object to such people doing as they want. There’s no tort to person or property. But my advice to them would be to keep jolly quiet about it, and not try to make themselves martyrs, and flaunt themselves publicly.”

“Oh, oh!” Elizabeth laughed. “Grandpa George foregathering with the Victorians.”

“All right, but I’m not going to say what I don’t feel. In this matter you must look upon me as a neutral.”

“Well, I think you ought to look into it more carefully and sympathetically, and get Bobbe to let you write some articles on it.”

“Thanks very much. You ask him to do it himself, it’s far more likely to attract _him_. If I wrote such articles I should immediately be suspect. It’s a damned dangerous thing to do in England; in most cases the suspicion is far too likely to be true!”

And they left it at that.

* * * * *

All this time the war was drawing steadily nearer. Probably it had become certain since 1911, though most people were taken quite unawares. Why did it happen? Who was responsible? Questions which have been interminably debated already and will furnish exultant historians with controversial material for generations to come. Already one foresees the creation of Chairs in the History of the First World War, to be set up in whatever civilized countries remain in existence after the next one. But for us the debate is vain, as vain as the pathetic and reiterated enquiry, “_Where_ did I catch this horrible cold?” If anybody or bodies engineered this catastrophe they must have been gratified by its shattering success. Few lives indeed in the belligerent countries remained unaffected by it, and in most cases the effect was unpleasant. Adult lives were cut sharply into three sections—pre-war, war, and post-war. It is curious—perhaps not so curious—but many people will tell you that whole areas of their pre-war lives have become obliterated from their memories. Pre-war seems like prehistory. What did we do, how did we feel, what were we living for in those incredibly distant years? One feels as if the period 1900-14 has to be treated archæologically, painfully recreated by experts from slight vestiges. Those who were still children at the Armistice, who were so to speak born into the war, can hardly understand the feeling of tranquil security which existed, the almost smug optimism of our lives. Especially in England, for the French retained uncomfortable memories of 1870; but still, even in France life seemed established and secure. Since Waterloo, England had engaged in no great war. There were frontier and colonial skirmishes, and the reputation of the country for military organization and efficiency was immensely strengthened in the world’s eyes by the conduct of the Crimean and Boer Wars. But there had been nothing on a really big scale. The Franco-Prussian War was just one of those unfortunate occurrences one must expect from backward Continental nations, and the huge struggle of the War of Secession was observed through the wrong end of the telescope. In some quarters, indeed, that war had been considered as a peculiar mercy of God to His Chosen People, enabling the British Merchant Marine to re-establish an indisputable primacy at the expense of a regrettable upstart among nations.

Talleyrand used to say that those who had not known Europe before 1789, had never known the real pleasure of living. No one would dare to substitute 1914 for 1789 in that sentence. But such a wholesale shattering of values had certainly not occurred since 1789. God knows how many governments and rulers crashed down in the earthquake, and those which remain are agitatedly trying to preserve their existence by the time-honoured methods of repression and persecution. And yet 1914 was greeted as a great release, a purgation from the vices supposed to be engendered by peace! My God! Three days of glory engender more vices and misery than all the alleged corrupters of humanity could achieve in a millennium. _Les jeunes_ would be amazed if they read the nauseous poppycock which was written in 1914-15 in England, and doubtless in all the belligerent countries, except France where practically nothing was printed at all. (However, the French have made up handsomely for the loss since then.) “Our splendid troops” were to come home—oh, very soon—purged and ennobled by slaughter and lice, and were to beget a race of even nobler fellows to go and do likewise. We were to have a great revival in religion, for peoples’ thoughts were now turned from frivolities to great and serious themes. We were to have a new and greater literature—hence the alleged vogue for “war poets,” which resulted in the parents of the slain being asked to put up fifty pounds for the publication (which probably cost fifteen) of poor little verses which should never have passed the home circle. We were to have... but really I lack courage to continue. Let those who are curious in human imbecility consult the newspaper-files of those days....

* * * * *

But we are still lingering in the golden calm of the last few months preceding August, 1914.

Fanny had followed Elizabeth’s amazing evolutions with considerable surprise and that feeling of “something not displeasing” with which we contemplate the misfortunes of our best friends. She chiefly felt rather sorry for George....

* * * * *

“You have a vendetta of the dead against the living.” Yes, it is true, I have a vendetta. Not a personal vendetta. What am I? O God, nothing, less than nothing, a husk, a leaving, a half-chewed morsel on the plate, a reject. But an impersonal vendetta, an unappeased conscience crying in the wilderness, a river of tears in the desert. What right have I to live? Is it five million, is it ten million, is it twenty million? What does the exact count matter? There they are, and we are responsible. Tortures of hell, we are responsible! When I meet an unmaimed man of my generation, I want to shout at him: “How did you escape? How did you dodge it? What dirty trick did you play? Why are you not dead, trickster?” It is dreadful to have outlived your life, to have shirked your fate, to have overspent your welcome. There is nobody upon earth who cares whether I live or die, and I am glad of it. To be alone, icily alone. You, the war dead, I think you died in vain, I think you died for nothing, for a blast of wind, a blather, a humbug, a newspaper stunt, a politician’s ramp. But at least you died. You did not reject the sharp sweet shock of bullets, the sudden smash of the shell-burst, the insinuating agony of poison gas. You got rid of it all. You chose the better part. “They went down like a lot o’ Charlie Chaplins,” said the little ginger-hair sergeant of the Durhams. Like a lot of Charlie Chaplins. Marvellous metaphor! Can’t you see them staggering on splayed-out test and waving ineffective hands as they went down before the accurate machine-gun fire of the Durhams sergeant? A splendid little hero—he got the Military Medal for it. Like a lot of Charlie Chaplins. Marvellous. But why weren’t we one of them? What right have we to live? And the women? Oh, don’t let’s talk about the women. They were splendid, wonderful. Such devotion, such devotion. How they comforted the troops. Oh, wonderful, beyond all praise! They got the vote for it, you know. Oh, wonderful! Steel-true and blade-straight. Yes, indeed, wonderful, wonderful! Whatever should we have done without them? White feathers, and all that, you know. Oh, the women were marvellous. You can always rely upon the women to come up to scratch, you know. Yes, indeed. What would the Country be without them? So splendid, such an example.

On Sundays the Union Jack flies over the cemetery at Etaples. It’s not so big as it was in the old wooden cross days, but it will serve. Acres and acres. Yes, acres and acres. And it’s too late to get one’s little lot in the acres. Too late, too late....

* * * * *

Yes, Fanny was sorry for George, and showed it with practical feminine sympathy. In the late spring Elizabeth “had” to go and spend a fortnight with her parents in the north. Mrs. Paston—who never failed in any of her duties, and took jolly good care to let you know it—was accustomed to write every week to Elizabeth. This weekly letter was supposed to be a nice, chatty, affectionate record of the little home circle and friends, something to keep Elizabeth in touch with their purer lives (of pure boredom) and preserve her from the decadents and degenerates she frequented in London. In fact the letter was almost invariably a perfidious and insinuating effort to make Elizabeth uncomfortable and to discourage her with her own life. Under the endearing words of conventional family affection lurked a curious resentment and hatred. If Mrs. Paston could think of anything likely to worry Elizabeth she never failed to convey it, in the strain of “isn’t it a pity, dear?...” Sometimes Elizabeth answered these letters, sometimes she did not. Recently, they had been filled with discouraging hints about the state of Mr. Paston’s health. “Your dear father” could not shake off his “bronchitis” (i.e., a cold in the head), he was very “languid” (i.e., bored, the golf links were under water), he “scarcely ever went out” (he hardly ever had done, except to play golf), he was “getting so frail and white-haired, poor darling daddy” (he’d been grey for fifteen years and still ate four hearty meals daily), he “seemed to be failing fast”—a pure piece of mythology. Elizabeth was rather fond of her father, and began to get alarmed, although she was more or less aware of her mother’s strategy. But it is the misfortune of youth never really to credit the aged with their full meed of perfidy and dislike. She felt she ought to go and see her father for herself—it would be awful if he suddenly died without her seeing him. She told George she was going.

“All right, of course, if you want to. I’ll take you to the station. When are you going?”

“I wish you’d come with me, George. Father and mother would like to see you, and they’d appreciate it so much.”

“Now look here, Elizabeth, don’t let’s have any humbug here. I don’t ask you to meet my parents and I don’t see why I should have to stay with yours. I think your mother’s quite awful, one of those nagging martyr women who’re always taking on unnecessary jobs and worries, and then grumbling about how much they have to do and how little they’re appreciated. Your father’s all right. He’s a decent sort, with a human respect for other people. But after I’ve feigned an interest I don’t feel in golf and we’ve shaken our heads over the wickedness of Liberal governments, we’ve really nothing left to say to each other.”

“But it’s so much easier for me if you’d come too.”

“No, it wouldn’t. We’d be shown off as the happy married pair to your mother’s friends, and our sufferings would be dreadful. Besides, it’ll be easier for you to adjust yourself temporarily to their prejudices if you don’t have the sensation of a satirical me watching you.”

So Elizabeth went by herself, and George remained alone in London. He always missed Elizabeth frightfully when she went away, but instead of going out and amusing himself, he stayed in and tried to pass the time by overworking. By the evening of the fifth day, he was thoroughly fed up. He decided to go out and ring up various friends in turn, until he found some one to have dinner with him. He had just finished washing and was putting on a clean collar, when some one knocked at the door of his studio.

“Half a minute,” shouted George, “I’m dressing. Who is it?”

The door opened, and in came Fanny, wearing a charming new dress and a gay wide-brimmed hat with a large feather in it.

“Why, Fanny! How good to see you, and how lovely you look!”

They kissed affectionately. Fanny sat down on the bed.

“I’ve come to be taken out to dinner. If you think you’re doing anything else, you’re mistaken. You’ll have to ring up and say you can’t come.”

“As a matter of fact, I was on the point of going out to find somebody to dine with me, so your coming is a godsend.”

“How’s Elizabeth?”

“She’s all right. I got a letter from her this morning. She’s with her parents, you know.”

“Yes, I know. How long’ll she be away?”

“Another ten days. Poor darling, she sounds awfully bored already.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Oh, fighting the lone hand here. Do you want to see the picture I’m finishing?”

And George dragged round an easel with a large canvas on it, into the light.

“But it’s good, George! It’s got great qualities of energy and design.”

“You don’t think it’s too hard and angular?”

“No, not a bit. It’s excellent. By far the best thing you’ve done.”

And Fanny jumped up from the bed, put her arm around George, and kissed him again. For the first time her lips were not cool, shut and sisterly, but warm and open and delicious—the lips of an accomplice. The sudden flicker of warm desire awoke in George’s flesh, and he felt his heart leap and the blood flush to his face. He held her to him, and pressed eager firm lips to her soft yielding mouth. For a few seconds she seemed to resist, and made as if to thrust him from her. He held her more closely, and suddenly her stiffened body yielded delicately, moulded itself to his, her head moved slowly backwards with closed eyes. Between the moist velvet of her lips he felt on his the exquisite caress of a gentle tongue-tip. George gently laid his hand on her left breast, and felt the rapid beating of her heart. She softly drew away her lips and looked at him.

“Fanny! Fanny!”

Her gem-like eyes, now all flower-like, looked at him.

“Fanny! Most dear Fanny! I must have loved you a long time without knowing it.”

Fanny spoke slowly, still watching him:

“You’re such a nice man, George, and yet such a boy.”

“And you are divine and inexpressibly lovely and thrilling and adorable....”

They kissed again, and stood there embraced until George felt dizzy with the blood beating in his brain. He pulled her gently towards the bed, and they lay down, clothed, in each other’s arms. George’s hand moved tenderly and delicately over her uncorseted girl body, so warm and firm and fragile under the thin cool silk dress. The incoherent words of lovers gave place to silence, and they lay trembling in each other’s arms, almost like frightened children comforting each other.

Fanny sighed, and opened her eyes.

“What time is it?”

George fumbled for his watch.

“Nearly half-past eight!”

“Heavens! We shall be too late for dinner if we don’t hurry.”

George went to get his coat, and returned to find Fanny unconcernedly drawing her silk stockings tight and trim.

“Where can we go that’s near?”

“There’s a new place just started in Frith Street—we can go there.”

George watched her as she smoothed her mussed hair, and absorbedly fitted on the large hat before the mirror. He was still trembling a little, and noticed how steady her hands were. Only a few minutes before they had been so close, all the barriers down, each existence melted in the other. That had been perfect, complete happiness. “Had been.” Already the current of ordinary life was sweeping them apart again. Oh, not very far really, still within hailing distance. But very far, compared with that wonderful nearness. Such an ecstasy could not last. But why not? Perhaps one of the many bitter jests of the gods—to show us for an hour what happiness might be if we were gods. None can possess another, none can be possessed. Is it possible to give, is it possible to take? Does one existence really melt into another for a few minutes, or does it only seem to? What is she thinking now? Her mind is as remote from mine as if she had slipped into another dimension. Romantically we ask too much. It is much that she is lovely and finds me desirable. Let us not ask too much. Enjoyment is enough. Yet how fragile even that is! It is as if one tried to carry a small flickering light in a thin glass vessel through a tumultuous hostile crowd. How earnest is the world to suppress the delight of lovers! How bitterly wrong all that is!

They went down into the warm, airless street, where the lamps were already lighted. Dirty children still played noisily and screamed on the side-walks. An Italian woman slip-slopped past them in felt slippers, carrying a jug of beer. Soho smelled frowzy and stale. Fanny noticed this.

“Why do you and Elizabeth live in this horrid district? It must be awfully unhealthy, especially for Elizabeth.”

“Oh, one gets used to it. Hampstead’s too far out. Kensington’s too dear, Chelsea’s both dear and ungetatable. When I’m in town I like to be in the middle of it. Suburbs are beastly. We all suffer from the English ‘home’ system of building—one hut, one family—and from our peculiar desire to be in a town and the country simultaneously. We don’t seem able to live the purely urban life of the Latins. But London’s too big and frowzy.”

* * * * *

They dined in the small restaurant, which had been “decorated” with rather feeble pictures by young artists, to give it that Latin Quarter air. It was somehow ineffectual. A bit amateurish. However, they didn’t care about that. Since they were comparatively old friends, they did not suffer the haunting and disagreeable uneasiness and strangeness which fall between those who suddenly become lovers. The spontaneity of their passion absorbed any possible feeling of remorse. They talked quietly, but without any strain and effort. Fanny gave some amusing descriptions of the odd freaks among the British “colonies” on the Riviera. Why is it that one sees such curious and freakish specimens of one’s countrymen abroad, types one never sees at home? Do the foreign surroundings bring out the freakishness, or were such people destined to emigration by their very oddity? But there could be no doubt—Fanny and George were on a new footing with each other. There was a new and delicious intimacy between them. Strange that a few kisses and caresses should make such a difference.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Fanny was hailed by some friends at a table near the door.

“Hullo, Fanny! How are you? I say, why don’t you come along with us? We’re all going to Marshall’s chambers at ten. There’ll be lots of people there. It ought to be amusing.”

“No, I want to see that new film at the Shaftesbury.”

“But you can see that any time.”

“No, this is the last week, and I’m going to Dieppe to-morrow for a week.”

“Oh, all right. Sorry you won’t come. Look us up when you get back. Good-bye, good-bye.”

They got into a taxi, and Fanny gave the address of her flat.

“Did you really mean that you are going to Dieppe to-morrow?” asked George a little wistfully.

Fanny squeezed his arm, and kissed him briefly and skilfully as the taxi lurched them together.

“Of course not, goose! We’re going to be together, unless you piously decide not to. But it’s useful to have an alibi. People are still fussy about one’s ‘reputation,’ you know.”

“But suppose we meet them, or some one else who knows you?”

“I shall say I changed my mind, or that I got bored and came straight back.”

* * * * *

Fanny’s flat was small, but pleasantly clean and modern. After the picturesque but rather dingy antiquity of his large eighteenth-century panelled room, George found it delightful to be in bright-painted clean rooms with a white-tiled bathroom. Among Fanny’s many remarkable efficiencies was the genius of discovering excellent flats at a fabulously cheap rental, furnishing them charmingly for about five pounds and running them perfectly without the slightest fuss. She generally shifted her quarters about every six months, and invariably for the better. How pleasant is efficiency in others, especially when you are rather inefficient yourself! I wouldn’t exactly say that George was inefficient, but the details of material life rather bored him. When you had so much else to do and so little time to do it in, he thought it rather a waste of life to be too pernickety about one’s surroundings and fixings. However, he decided then and there that he and Elizabeth would have to get out of Soho. It was too disgustingly frowzy.

Fanny was a marvelous lover. Or, at least, George thought so. It was not only that she was golden and supple and lithe, where Elizabeth was dark and rather stiff and virginal, but she really cared about love-making. It was her art. It was for her neither a painful duty nor a degrading necessity nor a series of disappointing experiments, but a delightful art which gave full expression to her vitality, energy and efficiency. Like all great artists, she was entirely disinterested—art for art’s sake. She chose her lovers with great care, and rather preferred them to be poor, to avoid any suspicion of commercialism or arrivism. She knew she had the genius of touch, and was unwilling that it should be wasted. If she hadn’t been a great lover, she might have been a good sculptor. But like all artists she was exacting, and had her vanity. She would not waste her talents. If a subject was not profoundly responsive and appreciative, she put him aside at the earliest possible moment. No clumsy, inhibited Englishman for her! No, thank you. Perhaps that is why she spent so much of her time abroad.

But this particular Englishman was not inhibited or ineradicably clumsy. Crude perhaps, rather lacking in style and finish, but capable of rapid progress under expert guidance. Fanny, with the artist’s unerring glance, had long ago perceived that there were considerable possibilities in George. He had natural aptitudes and, what is far more important, the sense of delicate artistry which finds its highest satisfaction in bestowing delight. He was neither a bull nor a turkey gobbler. Fanny was satisfied; she had not made a mistake....

* * * * *

For the remaining days of Elizabeth’s absence George did no work whatever. And a very good thing too, for he needed a holiday. He stayed at Fanny’s flat. They made picnic meals in the flat, or ate out at places where they were pretty certain not to meet friends—City stockbrokers’ taverns or curious pubs with sawdust and spittoons on the floors, where you sat on stools at the bar and had a cut from the joint and two vegetables with beer. They went to “low” music-halls and saw all the primitive films of the day—Charlie’s were the only good ones—and for a lark went to see what the inside of the Abbey looked like, a place no Londoner ever visits. They agreed that it looked like the atelier of an incredibly bad academic sculptor installed in an overcrowded but rather beautiful Gothic barn. Fanny rather hated Gothic architecture, she said all those points and squiggles gave her the creeps; but George said that if you wanted to see the real spirit of mediæval sculpture you ought to look underneath the seats of the canon’s stalls. But they didn’t quarrel about that. They were far too happy.

* * * * *

Nothing more was said about Elizabeth, until the day before she returned.

“You’ll meet her, of course?” said Fanny.

“Of course.”

“Well, give her my love.”

“I suppose I ought to tell her about us,” said George reflectively.

Fanny saw the danger in a flash. Her “freedom” was of a different kind from Elizabeth’s rather theoretical and idealizing kind. Fanny’s was light-hearted and practical; moreover, she had observed human beings and knew her Elizabeth far better than George did. She also knew her George. If George told Elizabeth, she knew quite well there would be a bust-up, that Elizabeth’s theories would be abandoned as speedily as on the former occasion. But she knew it was useless to reveal the truth to George. On the other hand, she didn’t want to lose him and didn’t want to “take him away” from Elizabeth—not until much later when Elizabeth started the struggle. Fanny knew that George had to be managed within the limits of masculine stupidity.

“Oh, tell her if you like. But I shouldn’t discuss it with her, if I were you. She must have long ago felt subconsciously the attraction between us, and you can see by her attitude that she accepts it. I don’t see the need for all this talk and re-hashing of what’s a private and personal matter between two people. We’re so hypnotized by words, that we think nothing exists until we have talked about it. How can you interpret all these deep feelings and sensations in words? It’s because words don’t suffice that we need touch. Tell Elizabeth by loving her better.”

“Then you really thinks she knows?”

Fanny was a little annoyed. Why couldn’t he _see_, why couldn’t he take a hint?

“If she’s as acute and experienced as she tells us, she ought to have seen the possibility long ago. No doubt, if she’s said nothing about it to you, the reason is that she just doesn’t want to discuss it. If she accepts, that’s enough.”

“But she always believes that two people should be perfectly open and frank with each other about their other affairs.”

“Does she? Well, I advise you to say nothing until she asks you.”

“All right, darling, if you think so.”

* * * * *

George duly met Elizabeth at Euston. She was delighted to be back in London, away from the stuffiness of family and the solemn boredom of middle-class existence. She leaned out the window of the taxi and sniffed the air.

“How lovely to smell dirty old London mud again! It means I’m free, free, free again!”

“Was it very awful?”

“Oh, awful, interminable.”

“I’m so glad you’re back.”

“It’s wonderful. And lovely to be with you again. How well you look, George, quite handsome and Italian!”

“That’s because you haven’t seen me for a fortnight.”

“How’s Fanny?”

“Oh, very well. Sent her love to you.”

“Dear old beastly ugly Tottenham Court Road!” said Elizabeth with her nose out the window again.

“By the way, it was awfully frowsty in Soho while you were away. Don’t you think we might move to somewhere more modern?”

“What, to a suburb? Why, George! You know you hate suburbs, and always said you liked to live in the middle of London.”

“Yes, I know. But we might find something at Chelsea.”

“But we couldn’t possibly afford two places at Chelsea rents.”

“Well, why not share a fairly large one?”

“What, and live in the same flat? George!”

“Oh, all right, if you don’t want to, but Fanny thinks Soho is unhealthy for you.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

* * * * *

Whether, as the Swedish old-maid hinted in her book, it was the stimulus of another affair or whether George was anxious to display the artistries of Fanny or whether it was merely remorse, Elizabeth found George peculiarly charming and ardent.

She attributed this to the happy effect of a brief absence.

[ VII ]

In a few weeks they duly moved to Chelsea. Fanny found them an excellent apartment, with two large rooms, a kitchen and a modern bathroom, for less than the combined rental of their two ramshackle rooms in Soho. Elizabeth developed an unexpected talent for “home-making,” and fussed a good deal over the installation in spite of George’s light satire. But they were both only too happy to get away from the frowstiness of Soho to a clean modern flat.

This was in June, 1914. They did not go away when the hot weather arrived, intending to stay the summer in London, and go to Paris for September and October. Elizabeth spent a good deal of her spare time with Reggie Burnside, and George was absorbed in his painting. He wanted to get enough good canvasses for a small show in Paris in the autumn.

One day towards the end of July he left his painting early, to meet Reggie and Elizabeth for lunch somewhere near Piccadilly. It was a benign day, with fine white fleecy clouds suspended in a blue sky, and a light wind ruffling the darkened foliage of summer trees. Even the King’s Road looked pleasant. George noticed, and afterwards remembered vividly, because these were the last really tranquil moments of his life, how the policeman’s gloves made a clear blotch of white against a plane-tree as he regulated the traffic. A little band of sparrows were squabbling and twittering noisily in the lilacs of one of the gardens. The heat was reflected, not unpleasantly, from the warm white flagstones of the sidewalk.

As he waited for the number 19 bus, George did what he very rarely did—bought a newspaper. He always said it was a waste of life to read newspapers—if something really important happened people would tell you about it soon enough. He didn’t know why he bought a paper that morning. He had been working hard for two or three weeks without seeing any one but Elizabeth, and perhaps thought he would see what was going on in the world. Perhaps it was only to see if there was any new film.

George clambered to the top of the bus, with the paper under his arm, and paid his fare. He then glanced casually at the headlines and read: Serious Situation in the Balkans, Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Servia, Servian Appeal to Russia, Position of Germany and France. George looked up vaguely at the other people on the bus. There were four men and two women; each of the men was intently reading the same special early edition of the evening paper. He read the despatches eagerly and carefully, and grasped the seriousness of the situation at once. The Austrian Empire was on the verge of war with Serbia (Servia, it was then called, until the country became one of our plucky little allies); Russia threatened to support Serbia; the Triple Alliance would bring in Germany and Italy on the side of Austria; France would be bound to support Russia under the Treaty of Alliance, and the Entente Cordiale might involve England. There was a chance of a European war, the biggest conflict since the defeat of Napoleon. The event he had always declared to be impossible—a war between the “civilized” nations was threatened, was at hand. He refused to believe it. Germany didn’t want war, France would be mad to want it, England couldn’t want it. The “Powers” would intervene. What was Sir Edward Grey doing? Oh, suggesting a conference.... The man on the seat opposite George leaned towards him, tapping the newspaper with his hand:

“What do you say to that, Sir?”

“I think it looks confoundedly serious.”

“Chance of a war, eh?”

“I sincerely hope not. The newspapers always exaggerate, you know. It would be an appalling catastrophe.”

“Oh, liven things up a bit. We’re getting stale, too much peace. Need a bit of blood-letting.”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that. I...”

“It’s got to come sooner or later. Them Germans, you know. They’d never be able to face our Navy.”

“Well, let’s hope it won’t be necessary.”

“Ah, I dunno. Shouldn’t mind ’avin’ a go at the Germans myself, and I reckon you wouldn’t either.”

“Oh, I’m a neutral,” said George, laughing; “don’t count on me.”

“Umph!” said the man, as he got up to leave the bus, casting a suspicious look at this foreign-looking and unpatriotic person. Yes, that’s it, a foreigner, a bloody foreigner; umph, what’s he doing in England I’d like to know? Umph!

George was back in the newspaper, unaware of the turmoil he had excited in that elderly but patriotic bosom.

* * * * *

“I say,” exclaimed George, as soon as he met Elizabeth and Reggie, “have you two seen the newspaper to-day?”

“Why?” said Elizabeth, “what’s in it? Something about you?”

“No, there’s a war threatened in the Balkans, and it may apparently involve every one else.”

Reggie sneered.

“Oh, piffle! How absurd you are, George, to believe a newspaper sensation. Why, we were talking about it last night in the Common Room, and every one agreed that the conflict would have to be localized and that Grey would probably make a statement in a day or two. It’ll all blow over.”

Elizabeth had grabbed the newspaper, and was trying to find her way through the unfamiliar mazes of sensational rhetoric.

“So you don’t think it’ll come to anything?” said George, hanging up his hat, and sitting down at the restaurant table.

“Of course not!” said Reggie contemptuously.

“What do you think, Elizabeth?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking up bewildered from the paper, “I can’t understand this curious language. Are all newspapers written like that?”

“Mostly,” said George, “but I’m glad you think it’s only a scare, Reggie. I admit I was startled when I read those headlines. That’s what comes of living absorbed in one’s own life, and neglecting the fountain-heads of truth.”

* * * * *

All the same, he was not quite reassured, and on the way home left an order with a local news agent for the delivery of a daily paper until further notice. He hoped the next morning’s news would be better. It wasn’t. Neither was the next day’s. Then came the news that Russia was mobilizing, and that the Grand Fleet had sailed from Spithead “on manœuvres,” but under sealed orders. George remembered the coastguard officer who got drunk, and let slip that he had sealed orders in case of war. Perhaps the man would be opening those orders in a few days, perhaps he had already opened them. He tried to paint, and couldn’t; picked up a book, and found himself thinking: Austria, Russia, Germany, France, England, perhaps—good God, it’s impossible, impossible. He fidgeted about, and then went into Elizabeth’s room. She was delicately painting a large blue bowl of variegated summer flowers. The room was very quiet. One of the windows was opened on to a large communal garden surrounded by the backs of houses. A wasp came in through the striped orange and black curtain and buzzed towards a bunch of grapes on a large Spanish plate.

“What is it, George?”

The room was so peaceful, so secure, Elizabeth so unperturbed and as usual, that George felt half-surprised at his own agitation.

“I’m worried about this war situation.”

“Really, George! What _is_ the good of getting into such a fuss? You know Reggie told you there was nothing in it, and he hears all the latest news at Cambridge.”

“Yes, darling, but it isn’t a matter of Cambridge now, but of Europe. The Tsar and the Kaiser won’t consult the Dons before launching a war.”

Elizabeth, rather annoyed, went on painting.

“Well,” she said through the brush between her teeth, “I can’t help it. Anyway it won’t concern us.”

It won’t concern us! George stood irresolute a moment.

“I think I’ll go out and see what’s the latest news.”

“Yes, do. I’m dining with Reggie to-night.”

“All right.”

* * * * *

George spent the first few days of August wandering about London, taking busses, and buying innumerable editions of newspapers. London seemed perfectly calm and as usual, and yet there was something feverish about it. Perhaps it was George’s own feverishness exteriorized, perhaps it was the unwonted number of special editions with shouting newsboys in unusual places, handing out copies as fast as they could to little groups of impatient people. His memories of those days were confused and he couldn’t remember the chronological order of events. Two or three scenes stood out vividly in his mind—all the rest became a blur, the outlines obliterated by more dreadful scenes.

He remembered dining with Elizabeth and some other friends in a private suite of the Berkeley as the guests of a wealthy American. The talk kept running on the possibility of war, and the positions of England and America. George still clung to the great illusion that wars between the highly industrialized countries were impossible. He elaborated this view to the American man, who agreed, and said that Wall Street and Threadneedle Street between them could stop the universe.

“If there _is_ a war,” said George, “it will be a sort of impersonal, natural calamity, like a plague or an earthquake. But I should think that in their own interests all the governments will combine to avert it, or at least limit it to Austria and Servia.”

“But don’t you think the Germans are spoiling for a war?” said another Englishman.

“I don’t know, I simply don’t know. What does any of us know? The governments don’t tell us what they’re doing or planning. We’re completely in the dark. We can make surmises, but we don’t _know_.”

“It’s probably got to come sooner or later. The world’s too small to hold an expanding Germany and a non-contracting British Empire.”

“The irresistible force and the immovable mass.... But it’s not a question of England and Germany, but of Austria and Servia.”

“Oh, the murder of the Archduke’s just a pretext—probably arranged beforehand.”

“But by which side? I can’t see the situation as a stage scene, with villains on one side, and noble-minded fellows on the other. If the Archduke’s murder was the result of an intrigue, as you suggest, it was a damned despicable one. Now, either the various governments are all despicable intriguers ready to stoop to any crime and duplicity to attain their ends—in which case we shall certainly have a war, if they want it—or they’re more or less decent and human men like ourselves, in which case they’ll do anything to avert it. We can do nothing. We’re impotent. They’ve got the power and the information. We haven’t....”

The white-gloved, immaculate Austrian waiters were silently handing and removing plates. George noticed one of them, a young man with close-cropped golden hair and a sensitive face. Probably a student from Vienna or Prague, a poor man who had chosen waiting as a means of earning his living while studying English. They both were about the same age and height. George suddenly realized that he and the waiter were potential enemies! How absurd, how utterly absurd....

After dinner they sat about and smoked. George took his chair over to the open window and looked down on the lights and movement of Piccadilly. The noise of the traffic was lulled by the height to a long continuous rumble. The placards of the evening papers along the railings beside the Ritz were sensational and bellicose. The party dropped the subject of a possible great war, after deciding that there wouldn’t be one, there couldn’t. George, who had great faith in Mr. Bobbe’s political acumen, glanced through his last article, and took great comfort from the fact that Bobbe said there wasn’t going to be a war. It was all a scare, a stock-market ramp.... At that moment, three or four people came in, more or less together, though they were in separate parties. One of them was a youngish man in immaculate evening dress. As he shook hands with his host, George heard him say rather excitedly:

“I’ve just been dining with Tommy Parkinson of the Foreign Office. He had to leave early and go back to Downing Street. It seems there are Cabinet meetings all the time. Tommy was frightfully depressed and pessimistic about the situation.”

“What did he say?” asked three or four eager voices.

“He wouldn’t commit himself at all. He was simply very gloomy and _distrait_, and wouldn’t say anything definite.”

“Why didn’t you ask him whether Germany is mobilizing?”

“I did, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Oh, well, perhaps he only has a liver.”

Among the other guests was a tall, very erect, rather sun-burned man of about forty, who had taken no part in the conversation. He was sitting on a couch in silence beside a woman younger than himself—his wife—who was also silent. George heard him introduced to another man as Colonel Thomas. After a few minutes George went over and spoke to him.

“My name’s Winterbourne. You’re Colonel Thomas, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of the situation we’ve all been discussing so intelligently?”

“I don’t think anything. A soldier mustn’t have political ‘views,’ you know.”

“Well, but do you think the Germans are mobilizing?”

“I don’t know. I believe they are. But that doesn’t mean war necessarily. They may be mobilizing for manœuvres. We’re mobilized for manœuvres on Salisbury Plain.”

“Mobilized! The British Army mobilized!”

“Only for manœuvres, you know.”

“Are you mobilized too?”

“Yes, I leave to-morrow morning.”

“Good God!”

“Oh, it’s only manœuvres. They always happen at this time of the year.”

* * * * *

Another day—it must have been the Sunday before the 4th of August—George went down to Trafalgar Square to attend a Socialist Peace Meeting. The space round the Nelson Column was so crowded that he could not get near enough to hear the speakers, who were standing on the plinth above the heads of the crowd. An eager-faced man with white hair and an aristocratic voice made a speech, directed at mob prejudices. He apparently took the view that the threatened war was the work of Imperial Russia. George caught repeatedly the words “knout,” “Cossacks,” and the phrase “the eagles of war are spreadin’ their wings.” Some of the listeners at a rival war meeting started an attack on the peace party. There was a scuffle, which was very soon dispersed by Mounted Police. The crowd surged away from Trafalgar Square. George found himself carried towards the Admiralty Arch and up the Mall. He thought he might as well go back that way, and try to get a bus at Victoria. But opposite Buckingham Palace the road was blocked by a huge crowd, which was continually reinforced from all three roads. The Palace Gates were shut, with a cordon of police in front of them. The red-coated Guardsmen in their furry busbies stood at ease in front of the sentry-boxes.

“We want King George! We want King George!” chanted the mob.

“We want King George.”

After several minutes, a window was opened on to the centre balcony, and the King appeared. He was greeted by an immense ragged cheer, and acknowledged it by raising his hand to his forehead. The crowd began another chant.

“We want War! We want War! We want WAR!”

More cheering. The King made no gesture of approval or disapproval.

“Speech!” shouted the mob, “speech! WE WANT WAR!”

The King saluted again, and disappeared. A roar of mingled cheering and disappointment came from the crowd. There were several of the inevitable humorous optimists to cry:

“Are we downhearted?”

“NO-OOOO!”

“Is Germany?”

“YUSS!”

“Do we care for the Germans?”

“NO-OOOO!”

There could be no doubt about the feelings of that small section of the English population....

* * * * *

Even then George still clung to hopes of peace, bought only the more pacific Radical papers, and believed that Sir Edward Grey would “do something.” Touching faith of the English in the omnipotence of their rulers! After all, Sir Edward was not God Almighty, but merely a harassed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in a difficult position, with a divided Cabinet behind him. What on earth could the man have done? Possibly a frank statement in July that if France or Belgium were attacked, England would “come in”? People say so now, but then it might have looked like a gesture of provocation.... Who are we to pass judgments? And the nations cannot altogether pose as the victims of their rulers. It is certain that the mobs in the capitals were howling for war. It is certain that the largest demonstrations in favour of peace occurred in Germany....

* * * * *

When the news came that France had mobilized, and that the Germans had crossed the Belgian frontier, George abandoned all hope immediately. He knew that one of the cardinal points of British policy is never to allow Antwerp to rest in the possession of a great power. The principle is as old as the reign of Queen Elizabeth or older. Who was it said: “Antwerp is a pistol pointed at England’s head”? All Europe was in arms, and England would join. The impossible had happened. They were in for three months of carnage and horrors. Yes, three months. It couldn’t last longer. Probably less. Oh, much less. There would be an immense financial collapse, and the governments would have to cease fighting. Why, Bank Rate was ten per cent already. He jumped on a bus at Hyde Park Corner and sat just inside the entrance.

“What’s the news?” said the conductor.

“Very serious; the French have mobilized.”

“What abaht us?”

“We’ve done nothing yet. But it looks inevitable.”

“Wy, we ain’t declared war, ’ave we?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, there’s still ’opes then. I reckon we’d best mind ah own business, and keep aht of it.”

Mind our own business! How quickly that unselfish sentiment was crystallized in the national slogan: Business As Usual!

The long unendurable nightmare had begun. And the reign of Cant, Delusion and Delirium. I have shown, with a certain amount of excusable ferocity, how devilishly and perniciously the old régime of Cant affected people’s sexual lives, and hence the whole of their lives and characters, and those of their children. The subsequent reaction was, at least in its origin, healthy and right. There simply _had_ to be a better attitude, the facts had to be faced. And nobody with any courage will allow himself to be frightened out of saying so, either by the hush-hush partisans of the old régime or doing-what-grandpa-did-and-let’s-pretend-it’s-all-lovely, or by the fact that numerous congenital idiots have prattled and babbled and slobbered about “Sex” until the very word is an exacerbation. But the sexual life _is_ important. It is in so many cases the dominant or the next to dominant factor in peoples’ lives. We can’t write about their lives without bringing it in; so for God’s sake let’s do so honestly and openly, in accordance with what we believe to be the facts, or else give up pretending that we are writing about life. No more Cant. And I mean free love Cant just as much as orange-blossoms and pealing church bells Cant....

If you’re going to argue that Cant is necessary (the old political excuse) then for Heaven’s sake let’s chuck up the game and hand in our checks. But it isn’t necessary. It can only be necessary when deceit is necessary, when people have to be influenced to act against their right instincts and true interests. If you want to judge a man, a cause, a nation, ask: Do they Cant? If the War had been an honest affair for any participant, it would not have needed this preposterous bolstering up of Cant. The only honest people—if they existed—were those who said: “This is foul brutality, but we respect and admire brutality, and admit we are brutes; in fact, we are proud of being brutes.” All right, then we know. “War is hell.” It is, General Sherman, it is, a bloody brutal hell. Thanks for your honesty. You, at least, were an honourable murderer.

It was the régime of Cant _before_ the War which made the Cant _during_ the War so damnably possible and easy. On our coming of age the Victorians generously handed us a charming little cheque for fifty guineas—fifty-one months of hell, and the results. Charming people, weren’t they? Virtuous and far-sighted. But it wasn’t their fault? They didn’t make the War? It was Prussia, and Prussian militarism? Right you are, right ho! Who made Prussia a great power and subsidized Frederick the Second to do it, thereby snatching an empire from France? England. Who backed up Prussia against Austria, and Bismarck against Napoleon III? England. And whose Cant governed England in the nineteenth century? But never mind this domestic squabble of mine—put it that I mean the “Victorians” of all nations.

One human brain cannot hold, one memory retain, one pen portray the limitless Cant, Delusion and Delirium let loose on the world during those four years. It surpasses the most fantastic imagination. It was incredible—and I suppose that was why it was believed. It was the supreme and tragic climax of Victorian Cant, for after all the Victorians were still in full blast in 1914, and had pretty much the control of everything. Did they appeal to us honestly, and say: “We have made a colossal and tragic error, we have involved you and all of us in a huge War; it’s too late to stop it; you must come and help us, and we promise to take the first opportunity of making peace and making it thoroughly?” They did not. They said they didn’t want to lose us but they thought _WE_ ought to go; they said our King and Country needed us; they said they’d kiss us when we came home (merci! effect of the Entente Cordiale?); they said one of the most civilized races in the world were “Huns”; they invented Cadaver factories; they asserted that a race of men notorious during generations for their kindliness were habitual baby-butchers, rapers of women, crucifiers of prisoners; they said the “Huns” were sneaks and cowards and skedadellers, but failed to explain why it took fifty-one months to beat their hopelessly outnumbered armies; they said they were fighting for the Liberty of the World, and everywhere there is less liberty; they said they would Never sheathe the Sword until et cetera, and this sort of criminal rant was called Pisgah-Heights of Patriotism.... They said... But why continue? Why go on? It is desolating, desolating. And then they dare wonder why the young are cynical and despairing and angry and chaotic! And they still have adherents, who still dare to go on preaching to _us!_ Quick! A shrine to the goddesses Cant and Impudence....

* * * * *

I don’t know if George was aware of all this, because we never discussed it. There were numbers of things you prudently didn’t discuss in those days; you never knew who might be listening and “report.” I myself was twice arrested as a civilian, for wearing a cloak and looking foreign, and for laughing in the street; I was under acute suspicion for weeks in one battalion because I had a copy of Heine’s poems and admitted that I had been abroad; in another I was suspected of not being myself, God knows why. That was nothing compared with the persecution endured by D. H. Lawrence, probably the greatest living English novelist, and a man of whom—in spite of his failings—England should be proud.

I do know that George suffered profoundly from the first day of the war until his death at the end of it. He must have realized the awfulness of the Cant and degradation, for he occasionally talked about the yahoos of the world having got loose, and seized control, and by Jove, he was right. I shan’t attempt to describe the sinister degradation of English life in the last two years of the War; for one thing I was mostly out of England, and for another Lawrence has done it once and for all in the chapter called “The Nightmare” in his book “Kangaroo.”

In George’s case, the suffering which was common to all decent men and women was increased and complicated and rendered more torturing by his personal problems, which somehow became related to the War. You must remember that he did not believe in the alleged causes for which the War was fought. He looked upon the War as a ghastly calamity or a more ghastly crime. They might talk about their idealism but it wasn’t convincing. There wasn’t the élan, the conviction, the burning idealism which carried the ragged untrained armies of the First French Republic so dramatically to Victory over the hostile coalitions of the Kings. There was always the suspicion of dupery and humbug. Therefore, he could not take part in the War with any enthusiasm or conviction. On the other hand, he saw the intolerable egotism of setting up oneself as a notable exception or courting a facile martyrdom of _rouspetance_. Going meant one more little brand in the conflagration; staying out meant that some other, probably physically weaker brand, was substituted. His conscience was troubled before he was in the army, and equally troubled afterwards. The only consolation he felt was in the fact that you certainly had a worse and a more dangerous time in the line than out of it.

As a matter of fact, I never really “got” George’s position. He hated talking about the subject, and he had thought about it and worried about it so much that he was quite muddle-headed. It seemed to involve the whole universe, and his attempts to express his point of view would wander off into discussions about the Greek city-states or the principles of Machiavelli. He was frankly incoherent, which meant a considerable inner conflict. From the very beginning of the War he had got into the habit of worrying, and this developed with alarming rapidity. He worried about the War, about his own attitude to it, about his relations with Elizabeth and Fanny, about his military duties, about everything. Now “worry” is not “caused” by an event; it is a state which seizes upon any event to “worry” over. It is a form of neurasthenia, which may be induced in a perfectly healthy mind by shock and strain. And for months and months he just worried and drifted.

When Elizabeth decided, somewhere towards the end of 1914, that the time had come when the principles of Freedom must be put into practice in the case of herself and Reggie, and duly informed George, he acquiesced at once. Perhaps he was so sick at heart that he was indifferent; perhaps he was only loyally carrying out the agreement. What surprised me was that he did not take that opportunity of telling her about Fanny. But he was apparently quite convinced that she knew. It was, therefore, an additional shock when he found out that she didn’t know, and a still greater shock to see how she behaved. He suffered an obnubilation of the intellect in dealing with women. He idealized them too much. When I told him with a certain amount of bitterness that Fanny was probably a trollop who talked “freedom” as an excuse and that Elizabeth was probably a conventional-minded woman who talked “freedom” as in the former generation she would have talked Ruskin and Morris politico-æstheticism, he simply got angry. He said I was a fool. He said the War had induced in me a peculiar resentment against women—which was probably true. He said I did not understand either Elizabeth or Fanny—how could I possibly understand two people I had never seen and have the cheek to try to explain them to _him_, who knew them so well? He said I was far too downright, over-simplified and _tranchant_ in my judgments, and that I didn’t—probably couldn’t—understand the finer complexities of peoples’ psychology. He said a great deal more, which I have forgotten. But we came as near to a quarrel as two lonely men could, when they knew they had no other companion. This was in the Officers’ Training Camp in 1917, when George was already in a peculiar and exacerbated state of nerves. After that, I made no effort at any sort of ruthless directness, but just allowed him to go on talking. There was nothing else to do. He was living in a sort of double nightmare—the nightmare of the War and the nightmare of his own life. Each seemed inextricably interwoven. His personal life became intolerable because of the War, and the War became intolerable because of his own life. The strain imposed on him—or which he imposed on himself—must have been terrific. A sort of pride kept him silent. Once when it was my turn to act as commander of the other Cadets, I was taking them in Company Drill. George was right-hand man in the front rank of number one Platoon, and I glanced at him to see that he was keeping direction properly. I was startled by the expression on his face—so hard, so fixed, so despairing, so defiantly agonized. At mess we ate at tables in sixes—he hardly ever spoke except to utter some banality in an effort to be amiable or some veiled sarcasm which sped harmlessly over the heads of those for whom it was intended. He sneered a little too openly at the coarse obscene talk about tarts and square-pushing, and was too obviously revolted by water-closet wit. However, he wasn’t openly disliked. The others just thought him a rum bloke, and left him pretty much alone.

Probably what had distressed him most was the row between Elizabeth and Fanny. With the whole world collapsing about him, it seemed quite logical that the Triumphal Scheme for the Perfect Sex Relation should collapse too. He did not feel the peevish disgust of the reforming idealist who makes a failure. But in the general disintegration of all things he had clung very closely to those two women, too closely of course. They had acquired a sort of mythical and symbolical meaning for him. They resented and deplored the War, but they were admirably detached from it. For George they represented what hope of humanity he had left, in them alone civilization seemed to survive. All the rest was blood and brutality and persecution and humbug. In them alone the thread of life remained continuous. They were two small havens of civilized existence and alone gave him any hope for the future. They had escaped the vindictive destructiveness which so horribly possessed the spirits of all right-thinking people. Of course, they were persecuted, that was inevitable. But they remained detached, and alive. Unfortunately, they did not quite realize the strain under which he was living, and did not perceive the widening gulf which was separating the men of that generation from the women. How could they? The friends of a person with cancer haven’t got cancer. They sympathize, but they aren’t in the horrid category of the doomed. Even before the Elizabeth-Fanny row he was subtly drifting apart from them against his will, against his desperate efforts to remain at one with them. Over the men of that generation hung a doom which was admirably if somewhat ruthlessly expressed by a British Staff Officer in an address to subalterns in France: “You are the War generation. You were born to fight this War, and it’s got to be won—we’re determined you shall win it. So far as you are concerned as individuals, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn whether you are killed or not. Most probably you will be killed, most of you. So make up your minds to it.”

That extension of the Kiplingesque or Kicked-backside-of-the-Empire principle was something for which George was not prepared. He resented it, resented it bitterly, but the doom was on him as on all the young men. When “we” had determined that they should be killed, it was impious to demur.

After the row, the gap widened, and when once George had entered the army it became complete. He still clung desperately to Elizabeth and Fanny, of course. He wrote long letters to them trying to explain himself, and they replied sympathetically. They were the only persons he wanted to see when on leave, and they met him sympathetically. But it was useless. They were gesticulating across an abyss. The women were still human beings; he was merely a unit, a murder-robot, a wisp of cannon-fodder. And he knew it. They didn’t. But they felt the difference, felt it as a degradation in him, a sort of failure. Elizabeth and Fanny occasionally met after the row, and made acid-sweet remarks to each other. But on one point they were in agreement—George had degenerated terribly since joining the army, and there was no knowing to what preposterous depths of Tommydom he might fall.

“It’s quite useless,” said Elizabeth, “he’s done for. He’ll never be able to recover. So we may as well accept it. What was rare and beautiful in him is as much dead now as if he were lying under the ground in France.”

And Fanny agreed....